I read this article http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=21299 with some interest.

 

In the journalistic trend of trying to balance opinion and get a differing point of view across in the debate on Global Warming, this article is a very mild piece of rhetoric.  Unfortunately it can have catastrophic effect.  The time to ACT is now.  The time to give ourselves "time" is now.  not when we have no more time and we are fighting both the environemnt AND our own populations running around like frightened sheep.

 

The statement "It may only be a matter of time before another cooling trend comes along. " is inexcusable in the current political environment.  Why?  Let me explain.

 

After 4 years of near drought in France, with deparments which were looking at standpipes and farmers restricted to the water they can take from the ground, the French government decided that it was, perhaps, time to act so that more water could be conserved.  However the weather broke and we got 4 years of rain in 18 months.

 

Why is this important?  Well because the French governmetn has decided not to make the changes to conserve more water as the "drought" is over and we have had them before haven't we.  Sound logic?  Well actually not.  Because if you get into this situation again and the drought is 8 years, not 4 years, then whatever steps you take After 4 years, there will not be enough water to refill the new facilities with water.  Meaning that the population and environment we live in has to suffer until it rains again.  We have the technology to fix this problem today, however we will not because the money could be "better spent elsewhere".

 

So in the terms of Global issues, the time to act is now.  Things are beginning to happen 50 years, or even 100 years, before predicted yet the governments still dither.  Tell them that it "will all return to normal someday" and they will wait, either for "someday" or until it's too late to DO anything.

 

The only thing you can be certain of is that Government won't suffer.  We will make sure they have all the food, shelter, water and comfort they need so that they can "govern" us.

 

So let's just remove all these "sensible" journalists and get on with what we know needs to be done......

 

So I've been using vista for all of 3 days now.  Several things have come to sight and mind as I've used it.  Besides the fact that Exploerer is a visual nightmare and is slowly beginning to understand that I don't want any FUCKING images, the rest of it is really pretty good.

 

OK I've disabled almost ALL of the new security and overridden a bunch of defualt settings.  But in general it's really good.  The Aero interface which actually uses the power of the graphics card is something else in terms of look, feel and speed.

 

But one thing that really blows me away is the Alt Tab.  I use this a lot.  It has become way more functional with the thumbnails.  Just fantastic.

 

I'm sure the more I use it the more I'll find.

I've been doing the old driver shuffle and managed to get myself blue screening continuously with vista.

 

OK, time to try out the new and wonderous features to repair a broken vista.  So I boot to the Install CD and ask it to repair it.  Full of hope, I watch the progress bar churning away.  Finlly the fateful words "Vista cannot fix it".  It know's it's a driver failure, but can't tell me what went wrong.  I can tell it that I installed an alps touchpad driver when the synaptics driver was still there, but it won't let me do anything.

 

OK so click on the other options link.  Well I can system restore.  Well I could If I used it.  Or I can reinstall the whole damned thing.  Er, no thanks.

 

At the bottom is the Command prompt.  Ah, at last.  A tool to fix my problems.  Open the command prompt and type help.  Nothing.  And again in disbelief.  Zip, nothing, nada.  Oh bugger.  What about listsvc then.  Zip.  Buggered!

 

Obviously I'm typing this so what did I do?

 

Well I got out the old trusty XP cd and booted to the recovery console.  pressed 1 and pressed enter to get into Administrator.  Bugger again.  Vista leaves administrator without a password and disabled.  Bugger, bugger, bugger.

 

Out with Peter Nordahl's NT Password recovery CD.  Boot up.  Select to change password.  It offers to unlock and enable the account... Yup, ta.  I enter the password and save it all out again.

 

Back to the console.  This time I get in.  Listsvc and peruse the list.  First I take out the TV tuner driver I also added at the time.

 

Bluescreen.

 

Then I take out the Synaptics driver.

 

Bluescreen.

 

Then I take out the Alps driver.

 

Success.  I have my vista back.

 

Thank god for some backwards hacking compatibility.......

 

I now have a system restore point and will have to live with the restrictions of it and the diskspace implications..... Ah well.  However it's nice to know that those hard won skills are still worth having.  Also my caution at NOT using the windows encryption services is well observed.  The NT password CD can blow that away.  WinRAR is still the best.  It's virtually uncrackable unless you have one of the top 500 machines in the world and the authorities can't afford that.  Nobody else is going to look into my machine and poke around like that....

 

So Vista is going well.  I have created a cmd file for recovering my permissions on the disk in case Vista takes it into it's head to change them again. Since I put back sensible permissons on the NTFS (I get to do everything sensible), all the programs I use that don't require drivers which are not there have started functioning perfectly.

 

By the time I have to update them and vista, the new programs will work with it just fine....

My 23 year old CB250n "not so" superdream developed a hole in the tank.  Naturally at the bottom.  I arrived back at Poitiers station to an almost empty tank and I had filled it.  Bugger.

 

Double bugger when it starts pissing fuel all over me AND the 2:1 on the right.

 

Tripple bugger when I try to stop it leaking out to get home.

