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"High-Speed Robot Hand " http://www.hizook.com/blog/2009/08/03/high-speed-robot-hand-demonstrates-dexterity-and-skillful-manipulation?page=1

Or: http://econfuture.wordpress.com/2012/05/10/automation-links/

And from there: http://singularityhub.com/2012/05/04/better-faster-and-cheaper-these-robots-are-invading-car-manufacturing-plants/

See especially from the last: http://singularityhub.com/2011/04/23/look-out-humans-this-frida-robot-from-abb-will-take-your-factory-job/

The income-through-jobs link that grants the right to consume (for those 99% without significant capital) is about to be severely stretched... Which was predicted decades ago (like in "The Triple Revolution Memorandum" from 1964).

Create a .desktop file for your script: https://linuxcritic.wordpress.com/2010/04/07/anatomy-of-a-desktop-file/

The problem with your talking points is that they are blatant lies.

No, stuborn fact. You just don't realize it yet.

Then what is the relevance? Do you really not understand the difference between local (2% of the planet or so) and global? But you didn't specify the US did you? You wrote: "The warmest decade for the 1900s was the 1930s" - nothing about this only being the US. You have been caught red-handed again.

What do you mean again? You haven't caught me the first time. Perhaps it was my fault. I presumed that if you had anywhere near knowledge in this area that you pretend you do, you would know precisely what I was talking about. Mr. Hansen is after all, an 800 Lbs gorilla in the room. Hard to know about this subject and not know about him and what happened. More to my point that you don't know what you are talking about.

Actually, the sun has had a cooling trend for nearly 40 years. And how did you miss the part of that page which says "bout 90% of the global warming followed the CO2 increase"? Face it, you were just spewing another denialist talking point because you are clueless, and now you are trying to pretend that the article supports your nonsense.

Ok, now is where I can really hit you with a clue-by-four. OTHER planets have been warming and you can see it (stuborn facts again), the sun isn't cooler. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/02/070228-mars-warming.html http://reinep.wordpress.com/2010/08/09/sun-is-getting-hotter-burning-the-planet-according-to-swiss-and-german-scientists/ Many, Many other articles on this as well. Even Pluto has been warming though to be fair, that's not scientific since it's beyond the capability of our instruments to conclusively say that. Clearly there is reason to believe that, however. Some denier sites or I suppose "green sites" to you try to explain the damning evidence away. No man on Mars to get rid of that CO2 ice. So they try to baffle you with bullshit, something they do really well. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.

Speaking of Mr. Hansen (above), he had an article in the NY Times today. "Sky is falling" sums it up. Apparently he can't read his own predictions. He says he was right. Even your skeptical site says he was wrong. Not surprising I found some sites that say he was right. Not that I expect you'll have any sort of clue how to read and understand it (you need to be a scientist who works with this stuff or a very bright guy, otherwise you'll probably misunderstand it), it's here - http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/1981/1981_Hansen_etal.pdf . Yes, that really is the famous report. Not to say he's all wrong, there is some very good information in that report. If you're really bright you'll see why I disagree with him and you'll likely agree with me from now on. I guess I'll see how bright you are. Not if you agree with me or not of course. Being bright doesn't mean you agree with me. Maybe you'll understand what I was saying about the Gaia scientists in the beginning. You probably need a lot more context for that though.

Al Gore is irrelevant. He is not a scientist. I realize that you hate science and can't be bothered to refer to actual scientists, though.

Al is irrelevent? Thanks for the laugh! Of course you're right about Al and science. At best he was just a washed up newspaper reporter who wanted to be super man and save the world. Remember Al as you pay more for electric, gas and just about everything else coming up. See how irrelevent you think it is as you pay Al a bunch of money. By then I'm hopeful that you'll realize it's a bunch of money for nothing. Income ensured by laws.

One think I read recently was a blog of a .NET developer who decided to switch to iOS development.

