I do like how you focused on two of the more minor points of my post that are easy to argue about, while not touching on the main idea at all.
I responded to the parts I had information to contradict. Unlike most everyone who talks about Katrina on/., I was actually in New Orleans when the storm hit, and for the immediate aftermath.
I said that because I thought you were the same person that I was replying to. Since you weren't I shouldn't have bitched that you didn't respond to my whole post, my fault.
I got the 1.4 million figure from wikipedia's page, which could obviously be wrong.
Consider the expected effect of GCC (Global Climate Change) on sea-levels, as they are now expected to be - 17 inches (about 45cm for you people outside the USA). Spread over 100 years. Which is about 1/6 inch per year. Sure, it'll be a problem.... But it won't be a SUDDEN problem.
Here's where I think you're wrong, and have shown evidence in other parts of this thread to explain that. If we are just talking about melting glaciers, then the 17 inch estimate might be right, but the issue isn't only about melting. Many of the glaciers (on shelves above the water) are breaking off and falling into the water, causing a much more sudden change (take a look at the Ross shelf and what happened to it lately). There are a lot of estimations out there that predict different scenarios.
There won't be any part of the situation where we have to relocate tens of millions of people RIGHT NOW! More like thousands this year, and next year, and the next, and the next....
Assuming 10 million people are displaced over a hundred years, that's 100,000 people a year. Looking at some of the estimates for areas in India that say hundreds of millions will be displaced, that's a million people a year. Again, that all depends on the estimations that you select. 17 inches is a very conservative estimate (according ot what I've read and cited in my other posts in this thread) and I'm not sure of exactly what that would do to the land ass over the years.
Yeah, it was getting late and I was pretty tired. I knew I was going to mess up a calculation in there somewhere with a stupid mistake. Thanks for the correction.
As the other reply to your post stated, nothing I said had anything to do with "ice cubes in a glass full of water." These analogous ice cubes (glaciers) are not in the water but are essentially suspended above it. Since you like experiements, try this.
1. Fill up a glass of water half way.
2. Drop ice cubes in the glass of water until it is filled to the top by water and ice cubes.
3. Let all the ice melt.
4. Carefully OBSERVE the new water level.
5. You may, if you are a really careful observer, see that the water level has even increased slightly (or more) from where it was in step 1.
6. Repeat experiement as many times as needed to convince yourself that you are wrong.
If you do observe a DECREASE, I'll let you think about its cause for a while. Please do post the results of your experiment for others. You don't have to write a long dissertation, summary will do.
You don't need to get any proof of this from anyone else. Do some REAL experimental science yourself. After all science is experimenting not conjecturing about what may have happened in the distant past or the unknown future.
Not really. It's hard to define science exactly, but it definitely includes the scientific method in which scientists makes hypotheses to explain events and then develop experimental studies to determine the accuracy of such predictions.
Umm, no. New Orleans had a population of less than 500,000 before Katrina. About half have returned.
New Orleans Proper had a population of less than 500,000. The Greater New Orlenas area had a population of 1.4 million. Since the Greater New Orleans area was affected by Katrina and most of those people were displaced, that was the figure I gave.
Umm, no. Crime wasn't much of an issue after Katrina, and didn't start picking up again for quite some time.
I bet you're going to say that the looting caught on camera in the streets didn't happen, and neither did the pockets police corruption. Since the reports of rape in the Superdome were uncomfirmed, they probably weren't true either.
I do like how you focused on two of the more minor points of my post that are easy to argue about, while not touching on the main idea at all. This isn't about crime in New Orleans or how people will react during the next hurricane. Its about the issue on a larger scale where you have tens if not hundreds of millions of people displaced from their homes, which you failed to address.
Much of the world's ice is already floating on the oceans and is therefore displacing the water.
Flat out wrong. I couldn't immediately find a reference to contrast your lack of proof, but it becomes a moot point shortly.
All that floating ice melting would not raise the oceans even a millimeter. All the ice on land melting would not make much of a rise either... The worlds major ice stores are in Antarctica and Greenland. If that all melted the oceans would not rise enough to cause many problems.
All the ice on Greenland alone would cause a 15 to 20 foot rise in sea level (4th paragraph). Although the article states that it is unlikely for all of it to melt in this century, Greenland isn't "all the ice on land".
Just get yourself a globe and look how much ice area on land there is compared to the vastness of the oceans.