 

Quad bugger when I have to ride 30km with my left hand over the right side of the tank holding wads of sticky tape to the holes so that I can get home before midnight.

 

Now I'm going to have to fibreglass it all up and paint it so that I can use it again next Monday.

 

Bugger,Bugger, Bugger, Bugger.

 

I feel another tank coming on.........  But getting one is not so simple.

Well if you're like me, the controls built into vista are a complete pain in the bollocks.  Well if you have them that is.

 

I have finally done the monitor swap on the laptops and am back up and running with the newer model.  I had to switch over the webcam in the lid and put the new drive in.  The CPU hadn't arrived so I'm going to have to wiat for that.

 

However I finally decided it was time to start dealing with Vista on a daily basis so that I can be fully up to speed with it when I have to.  So I install it.  Then I try to copy over my documents and settings.  I don't use the wizardy things as I'm not going to make the mess that I had before.  So I get just a little frustrated when I find I can't place my Outlook pst file where it belongs.

 

It took me about 2 minutes to realise it was NTFS permissions.  Aha.  Well I fixd that directory and found out it's all over the place.

 

Hmmm.  2 seconds thought.  Open Explorer, right click on the C drive icon.  Properties, security tab, advanced.  Take ownershiop and do all the files.  When it's complete go to the permissions.  Make sure they are max and apply to all sub dirs and objects.  Into the control panel and switch off that bloody stupid nag screen and I'm back to XP.  Well with a prettier interface and a completely fucked up Explorer.  However I can't get the explorer back without breaking the rest.  I'll have to rely on some enterprising geek who can hack the look and feel of Explorer alone without compromising the rest.

 

One interesting point is that IE7 is way, way, way faster than IE6 or IE7 on XP.  I know as I installed XP And did a vista upgrade report to check the hardware.

 

Methinks the XP versions of 7 is deliberately crippled....  Well I suppose they own it and really only want to run it on Vista for support reasons.  Can't blame them, I wouldn't want to pay hundreds of Millions supporting XP when I'd just spent billions producing the next "latest and greatest".

 

Jury is out, we'll see.

 

I just read an article talking about IPY and studies to use Antarctic Ice for drinking water around the world.

If it was not for my own family, I would be wishing the human race off this planet so that we can remove this stupidity once and for all.

We overpopulate the planet to the point where the environment will no longer support us.  Then we engineer solutions which “force” the environment to support us.  All the while, damaging the balance of the ecosystem at such a fundamental level that even the ice caps are melting.

Then we talk about “capturing” Antarctic ice because we are polluting so much drinking water that we need new sources.

So once we have hooked the economies of the world on “free floating” ice which is converted to drinking water, just exactly when do we start mining it?

After all, if we do not stabilise our consumption and control our population, then we will “need” the ice from the Antarctic.  If it stops falling off, we’ll have to go there and chip it off.  Because we are now seeing the retreat of mainland glaciers at such a rate that water shortages may occur in as little as 20 years.

The cost of the catastrophic collapse of the Cryosphere is calculated at about 2 billion lives.

I respectfully submit that the cost of a little restraint and control is much less.

We can pump Oil and gas half way round the world.  There is plenty of water in temperate regions of the world which simply runs into the sea.  Much better to talk about water control and management than relying on a “seemingly inexhaustible” supply of fresh water from the Arctic.

But of course that would rely on international cooperation.  Taking Antarctic ice just requires a free for all…..  In today’s political climate, a much more acceptable option.

Myt favourite site for monitoring the Arctic has decided to do a significant data upgrade.  Taking the site offline at the weekend and leaving the data at June 13th.  Right when the changes up there were really interesting and I was enjoying seeing the day by day changes and how the warming moved around and settled.

 

Oh well.  It's back online today.  Perhpas we'll get some new data tomorrow.

 

Whoever said patience is a virtue was mad.  Patience is a trial of determination against conditions.....

And then you lose all that good feeling which slops over the side.

 

No sooner have I felt somewhat justified (in my blogging of huge changes in the cryosphere), in my statement about the massive overnight meltback of a huge chunk of the Arctic ice, but I have a look the next day and twice as much has gone over and above the first chunk.

 

The scientists talk about tipping points.  The population ignores them as usual.  Those who ignore them are missing front row seats at an environmental catastropy.  Given the "reality" tv culture of today, I am surprised that Disaster TV is not showing this happeining real time.  Then again perhaps I'm not.

 

The Scientists don't know "why" this is happening, nor do they have enough empirical data to explain the phenomena.  So, due to the agressive stance of the US congress, they say nothing until they know why.

 

Just this week there was a big thing made of the iceshelf which broke off the Canadian north being marked to track it's drift.  Well if you look on Google earth at the "tiny little chip of ice" that it makes in the arctic and compare it to the meltback going on now, you get some scale of the problem.  In fact, if this meltback keeps going over the summer, then that 40M thick chunk of ice will be floating in open "relatively warm" water.

 

Not much data coming from that if it melts this year is there...... :-)