He thinks the frameworks are better than MS's tools:

IB rocks. It's so good that I have never once needed to look at the XML it generates to serialize UIs. Imagine using Cider or Expression Blend and never needing to look at and edit XAML by hand!

and is complementary about iOS itself:

iOS apps run lightning fast. Not having the overhead of a managed runtime environment, a garbage collector, code-access security, etc. really helps keep iOS apps fast and easy on the battery

I just think its a bit of a shame they went with objective-C which is a bit strange, they might have been better off with C++ which has as many quirks as obj-C but is more widely known and is just as performant.

http://dafunion.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/pilot.jpg

TFA was great--TFS not so much. I agree that bufferbloat.net doesn't seem to be as useful as I thought on a first glance, but the Bufferbloat FAQ would have been a good resource.

Well you have to prove that education is asset to society. Can show that we are generating more nominal output with less input as result of our society being more educated ( % of population with a degree is a valid measure of that ) then ever?

You have no control so good luck.

How about http://filipspagnoli.wordpress.com/stats-on-human-rights/statistics-on-gross-domestic-product-correlations/#9
or http://finance.yahoo.com/news/the-10-most-educated-countries-in-the-world.html
In today's economies knowledge is the basis for almost any industry that won't be outsourced to China, Mexico or any other rising country within a few years. To keep up you need researchers, engineers and other highly qualified people. If you don't have them, you either have to hire them from abroad (at a price) or fade into oblivion.

See Jim Getty's blog for more (and better) info.

Evem with IEEE things aren't that simple: http://randomascii.wordpress.com/2012/03/21/intermediate-floating-point-precision/

// ville

Circular

'We get better reception that way'

Ok here's some evidence: fresh of the press: Nature Geoscience One of the co-authors (Dr. Bas van Geel) is actually very skeptical of AGW, because all of the GCM's underestimate the effect of the sun on climate. I tend to agree with his ideas, based on measurements, seems to me more evidence based than the output of computer models.

Your style of posting is of a denier, one dissenting scientist does not make an argument, in fact his case of the sun's influence being large was as far as I know based on local studies, then from that he thinks global climate change depends largely on the sun. This is already moronic but then he says that some solar amplification effects must exist which can't be modelled. That's just ludicrous.

However, it's long been known from lots of modelling that the sun's influences are minute. So what has he offered to counter that? Nothing? Indeed. And when you say that you agree with van Geel, what does that mean? Surely you mean 'He says something I want to believe', as you are not up to a scientific analysis of this stuff yourself...

See also: http://klimaatverandering.wordpress.com/category/bas-van-geel/ (Dutch).

But slashbart can at least read that. I already knew from slashbart's username and his style of writing before looking at his 'Homepage' that he is Dutch.

You're probably a believer of the insane 'groenerekenkamer' liars aren't you? And it wouldn't surprise me either if you are a VVD voter (= antisocal a-hole party of the Netherlands).

Survey without religion bias And 64% of Americans would hold onto a religious belief even if it was contradicted by clear science and evidence. In 2009 a survey showed only 4 in 10 Americans believed in evolution.

That is pretty bad.

Not true (as in, completely wrong). I have seen it with my own eyes using a diffraction grating comparing LED and fluorescent. Phosphors are wavelength multipliers, and CFLs start with a small collection of single frequencies, and the phosphors make more single frequencies. LEDs start with a (tight) continuous range of frequencies centered around a frequency, and the phosphor makes copies of the range, which overlap.

Heating with incandescent light bulbs is an appalling waste of energy; better to use a heat pump, or a furnace.
And the energy costs of running those incandescent bulbs is substantial (compared to LEDs) unless you use them hardly at all.

I am also pretty sure that LED longevity is as good as claimed; there are some in my kitchen that already have over 10,000 hours on them (they're on most of the time, and I installed them back in 2010). I also use LEDs in homemade bicycle lights, and they have survived both several years of Boston weather (and winter road slime) and thousands of miles of vibration.

And military spending is obviously less important to the powers that be than social welfare:

http://macromon.wordpress.com/2011/05/25/chart-of-the-day-u-s-federal-spending/

I think I saw that episode too.

