Slashdot Mirror

I've hit my 30 comment limit so I have to post anonymously, but:

Lots of data at NCDC.

Simple interactive Java climate model JCM5.

3D general circulation model EdGCM (based on NASA GISS Model II, state of the art in 1983 and what James Hansen himself used in his famous 1988 testimony to Congress).

For more modern and advanced models ... they're not so easy for laymen to run themselves, but ...

There are a variety of Earth System Models of Intermediate Complexity (EMICs) which are not fully 3D models but represent a lot of physics and don't require a supercomputer. One such is UVic; there are many more (here).

You can even get full blown state of the art GCMs which run on supercomputers, like NASA GISS Model E or NCAR CCSM, but expect to run them for most of a year to get any kind of result ...

GISTEMP is available in Google Earth here: http://dev.edgcm.columbia.edu/wiki/GISTEMP

Also, if you'd like to do some of the experiments discussed in the article yourself, the EdGCM project has wrapped a NASA global climate model (GCM) in a GUI (OS X and Win). You can add CO2 or turn the sun down by a few percent all with a checkbox and a slider. Supercomputers and advanced FORTRAN programmers are no longer necessary to run your own GCM.

Disclaimer: I'm the project developer.

GISTEMP is available in Google Earth here: http://dev.edgcm.columbia.edu/wiki/GISTEMP

Also, if you'd like to do some of the experiments discussed in the article yourself, the EdGCM project has wrapped a NASA global climate model (GCM) in a GUI (OS X and Win). You can add CO2 or turn the sun down by a few percent all with a checkbox and a slider. Supercomputers and advanced FORTRAN programmers are no longer necessary to run your own GCM.

Disclaimer: I'm the project developer.

What Hansen considers the really significant distortion in the 1934-vs.-1998 comparison is this: while the absolute temperature difference between the two years (for the U.S.) was negligible, the U.S. was much warmer than the rest of the world in 1934, whereas in 1998 it was close to the global average. You can see this if you go back and read the PDF http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/realdeal.16aug20074. pdf of Hansen's second e-mail, and especially take a look at Figure 2 on page three. In 1934, the U.S. is a red spot surrounded by cooler areas, whereas in 1998 it's glowing red all over. Of course, the colour codes for a difference against baseline, not absolute temperature, but the difference is clear: 1934 temperatures in the U.S. were anomalously warm vs. the rest of the world, whereas in 1998 they were much more typical.

Dr. Hansen gets it right on. His 2nd email: http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/realdeal.16aug20074. pdf is full of facts but most climate change deniers are highly skilled at ignoring those pesky facts.

I think that how humanity handles this issue will be one of the greatest measures of our species in our entire civilization's existence so far. I just hope we don't embarrass ourselves by bickering about this until it's too late.

Ok, I admit, I had to look this one up:

Usufruct is the legal right to derive profit or benefit from the property of others. It comes from the latin roots for "use" and "fruits," in the sense that you are using the fruits of someone else's labor.

Wikipedia
Merriam-Webster's Dictionary
a legal Dictionary

In the case of Hansen's second email, he is, I think, using it to describe how captains of industry are benefitting from the global warming nay-sayers' spin on this correction. He also uses it in the sense that successive generations have a right and claim to the enjoy the Earth, so we'd better take care of it, even as we benefit from it.

Related links: * LDX@MIT
* Physics of magnetically confined fusion [pdf]
* The main principles of magnetic fusion
* Magnetic fusion experiments at LANL
* High density magnetic fusion
* Has a good bit on magnetic confinement
* Can a magnetic field be used to contain plasma?
* International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor
* What's happening in fusion?
* Design of magnetic fields for fusion experiments [pdf]
* Wikipedia article on the topic
* Magnetized target fusion bibliography
* Plasma physics bibliography
* Databases for plasma physics

* Plasma physics laboratories
* List of plasma physicists
* Plasma on the internet

Yet the statistics you quote are for inconsistent and incompetent condom use. If you learn to use them properly the failure rate drops quite a bit. And if you get a responsible partner she can help take the risk down even further by using the pill or some other form of female contraceptive. This doesn't mean 0% risk but that odds of a problem occurring can be really quite small.

