Slashdot Mirror

(Instructions for using TARIC can be found at http://www.sloanefox.freeserve.co.uk/taric.htm, some of the links seem out of date and it's got a bit of UK Europhobe editorialising, but it gives an idea of how to use it),

http://www.brighton73.freeserve.co.uk/gw/paleo/400000yearslarge.gif

There is plenty of data showing this correlation, but this is precisely the type of unedited data that is hidden because it could cast doubt on the notion that CO2 is primarily responsible for climate change. Partisan spin is getting in the way of actual science.

I'd rather we get to bottom of what is really going on. But instead, we need to defend theories politically even if the data doesn't always support them.

I've always loved this example of that. It's an American car importer's website that must have been designed in Front Page or some other awful package. It works in IE but not in FF. In fact it recommends using IE5!

Good. Then you can bring the truth of Megabrain to everyone. Seriously, the biggest strength of Open Source is that it is country-agnostic and affiliation-agnostic. Further, some things SHOULD be more international. The ISO fiasco demonstrates the perils of nationalist and corporatist protection. Obviously, you don't scale any more than Linus does, but surely that just means migrating from individual nations to power blocs where possible, still doing the same job but both increasing visibility AND increasing the target audience at the same time. You can't scale, but you CAN multicast.

Actually THIS is Patently Absurd.

When the BBC was launched (did anyone really call it a 'Beeb'? That's always meant the corporation, not the computer to me)

Yep, I did. And so did Beebug magazine.

Cheers,
Ian

I'm reminded of the Blackadder episode about Rotten Boroughs:

E: A rotten borough, sir, is a constituency where the owner
of the land corruptly controls the both the voters and the MP.

G: Good, yes...and a rubber button is...?

E: Could we leave that for a moment? Dunny-on-the-World is a tuppenny-
ha'penny place. Half an acre of sodden marshland in the Suffolk Fens
with an empty town hall on it. Population: three rather mangy cows, a
dachshund named `Colin', and a small hen in its late forties.

G: So, no people at all, then? apart from Colin...

E: Colin is a dog, sir.

G: Well, yes, yes, yes...

E: Only one actual person lives there, and he is the voter.

G: Well, right! So, what's the plan?

E: We must buy Dunny-on-the-World at once and thus control the voter. I shall
need a thousand pounds.

G: A thousand pounds? I thought you said it was a...`tuppenny ha'penny' place.

E: Well, yes, sir, the land will cost tuppence-ha'penny, but there are
many other factors to be considered: stamp duty, window tax, swamp
insurance, hen food, dog biscuits, cow (ointment?) -- the expenses
are endless.

G: Fine. Well, the money's in my desk.

E: No, sir -- it's in my wallet.

This statement is meant for no other reason than to give weight to the claims, not discuss the issues intelligently.

Even if true, "most scientists" once thought we would see an ice age within 50 years of the 1970's.

It's fair use, but I received a letter from the cult's lawyers for putting precisely that quote on my website. They don't sue to win, they sue to shut people up.
http://www.daisy.freeserve.co.uk/stolgy_14.htm

I was responding to the suggesting that the sample was so small that another sample could easily be the other way round: onset at 71.4 years for bilingual and onset at 75.5 for monolingual. Putting it abstractly, I was responding to the question of statistical significance.

I posted to encourage readers to take a cavalier attitude to statistical significance. Don't get hung up on difficult mathematics, t-test, F-test, etc. Just code up a simple simulation and get a feel for the kind of variability you should expect to be inevitable due to random chance.

Two big reasons for being cavalier about statistical significance are:

1. Non-significance tells you sod-all. Perhaps the phenomena is real and important but your sample size is too small, or perhaps there is nothing there at all.
2. Significance gets you nowhere on the all important question of causality

I'm painfully aware that one cannot deduce causality from correlation. The deeper reason for being casual about statistical significance is that one needs to save ones mental energy for thinking about causality. My guess would be that even if bilingualism came easily in childhood, it often requires effort to retain the less used language through adult life. So life long bilingualism is likely to work reasonably well as a proxy for being healthy and vigorous: one is checking if persons have done something that requires effort. Seeing that healthy and vigorous people have a later onset of Alzheimer's disease is unsurprising.