This project needs to die, and die fast. It doesn't matter just how it happens, it's a colossal waste of money. Datawind were trying to sell awful junk for more than it costs to just buy a bit less awful junk from China. The Indian government department concerned is clueless about technology, from the minister all the way down.

Shameless self promotion, but very relevant: you can read my old blog entry about the folly of this project here: http://colourmeamused.wordpress.com/2011/10/05/4/

The reason for poor internet penetration at this point isn't that much to do with cost right now. There are many many people who can well afford to get internet access and afford basic but adequate computing devices in India but don't. Maybe we should start with those people first. I'll write something about the state of internet penetration in India, if anyone's interested you can subscribe to the blog if wordpress lets you do that.

You bet he did!

It's long been true that a top reason to go to academic conferences isn't only for the paper presentations, but rather for the hallway/dinner/bar conversations about those papers. More formally, many scientific journals will publish short letters or commentaries about papers they've previously published, and that practice used to be even more widespread (at some journals a "letter" has morphed into a mini-paper, but they used to really be letters to the editor).

The same is now true online with something like Terence Tao's blog: it's interesting as much for what other mathematicians post in reply, as for what Tao himself posts (though his posts are quite interesting). The main difference as I see it is that the number of people participating is much greater (which has good and bad parts), and, in comparison to hallway conversations, the conversations persist and get referenced back to more, since they're in a semi-durable written medium (that's the "wiki-like" aspect the article discusses).

Much more likely he was going to point the proton stream at Sarkozy.

Interesting account of a human intercepting a proton-accelerator beam with his head.

The practical effects of recent sea level rise are statistical, rather than directly observable.

*cough*

Has there ever been a 100% tax?

Yes, Sweden had tax rates above 100%. Here are some links for you:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomperipossa_in_Monismania

http://everestlancaster.wordpress.com/2009/06/02/pomperipossa-in-monismania/ (You must read this, good writing by a steady hand!)

http://everestlancaster.wordpress.com/2009/06/09/the-pomperipossa-effect/

I have not seen unemployed dying on the streets yet.

One of our Australian friends (elsewhere in this very discussion) is sure that this is a common occurrence because, as you must know, in case of a heart attack the EMT whips up not a defibrillator but a credit card reader :-)

As it happens, I am pretty familiar with the USSR economy.

I don't want to make an example of a fallacy of argument from authority, but I know this issue from the inside, up close and personal. If you were employed by USSR in 1980s-1990s then we can compare our notes. Otherwise - sorry.

It seems that you are incapable of reasonable discussion about economy and taxes without resorting to threats of death and destruction to all who do not follow your anti-tax religion.

I paid my taxes about a month ago, and as result I'm very poor at the moment.

Has there ever been a 100% tax?

Yes, Sweden had tax rates above 100%. Here are some links for you:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomperipossa_in_Monismania

http://everestlancaster.wordpress.com/2009/06/02/pomperipossa-in-monismania/ (You must read this, good writing by a steady hand!)

http://everestlancaster.wordpress.com/2009/06/09/the-pomperipossa-effect/

I have not seen unemployed dying on the streets yet.

One of our Australian friends (elsewhere in this very discussion) is sure that this is a common occurrence because, as you must know, in case of a heart attack the EMT whips up not a defibrillator but a credit card reader :-)

As it happens, I am pretty familiar with the USSR economy.

I don't want to make an example of a fallacy of argument from authority, but I know this issue from the inside, up close and personal. If you were employed by USSR in 1980s-1990s then we can compare our notes. Otherwise - sorry.

It seems that you are incapable of reasonable discussion about economy and taxes without resorting to threats of death and destruction to all who do not follow your anti-tax religion.

I paid my taxes about a month ago, and as result I'm very poor at the moment.

Interestingly, the BBC article calls CERN "Cern" as though it were a person. To whom do we address our complaints?

You're not the first person to notice this. They've been up to this stupidity for a while now.

Google also turned up this official-looking BBC capitalisation guide, but it doesn't mention acronyms - all the ones actually in that page are capitalised correctly, though.

This seems to be the place to complain.