The original mastering equipment used videotape.

> An open question...why 44.1khz for the sampling rate?

In 1996 I started doing CD-R support for HP. Back then it was a Philips-OEM HP 4020i with an AdvanSys SCSI controller. The things were expensive as hell, and hard to use given the state of computers and FirmWare at the time. Buffer Underrun was the most dreaded message around as CD-R disks retailed for 25 Guilders (10 Euros, 13 USD) a pop.

Anyway, during my initial training on CD's I got a technology overview where it was explained that the typical human ear can "hear" a sampling rate of 20 Khz. There is a rule called the Nyquist Criterion that says that digital sampling must double that to not hurt audio quality for human consumption. Why exactly 44.1 was chosen and not, say, 42 or the more logical 48 had to do with the fact that the original CD mastering equipment was pseudo video equipment. I believe this page explains it nicely:

http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~hgs/audio/44.1.html

I read somewhere that the old DEC VT100 (or was it the VT220?) had instructions in the manual that said something like "put them in the dishwasher to clean up".

This is the ENTIRE TERMINAL, not just the keyboard.

I read somewhere that the old DEC VT100 (or was it the VT220?) had instructions in the manual that said something like "put them in the dishwasher to clean up".

This is the ENTIRE TERMINAL, not just the keyboard.

I read somewhere that the old DEC VT100 (or was it the VT220?) had instructions in the manual that said something like "put them in the dishwasher to clean up".

If you have a partly broken terminal that would be a good way to get it replaced entirely under your maintenance contract. Otherwise I don't think DEC would recommend that. [...] Environments which had DEC gear tended not to have dishwashers anyway.

Really? It's been a while, but I thought I remembered us having dishwashers in our machine room... or were they just conventional washing machines...

Oh, never mind, I remember now: I'm thinking of disk drives.

Well, Just so you know where I stand, I'm against suicide and assisted suicide too. I don't care about capitol punishment as long as they are positive they have the right person either.

Now, as far as being humane, Adoption is a way to alleviate that without ending a life that was purposefully made and didn't cause no threat of harm to anyone else yet. In todays day and age, with all the education involved with how babies are made and birth control, there is no reason to claim that having unprotected sex without other birth control wasn't a purposeful act in making a baby. And Quite frankly, I'm scared that someone would argue that instinct or desire takes over and they don't have enough control to use birth control as it might clear the way for child molesters and rapist to claim the same in a defense. Besides, no matter how spontaneous the moment is, it takes an active decision to take your cloths off and have sex.

Taking the morning after pill to stop the egg from attaching and becoming a life is yet another option when someone just cannot follow reason or responsibility. I know, some people call that an abortion too, but I don't. I don't think the medical profession does either. I consider it to be the same as most of the birth control pills in that those don't necessarily stop conception from happening, it stops the egg from attaching itself in much the same way as the morning after pill does. but once its attached and developing, even though it is a parasite, it shouldn't be intentionally harmed for the reason of birth control.

The Red Book standard unfortunately went with 44.1 (for some esoteric reason having to do with syncing with an analog video standard or something back in the 80s).

Huh, you're right...

http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~hgs/audio/44.1.html

I always assumed that 44.1kHz was chosen because they took the necessary (Nyquist) sample rate to be able to record up to 20kHz (40kHz), and added a bit for good measure. There's always been that rumor that the time length of a CD was chosen to be able to fit Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, so I always figured they knew they wanted 16 bit, and a length of about 74 minutes, and just picked the >40kHz sampling rate that would get them there with that fancy new "CD" technology that was being developed. I'm happy to know that we're all using 44.1kHz for an even stupider reason ;-).

The old HP-150's had what was called a 'touch screen'. When your finger broke the infrared X,Y grid it registered it as a 'touch'. We used them as POS devices with great success.

