I wondered back in the 80s if he was for real or a scam artist but I have no doubt he's for real. He has spent a fortune of his own money and there has been a lot of development. The car has two major problems. First it's nearly impossible to do what he's trying but it looks like he finally has a nearly functional one so scam is a mighty strong word. The second issue is the odds are near zero of the FAA approving them anytime in the near future. They can't even get the insurance company to allow them to test it without the tether. From what I gather he's 95% there having a working prototype but they are on the razor edge of loosing it all. Releasing the saucer version was a desperate act to keep the company a float and legitimate. I have serious doubts of the skycar ever being approved for the average citizen. That doesn't make Moller a scam artist it makes him a dreamer. Sadly he may be shooting himself in the foot. All it takes is one moron doing something stupid in one of the saucers and the lawyers will eat his company for lunch. "Gee you didn't specially tell me flying a surface effect vehicle off a clift was a bad idea, give me money." Really it's a hovercraft that can fly 10' instead of 6". Cool but the potential for disaster is high. My fear would be wind flipping one. 10' is still enough head first to kill you.
The biggest problem with our current administration is they have never been after the "terorists" as the call them their real agenda is findling the "enemy". For them the enemy is anyone who doesn't agree with them. That does include terrorists but it also includes many of their own people, Republicans that disagree on specific issues. NASA has been a thorn in their side lately because a few have complained about supressing facts and have spoken out in support of global warming. I think this is far more about towing the party line than about terrorists. They want dirt on everyone. There's an underlying paranoia in everything they do. Freedom isn't about free to think like they do but that's the interpretation. It's not whether potential terrorist can influence them but can the government yank their chain when they need to. We live in very scary times and it's not the country I grew up in. In some ways it was actually far more conservative but ironically there was far more freedom in the 60s. We're increasingly under a microscope and knowledge is power and it's always about power. The factions in Iraq claim it's about religion but even the factions are dividing into smallwer and smaller sub groups fighting among themselves but at it's heart it's about power and control.
Yeah service pack 2 was secure. It just maxed the firewall by default so it disabled all my software and left me unable to so much as install a video driver. Disabling all functions isn't security is reducing a computer to a power sucking paperweight. Now at random times when I upgrade cerain things it resets the firewall much to my annoyance. Service pack 2 was the last straw. I commited to switching the company to 90% Mac by the end of the year based on XP service pack 2 and Vista. Most of the equipment isn't connected to the internet unless it's being upgraded so I shouldn't need a tech to reconfigure the bloody firewall everytime I upgrade. Service pack 2 was a trainwreck in my opinion. The lesson they learned from Vista is the best way to secure a computer was to disallow everything. Somehow Mac seems to manage to be more secure than Windows with none of this BS. It's going to mean switching to some new applications to make the transition but I'm tired of loosing time dealing with the OS on a daily basis. We rarely have trouble with the Macs it's always the PCs that are having problems. The internet running PCs are even worse. There's daily maintainence of scrubbing out malware and every so often running things like defrag on the PCs is a pain. Mac doesn't even have defrag anymore it's built into the OS as a passive background app. I work everyday with both Macs and PCs and anyone that says PCs are still superior to Mac simply doesn't know what they are talking about. Ten, even five years ago that wasn't true but it is true today. I've used PCs since DOS 2.5 but if I could throw everyone of them in the trash tomorrow I'd do it in a heartbeat. Software has kept me in the PC world but I've found alternatives for most application in the Mac world now so we'll just keep a couple of PCs to handle what apps aren't on Mac yet, translated dual boot Macs we aren't buying anymore PCs. I say yet because at this rate all the major vendors are going to have to support Mac better. Already they are a serious threat in the laptop market and may take the lead there. If Microsoft doesn't recover from the Vista fuck up I say they will pass them in the desktop world as well. Most people would switch if they tried Mac for a while. That is a fact. The average user couldn't care less about the OS people get branded though like what shaving cream they are using. Vendor support and better game support are holding back Macs but it's getting like Bill Gates is the little Dutch Boy and the dike isn't going to hold out forever unless the rebuild the bloody thing. They've got every tech with their finger and toes pluging holes but the dike keeps springing new holes as fast as they can plug them. Apple saw the future and made a brave move scraping their OS and building a better system. Miscrosoft believes they can patch their way to a better OS. I wish everyone would go back and reread all the posts declaring OSX a rip off of Vista and how superior Vista was just before Vista hit the streets. Macs are far from perfect but Windows has fallen to a distant second for me and I see nothing to indicate they will fix the problems in the forseeable future. Service Pack 2 proved to me they are committed to the wrong approach. If you're on the Titanic the answer isn't bailing it's finding a new ship. Service Pack 2 wasn't a lifeboat it was an anchor.
