On the Nature of Things | Forum

Here's a little better one from Cassandra Does Tokyo: “What will fill the vacuum formerly occupied by religion?” ... Beyond these spartan observations, there is little I can add. We drank coffee, and chatted about our experiences, and about faith. I made no effort to hide my lack thereof, though I c...

... Zuckerberg will cut everyone a check for the content they've generated, right?



Right??

GrLGTfz3REY

Is ethanol really a bad concept? ... I has to be, I can't figure how the thermodynamic inputs to outputs could possibly work. (compared to crude, and considering _all_ inputs, including soil depletion) It's not possible to put that much energy into production of the corn or sugar cane, only to end ...

It's just thermodynamics -- the _day_ someone has the ability to make this cost effective, it'll happen all by itself. No one sat around wondering "why isn't anyone putting transistor radios into production?"

Probably the best question to ask is why will the environmentalist movement endorse scientific idiocy like ethanol? When did thermodynamics and grade-school addition become expendable in the race to save the planet?

Aerosmith -- Seasons of Wither

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This is my 12th winter back in Alaska, and they're just getting consistently colder. The HIGH temp this week was -22C. Some more global warming over the last 12 years would have been nice. Maybe it would only be -21C.

Yukon: The problem is third parties being punished for the behavior of others, even if they work in full compliance to make sure their service isn't being used for piracy. No again, people like Google, etc. should have been policing themselves a long time ago. They're doing it now, they do it for C...

What's illogical is the way you've distorted the argument. It's not about copyright infringement being "right" or excusable, it's about the punishment being excessive. It's not the right way to deal with what is clearly an unprecedented technology. What is your argument for why existing l...

Yes, Adobe is going down the dark path as well. It has a de facto monopoly on a few products, and is getting some funny ideas.

This goes right back to what I said earlier, and no one is admitting, point blank: if you don't like how the movie, etc. is distributed, that gives you the right to steal it. It's not a logical argument. Sorry guys, that's God's way of telling you to file a class action suit, or get an anti-trust ac...

The amount of material The Pirate Bay has spread around is not trivial, that's not a supportable position. And neither is the kids with pocket money only argument --- you do anything a hundred million times, and it starts to add up. Lending a book is removing that book from your possession, transfer...

You're forgetting something. As another website put it: " The funny thing is, the bills wouldn't even accomplish what they set out to do. You could still get to Pirate Bay or whatever by using their IP address. All SOPA and PIPA would do is put crazy amounts of power in the hands of a few. &qu...

150 years ago the Southern American states wanted "freedom" and "States Rights" to own slaves. "Free" to do "What", exactly? That is the question. Maybe if places like The Pirate Bay were shunned as vehemently as SOPA, we wouldn't have drawn this sort of atten...