Sorry, here's the link to the first chapter. Not that you couldn't figure that out. You do have a 3 digit /. account....

http://www.columbia.edu/cu/augustine/arch/lewis/ab olition1.htm#1

Not to dodge the debate, but anything I could ever say on the matter was covered by another, in a far better and intelligent way than I could ever hope to: http://www.columbia.edu/cu/augustine/arch/lewis/ab olition3.htm

Sorry, forgot the blog link - http://emoglen.law.columbia.edu/blog

I would recommend the following resources:

1. Technical Writing Textbook, free online, which covers the basics.

2. Writing Technical Papers, also free online, a good introduction to the process.

3. Microsoft Manual of Style for Technical Publications, not free but very good on the details. Even if you hate Microsoft... they did a good job on this one. Maybe they did steal it from Apple. I don't know. I like this book.

4. IBM Style Guideliness, free on the web, see disclaimer above if AIX raped your dog.

5. Sun Style Guide, not free, but worthy. See disclaimer above if you call Solaris "Slowlaris."

I also maintain a blog called User Advocacy: Technical Writing and Technical Communications in which I detail links and other useful information for people wanting to get into technical writing.

For developers and others who want to explain things to people of varying technical ability, the skills of technical communications (the "new" name for technical writing) are invaluable. If you have any questions, please contact me through the profile link above.

If you'd like to do some of the experiments discussed in the article yourself, the EdGCM project has wrapped a NASA global climate model (GCM) in a GUI (OS X and Win). You can add CO2 or turn the sun down by a few percent all with a checkbox and a slider. Supercomputers and advanced FORTRAN programmers are no longer necessary to run your own GCM.

Disclaimer: I'm the project developer.
Posting anonymously so I can moderate too.

IANAL. I do hope what you suggested is even close to how things are. Though sadly, I doubt it. If patent law were good, it would be how you suggested. However, the past 25 years has been the major "boom" era for software patents in the USA. Go back more than 25 years and this software "IP" crap didn't exist.

I doubt things are how you hinted at in your post. For the last 2 decades, big corps have been buying laws left-and-right from our corrupt "representatives". I cannot personally attest to the current state of patent laws. If anyone here that is a patent attorney, please chime in. Especially Eben Moglen!

We've done this on Linux, including supporting checkpointing the state (very quick, its under a second ignoring writeback time, which is a function of the device one wants to use) so one can migrate to a different machine where one can restart it.

http://www.ncl.cs.columbia.edu/publications/compsa c2006_fordist.pdf

...in his essay Anarchism Triumphant. I remember when I first read it sniggering at all the hooplah about numbers that could be copyrighted. But he was right after all:


Like everything else in the digital world, music as seen by a CD player is mere numeric information; a particular recording of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony recorded by Arturo Toscanini and the NBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorale is (to drop a few insignificant digits) 1276749873424, while Glenn Gould's peculiarly perverse last recording of the Goldberg Variations is (similarly rather truncated) 767459083268.

Oddly enough, these two numbers are "copyrighted." This means, supposedly, that you can't possess another copy of these numbers, once fixed in any physical form, unless you have licensed them. And you can't turn 767459083268 into 2347895697 for your friends (thus correcting Gould's ridiculous judgment about tempi) without making a "derivative work," for which a license is necessary.

At the same time, a similar optical storage disk contains another number, let us call it 7537489532. This one is an algorithm for linear programming of large systems with multiple constraints, useful for example if you want to make optimal use of your rolling stock in running a freight railroad. This number (in the U.S.) is "patented," which means you cannot derive 7537489532 for yourself, or otherwise "practice the art" of the patent with respect to solving linear programming problems no matter how you came by the idea, including finding it out for yourself, unless you have a license from the number's owner.

Then there's 9892454959483. This one is the source code for Microsoft Word. In addition to being "copyrighted," this one is a trade secret. That means if you take this number from Microsoft and give it to anyone else you can be punished.