Wow; just wow. You do realize that the earth is in 3 dimensions right? Since talk about climate doesn't work and you demonstrated such a colossal knowledge of physics, let's try math. Earth ocean's are a combined total of just under 142,000,000 square miles. An iceberg named B-15 fell of the Ross Shelf and is approximately 4250 square miles with a thickness between 20 and 60 meters, so I'll be conservative and go with 20. 20 * 11,000 / 142,000,000 =.000599 meters or just over half a millimeter. Calculated at 40 meters it turns out to be.001197m and at 60 its.001796m. The West Antarctic ice sheet is "holding an estimated 30 million cubic kilometres" which is 30 billion cubic meters, which would raise the oceans levels 30*10^9 / 142,000,000 = 211 meters. Ice doesn't have to look big on a map to take up a lot of space. That last article I cited explains how they expect the Ross Ice Shelf to drop abruptly due to samples taken from the shelf, and that once one glacier disappears, the rest tend to follow more quickly.
Ok, I'll admit I went a little overboard, maybe even a lot. However, it was in response to the comment "I for myself still think global warming could be nice, after the initial, inevitable adaptation pains. More crops, more habitable lands."
I was trying to give a bunch of examples as to why that probably wouldn't be true (in my opinion, definitely won't be true). My intention was not to prove the effects of global warming, just to list other possible consequences of it, which I felt the parent poster needed due to his/her opinion. Besides the climate change mistakes that I made and you pointed out, which I don't care to argue about since I won't claim to know exactly what will happen, I want to focus on:
How naïve. So many societies have recovered from such destruction, and all we are talking about here is planned moving to higher lands. It is not like sea levels will rise in a repentine tsunami. As things go, most business will just plan their new installations in higher land and possibly more to the North, as old ones get obsolete.
You're right, a lot of societies have recovered from massive levels of destruction, and some haven't. As I see, the major problem we will have with global warming would be from the rise in the sea level. I understand that some of these projections for land masses are exaggerated, but I think it is safe to say that at least tens of millions of people would be displaced from their homes if the sea levels rose to some of the more conservative levels of projection (some predictions claim hundreds of millions just in India). This might not happen in a day, but moving 10 million people in a year isn't easy either, especially in some of these countries that don't have infrastructure or funding to do it properly. Without knowing how fast this change would occur, it is hard to know just how damaging it would be. If you want to claim that 10 million refugees wouldn't cause increased crime, violence, possible revolutions, and wars, then that is a different argument which can easily be traced through history. As you brought up Katrina, there were 1.4 million people in New Orleans before the hurricane which displaced most of them. Those that remained or returned shortly after had to deal with a lot of social issues including crime and such, along with the destruction caused by the hurricane. My point here is not to talk about the effects of nature but instead the way people handle the aftermath.
Finally,
if you had said that you think global warming might be good because hundreds of millions of people will die, giving our global economy and political systems a chance to rebuild itself from scratch due to anarchy, revolutions, and war, then that's a different story.
Just what I thought. Ecofascism is on the rise. Keep your nature, I stand with people.
After re-reading my post, I can see where you get that, even though it was not my intention. I'm not trying to sound like a tree-hugger here, but you can read into it however you want. I firmly believe that in the end, it doesn't matter what we do to this planet because it will adapt to us in the end. With the exception of a few catastrophic solar system events, the earth isn't going anywhere. Hell, it took a few giant meteors over the years and now here we are. My reason for trying to stop some changes from taking place is not to protect the planet, but to keep the planet from adapting and killing me. You can call me naive all you want, but the idea that you either stand with the planet or with the people is a great definition of the word. What I intended to say in that quote was that there may be some so-called "benefits" from global warming, but that increased land and crops is not one of them. I do not think that hundreds of millions of deaths, revolutions, and wars are a good thing, but I'm sure that some people think that such a scenario would be good, so I wouldn't choose to argue with them because I can't provide such an argument. I can however, provide a basic explanation (which of course is arguable) as to why there will not be more land or crops.
As some of the other reponses noted, global warming does not mean more land or crops. As the temperature rises, climate patterns change, usually making dry places more dry and wet places more wet. This means increased flooding for the wet places and droughts for the dry. It's hard to grow most of our current produce staples in either of those environments.
On the topic of more habitable lands, that seems pretty ridiculous to me. If the sea level rises, earth's total land mass will decrease significantly, displacing millions to hundreds of millions of people. With that many "refugees", areas that were once habitable would become wastelands while trying to support them. When you say more habitable lands, I'm guessing you're talking about frozen areas becoming habitable because of increased temperatures. The problem there is again due to droughts. Most of the frozen places on earth get little rainfall. It's hard to say how increased temperatures in these areas would affect rainfall, but if they follow patterns in other places, they wouldn't be habitable. Even if they do become habitable, we now have to completely relocate or rebuild our infrastructures for manufacturing, agricultural, and basically every other aspect of modern life.
Let's finally look at what would happen if the the sea level rose and new land becomes habitable due to global warming. Assuming none of the other problems I have mentioned are major factors and that everyone who is displaced by the oceans (Florida, most of Western Europe, China along the Yellow River, most of India along the delta, islands across the world, etc) is able to safely move farther inland. They would need to continue to move inland due to the massive hurricanes/typhoons that would be destroying anything built along the coast, which would considerably decrease the amount of habitable land. Living in Africa or around the Equator would be pretty much out of the question due to the increased heat in the summer, again leaving less space for people.
