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I think the reason the BBC 'gets it' is mostly due to the fact it's a government (Well, licence fee paying) funded organisation. The bottom line for the BBC is that everyone in the world could download their shows and they'd *still* have enough funding to make the same programs year after year after year.

And if you like Charlie Brooker, make sure to check out what he has to say about Macs!

my wife is chinese but born in america, and very dislexic. We often wonder if she had grown up in china instead of america she would probably be reading a language that was easier for her brain to process. This article seems to point in the direction: http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/feature/story/0,130 26,1310286,00.html

Will Woodward, Patrick Wintour and Dan Milmo
Wednesday February 14, 2007
The Guardian

Downing Street will respond to a surge of support for a petition on its website condemning its road pricing plans, which could reach 2m signatures by next week.
With Douglas Alexander, the transport secretary, resisting concessions, No 10 sources acknowledged they had to deliver a gesture to the protesters. That is likely to take the form of an email to each signatory from the prime minister, explaining the pricing plans in greater detail.

Downing Street will respond to a surge of support for a petition on its website condemning its road pricing plans, which could reach 2m signatures by next week.

With Douglas Alexander, the transport secretary, resisting concessions, No 10 sources acknowledged they had to deliver a gesture to the protesters. That is likely to take the form of an email to each signatory from the prime minister, explaining the pricing plans in greater detail.

Two million people, in a country of 60 million, sign the petition. Discount the children, the elderley who haven't voted, and consider the demographics and percentage of people in the UK who don't use a computer or wouldn't generally use one to sign a petition.

This is why we think Blair = Bliar

I don't know where you're from, but let's pick another Western nation - oh, say, Britain - and see if they have any of these problems, shall we?

Edu cation, obesity, autism, and creationism. Hmm. (And these were just top picks from Google searches.) Maybe America's problems are just more widely known than those of other nations?

Greenhouse denial can be at least as evil and murderous as Holocaust denial, though probably more murderous if not quite as evil.

The problem with GM food is that it isn't necessarily sterile. So GM corn can spread its cold resistant salmon gene to traditional maize crops raised in nearby fields.

Also, note that plants that are GM resistant to certain herbicides can pass on genes of resistance to closely related plants and as such the genes could tranfers from closely related plant to closely related plant until there is no benefit for the original crop the GM was intended for. YOU NEVER GET SOMETHING FOR NOTHING AND YING AND YANG SEEM TO RULE THE NATURAL WORLD.

We in fact know very little of protein folding and the effects it can have on function. Look at Mad Cow disease. That is a prion whose ill effects can take quite a long time to manifest themselves. Lets say that lab induced genetic modifications do not have the safe guards natural selection or even natural breeding have. How long and how many people will be sick from eating a tainted GM soybean related product?

http://www.defra.gov.uk/environment/gm/research/pd f/epg_1-5-151.pdf
http://www.guardian.co.uk/gmdebate/Story/0,2763,15 35428,00.html

Here's a basic google search that yields pro and con views for GM. I see no benefit to GM foods when I'm eating very well as it is today.

http://www.google.com/search?q=genetically+modifie d+herbicide&hl=en&rls=com.microsoft:en-US&start=10 &sa=N

> If you explore these areas, and find out that the HIV has actually never been seen, just the antibodies...

Uh, right. You know that the we've sequenced the HIV virus, right? Not only has it been sequenced, but it's been sequenced so many times that we can see the evolution of it's genetic code over time, and can tell which people infected which people. We can tell that the "Libyan seven" are innocent. We can tell that HIV evolved from SIV (the simian version of HIV) multiple times.

