1veedo

Yeah, I guess, but I like it. Everything is logged anyway and on Linux I just dont see how it's going to matter. The user can't write anywhere but one folder, though read access is just about universal. Plus the service is in a hidden directory that only I and maybe nosy system admins know about.

Well you call it theoretical and to be theoretical there must necessarily be some form of evidence for the hypothesis, eg case studies. And in reality, there is external evidence, including a couple case studies, that illustrate what happens when a child is put in complete social isolation. For moral reasons we can't just stuff a baby in a closet to see what happens, but parents have put their kids in closets on their own and it is from these case studies that we know what happens when humans are isolated from social contact. Furthermore, there have been numerous experiments on monkeys (and chimps for those of you who get mad when people call chimps "monkeys") that show the same results. This isn't speculation or anything. We know for a fact what happens when you isolate people. Anna is a good example. "Enraged by his daughters 'illegitimate' motherhood, the grandfather did not even want the child in his house. For her first six months, Anna was shuttled among various welfare agencies. But when her mother was no longer able to pay for care, Anna returned to the hostile home of her grandfather. To lessen the grandfather's anger, Anna's mother kept the child in the storage room. She gave the child just enough milk to keep her alive, but she gave her no loving attention, no smiles, month after month, with almost no human contact, for five long years. When he heard about the discovery of Anna, sociologist Kingsley Davis (1040) immediately went to see the child. He found her being cared for by the local authorities at a county home. Davis was appalled by the sight of the emaciated girl, who could not laugh, speak, or even smile. Anna was completely unresponsive, as if alone in an empty world." This is just basic sociology. When you get to college psiji (you cant be in college right now or you'd already know this), make sure you take psychology and sociology. "Here is a horrible case of a child who was completely deprived of social contact. Although physically alive, Anna hardly seemed human. Her plight reveals that without social experience, a human being is incapable of thought, emotion, or meaningful action, seeming more an object than a person. Sociologists use the term socialization to refer to the lifelong social experience by which individuals develop their human potential and learn culture. Unlike other living species, whose behavior is biologically set, humans need social experience to learn their culture and survive. Social experience is also the basis of personality, a person's fairly consistent patterns of acting, thinking, and feeling. We build a personality by internalizing -- taking in -- our surroundings. But without social experience, as Annas case shows, personality simply does not develop at all." ...monkey experiments with the Harlows "The rest of Anna;s story squares with the Harlow's findings. After her discovery, Anna received extensive social contact and soon showed improvement. When Kingsly Davis (1940) revisited her after ten days, he found her more alert and even smiling with obvious pleasure. Over the next year, Anna made slow but steady progress, showing more interest in other people and gradually learning to walk. After a year and a half, she could feed herself and play with toys. As the Harlows might have predicted, however, Anna's five years of social isolation had caused permanent damage. At age eight, her mental development was still less of a two-uear-old. Not until she was almost ten did she begin to use words. Because Anna's mother was mentally retarded, perhaps Anna was similarly challenged. The riddle was never solved, however, because Anna died at age ten of a blood disorder, possibly related to the years of abuse she suffered (davis, 1940, 1947). A more recent case of childhood isolation involves a California girl abused by her parents (Curtiss, 1977; Rymer, 1994). From the time she was two, Genie was tied to a potty chair in a dark garage. In 1970, when she was rescued at age thirteen, Genie weighed only fifty-nine pounds and had the mental development of a one-uear-old. With intensive treatment, she became physically healthy, but her language ability remains that of a young child. Today Genie lives in a home for developmentally disabled adults. All evidence points to the crucial role of social experience in forming personality. Human beings can sometimes recover from abuse and isolation. Although it is unclear exactly when, there is a point at which isolation in infancy causes permanent developmental damage."

Why not? I do remote access for my computer and nothing bad has ever happened.

This really isn't that true. For the purposes of proving the left-brain link, yes, but the results were actually very mild. People did a little better on tests, like drawing a dog for instance, when the left side of the brain was "turned off" with these magnets. This shows, of course, that damage to the left side of the brain can lead to servant characteristics, but the study you're talking about didn't exactly "turn normal people into servants" so to speak. Just thought I'd point this out as well... Actually high functioning autism means you dont meet the criteria for mental retardation (which is an IQ of 70 or bellow). You can still have an IQ of like 75 (thus having intelligence that's well bellow average) and be considered "high functioning." It's only high functioning compared to traditional autism where one of the defining characteristics is mental retardation. Asperger's is where you have normal to above average intelligence (I'd say 95 and up, though most people with Asperger's do have above average IQs). For those of you that don't know, everyone actually has some level of autism. Autism just means you have an extreme male brain. There are tests you can take online that are administered by psychologists that can tell you where you are. (this is by no means a diagnosis though) http://glennrowe.net/BaronCohen/MaleFemale.asp People who are commonly labeled "smart but lack common sense" usually have a higher systemizing quotient then people who are "really nice but not that good at math." Women are ten times less likely to have autism, and we all know about the gender difference with math/science. This is just statistical averaging though. And the male brain isn't really smarter then the female brain, it's just that systematizing is what we commonly correlate with "smart" -- math, science, and engineering. You can read about all of this in Essential Differences, the truth about the male and female brain.

