edd17

You have to wonder what kind of research went into this decision, usually i take the prevalence of goths in an area to be indicative of a wealthy middle class and a generally safer and more pleasant area. This is really just a matter of someone not liking the way they look.

First they came for the hoodies I remained silent I was not a hoodie Then they came for the goths I remained silent... ...and so on, WHERE WILL IT END!?!

The values for capacity aren't realistic at all, the regular rail should have a greater capacity then the highway. I increased the capacity of the rail, subway and monorail with the iLive reader, if you have the NAM installed you have to edit one of the NAM files in the plugins folder.

Originally posted by: manticorefan No religious/ conspiracy theorist content? Hmmmm.... Enviromentalism has become a religion all it's own, with Algore as its messiah, and the us-vs-them viewpoint common to many religions. The with-us-or-against us philosophy, etc. Try radioliberty.com, it might explain some things. Ever heard of the Georgia Guidestones? The eco-types want to eliminate 5.5 BILLION people to save the enviroment; not many would be left to enjoy it....quote> There has been no religious or conspiracy theories because most people here are debating the scientific validity of the theory of anthropogenic global warming while some only seem to be here do air their dislike of Al Gore. Trying to invalidate our arguments by comparing us with some of the more excitable groups on the internet isn't going to work, and I'm not going to say what that says about your position (though i would hate to group genuine sceptics with those who simply refuse to acknowledge the facts). I haven't heard of the Georgia Guidestones because they are a fringe group with some strange ideas, few people think that this kind of thing is necessary but it seems convenient for people ignoring the fact that they are damaging the ability of the environment to regulate itself and harming others through their overconsumption of the planets finite resources to simply dismiss people who are concerned about this as tree huggers with nothing better to do and possessing some sort of mental incapacity. Originally posted by: coolotter88 the "eco-types"quote> Again, lumping people with genuine concerns about the state of the environment into the same group and considering them all enviro-hippy-commi-nazis isn't going to make the facts go away.

Wow, lots of nationalism here. Seems people can get pretty worked up over a guy buying arms from someone other than the Americans. The guy does seem to associate with some dubious characters and seems to be spending a lot of money on the military which could be spent on better things, but if you had people trying to overthrow your government then you might get a little paranoid as well. I think we should judge this man by his policies, not what he goes around saying to make himself feel big.

The stations (RCTV) licence had expired, and the government did not renew the licence as it had a legal right to. The station had also violated the terms of its licence by breaking Venezuelan law and openly supporting the military coup. Chavez may be damaging the Venezuelan economy and wasting money on the military but he was democratically elected, remains in power democratically (despite the brief coup) and has broken no laws.

All those level crossings sometimes look unrealistic in large cities, perhaps modding the el-rail track to allow freight traffic would be a solution.

The reason that the worlds population is growing so fast is that infant mortality has fallen, but in developing countries they are still having large families as they would have when the extra children were needed as insurance so some would survive. In more developed countries birthrates have fallen and population growth has levelled off. There is always going to be some population growth but the biggest problem is that more people in developing countries are starting to want to live like we do, and there are not enough resources for everyone on the planet to do that.

The reason that the worlds population is growing so fast is that infant mortality has fallen, but in developing countries they are still having large families as they would have when the extra children were needed as insurance so some would survive. In more developed countries birthrates have fallen and population growth has levelled off. There is always going to be some population growth but the biggest problem is that more people in developing countries are starting to want to live like we do, and there are not enough resources for everyone on the planet to do that.

Carbon dioxide is one of many gasses which contribute to the greenhouse effect but the problem is that so much of it is being released into the atmosphere. How bad its effects will be is open to debate but we can be sure that increasing the levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will increase the amount of heat in the atmosphere which will probably alter weather systems to some degree. The atmosphere, the oceans and all plant and animals can be thought of as a self regulating system, altering the system in some way upset the balance in some way but ultimately the system will adapt to this (playing SimEarth can give a basic idea of how this works). I don't think that the earth will be transformed into a Venus like planet, but i do think that humanity will suffer as it has to adapt to new climate systems.

This diagram shows the imbalance in the release and absorption of CO2, the actual imbalance is quite small compared to the how much passes through the system. When comparing the amount that would need to be taken out of the atmosphere to the amount that is taken out by photosynthesis, it would have seemed like a reasonable option.

This reminds me of one of the older plans to combat the increase in CO2 in the atmosphere by dumping loads of iron in the ocean to promote the growth of phytoplankton, but the amount of CO2 released by the boat on the journey out to sea was greater then the amount taken out of the atmosphere. I think they want to pump fertiliser out to the middle of the ocean now.

mimes simply cannot compete with the inherent hilarity of llamas, perhaps Tilted Mill is trying to make its own stamp on the series

People always complain that mass transit doest pay for itself, but when it often has benefits beyond the fares collected (increased commerce etc.), they also seem to forget that roads (except for toll roads) definitely do not pay for themselves (if your just going to consider fares).

Originally posted by: Albatross Domain but here's another problem... the contract is going to a different country... instead of investing into companies here in the U.Squote> Free market? They simply choose the most competitive quote and projects of this scale usually involve international companies, no ones complaining about American companies involved in overseas development.