I'm not a fan of contests, I don't have the time to waste anyway, but an eye opener is most CG animation contest require "all" entrants to surrender rights to their work. You can still use the videos yourself but they are free to use they as they want including distributing them on for sale DVDs. It's one thing to make that condition on the winners but it's startling giving them the rights to your work just by entering. Definitely read the fine print because some don't make this condition but the majority of them, especially smaller ones, do require that you grant them rights to your work when you enter. Some design contests are worse yet. I remember the Puegeot car design contest requires the finalist to sign off all rights to their desin whether they win or not.
The point is the Buddists are the only major religion not promoting violence opposition. The Dalai Lama has never supported violently resisting the Chinese inspite of nearly a million Tibeteans being slaughted by then. Poverty is not a requirement of Buddist Monks but most consider worldly possessions a distraction and avoid them. Until recently the Dalai Lama rarely traveled and has few personal possessions. If you want to talk about bleeding the poor tey the Catholic faith. Most of their growth has been in poorer countries where they are still expected to Tithe. Vatican City is one of the richest countries on the planet in spite of being one of the very smallest. The Catholic Church may organize the gathering of money for charities but I can't remember the church giving any of the Tithe money to help the poor. The Catholic Church is run more like a business than a church on many levels. I'd recommend reading more about Buddism before knocking it, this is a blanket post also referencing the parent. Tibet was a poor country due to isolation and few resources not from the religion bleeding it dry like so many do. The wealth of the order goes back many centuries and not from demanding tithes. Christ lived in comfort and spoke out about helping the poor and did not support violently opposing Rome very much like the Dalai Lama. Care to weigh in on how hypocritical Christ was?
If they really wanted to fire imaginations and send it where Geeks dream of going they should send it to a whore house in Nevada. It'd be cheaper, get more press, and inspire generations of Geeks to shoot for the stars, former porn stars but they're still stars damnmit!
I've never heard of the Robinhood defense working. Not gaining financially from the act changes nothing in the eyes of the court. Simply storing illegal goods is an illegal act. Friend steals a TV and you let him keep it in your closet it's still a crime and both are guilty. It doesn't matter whether you are for or against file sharing it's a matter of how the law is written and enforced. And they were fool for not having a lawyer. In the US justice more often comes from a choice of lawyer than the merits of the case. Sad but too often true. Even if you loose the penalties are radically less if you have the right lawyer. The rich rarely do time and are tough to convict.
Dude if you're pushing 200 gig to 300 gig a month band useage it's time to look into T1 lines or dump the torrent. I don't have the time to download that much let alone tie up equipment doing it and I have five machines running. I'm going to move in the Spring and I've considered a T1 line. I do transfer a lot of data at times but almost the bigger consideration is reliability. They've been working on the local cable service and my internet keeps going down which results in hours lost trying to explain to the moron on the other end of the phone that it's not my equipment it theirs. I'm running a graphics business out of my home and I don't want to worry about consumer service limits or the "what do you want me to do about it" attitudes from the service people. T1 service may beyond the average consumer but for heavy users it's pretty afordable compared to the old days. Since it's wired through traditional lines it has the added benifit of being available in areas that lack high speed service. Installation is still pricey but if you own your own home and plan to be there for a few decades look at it as an investment.