It would be much more interesting to compare life long bilingualism with those who have run a marathon after the age of 50. Then one might get some sense of whether robust health is protective or whether there is something specific to mental exertion.

More on Acorn / BBC and all the rest here : http://www.oldcomputers.freeserve.co.uk/index.htm The BBC ran quite a few programmes on home computing including a radio show called Chip Shop which used to broadcast programmes to save on tape in a feature called the Chip Shop Takeaway. They used a system called Basicode which enabled the same programmes to run on different types of computer and had originally been developed by the Dutch broadcaster NOS. More on that here : http://www.xs4all.nl/~lennartb/basicode.html

Don't you people have to . . .Poo?

For every engineering problem there is an engineering solution

KFG

Quoting from the Xlib Programming Manual by Adrian Nye

A protocol reply is sent from the server to Xlib in response to certain requests. Not all requests are answered by replies --- only the ones that request infromation. Requests that specify drawing,for example, do not generate replies. When Xlib receives a reply, it places the requested data into the arguments or returned value of the Xlib routine that generated the request. An Xlib routine that requires a reply is called a round-trip request. Round-trip requests have to be minimized in clients becasue they lower perfomance when there are network delays.

I think there are two weak spots.

First, there is no provision for local echoing. You press a key, the event goes to the client, the client says:draw a character. Now the events and the requests are all queued, so several key presses can be in flight at the same time, but it is undesirable to have a round trip delay before a character appears in response to a key press.

Second, it is tempting to knock together a crude client that responds to every event by redrawing its entire window. This is easy to code, just update the clients internal state, clear the window, and call the GreatBigDisplayRoutine. Much easier than working out what changes need to be made to the window and just doing that. It works OK locally, but generates lots of network traffic. There is a case to be made that X11 is not at fault at all here. X servers are designed to support oodles of sub-windows, nested as deep as you want. If you take advantage of this much of the client code is simple, an event goes to a little sub-window that can quite reasonably be re-drawn in its entirety.

I've actually been studying (and writing about) CLX, which is the native Common Lisp binding to the X protocol. The native C binding to the X protocol is called Xlib.

Notice that X11 is an old protocol, from the bad old days when computers were small and slow, and Ethernet ran at 10 Megabits per second. It is reasonable efficient because it had to be.

I think this is one of the sure-fire ways to start a flame-war on slashdot... and is ridiculous.

                        Your post may 'expose' the asinine grandparent post, but also doesn't answer the valid point it raises. The question you/ (science) needs to answer is if we (mankind) are to blame for the rise in temperature, or if we can even stop the warming trend. If we are not to blame, what evidence, (moral/ethical/scientific), is there that we should do anything to stop it, assuming we could?
                        When looking at temperature models, it is important to take TIME in to consideration. Yes, we are probably the warmest we have been in 400 years... possibly in over 100,000 years.
                        http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/warming/etc/graphs.html [pbs.org] (NOVA) - Note that the pictures don't overlay the correlation, (let me say that word again; CORRELATION), between the two. Take a look at these others;
                        http://cdiac.esd.ornl.gov/trends/co2/graphics/vost ok.co2.gif [ornl.gov]
                        http://www.brighton73.freeserve.co.uk/gw/paleo/400 000yrfig.htm [freeserve.co.uk] - (This is also a good read)
                        As you can see, we are on a warming trend, and are not yet as warm as it has reached in the non-industrialized past. Either way, there seems to be a strong force in the earth to bring this heating cycle back down, and though there is a correlation in carbon and temperature, though it is debatable that .0055% (ppm difernce taken from NOAA site, increase of 55ppm - if you count since the industrial revolution, it might be around .01%) change in the atmosphere is going to cause a huge warming trend. It is more possible that the carbon levels are an indication of another cause, which would be a good reason why they are correlated. (If that is the case, we have contaminated our "warning sign," or indicator with the industrial revolution.) If we act before we know if these two evidences are directly related and not just correlated, we could end-up damaging the cycle/environment even further. Regardless of which camp you reside in, these questions need to be answered. (In my mind, especially the part where less than a tenth of a percent increase could trap enough energy to raise the global temperature several degrees.)