Lastly, there's 588832161316. It doesn't do anything, it's just the square of 767354. As far as I know, it isn't owned by anybody under any of these rubrics. Yet.

• Copyright term extensions have been extended by an order of magnitude from the 14-year term established by the Statute of Anne.
• In many industries, the standard of production is so high that it takes dozens of people to create a work. Therefore, most works in these industries fall under the "work made for hire" rule, where the publisher is deemed the author.

"...87% of villages are electrified, while only 42-44% of rural households are electrified."
- Ministry of Power, Government of India, Discussion Paper on Rural Electrification Policies (Pursuant to Sections 4&5 of the Electricity Act 2003).
This paper has more details

Eben gagged himself, in a way, by retiring from his work on the GPL3

Oh, come on. Eben Moglen's stepping down from the board of directors of the Free Software Foundation. That's nothing near "gagging himself". He's still a professor of law and history of law at Columbia University. He's still the Chairman of Software Freedom Law Center. He's still allowed, able, capable, and free to make as much comments on SCO as he wants.

He specifically stated in his blog post announcing his stepping down from the FSF that he wants devote more time to writing, teaching, and the Software Freedom Law Center. He considers his years-long FSF work on the GPLv3 as "almost finished", anyway.

"Experimental study of inequality and unpredictability in an artificial cultural market"
Matthew J. Salganik, Peter S. Dodds, and Duncan J. Watts.
Science, 311:854-856, 2006.

Abstract: Hit songs, books, and movies are many times more successful
than average, suggesting that "the best" alternatives are qualitatively
different from "the rest"; yet experts routinely fail to predict which
products will succeed. We investigated this paradox experimentally, by
creating an artificial "music market" in which 14,341 participants
downloaded previously unknown songs either with or without knowledge of
previous participants' choices. Increasing the strength of social
influence increased both inequality and unpredictability of success.
Success was also only partly determined by quality: The best songs
rarely did poorly, and the worst rarely did well, but any other result
was possible.

that was a teletype machine. completely mechanical.

the usual fix or PM for it is to dunk the whole machine in oil to clean it.

I'm serious.

but no, you didn't RUN it in oil. you just 'fixed' it with oil.

model 33 ref

Recently I've been listening to the Introduction to Molecular and Cellular Biology podcast during my commute. It is pretty cool!

http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~hgs/rtp/history.html lists early VoIP and voice-over-packet work, dating back into the 1970s. The closest is probably the ITU G.764 standard, which describes packet transmission to interconnect voice systems. These were typically used for trans-oceanic links, to save bandwidth.

If you'd like to run some of the same experiments done in the IPCC report, you can (with a slightly older code base). The EdGCM project has wrapped a NASA global climate model (GCM) in a graphical interface and ported to Mac/Win. You can add CO2 or turn the Sun down with your mouse, a checkbox, and a slider. Simple graphical tools are included to look at the final results (there are hundreds of variables to choose from).

Disclaimer: I'm the project developer.

I find it interesting which ones of the object-recognition and scene categorization algorithms make it to Slashdot.
Why does this one make it?
This is a very hot research topic at the moment.
to name a couple of groups:

http://www.robots.ox.ac.uk/~vgg/
http://lear.inrialpes.fr/
http://www.vision.caltech.edu/
http://www.science.uva.nl/research/isla/
http://www.cdvp.dcu.ie/
http://www.informedia.cs.cmu.edu/
http://www.research.ibm.com/slam/
http://www.ee.columbia.edu/ln/dvmm/newResearch.htm

oh, and people should not stare themselves blind on the claimed results.
Research papers *always* have to present good results, or else you do not get published.
Furthermore, these images are of a very high quality, make by professional photographers.
Many algorithms perform very well on these ('corel'-like) sets, while utterly failing if applied on real-world data:
http://www-nlpir.nist.gov/projects/trecvid/

So what company wants to publish your music composition software for a PlayStation platform?

