Vapymid

c_5-6dynNug x6kyIJ8jN5c Regards

RQwR1Ph35Jo Regards

Probably nothing, as Valve will no longer exist and anything dependent on Steam activation will be useless... Regards

Peter Hammill at his best... 2UDPYDc0ZKw 0vX1Sses4zA Regards

But once you have enough electric power and high enough demand for liquid fuels (= high price) then CTL (coal) and GTL (gas) processes can be used to produce synthetic oil. We will still have large reserves of both available for many years. Longer term solution will require fusion, solar from orbit. Also, moving some industries off-planet (e.g. metal smelting) will help to reduce per capita energy needs on Earth. Regards

Decided to listen to Kansas' debut album to remind myself how good it was. Remind me it did. Here are the 3 best (IMHO) numbers from it (especially the Mariabronn): uX0H_anNJE4 PZ3ezVBRtCY qOVxNppbvBc Regards

Sorry to hear that. You should try this then (parallel) - most people find parallel viewing relaxing and a good eye rest... Don't put your glasses (if you wear any) on for this one. Regards

Yes, it's not difficult. You may get tired if you watch crosseyed pictures more than 10min or so without a break... Anyway, I think it's worth it to learn unaided stereo viewing (both crosseyed and parallel) - just because it feels good to know you can do it. Also, it still never ceases to amaze me how an unremarkable flat picture all of a sudden turns into full 3D right in front of your eyes, literally. Regards

You can view cross-eyed stereo without special glasses, you just need to learn the technique. Basically, lean back from the screen a bit, cross your eyes slightly until the stereopair starts to look like a row of 3 images, then focus on the central image. If you wear glasses against myopia (negative diopters) then you should wear them for viewing cross-eyed stereo as well. Regards

A while ago I became interested in stereophotography and stereograms. So, just for fun I tried to make some 3D screenshots from Half-Life. In the early experiments I've left the viewmodel visible, which doesn't look very good (as it's perceived as an object at infinity while at the same time obscuring the field of view): The rest of the album... Then recently I remembered about this as I was processing some photos from my Fuji camera and made some more HL shots: The rest of this image set... The script on Phereo page can show the images in a number of stereo formats including anaglyph (needs red-cyan glasses) or cross-eyed (which I by far prefer). Regards

It is frustrating that with all high rhetoric about liberation, democracy, freedom etc it all always ends up as a personal revenge against an individual - be it Osama Bin Laden, Czar Nicholas or Gaddafi. If you are supposedly acting on principles than you must detach your principles from the role of an individual player, because not doing so implies that the individual is more powerful than your principle. On a practical note, another message for dictators around the world: don't try to be nice to the West - they only want to make you weaker; don't try to be nice to your people, for they will revolt eventually; be as hard and brutal as you can, otherwise you're dead. Hardly a message that will make these regimes more amenable to peaceful transitions and reforms... Regards

I've considered this as well, but unfortunately there are a few problems with that theory. 1 you would need to know the exact energy and position information of every particle in a radius of T*C. T being the distance in time from now to when you're planning to predict and C being the speed of light. Unfortunately the more you know about a particle's position, the less you know about its's momentum and vice versa. Then even if you did manage to magically acquire all the data required you'd still have to create a computer that could simulate the universe with 100% accuracy in faster than real time, basically all you have to do is create a computer that calculates at greater than 100% efficiency. Good luck with that. Fluttershy's line of logic does not take into consideration the logistics of comprehending all points in space and time in our Universe because it does not intend to. This is philosophy, not theoretical engineering. It assumes it is both possible and has been achieved, for the vehicle of the line of logic. Well, I would argue that the point which ABG has made is philosophical, rather than engineering - which is, basically, that in order to calculate all events and interactions across the entire Universe you must have complete information about the entire Universe at a specific moment and the information processing power equal to or greater than that of the entire Universe, so you yourself have to be greater (and beyond) the Universe, which implies that you must be God to do that. A corollary of that is that no one inside this Universe can ever be able to accurately predict the future of the Universe. In other words it is impossible to calculate the ultimate end-state of the Universe prior to that end-state occurring. All that can be achieved is a rough approximation and extrapolation - the smaller the volume and time horizon of the prediction, the more accuracy (higher probability) can be achieved, until you get to one half of the reduced Planck constant for real-time observation (i.e. with zero prediction). Regards