If you want to get technical bird shot is a lousy way to go. You're more likely to badly injure them than kill them unless you're fairly close. Something like #4 Buckshot is better. They hold 28 pellets that are each nearly the size of a.22 round. There are rounds like turkey shot but most bird shot is smaller than BBs. It's really meant for small birds not mammals. Small buckshot gives you a better chance of killing rather than wounding them. It's common for bird shot to not kill the birds just cripple them. At a short distance it can be devastating but after 20 or 30 feet it looses energy fast and spreads out.
The distance actually can be measured in light hours and I'll probably live to see it go into a light day distant and some on the forum may see it hit two light days, young teens with long lives. Puts interstellar travel into perspective.
There's a simpler solution to all the bloody memory problems with PCs, buy a Mac or Linux machine. It's not meant to be flamebait just a simple fact. It's alwasy been the main reason Linux machines got such a foothold in the server market and now Mac is gaining ground because their new servers are very sweet and afordable. The memory issues have been around forever in Microsoft OSs and I don't see them going away. For the first time I see Microsoft starting to loose ground. They shot themselves in the foot with ME but managed to regain their footing with XP. Vista just blew a leg off. Apple is gaining ground at a rate no one could have predicted and now even hardcore PC people are looking hard at Linux. I never thought I'd see Microsfot loose their dominance in my lifetime but if they aren't careful I can see a combination of Linux and Max totalling more than PC sales. If vendors start balking at the exclusive deals and Mac mantains it's growth Microsoft could see a big chunk of their sales go away. The next OS is a make or break it for them. If it's another Vista dog then they'll loose their stranglehold. People can knock Mac all they want but Microsoft has a long way to go to match OSX Tiger and Apple will release three to four new versions before Microsoft can hack up another major release.
They didn't lie. When they started Vista the started with a fresh file. They then copied and pasted the XP code and added the memory sucking parts. Finally they hardened the firewall by disabling everything. My question is why it cost five billion to copy and paste a file?
The thing to remember first and foremost their concern is maintaining the integrity of the iPhone as it was designed. Part of the issues with doing the reload is to avoid a tech support call when their shareware app isn't compatible with the changes in the iPhone OS. If you're after an open source product iPhone isn't it and it's not likely it ever will be. I'm sure eventually they have a SDK and encourage some third party development but it'll never be a tinkerers device. It does a great job at what it was designed to do. If it isn't what you want or need find something that suits your needs. I really think the third party app issue is overblown. No one is dropping $500 to $600 on a phone that doesn't do what they want but they hope down the line additional apps will be available. I decided to wait because I just got a service contract and I couldn't wait for the iPhone. I'm really waiting for the next generation because I want twice the memory and I want a movie function added. When they release the second genration I'll be happy to buy my way out of the contract. The fact it doesn't quite suit my needs but the next generation should softened the blown of not being able to wait.
Is command line phobia a medical condition or is it related to a fear of typing? Do people actually get the shakes and start screaming "where did all the icons go"? An older Unix system must make them go fetal.
Non argument. They aren't putting dedicated watermarks on CDs. What this is meant for is downloadable music. Say you buy a downloadable song or movie it encodes a number that references your purchase. Most services don't allow resale of a downloaded music files so you can't legally resell it in the first place. The idea would be to eventually drop traditional DVDs and CDs in favor of downloading since most people are asking for that anyway. It'll save a fortune in distribution costs and it is possible to watermark them. I researched doing this many years ago. It is possible to encode the watermark in such a way that it would degrade or make make the song unplayable if you stripped out the watermark. This may anger the ones that want to "share" but the system would work and it would make people hesitant to post the song they just downloaded if they were held accountable for their actions. Most people say they want afordable flexsible downloads. In theory this could solve the issue since the companies generally don't care how you personally access the music or movies they want to limit you from sharing the files to save your friends a buck or potentially costing sales by giving it to millions through downloads. A million of those people may not have bought the track but a 100,000 might and that's a lot of money. Most people don't download on torrents to demo music they do it to avoid buying it in the first place.