• 1) I despise having the analogs at the center of the controller. They've always been so far in that to push ether of them towards the center I have to physically loosen my grip on the controller and move my hand because my thumb wont reach that far. Considering that there are VERY few games that use the D-pad for anything but an auxiliary function, every year it becomes increasingly ridiculous that the left analog isn't moved to the main position. If they simply swapped the D-Pad and Analog I'd be a whole lot happier with the controller. Honestly the placement of the analogs when they made the dual shock for the PS1 was quite obviously an afterthought, tacking them on to the existing controller so they could compete with Nintendo and Sega who had unveiled their analog controllers. The placement of the sticks should have died with the PS1 because that layout is not optimal at all. (it's understandable that the retro-wii controller would have them there, because again, they're simply tacked on to an existing design. any NEWLY built from the ground up design shouldn't be placing them in the center like that)
• 2) The 2nd shoulder button is too large. It hangs off the back just enough to force you to put your middle finger up there along with your trigger finger. Even the GC and Xbox 360 controls are setup so you use your trigger fingers. The problem here is once I move my middle finger up there all I have left to hold the controller is my ring finger and my pinky, and if your not use to that they get VERY cramped very fast. If I decide to put my middle finger under it for more support then there isn't enough room back there because they extended the 2nd buttons and my middle fingers get cramped from the 2nd shoulder buttons digging into them. The pre-dual shock didn't have this problem because the 2nd shoulder button didn't stick out as much. Again neither the GC or the 360 controllers have this problem because they were designed to have the user hold the controller with their middle finger as opposed to pushing buttons with it.
• 3) The overall Shape. Seriously the Playstation controller is made up of various basic shapes, cylinders, cones and rounded boxes. The hands were not made to interface with such basic geometric shapes. The controller is hard and not forgiving to hands that are not use to it. Even if they made a controller with an identical layout but smoother and more ergonomic in SHAPE it would be vastly superior. Despise the flack the boomerang got it looked like a far more comfortable controller then the dual shock. Something you wrap your hands around for that length of time needs to compliment it like a glove.. Honestly using a Playstation controller is like using an ancient mouse. It has the same LAYOUT as modern mice but ergonomically it's completely different.

It came from the Blinkenlights. I read somewhere that it started at MIT after the war when the US was examining all the captured German war toys that never came on-line in time. Maybe someone else knows more about it.

I've never had RSI but as a programmer/violinist/pianist I naturally take an interest in how to avoid it. I've got an additional mouse (actually a trackball) that I've put on the floor and work with my toes. This works very well with being a touch typist; I get to keep my hands on the keyboard, in the home position.

Thirty years ago, the primary source for innovation was large corporate labs. That is where all of the money went. Then, 20 to 25 years ago, the source of ideas and creativity shifted to venture funds and startups.

Over the past 20 years, we've seen the economy and society change due to innovation from small independent efforts outside of corporate labs. Technology has enabled startups to have a big influence, and consequently they have had a tremendous effect in the technology scene today.

Much of the technology required is in place already. Webcams are familiar. Many companies save on telephone call charges by using the internet in the form of Voice Over IP. Short range wireless connections to Local Area Networks are already in use. Radio controlled cars capable of driving about offices are popular children's toys.

Servo-ing the cameras at the far end to the users movements at the near end exists as expensive military technology. It is the kind of technology that will plummet in price with mass production. Speed of light delays will cause lags when working on the opposite side of the globe, which may lead to seasickness. Seasickness did not block the development of sea travel. It can probably be avoided by suitable signal processing, such as near-end caching.

I see it as strictly a big company game. Sony could pull it off. Perhaps Toyota. Who else?

Notice that I've picked a difficult point to argue. I'm trying to say that some disruptive changes need big companies to see the development through to completion. I've tried to give an example, but disruptive changes are always controversial before they happen, so you might not believe in the example I've given. If the next disruptive change is not the replacement of business airtravel by telepresence what will it be? I don't see any reason to write off big companies and their corporate development labs.

