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Comment Re:George Selden (Score 1) 190

TIL some of the earliest automobiles were electric

The Electric Vehicle Company was founded as a holding company of battery-powered electric automobile manufacturers made up of several car companies assembled by Isaac L. Rice beginning in 1897. It was taken over in 1899 by William C. Whitney and P. A. B. Widener's, thus forming the so-called "Lead Cab Trust," which hoped to develop a monopoly by placing electric cabs on the streets of major American cities.
The firm actually made and sold about two thousand electric cars (based on the Electrobat and Riker Electric cabs) as taxis to several American cities, but fell into hard times in 1900 after facing competition from gas-powered cars and legal problems stemming from monopolistic practices, as well as scandal surrounding the poor performance of its vehicles.

Oh how far we've come.

Comment Re:It happens again and again in nature (Score 3, Interesting) 170

There are four regions offshore North America with known seeps. Two of these, the Gulf of Mexico and southern California, have a combined annual oil seep rate of 160,000 tonnes, derived by adding 140,000 tonnes, estimated from the Gulf of Mexico, and the estimate of 20,000 tonnes from Southern California.

source: http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=10388&page=192

Spills of that magnitude at one location might be rare but they still occur and looking at time in a geologic timescale they're simply not that big of a deal. Man has simply decided that it needs to feed of the seafood in that area, and swim on those beaches so a spill is something to complain about. A meteor impact wiping out 80% of all species on the planet you could deem damaging to the ecosystem, it's still a natural occurence, life still finds a way and the world still turns.

The pictures of dead fish sure prompt a lot of people to get upset I'm sure but it does not make this event even remotely unprecedented in nature.

Comment It happens again and again in nature (Score 5, Insightful) 170

This could easily have been a natural occurrence, at anytime nature could again just decide to expel tons of deep ocean oil, but because now people have $$$$ involved and it could be blamned on someone (sued) then it's all the news with the environmentalists. Anyone who actually has studied some Geology knows this was not a big deal for the environment... and please.. we need to talk in scales of centuries.. not months.

Comment Re:This is why I stopped torrenting (Score 1) 309

You must make a distinction, there are different ways one can torrent things. Some ways are less secure that others... if you say just want to use some public tracker from your home pc, then sure, that's not very safe. If you want to say... have a seedbox hosted in a non MPAA, RIAA friendly country and pay that account with untraceable bitcoins using a fake email account you set up over a VPN and then only use private trackers and use SFTP to bring everything back to your home machine I'd say you're safer than even doing what you're suggesting as even your friend can rat you out or your wifi could be monitored.

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