Now, if you had said that you think global warming might be good because hundreds of millions of people will die, giving our global economy and political systems a chance to rebuild itself from scratch due to anarchy, revolutions, and war, then that's a different story.
I've only had sporadic problems with sleep and hibernate on other versions of Windows, but for the past 2 or 3 weeks that I've had Vista, there haven't been any issues.
Of course, I can't transfer files over the network to my non-Vista computers without Vista disconnecting from the network, use a network printer, burn a whole DVD using Windows DVD Maker... but that's a totally different story.
Oh definitely, because its not like people can figure out how to use tools on their own.
When I was young, I found a calculator that my parents had in a drawer. I was probably in kindergarten at the time. I knew about numbers, but I didn't know how to add or multiply (I might have known the basics of addition, but I didn't really understand the concept). I knew what the different signs meant and started to play around with it. I taught myself addition, subtraction, and multiplication (only certain numbers when it came to multiplication) with that calculator. I used a tool that I didn't know how to use to learn something that I didn't know how to do.
Humans are set apart from other animals by our ability to learn from our surroundings (that's not really true, but I think you understand what I'm getting at). Given a tool, people will learn things about it one way or another. If one kid figures out how to use it (or is taught how), he/she will teach another kid, and the learning will be viral. Knowledge spreads as it is needed.
I admit that teaching people how to use them would be the best way to acomplish the spirit of this project, but that doesn't mean these laptops will be worthless without training. By not providing the laptops, you will deny these people the opportunity to learn.
I knew that they did but thought that maybe there was some reason they were refusing to tell customers. I called two places: a wal-mart and a GameStop. At wal-mart, I talked to a couple people who either said they themselves didn't know or that the store wasn't given that information before I gave up since I could tell they weren't real bright and it was wasting my time.
At Gamestop, I walked into the store a week or so before the launch and asked the guy behind the counter if they were reserving Wii's for any future launches, to which he replied "No." and turned away from me. I turned to the other guy behind the counter and asked him if he knew when they would be shipping out more, to which he also replied "No." and started stocking things. At this point, I was a little pissed that they were so unhelpful so I left, vowing to never shop there again, but I was also a little disheartened at trying to get a Wii. Luckily though, I know my area pretty well and I believe that there are a lot of stores that sell consoles in the area while there aren't enough people to buy all of them. I had a friend who actually bought a Wii a day or two after the second launch, so I guess that's a good sign.
So I see that according to the article, almost 500k wii's have sold. I thought Nintendo said that they planned on having 1m shipped by the end of the year. Even if a lot of those wii's have been sold online, there should still be a lot out there right? Does anyone have any tips for finding a wii at a store? The stores in my area are sold out and the two that I asked told me they don't know when they will be getting more. Any advice would be appreciated.
That post actually helped me understand why I got modded down recently for a first post that kinda made fun of Apple and was modded down as a troll (although after looking back on my wording, I wasn't careful and was pretty un-flattering) even though all of the replies to my post agreed with what I said and reiterrated my point while getting modded up. It seems to me that if you are going to be the first post, you had better say something neutral or else someone will come after you.
Then again, picking on apple is probably going to bring some hard core apple devotees down on you.
It's also not a good idea to sink to someone else's level, kick someone when they're down, or even kick a guy in the balls for that matter.
But we are talking about lawsuits here, so the "rules" of common decency don't apply.
Also, if two wrongs don't make a right, then do they turn around, keep going, or make a left? How many wrongs does it take to get to the center of a right? Do three rights and two wrongs make a right? Then there's also that proof about the limit of wrongs as n approaches is infinity, plus the square root of evil, divided by who was nicer to the ugly girl in high school plus the number of old ladies you helped cross the street... Shit, I can't remember my class on moral action computation theory.
IMO, you're exactly right, and kinda wrong (but mostly right). This question is almost completely (if not straight up completely) dependent on the type of information those IT works are in charge of.
Let me pose a different question: should janitor have their backgrounds checked? My initial answer would be the same as yours, only as much as any other person. However, it depends on where they work and what they are trusted with. If you are a bank trusting your janitor with a key to clean to clean the safes at night, then you sure as hell better do a background check. Another reason for backgrounds checks would be janitors who work at schools or in other places with lots of children (although that need is definitely arguable, I'm just trying to point out that the answer isn't simple).
Background checks should be done according to what a person has access to, not what their job title is. A mailroom employee can be just as dangerous as a cubicle worker if the mailroom employee has access to the right information / resources.