Re: Libyan Seven
"By looking at the genome sequence of the virus found in children at Bambino Gesu hospital, we established that the estimated date of the most common recent ancestor for each cluster predated March 1998, sometimes by several years."
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,1974 040,00.html

"The story revolves around Dr. David Acer, a Florida dentist who died in 1990 from complications of AIDS. Dr. Acer's death would have been far from remarkable at the time -- the AIDS epidemic was quite visible by the late 1980s, and one death earned no more attention than any other. Dr. Acer's story, however, extends beyond his private life and into his practice. You see, Dr. Acer had multiple patients that had been diagnosed as infected with HIV within a couple of years of his death." Sequence analysis of HIV in his patients shows that he infected his patients.
http://scienceblogs.com/evolgen/2006/06/phylogeny_ friday_9_june_2006_1.php

you would do well to read about Bhutan:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/weekend/story/0,3605,975 769,00.html

This is the last country on earth to have no TV, until 2002. When foreign TV was introduced, complete with violent porgrams, the crime rate in the country went ballistic. The country now has all kinds of social problems that were previously unheard of.
People often claim you cant tell the effects TV has because there is no test case. they are wrong Bhutan was a perfect test case, and a damning one for showing TVs potential negative effects.

"Since the April 2002 crime wave, the national newspaper, Kuensel, has called for the censoring of television (some have even suggested that foreign broadcasters, such as Star TV, be banned altogether). An editorial warns: "We are seeing for the first time broken families, school dropouts and other negative youth crimes. We are beginning to see crime associated with drug users all over the world - shoplifting, burglary and violence..."

• "the lowest form of hypocrite"
• "the Mac, the iPod and the upcoming iPhone all are DRMed to the gills"
• "FairPlay is an illegal technology whose main purpose is to lock the consumers to the total package provided by Apple by blocking interoperability"

Maybe the abortion clinic was a bad example, but how about Abu Ghraib, where they were forced to pray to Jesus while being beaten? I mean, some evangelicals ran the place (There's better evidence if you read the testimony from the victims, they were forced to say "F**k Allah" and "Help me Jesus" or else they were beaten by Charles Grainer. It's in PDF form somewhere on the web). How about the Christian soldiers who shoot Iraqis while saying it's what God wants?

What you both are overlooking is that the assault on the police officer is a California crime, not a federal crime. As I've argued above, I can't think of any federal crime at all that Wolf's video might have shown -- although the assault apparently is being labeled as terrorism. Which is absurd. Wolf doesn't want these people he might know to be disappeared off to Gitmo, deprived of their rights, and driven out of their minds, which is apparently what the feds do to suspected terrorists. (Never mind the "Oh, that was months ago! We are so over that now!") I think Wolf is the one with a decent justification for keeping mum, and it's the feds who are behaving unreasonably. If I were in his shoes I would be leery of even meeting with the federal judge.

...Comes courtesy of John Naughton's column about Google Docs: "The problem is that the platform has been reduced in status to a life-support system for a web browser."

> Good Christ, none of you read the article did you?

You must be new here.

From my understanding the AdSense money means this is commercial scale (criminal) infringement. Without that, the "cadre of media powerhouses" would be stuck with a civil case. Overall the WSJ article looks like just another attempt to smear Google. The telling content in the Guardian is "The row is a sign, however, of deteriorating relations between the media companies and Google."

> You people fucking amaze me. You'd apologize for Hitler
> if he had made a bitchin' search engine.

Godwin isn't needed here, tell us what percentage of VW owners are also Hitler apologists and we're done.

As someone who loves building PCs and so wont go near a Mac until there are equal possibilities I found this article amusing - Charlie Brooker (ex pczone games journalist + comedy writer) has an amusing mickey take- initially a tirade against Apple's switching campaign in the UK and why he hates Mac owners - below's a snippet from the article here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,2005931,00.h tml
"I hate Macs. I have always hated Macs. I hate people who use Macs. I even hate people who don't use Macs but sometimes wish they did. Macs are glorified Fisher-Price activity centres for adults; computers for scaredy cats too nervous to learn how proper computers work; computers for people who earnestly believe in feng shui."

As Bayoudegradeable pointed out, there is evidence of noodles in China 4000 years ago.

