Posts by Duster 12 publicly visible posts • joined 30 Nov 2010
There are even places where the owners ENCOURAGE use of gmail because the existing servers of the primary provided for the company will not handle adequate file sizes. One of the problems with the proliferation of electronic "paper" work is that document sizes have ballooned out enormously. The common means of transfer - email - is gradually losing ground against the shear wordiness of the maximum document sizes. Sharepoint services are gradually becoming much more common. Even gmail will buckle under some loads.
The op is right. Most "piracy" is for stuff you can't get form you would prefer - either unavailable or available with lots of excess baggage. Copyright is so long now and - in the US at least - corporations are effectively immortal and also recognized as "people," many movies are vanishing because they were never popular enough. Songs are not released as singles any longer so paying the price of a decent dinner for a bit of plastic with a three-minute tune on it is too expensive. However if the individual tunes from the disk are available - say on Amazon - then $0.99 or so is a reasonable cost. If it is locked so that it only be listened to on one device, well then it again becomes too expensive.
There's no question the creationism and intelligent design are screwball concepts, but when you parse, AGW is just about as screwy as ID. So, while some of his ideas may be cockeyed, not even a majority of biologists can actually talk coherently about evolution with descending into ontological confusion. The question is not whether all of his ideas are screwy, just if this one is. Spencer's arguments are directed at recognized problems in existing GCMs having to do with atmospheric moisture, cloud formation, etc. He concludes sanely that satellite evidence strongly suggests that there really is no "missing" energy. That guarantees an attack from AGW theorists because implies they can't do their sums properly.
He isn't the only scientist to argue so either. In fact, contrary to the media-provided impressions one might develop, there is no general agreement among atmospheric scientists that a "greenhouse effect" theory is even necessary to understand climate, or in fact to explain earth's weather and average climate. There are physicists that are quite blunt in pointing out that the "physics" of current climate theory should mean that perpetual motion machines are possible. It might be best to regard the arguments and logic and not the men. We might actually form a consensus about what we don't know.
The most recent rise in sea level as a constant added by "scientists" to account for the fact that sea level changes were slowing or reversing. That is, they are fudging the data to make it look more like predictions. You can expect desertification from a cooling earth sooner than from a warming one - it would have to become warm enough that additional evaporation did not result in additional precipitation, so any present increase in desert areas is highly unlikely to be linked to global climate changes - regional ones due to grazing, farming, development, perhaps. Cool air on the other hand contains less moisture to begin with. Tropical storm frequency changes can be accounted for by increased monitoring - satellite imagery detects storms that would have been unnoted not many decades ago.
Point well made. Another fact is that many users don't want "flexibility." They just want _A_ way of doing things that accomplishes their goals. When someone like that encounters linux with all its distinct desktops, they can feel overwhelmed with the available choices. Showing the better half how to do things I learned long ago to leave out the "...or you can ..." parts.
Certainly not. The invulnerability of Apple and Linux systems is a matter of faith rather than of demographics. The "fanbois" actually believe that stuff and so do the marketing departments. Of course it is clear that the "end user" hasn't learned much in that time either. It's not just a matter of popular OS's being bigger targets than unpopular ones either. Popular social networking, music and shopping sites are all common target acquisition locations - come visit, become a target. So, follow popular fads on line using a popular OS and make twice the target you would following reports of UFOs and black helicopters.
The gps function in cell phones (in the US anyway) is required by law. Theoretically the ability to remotely fix the location of a phone during an emergency might save lives or ... what ever. Short of not having a battery in the phone, the location is always available to law enforcement - or a knowledgeable snoop.
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