It is Republic Day in India as well today. 57 years:-O :rose:

CaveFox wrote:

== Coffee!!

shouldn't that be COFFEE!! ? sorry, nitpicking. ;P

hey, don't lose heart. keep up the good work. :^)

what do you think would be the right punishment for this man: Noida serial killer[^]. Just makes my soul shiver, and just want the worst things possible to happen to him. He somehow lost his right to live, why should the taxpayers pay for his time in jail?

instead of percentages, could you give the number of errors in MS code. I mean not as a fraction but as absolute number. I would not like to drive anything that crashes so regularly (Even twice a year would be too much for an automobile).

It is a win win situation for Microsoft. If the OS crashes, the user might not live to report it. Imagine an air bag with send/don't send dialog coming up. :) Or better still, a panel with open airbag/cancel coming up.

ah, thanks. the link and link^ buttons do not work correctly for https links, adds the http:// again.

Looking Glass 3D[^] -- modified at 12:48 Saturday 30th December, 2006 fixed link.

if you try hammering a nail, you will realize you are able to apply lesser force without the thumb in proper position. the grip is not good enough. if you and I have a sword fight, and you don't have the opposable thumb, you will lose. you could argue that you would use a dagger, which might not need the thumb, but your chances of survival goes down. also using a gun will be so much tougher without the thumb. (the recoil without the curl, will be difficult to handle). so, a person of equal intelligence, but who uses a hammer, a crowbar, a sword and a pistol better then you do, is going to out-breed you, if nothing else. :laugh:

clickety[^]

Red Stateler wrote:

Apparently rising sea levels are also natural, since the rate of rising has been about constant for the past 100 years

how is that apparent to you? wikipedia sea level rise[^]

From 3,000 years ago to the start of the 19th century sea level was almost constant, rising at 0.1 to 0.2 mm/yr; since 1900 the level has risen at 1 to 3 mm/yr

if you have sources more reliable than NASA please share them with us. and no, your gut feeling + intuition does not count as a reliable source.

Red Stateler wrote:

And I said the net result would be 4 inches higher

What would people do when they see that there is a risk of the island getting drowned? they will pile up something on the coast to keep the water away. what happens when the piling gets breached? the island gets submerged. I don't hope you can understand it, but try this. push an empty glass(open end up) in a bucket of water(tell someone to stir the water for you if you want it to be turbulent). If you slowly do it, there will be very little water in the glass until major portion of glass is in. Then the turbulence will start to throw water in(even though the still water is much lower still). For an island, some water thrown in will dry up/flow back to the sea. The water level of calm sea at low tide is still way lower then the brim. However, as more and more waves manage to breach the brim, the water no longer dries up but starts to accumulate in the lower regions. Assume a height of waves forms a Gaussian distribution. when the average sea level goes up by 4 inches, more waves get inland (at high tide). If the threshold was way to the right earlier, the increase in number of waves that cross grows exponentially.

Red Stateler wrote:

Ever been to the beach?

I have seen two different seas and an ocean, 7 coastal cities, and can not count the number of beaches I have seen. Turbulent sea at high tide, and a beach where the water was almost stagnant. However much I try to not get personal, you can't manage it. Get over the "I know everything and the other person is an idiot" attitude. if you think islands will lots of people on them getting submerged is common, mind if you lookup some references?

Red Stateler wrote:

Do you really think 4 inches would do much, considering the 2.5 foot rise the tides bring in?

I don't think you want to listen to what the other person is talking. I asked what if the high tide + wave height was 4 inches less than the embankments at the island. now where does the tidal variation come into picture at all? even if there is a 15m tidal rise, I am considering all land exposed by low tide as waste uninhabitable land. you somehow want be believe that if something happens relatively slow it can not cause any difference, even if it continues for long time frames. missing something huh?

Red Stateler wrote:

To arbitrarily attribute a common natural phenomenon to global warming is nothing short of absurd.

who said global warming can't be natural? can we do something to limit its effect is the question. heard of the flood gates of Venice? and how is islands with population of 10,000 vanishing a common phenomenon?

Red Stateler wrote:

Not "sea level" since that's a constant at any given time.

I did not ask you what not to call it, anyways if sea water level seems more reasonable to you, its ok with me.

Red Stateler wrote:

It assumes that the island was originally no higher than 4 inches above high tide at its highest point.

what if it was 4 inches higher that high tide level + wave height in the area?

Red Stateler wrote:

It simply eroded away.

it is a possibility for sure, but don't say it as if you know everything. If I can't prove it was because of global warming, you can't prove it had nothing to do with it. If everyone shuts his/her eyes and stay this stubborn we would be caught unprepared if(and when) it happens. I am not holding my breath though, and lets hope all this is indeed fear-mongering.

A floating ice block is equivalent to melted water as far as water level is concerned. Volume of water displayed by iceberg == volume of water locked in the block. However, the water that gets blocked over Greenland/Antarctica and in glaciers over high mountains does not contribute to sea level. similarly for ice shelves.

ok, so what do you call the level of sea water at a given moment at a given time? That can change by upto 15m for places(at high tides and rough seas). You somewhere in the thread seem to make a point that 4ins was not good enough because waves are more than 4ins high. I am claiming that waves are much higher, and if height of a wave is some metric, 15m would not be sufficient either.

Red Stateler wrote:

So how can a 4-inch rise in water levels over 40 years completely and suddenly wipe out an entire island?

the difference in sea level can be as much as 15m, so the land might not to submerged totally all the time, but it would be uninhabitable if it is covered at high tide. for most low lying regions, there are thresholds that would keep the sea water out. as soon as the higher waves at high tide starts reaching a place, it is lost. it is only for sometime walls and barrages will stop the sea, once they are breached, the island will be lost quite suddenly. by your logic, if 4ins is not sufficient to wipe out an island, even 15m should not be sufficient(wave can be very high during bad weather). did you hear about "slow and steady wins the race?" During the tsumani that hit south Asia 2 years ago, some islands got submerged when the sea got rough, however the water never receded later on. I am not saying that it happened because you used your car, just that things are changing. if you could manage to pile up some ice at the poles and mountain peaks, it might help.

Rising seas, caused by global warming, have for the first time washed an inhabited island off the face of the Earth. The obliteration of Lohachara island, in India's part of the Sundarbans where the Ganges and the Brahmaputra rivers empty into the Bay of Bengal, marks the moment when one of the most apocalyptic predictions of environmentalists and climate scientists has started coming true

http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/article2099971.ece[^] I don't need to worry though, I live at least a 1000kms from sea (though the Ganges is 10kms from my home). -- modified at 2:58 Tuesday 26th December, 2006 clickable link

Vendor = Linux Title = kernel Version = 2.6.19, vulnerabilities = 1 Version = 2.6.19.1, vulnerabilities = 0 :confused:

it will take me a few days to read this and since it is 4am here at the moment, I will start tomorrow. no really. ;) liked the first one-third, will have to copy-paste it into a text editor if I want to read the whole thing(whenever you decide to post it please make it a multi-page article, that way the reader does not give up just by looking at the scroll bar, but reads it for the content).