Is this a general question about the meaning of life in the Universe or is it about an individual person's life? The answer to the former is that the meaning of life seems to be organisation of matter in a way resulting in reduction of entropy for as long as there remains free energy in the Universe. Presumably, before or at the moment the last energy is converted into work the living Universe must transcend into a new state (possibly creating a whole new Universe) where the process will continue... Alternative is that all life in the Universe will cease to exist (again, presumably, resulting in failure to achieve its transcendental purpose). An interesting result of such argument is that one can identify entropy (chaos) with the concept of evil, giving objective definitions to good and evil. This then gives such concepts as morality an absolute, universal quality, quite independent from subjective, human-centric interpretations. As for the latter question - well, the meaning of individual life should be to help the life in general to achieve its universal target without going extinct in the process. What that actually means may be completely trivial (like someone meant to become a birth accident statistics because you *must* have a birth accident statistics) or quite grandiose (as in being a Newton or Hitler or Ghandi etc). This all is totally independent from the argument about whether or not there is God as it will fit either case (discarding of course the view of God as an old man sitting on a cloud - such "god" will not be God at all as he will be subject to the same laws of the Universe as any other object and will have to die when all free energy is exhausted). However, if you assume that there is God, it may be argued that the purpose of universal life is to organise itself until it becomes equal to God himself, at which point it will transcend (and merge with God?). This hypothesis is impossible to prove or disprove at least until the moment the universal life reaches the point of "transcend"... Regards

Ahem, ever thought of inviting her to a nice cafe, restaurant or a cinema? Regards

Body? What body?

Well, having substantial oil and gas reserves surely must have contributed to that, isn't that so? Regards

This is too simplistic. And even in your example you account only for about 3% of the savings. The thing is that by doing this the company increases the value for sharehoders. Even as it moves its production out of the US it will still be owned by, presumably, US owners. They may receive bigger dividends which they will invest or spend, most likely in the US. The company may be publicly listed and the shareholders may include pension funds, local authorities etc. - the benefits of a sound commercial decision will be spread more widely than just among the senior management of the company. The reverse will be true as well - if the company will be run on protectionist basis, the only one who would benefit for a while will be the local employees, union officials and the House representatives. The company itself will likely start losing its market share because of its inability to compete on the cost of its labour. When it will finally collapse or be swallowed by another, those local employees will quickly see their supposed advantages turn into a huge disadvantage. What your example shows, actually, is that the market forces put pressure on societies to always look for a new edge which will bring them back into the game when they can't compete in the old ways (because other people learned how to do it better or are prepared to do it cheaper). But having said this I agree with many other things you said. Things may work very well in theory for academicians debating the ideal markets and abstract economic principles but, in reality, the flaws in the system allow manipulation and corruption, which makes stronger players stronger and reduces the chance of a newcomer to break through. There is no justification for that. That is what must be fought. Regards

I believe the whole obsession with banks is nothing but a modern witch hunt. Banks did not cause the crisis, which happened because governments throughout the world decided to disregard economic realities and went on a spending spree, pushing the banks to do the same. Like a drinking binge it all felt good until the morning after... Now, those very governments basically made the deal with banks - "we will use you as scapegoats, deflecting the blame, and you will just keep quiet but for that we will recapitalise you out of public funds". A great deal of responsibility also lies with the public who borrowed without thinking or even knowing that they will be unable to ever repay these loans. And, of course, there is a wider issue of where is value creation in Western economies, which could realistically generate growth, coming from? We don't do things anymore. We will soon stop designing them. We have to buy resources and fuel from others. Financial services are only good when you have finances. So, these protesters are like moths knocking their heads on a light bulb to me... Found a false target for their anger... Regards