You can tell in the junkscience graph how the solar irradiace is scaled a point or two higher but it clearly stops correlating around 1950. It claims to have been done by noaa though I've never seen this study at their website or anywhere else. The author of junkscience.com probably took the data set and graphed it. I just think it's funny that this graoh is about the best junkscience.com can come up with and it still doesn't even support their position that "the sun is causing global warming." Your graph is actually correct up till the last few years. These are the years that it shows data about opposite of what other studies show. Instead of a very clear, even slope from ~1970 onwards, your graph increases during this period.

Well I said I thought it was fuged. I've see enough of these sorts of studies to know what the norm looks like. Even if your study were critiqued well (which it isn't, more on that latter), it shouldn't change what every other study has found. We're not talking about one or two odd studies here; there is a lot of research in this field, and they all pretty much agree with each other. Naturally, different studies are going to show slightly different results. And you can also "fudge" it up to look differently without changing the data. For instance, I graphed one of the studies from here in openoffice and you can hardly tell the temperature increase. http://1veedo.homelinux.com/misc/Screenshot.png (I brought this up on wikipedia talk) This is consistent with a graph of the same data found on a global warming denier website. http://www.john-daly.com/nasa.gif The wikipedia graph appears to show a much greater increase, imo, mostly because of the line they draw through it. I figure most studies do this to illustrate their point. The wikipedia graph talks about global warming and the denier's graph talks about how global warming is false. I did a google for the study you provided and found some peer-review about it. Apparently there are actually studies that do show it's incorrect. I don't think this came from a science journal, but it references good sources. (particularly two studies done by Damon that shows the Friis-Christensen study is flawed) "In 1991, a Science paper reported a remarkable correlation between solar activity and temperatures, prompting speculation that solar activity was causing global warming. 1 While the paper understandably received a great deal of attention at the time, and is sometimes cited today, its conclusions are flawed.2 The original 1991 analysis compared temperature data to records of sunspot cycle length (a proxy for solar output). However, the sunspot data used in the analysis were not uniform—some were filtered to smooth out temporal variations and others were not. Subsequent analyses (by these same authors) attempted to address the filtering issue but were plagued by mathematical errors. When the analysis was repeated without these errors, the relationship between solar activity and temperature fell apart." Another statement directly agrees with a study I linked to above, "...but there has not been any net change in solar output since 1978 when most of the 20th century warming occurred." http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&ct=res&cd=11&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.environmentaldefense.org%2Fdocuments%2F5544_SolarActivity_One-pager.pdf&ei=RIP4RZTKBYiIgAT4jPHPBw&usg=__qWrMFyB7EwNF1311SYKP7kNOwjw=&sig2=nIJ-dRxce5ojkCfrffcBBg (they have the corrected graphs as well as actual direct sunspot measurements in the pdf)

Well I've thought about this as well. I never would've thought I'd be good at psychology and, the funny thing is, everyone who knows me doesn't think I'd be very good at psychology. The thing is, I really enjoy psychology. I can understand/remember concepts very well, and psychology is full of lots of interesting concepts. So is sociology btw. If all of college is like my psychology and sociology classes then it's going to be a breeze. Psychology is misunderstood by the general public. It is about people, yes, but it takes a systematic approach towards people. This is very different from psychiatry. But I still do have serious doubts about how successful I'd be in psychology. (forgot to mention my psychology and sociology classes are college classes. We get a professor from wvu tech and everything)

