I agree, when people say "what will we do with cities like Tampa and New Orleans?" and I reply, 200 years ago, they were just a few maybe 2-3 story buildings. How many cornerstones in those cities are marked pre-1814? Not many important ones. People migrate over time due to the environment, it's a natural process.

Deeper water, increased flow. Both add thermal mass and the increased flow velocity could slow or halt freezing on the surface. I'm not saying anything about temperature differences, just pointing out that there is a scientific argument to be had that dredging a river could make it less likely to freeze given constant temperature.

My problem is with 7... The assumption that a warmer climate will be catastrophic or even net harmful to humanity. Even worse is number 8, the assumption that we can or should attempt to keep the climate where it has been throughout the very recent period of human societal development.

There is perfect competition in the fuels market, that's not to say the oil market has perfect competition, it does not. The price changes in the oil market have an effect on fuel prices, but it does not affect the marketing and competition among the sellers of the refined product. This is why people think there is collusion, because the price of gas is very similar at all stations in a given region and that is actually because the competition is so fierce for customers.

Ain't that the truth. If car companies were ISPs, you'd get to choose between Chrysler and Kia. Both would suck ass and be worse than what is available to the rest of the world. Your car would be sold lease only with low payments for the first year, plus a nice surcharge for a steering wheel, billed monthly. They would advertise "Up to 100 MPG!" and not tell you that that was downhill with no traffic. Actual mileage might only be 10MPG on average. You'd take it into one of their shops because it doesn't get the advertised mileage, they'll make you wait 10 minutes before a tech tells you that it must be the gas you put in it and refuse to fix anything.

I know I'll get flamed for this... Motor fuels:

1) They are all selling an identical product (made to meet standards, with any slight differences being indistinguishable in performance benefits in a laboratory.
2) Their prices are advertised on huge signs so that people can easily price shop.
3) Pipeline transportation is regulated as a utility so that companies can't give preferential treatment.
4) There are still many companies involved in the refining, transportation, and marketing of fuels.

Sure the government meddles, but at least for now is mostly meddles evenly across all companies, so the net effect of the loss is still even across the industry.

No, but I'm just saying the IRS wouldn't accept my word that I didn't hide income and assets if they were doing an audit. Sorry, I lost all my paper records would not be an excuse.

Well according to their word the President didn't know about it. Sadly it seems all records of any conversations about it were lost...

Yes, because I work for an oil company and when the government comes to investigate a pipeline leak they suspect was due to intentional decision making and my emails were lost in a hard drive crash and the drive was thrown away is a completely valid excuse and I'm sure the EPA will let us off the hook for any potential negative information that may have been contained in those emails.

That depends on where you live. In Massachusetts, the incentives are such that you can install a system where you pay nothing up front. You can get a loan and pay for it with the savings. Or solar companies will set up a lease and power purchase agreement where they install the system for free, and you are guaranteed to be cashflow positive for the life of the system. (Those lease agreements often eat up two-thirds of the would-be savings over twenty years, so watch out for them.)

For many people, the limit on the size of their solar array is the size of their roof. If you want to offset your full usage, you may need higher-capacity panels than the standard 250W base panels. There are a number of higher-efficiency panels available, but the cost per Watt is higher. They probably don't cost much more to manufacture, so the more efficient panels have a higher profit margin.

Also, you have to keep improving your technology or you're out of the business when the cheap panels get to be as efficient than what you're producing.

So the solution is that the professional reviewers at places like C|Net or ArsTechnica need to have a policy of redoing their testing on older models when newer models are released. If they find that the older model no longer performs as they originally reviewed it, then they need to loudly warn that the manufacturer is known for reducing the quality of the product without announcing a change.

Same user, second account.

- and that is the actual problem, isn't it?

Government making it a Constitutional entitlement to protect whatever it is you want protected. Why not a McDonalds having Constitutional entitlement to prevent competition from opening another fast food place within 10 miles of each of their stores?

This is the same thing: what you do in your life and on your time is none of government's business in any way, you shouldn't be attacked by government and you shouldn't be given any entitlements by it either. I guess whoever managed to stick that particular item into the USA Constitution had interest in patents but not in fast food stores.

FTFA

- isn't that something.

Patents are a system of government enforcements that provide monopoly over something to a patent holder, however to understand what this 'something' is you need to read through millions of patents and you need to understand that insane language that they are written in.

How is it possible to assert that people are infringing on patents at all if the patents are unreadable in the first place? If the patents are written in a coded language and there are millions of patents, who in their right mind (except for government officials) could ever believe that companies that end up using something that is covered by these patents are infringing rather than simply working out the details of what they need for their product to be built on their own?

All of these and more is why I am ever so firmly against all government involvement in the patent and copyright schemes in the first place.

These reviews are nice, but they always focus on gaming. There's very little information for media playback.

How well do each of these drivers do with accelerated playback of MPEG2, MPEG4, and other formats? If given a 1080i source, can they produce a real 1080i stream to the display, or will the alternating fields get reversed? (I have an older CRT HDTV that is 1080i native. With newer displays, it's good to have the option of letting the display handle deinterlacing.)

If I want to build a low-power media player, what are my options for video hardware and drivers?