Google much?

http://www.techsupportalert.com/content/best-free-microsoft-downloads.htm

http://www.techradar.com/news/software/applications/60-best-free-pc-software-downloads-from-microsoft-914749

http://blakehandler.wordpress.com/2006/08/01/ultimate-list-of-free-windows-xp-software-resources-from-microsoft/

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/results.aspx?freetext=free&displaylang=en&pf=true

http://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/the-fallacy-fallacy

OK, you believe that we can predict the behaviour of the climate. That's fine, but please give more information to prove your point. At the moment, all I see is that you're claiming belief as fact.

As for my argument, that we cannot consistently predict climate behaviour, this is supported by this information:
http://drtimball.com/2011/ipcc-predictions-scenarios-always-wrong-therefore-science-wrong/
http://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/2012/03/15/further-evidence-of-the-failure-of-multi-decadal-regional-climate-predictions-to-by-of-value-to-the-impacts-communities/
http://www.rosettatranslation.com/media/catastrophic-climate-change-or-maybe-not/
http://joannenova.com.au/2012/01/dr-david-evans-the-skeptics-case/

And, for the argument, I'm not denying that climate change is happening. I believe it is. I'm just not convinced we can accurately predict it.

Football has been crippling its victims for decades. It wasn't news when this documentary came out: http://mobilemojoman.wordpress.com/2011/11/18/movie-review-disposable-heroes-the-blood-guts-and-tears-side-of-football/

Nothing will change.

What they found in her thesis is that she rightly referenced the authors she quoted word for word, but didn't reference the authors again in following sentences that were in relation to those first quotes in 56 cases.

No, what they found is that she copied other author's text including footnotes. At other places she reformatted in-line references of the original into footnotes of her text. Whether she copied the text literally or not; if you copy references&footnotes, keeping the original order and semantics, it's pretty clear that you didn't think of your own. I don't think reformulating and reformatting skills entitle you to a PhD.

What they found in her thesis is that she rightly referenced the authors she quoted word for word, but didn't reference the authors again in following sentences that were in relation to those first quotes in 56 cases.

No, what they found is that she copied other author's text including footnotes. At other places she reformatted in-line references of the original into footnotes of her text. Whether she copied the text literally or not; if you copy references&footnotes, keeping the original order and semantics, it's pretty clear that you didn't think of your own. I don't think reformulating and reformatting skills entitle you to a PhD.

http://schavanplag.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/plagiatsdokumentation_schavan_020512.pdf

Starting at page 7 is where it gets good...and definitely not explainable. It reminds me of the elementary school "We have zero tolerance for plagiarism. It's easy not to plagiarize! Change some verb forms, add a few prepositions, and reposition clauses!"

First, there's Mondo Spider. The same guys are also working on Titanoboa, which is a ridable robot snake.

And both of those are electric. No propane forklift engines, which makes them much quieter.

or, more importantly, Mondo Spider exists. So far "Stompy" is just a computer rendering. Article is kind of pointless, what is the point of telling everyone every little project you plan on working on? They're not even half way done, nothing exists at all.

In the spirit of the nonexistent Stompy here's the rocket ship I'm building to travel to Mars

Sure the CO2 increases. Sure there is Temperature increase and decrease... and a long term slight linear+cyclic upward trend since the end of the Little Ice Age... no doubt about either of those... the problem that exists is that when you correlate both they don't correlate at all. Nada. Also the temperature trend, linear+cyclic, stays the same before and after the 1950's when CO2 started increasing... exactly the same temperature trend so that is a serious problem for those promulgating CO2 Climate Doomsday Rapture aka CAGW.

Also all the climate models haven't been able to predict the temperature standstill for the last 12+ years. Not one. And if you know the scientific method then you'll get the following statement:

“if your prediction is wrong then your hypothesis is wrong. Period.” - Richard Feynman

What is missing is the actual evidence that the CO2 we're pumping into the atmosphere is having any significant effect at all. Sure there might be a wee bit of warming from it but so what?