Actually, quite a bit. The IPCC hires more global warming deniers then most "reputable" scientific organizations. Of course I understand what you're talking about here so this isn't some sort of witty dismissive comment from me. The logical fallacy you're looking for is ad hominem. Although you can learn a lot about an argument bu who's arguing it, you can't dismiss argument on those grounds. The arguments against global warming fall on their own, not because of who says them. Actually, yes. The IPCC isn't a global warming prover organization. All the IPCC does is research the current scientific opinion on climate change and publish it. They don't do original research. And if you look at what's actually published in scientific literature, you'll find very little peer-reviewed material against global warming. Actually, and this is the same study Peak Oil Man was talking about, Naomi Oreskers found "Remarkably, none of the [928] papers disagree with the consensus position."[referenced in 1] This doesn't mean they don't exist, of course, but if you search peer-review literature for global warming, climate change, etc, you'll find next to nothing that disagrees with global warming. What a lot of people don't understand that global warming is one of the the most understood natural phenomenon every observed in science! We know more about climate change and human interactions with the climate then we do many other areas of science. Climate change is up there in unanimous consensus as relativity and quantum mechanics. "Consensus as strong as the one that has developed around this topic is rare in science," says Science editor-in-cheif Donald Kennedy[1]. I havn't watched more then five minutes of the video, although I do plan to see it (unlike an inconvenient truth, though I have seen The Denial Machine). However, it seems like most of these "scientific arguments" are what I like to call global warming myths. None of these claims are actually real in science but many people like to make pretend that they are. The IPCC has released a couple summaries of current climate research and they concluded that the Earth is warming very rapidly and that the cause for this is rising greenhouse gases from human activity. These statements have been endorsed by the Australian Academy of Sciences, Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Sciences and the Arts, Brazilian Academy of Sciences, Royal Society of Canada, Caribbean Academy of Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, French Academy of Sciences, German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina, Indian National Science Academy, Indonesian Academy of Sciences, Royal Irish Academy, Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei (Italy), Academy of Sciences Malaysia, Academy Council of the Royal Society of New Zealand, Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, and Royal Society (UK). ( http://www.royalsociety.org/displaypagedoc.asp?id=13619 ) "The work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) represents the consensus of the international scientific community on climate change science. We recognise IPCC as the world?s most reliable source of information on climate change and its causes, and we endorse its method of achieving this consensus. Despite increasing consensus on the science underpinning predictions of global climate change, doubts have been expressed recently about the need to mitigate the risks posed by global climate change. We do not consider such doubts justified. There will always be some uncertainty surrounding the prediction of changes in such a complex system as the world?s climate. Nevertheless, we support the IPCC?s conclusion that it is at least 90% certain that temperatures will continue to rise, with average global surface temperature projected to increase by between 1.4 and 5.8oC above 1990 levels by 2100 1. This increase will be accompanied by rising sea levels, more intense precipitation events in some countries, increased risk of drought in others, and adverse effects on agriculture, health and water resources." A further source explicitly endorsing the IPCC signed by many of the same people, including the Untied States, can be found here: http://nationalacademies.org/onpi/06072005.pdf On top of the IPCC, many other institutions have published the same conclusions. These include, but are definitely not limited to, the National Academy of Science(http://www.nap.edu/collections/global_warming/index.htmll ), NASA ( http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/2005/ ), The National Center for Atmospheric Research ( http://eo.ucar.edu/ ), The Environmental Protection Agency ( http://epa.gov/climatechange/index.html ), and the American Meteorological Society ( http://www.ametsoc.org/POLICY/climatechangeresearch_2003.html ). Several people have already responded to that in this thread. CO2 is actually what's known as a feedback agent. Feedback is like when you put a microphone by a speaker and you get accelerated amplitude of sound. This same sort of thing also happens in relation to temperature and CO2 throughout history. The switch from ice ages to warm periods is always very rapid which indicates a positive feedback loop causing acceleration of the effects[2]. CO2 actually rarely ever lags behind temperature. This shows that, obviously, CO2 is a cause as well as an effect of temperature[2]. And one of the main reasons we even see the 10% in the first place is because of certain orbital variations that cause uneven distribution of sunlight on the planet. For instance, the northern hemisphere commonly gets more sunlight then the southern. The problem is that the extra sunlight melts ice in the north which is one feedback loop and then CO2 comes in as another feedback loop. The effects of these feedback loops is the reason scientists are concerned today -- we see the exact same things happening, only much larger. As ice melts, many scientists are concerned that it will amplify the speed at which the Earth warms. If you take a look at this page, you can see why this is. http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=13 The sun, all by itself, would not causes the temperature to vary anywhere near as much as it has. In order for us to have ice ages and warm periods, we need CO2 to feed back into the system. W/o CO2, changes in temperature would be very small[2]. This is just a simple fact, we understood how all this worked before we started noticing global warming. For an example of CO2 causing global temperatures to rise, you can just look at the past two hundred or so years. Even though we are moving away from the sun, temperatures are rising. The only possible cause is an increase in greenhouse gases. Therefore, there must be high levels of greenhouse gases right now. And if you look at the data, what do you find? That greenhouse gases are higher then they ever have been for hundreds of thousands of years! Well yeah, this is actually true. This does not, however, carry over into current warming. Whoever thinks scientists don't take into account the sun and only care about co2 are just ridiculously oversimplifying things. The sun's contribution to current warming is much smaller then anthropogenic factors. Between 1900 and 1950 for instance, it's believed that the sun contributed 16% to 36% of total warming[3]. Today it's even less. Solar forcing is an entire order of magnitude smaller then anthropomorphic[4]. This looks a little fuged to me. I've seen numerous studies that show a diviations between temperature and solar activity over the past 100 years. The sun does stick with us till about 1950 but then the graph reverses itself. There's an interesting little graph at junkscience.com, http://www.junkscience.com/Greenhouse/IrradianceVsTemp.gif . I cant find this graph anywhere else but I'm assuming it's real. (btw junkscience.com is what is know as "Internet bunk" It is a website that appears to contain credible information but really doesn't. The author is a conservative activist and gets paid by the oil industry to make misleading claims. This is ad hominem but it doesn't change the fact that the majority of articles on the website are in fact false. junkscience.com is not a credible reference. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Milloy http://skepdic.com/refuge/junkscience.html http://environment.guardian.co.uk/cl...875762,00.html) The study shows no increase of irradiance from ~1970 forward despite its apparent rise from ~1860. As you can see, the blue line is temperature and the red line represents 11 year cycles of sun spots (not directly sunspots but the amount of radiation, which correlates w/ sunspots). Before the 1900s, the temperature directly correlates with the amount of radiation emitted from the sun. However, the temperature stops correlating with solar activity and starts correlating with what we know about the time period from 1940 onwards. Between 1940 and 1970, the temperature stayed the same because of aerosol emissions (despite an increase in irradiance). After 1970, the temperature started to rise dramatically. This is all independent of solar irradiates and does not correlate with the actual irradiance. The entire period from 1970 to today is marked by .2C increases in temperature per decade despite the fact that there was no increase in solar radiation. http://www.pmodwrc.ch/pmod.php?topic=tsi/composite/SolarConstant . Another sources claism that sunspot activity peaked around 1950. This graph shows the relationship (or lack thereof) between temperature and solar irradiance very well: As you can see, the red line is temperature and the blue line represents solar irradiance. Since 1970, the temperature has risen very rapidly and this is despite the fact that solar irradiance decreased during this period. You have to remember that there's a difference between the amount of sunlight that reaches the Earth and the amount of sunlight that is emitted toward the Earth. The reason for this is that our atmosphere screens out a lot of radiation from the sun. Particulates especially because they directly contribute to a phenomenon known as global dimming. This is a factor that the IPCC and other climate models addres. For instance, the latest IPCC report, Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis, gave solar irradiance a value of .12 W/m^2 and human factors a value of 1.6. Anthropomorphic forcing is one entire order of magnitude higher then solar[4]. It's just a myth, an urban legend if you will, that the sun is responsible for global warming. A myth that this movie perpetrates. Well I think from my other responses you already know the motif. Historically it is true that the sun has drove warming/cooling. Volcanoes and other factors have had effects as well, like the little ice age for instance[5]. However, modern warming is very different. I could quote literally thousands of peer-reviews science articles that claim global warming is caused by humans. However, there are no peer-reviewed references that claim otherwise. The entire body of information against global warming is found outside of science. This video is a good example of one. Notes 1. 3. Mooney, Cris. (2005). The Republican War on Science. --quoted from "An unfortunate U-turn on carbon," Science, vol. 291, p. 2515, March 30, 2001. 2. Understanding Climate Change Feedbacks by the NAP. http://books.nap.edu/catalog/10850.html (you can read it online for free.) 3. Stott, Peter et al. (2003). Journal of Climate, vol. 16, p. 4079-4093. "Do Models Underestimate the Solar Contribution to Recent Climate Change?" 4. IPCC (2007), Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. 5. Crowley, Thomas J. Science 289, 270. (2000). "Causes of climate change over the past 1000 years" This post appeared after I'd written all this... Scientists can be sort of socially marginalized for pushing against the consensus -- it's always been that way, regardless of field. But saying you're being laughed at does not make you correct. Sure, Darwin was ridiculed, the Wright brothers, even, were ridiculed, but these are good stories cause people like them. What you dont hear about are all the people who were ridiculed and history has subsequently found them wrong! (see for instance Why People Believe Weird Things by Michael Shermer) "For every Galileo shown the instruments of torture for advocating a scientific truth, there are a thousand (or ten thousand) unknowns whose "truths" never pass muster with other scientists"