A Rose of a Different Name ... is still a turd

So, what you are saying, then, is that this beautiful flower

is still a turd???

Boy, I sure prefer to smell one over the other!

I think what you are trying to say is that "A rose, by any other name, is still a rose" (which implies beauty, wonder, as in its original use by Shakespeare) or maybe, "A turd, by any other name, is still a turd". (which certainly has a different connotation)

Used this way, your metaphor actually argues that Gator (the turd) changed its name, and became a beautiful rose...

http://www.gwowen.freeserve.co.uk/

Then I clicked on the Home link at the bottom
http://www.ma.man.ac.uk/~gowen/

People who try to run complex analysis on this problem aren't necessarily smarter. How does it make you smarter if you complicate a problem? Someone posted they ran Excel to find the answer. All this problem does is show how numbers are nothing special in mathematics, just another way of showing a relationship.

Anyway, here's the pattern. Look at all the dice that have a dot in the center. Using numbers to show this relationship, that'd be all the odd numbered dice. Now the "petals" are the dots around the middle dot. So 1 ==> no petals, 3 ==> 2 petals, 5 ==? 4 petals. And of course all even numbers are not a rose. How many people even thought of a rose when attempting to solve this puzzle? Take a look at this picture and you'll see how a "rose" must have a dot in the center.

Only 60 years of data? Please, read up on paleoclimate, like here and here.

You can compare temperature changes in the past here. The present temperature rise is quite significant and certainly not at a slower rate compared with previous ice ages (if you calculate the rise in deg/decade)

Actually, from the off-site link mentioned in the wiki article, that's not one of the postulated methods:

"My results suggest that energy separation in the Ranque-Hilsch tube can be accounted for by two phenomena. Firstly, the formation of an approximately forced vortex near the tangential inlets to the tube initially provides a kinetic energy separation, the peripheral gas having a much higher velocity than that near the centre."

However, I wonder how much of this is similar to a river where the water travles faster on the outside of the bends, and it's really the friction of the air against the tube that's creating a significant percentage of the temperature differences being observed.

How can you rotate anything without moving parts???

10000000 rpm could be acheivd with mules and huge gears?

To make that "high rate of rotation (over 1,000,000 rpm)." Better use the ice on your legs after.

If you press a gas into a cylinder with a specific angle, it starts to rotate at a very high rpm. Here is the construction.

Please RTFM first.

No you are both wrong. Shown here is an artist's rendering of a Velociraptor in comparison to a human:

(picture)

can you say "Urban Legend?"

Yes (there are better references on this but I couldn't locate them...)

I've argued that telepresence will displace business air travel.

It is unreasonable to fund supersonic transport research when competition from telepresence is looming.

I don't know about "no difference". Some sofers make nice even letters. Others start the line well enough but then buncheverythingup as they get to the end. Others realize they're going to get to the end of the line too quickly and stretch out some letters (which is allowed) to the point where they're hard to read. And on one torah I read from, the sofer went crazy with the crowns. We called that the 'trippy torah'. Here's a link to a sofer's site with lots of pictures and explanations: http://www.bayit02.freeserve.co.uk/index.html

Torah parchment (klaf) is made from the skin of kosher animals. The ink (dyo) is made from a mixture of ground nuts, gum, and salts, mixed with water.

Torah parchment (klaf) is made from the skin of kosher animals. The ink (dyo) is made from a mixture of ground nuts, gum, and salts, mixed with water.

I heard of an escalator accident in 1982 in Moscow, Russia, when an escalator maimed and killed about 40 people. The transmission that connected the motor to the stairs broked and disconnected, and brakes failed, causing 100 people on the escalator to slide down within a few seconds. The only English-language internet reference that I found is

http://www.basedn.freeserve.co.uk/miscellany.htm

I know of this from an indirect witness account (i.e. someone who knows someone who seen it). There were several brakes/safeties in that escalator, all of which happily failed. If you can read Russian, google for aviamotornaya station, 1982.