Ignore world temperatures, they've increased more than one degree in the northern lattitudes, ignore CO2 levels, ignore the crazy weather, I'm 46 and I've never seen anything like what we have. Ignore all of that, what pray tell is melting virtually all glaciers at a rate that no one thought possible. Some of the glaciers date back more than a million years. Most of the ice that's melting now is tens of thousands of years old yet it's expected to melt in the next hundred years, not theory it's happening. Numbers can be distorted to mean anything when we are talking about small changes that have dramatic effects. Is this a NASA rep discovering a problem or is this the Bush administration performing damage control? Even if it isn't NASA has a history of defending dogma. It pratically had to rain on the landers for NASA to accept that there has been recent water on Mars. At what point do we start accepting global warming? How deep do coastal cities need to be underwater? They can say we aren't the cause all they want but no one is rationalizing how such a massive spike in CO2 levels aren't having an effect on the environment.
Have they raised prices? I mean elections are already costing a couple of hundred million. If we wind up with a Hilary/Obama ticket on the Democratic side how much with Diebold charge the Republicans to win this time around? We could be talking some serious election time inflation. If hacker/Linus nuts really want to show their support for open source they need to hack into Diebold and get Linus Torvalds elected President. Sure he's not a native born American citizen but that's a truly great hack, get some one elected that can't even take the job. It'd also get all the non computer geeks wondering who the hell Linus Torvalds is? They can also claim hey don't look at us if it was a linux OS this would have never happened.
Unless you're talking about the 1800s and before not really. Carbon is considered organic as well as chemicals like acetone since they are used in organic processes. Finding signs of animo acids was a bigger find in a sense because they aren't chemicals but are complex organic compounds. The point is these things aren't limited to planets and they are finding that complex organic structures can form in space. Even those red globulas found in Inda that fell from the sky were thought to have originated either in space or high in the atmosphere. They weren't cells but they may have be an early stage of cell formation. They resembled cell walls and could reproduce. Maybe the first life was a form of prion or simple virus invading one of these cell structures. Later they began to divide to reproduce rather than infecting the empty "cells". All of these elements could have originated in near space or space itself.
Slashdot Mirror
Only prior to Service Pack 1.
Wouldn't that be a Beowulf Cub?
Sure they do. We call them walls.
I wondered back in the 80s if he was for real or a scam artist but I have no doubt he's for real. He has spent a fortune of his own money and there has been a lot of development. The car has two major problems. First it's nearly impossible to do what he's trying but it looks like he finally has a nearly functional one so scam is a mighty strong word. The second issue is the odds are near zero of the FAA approving them anytime in the near future. They can't even get the insurance company to allow them to test it without the tether. From what I gather he's 95% there having a working prototype but they are on the razor edge of loosing it all. Releasing the saucer version was a desperate act to keep the company a float and legitimate. I have serious doubts of the skycar ever being approved for the average citizen. That doesn't make Moller a scam artist it makes him a dreamer. Sadly he may be shooting himself in the foot. All it takes is one moron doing something stupid in one of the saucers and the lawyers will eat his company for lunch. "Gee you didn't specially tell me flying a surface effect vehicle off a clift was a bad idea, give me money." Really it's a hovercraft that can fly 10' instead of 6". Cool but the potential for disaster is high. My fear would be wind flipping one. 10' is still enough head first to kill you.
The biggest problem with our current administration is they have never been after the "terorists" as the call them their real agenda is findling the "enemy". For them the enemy is anyone who doesn't agree with them. That does include terrorists but it also includes many of their own people, Republicans that disagree on specific issues. NASA has been a thorn in their side lately because a few have complained about supressing facts and have spoken out in support of global warming. I think this is far more about towing the party line than about terrorists. They want dirt on everyone. There's an underlying paranoia in everything they do. Freedom isn't about free to think like they do but that's the interpretation. It's not whether potential terrorist can influence them but can the government yank their chain when they need to. We live in very scary times and it's not the country I grew up in. In some ways it was actually far more conservative but ironically there was far more freedom in the 60s. We're increasingly under a microscope and knowledge is power and it's always about power. The factions in Iraq claim it's about religion but even the factions are dividing into smallwer and smaller sub groups fighting among themselves but at it's heart it's about power and control.