I have aspergers too. I didn't want to post in this thread though because employers search for you on the Internet, and you cant trust that they aren't going to discriminate. But I'm going to try this thing where I remove my name and everything from profiles. I kind of like being open about who I am on the Internet but I'm afraid an employer is going find out I have opinions that he doesn't agree with. You do know that IQ tests on the Internet give you extremely high results, right? If you got that from a psychiatrist, that's really good. Mine is 144 and I test 160~180 on the Internet, so if that really is an Internet test, we have about the same IQ. Not that it matters though. I'm a believer that a lot of intelligence we (as in aspies) display comes from our, what neurotypical people call, "obsessive" interests. I post a lot about global warming, esp at forum.bodybuilding.com, and people have assumed I was an actual climate scientist before. "That's you're career, of course you're going to agree with global warming! It means your job to you!" Nope. I just like to read. Especially about climate change. I printed "Do Models Underestimate the Solar Contribution to Recent Climate Change?" because I was finding it difficult to read on the computer and people at school were like "why are you reading that?" We have this thing called silent sustained reading where you get points to read every Tuesday and I had to argue with my teacher that it wasn't a computer website and that I should get my points. I was wondering what it's like in college with asperger's syndrome. I'm starting this year so I'm hopping it's better -- especially with people and women. I actually know a lot about people, dating, conversation, etc, it's just that... people are hard to systematize. I really hate it when I say stupid stuff and then have to get someone to explain why it was so stupid to say. There are so many things to remember when talking to people and when you mess up... that's one more thing you have to remember. I had a girlfriend once who would help me out a lot here but then again if it was stupid and offensive to her I have a feeling she never told me. Btw there's a book to help people with asperger's syndrome find a career. I don't know if you've decided on a major or anything but it'd probably be of some help. I havn't bought it yet so I don't know if it gives advice for getting/keeping jobs or anything, but it probably does. (isn't there a sfn amazon type link?) http://www.amazon.com/Developing-Talents-Individuals-Asperger-High-Functioning/dp/1931282560 I figure I'm just going for computer science/engineering (or maybe electrical/mechanical engineering but I doubt it). I'd really like to be an actual scientist though -- like a climate scientist or psychologist. But you don't make a lot of money as a scientist, especially for someone with a PhD. $70,000 thereabouts.

