lasto i glemyr

Anyone happen to read Michael Crichton's Jurassic Park? Ever read about Ian Malcom's ideas? Anyway, Malcolm is always preaching about mankind's insignificant effect on the Earth. He talks about the origins of the Earth, and the incredible stability of Mother Nature, and his arguments make sense. Consider this: when the Earth was just forming, the atmosphere was completely inhospitable to life. It was excessively acidic, lacking oxygen, and didn't contain very much water. And considering that ozone is composed of oxygen, I don't think Earth had much of an ozone layer to speak of then. Obviously, at some point, Earth reached a fairly stable state that was able to support life. In the field of chemistry, there is a concept known as Le Chatelier's Principle. It states that if you apply a change to a certain system that is at equilibrium, the chemicals within the system will react to counteract that change. Anyway, long story short, Earth will probably change in order to counteract any effects imposed by man, such as the increase of the greenhouse effect and the destruction of the ozone. Earth is a highly stable mass; mankind will hardly leave a dent on it. So, essentially, man is danger of destroying himself, not the Earth.

I think I'm still going to stick with a Windows-based machine.Firstly, you can get a very good Windows machine for a lot less money.Secondly, from what I've seen, Windows supports a lot more software out there. The majority of developers write for Windows because, of course, the majority of the population uses Windows.Thirdly, I've never had much of a problem with Windows, so why should I switch?And finally, if I ever do have a problem with Windows, it is very easy to find help. Since almost everyone uses Microsoft's OS, you find that there are a lot more people you can ask for help with Windows.So as long as the majority of developers and users utilize Windows, I'm going to stick with Windows myself.

I voted for Windows as well.The main reason I don't like Macs is that there aren't that many people who know how to use them and can help you if you have problems.For example, my aunt has a pretty old Mac. She is always asking me to help her with her computer, but I don't really know how to use a Mac OS.So, personally, I prefer Windows. It provides a good OS, and if you need it, help is very easy to find.Apart from that, Mac has a very nice-looking and functional OS, just so long as you know how to use it.

Another interesting point in the speed of light debate--even if it was possible to amass such a huge quantity of energy, how would you employ it fast enough (practically instantaneously)?Think about it. If you had enough gasoline, you could generate the number of Joules necessary to reach the speed of light. The problem is that the energy is extracted from the gasoline rather slowly; it would take quite a long time to convert that much matter into that much energy.Even nuclear power couldn't do it. For example, take the Hiroshima A-bomb. Even that didn't release all of its energy instantaneously; the energy was unleashed over a period of time.To reach light speed, that huge amount of energy would have to be employed instantaneously, and at the moment there is no fuel source that can even come close to this.

I happened to watch a special on tsunamis after the disaster occurred.Tsunamis are usually caused by underwater tectonic disturbances, namely earthquakes. This earthquakes cause one of the plates to suddenly slide upwards as much as 30 feet, thereby causing a tsunami surge that is 30 feet high.However, the size of the tsunami is limited by its cause. Earthquakes will rarely push a plate up higher than 30 feet, and thus tsunamis that are caused by earthquakes are generally limited to this height.On the other hand, landslides can generate much higher tsunamis. There is one bay in Alaska, though I don't recall its name, in which this happened. A landslide rolled swiftly into the bay, generating a wave more than 150 feet high. This is proven by the treeline on the surrounding cliffs; at about 150 feet above the sea level, very old trees exist; below that, new trees are growing, indicating mass devastation below the 150 foot mark.The scary thing is that this was caused by a relatively small landslide. Scientists speculate that if, say, a whole side of a mountain or volcano slid off into the sea, it might generate a tsunami reaching a towering 450 feet in height. They are currently monitoring the west side of one small island off the west coast of Africa. The side of the cliff could potentially fall into the sea. The resulting wave would travel westward and would thus devastate the eastern seaboard of the Americas.Just a little interesting piece of info on tsunamis

This sounds like a question for my old chemistry teacher...gosh, that guy knew everything there was to know about science.Anyway, scientists apparently debate if the universe will eventually collapse again. Supposing that the big bang created the universe as we now know it, then all the matter had to come from one centralized location. Wouldn't it also make sense, then, that gravity would pull all the matter back into a centralized location eventually? Scientists speculate that the universe is still expanding, but most now believe it will collapse.Some might argue against gravity being able to cause the collapse of the universe. After all, the sun exerts gravitational force on Earth, and yet the Earth does not move closer to the sun. The centripetal (or centrifugal, I never knew the difference between the two) force of the Earth as it rotates around the sun counterbalances the effects of gravity. Thus, some argue that the universe cannot collapse as long as celestial bodies maintain a rotational motion as they currently do.However, another fundamental truth of the universe is that perpetual motion is not possible. You know how you learned in school that "space is a vacuum"? This is technically not true; some matter still exists in space. Apparently, NASA reported that the temperature in outer space is somewhere in the neighborhood of 3 Kelvins. The fact that the temperature is above absolute zero shows that some matter exists in outer space.Since this is true, any body travelling through space will have an ever-so-slight amount of friction with this matter. In theory, without any forces of propulsion, revolving bodies will eventually slow down, thereby lowering their centripetal [centrifugal] force. This force will no longer be enough to counteract the effects of gravity, and hence the universe will collapse.On the note of religion interfering with the Big Bang Theory, I don't believe it has to be so. Suppose you believe that God created the universe. Why couldn't he have done it through the Big Bang? Essentially, I see that it is entirely possible that God created the Big Bang, which then created the universe. Essentially these two beliefs do not have to be contradictory.