Also "might", "may", "could", and other conditional words are not scientific words with any accuracy at all. Some feeding your brain mind poop from the media and doomsday claims from scientists who haven't yet produced any serious evidence that CO2 is a problem. Also learn that CO2 is an essential life giving nutrient and that we use 900 ppm to 1400 ppm of CO2 in greenhouses to grow plants bigger and faster. Plants for the most part love CO2. Biological fact. In fact a study found that from 1980 to 1999 plants grew by 6% as seen by satellites.

The amazing irony is that the extra CO2 is actually be helping green the planet.

_________

" Effect Of CO2 Emission On Global Mean Temperature

Examination of Figure 3 shows that the Global Mean Temperature Anomaly (GMTA) for 1940 of 0.13 deg C is greater than that for 1880 of –0.22 deg C. Also, the GMTA for 2000 of 0.48 deg C is greater than that for 1940 of 0.13 deg C. This means that the GMTA value, when the oscillating anomaly is at its maximum, increases in every new cycle. Is this global warming caused by human emission of CO2?

The data required to establish the effect of CO2 emission on global mean temperature already exist. The global mean temperature data are available from the Climate Research Unit of the Hadley Centre shown in Figure 3, and the CO2 emission data are available from the Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Centre [8]. *For the period from 1880 to 1940, the average emission of CO2 was about 0.8 G-ton, and the increase in the GMTA was 0.13+0.22=0.35 deg C. For the period from 1940 to 2000, the average emission of CO2 was about 4 G-ton, but the increase in GMTA was the same 0.48-0.13=0.35 deg C. This means that an increase in CO2 emission by 4/0.8=5-fold has no effect in the increase in the GMTA. This conclusively proves that the effect of 20th century human emission of CO2 on global mean temperature is nil.*

*Note that the increase in GMTA of 0.35 deg C from 1880 to 1940 (or from 1940 to 2000) in a 60 year period has a warming rate of 0.35/60=0.0058 deg per year, which is the slope of the linear anomaly given by Equation 1. As a result, the linear anomaly is not affected by CO2 emission. Obviously, as the oscillating anomaly is cyclic, it is not related to the 5-fold increase in human emission of CO2.

Figure 4, with high correlation coefficient of 0.88, shows the important result that the observed GMTA can be modeled by a combination of a linear and sinusoidal pattern given by Equation 3. This single GMTA pattern that was valid in the period from 1880 to 1940 was also valid in the period from 1940 to 2000 after about 5-fold increase in human emission of CO2. As a result, the effect of human emission of CO2 on GMTA is nil.* "
http://pathstoknowledge.files.wordpress.com/2010/10/predictions-of-gmt.pdf

"Volare" already has its own theme song. Not to mention that it can't get much cooler than sharing a name with this: http://atlantaip.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/volare.jpg?w=450&h=299

"Trust but verify" is exactly how peer reviewed science works.

Really? Can you name a single warmist paper in the past 10 years where any of the reviewers actually asked for the data behind a paper they were reviewing?

http://hro001.wordpress.com/2012/02/02/phil-jones-keeps-peer-review-process-humming-by-using-intuition/

From Phil Jones: "I’ve never requested data/codes to do a review and I don’t think others should either."

So much for verify :)

There are volumes and volumes of data and experiments that suggest that AGW is a significant effect.

There are volumes and volumes of data and experiments that suggest that Pisces are generally honest, but sometimes deceitful. Yet we understand astrology isn't a science.

If you want to play the science game, you come up with your clearly necessary and sufficient falsifiable hypothesis, and look *really hard* for falsifications. Can you cite any warmist work that has done that? Stated "this would be a falsification of my theory, and here are all the things I did to look for it"?

Some time ago I read a lot about the stupid Airbus stick control which "averages" the movements of both pilots and *does not* have force feedback.

How I saw it was that while the pilots *knew* the plane was stalling, they did not know *why*. That piece of information could have been obtained with a typical joystick system were both pilots' sticks are mechanically connected (coupled).