C'mon you guys do know he's assuming the child is fed and everything. Social isolation is the key word here. There is a plethora of research abotu this. Many developmental theories rely on social development which is impossible if the child is isolated. (eg George Herbert's social self and Lawrence Kohlberg's theory of moral development) The beginning of chapter 3 in my sociology book Society 8 ed is a story about a girl named Anna who was isolated from birth till age five. Anna never fully recovered. "Anna's case makes clear the fact that humans depend on others to privde the care needed not just for physical growth but for opiersonality to develop." There's a lot of studies for this sort of thing done on monkeys. Look up Harry and Margaret Harlow, for instance. Completely isolation for six months damages development. If they are put in a room with a "fake" mother they fair a little better.

Well yeah, of course they did. This is actually true. The science is impressive simply because this is one of the factual things they said. This does not, however, carry over into current warming. Whoever thinks scientists don't take into account the sun and only care about co2 are just ridiculously oversimplifying things. The sun's contribution to current warming is much smaller then anthropogenic factors. Between 1900 and 1950 for instance, it's believed that the sun contributed 16% to 36% of total warming*. Today it's even less. Solar forcing is an entire order of magnitude smaller then anthropomorphic**. *Stott, Peter et al. (2003). Journal of Climate, vol. 16, p. 4079-4093. "Do Models Underestimate the Solar Contribution to Recent Climate Change?" ** 1.6 for humans and .12 for the sun. IPCC (2007), Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. The medieval warm period and little ice age have been wrapped up in a heated, partially forgotten, debate over the merits of the original hockey stick study. In reality we don't think the medieval warm period actually matched or exceeded modern temperatures. Evidence suggests it was mostly a localized event in the northern hemisphere, and largely during the summer. From here, http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/globalwarming/medieval.html , " The idea of a global or hemispheric "Medieval Warm Period" that was warmer than today however, has turned out to be incorrect." The reason there is so much discrepancy about this is because the methods we use to construct temperature during this time is different from other methods used for older time periods, and the accuracy of this data comes into question. However, all the various methods for constructing the temperature collaboratively agree on the same conclusion. The graph below neatly represents all of the different studies so you can see what the actual conclusion is: the medieval warm period really wasn't as warm as it is today. Also the idea that Vikings were growing lots of crops on greenland is an urban legend. Greenland was called "green" not because it was actually green but because the guy who discovered it thought he could get people to move there if he made it sound appealing. What few people actually came to greenland ended up dying. They couldn't grow any food and the winters, much like the early settlers in America, killed the vast majority of people (unlike America though they didn't listen to the natives...). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Greenland The thing about the medieval warm period is that we know what caused it -- mostly orbit around the sun -- and we know what's causing global warming today -- greenhouse gases. That in itself makes the two very different.

I've seen this video being discussed elsewhere. http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/ The general consensus is don't believe it.

Lol YT2095 I didn't know what it was called. When you said UPS I was puzzled why you would suggest United Parcel Services. Uninterruptible Power Supply. Kind of like if you mention CVS people assume you mean the drug store not the source manager. Btw you can copy RAM in Linux w/ dd. I'm not sure the exact command but you just go through the /dev/rams. I don't know what good that'd do you but I'm sure there's some sort of specialized usage for it.

It depends on what it is you want to save. If you're talking about word procesing just use a word processor that autosaves data. Abiword I know does this and I think ms word does too. (actually don't all word processors do this?) You could also get one of those power supplies that have a battery in them so if the power goes out you can save everything and shut down. If you could be a little more specific it'd be helpful.

No no no Pangloss. Assuming you're using Windows, you're going to need to learn what's known as the Windows 32 API. There are other ways to do this of course but win32 should be pretty good for C++. Just use google. (this changes if you want to program 64bit) I've never done this before but I skimmed through a book someone got me called "sams teach yourself game programming in 24 hours" where in the first chapter it outlines what you need for a basic "window." It's mostly a matter of using this template for almost every program you make. This is completely independent of any programing gui. You can continue to use whatever it is that you're currently using (no need to get visual studios or for the most part follow any of Pangloss advice). It just amounts to learning a new way of doing things. Instead of int main() for instance you need a bunch of "basic" code that pretty much doesn't change from program to program. edit-- I forgot to mention about actual graphics programming. Here you use something like OpenGL which is what most opensource 3D games use (you can use directx as well. Contrary to what people say, opengl really isn't much better then directx. The only downside is that directx isn't potable). Again it's kind of like a layer that you program on and requires you just learn new stuff. I found this link w/ google, the same website I learned the basics of sdl from a long time ago lol http://cone3d.gamedev.net/cgi-bin/index.pl?page=tutorials/gfxsdl/index edit again-- You might want to look at allegro as well.