And as CRCulver mentioned that pasta is nowhere to be found in the texts at all. "We know more about Roman dining customs than about any other ancient people, with whole recipes reconstructed, see Patrick Fass' Around the Roman Table [amazon.com] (University of Chicago Press, 2005). "

Have we in the Western world become so enamored by political correctness that we cannot even take a joke for what it is? A similar double standard is happening in Britain right now: racism by the majority is rightfully condemned, but some minorities seem to be able to get away with inciting hatred (The Observer)

If proven, then the theory that Marco Polo brought spaghetti to Italy will finally have some competition. Were noodles, in fact, a Roman invention introduced to the Chinese?

but the wannabes bail out, because it's not turning out to be a good way to earn big bucks doing something that they're marginally talented at

Indeed. The author works at De Montfort university, which in 2005 ranked 95th out of 111 UK universities for CS. And he's right: if you get a traditional CS degree from De Montfort, you are going to have trouble finding a job. But if you get a theoretical CS degree from a top university (as I did) you'll find that you are very employable.

He's not talking about the future of CS; he's talking about the future of his own department. Sucks to be a third-rate academic.

> If we built this house the way we do software development

Reminds me of this

The existence of current warming, and man's contribution to it, is not however in doubt.

I guess reading comprehension wasn't one of your strong points. Or maybe math... You don't even have to read the linked articles to see that you're full of shit. The submission itself quotes, 'there is a 90% chance humans are responsible for climate change.' And that's straight from the cult of global warming. I was modded higher than you, and I'm defending an unpopular viewpoint... that should tell you something.

Climate isn't correlated with absolute concentrations of CO2, because of all of the other climate factors in effect. Changes in climate are correlated with changes in CO2 ... The evidence suggests that a drop in CO2 precipitated the ice age, and a rise in CO2 may have ended it.

Damn, you contradict yourself in the same paragraph... GWB, is that you? No, it suggested that a drop in CO2 coincided with an ice age. You and your religious leaders are confusing correlation with causation. CO2 was around 4400 PPM at that time. Compared that to our 370 PPM. Yet we receive dire predictions that if CO2 rises to 400, 500, 600, etc. that the poles are going to melt and coastal cities will be inundated. If you had even bothered to read what I provided for you, you would have seen that having a large polar land mass and a continent that stretches between the poles as we have today is an essential ingredient to ice ages. The only man-made activity that might change that is the Panama canal.

Micahels' analysis was, shall we say, dodgy at best.

You cannot possibly be suggesting that a computer scientist at the University of New South Wales knows more about the climate than a research professor and State Climatologist with a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Oh wait, you are. Pardon me, but if given nothing but the opinions of Mr. Tim Lambert and DR. Patrick J. Michaels, I think I would go with the person who had devoted his entire fucking life to studying the environment in favor of some dipshit with a CS degree who apparently spends most of his time blogging. You have got to be fucking kidding me? Is there no limit to how far your blinders extend?

McKitrick & McIntyre's analysis is also not without its flaws

Put in random data, still get a hockey stick. I don't need an 18 page rebuttal from the shills at realclimate.org to tell me the sky is green when I can see it for myself with my own two eyes.

Given the rest of your post, I can see your global warming religion is waaaaay more important to you than reality, so it's kinda pointless to even try to argue with you. I'll just leave it at that. Have a nice day, don't let the sky fall on you.

A cheaper and more promising way to produce this oil is using the Fischer Tropche process and doing coal->liquids or coal->gas. (...etc...)

An interesting analysis, although you do focus entirely on the extraction-of-fuels aspect. The other notable aspect of fuel from biomass is that (in principle anyway) it's a carbon-neutral energy cycle. Extraction of new and different fossil fuels isn't.

40 megatons of biomass/day does sound like rather a lot, though. This article (hardly authoritative, just what I happened upon with 42 seconds of googling) says the world grain harvest is ~2 gigatons... which according to your figures would fuel the US of A for 50 days or so, leaving us with nothing to eat in the bargain.

I thought there was "uniform concensus" among scientists that humans were responslble for climate change. Now it is only 90% certain.

Anything for the almighty buck.