Yeah service pack 2 was secure. It just maxed the firewall by default so it disabled all my software and left me unable to so much as install a video driver. Disabling all functions isn't security is reducing a computer to a power sucking paperweight. Now at random times when I upgrade cerain things it resets the firewall much to my annoyance. Service pack 2 was the last straw. I commited to switching the company to 90% Mac by the end of the year based on XP service pack 2 and Vista. Most of the equipment isn't connected to the internet unless it's being upgraded so I shouldn't need a tech to reconfigure the bloody firewall everytime I upgrade. Service pack 2 was a trainwreck in my opinion. The lesson they learned from Vista is the best way to secure a computer was to disallow everything. Somehow Mac seems to manage to be more secure than Windows with none of this BS. It's going to mean switching to some new applications to make the transition but I'm tired of loosing time dealing with the OS on a daily basis. We rarely have trouble with the Macs it's always the PCs that are having problems. The internet running PCs are even worse. There's daily maintainence of scrubbing out malware and every so often running things like defrag on the PCs is a pain. Mac doesn't even have defrag anymore it's built into the OS as a passive background app. I work everyday with both Macs and PCs and anyone that says PCs are still superior to Mac simply doesn't know what they are talking about. Ten, even five years ago that wasn't true but it is true today. I've used PCs since DOS 2.5 but if I could throw everyone of them in the trash tomorrow I'd do it in a heartbeat. Software has kept me in the PC world but I've found alternatives for most application in the Mac world now so we'll just keep a couple of PCs to handle what apps aren't on Mac yet, translated dual boot Macs we aren't buying anymore PCs. I say yet because at this rate all the major vendors are going to have to support Mac better. Already they are a serious threat in the laptop market and may take the lead there. If Microsoft doesn't recover from the Vista fuck up I say they will pass them in the desktop world as well. Most people would switch if they tried Mac for a while. That is a fact. The average user couldn't care less about the OS people get branded though like what shaving cream they are using. Vendor support and better game support are holding back Macs but it's getting like Bill Gates is the little Dutch Boy and the dike isn't going to hold out forever unless the rebuild the bloody thing. They've got every tech with their finger and toes pluging holes but the dike keeps springing new holes as fast as they can plug them. Apple saw the future and made a brave move scraping their OS and building a better system. Miscrosoft believes they can patch their way to a better OS. I wish everyone would go back and reread all the posts declaring OSX a rip off of Vista and how superior Vista was just before Vista hit the streets. Macs are far from perfect but Windows has fallen to a distant second for me and I see nothing to indicate they will fix the problems in the forseeable future. Service Pack 2 proved to me they are committed to the wrong approach. If you're on the Titanic the answer isn't bailing it's finding a new ship. Service Pack 2 wasn't a lifeboat it was an anchor.
I'm not a fan of contests, I don't have the time to waste anyway, but an eye opener is most CG animation contest require "all" entrants to surrender rights to their work. You can still use the videos yourself but they are free to use they as they want including distributing them on for sale DVDs. It's one thing to make that condition on the winners but it's startling giving them the rights to your work just by entering. Definitely read the fine print because some don't make this condition but the majority of them, especially smaller ones, do require that you grant them rights to your work when you enter. Some design contests are worse yet. I remember the Puegeot car design contest requires the finalist to sign off all rights to their desin whether they win or not.
The point is the Buddists are the only major religion not promoting violence opposition. The Dalai Lama has never supported violently resisting the Chinese inspite of nearly a million Tibeteans being slaughted by then. Poverty is not a requirement of Buddist Monks but most consider worldly possessions a distraction and avoid them. Until recently the Dalai Lama rarely traveled and has few personal possessions. If you want to talk about bleeding the poor tey the Catholic faith. Most of their growth has been in poorer countries where they are still expected to Tithe. Vatican City is one of the richest countries on the planet in spite of being one of the very smallest. The Catholic Church may organize the gathering of money for charities but I can't remember the church giving any of the Tithe money to help the poor. The Catholic Church is run more like a business than a church on many levels. I'd recommend reading more about Buddism before knocking it, this is a blanket post also referencing the parent. Tibet was a poor country due to isolation and few resources not from the religion bleeding it dry like so many do. The wealth of the order goes back many centuries and not from demanding tithes. Christ lived in comfort and spoke out about helping the poor and did not support violently opposing Rome very much like the Dalai Lama. Care to weigh in on how hypocritical Christ was?