The question about morality and evolution is a very silly one. "If someone believes in evolution are they less moral?" Replace evolution in the above sentence with any other natural process and it illustrates how silly it is. "If someone believes in geology are they less moral?" "If someone believes in electromagnetism are they less moral?" As for evolution causing our morals, this is a very valid question and is actually a very well researched field. I don't know much about it but, obviously, all human morals come from biology (and definitely not religion). Culture effects our values and beliefs but ultimately culture is a product of evolution. I'm not sure about many specifics though. If you've read anything about the selfish gene, or more specifically altruism in relation to the selfish gene, it's clear that altruism can be very beneficial in evolution. Altruism is seen much more when it either involves close kin or reciprocation. Richard Dawkins spends a lot of time talking about what's known as an evolutionary stable strategy (w/ game theory). If a population is 100% altruistic, there's always the chance that one "cheater" will come by and greatly benefit from free help. His cheater genes quickly spread throughout the population. If, however, you have a species where they don't return favors to cheaters, you get a mutually beneficial altruism which helps out either the whole species or close kin. This particular evolutionary stable strategy is known as tit for tat, which is equivalent to reciprocal altruism, and is a part of the genetic code for all humans and most social species throughout the world. The idea of reciprocal altruism is so engraved in human behavior, throughout all cultures, that we can be tricked by marketing tactics. One of Robert Cialdini's "weapons of influence" for marketing is reciprocation; giving out free samples goes much further then allowing people to try out a product. It greatly increases sales because of the tendency for people to return favors. I think what we're talking about is very elementary. The answers are very obvious. Everything about humans is a construct of evolution. Including morality and the tendencies for people to follow these morals. If you look at rape for instance, and the tendency for men to report that it's actually "enjoyable" (I believe we had a thread about this recently), from an evolutionary point of view, it makes a lot of sense. So does premature ejaculation (I'll let you use your imagination). Some people you have to admit follow morals for no better reason then to get along with society. In this sense morals can be thought of as arising from culture -- some morals benefit society to a much larger extent then they benefit individuals. It only makes sense from an evolutionary perspective that we would find such morals -- cultures compete with others and generally benefit everyone as a whole. It then follows that on an individual level you'd want to get along with society because of your own selfish desires to survive. Lawrence Kohlberg has an entire model for moral development within a culture. As children, people generally view morals based on what is pleasurable and painful (sensorimotor). The next stage, corresponding w/ the final operational stage in Piaget's developmental model, is where individuals start to understand society and they base morals on what society sees as correct. The final stage is supposedly when people think "outside" the culture, but its actually disputed as to how many people really make it to this stage. I see a lot of people in the politics forums basing right and wrong completely on American social principles and never thinking in a larger context People are rich because they deserve it, they're somehow smarter -- it has absolutely nothing to do with who they were born to. People are poor because they chose to be poor and are somehow dumber. Again, this has nothing to do with who they were born to, but was because they didn't try hard enough. The stereotype is that people who live on welfare are lazy and don't want to work yet this cant be further from the truth. There are a couple reasons that people believe this. The main one is that we believe in equal opportunity. Everyone has the same opportunity but that doesn't guarantee that you'll be successful. We generally encourage doing more then we do dreaming and then success comes from personal merit -- the people who actually work and "do" things get the most money and the pleasures that it provides (they worked for it so they deserve it). There's nothing wrong with any of this though. Capitalism is inherently unfair and there's really very little we can do about it. This is just reality and is on a purely objective level. I'm not the kind of person to pass moral judgment. The way things are today is largely an accident and any sort of blame amounts to nothing more than hindsight bias. Things just are and that's the context that you have to look at it in. Then you can ask questions such as why and if it bothers you, how we can change it.

I can't remember where I read this, but it was actually a very serious reputable article, that said we should let higher salinity water from the pacific flow through the Panama Canal into the Atlantic because it would reduce global warming (or something to that effect. It might have been in a book... but then again it could be wrong) So apparently salinity does have an effect on the climate if it's leading people to advocate moving water between oceans through the Panama Canal.

It's not. The problem nowadays is running Linux programs on Windows. Application such as bluefish, gift, and amarok still havn't even begun to plan a port to Windows and I couldn't imagine going without any of them. Note that all of these should run on Mac because Macs are awesome. Well getting more to the point, there are hardly any settings in Windows to modify in the first place! Linux is difficult because it offers more customizability then Windows.

Even if it were done in the ear, which I'm taking Pleiades and Rocket Man's word for, it would not be "twice" that of the music in the headphones. It would be the music playing + 2 times the noise outside. So assuming there isn't all that much noise outside, the extra "damage" would be negligible.