Anything indeed, no matter how irresponsible.

As long as it's not a big red cross they should be safe.

Apparently even a little weight savings is a big deal for airlines. In China they want you to punch your ticket before boarding.

I hate to do it, but...uh....here's the latest news. Looks like the latest models and recent data paints an even worse picture.

And this story hit the UK Guardian on 9 Nov 2006. (via CS maven my slice of pizza.)

I certainly won't claim that China wouldn't have pressed ahead with its anti-sattelite weapon if the US hadn't stated space hegemony as its policy objective, but in terms of being provocative it really seems to be a case of the pot calling the kettle black. The US space policy is confrontational if nothing else.

I'm fairly confident that the recently unveiled US space policy caused a massive "Oh yeah? We'll see about that!" response among China, Russia, India, and perhaps others too.

I'm not an expert on the mechanisms of global warming. But there are just a few things that I heard which might convince you otherwise.

Most time there is any serious scientific conference on the matter, it seems that the concern is getting larger and larger. Most climatologists believe that anthropogenic global warming is a huge threat to society and which needs to be acted on urgently. All evidence seems to be pointing clearly in one direction.

There have been a few changes in regional climate patterns in the past thousand years, but it seems that CO2 levels are higher than ever, and we already seem to be experiencing some of the effects, which are only the tip of the iceberg. If you look at the numbers and predictions, we are headed for one heck of climate change.

And it is true that the climate changes naturally, although very slowly, and there have been large climate changes in the past. What we also know is that it sucks to be alive when it happens. Mass extinctions and huge land desertification may be comfortable when it happened to dinosaurs millions of years ago, but I would like to prevent it if I can.

Obviously there are a lot of groups who stand to lose out if the government were to enforce controls on emissions, so there is much resistance, and the article you cited is from an unqualified organisation with the specific goal of "debunking" global warming. There is a huge industry based around this denialism, and it would be very dangerous to simply believe anything called a "paper" by an organisation with a name like "global warming research" or similar, that is meant to give people with little knowledge of the academic world a belief of authority or qualification.
Have a quick look at this and do a text search for "Seitz", the man on the front page of the site you linked to. Read the next few paragraphs after that, it should be a little revealing.
Basically, anybody with a degree, it didn't matter if they had anything to to with climatology, was invited to sign a petition, which he then presented as proof that the scientific community didn't see global warming as a problem.

Women mostly don't need to be self-taught. Colleges and educational institutions are happy to educate women. Meanwhile there's an increasing bias in educational institutions against males:

Schoolboy's bias suit
Where The Boys Aren't
Why boys can't be boys
The Trouble With Boys

and especially

How the Schools Shortchange Boys

It's not a big factor in this particular case, but one reason some guys are self-taught is because they've learned education isn't for them -- rather it's against them.

At this point, it's fairly evident that people will listen to the media of their choosing. If a large segment of the population is out of touch with reality because they think one source has it right and alllll the others are insane, it's really their fault, and our obligation to have to defend their right to speak and vote in a free society where their votes count just as much as ours. We just have to deal with it.

The politicians can try, but I don't see the solution coming from Washington no matter how well-intentioned its proponents may be. Do you want fair and balanced coverage and have some time to spare? Read a larger variety of news sources, from multiple countries, from multiple points of view. You will gain a sense of who's biased how, and make first-hand decisions about who is being more reasonable and honest.

I have my own sites that I follow. Some air a specific point of view, but listening only to the echo chamber will weaken your perspective. Here is one site that I think does a fantastic job of presenting a wide range of views for your consideration.

And then, here are the rounds I usually make:

BBC world news
Google News
The Daily Star, an English-language Lebanese newspaper
The New York Times
The Guardian, a British news source
Le Monde, the English edition
Al Jazeera's English language page, like it or hate it
World Net Daily, if you want to know what the Christian Right is up to

Now, good luck.

I say this as someone who really likes Kucinich and would vote for him anyday.

By your train of thought. Let's hurry for wikipedia and every open source project is gonna crash.