I run 2. One is a Seagate, and the other is a Western Digital. Both have stood up to the test of time and use, as they have been reformatted repeatedly; essentially both are reliable brands.A little side note: anyone into video-editing should get two hard drives. You install all your software on one HD, and you save all your files on the other. This significantly speeds up the process, as one hard drive does not have to read and write simultaneously. With two, one is always reading, the other is writing, =more speed.

I would definitely have to give Xbox the edge over PS2.As far as graphics capabilities, both systems are probably limited by the resolution of your TV. (However, Gamecube actually has a slight lead in the graphics department. This is only because their designers typically spend more time developing fine detail within the games. For example, one of their designers spent 6 months working solely on the dust patterns in Luigi's Mansion!)Xbox's real advantage comes in its games. PS2 has no unique games (ones that are ONLY for PS2 and nothing else), while there is a variety of games that are exclusive to Xbox.And now, the two things that fully pushed me over the edge? Simple: Halo and Halo 2. These are a couple of the best games created to date, and they are exclusively for Xbox.

A note on the headphones...I use a pair of Bose Triport headphones. The sound quality is outstanding, and the bass capability is enough to rattle your head. Some might think that I'm crazy to spend $150 on a set of headphones, but in retrospect it was one of the best purchases I've made.While listening to these headphones, I wonder how the integrity could get much better. You could spend an exponential amount of money on headphones to get less and less of a noticeable difference in sound quality.Before I bought, I also looked into Sennheiser. It is true that their top-end is better than Bose, and they have some very good headphones in the range of $70-$150 as well.And if you're wondering about Sennheiser's top-end headphones, check out their Orpheus headsets on their website. These headphones come with their own extremely-low distortion amplifier (only 0.01% THD or something like that!), super-high-grade oxygen-free copper cable, etc. The price? $15000. And no, I did not put in an extra zero. I know I am an audiophile, but that is ridiculous. Why not buy a car instead?!But anyway, both Bose and Sennheiser probably offer the best headphones on the market.

I own a Sony MiniDisc player. The main reason I purchased this over one of the flash (not HD) mp3 players is that they have interchangeable media. If you ever get tired of the music you have on there, you don't have to overwrite the old files; instead, you just change a disc. On mine, the discs can store more than 5 hours of fairly high-quality music.Also, MiniDisc players use Sony's patented ATRAC3 format, which I personally think is better than mp3. In mp3, data is compressed on all frequencies, causing an evenly-distributed loss of integrity. However, ATRAC3 compression degrades only select frequencies that you don't tend to hear so much in music. Hence, the songs can be compressed without much of a noticeable loss of quality.Since I got mine, Sony has also come out with Mini-HD, which fits even more data on a disc. I hear you can fit 45 hours of audio on a single disc. The media is fairly cheap (about $3 per disc), the storage is great, and the price is fairly low compared to HD mp3 players such as i-Pod.All considered, I highly recommend Sony's MD players above flash or HD mp3 players.

I have an 17" LCD monitor, one of the standards that came with my Gateway (and no I do not have problems with Gateway; they aren't the horrible company everyone makes them out to be).The image quality, brightness, and contrast ratio appear to be much better than any CRT I have seen. The colors are outstanding, and the images are crisp and clear.However, I hear that they aren't as good as CRTs for gaming. Due to slower response times, LCDs are supposedly inferior to the time-tested CRT. LCDs are getting faster, though; I know that NEC makes some LCD monitors with faster response times for gaming.

I have an ATI Radeon 9800 pro. I can't say much because I am not very familiar with nVidia's cards, but I can say that ATI delivers a solid, reliable card with excellent graphics.I'm sure you'll be happy with whichever you have or get; they're both solid cards with similar features.

I have a 160GB HD; nothing too spectacular nowadays.My friend, on the other hand, currently has somewhere in the neighborhood of 500GB of HD space. He is determined to have a terabyte of HD space by the end of the year...

I've stopped using floppies. My main reason is that I find them to be unreliable; somehow my data keeps getting destroyed in transit. I don't know why this is, either...maybe my house just sits on some giant electromagnetic deadzone or something Instead, I have adopted a USB flash drive. It writes faster than floppies, it is smaller than a floppy, and it fits a lot more space. Also, they're getting pretty cheap; if you look, you can probably find a 512MB one for $30 or less.Also, what's the deal with these dual-layer DVDs? The burners are cheap, but I hear that the media costs in the neighborhood of $7-$10 PER DISC! I don't see much of a point in this technology if it costs so much...hopefully Blu-Ray won't be terribly expensive when it's released.