With that said, I'm not saying that background checks are or should be good / moral / right / legal etc., I'm just pointing out the factors that I think should go into the choice of whether or not to do a background check on someone.
Definitely. The only problem is that the RIAA and MPAA have been using the "think of the artists" line as their reason for prosecuting. When people think about millions of songs being downloaded without compensation to the artists, a lot of people feel sorry for the artists. When those same people think about a woman with MS being sued by an organization with an almost endless supply of money and lawyers, they start to feel bad for the woman. If the RIAA/MPAA had started this campaign as "downloading songs is illegal and we will sue anyone who does so, regardless of age, sex, or race" then this wouldn't be an issue. (And it's not like this argument is my idea, I've read it in dozens of other slashdots posts about this subject, and agree.)
From what I've seen as well, you're definitely right. I guess what I was trying to say, and didn't make clear enough, is that companies are recognizing that, see it as a problem, and are looking for solutions. From what my professor was telling us, not that that makes it true, is that companies are starting to make a shift towards allowing engineers to stay as engineers. The key word there is "starting", so it probably won't be as common as managerial positions for at least a few more years.
The Peter Principle states, "In a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence." Although this isn't quite applicable, it is seen all too often that engineers and such who do well at their jobs are eventually promoted to management, where many don't want to be, regardless of whether or not they are good at doing it.
The good news is that this might be changing. I'm currently at the University of Illinois and have had the wonderful opportunity (sarcastic) to have just finished a class on CS Ethics and Professionalism here. The class was miserable, but that's not the point. There was a lot of focus on how to do job interviews and what to look for when you are trying to get into the workforce, and this topic of engineers getting promoted to management positions came up. Our professor, along with a guest lecturer who runs the Career Management Offices (or something like that), both said that many jobs now are offering contracts that will "promise" to allow for engineers to stay in engineering and not get bumped to management, while also getting continued pay raises and promotions, so they aren't just getting stuck in engineering with no chance for advancement. This is good news for others who are worried about having a choice between management with a promotion and engineering with no chance for advancement at some point.
I also have a friend who graduated with EE and started working as an engineer at some manufacturing plant I believe. He did well and within a couple years of graduating, got into what I think is an unorthodox managment position. He is more of a contractor; he manages the other engineers in the building while working with them to get projects done. When things go wrong, he's the first one there trying to fix things. He doesn't have to deal with a lot of paperwork and salaries or anything like that, so its not my idea of management. Maybe this is the direction you were looking for?
Either way, I realize neither of those are getting from Systems to EE, but if some recent graduates are starting to have these opportunities, then maybe you will to.
Yeah, because when I think of video games, I think of a Mac.
But seriously, this will either follow the usual theme of Mac gamers (being that they don't exist) or it will give Apple a chance to bust out of that stereotype.
Nobody said that the area couldn't be split up and put in different places, but you make a good point anyway.
Also (not contrary to anything you were saying), I did not read the article, but the summary said 265 miles on a side, which turns out to be 70,225 square miles. Texas is 268,581 square miles. A solar array that large would take up a little over 26% of Texas. When put in that perspective, that's a huge mass of land. Using "265 on a side" just doesn't do the size justice.
I got drunk underage and got caught. It taught me to be more careful when I get drunk underage, and I didn't get caught again. Now if I do something illegal or questionable, like speeding, I'm more careful about doing it to avoid getting caught... so something came of it for me, but on the opposite side of the spectrum.
If you are the CEO or any senior exec of a public company you have to sign a piece of paper that commits you legally to chasing profit for the stock holders.
Yeah, I get that, but where does it say that the only way to raise profits is to do evil things? So many people have adopted this idea that corporations are evil because all they care about is money, while this isn't true at all. You can care about money and still do good things. Here's a real shocker: you can do good things and make money by doing it! Knowing that doing an "evil thing" will lead to increased profit at the moment is easy, but having the foresight to to know that it will lead to drops in profit in the future is much better. Google doesn't have to do "evil" things just because its a corporation.
Right, because a company ONLY cares about money and making more of it. And the only way to make more money is to do things that are "evil" because having morals and making decisions based on them wouldn't be good for business.
Initially, I wasn't thinking about tracking random citizens as much as I was thinking about it being used during sentencing. I can just picture a first time assault offender having this used against him to send him to jail because "he is likely to do it again". I can't give an in depth example of how that would work and IANAL, but I've read about enough obscure cases to know that some lawyers are good at their jobs and can do things that I wouldn't ever think would fly.
In another example, picture a violent offender being released and then committing another violent crime. If this happens in a state that doesn't use the system, this could open up a lawsuit against the state by the victim (or victim's family if its a murder) for not "properly" protecting its citizens. If a lawyer successfully argued that, then this type of statistical profiling could be required in other offices. I know that's a lot of if's, but this thing worries me in the long run. When we take away freedoms from groups of people (even though it is necessary in many cases), other groups are always at risk of losing those freedoms too.
