If you want a planet made of gold
just order one from Magrathea
4248 publicly visible posts • joined 24 Apr 2007
Maybe you are right that good people will leave, but WebOS is interesting. The big question is what to put it on. If HP can license it to hardware makers they could be on to something. Do not forget that there is a far bigger profit (margin) to be made on software than on hardware.
It was a 6k3k demo AFAIK. The models on display on it did not really like the result, as it showed all kinds of blemishes on the skin ordinary HD does not. Make-up artists will have to go to new lengths to keep Hollywood stars looking picture perfect (silicone skin anyone?)
but then they would not believe you
and anyway, by NOT allowing this atheists (often) do have a strong sense of ethics, and thus show that atheism != satanism. This confuses the hell out of the more mindless type believers (which are the ones "self-selected" by this channel).
Note that I have quite a number of Christians, Jews, Hindus and Muslims as friends, and none are mindless (mindless believers (or atheists) I tolerate, rather than befriend)
I could suggest that Opera is so difficult to install and use, and thus requires more intelligence to use. As I have on occasion used it I know this is not true. It could be a small-number effect. If the number of Opera users in the survey is comparatively small, random fluctuation are more likely. It would have been nice to have error bars in the graphs, so we could judge whether or not the differences are significant.
I just read the books. Nothing about Gandalf's staff broken by the Witch-king in there (though only a purist would complain). I only got to see the Fellowship, and liked the more active role given to Arwen, so I will not say all changes are for the worse. I did feel the fighting was a bit much, compared to the more sedate pace of the book. However, if you kept to that pace, the film would have to become a (very long) series.
Regarding the increased length, Tolkien said in the preface to the book that the main criticism he agreed with is that it was too short.
Like the output of weather stations in the USA to "correct for changes in the station's environment." This is not a good idea, it is better to let the raw data out, and explain any trends later. Anyway, the debate is not so much about climate change per se, but about the underlying causes. As we cannot see the causes, only correlations, it makes perfect sense to argue about that. It might well be argued that the Earth is unusually cold (starting in the Pleistocene), or that we are in an interglacial era.
Whatever the outcome of the debate, we still should not be wasting energy and other resources.
I have read one report that the ice caps of Mars are receding, but the mechanism is not fully understood. We also don't have temperature readings over anything like the period we have for Earth. Venus is even more difficult, because it really is a runaway greenhouse, and surface probes do not tend to survive for any length of time (the Russians hold the record, I think). I remember reading a letter in Science in about 1989, that some Danish astronomers (IIRC) had found a 98% correlation between sunspot activity and temperature on Earth, over a period of some 150 years. That is quite a coincidence supposing there is no causal link.
Again, it is definitely wise to move towards more sustainable energy sources, but I am certainly not sure the solar cycle is not involved in some way.
Science makes progress whenever there is a lack of consensus. When everybody agrees, and we therefore think we are right (for a given value of right), and there is little incentive to refine our knowledge.
By contrast, whenever we disagree we work hard to prove the other guy/girl wrong. In the best cases, we do that indirectly, by trying to prove ourselves wrong. If we fail to prove our theory wrong, it may be right.
As an example, astronomy progressed a great deal simply from being annoyed by Fred Hoyle, who proposed preposterous (they thought) theories which were consistent both internally, and with observations (at the time), and very hard to prove wrong. They often were proved wrong, but the proof taught us a great deal.
If all scientists vote on an issue, say global warming, the outcome has no effect on the truth of the matter. Suggesting global warning has been proven beyond all doubt is not very scientific.