If they really wanted to fire imaginations and send it where Geeks dream of going they should send it to a whore house in Nevada. It'd be cheaper, get more press, and inspire generations of Geeks to shoot for the stars, former porn stars but they're still stars damnmit!
I've never heard of the Robinhood defense working. Not gaining financially from the act changes nothing in the eyes of the court. Simply storing illegal goods is an illegal act. Friend steals a TV and you let him keep it in your closet it's still a crime and both are guilty. It doesn't matter whether you are for or against file sharing it's a matter of how the law is written and enforced. And they were fool for not having a lawyer. In the US justice more often comes from a choice of lawyer than the merits of the case. Sad but too often true. Even if you loose the penalties are radically less if you have the right lawyer. The rich rarely do time and are tough to convict.
Dude if you're pushing 200 gig to 300 gig a month band useage it's time to look into T1 lines or dump the torrent. I don't have the time to download that much let alone tie up equipment doing it and I have five machines running. I'm going to move in the Spring and I've considered a T1 line. I do transfer a lot of data at times but almost the bigger consideration is reliability. They've been working on the local cable service and my internet keeps going down which results in hours lost trying to explain to the moron on the other end of the phone that it's not my equipment it theirs. I'm running a graphics business out of my home and I don't want to worry about consumer service limits or the "what do you want me to do about it" attitudes from the service people. T1 service may beyond the average consumer but for heavy users it's pretty afordable compared to the old days. Since it's wired through traditional lines it has the added benifit of being available in areas that lack high speed service. Installation is still pricey but if you own your own home and plan to be there for a few decades look at it as an investment.
If you want to get technical bird shot is a lousy way to go. You're more likely to badly injure them than kill them unless you're fairly close. Something like #4 Buckshot is better. They hold 28 pellets that are each nearly the size of a .22 round. There are rounds like turkey shot but most bird shot is smaller than BBs. It's really meant for small birds not mammals. Small buckshot gives you a better chance of killing rather than wounding them. It's common for bird shot to not kill the birds just cripple them. At a short distance it can be devastating but after 20 or 30 feet it looses energy fast and spreads out.
300 female Vervet Monkeys in black teddies..
can you mastrabate with it? Come on this is Slashdot, you were thinking it too.
The distance actually can be measured in light hours and I'll probably live to see it go into a light day distant and some on the forum may see it hit two light days, young teens with long lives. Puts interstellar travel into perspective.
Where's an all of the above option when you need it?
Yes but did you get laid? A couple of hundred thousand geeks saving up for a sports car want to know?
There's a simpler solution to all the bloody memory problems with PCs, buy a Mac or Linux machine. It's not meant to be flamebait just a simple fact. It's alwasy been the main reason Linux machines got such a foothold in the server market and now Mac is gaining ground because their new servers are very sweet and afordable. The memory issues have been around forever in Microsoft OSs and I don't see them going away. For the first time I see Microsoft starting to loose ground. They shot themselves in the foot with ME but managed to regain their footing with XP. Vista just blew a leg off. Apple is gaining ground at a rate no one could have predicted and now even hardcore PC people are looking hard at Linux. I never thought I'd see Microsfot loose their dominance in my lifetime but if they aren't careful I can see a combination of Linux and Max totalling more than PC sales. If vendors start balking at the exclusive deals and Mac mantains it's growth Microsoft could see a big chunk of their sales go away. The next OS is a make or break it for them. If it's another Vista dog then they'll loose their stranglehold. People can knock Mac all they want but Microsoft has a long way to go to match OSX Tiger and Apple will release three to four new versions before Microsoft can hack up another major release.
They didn't lie. When they started Vista the started with a fresh file. They then copied and pasted the XP code and added the memory sucking parts. Finally they hardened the firewall by disabling everything. My question is why it cost five billion to copy and paste a file?