That was my first thought on this article as well, until I read the last line: "to let probation caseworkers concentrate most of their effort on the former offenders most likely to be most dangerous."
If this is only used in that manner, then it seems like a good idea to me. However, that's a huge if, and I don't believe for a second that it will only be used by probation officers against convicted criminals.
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I said that because I thought you were the same person that I was replying to. Since you weren't I shouldn't have bitched that you didn't respond to my whole post, my fault.
I got the 1.4 million figure from wikipedia's page, which could obviously be wrong.
Consider the expected effect of GCC (Global Climate Change) on sea-levels, as they are now expected to be - 17 inches (about 45cm for you people outside the USA). Spread over 100 years. Which is about 1/6 inch per year. Sure, it'll be a problem.
Here's where I think you're wrong, and have shown evidence in other parts of this thread to explain that. If we are just talking about melting glaciers, then the 17 inch estimate might be right, but the issue isn't only about melting. Many of the glaciers (on shelves above the water) are breaking off and falling into the water, causing a much more sudden change (take a look at the Ross shelf and what happened to it lately). There are a lot of estimations out there that predict different scenarios.
There won't be any part of the situation where we have to relocate tens of millions of people RIGHT NOW! More like thousands this year, and next year, and the next, and the next....
Assuming 10 million people are displaced over a hundred years, that's 100,000 people a year. Looking at some of the estimates for areas in India that say hundreds of millions will be displaced, that's a million people a year. Again, that all depends on the estimations that you select. 17 inches is a very conservative estimate (according ot what I've read and cited in my other posts in this thread) and I'm not sure of exactly what that would do to the land ass over the years.
Yeah, it was getting late and I was pretty tired. I knew I was going to mess up a calculation in there somewhere with a stupid mistake. Thanks for the correction.
As the other reply to your post stated, nothing I said had anything to do with "ice cubes in a glass full of water." These analogous ice cubes (glaciers) are not in the water but are essentially suspended above it. Since you like experiements, try this.
1. Fill up a glass of water half way.
2. Drop ice cubes in the glass of water until it is filled to the top by water and ice cubes.
3. Let all the ice melt.
4. Carefully OBSERVE the new water level.
5. You may, if you are a really careful observer, see that the water level has even increased slightly (or more) from where it was in step 1.
6. Repeat experiement as many times as needed to convince yourself that you are wrong.
If you do observe a DECREASE, I'll let you think about its cause for a while. Please do post the results of your experiment for others. You don't have to write a long dissertation, summary will do.
You don't need to get any proof of this from anyone else. Do some REAL experimental science yourself. After all science is experimenting not conjecturing about what may have happened in the distant past or the unknown future.
Not really. It's hard to define science exactly, but it definitely includes the scientific method in which scientists makes hypotheses to explain events and then develop experimental studies to determine the accuracy of such predictions.
Umm, no. New Orleans had a population of less than 500,000 before Katrina. About half have returned.
New Orleans Proper had a population of less than 500,000. The Greater New Orlenas area had a population of 1.4 million. Since the Greater New Orleans area was affected by Katrina and most of those people were displaced, that was the figure I gave.
Umm, no. Crime wasn't much of an issue after Katrina, and didn't start picking up again for quite some time.
I bet you're going to say that the looting caught on camera in the streets didn't happen, and neither did the pockets police corruption. Since the reports of rape in the Superdome were uncomfirmed, they probably weren't true either.
I do like how you focused on two of the more minor points of my post that are easy to argue about, while not touching on the main idea at all. This isn't about crime in New Orleans or how people will react during the next hurricane. Its about the issue on a larger scale where you have tens if not hundreds of millions of people displaced from their homes, which you failed to address.
Much of the world's ice is already floating on the oceans and is therefore displacing the water.
.000599 meters or just over half a millimeter. Calculated at 40 meters it turns out to be .001197m and at 60 its .001796m. The West Antarctic ice sheet is "holding an estimated 30 million cubic kilometres" which is 30 billion cubic meters, which would raise the oceans levels 30*10^9 / 142,000,000 = 211 meters. Ice doesn't have to look big on a map to take up a lot of space. That last article I cited explains how they expect the Ross Ice Shelf to drop abruptly due to samples taken from the shelf, and that once one glacier disappears, the rest tend to follow more quickly.
Flat out wrong. I couldn't immediately find a reference to contrast your lack of proof, but it becomes a moot point shortly.
All that floating ice melting would not raise the oceans even a millimeter. All the ice on land melting would not make much of a rise either... The worlds major ice stores are in Antarctica and Greenland. If that all melted the oceans would not rise enough to cause many problems.