Still, if I write my own songs, play real instruments, and put my recordings on the Internet, then how do I keep from being sued by a major music publisher for alleged subconscious infringement of copyright? See Wikipedia articles My Sweet Lord and Cryptomnesia, citing Bright Tunes Music v. Harrisongs Music, 420 F. Supp. 177 (SDNY 1976).

Sure you can repeat evolution. It's called "setting the fitness criteria repeatedly". If you can match the criteria more than once to solve a given problem then you have repeated evolution. Note: this is for applications of evolutionary theory. When the natural environment sets the criteria for biological systems we call it Natural Selection.

http://www.frams.alife.pl/common/al_evoltips.html

http://www1.cs.columbia.edu/~evs/ml/OthelloStudPro j/Jan%20Stephen/ml-hw4.html

Repetition can also be observed with fast reproducing species by likewise arbitrarily setting fitness criteria:
http://www.rasmusen.org/x/2006/11/24/evolution-exp eriments-with-bacteria/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experimental_evolutio n
http://myxo.css.msu.edu/ecoli/

As for "computers never being smarter than their programmers", watch the experiments going on with FPGAs mentioned earlier this week. The results of these regularly generate circuits that depend on undocumented chip behaivors and features/flaws of individual chips: no human would design things that way. All we really need do is build several machines capable of reproducing themselves, supply some feedstock, and watch. True, one can argue that the initial machines were created but since there isn't any predicting what you get several hundred thousand generations down the line, I wouldn't call the end product Designed either.

Thanks for these statistics. I am reminded of the "Can Music Tell Your Personality?" posting: heavy metal did have a slight correlation with "reflective and complex" music preference dimension, but not as much as genres such as blues and jazz.

A rose is still a rose and atheism is still religion. You want what religion wants, you just don't want the organ that performs the fuction. Remove the heart and demand bloodflow. Castrate the gelding and demand it bear fruit. Atheism is quaint. It is the jazz of religion. It is faith for the proud. Remove the word and read the beliefs -- what's the difference? Atheism wants the same morality as religion. We both, as you rightly point out, are chocked-full of failed examples. Religious people failing? murdering? commiting wrongs? Concur. Most prophets in the bible were extreme failures in all of these ways. Saints once sinners, prostitues converts, rising, falling, failing -- sounds like a human life to me. Still, you cannot escape Kant's moral law within or Lewis' paradox of desiring what's right yet failing utterly to do so.

http://www.columbia.edu/cu/augustine/arch/lewis/ab olition1.htm

En de nux

According to which moral code?

There is but one moral code. All versions of civilization -- and there is but one civilization -- adhere to the same first principles. None, really, go against the basics of not murdering, or not stealing, or not lieing. And before any arguments to the contrary -- war, politics, etc. -- each and every culture, historically and presently, forbade such things.

I'm citing here:

http://www.columbia.edu/cu/augustine/arch/lewis/ab olition1.htm

The Master said, He who sets to work on a different strand destroys the whole fabric. --Confucius

At any rate, the models today are still not fundamentally different than they were two decades ago. They are gross simplifications based on a set of assumptions.

That's a bit like saying that computer graphics aren't fundamentally different than they were two decades ago. Sure, modern graphics cards push around a few more triangles, and maybe the physics models have improved a bit. But the output is still a far cry from the real world, so are the results really any more useful now?

[Note: the preceding is an "argument from analogy," and a sucky one at that.]

That said, in order for someone to "plug in" their data, they would need access to the precise program that ran the model. To my knowledge none of the code behind these simulations has been published as open source.

Technically, you don't need the source to know that you have the exact program that ran the model. More important, having the same program and the same data allows for a great deal of outside verification. It means others can perform the trivial check of ensuring that data set X does produce result Y, but also that they can see how dependent the results are on that data set. Finally, the data can also be run on other models, which presumably shouldn't share all the same assumptions. I agree that open models would be a vast improvement, but I don't consider it the fatal flaw that you do.