Tacitus, Annals, 3.27: After Tarquin's expulsion, the people, to check cabals among the Senators, devised many safeguards for freedom and for the establishment of unity. Decemvirs were appointed; everything specially admirable elsewhere was adopted, and the Twelve Tables drawn up, the last specimen of equitable legislation. For subsequent enactments, though occasionally directed against evildoers for some crime, were oftener carried by violence amid class dissensions, with a view to obtain honours not as yet conceded, or to banish distinguished citizens, or for other base ends. Hence the Gracchi and Saturnini, those popular agitators, and Drusus too, as flagrant a corrupter in the Senate's name; hence, the bribing of our allies by alluring promises and the cheating them by tribunes vetoes. Even the Italian and then the Civil war did not pass without the enactment of many conflicting laws, till Lucius Sulla, the Dictator, by the repeal or alteration of past legislation and by many additions, gave us a brief lull in this process, to be instantly followed by the seditious proposals of Lepidus, and soon afterwards by the tribunes recovering their license to excite the people just as they chose. And now bills were passed, not only for national objects but for individual cases, and laws were most numerous when the commonwealth was most corrupt.

unabashedly display every peddler

Maybe he really is from the futar!

Talking about the beginning of Wikipedia, I realized that this was posted on slashdot. Not long ago, I discovered that a moderator on slashdot was named Samzenpus, who is the second cousin twice removed of Snagglepus

Well Snagglepus is famous for saying "Heavens to Mergatroid

Mergatroid was the sister of a guy in a band called Newcleus

The guy just happens to say, and I quote:

• "(Yeah, that's how you do it Cozmo) (You were right, kid, that's the way you do it) (Yeah, like did you see when he went in the corner) (And he started doin' this) (Wikki-wikki-wikki-wikki) (Wikki-wikki-wikki-wikki)"

this song came out in the early eighties - a Paradox (how could a wiki exist in the eighties before wikis existed?). Cosmos, nucleus, wikis, it all makes sense now. Slashdot may look like an innocent little blog which slashdots servers from time to time, but they are in actuality trying to slashdot the universe

Please check out this faq if you make claims about noisy and ambiguous data.

I also disagree with your other points:

1. A lot of theories were popular and well accepted before they are disproven. True, but a lot more theories are accepted and turn out to be true. Also, a LOT of theories are not well accepted and turn out to be wrong. If you are not a climate scientist, this cannot be an argument AGIANST global warming.

2. As a university professor, you know that a theory is only as strong as the arguments that support it. If a paper is flawed or can be disproven, a scientist would jump at the chance to tear it to pieces. While it's true that climate scientist are focussed on global warming, I don't think they feel their jobs are dependent on it. It's more probably that Bush would rather fund any scientist that disproves global warming.

3. Sorry, but the measurements are quite conclusive. See link above. You just pull this out of your hat.

4. Global warming has a number of effects. Mainly higher temperatures and more precipitation, but it varies over countries and continents. If you think everything is contradicting itself, you just haven't studied it well.

I made a banner for my site back in 1999, mocking the imminent demise of Y2K specialists (who were thriving from the fear):

I still have it at the bottom of the page here

it was clear that the oceans would die by the turn of the century, the ozone hole would be so large it would cover parts of Africa, people would be dieing of radiation poisoning from the sun... etc etc etc.

Weren't the ice caps supposed to be all gone soon?

Proof has been constantly cited since the 70s and yet all the dire predictions have come to naught.

A few good volcanoes provide visible effect that the public can see and in some cases experience.

• RealClimate.org
• The Discovery of Global Warming
• Global Warming FAQ
• http://ebulletin.le.ac.uk/features/2000-2009/2004/ 12/nparticle-vkt-hgf-t4c
• International Panel on Climate Change

And the reason you think this, in spite of the evidence gathered by thousands of scientists and decades of research published in reputable peer-reviewed journals is... what, exactly?

> A volcano can dump more greenhouse gasses in an hour than man can
> produce in a year.
>

This is completely incorrect. It's just > WRONG. Human CO2 emissions are many, many times larger than the largest volcanic eruptions. I don't know where you think you're getting your information from...