All the ice on Greenland alone would cause a 15 to 20 foot rise in sea level (4th paragraph). Although the article states that it is unlikely for all of it to melt in this century, Greenland isn't "all the ice on land".
Just get yourself a globe and look how much ice area on land there is compared to the vastness of the oceans.
Wow; just wow. You do realize that the earth is in 3 dimensions right? Since talk about climate doesn't work and you demonstrated such a colossal knowledge of physics, let's try math. Earth ocean's are a combined total of just under 142,000,000 square miles. An iceberg named B-15 fell of the Ross Shelf and is approximately 4250 square miles with a thickness between 20 and 60 meters, so I'll be conservative and go with 20. 20 * 11,000 / 142,000,000 =
I was trying to give a bunch of examples as to why that probably wouldn't be true (in my opinion, definitely won't be true). My intention was not to prove the effects of global warming, just to list other possible consequences of it, which I felt the parent poster needed due to his/her opinion. Besides the climate change mistakes that I made and you pointed out, which I don't care to argue about since I won't claim to know exactly what will happen, I want to focus on:
You're right, a lot of societies have recovered from massive levels of destruction, and some haven't. As I see, the major problem we will have with global warming would be from the rise in the sea level. I understand that some of these projections for land masses are exaggerated, but I think it is safe to say that at least tens of millions of people would be displaced from their homes if the sea levels rose to some of the more conservative levels of projection (some predictions claim hundreds of millions just in India). This might not happen in a day, but moving 10 million people in a year isn't easy either, especially in some of these countries that don't have infrastructure or funding to do it properly. Without knowing how fast this change would occur, it is hard to know just how damaging it would be. If you want to claim that 10 million refugees wouldn't cause increased crime, violence, possible revolutions, and wars, then that is a different argument which can easily be traced through history. As you brought up Katrina, there were 1.4 million people in New Orleans before the hurricane which displaced most of them. Those that remained or returned shortly after had to deal with a lot of social issues including crime and such, along with the destruction caused by the hurricane. My point here is not to talk about the effects of nature but instead the way people handle the aftermath.
Finally,
After re-reading my post, I can see where you get that, even though it was not my intention. I'm not trying to sound like a tree-hugger here, but you can read into it however you want. I firmly believe that in the end, it doesn't matter what we do to this planet because it will adapt to us in the end. With the exception of a few catastrophic solar system events, the earth isn't going anywhere. Hell, it took a few giant meteors over the years and now here we are. My reason for trying to stop some changes from taking place is not to protect the planet, but to keep the planet from adapting and killing me. You can call me naive all you want, but the idea that you either stand with the planet or with the people is a great definition of the word. What I intended to say in that quote was that there may be some so-called "benefits" from global warming, but that increased land and crops is not one of them. I do not think that hundreds of millions of deaths, revolutions, and wars are a good thing, but I'm sure that some people think that such a scenario would be good, so I wouldn't choose to argue with them because I can't provide such an argument. I can however, provide a basic explanation (which of course is arguable) as to why there will not be more land or crops.
As some of the other reponses noted, global warming does not mean more land or crops. As the temperature rises, climate patterns change, usually making dry places more dry and wet places more wet. This means increased flooding for the wet places and droughts for the dry. It's hard to grow most of our current produce staples in either of those environments.
On the topic of more habitable lands, that seems pretty ridiculous to me. If the sea level rises, earth's total land mass will decrease significantly, displacing millions to hundreds of millions of people. With that many "refugees", areas that were once habitable would become wastelands while trying to support them. When you say more habitable lands, I'm guessing you're talking about frozen areas becoming habitable because of increased temperatures. The problem there is again due to droughts. Most of the frozen places on earth get little rainfall. It's hard to say how increased temperatures in these areas would affect rainfall, but if they follow patterns in other places, they wouldn't be habitable. Even if they do become habitable, we now have to completely relocate or rebuild our infrastructures for manufacturing, agricultural, and basically every other aspect of modern life.
Let's finally look at what would happen if the the sea level rose and new land becomes habitable due to global warming. Assuming none of the other problems I have mentioned are major factors and that everyone who is displaced by the oceans (Florida, most of Western Europe, China along the Yellow River, most of India along the delta, islands across the world, etc) is able to safely move farther inland. They would need to continue to move inland due to the massive hurricanes/typhoons that would be destroying anything built along the coast, which would considerably decrease the amount of habitable land. Living in Africa or around the Equator would be pretty much out of the question due to the increased heat in the summer, again leaving less space for people.
Now, if you had said that you think global warming might be good because hundreds of millions of people will die, giving our global economy and political systems a chance to rebuild itself from scratch due to anarchy, revolutions, and war, then that's a different story.
