Vapymid

Wait a second... SOPA, PIPA, ACTA are *not* anti-trust laws. Quite the opposite - these are laws aimed to support and protect cartels and to legitimise anti-competitive behaviour. Regards

If you're going to beam energy from a space-based generator you don't need to use nuclear (or any fuel-based) power generation at all. You can build solar cell farms as large as you want and place them in orbits which will keep them exposed to the Sun 24 hours a day. You will not have to raise all that mass from the Earth's gravity well either - you can make the panels and other equipment on the Moon or even on a silicon-rich trojan asteroid, place the farm near to where the manufacturing goes and relay the power by, say, microwave laser. Regards

Catherine Parr is my favourite out of the Six Wives of Henry VIII's. HH4S8bBiMfQ I prefer the original album version though... Regards

I also think that nuclear fission is a temporary solution to keep the things going until fusion becomes commercially feasible. Until the latter has happened though, fission is a very good energy source, even taking into account that we are using it mostly to boil lots of water Still, it's environmentally clean during normal operation (cleaner and less radioactive than coal burning, for instance) and it's not as dangerous as is popularly believed even in accidents (as Fukushima events showed last year). Once cheap fusion comes online the fission will be too expensive even though it has the highest known energy density save antimatter-matter annihilation but I expect it will then be used mostly for deep Solar System exploration + oceangoing and underwater transport. Regards

One limiting process Malthus did not consider was the economic restraint on birth rate which becomes a factor in "developed" economies. The higher the standard of living gets, the more relatively expensive it becomes for parents to bring up a child. We can see it working clearly now as the problem of the developed nations is the *low" birth rate of the native population. It is logical to assume that this will hold true for developing countries as well and their population growth will start leveling off once a certain economic magnitude is achieved. Ultimately, the overall population will continue to grow but at a slower rate as long as enough energy can be generated and material resources found on Earth. Those will be the "hard" limits and they can only be overcome by exploring extraterrestrial resources. Of course, there may always be extreme tail events - external (a GRB nearby) or internal (some monumental screw up) but these are not part of the "natural" trend... Regards

From the Starship's arguably the best album... bRgq5GfiruU Regards

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Top to bottom: - HL2 + episodes - Minerva - HL1 + Opposing Force + Blue Shift + some mods (like Poke646 etc) - (Descent/Descent 3 would come in here if they qualify as FPS...) - Return to Castle Wolfenstein - DOOM 1 Episode 1 - Wolfenstein 3D - Operation Flashpoint Regards

^ - this, but so that it loads as quickly as HL1, doesn't use Steam or any other DRM and has a working DemoSmoother + machinima tools which simple people (like me) can actually use... Regards

I tend to disagree with this. If you look at most of the impoverished countries you will find they have plenty of farmable/arable land. Their lack of food is normally explained by antiquated agricultural methods, backward social structure and ethnic/civil conflicts. The Earth population will need to grow to some kind of Coruscantian size before the planet itself will run out of resources to generate enough food (and will have to start importing it from Mars ). Regards

Rick Wakeman's Homage To The Doctor A tribute to Robert Moog... Regards

Actually, one of the most common complaints I heard about democracy is that it means the rule of vocal minorities... Anyway, you are right when you are saying that a democracy *can* be as bad as a dictatorship but still, on the balance, a form of democracy is preferable than a dictatorship (save maybe in the event of a natural disaster or war). Further than that, one must specify in much greater detail which type of democracy he/she is discussing, otherwise the argument becomes very muddled. Regards

That is not stupid. Freedom of speech/expression is absolutely necessary for a healthy society. Trying to suppress ideas and beliefs only works to support and promote them by giving them official recognition as a threat. That is not to say that the outrageous ideas cannot get hold but they only do so when there is already a fertile ground of disgruntled/disaffected population. For examples see Marxism/Leninism in Russia, National-Socialism in Germany. They illustrate both points - a) not possible to suppress an idea and b) the country must be in big trouble to turn to radicalism en masse. And these are only the two most recent examples... In normal times, you'd want the stupid and eccentric to vent their ideas freely. That will eliminate the possibility of them getting the aura of unjust persecution, they will also act as "antibodies", constantly reminding people about the lunacy of some of these ideas and creating a certain social "immunity" against the most outrageous and ridiculous "solutions". Finally, they will - very importantly - show you the "temperature" of your society by the amount of support they will generate among the general population. Also, when these ideas are out in the open you can fight them in the only effective way possible - by counterarguments. In contrast, when you suppress these ideas and beliefs they will spread underground and sooner or later will explode and bite you in the arse... All of this has nothing to do with the Anonymous, which I really don't know much about, so I'll reserve my judgement for now. Regards

From the same album (live version). DyG7C_AfRdo Regards

I guess I'm in a dark mood today... qoSbrTwA4ps Regards

QbjfesCI254 Regards

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VFcSMsOyKyg Regards

Wow! Christmas came early this year! Regards

Came across this short movie on Vimeo. Very well made. Not machinima, really - live action with CGI, but the opening scenes are an obvious nod to Half-Life 2, so I decided to post it here. Regards

Please. Don't do it just yet - I want the Episode 3 to come out, eventually. When it came out, Doom was the best FPS game there ever was, believe me. All the bells and whistles that came later were based on feedback from gamers who started to figure out what worked well and what didn't. Remember that even WASD controls only appeared much later, after Quake IIRC or maybe even later... But that was happening after ID started licensing it engines to other developers - of course, people improved from there but that was an evolution. Doom itself was a revolution. Now, try playing it through zdoom engine - it's got those things (free-look, jumping etc). But also remember that when Doom came everything was still rendered in software, graphics acceleration was practically unheard of and most PCs were still AT-386, AT-486 - that was looong time ago Unfortunately, half of Half-Life 2 atmosphere is lost on people who never lived in the former Soviet/Socialist bloc. For me, just walking through City-17 or the Pobeda mine brings goosebumps, still... Nothing before or since equals HL2 series in that respect + the plotline + voice acting - I personally think HL2 is not overrated at all. Regards

X84ZHSj2JnQ Regards

KravTo42qXs 5tQ9hWwIyiE Two short but to-the-point instrumentals... Regards

Oh, yes. Until the economy goes down the drain and they run out of money to spend. Then, quickly, there are more people disgruntled with the government than those who still expect them to provide bread and entertainment and the government is changed. Simple negative feed-back - but for this to work you must have a mechanism, which is democracy. The UK is a case in point here - the Labour government was milking the country to cultivate a specific group of voters which held them in power for 13 years, then they run out of money and got kicked out. Alternatively, where the feed-back is not working - as in a tyranny, the dissent grows and the economic disbalances accumulate until the system breaks down and a coup or a revolution follows. History if full of clear examples of how that happens. Regards

YwX3f_5Vars Regards