i said skilled, not necessarily young or lovely. and i'd can my own goddam food if it meant better blowies.

Ah, yeah, fair enough, though the standby consumption of an xbox is also much, much higher than an appletv. The arithmetic is trivial, but I won't bother with it since I have neither.

The "embodied energy" of a laptop is about 1500MJ, so let's call the Apple TV+HDMI a generous total of 2000MJ. Shipping energy is relatively low and fits easily in the 2000MJ upper bound.

The Xbox360 uses ~120W to watch a movie, while according to ArcadeMan the Apple TV uses 6W. Thus you make up the embodied energy in about 2000000000/114 seconds, or about 200 days.

The Xbox One is a bit more efficient, using ~75W, for a makeup time of about 335 days.

Either one is less than a year, so if you want to minimize energy consumption, it seems like a good plan to buy an Apple TV.

Of course it isn't clear that this is the right thing to be doing, but if it is, the benefit seems obvious.

Pace the implication of the article, medieval musicians and other low-tech entertainers would likely be in high demand.

If electronic technology magically stops working (somehow), then judging by the amount of purchased and pirated music today, one of the most secure professions would probably be musician. And if technology is low, medieval music (or some synthesis of it and modern forms like jazz) would be the go-to.

no skill involved

uh, haven't gotten around much, have you?

here's one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M...

Yeah, if things are so dire that computers magically disappear for decades, the concomitant disappearance of advanced agriculture, etc., will mean the lingering miserable death of probably 90% of the developed world.

Like most doomsday scenarios, this is a masturbatory exercise. Things will end up either 1) like now, but worse in many ways or 2) utter decimation. In neither of these cases will your soldering hobby become the salvation of your village and earn you the respect and admiration long-denied you by our anti-intellectual society, granting you, finally, a day in the sun where the jocks pull you along on a rickshaw while Julie the prom queen gives you deep throat.

Obviously, he doesn't understand Picard's story. He's just being comforted by a newly-won ally, enjoying the bitter victory and what it might mean for the future of his people. What Picard is saying is basically irrelevant. It's simply a way for the character to celebrate and it emphasizes the themes of the episode, for one, that words have meanings beyond the literal or even evocative.

They may not have meant it that way, but it works.

Of course, it is completely impossible that a culture could develop space-faring technology, or even a fucking automobile, through such a simple language; the language would just be so information-poor, that it would be basically impossible to collaborate on anything beyond a wheeled cart. But most Star Trek episodes are total bullshit on a scientific level; it's just part of what you accept. They're simple fables and morality tales in spaaaaaace, nothing more, no matter how much obsessive neurotics fetishize it.

What mostly irritates me is the (few?) furries with the idea that their furry identity is legitimate, sort of like with transgendered folks. The thing is, we mostly understand what differentiates the human sexes and the technology, though primitive, is capable of making significant changes from one to the other. Transgendered folks use these technologies to various extents. Once the technology is mature, the label of transgendered will mostly evaporate, apart from the few who intentionally adopt an ambiguous sex. The thing that freaks people out, is that trans people today are kind of in an uncanny valley. Nonetheless, for whatever reason, this is an acceptable price for many people.

Now, the thing is, we also understand some of what differentiates humans from animals and while most of the technology does not exist yet, I haven't heard of any furry yet who has stabbed out their frontal lobes or at least cauterized their Broca's area. These would seem like reasonable steps to take, if you were "really" a leopard or whatever.

Typical partisan hack commie; your ticket would bring only serfdom.

I, and any true American lover of liberty, demand a Libertarian president and Green Party vice president! ;-)

Nice false dichotomy, you fucking imbecile.

Did you read the article? He wants a degree as easily as possible, just so that he can make more money. If an accredited institution offered Bachelor's degrees in CS for sucking dick in the parking lot, I'm sure our erstwhile submitter wouldn't have bothered asking for anything else.

Risk is the product of probability and cost

No it isn't, you fucking moron. The product of probability and cost is the expected cost; risk is almost exactly the opposite. Risk is a measure of uncertainty; it's vague because there are many ways to define risk. For instance, one may define risk as the probability that seeking medical care will completely ruin you financially. It's easy to reduce this risk, even if it increases the average cost of medical care. There are many other definitions which I won't bother going over. The point is that you're an idiot. Don't use probabilistic lingo if you don't know what it means.

Wow. Maybe you should try reading a few of these books yourself.

yeah, and Dara Ó Briain did it before Tim Minchin.

who cares?

They could sell them, and then use that money to pay for a new non-infringing shipment of (inferior) multimeters.

Of course since it's important for them to appear altruistic, they'll probably just give away a smaller number of (superior) multimeters.