I'm not entirely sure but I think the numbers that add into it have certain error margins so they add it all in somehow. "You can't just add up all the numbers."

Well I'm sorry I made you feel that way but this is very basic stuff. Just read wikipedia or something. These exact same questions come up time and time again from every single global warming denier and absolutely none of them hold any scientific validity. Well, lets take a look at what other scientists are saying. This is the way they "interpret" it, not me. I'm not a climate scientist; I only know what I've read in books (and no, I didn't read nor watch an inconvenient truth) so it would not be right for me to give you my own special interpretation. "The work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) represents the consensus of the international scientific community on climate change science. We recognise IPCC as the world’s most reliable source of information on climate change and its causes, and we endorse its method of achieving this consensus. Despite increasing consensus on the science underpinning predictions of global climate change, doubts have been expressed recently about the need to mitigate the risks posed by global climate change. We do not consider such doubts justified. There will always be some uncertainty surrounding the prediction of changes in such a complex system as the world’s climate. Nevertheless, we support the IPCC’s conclusion that it is at least 90% certain that temperatures will continue to rise, with average global surface temperature projected to increase by between 1.4 and 5.8oC above 1990 levels by 2100 1. This increase will be accompanied by rising sea levels, more intense precipitation events in some countries, increased risk of drought in others, and adverse effects on agriculture, health and water resources... The balance of the scientific evidence demands effective steps now to avert damaging changes to the earth’s climate." Earlier I gave you a quote from NASA GISS, in my above post I clearly pointed out that there is indeed a scientific consensus about climate change, and just now I gave you part of statement signed by 16 different world science organizations: Australian Academy of Sciences http://www.science.org.au Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Sciences and the Arts http://www.kvab.be Brazilian Academy of Sciences http://www.abc.org.br Royal Society of Canada http://www.rsc.ca Caribbean Academy of Sciences http://www.e -caribtrade.com/cas/index.htm Chinese Academy of Sciences http://www4.nationalacademies.org/oia/iap/IAPacInfo.nsf http://www.academie-sciences.fr French Academy of Sciences http://www.leopoldina.uni-halle.de German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina http://www4.nationalacademies.org/oia/iap/IAPacInfo.nsf Indian National Science Academy http://www4.nationalacademies.org/oia/iap/IAPacInfo.nsf Indonesian Academy of Sciences http://www.ria.ie Royal Irish Academy http://www.lincei.it Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei (Italy) http://www4.nationalacademies.org/oia/iap/IAPacInfo.nsf Academy of Sciences Malaysia http://www.rsnz.govt.nz Academy Council of the Royal Society of New Zealand http://www.kva.se/eng Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences http://www.royalsoc.ac.uk Royal Society (UK) It is perfectly good science. They're saying exactly what they know; that temperatures are going to rise between 1.1 and 6.4 C(1.4 to 5.8 according to the lattest IPCC -- It seems we're getting better at this...). We don't know anything more then that and claiming so would be lying. It is true that scientists aren't completely sure about the future. The fact is that global warming is real and humans are causing it. Predicting what the effects will be is much harder. The controversy around global warming, explicitly, is this: What's going to happen in the future. (What are the effects going to be? The scientific question of interest: What will the net effect of greenhouse gases be working through positive feedback?) What should we do about it, if anything at all. (Should we reduce greenhouse emissions, etc) So yes, they have not nailed anything around this for certain. That doesn't change the fact that they have nailed, for certain, that global warming is real and that humans are causing it. You cannot make a straw man nor equivocate anything like this; just because certain areas of a science are still unknown doesn't make everything else invalid. You're overlooking what we do know with what we don't. Global warming is one of the most studied and understood natural phenomena ever observed. We know more about climate change then we do most other areas of science. It is, in fact, a shining example of good science at work to help humanity.

