Posts by PatientOne

Exactly...

and if these creationists are allowed to proliferate their beliefs within the scientific community, they will soon be 'peer reviewing' their own papers and so adding credibility to their rather unscientific beliefs.

Of cause the danger is that the scientific community will be branded Bigots for not hearing out the creationists. Yet the creationists will simply pretend to listen to the scientists and refute all the evidence based on belief rather than scientific fact. This is what will drive scientists into a froth: You cannot counter belief with rational argument, yet to prove the creationists wrong, this is exactly what is expected of them.

There is no easy solution that I can see that doesn't brand the scientists as bigots.

@Gulfie: It's not the council making a saving.

You'll find that the councils are paying the same for these services under contract no matter where the workers are based. It's not their decision who is employed or where they are based, you see. Well, not unless they thought of that when they signed the contract that is.

What is their decision is to whom they award contracts, or, if they truly understood how IT works, to keep the support and expertise in house where they can manage it. But these decision are made by people who don't understand technology, and who do not understand that the best support tech they can have is one who will have fixed the problem before anyone even realized there was a problem. That's the person who rarely looks busy, so they obviously aren't needed, are they? So outsource that post, then see things go to hell because the company looking after services only respond when a problem has been reported. And by then it's too late.

@ObSolutions, Inc

"Well, surprise, surprise! November and December just *happen* to be the two least windy months of the year. Who'd have thunk it?"

Want to take a guess at which months are also the heaviest in demand for power?

Nice title, though.

@Zolko

I would have thought they would want to control the situation so they could then wind it down in a controlled and *safe* manner. So if they gained control around the 25th, then yes, they could be winding it down slowly, safely and in a controlled manner around the 31st.

*sigh*

"5. If anyone wants to see what real global warming by CO2 is - have a look at the planet next door. Venus had natural runaway CO2 generated warming - now it's temperature is 450 celsius, it has sulphuric acid rain, and snow on it's mountains turns out to be metals."

Stand right by the fire: You get really hot.

Stand 10' from the fire: Get moderately warm.

Last time I checked, Venus was considerably closer to the sun than we are. Plus, we haven't been monitoring the weather on Venus for all that long, and have no real knowledge of its climate history. Unless, of cause, you know someone who popped over to visit and take some core samples and found it's been getting hotter due to CO2 emissions. Damn Venusians and their 4x4 gas guzzlers! Damn them I say!

Or don't as I'm a bit more sensible than that.

The fuss is thus:

Insurance firms getting hold of your medical data tops the list, I think.

Research firms and pharmaceutical companies come second.

Your family or friends, or even your work getting hold of your medical data is close third.

It matters because of *why* they would want to, and *what* they will do once they have that data.

It's a case of *need* to know. Does anyone out side of patient care *need* to know about a patient's condition?

The answer is: No.

Not even family need to know. Not unless the patient decides they do, or they are next of kin and the patient can't make decisions for themselves.

Just remember: If you've been tested for HIV, it'll be there in your records, no matter what the result is, but the reason for you having the test will not be.

Even innocent people can have things to hide.

@AC : Process of elimination

which is all the more reason for this MP to be locked up for the good of everyone else. Oh, sorry, for sexual discrimination? Harassment of the male population? Well, for something! Please!

She should have called for EVERYONE to be DNA tested and stepped up to be the first. After all, who said the killer was a man, or that they live in Bristol? And, as AC mentioned: If you DNA test the mother or sister or daughter, you'll get a close match which will help narrow down the search (as you would by testing a male relative)

But MP's aren't interested in catching the criminal or helping the people: They just want to be seen to be doing something. Not leading by example, but making noise, much like a small stone rattling around in an otherwise empty can...

episodes 7,8,9...

As I understand it, they will never be produced. The reason being too much has already been released that continues the story beyond Jedi that there's no real room for Lucas to continue.