EdGCM is based on NASA's GCM models, which is public domain. But it's written in FORTRAN, so it's dead to me.

But let us assume they [global temperature reconstructions] are reasonably close, say accurate to within a few degrees C. I think that's generally reasonable. What are the modelers predicting? A change of a few degrees C. ...

Personally I have not seen any reasonable certainty that the margin of error is less than a degree or two.

And yet this graph (to my untrained eye, at least) shows several reconstructions all agreeing to within about a half degree (usually less). If each of the individual reconstructions has a margin of error of +/- 1.5C, that level of agreement would be absolutely stunning, even if there were assumptions in each that allowed you to move the whole graph up and down.

Based on that, I'm choosing to doubt your claim that predicted warning trends lie within the reconstructions' margin of error.

Perhaps you take biodiversity increase to mean new life forms. If so, you are entirely incorrect. Biodiversity is specifically the amount of different species of life (plants, insects, bacteria, animals) in a given area.

When I said "biodiversity," I was (corre

If you'd like to study climate change yourself, the EdGCM project has wrapped a NASA global climate model (GCM) in a GUI (OS X and Win). You can add CO2 or turn the sun down by a few percent all with a checkbox and a slider. Supercomputers and advanced FORTRAN programmers are no longer necessary to run your own GCM.

Disclaimer: I'm the project developer.

Yours is an interesting supposition, but I think you are the one with flawed logic. First of all, I have not talked about menus and user interface differences at all

I think my logic was sound enough, given the assumptions in your post. If you want to introduce new elements for consideration, then the conclusion I draw amy have to change, but that doesn't invalidate my earlier logic :)

My two complaints regarding OO Calc are that the syntax of the formulas is different, and the graphing performance is pathetic.

And to that extent, (and apart perhaps from the needless note of derision) I don't have any argument with you. Clearly you don't like the way OO Calc does things, and I'll take your word for it regarding the graphing performance. Therefore it's probably not a good choice for your at the moment. If the graphing problem is a common one, I expect it will be addressed before too much longer; FOSS development cycles tend to be faster than proprietary ones. On the other hand I don't suppose that Calc's formula syntax is ever going to be to your liking, so by all means stick with Excel. The important thing is that you have a choice.

However, from there you seem to be arguing that

• since OO Calc doesn't suit your needs, it therefore doesn't suit anyone else's need
• almost everyone already uses Excel, therefore no one is going to want to switch

But really the only reason you've given me not to migrate my business to OO is that, if everyone else joins me, it might make your graphs run slower. Amy while I sympathise, I don't find your argument particularly compelling.

if Word didn't support, or offered a lousy implementation of, some common word processing functions (like underlining, automatic TOC creation, etc), then Word would not have usurped Word Perfect.

Which is, in fact, the case. At the time Wordperfect was in the same position as MS Office is now - a de facto industry standard, MS Word ignored many WP conventions, most notably perhaps was WP's code-based format which offered many clear advantages over MS style based approach. Migrating to Word broke a lot of software that was designed to take advantage of WP's codes features and if you do a quick Google you can still find HOWTOs for converting one format to the other, and even advocacy pieces explaining why MS Word is not yet ready for X - although I'll grant that none of them cite speed in rendering graphs as a problem. So the switch-over was nowhere near as easy as you suggest - and yet still it happened. And what happened once can happen again.

Personally, I think it will. If we price MS Office at 200 bucks a seat, then a company with 5000 office could sponsor a team of developer for e year to fix the graphing problem, save 90% of that year's IT budget, and still have the work done inside their migration timetable. I don't think you can argue against numbers like that.

So, the fact that Word supplanted Word Perfect, and Excel usurped 123 are both, in my view, supportive of my logic.

I suppose that all depends on the conclusion you're trying to support. If your point is "Microsoft are the best" then fair enough - although in that case there are a few other points I might like introduce into the argument. If your point is that "open office is a toy", then no, your logic doesn't support that proposition at all. For anything else, I think you need to state your point more clearly.

