Posts by Sergei Andropov 14 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Jun 2007
People died during the energy crisis. I am all for an alternative to rolling blackouts that shut off everybody's power indiscriminately.
I am also in favor of the people responsible for the energy crisis being charged with, at the very least, negligent homicide, but that would require actual justice.
It's easy to assume that everything that comes out of the Bush administration, or even the US government in general, is false; however, that's not always the case. I know from a relative who works in the government, and has to deal with this stuff on a daily basis, that China is indeed waging cyber-warfare against us, and has been doing so for quite some time. The government has only recently been starting to admit this, and the media has been ignoring it entirely.
"Personally, I think we have all forgiven Germany far too readily and far too soon"
The First World War took place almost one hundred years ago. There are only about thirty surviving veterans of it on the planet; all of those involved in actually starting it have long since decomposed. How many generations is long enough? Should we be upset with people because of things that their ancestors did? Should I perhaps be up in arms because the French forced my ancestors out of Alsaß back during the Thirty Years War? That's precisely the kind of grudge-holding mentality that contributed to things like World War One.
"'The Pentagon logged more than 79,000 attempted intrusions in 2005 ... The Pentagon uses more than 5 million [networked] computers.'
"That seems to be about 0.01 attempted intrusions per computer per year: an unbelievably low figure. If it's actually true, the US military can relax."
I wish. While I do not know the exact number of total attempted intrusions, I do know from a certain government-dwelling relative that the cyberattacks we are faced with are a serious problem, and before you ask, no, she's not part of the Department of Misinformation. The media, El Reg included, apparently, has not been given, nor is it giving, the full story.
"So no good can come from global warming, even though climate changes are perfectly normal occurances that have occured throughout history? It is a recognised fact that there was a "hot" period in the middle ages (warmer than now), followed by a "little" ice age that we have been recovering from in fits and starts through the 20th century. That is only in recent times that affects our living memory and well documented history."
The fact that something has happened in the past does not mean it's good. The "hot" period you refer to resulted in the destruction of the Anasazi civilization, which sent economic shockwaves throughout North America. I doubt that was an enjoyable experience.
Also, the fact that large scale climate change has happened in the past does not mean that we cannot cause it in the present. Lakes form and dry up over time, but that doesn't mean that we didn't cause the near destruction of the Aral Sea and Lake Chad.
The discovery that Eris is larger than Pluto is what catalyzed this whole controversy in the first place. All that's new is that we now know exactly how much bigger it is.
David,
I disagree that "any grouping is essentially meaningless." A quick look at the solar system shows that there are three basic kinds of solar satellite: those closest to the Sun are small and rocky, the next ones out are large and gaseous, and the most distant ones are small and icy, and also have erratic orbits. You could call all three groups planets, but I'm not sure how you could logically include the first two groups, which don't even remotely resemble each other, while excluding the third group, which is very similar to the first.
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