That the FDA found an excuse to stick its dick where it doesn't belong? The entire article reads like one great big FDA power grab. Lines about expanding the FDA's authority and jurisdiction to areas where it doesn't currently exist, and strengthening it where it's weak because the shibboleth of nanotechnology will provide them a FUD cover don't exactly fill me with joy. The FDA is already the single largest impediment to development of drugs, and allowing them to interfere with a fledgling technology under the banner of "safety" is only going to hurt future development and us, the consumers.
Of course, these new regulatory powers will necessitate budget increases for the FDA. Is there a single government agency that has ever, in the history of time, said "You know what guys? We actually have more money than we need. Go ahead and take this back, use it somewhere else, maybe give it back to the people."? Of course not. Government agencies ALWAYS try to increase their funding and power base, and it's silly that we let them just because they use big words and imply that, if they don't get what they want, Borg devices will make their way into everyone's bodies via a carrot or something. Remember, the government relies on the fact that most people are too stupid to tie their shoes, let alone parse the rhetoric they spit out.
We have to protect research and development of new tech, including nanotech, and suffocating the ability of companies to produce commercially profitable nanotechnology through over-regulation and intervention will only hold back advances in the tech and decreases in the cost.
Look, we're all hemming and hawing around the real issue. You want to see what the real agenda of the Blackle is? Everywhere they talk about black and white "backgrounds", think black and white "people".
That's right, the Blackle crew is seeking to replace all white people with black people. It's a well known fact that black people's internal batteries consume less power than those that power white people, and the dark tone of their skin means that they retain more of the sunlight that all humans need to enable the process of photosynthesis. Not only that, but as any student of physics knows, playing basketball and generally being cool by nature decrease the amount of entropy in the universe. That's right, black people violate the laws of thermodynamics via being hip and talking jive.
Also compare the lifestyles of each group. As an attempt to cover up their small penises, white people buy a lot of high tech gadgetry, creating, in essence, a proxy-dong out of cell phones, laptops, PDA's, Italian cars, etc... The preening of white people accounts for 85% of the world's energy consumption. Proven fact. What's the most extravagant black peacock display? Rims? They spin all by themselves! They're fucking perpetual motion machines! Black people have perpetual motion machines on their goddamn impalas. Does your iPhone have a fucking perpetual motion machine? No it doesn't, because Steve Jobs is white, and the knowledge of perpetual motion is forbidden to whites by the god Ogun. So suck it.
Look, mock me if you want, but I've seen this kind of thing before. Sure, you environmentalists are thinking "Well, if eradicating all people of my skin tone is what it takes to save mother earth, then I guess that I'll have to suck it up and take it." Well, to paraphrase Pastor Martin Niemöller, first they came for the whites, and you did nothing. Then they came for the kitties, and you did nothing. Then they came for the sort of caramel colored guys, but not the South Americans, just the kind of half-white/half black guys. Then they came for the old blues guitarist black guys from Alabama. And then they'll come for you. Is it really worth it?
I, for one, will fight against Blackle's attempt to eliminate all white people. It's an injustice,and must be stopped!
This is actually not as terrible as it seems to be, and probably isn't substantially different from the laws that are enforced today. Let me preface all of my following arguments with this statement: I hate Executive Orders. They're subversions of the Constitution, and should be declared as such by the Supreme Court. Through "clarifying" enforcement duties, it gives the Executive branch the power to essentially create new laws out of whole cloth. Affirmative action is one such result. That said, here are the reasons this particular XO isn't uniquely worse than any other:
The XO restricts the scope of seizable offenses to acts of violence and material support of those who commit acts of violence. This doesn't give the Treasury department the ability to jack the property of people who write blogs about how the US sucks, and Iraq should fall into the earth, or how they want al Qaeda to win, or anything like that. It's only violent activities that trigger the XO's provisions.
I'm not even sure that this XO gives the Treasury Department any powers that other executive departments and agencies don't already have. The DOJ/FBI/CIA/NSA can _already_ seize the assets of people and organizations identified as terrorist supporters.
Now, that said, here's a major problem I have with this:
It leaves the determination of who has, in fact, committed such acts to the sole discretion of the Treasury department. It must "consult" with State and Defense, but there's nothing to indicate that consultation is binding. It also doesn't provide any outlet for judicial review of a Treasury decision, or even an appeals process within the Treasury department.