Magnetic confinement: http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/p012561.pdf Quote: "This trap design may be useful for production and confinement of cold antihydrogen" Regards

Well, the are many people who would say something like that about their teenage children... Pet animals are not tools or toys. Both canines and felines are sufficiently advanced animals to have their own intelligence, personality and self awareness. Once you've taken a pet cat or dog you must consider it a part of the family (which most people thankfully do) and be responsible for it whether it does any useful work for you or not. Also, it's easy to confuse respect and subservience. If a dog sees you as a pack leader that does not necessarily imply any conscious respect. Personally, I prefer cats - for their independence, amongst other things. I've had sufficient experience with cats to show me that the common preconceptions of them being cold, emotionally-challenged, ungrateful creatures are totally wrong. With dogs, their permanent unquestioning optimism depresses me... Regards

On the first glance it appears that with robots it can work... But in reality, robots of such advanced development as those ones will just decide to cut out the redundant middle man (so to say ) And I am pretty sure that you cannot create robots productive enough without them having AI as complicated and fuzzy as human intelligence - in fact, such robots mentality will be quite indistinguishable from human's. Actually, the Time Machine by Herbert Wells is a remarkable thought experiment on just such a possibility (with Morlocks being the robots). I think we have an instinct which tells us that the moment we relax and rest on our laurels another species (natural or artificial) will take over and swipe us away. I'm sure this is not an empty premonition - it's the way the Nature works and we, being a part of it, know it deep down in the marrow of our bones. Regards

Ideal communism (from each - according to his abilities, to each - according to his needs) cannot exist. Like perpetual motion machines, it will violate the laws of thermodynamics. You can achieve an approximation to communism in small communities, such as kibbutzes, but only because there is the larger world with which you can trade. In politics, what is commonly considered "communism" is nothing of the kind. Ideologically, it is based on the principle that individuals (their rights, their needs) are secondary to those of the society as a whole and that the product of individual's labour belongs to the society. This sounds seductive to people who consider themselves disadvantaged (because they expect that they will get a greater share of the total product than they could otherwise expect). However, in reality all that happens is that this total product becomes personal property of a small ruling oligarchy which in the end inevitably increases inequalities, disrupt the production and collapses the system. Regards

[trollmode]Get a proper computer?[/trollmode] Regards

Yes, but I don't think it's that simple. Most people are heterosexual. An essential part of heterosexuality is that you are sexually attracted to people of opposite sex while being repulsed by idea of sex with people of the same sex. This is instinctive and no cultural conditioning will ever take it away completely. All you can do is to acknowledge the biological factor and learn to recognise it in you and willfully suppress it. Obviously, this requires highly sophisticated social structure and high level of education and awareness of the public. That is why the more primitive the social order is in a country, the more intolerant it is to sexual minorities. The fact that the rights equalisation, even in "developed" countries, is being done purely through "political correctness" and without acknowledging the underlying biological factors, certainly does not help. Regards

All this will do is raise the inflation further. These things never work - look at tobacco or alcohol or gasoline excise duties. People still buy these things because they need or want to. In fact what it will likely do is to cause poorer people to switch to even lower quality food, which will have higher fat content but will still be cheaper because the rest of the ingredients came from the garbage bins... Look, the way this tax appears to work is that essential (and dietary important) food ingredients like butter will be taxed the highest. So, people will switch to some gutter oil-based margarine which will be cheaper than good butter even with the tax and all... Go to any supermarket - the amount of fruit and vegetables and all sorts of other food available now (all year round) is phenomenal. At no time in history there was such an abundance of different foods available to and being within the purchase power of the general population. What is manifestly lacking is a food culture. You have a choice suitable for patricians but the masses of consumers with plebeian taste on whom all this choice is wasted. Until that is changed you may tax or not tax - your people will still eat cr*p. Regards