At the end of the day, however, your complaints with OO Calc sound a lot like the advocacy pieces from those WP diehards who were so opposed to MS Word. I can sympathise, but I believe the fin

Yours is an interesting supposition, but I think you are the one with flawed logic. First of all, I have not talked about menus and user interface differences at all

I think my logic was sound enough, given the assumptions in your post. If you want to introduce new elements for consideration, then the conclusion I draw amy have to change, but that doesn't invalidate my earlier logic :)

My two complaints regarding OO Calc are that the syntax of the formulas is different, and the graphing performance is pathetic.

And to that extent, (and apart perhaps from the needless note of derision) I don't have any argument with you. Clearly you don't like the way OO Calc does things, and I'll take your word for it regarding the graphing performance. Therefore it's probably not a good choice for your at the moment. If the graphing problem is a common one, I expect it will be addressed before too much longer; FOSS development cycles tend to be faster than proprietary ones. On the other hand I don't suppose that Calc's formula syntax is ever going to be to your liking, so by all means stick with Excel. The important thing is that you have a choice.

However, from there you seem to be arguing that

• since OO Calc doesn't suit your needs, it therefore doesn't suit anyone else's need
• almost everyone already uses Excel, therefore no one is going to want to switch

But really the only reason you've given me not to migrate my business to OO is that, if everyone else joins me, it might make your graphs run slower. Amy while I sympathise, I don't find your argument particularly compelling.

if Word didn't support, or offered a lousy implementation of, some common word processing functions (like underlining, automatic TOC creation, etc), then Word would not have usurped Word Perfect.

Which is, in fact, the case. At the time Wordperfect was in the same position as MS Office is now - a de facto industry standard, MS Word ignored many WP conventions, most notably perhaps was WP's code-based format which offered many clear advantages over MS style based approach. Migrating to Word broke a lot of software that was designed to take advantage of WP's codes features and if you do a quick Google you can still find HOWTOs for converting one format to the other, and even advocacy pieces explaining why MS Word is not yet ready for X - although I'll grant that none of them cite speed in rendering graphs as a problem. So the switch-over was nowhere near as easy as you suggest - and yet still it happened. And what happened once can happen again.

Personally, I think it will. If we price MS Office at 200 bucks a seat, then a company with 5000 office could sponsor a team of developer for e year to fix the graphing problem, save 90% of that year's IT budget, and still have the work done inside their migration timetable. I don't think you can argue against numbers like that.

So, the fact that Word supplanted Word Perfect, and Excel usurped 123 are both, in my view, supportive of my logic.

I suppose that all depends on the conclusion you're trying to support. If your point is "Microsoft are the best" then fair enough - although in that case there are a few other points I might like introduce into the argument. If your point is that "open office is a toy", then no, your logic doesn't support that proposition at all. For anything else, I think you need to state your point more clearly.

At the end of the day, however, your complaints with OO Calc sound a lot like the advocacy pieces from those WP diehards who were so opposed to MS Word. I can sympathise, but I believe the fin

Incidentally, I came was convinced an essentially literary and psychological argument for accepting the Gospel of St John as the most accurate account of the life of Jesus in a book by a physicist (Russell Stannard).

I agree that psychology and literature might be a relevant tool to evaluate the quality of different accounts of a given event. That is not relevant to when I question that central facts about the universe can be deduced by a literary man reasoning in a domain far from his expertise.

The particular argument Lewis makes for absolute morality (at least in The Abolition of Man, which I am familiar with) is not really likely to be that affected by those advances. It rests on on the intrinsic contradition in moral relativism, the way in which arguments for any particular position develop, and similarities between moral teachings in different cultures, religions and times.

Morals are (genetically and culturally) evolved and some things will be mostly universal, just because of game theory. (Postmodernists or marxists might disagree, but afaik this is widely accepted today.) So some values will be mostly universal for humans and (at least) higher primates. Some probably even for aliens. Some change with increasing wealth (e.g. women got better rights when society had technology enough that it was possible).

