Carbon is not the entire problem. everyone is worried about carbon, because carbon supposedly adds heat to the earth. Carbon keeps heat here. that's all it does. the problem is the waste heat generated by the first world nations. stop and think about the amount of waste heat our society produces on a day to day basis. on average a set of brakes on a single car will heat up and then dissipate off up to 200C of heat several times a day. a Coal plant will discard 20% of it's output AT LEAST in waste heat all day. and in this nation we have several 300MW and larger coal plants. I live and work in a city with two of them. when the heat exchange tower for the newer, more modern, ahem, clean coal plant activates (it's a steam bed, basically, four basins 20m in diameter that discharge waste heat as steam into the atmosphere. Saskpower Shand Generation station, if you're interested) the greenhouse, more than a km away, routinely has the temperature outside raise by up to 5C on a -40C day.

Accumulation of waste heat in the biosphere is the root cause of global warming. carbon dioxide only makes it worse by lessening the extent to which the earth is capable of radiating her heat load off into space. Wind helps with this, because Capturing the wind robs the biosphere of energy, which in this case is generated by heat. convection drives the wind, heat drives convection. Wind is not the solution, but it's a far better one than nuclear which again just adds more energy and therefore waste heat to the environment. the end result of every joule of electricity generated on earth today is waste heat. every last joule. we need to start taking some of that energy back out of the environment, whether by capturing it with solar cells (well, not capturing our heat, but removing some measure of the new heat the sun adds), harvesting it's result with wind generators, and perhaps invest more in some thermovaltic solutions to harvest heat from the ocean as electricity.

What they need to do is strap a good coverage-net of accelerometers to his body, to collect some very useful data. for science, and all that. accelerometers are very cheap thanks to the nintendo wii, and what can be learned about the motion of a transonic human body will undoubtedly be of use to somebody, even if this man dies and they use the data to make sure the second attempt succeeds.

As a an air-conditioning technician, I work in peoples homes, typically six or more a day. From my own admittedly anecdotal experience, the percentage of my customers who have an HDTV set in the livingroom is quite close to 100. That being said, the "hardcore" "core gamer" markets are often teenaged males who happen to have the family's old set in their bedroom with the console connected to it. I'd argue that the percentage of casual gamers that play using an HDTV is higher than that of the "Hardcore" Gamers.

There are limits to that. You can own and modify a coat hangar all you like until you create a tool to unlock car doors with it, at which point it becomes illegal to posses, with good reason.

I agree that people should be able to modify their own hardware however they like, but with that comes the responsiblity for those modifications. this case goes beyond that in that he was modifying hardware commercially for other people, where he was aware that the majority of his customers were using his service to enable the theft of game software. it's morally grey right up until you realize that us as geeks are pretty much the ONLY people who're going to use modified hardware for good means. we mod for XBMC, regular students and youth mod so they don't have to pay for software.

The law that they are prosecuting on is a bad law. I agree. They should have to prove that his hardware modifications were used to steal software and that he was aware or perhaps advertised that this is what you could do and will do with these modifications. prosecute on the basis that he's a copyright thief instead of the basis that he circumvented protection measures. when the DMCA was introduced it was stated they weren't going to use this law this way, now they have. this a bad thing, I agree. this man is still a thief and should be treated as such.

I agree that it's not a guarantee that every system was used to run pirated copies of games. I have friends who have an old hacked xbox and all it does is run XBMC. but in all likelihood they were stealing software. this man knew what he was doing and for the majority of his customers that was providing a means to steal console games. he may not have provided the isos, but his work is the critical step in enabling piracy on a console. this is far less of a moral grey area than downloading is.

You're right about fat, but for the wrong reasons. the easiest calorie to turn into fat is a simple carbohydrate, sugar, or white bread, etc. Fat has to be converted into energy and back into fat to be stored. The right fats in your diet are beneficial because you need fat in your diet to produce body-regulating hormones.

Running is one method, and a good one. I lift weights. Lifting weights increases your metabolic rate, makes you stronger, and is generally more intense than a run and therefore takes less of your day. My weight training sessions take about 45m three times a week, and that, combined with a proper 40/30/30 (40% protien, 30 fat, 30 carbs) Diet rich in vegetables and the right fats (for healthier hormone levels) I've been able to control my figure, if not my weight. I was going to be a big man, one way or another, I just chose the configuration. And yeah, I was the fat geek, now I'm just "that geek on steriods" which of course is not true. But like with anything else that takes effort to attain, everyone is going to assume you took the shortcut. I take it as a compliment, and politely correct them. (was 315lbs, 6'0", 40%+ bodyfat. now am 225lbs, 14% bodyfat.) We're both extreme sides of the same goal. the best method is somewhere between the two, but diet is key. Run, lift weights, eat plenty of protien, and make sure you're eating the right foods. Lifting weights gives you margin for error, instead of any excess calories going immediately to fat, they have the option instead of going to repair damaged muscle tissue from working out.

Three Phase 440v is already Installed in most Gas/Service stations thanks to the rooftop HVAC requiring three-phase and the base install for three-phase being 3phase 600v.

Bury a line over to a new "Pump", add a billing interface and cosmetic and functional concerns, such as a price/unit window akin to a classic pump, cable and cable management (let's face it, aside from being probably 3x as heavy, a cable capable of handling the power isnt going to be much thicker than a 1 1/4" hose, which is what we use for gas pumps.) Add a Heatsink, Probably possible to use the gasoline and diesel storage tanks as a heatsink, and You're done. Compared to the enviromental hurdles jumped in order to put in a common gas pump, or maintain them, And it'd be a no-brainer for any one Gas station franchise trying to get a leg-up over its competitors. Assuming the cars are on the road and the companies can agree on a common charging interface.

I for one Love the opportunity a game provides for attention to specific detail and the scenario. If in a novel a writer were to spend a half or more of a chapter explaining the history of a minor character or the role of a nation, it might be seen as a waste of page space. Whereas in a Video game it is completely feasable to do this. You insert characters into optional areas or an inn or the like, that explains these things at the players option, thereby enriching the experience for those who choose to take the time.

There are numerous examples of exactly this type of content in most Final Fantasy games, But also Atlus titles, etc. Infact it's found in pretty much every critically acclaimed single player rpg.

Not to mention the fact that we obviously perfectly understand the power and role of a hurricane in terms of global weather patterns...

Am I the only one concerned what might happen to other weather systems if we suddenly start damping hurricanes? the energy to form a hurricane comes from somewhere, if we're adding more to kill a hurricane, where is this new net total going to express itself?

Ah, found one of my original articles, oddly the one corroborating it 404s now. please, read it and make your own conclusions. http://www.storagesearch.com/ssdmyths-endurance.html

Not so with the flash drives. I was looking into an equivalent for MTBF for flash drives, and not finding one i started looking into the maximum capacity of writes, and found an article extolling a sort of half-life figure for flash drives. looking into the drive i have installed in my media center (for Quiet) an OCZ model. i found that i'd have to be writing to the drive at maximum capacity 24/7 for 18 years before the available capacity of the drive would decrease by half. they're quite long-lived, if the maximum writes per sector figures are to be believed.