Please be so kind as to add a vacuum gauge to the Guardian Angel, so I can at least tell in advance how much it's sucking on any given day...

I would say fighting global cooling is much better than fighting global warming.

Thirty years is really only enough for very short term fluctuations, anyway. It's like measuring the changes in weather throughout a day vs throughout the week or month or year, or several years. It's about the shortest span you can go, and you should expect there to be a lot of variation both high and low.

We are currently in the middle of a climate "summer" if you will, given a few thousand years (hopefully not less than that, but it won't matter anyway for anybody alive today) it will be climate "wintertime", which will suck royally.

Small fluctuations over a short period of time won't have any affect on what will ultimately happen in the long run. The whole climate change debate depends heavily on how long your time-line is, because if you take a wide enough view the current trends are absolutely meaningless, one way or the other. If you take a short-term view, the current trends are absolutely frightening.

So, using the legal system to go after people who are misusing their copyrighted works is abusing the legal system? What are they supposed to do? Give up making money at something they enjoy? I never had a problem with the **AA suing people in court over their IP being misappropriated. My contention was with their "accounting" practices in estimating piracy and it's effects, and the monetary "damages" they were claiming.

> base 2 number system, which is ultimately the most
> important base system for people working with computers

That is a truly ridiculous statement. "People working with computers" is EVERYONE. And they all have 10 fingers and count in base 10 and have standard measurements based on 10's in which a kilometer is 1000 meters.

You're doing the elitest programmer priesthood thing, but even there you are wrong. Programmers also use maps and drive cars and none have 10.24 fingers. What's more, computer programs have to work internationally, and be maintained by arbitrary programmers, so they need to follow standards. If one programmer is working with nonstandard 1024 kB and the rest aren't you have a problem.

The argument against this is the same as other arguments against SI in general. Carpenters don't want to give up inches, etc. Give us a break. The world is international and connected and very tiny. If you're not using SI you're asking people to fix your shoddy work or for a Mars probe to smash uselessly into Mars.

We could settle this whole argument by just figuring out a way to convince Microsoft that it is in its own best interest to put pressure on the standards body to reverse the standard. It would be redefined within a year :-)

I wonder if you realize how foolish you sound.

Every trait has a tradeoff. Evolution has no master plan, it has no absolutes, the superiority of one trait over another depends on environment and luck. It is not an accident that sickle-cell is a prevalent trait amongst those of recent african descent. Environmentally, living in africa presents a greater likelihood of dying from malaria. The sickle-cell trait protects the individual from malaria. In that population, it's a survival trait, as I said, in spite of that fact that getting copies of it from both parents is fatal. It is statistics, my friend.

Outside of Africa, particulary north European types, malaria is not a big issue. Sickle-cell in THAT population is NOT a survival trait, and is slowly disappearing amongst people of african descent who live in the north. They are also getting whiter, since black skin protects from heavy sun in africa but entirely blocks the diminished wavelengths needed to produce vitamin D in the skin, thereby causing rickets, a particular scourge of black people, especially nursing black mothers, and one reason why many countries add vitamin D to milk. Blackness is not a useful survival trait in northern climes.

Human evolution is a fascinating subject. You would do well to study it before demonstrating such cocky stupidity in public again.

Yes, who do they think they are. Those prefixes only meant powers of ten for nearly two centuries before computers came along. I think you'd find your precious dictionary reference would reflect that as late as the 70's or 80's.

Just why do you think that you are so important that you can redefine a centuries old standard?

The "tipping point" argument was always a bit bogus, being more an excuse to invoke the Precautionary Principle for insignificant environment changes. Now it's being applied to something where it has no business being applied. A slight rise in sea level just means a slight increase in soil transport. Whatever goes away due to erosion, would have gone away anyway.

So THAT's what happened to Pluto!

I guess it's subjective, but I don't really think 7 is a "sizable margin."

That, and imitating Redneck Nero's abuse of the word "mandate."

1) Nothing
2) Nothing
3) They won't

If we could reject them, we would. Our philosophy is for all people to choose their own poison. You're forcing it down everyone's throat. ONCE AGAIN, states' rights. If California or Iowa or [state] wants to enact this legislation, alright. But don't force it on 300m people! Our nation is too large for the high government to be representative of the people. Such sweeping, life changing, nation-bankrupting legislation is best reserved for the better-representing states, where only a portion of the country will be affected.

The opposition isn't "bizarre." Government-run healthcare costs money, creates bureaucracy, and requires cuts in Medicare. The nation is too large to centralize something like healthcare. People on Slashdot often mock the experience of working in companies with a lot of bloat and middle-management. Well, governments are the ultimate example of that. People are also opposed to the backroom deals that were made to secure votes for the bill.

Besides that, I'm not sure why the submitter thinks today is "end of a very long road." Democrats have been saying they were close to passing this for the last nine months. It's just posturing. Apparently, they're still six votes short, and the public disapproval over both the legislation and the unconstitutional methods used to force it on everyone means I highly doubt it will ever pass.

Doing this huge, expensive overhaul in the middle of an economic recession always seemed totally nuts to me. If they had passed small, modular pieces over time, it would have been more accepted and probably less bloated as well. However, Nancy Pelosi seems to have forgotten that we live in a democracy and that what the public wants should matter. She thinks the ends justify the means.

I'll be defiantly voting Republican in the fall. Watching Democrats become enormous hypocrites, from Obama's constant broken campaign promises to reporting citizens to "flag@whitehouse.gov" to guys like Democrat Harry Reid getting away with his "negro dialect" comment despite what happened to Republican Trent Lott before him, has made me realize they are arrogant and out of touch. The nation was founded on the idea of separate states united under a limited government infrastructure, not some all-powerful, centralized entity.

I don't know pudge from Adam, so I'm not defending him or anyone else.

I do, however, notice the pattern of attacks only shifted to AC when the flaming began, and I called him/her(you) on it.

The larger argument can be dealt with in other posts of mine if you please, but drawing back to the topic is ironically off-topic to the fact that somebody opted to go AC because their argumentative skills suddenly devolved to name-calling.