Ok let me give you a crash course in science jargon. In science, there are no absolute proofs. Science can always change when new data comes up so you will absolutely never hear a scientists saying 100% we know exactly what's happening. Science isn't like that. However, the certainty about global warming, from a general non-scientific perspective, is 100%. Just to put this in perspective, the older a scientific theory is, the most likely it is to stick around. Relativity and quantum mechanics are both less then 80 years old and global warming is more than 110 years old! This means that global warming is even more likely to be true then relativity and quantum mechanics! Every major scientific acadamy is sayign that global warming is real and that we are causing it. The IPCC calls it a 90% chance, "very likely." This translates from science jargon into every day people language as "Global warming is definitely real and we are definitely causing it." Another thing most people dont understand is what scientists mean by "theory." People who dont understand science jargon think theory means a "guess." Anit-evolution groups use the same arguments about language ("could have" for ex) in their campaigns. But in reality, a theory is much more than an educated guess. A theory is a way of explaining relationships between data that we know to be true. It's much more complex then that. For a very simple positive feedback loop, that's how it works, but in climate science, there are several different feedback loops that come into play. You can learn all about how this works at your local university or by reading Understanding Climate Change Feedbacks by the NAP, http://books.nap.edu/catalog/10850.html (you can read it online for free.) "During the past decade, scientists have learned much about the complex natural processes that influence climate variability and change, and our ability to model climate has increased significantly. We also have begun to better identify those parts of the climate system that are particularly important and not well understood and that therefore limit our ability to project the future evolution of Earth s climate. One of these critical areas is our understanding of the role of feedbacks in the climate system and their role in determining climate sensitivity. Feedbacks are processes in the climate system that can either amplify or dampen the system s response to changed forcings. This study looks at what is known and not known about climate change feedbacks and seeks to identify the feedback processes most in need of improved understanding. It identifies key observations needed to monitor and understand climate feedbacks, discusses ways to evaluate progress in understanding climate feedbacks, recommends ways to improve climate modeling and analysis for climate feedbacks research, and identifies priority areas for research." The thing about previous glacial cycles is that the sun, all by itself, would not causes the temperature to vary anywhere near as much as it has. In order for us to have ice ages and warm periods, we need CO2 to feed back into the system. W/o CO2, changes in temperature would be very small. This is just a simple fact, we understood how all this worked before we started noticing global warming. The issue was never about safety, it was just about the fact that you can use plutonium as a fuel source. However, the fact that plutonium power plants can make nuclear power safer is discussed in Kenneth S. Deffeyes book Beyond Oil. This is the direction we are currently headed, it's a relatively new development. The United States is actually encouraging new nuclear power plants, the problem is that it's not economical to build more power plants -- The production of new plants wont return a very large payback to investors because it'll take work from other plants -- plants operated by the same companies. Add in the price to manage and build it and you've got an economic looser. Essentially the most econimic way to run power plants is to only have enough on the grid to meat peak capacity. Anything more and you're making less money. A bias for science is much better then a bias against science. Here is a definite conclusion, as told by thousands of scientists around the world:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_opinion_on_climate_change I dont find it difficult at all to understand what they're saying. If you want I can explain it to you: Global warming is real and humans are causing it. That's a dumbed down version of modern climate science in a nutshell. That is simply not true. The IPCC has releases a couple summaries of current climate research and they concluded that the Earth is warming very rapidly and that the cause for this is rising greenhouse gases from human activity. These statements have been endorsed by the Australian Academy of Sciences, Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Sciences and the Arts, Brazilian Academy of Sciences, Royal Society of Canada, Caribbean Academy of Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, French Academy of Sciences, German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina, Indian National Science Academy, Indonesian Academy of Sciences, Royal Irish Academy, Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei (Italy), Academy of Sciences Malaysia, Academy Council of the Royal Society of New Zealand, Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, and Royal Society (UK). ( http://www.royalsociety.org/displaypagedoc.asp?id=13619 ) On top of the IPCC, many other institutions have poplished the same conclusions. These include, but are definitely not limited to, the National Academy of Science, NASA ( http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/2005/ ), The National Center for Atmospheric Research ( http://eo.ucar.edu/ ), The Environmental Protection Agency ( http://epa.gov/climatechange/index.html ), and the American Meteorological Society ( http://nationalacademies.org/onpi/06072005.pdf ). And on top of this there are thousands of studies that show the same results. If this is not a "general agreement" (aka consensus) then I dont know what is.

Uranium itself breaks down into plutonium. There have been lots of recent developments in nuclear energy, one of them being the utilization of plutonium, because you can take the byproduct of a uranium nuclear reaction (plutonium) and then reuse it to produce more energy. The debate about nuclear energy being "dangerous" because terrorists can take plutonium comes from uranium based nuclear power plants. Your issue of "How can we use it for peaceful nuclear energy without it being potentially available to be stolen by those who want to make a terrorist bomb?" applies for ALL nuclear power plants, not specifically plutonium. I think the bit that you don't understand is iths, " Uranium can be used relatively safely, because the 235 isotope can be blended with the 238 isotope to make a mixture that will work in a reactor but not in a bomb." 238 does not react to produce energy at all. 238 is also the most abundant isotope in uranium, comprising literally 99% of it. This is why people talk about "enriched" uranium -- enriched means it contains a little more 235 then "normal" uranium. 235 does not blend with 238 so to speak. 238 uranium turns into plutonium. 235 provides the energy. But, this 99% of uranium that turns into plutonium can be reused to make more energy. That's what's so great about it. A plutonium power plant would actually be safer, as far as terrorism goes, because the plutonium from the uranium reaction gets used in another reaction instead of building up in piles and being shipped to radioactive waste dumps.

Uranium isn't the only fuel source for nuclear power plants. Plutonium, which can be found in huge stockpiles of nuclear weapons, can also be used. Of course I guess it's too liberal to suggest we get rid of nuclear weapons by creating electricity, but you never know.

"The reason this qualifies is because he started a new thread. If he had posted that as a relevant and informative reply to an existing thread, it would not be spam." Don't give him any ideas.