> We can little affect the global climate fir good or bad.
>

You're so badly misinformed it hurts. Go get yourself a hot steaming cup of clue:

• RealClimate.org
• The Discovery of Global Warming
• Global Warming FAQ
• http://ebulletin.le.ac.uk/features/2000-2009/2004/ 12/nparticle-vkt-hgf-t4c
• International Panel on Climate Change

Hey, fella, guess what? You're in luck!The consensus on human CO2 emissions causing climate change is about as solid as you can get - despite what the oil-lobby, uninformed trolls and assorted net.kooks would have you believe.

• RealClimate.org
• The Discovery of Global Warming
• Global Warming FAQ
• http://ebulletin.le.ac.uk/features/2000-2009/2004/ 12/nparticle-vkt-hgf-t4c
• International Panel on Climate Change

Only in the sense that 'no-one really knows how gravity works'. Strictly speaking it's correct, but it doesn't mean you want to go jumping off a tall building.

Please educate yourself.

• RealClimate.org
• http://www.aip.org/history/climate/
• Global Warming FAQ
• http://ebulletin.le.ac.uk/features/2000-2009/2004/ 12/nparticle-vkt-hgf-t4c

Thanks to all those who responded. It now turns out that some much more authoritative and better-informed people than I are already doing this! Please, if you're posting some pet theory about why all this peer-reviewed science is baloney to this story, do yourself a favour and check one of these sites out before you make a fool of yourself in front of your peers.

• RealClimate.org/a>
• http://www.aip.org/history/climate/
• Global Warming FAQ
• http://ebulletin.le.ac.uk/features/2000-2009/2004/ 12/nparticle-vkt-hgf-t4c

Thank you.

Some references to further information. Google can supply nonsensical 'sceptic' links if you really want to see what the oil lobby and AM radio types want you to think. Personally I'll take the likes of Science and Nature journals, thirty years of research by peer-reviewed scientists over Rush Limbaugh any day.

• RealClimate.org/a>
• http://www.aip.org/history/climate/
• Global Warming FAQ
• http://ebulletin.le.ac.uk/features/2000-2009/2004/ 12/nparticle-vkt-hgf-t4c

Oh and by the way: the world's fastest moving glacier, in Greenland, doubled it's speed according to NASA research. If the Greenland ice-shelf slides into the sea you'd better be living in the Rockies with a large stash of tinned goods.

Hey Cally

Thanks for the public service. Your list of websites doesn't appear to have this site.

To my relatively ignorant eye is a useful compendium of various global warming questions along with links to the research underlying the answers put forward.

Regards
Luke

Is this Howl's Moving Castle? In which case it's not just based on a British novel, it's based on a really good British novel by Diana Wynne Jones, one of the top rank of children's fantasists around.

If you liked Harry Potter, pick up her books. Hell, if you didn't, still pick them up. They're literate, intelligent, and don't talk down to their audience.

(Some of her books are really weird. Hexwood has the scenes arranged in thematic order, not in chronological sense... and it makes total sense. If you think about it. She says the children have no trouble, but their parents find it tough going.)

Gotta love that sensitive 19th C. parenting.

Extended further. I recollect that when I was in the "electric train set" age on Christmas they presented me a layout without a train (it was hidden in the tunnel) telling me it would arrive next year.

CC.

Cigarette smoke is harmless.

And the Earth is flat.

Maybe you shouldn't jump to conclusions on the validity of the science on the basis of an NYT article.

One of the many ways of studying past climate patterns is by looking at ice cores.

We have pretty good data on long term climate patterns in cold places. Some links here:

http://www.elmhurst.edu/~chm/vchembook/globalwarmA .html
http://www.secretsoftheice.org/icecore/warming.htm l
http://www.brighton73.freeserve.co.uk/gw/paleo/pal eoclimate.htm

::snap::

The last time I read about Akalabeth in a magazine, it had a screenshot of the 3D dungeons with caption "The Quake of its era."

And look at this article: "Oh, look how this thing later led to games like Doom 3..."

Hmm, I've been reading about Akalabeth a lot and I haven't even played it. I suppose I should try it some day - everyone seems to be remaking it these days..