We often hear about the might of the pen, but the train of thought hits pretty hard as well

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,19 90011,00.html

Hey--allow us to be skeptical. A formula determining procrastination? Seriously.... (keep in mind that I'm not willing to pay the money to read the full article, and that the "formula" sounds awfully similar to this)

However, one commenter above actually said something useful in response to my skepticism (as opposed to your useless rant). He noted that the equation isn't meant to be an input of precise measurements with an output of a meaningful numerical value, but rather a mere visual method of depicting the relationship of the variables involved. That, I believe is how Slashdot works--I expressed skepticism, and explained why; the responder answered my skepticism with a reasonable explanation. What a good way to run a discussion board! Try not to clog it with your rants.

Posted anonymously to avoid Karma Whoring.

Bad science and useless formula


Folk as it has already been psoted earlier this is simply some PR agency which asked some random guy to MAKE UP a formulae. That's it. The formulae is useless , as useless as the pr/marketing around it. Tskkkk. What's it with Slashdot and pseudo science ?

These stories are just clever PR gags, they contain nothing of scientific value. Just look at the "equation" for a moment and you start wondering what the actually equate:

"Steel has also come up with the E=mc2 of procrastination, a formula he's dubbed Temporal Motivational Theory, which takes into account factors such as the expectancy a person has of succeeding with a given task (E), the value of completing the task (V), the desirability of the task (Utility), its immediacy or availability () and the person's sensitivity to delay (D). It looks like this and uses the Greek letter (capital gamma): Utility = E x V / D"

See: "expectancy", "value", "desirability" and so on. Perfect scientific quantities, don't you think?

Read more about those jerks atGuardian's Bad Science, they come up regularly

But, unlike terrorists, the Army does attempt to avoid doing so.

Well, and cluster munitions are a proven means to be successful in doing so.

CC.

Slightly related to this: How the terabyte drive could end the DVD wars

Two external drives, one stored offsite, like this would be a big help.

It's a little more convenient, but most of the time 4.7 GB is enough space for your data.

I have more than 160GB on my hdds. If I go through all of my files and delete those I think I may not need anymore I may be able to reduce my backup needs to 100GB, so I'd still need 20 single layer dvds to backup everything. And when I finally get a dslr camera my storage needs will be a lot higher. Now I realize not many people have these storage requirements, but there are some who do.

Let joy be unconfined! Hitachi has announced that it will introduce, in the next three months, a one-terabyte drive for desktop computers. Just to expand, that's one thousand gigabytes of storage, which you'll be able to buy for about $400 in the US (and, if experience is any guide, £400 in the UK), or about 40c/GB. Seagate plans a similar 1TB delight by the summer.
...

Salvation lies in the next-generation DVD formats. Not, however, in the way that the electronics makers want to tout to us. They'd like us to buy read-only high-definition discs that can store between 15GB and 50GB, and cost around $1/GB. Sorry, but that's useless to me. I want writable ones - for making backups. It's nice of Hitachi and Seagate to tempt us with so much space to fill. But we need sturdy egg boxes to put all our high-tech, personal eggs. If you want to know who'll win the high-def DVD war, it's the one which offers a writable version first. Geeks will leap on it for their hefty backups. It'll sell. And the market will take over. Meanwhile, I'll start saving up for that terabyte drive.

But the Pope personally? Do you really think he has that much power? There's a culture of powerful subordinates that are going to respect him as their spiritual father but not as their boss, and I'd blame them for the misdoings of the Vatican, not Mr. Ratzinger as a person.

Why are you being such an apologist?
He's the head of the organization and he's "infallible".
What he says goes, or he can boot you from the church. Either way, this means that all these bad people are operating with his implicit approval.

Based on your logic, no leader should ever be held accountable for the actions of his subordinates, unless specifcally ordered by him. I don't see how a person with any sort of decent moral compass can subscribe to such a view. Even if he can't stop something from happening, he's still responsible for taking adequate steps to enure it doesn't happen again.