I even remember a study (in 1987) where pilots explicitly prefered coupled sticks :

In a 1987 evaluation of side stick controllers Summers et al (1987) found that under simulated ‘surprise’ hand overs pilots Cooper Harper rating of the schemes were (in descending order):

Coupled sides sticks with algebraically summed inputs (1.4),
Uncoupled side sticks with algebraically summed inputs and disconnect switch (final A320 implementation) (1.8),
Uncoupled with algebraically summed inputs and priority logic (original A320 implementation) (3.3), and
Uncoupled side sticks with with algebraically summed inputs (3.4).

Why did Airbus decided to use uncoupled sticks? that will always remain a mistery to me.

And still you offer none...

There are plenty of examples to be found...

HAHAHAHAHAHA. You might want to read up on bedbugs.

start here:
http://membracid.wordpress.com/

A Berliner is not a sausage. It's a type of "pfannkuchen", kind of like a jelly doughnut.
http://amoiltedesco.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/berliner-pfannkuchen.jpg

Perhaps someone should have mentioned to them that Uganda is not in Central Africa? It's considered part of East Africa.

Looking at this map from a recent publication, there seems to have been more cases of monkeypox in the US than in Uganda: http://wellcometrust.wordpress.com/2012/03/01/developing-the-atlas-of-human-infectious-diseases/monkeypox/

But, hey, it's "Africa", right.

Pro-Choice was never about killing anyone. It's about allowing someone to remove something from their body. This operation is done all the time, more than a million times a year in the US and no one complains. (That would be those occurring somewhere near the 9 month mark.) There are also a fair number done earlier than the 6 month mark. These do not result in a sustainable living entity, no matter what is done.

For Pro-Lifers, something to provoke thought.

For comparison with a water droplet (the closer to 180 degrees you get, the closer to a perfect non-wettable/sticky surface you have):

This new glass (165 degree contact angle)
The upcoming Neverwet material (160 to 175 degrees)
Lotus leaf or even some birds' feather (150 degrees)
Rain-X (110 degrees - car windshield protector)
Teflon (95-110 degrees - surprisingly low, but then it needs to be tough and heat-proof)
Car wax (90 degrees)
Human skin (90 degrees - PDF warning)

I wonder what the durability of the glass is compared to Neverwet w(which is pervious to solvents, detergents, soap and high pressure water)...

http://sviehb.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/viehboeck_wps.pdf

+1 if I couldn't remove the DRM from Amazon ebooks easily I wouldn't buy them. FWIW here are the steps (all based on software from that apprenticealf.wordpress.com blog):
http://apprenticealf.wordpress.com/

***Amazon Kindle***
- Download and install the Kindle for PC application and ensure all ebooks you want to remove DRM from are downloaded in Kindle for PC

- Download & install Activestate Python Community Edition

- Download the 'combined tools package' from apprenticealf's blog (http://tinyurl.com/6asq47f)

- Double-click KindleBooks/Kindlebooks.pyw from the 'combined tools package', it should pop-up a GUI dialog with window title 'Kindle/Mobi/... eBook Encryption Removal'

- Click the ... to give it the path to the eBook input file. It'll be a .azw file in My Documents\My Kindle Content. Then select the directory where the unencrypted output file should go

- For the 'Alternative Kindle.info file' line do a Windows Search for *.kinf, this will find your kindle.info (in later versions .kinf) file. Eg. on Windows 7 it might be in c:\Users\myuser\AppData\Local\Amazon\Kindle\storage. On Windows XP it's C:\Documents and Settings\myuser\Local Settings\Application Data\Amazon\Kindle\storage

- Click Start!

Note: 'Directory for Unencrypted Output File(s)' should be something simple like c:\ or C:\Documents and Settings\myuser\Desktop. Kindlebooks.pyw has a problem with either the path length or particular characters in the path.

There are studies that show the "natural" conception of numbers is one, two, many, a lot.

http://numberwarrior.wordpress.com/2010/07/30/is-one-two-many-a-myth/

You can search the real literature if you'd like; that was one of the first hits I found. Once you can teach your kids to count beyond 5, they've already beaten most of humanity.

The calculation done in 1967 by Manabe and Wetherald

Does that calculation say that the ice caps will melt, the waters will rise, and we will all starve to death? Or does it predict a mild temperature rise like we have already observed?