The thing to remember first and foremost their concern is maintaining the integrity of the iPhone as it was designed. Part of the issues with doing the reload is to avoid a tech support call when their shareware app isn't compatible with the changes in the iPhone OS. If you're after an open source product iPhone isn't it and it's not likely it ever will be. I'm sure eventually they have a SDK and encourage some third party development but it'll never be a tinkerers device. It does a great job at what it was designed to do. If it isn't what you want or need find something that suits your needs. I really think the third party app issue is overblown. No one is dropping $500 to $600 on a phone that doesn't do what they want but they hope down the line additional apps will be available. I decided to wait because I just got a service contract and I couldn't wait for the iPhone. I'm really waiting for the next generation because I want twice the memory and I want a movie function added. When they release the second genration I'll be happy to buy my way out of the contract. The fact it doesn't quite suit my needs but the next generation should softened the blown of not being able to wait.
Is command line phobia a medical condition or is it related to a fear of typing? Do people actually get the shakes and start screaming "where did all the icons go"? An older Unix system must make them go fetal.
Non argument. They aren't putting dedicated watermarks on CDs. What this is meant for is downloadable music. Say you buy a downloadable song or movie it encodes a number that references your purchase. Most services don't allow resale of a downloaded music files so you can't legally resell it in the first place. The idea would be to eventually drop traditional DVDs and CDs in favor of downloading since most people are asking for that anyway. It'll save a fortune in distribution costs and it is possible to watermark them. I researched doing this many years ago. It is possible to encode the watermark in such a way that it would degrade or make make the song unplayable if you stripped out the watermark. This may anger the ones that want to "share" but the system would work and it would make people hesitant to post the song they just downloaded if they were held accountable for their actions. Most people say they want afordable flexsible downloads. In theory this could solve the issue since the companies generally don't care how you personally access the music or movies they want to limit you from sharing the files to save your friends a buck or potentially costing sales by giving it to millions through downloads. A million of those people may not have bought the track but a 100,000 might and that's a lot of money. Most people don't download on torrents to demo music they do it to avoid buying it in the first place.
Ignore world temperatures, they've increased more than one degree in the northern lattitudes, ignore CO2 levels, ignore the crazy weather, I'm 46 and I've never seen anything like what we have. Ignore all of that, what pray tell is melting virtually all glaciers at a rate that no one thought possible. Some of the glaciers date back more than a million years. Most of the ice that's melting now is tens of thousands of years old yet it's expected to melt in the next hundred years, not theory it's happening. Numbers can be distorted to mean anything when we are talking about small changes that have dramatic effects. Is this a NASA rep discovering a problem or is this the Bush administration performing damage control? Even if it isn't NASA has a history of defending dogma. It pratically had to rain on the landers for NASA to accept that there has been recent water on Mars. At what point do we start accepting global warming? How deep do coastal cities need to be underwater? They can say we aren't the cause all they want but no one is rationalizing how such a massive spike in CO2 levels aren't having an effect on the environment.
Have they raised prices? I mean elections are already costing a couple of hundred million. If we wind up with a Hilary/Obama ticket on the Democratic side how much with Diebold charge the Republicans to win this time around? We could be talking some serious election time inflation. If hacker/Linus nuts really want to show their support for open source they need to hack into Diebold and get Linus Torvalds elected President. Sure he's not a native born American citizen but that's a truly great hack, get some one elected that can't even take the job. It'd also get all the non computer geeks wondering who the hell Linus Torvalds is? They can also claim hey don't look at us if it was a linux OS this would have never happened.
Unless you're talking about the 1800s and before not really. Carbon is considered organic as well as chemicals like acetone since they are used in organic processes. Finding signs of animo acids was a bigger find in a sense because they aren't chemicals but are complex organic compounds. The point is these things aren't limited to planets and they are finding that complex organic structures can form in space. Even those red globulas found in Inda that fell from the sky were thought to have originated either in space or high in the atmosphere. They weren't cells but they may have be an early stage of cell formation. They resembled cell walls and could reproduce. Maybe the first life was a form of prion or simple virus invading one of these cell structures. Later they began to divide to reproduce rather than infecting the empty "cells". All of these elements could have originated in near space or space itself.