How can you not believe that a Pope lacks accountability for actions like this:
Vatican told bishops to cover up sex abuse

Space exploration is often cited as providing a country a tangible goal. Something to aim for, boost national pride, focus industry, provide technological spinoffs (whether product - Teflon etc.) or industrial capacity, and provide a sneaky way of subsidy through government contract. You can well imagine that India, looking to the US (and even some extent the USSR's program) would want in on that.

Of course, this leaves out the fact that any country that wants to launch satellites into orbit - whether for commercial, military or espionage reasons is at the mercy of the few nations with launch capability, both in terms of cost and possible political veto.

I, for one, can well understand why any nation might want a space program. (See the recent muttering about the UK's fairly timid approach to this.

I would like to say that it was equivalent to at least 80 Intels, but we all know how much US Intelligence is worth.

That's very similar to what he says in The Satanic Gases. He does indeed acknowledge that there is a human contribution to warming, against which I don't think anyone would argue these days, but that is a far cry from claiming that global warming is due, as you said, "primarily to anthropogenic factors".

Fair enough. I was recalling what he said and didn't have the article in front of me at the time. His other comments imply that the human contribution is at least significant however, if not dominant. If you feel that I'm being too generous with Pat Michaels, I can guarantee you, it is not my intent.

My problem is with the non-science-literate people you mention, spewing forth on something they don't understand, actively steering other people away from skeptical research with the claim that it's all corrupt because it's funded by the energy industry.

My problem is with anyone saying that it's a logical fallacy to mention the source of funding, when non-science-literate people are trying to decide who to trust. I'm a scientist and I think it is very valid for me to support my position in anthropogenic global warming by pointing out that almost all climatologists agree that it is a real phenomenon, and that the very few who don't are all receiving money from fossil-fuel companies. What's really idiotic is when the deniers chime in with "oh yeah, well those who don't receive money from fossil-fuel companies receive money from the government, and everyone knows that the Bush administration is all about AGW." (OK, they neglect to mention the Bush administration. That was just a lame attempt at humor.)

As for honest scientists being affected by their source of funding, you need to more narrowly define "affected". It can certainly influence their directions of exploration, their initial hypotheses, or what they consider to be anomalous vs. expected results, but funding doesn't change the laws of physics. And to whatever degree that it can affect scientists, it does so on both sides of the issue.

"a good deal of the so called third world countries that will need it aren't democracies"

But then again neither is the US or its satellite in Europe, GB ltd. For decades protests were allowed across the road from the House of Commons, but not any more. It took the party of the workers to sneek in the leglisation, over the weekend and while parliament was on holiday. Eight arrested in Iraq protest

was: I don't think the OLPC is a good idea

They do have abstinence ONLY education...and wow, it's still spreading. Maybe you should speak to the US government about getting off thier religious high horse and adopting a more realistic approach to halting the spread of AIDS, ie condoms.

http://www.om.org/headlines/view.jsp?id=6333

Nevertheless, moral attitudes are being allowed to dictate the practicalities of AIDS education, especially in the USA. Human Rights Watch argues that this form of education actively opposes basic human rights. http://www.avert.org/aidseducation.htm

http://www.guardian.co.uk/christmasappeal2005/stor y/0,16796,1654865,00.html

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/ne ws/2005/04/01/waids01.xml

I'm sure we can demand they "stop fucking" when all the rest of us decide to. Just because you MIGHT get hit by a car backing out of the driveway doesn't stop you from going to the movies...

Because when Apple does it, it becomes a well documented, open API.

Yeah, Apple is "open" when they take open source software and interface it to their proprietary system.

They are somewhat less "open" when it matters to their bottom line.

This week is the first week of the new rules here, where downloads count irrespective of the availability of the CD. See here for more.

And that goes for those of you holding Exxon stock, too. Sell, sell, sell. (Being entirely mercenary, and setting aside all the science, they're obviously not very good business people, or they'd have invested in alternatives the way Shell, BP etc have.