Things like this aren't built without a lot of planning and calculation of current and future needs. Its not just going to be a road, there are also utility and rail lines involved, theres a lot of trade between the US and Mexico so it makes sense for better connections for freight. Comparing it with the Three Gorges dam is reasonable, both are large projects that have been planned for a long time and have been planned with future needs in mind and yet meet seemingly irrational opposition just because they are so large. This project will have major effects simply because of the scale, building hundreds of smaller connections would have the same (probably greater) negative effects but would just not attract as much attention.

Originally posted by: JanYpe but I think this game is going to be very good because it'll be based upon a big budget.quote>As opposed to SCS being very bad because of EA's big budget behind it? Do Coca Cola, Jaguar (Ford) and Mini Cooper (BMW) care more about the best interests of the fans than about dollars?quote> Well the money combined with their witnessing of the backlash against SimCity Societies should mean that something good is on the way. This will probably have the same social engineering aspects as the first City Life but (hopefully) more of the realism and variety in city planning from the SimCity series.

Its kind of hard not to blame them, they say that they will be listening to us but they have reached a point in development where they probably cannot change much of what they have already done. If they had tried to find out what people wanted for the new game before this stage then we would have little to complain about. If they had looked at any SimCity fansite, they could have found any number of discussions about what people did and did not want. I can understand that they may have been under instructions from EA about how the game had to be simpler; but all this talk about working closely with fans and at the same time announcing that power and water grids, individual building funding and zoning (zoning and road building could be considered to be the basis of SimCity itself, they are the first things you think about when you start a city) will no longer be a part of the game, makes it seem like they have made what they wanted and that's how the new game is going to be.

If i wanted to play the Sims or City Life or Children of the Nile, then i would go and buy those games. Its almost like they think they can make some magic game that everyone likes by throwing all their failures (Okay they weren't complete flops, but they didn't come close to matching the success of the SimCity series) together and hoping that something good will come out of it. They are forgetting why people chose SimCity, because it allowed them to build their own city (if that's not obvious). SimCity was more of a toy then a game, you could do what you wanted and build whatever you were thinking of (of course you had to understand how to do this). Its like they cant differentiate between these different types of games and think that we want to play all of them at once. Originally posted by: Scipio Originally posted by: amal81 I can't believe what they are doing....They have created an exact clone of Caesar4!!quote> How much you wanna bet they re-use some lines code?quote> Its like they're making the same games over and over but with a different spin, the SimCity games were different so they decided to change that.

So its basicly there's as much to do in this as there was in the original SimCity but with better graphics

I just joined with my nation; The Oppressed Peoples of Eddonionia.

Originally posted by: maddogmark25"However, I do not want to mislead anyone: This SC is not a realistic urban simulation"quote> SC, what does that stand for? The answer, SimCity. If we break that down we get the words Sim, an abbreviation of simulation; and the word city, meaning an urban area. If this isn't going to be a realistic game simulation, then why call it SimCity. I could fully understand if they just made this new game and called it a different name, even if they announced that they would not be making a new SimCity, but this just seems that they are trying to make money using the name.

Originally posted by: coolotter88 not really, storing hydrogen as a liquid is pretty low weight and low volume (compared to others). quote> Yes, as you are only storing hydrogen and nothing else is taking up room in the container then more can be held, but the equipment used on the vehicle itself would weigh quite a bit, and would be expensive, and the equipment required to pressurise and transfer the hydrogen to the vehicle would also be expensive. Wikipedia states (although they have not cited a reference of this particular figure) that the energy used pressurising the hydrogen to high enough could account for 30% of the total energy used unless the energy from the pressure can be recovered. Originally posted by: coolotter88 metal hydrides are heavy because they have a large amount of metals used to help store the hydrogen. however, chemical hydrides are pretty light though there is a problem with the spent chemicals after their hydrogen is released.quote> The crystal lattices mentioned are much lighter than other chemicals used, and in most cases of chemical storage systems the chemicals used have been developed so they can be 'recharged' with hydrogen through simply exposing them to hydrogen at a suitable pressure.

You may be right, i can't find much information (i just want the numbers involved) comparing the different methods, i am not very good at gas law concentrations and i wouldnt want to treat the values i might arrive at as definitive either. The actual amount of hydrogen that is stored is based on the number of moles of the hydrogen atoms that are held, not the volume or the mass. The absolute amount of hydrogen gas that can be stored cryogenically, or just at very high pressure, may be higher then that of a chemical hydride and other similar storage systems, the equipment is too heavy, while chemical storage systems are much lighter (allowing greater mileage) and in my opinion have the potential to be much cheaper.

In what way do you mean? if you are judging by the readiness of use then yes, as pressurised hydrogen gas can be tapped off at any rate while hydrogen stored in any other way would be released at a slower rate (the rate at which it is released is usually sufficient). The article mentions that for a 300 mile driving range hydrogen at standard conditions (room temperature and sea level pressure) then a volume equal to a double decker bus would be required. The size and weight of the containers necessary for storing the gas under high pressure or in a liquefied form would be too much. Storage of the hydrogen in a chemical hydride or in a crystal lattice allows much larger amounts of hydrogen to be stored in a more practical way.