Your claim that C S Lewis makes a believable god proof without even understanding how game theory relates to behavior (research starting mostly from the sixties) seems really strange. I can't see how Abolition even makes a serious argument for the existence of god.

Here is the book. Could you give exact references to what you consider the strong god argument? And also reasons for the Xian god to be the real one and not the Norse gods, the invisible unicorn, the Jewish one, etc etc.

From some fast skimming of the book and reviews, it fails to realize that the sum of morals has evolved genetically as well as culturally -- so its absolute moral is a slowly moving target. Otherwise, it is an interesting argument -- if you accept that the basis of human instincts and built in morals are "sacred". I can agree with that it would be really dangerous, immoral and illegal to mess with the basic design of emotions!

And another question -- as I understand, you claim that your belief in Oden is based on an intellectual argument and not hearing voices like Son of Sam? If you found this argument to be bad, would you change position? I just note that philosophers (not literary people) have tried to write arguments showing religion to be true since milennia -- and everyone are embarrassed afterwards.

BTW, on a theological note, I know that there are those in the Church who seem to claim that Jesus and God are one and the same

If by 'those in the church' you mean 'the classic creeds, the church fathers and the statements of faith of all mainstream denominations' then you are correct.

but if you read the Bible it is clear that Jesus carefully avoided claiming he was God

Actually, he repeatedly referred to himself as 'I AM,' which is a name for God and said that he was one with the Father, claimed abilities unique to God, such as the forgiveness of sins (which is one of the reasons the Pharisees wanted to kill him). He does distinguish between himself and the Father at times, but he is also quite clear that he is God.

AND he PRAYED to God, and since he wasn't praying to himself

He was praying to the Father, but that doesn't mean is isn't God. The Trinity is relational, with the Father, Son and Holy Spirit displaying love towards one another. The Son, once incarnate, communicated with his Father through prayer and in doing so set us an example.

it is probably a mistake (on the order of breaking the first of the 10 Commadments) to worship Jesus.

Actually, Jesus willingly accepted worship when it was offered, e.g. by Thomas.

(although I do believe he is the savior, and he was sent from Heaven)

The trouble is that in order to be our Saviour, Jesus must be both man and God

If you are sceptical of what I've said, here a few links you might find interesting reading:

• Top ten reasons why Jesus is God
• Jesus is Worshipped
• The Deity of Christ
• The Divine and Human Nature of Christ
• Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God

• "The Evolution of the Unix Time-sharing System*", AT&T Bell Laboratories Technical Journal 63 No. 6 Part 2, October 1984, pp. 1577-93., http://web.archive.org/web/19991013115731/cm.bell- labs.com/cm/cs/who/dmr/hist.html by Dennis M. Ritchie
  
• "UNIX Implementation", The Bell System Technical Journal, 1978, http://www.hughes-fl.com/books/pdf/UNIX_Implementa tion.pdf by K. Thompson
  
• "The UNIX time-sharing system", Communications of the ACM archive
  Volume 17 , Issue 7, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~nieh/teaching/e6118_s0 0/papers/ritchie_unix74.pdf by D. M. Ritchie and K. Thompson
  

The EdGCM project has wrapped a NASA global climate model (GCM) in a GUI (OS X and Win). Our goal is to 'democratize' climate change science by allowing anyone to run a global climate model. If you can attach some numbers to these geo-engineering techniques you can study their effects yourself.

For example, to simulate the sun-shade, you can just turn down the sun a few percent with a checkbox and a slider!. Painting roofs would be equivalent to increasing albedo slightly, and I don't think the model would let you pump sulfur into the atmosphere (that is hard-coded, not exposed to the GUI interface), but you can change the amount of all the greenhouse gasses via the UI.

Supercomputers and advanced FORTRAN programmers are no longer necessary to run your own GCM.

Disclaimer: I'm the project developer.