I've only had sporadic problems with sleep and hibernate on other versions of Windows, but for the past 2 or 3 weeks that I've had Vista, there haven't been any issues. Of course, I can't transfer files over the network to my non-Vista computers without Vista disconnecting from the network, use a network printer, burn a whole DVD using Windows DVD Maker... but that's a totally different story.
Oh definitely, because its not like people can figure out how to use tools on their own.
When I was young, I found a calculator that my parents had in a drawer. I was probably in kindergarten at the time. I knew about numbers, but I didn't know how to add or multiply (I might have known the basics of addition, but I didn't really understand the concept). I knew what the different signs meant and started to play around with it. I taught myself addition, subtraction, and multiplication (only certain numbers when it came to multiplication) with that calculator. I used a tool that I didn't know how to use to learn something that I didn't know how to do.
Humans are set apart from other animals by our ability to learn from our surroundings (that's not really true, but I think you understand what I'm getting at). Given a tool, people will learn things about it one way or another. If one kid figures out how to use it (or is taught how), he/she will teach another kid, and the learning will be viral. Knowledge spreads as it is needed.
I admit that teaching people how to use them would be the best way to acomplish the spirit of this project, but that doesn't mean these laptops will be worthless without training. By not providing the laptops, you will deny these people the opportunity to learn.
I knew that they did but thought that maybe there was some reason they were refusing to tell customers. I called two places: a wal-mart and a GameStop. At wal-mart, I talked to a couple people who either said they themselves didn't know or that the store wasn't given that information before I gave up since I could tell they weren't real bright and it was wasting my time.
At Gamestop, I walked into the store a week or so before the launch and asked the guy behind the counter if they were reserving Wii's for any future launches, to which he replied "No." and turned away from me. I turned to the other guy behind the counter and asked him if he knew when they would be shipping out more, to which he also replied "No." and started stocking things. At this point, I was a little pissed that they were so unhelpful so I left, vowing to never shop there again, but I was also a little disheartened at trying to get a Wii. Luckily though, I know my area pretty well and I believe that there are a lot of stores that sell consoles in the area while there aren't enough people to buy all of them. I had a friend who actually bought a Wii a day or two after the second launch, so I guess that's a good sign.
Anyway, thanks for the tips.
So I see that according to the article, almost 500k wii's have sold. I thought Nintendo said that they planned on having 1m shipped by the end of the year. Even if a lot of those wii's have been sold online, there should still be a lot out there right? Does anyone have any tips for finding a wii at a store? The stores in my area are sold out and the two that I asked told me they don't know when they will be getting more. Any advice would be appreciated.
That post actually helped me understand why I got modded down recently for a first post that kinda made fun of Apple and was modded down as a troll (although after looking back on my wording, I wasn't careful and was pretty un-flattering) even though all of the replies to my post agreed with what I said and reiterrated my point while getting modded up. It seems to me that if you are going to be the first post, you had better say something neutral or else someone will come after you.
Then again, picking on apple is probably going to bring some hard core apple devotees down on you.
It's also not a good idea to sink to someone else's level, kick someone when they're down, or even kick a guy in the balls for that matter.
But we are talking about lawsuits here, so the "rules" of common decency don't apply.
Also, if two wrongs don't make a right, then do they turn around, keep going, or make a left? How many wrongs does it take to get to the center of a right? Do three rights and two wrongs make a right? Then there's also that proof about the limit of wrongs as n approaches is infinity, plus the square root of evil, divided by who was nicer to the ugly girl in high school plus the number of old ladies you helped cross the street... Shit, I can't remember my class on moral action computation theory.
IMO, you're exactly right, and kinda wrong (but mostly right). This question is almost completely (if not straight up completely) dependent on the type of information those IT works are in charge of.
Let me pose a different question: should janitor have their backgrounds checked? My initial answer would be the same as yours, only as much as any other person. However, it depends on where they work and what they are trusted with. If you are a bank trusting your janitor with a key to clean to clean the safes at night, then you sure as hell better do a background check. Another reason for backgrounds checks would be janitors who work at schools or in other places with lots of children (although that need is definitely arguable, I'm just trying to point out that the answer isn't simple).
Background checks should be done according to what a person has access to, not what their job title is. A mailroom employee can be just as dangerous as a cubicle worker if the mailroom employee has access to the right information / resources.
With that said, I'm not saying that background checks are or should be good / moral / right / legal etc., I'm just pointing out the factors that I think should go into the choice of whether or not to do a background check on someone.
Definitely. The only problem is that the RIAA and MPAA have been using the "think of the artists" line as their reason for prosecuting. When people think about millions of songs being downloaded without compensation to the artists, a lot of people feel sorry for the artists. When those same people think about a woman with MS being sued by an organization with an almost endless supply of money and lawyers, they start to feel bad for the woman. If the RIAA/MPAA had started this campaign as "downloading songs is illegal and we will sue anyone who does so, regardless of age, sex, or race" then this wouldn't be an issue. (And it's not like this argument is my idea, I've read it in dozens of other slashdots posts about this subject, and agree.)