I don't deny that the world has warmed. But I question the apocalyptic scenarios that say that feedbacks will amplify everything and we all will die.

I have no interest in, nor patience with, "apocalyptic scenarios that say that feedbacks will amplify everything and we all will die," although I'm not actually quite sure who these people are. The climate scientists I pay attention say that the anthropogenic warming effect is, so far, about half a degree. Perhaps Lovelock was saying "feedbacks will amplify everything and we will all die," but the actual climate scientists-- the ones nobody pays attention to-- are a little less spectacular.

Yes, in fact I do have issues with the arguments presented in the blog you cite. It is badly cherrypicked, I'm afraid. I don't have anything like the time required to show how, over and over again, Evans made choices of what data to present and how to present the data that just "happen" to make the predictions look bad, but I will start with just a single question for you. In figure 3, the graph showing how bad Hansen's predictions are, he happens to start the graph with the "prediction" matching the data at the left edge of the graph, at 1988. Now, the Hansen paper he is quoting predictions from was published in 1988, so that paper couldn't possibly have known the temperature in 1988. In fact, eyeballing the graph, it looks like 1988 was a cyclic high point. The paper was published 1988, so it must have been written in 1987, which means that Hansen actually must have baselined his predictions on temperature data from no later than 1986 (1987 data wouldn't have been available yet, of course.). OK, Evans does give his source for the data he graphed, and, yes, it turns out that 1988 was indeed anomalously high. The average temperature for 1986 was 0.41 degrees cooler than the temperature in January, 1988.
So, here's my question: if you slide the predictions 0.41 degrees lower (and two years earlier) than they are shown in the graph drawn by Evans-- that is, start the predictions at the point where the temperature actually was when Hansen made the prediction-- how does the data fit the prediction?

I have no problem decrypting Amazon books with http://apprenticealf.wordpress.com/2010/02/11/hello-world/ Use Calibre to then convert to whatever format you want. I have a Kobo and always buy my books. But Kobostore sometimes does not have the books I want so I buy them from Amazon and then strip and convert.

The problem is that the data tells us one thing and the IPCC tells us another.

Dare ask questions about this rather strange concept known as "scientific consensus" and you'll be labelled a "denier".

California has had Mad Cow for years.

In the 90's, the distinction was popularly called Knowledge in the World vs. Knowledge in the Head. As our communication and recording systems improve, we externalize more of our knowledge. First we recorded knowledge in books rather than memorize poetry. Now we rely on Google instead of memorizing facts.

Every book we read, therefore, constitutes a portion of our externalized knowledge. Some of what we read might get memorized, but most of it gets absorbed as an awareness where we know we can look it up again in the future (moves knowledge from DK-DK to K-DK). By agreeing to DRM, eBook users place control of part of their knowledge -- part of their mind, if you will -- in the hands of corporations. The corporations are practicing mind control with DRM.

That's the good. The bad is extensions silently failing; interface being suddenly reorganised without any explanation.

The Mozilla view seems to be that Web Apps can already act in this capricious fashion, so desktop applications should too. This just seems to be taking what is bad and unempowering about web applications and bringing it to the desktop.

The latest interface idea is to reorganise the address bar to remove the site icon, get rid of the blue https signifier and replace it with a greyed out padlock (once more it's a coincidence how similar this ends up being to Chrome). I understand the reasoning for removing the site icon, but developers seem to think it's OK to jump from telling users that they should ignore any lock in that position, and look for the blue text, to a new UI which is the exact opposite. And they wish to push these changes silently to users; I can only assume they don't work with actual end users in the real world.

Every UI change has a cost to users in adapting to it, and a cost to those who support end users (businesses using the browser or supporting end users of browser based software), this needs to be balanced against the value of the new UI. At the very least the experience for users moving from the old to the new system needs to be considered. Users are much less excited by new stuff than developers, and they're much more put out be needless change. One of the effects of Mozilla's open development process is being able to see this disregard across their bugzilla/maillists/wikis.