Leia marries Han, has 2 kids. Luke falls to the dark side, but not really: It's a clone and Luke comes back to fight himself. The dwindling empire isn't dead, it's still kicking and finding new evil to throw at the new republic. The books are out and have been for some time, and more material is produced yearly. Not a lot of room for Lucas to work on something new unless he moves on from Luke and goes with Luke's son. Or daughter. I don't think either have appeared in the books and the like. Then again, I stopped reading the books because they were getting a bit irritating. And then came episodes 1-3...

Anyhow, just popping out to the YT2400 for my jacket. TTFN.

Facts, figures and things people forget

Twenty years ago, a friend of mine completed her Environmental Science degree. She was somewhat disappointed, however: She wanted to do a thesis on weather cycles, but these were, apparently, too complex to map and intersections were too unpredictable. Instead she studied deer shitting in woods. Turns out they do. And in fields and anywhere else they happen to be.

But she did note something, even back then. Actually, she noted several things:

1) We are currently in an Ice age. We have been for a very long time and are due to emerge from it any day now. Seriously, we're actually overdue. Bit worrying there's no sign, isn't it? I mean, icecaps have to melt completely for us to be out of the ice age. (Just for reference, we're interglacial - the glaciers retreat, exposing the land. If they advance again, we're in trouble: They'll want their land back. And the lawn mower...).

2) When we hit the 'flip' from ice age to temperate, we could well see Sabre toothed cats reappear. She likes cats. So do I. It would be fun watching people's reaction to the appearance of Sabre toothed cats again.

More recently, with all this C02 business and 'Global warming' panic, she noted:

3) They (the environmental scientists, that is) have been expecting this. It's in the course books, after all, so it's been published for 20+ years, along with predictions as to what we might see (refer to 2, above). Gee, I wonder what the Sabre toothed cats will look like this time. Are house cats teeth growing? Or are the ABC's our new feline overlords...

4) Someone's having a laugh: Panic over C02? It's nothing: Methane is a more dangerous 'greenhouse' gas...

5) Greenhouse gasses. How are they going to work, exactly? Oh, they hold heat in? But won't they reflect heat, too? After all, the normal temperature of the planet is 6 C. Anything above that is from the sun. Look, clouds at night keep the land beneath them warmer, but during the day they provide shade that keeps it cool. Won't greenhouse gasses do the same but on a global scale? Won't it all balance out in the end?

6) Where are those Sabre toothed cats!

And me? I sit there and listen and I wonder... all this data: Is it correct? What factors have they taken in to consideration. They are scientists, aren't they: They haven't changed anything or missed anything out. But it always bothered me that they don't mention this thing about the ice age: That permanent icecaps are actually bad for the planet, and at some point they really need to melt. That we need to move into a temperate age. Well, the planet does, anyhow: Man really isn't that important as far as the planet is concerned. Little more than an infestation, an irritation, a pest to be exterminated it when the time comes. And then I wonder about these claims about how much impact man has on all this... you know, I'm not convinced we're not seeing a natural change to the planet's temperature, and that the worst thing man could be doing is just making it happen a little faster...

But hey, someone has to preach about the end of the world. Someone has to make money by scamming people through scare tactics. Someone has to be declared a heratic for pointing out the claims don't quite add up. And the bulk of us sit on, bemused, as people argue the world is flat/round/rhomboid/doomed.

Anyway, I'm off to go look at those cats. They seem to be smiling. Big smiles with big teeth...

Definitions.

@Ralph 5: Laptops are portable devices. Or lug-able as the older designs were known. You 'port' or carry, them from place to place. They are not really usable while you move, however, which is what Mobile infers.

You can walk around with an iPad while using it. Unless it's the 3G version, however, you're tethered to an open/authenticated wifi node if you want to access a network or the internet.

So to me, Zuckerberg is correct to an extent: His perspective is related to the internet. iPad's aren't mobile internet devices as 3G is not standard. He is wrong in that the iPad can be used while mobile. You just don't always have internet/network connection.