From what I've seen as well, you're definitely right. I guess what I was trying to say, and didn't make clear enough, is that companies are recognizing that, see it as a problem, and are looking for solutions. From what my professor was telling us, not that that makes it true, is that companies are starting to make a shift towards allowing engineers to stay as engineers. The key word there is "starting", so it probably won't be as common as managerial positions for at least a few more years.
The Peter Principle states, "In a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence." Although this isn't quite applicable, it is seen all too often that engineers and such who do well at their jobs are eventually promoted to management, where many don't want to be, regardless of whether or not they are good at doing it.
The good news is that this might be changing. I'm currently at the University of Illinois and have had the wonderful opportunity (sarcastic) to have just finished a class on CS Ethics and Professionalism here. The class was miserable, but that's not the point. There was a lot of focus on how to do job interviews and what to look for when you are trying to get into the workforce, and this topic of engineers getting promoted to management positions came up. Our professor, along with a guest lecturer who runs the Career Management Offices (or something like that), both said that many jobs now are offering contracts that will "promise" to allow for engineers to stay in engineering and not get bumped to management, while also getting continued pay raises and promotions, so they aren't just getting stuck in engineering with no chance for advancement. This is good news for others who are worried about having a choice between management with a promotion and engineering with no chance for advancement at some point.
I also have a friend who graduated with EE and started working as an engineer at some manufacturing plant I believe. He did well and within a couple years of graduating, got into what I think is an unorthodox managment position. He is more of a contractor; he manages the other engineers in the building while working with them to get projects done. When things go wrong, he's the first one there trying to fix things. He doesn't have to deal with a lot of paperwork and salaries or anything like that, so its not my idea of management. Maybe this is the direction you were looking for?
Either way, I realize neither of those are getting from Systems to EE, but if some recent graduates are starting to have these opportunities, then maybe you will to.
Yeah, because when I think of video games, I think of a Mac.
But seriously, this will either follow the usual theme of Mac gamers (being that they don't exist) or it will give Apple a chance to bust out of that stereotype.
Minor correction: We will still need a few more breakthroughs for large-scale solar to be practical.
Nobody said that the area couldn't be split up and put in different places, but you make a good point anyway.
Also (not contrary to anything you were saying), I did not read the article, but the summary said 265 miles on a side, which turns out to be 70,225 square miles. Texas is 268,581 square miles. A solar array that large would take up a little over 26% of Texas. When put in that perspective, that's a huge mass of land. Using "265 on a side" just doesn't do the size justice.
I got drunk underage and got caught. It taught me to be more careful when I get drunk underage, and I didn't get caught again. Now if I do something illegal or questionable, like speeding, I'm more careful about doing it to avoid getting caught... so something came of it for me, but on the opposite side of the spectrum.
If you are the CEO or any senior exec of a public company you have to sign a piece of paper that commits you legally to chasing profit for the stock holders.
Yeah, I get that, but where does it say that the only way to raise profits is to do evil things? So many people have adopted this idea that corporations are evil because all they care about is money, while this isn't true at all. You can care about money and still do good things. Here's a real shocker: you can do good things and make money by doing it! Knowing that doing an "evil thing" will lead to increased profit at the moment is easy, but having the foresight to to know that it will lead to drops in profit in the future is much better. Google doesn't have to do "evil" things just because its a corporation.
"Do no evil", my ass.
Right, because a company ONLY cares about money and making more of it. And the only way to make more money is to do things that are "evil" because having morals and making decisions based on them wouldn't be good for business.
Initially, I wasn't thinking about tracking random citizens as much as I was thinking about it being used during sentencing. I can just picture a first time assault offender having this used against him to send him to jail because "he is likely to do it again". I can't give an in depth example of how that would work and IANAL, but I've read about enough obscure cases to know that some lawyers are good at their jobs and can do things that I wouldn't ever think would fly.
In another example, picture a violent offender being released and then committing another violent crime. If this happens in a state that doesn't use the system, this could open up a lawsuit against the state by the victim (or victim's family if its a murder) for not "properly" protecting its citizens. If a lawyer successfully argued that, then this type of statistical profiling could be required in other offices. I know that's a lot of if's, but this thing worries me in the long run. When we take away freedoms from groups of people (even though it is necessary in many cases), other groups are always at risk of losing those freedoms too.
That was my first thought on this article as well, until I read the last line: "to let probation caseworkers concentrate most of their effort on the former offenders most likely to be most dangerous."
If this is only used in that manner, then it seems like a good idea to me. However, that's a huge if, and I don't believe for a second that it will only be used by probation officers against convicted criminals.