We should always be cautious whenever the State assigns itself further powers to seize personal property. The IRS, DOJ, DEA, FBI, CIA, NSA, Dept. of Ag, etc... already have seizure power and in many cases abuse it to the detriment of the citizenry in ways that are much more egregious than what Treasury could do with this new XO. We should really focus on the fact that people's lives are ruined for minor offenses such as tax evasion and drug possession before we start losing our minds over and XO that doesn't give the government MANY more new powers than it had before.
You know, this is why I'm a small/no government advocate, because the State will always expand its power at the expense of the rights of the citizenry.
Also, I know someone else has pointed this out already, but this has no impact on the 5th amendment at all. It's a poorly titled article that should have been corrected by the approval staff before being put on the site.
It's a solution without a problem. The actual impact of caller ID spoofing is almost nil, while it's a valuable learning tool for many people just getting started with phones. The only argument I can see for it is that it makes reporting violators of the Do Not Call list. However a.) that's not a big enough benefit to justify any but the smallest trade off and b.) the Do Not Call list is stupid, and its impact should be achieved via implementation of blacklists by phone carriers. The government shouldn't be acting unless there's a serious matter at hand, nor should it engage in yet another unConstitutional regulation.
It's too open-ended.
`(4) REPORT- Not later than 6 months after the enactment of this subsection, the Commission shall report to Congress whether additional legislation is necessary to prohibit the provision of inaccurate caller identification information in technologies that are successor or replacement technologies to telecommunications service or IP-enabled voice service.
...
`(A) CALLER IDENTIFICATION INFORMATION- The term `caller identification information' means information provided by a caller identification service regarding the telephone number of, or other information regarding the origination of, a call made using a telecommunications service or IP-enabled voice service.
Why not apply this to IP-spoofed or proxy'd Ventrilio/TeamSpeak/etc... conversation? This only increases the Constitutional argument against this amendment, because even if you buy the absurd assertion that the commerce clause gives the USFG power over anything that even remotely involves interstate commerce, where's the commerce in a private Teamspeak server? It also increases the chances of abuse by law enforcement, like the kids above.
The bill doesn't just restrict malicious spoofing, like making a threatening phone call look like it's coming from inside the house, it restricts simply playful spoofing, like ordering a pizza for I.P. Freely and making it look like comes from the local police precinct. Nor does it make a distinction between spoofed info that represents someone else's information accurately, and displaying non-existent information like '555-555-1212'. There's no reason the government should be spending my tax dollars on something as asinine as this. Osama bin Laden isn't calling up the White House and asking for Prince Albert in a Can while spoofing his CID to say "SUCK IT DRY".
The fines are absurdly out of proportion with any _potential harm_ presented by caller ID spoofers. What incentive does the USFG or the states (which the bill empowers to act on these matters) have to NOT go after 14 year old kids for $10k a pop? None. But nobody will think that at first, until the first few kids get busted, and are we really OK with _anyone_ being jacked by something this stupid?
One doesn't really have much to do with the other. The USSR had great science, not much democracy.
Actually, that's only partially true. A great deal of the Soviet war R&D (and let's not pretend that there was any real science going on outside the military in the USSR) was the result of the products of espionage. Yes, the Sov's did produce some neat things, but they straight jacked a lot of it from nations like the US and the UK.
Common sense is absurd to mention in a scientific debate. Vaclav Havel is a writer and politician. I don't tell him how to write. Why is he telling me how to do science? Could it have something to do with helping out Bush and his oil buddies now that Bush is putting missiles in the Czech Republic to defend against Russia? I can't help but notice the convenient timing.
But you _do_ tell him how to make policy. Or, if not you, your ideological compatriots. The implicit assertion behind your beliefs RE: global warming is that there are X Y and Z policy solutions to these problems. Pretending as though scientists aren't human, have no desires or pre-conceptions is silly. Yes, they are in a field where objective truth must eventually win out over political, philosophical, and other non-scientific concerns, but there's a lot of time between hypothesis and proof where those considerations _do_ take place. Look at quantum mechanics, or the cosmological constant, or the "global cooling" movement of the mid-70's. Or, for an even better example, look at some of the reactions to the work that's being done in biology today. Try to study the relationships between gender/race and brain development, and watch how quickly even scientists will react.
Furthermore, your position seems to be "keep a wall between the scientists and the politicians/writers", but do you criticize Gore or any of the other global warming alarmists when they attack the science of scientists who don't buy into the global warming Chicken Little scenario? You may, but that would make you an abnormally consistent person, and I know that many people who align themselves with your beliefs do not. And from the tone of your post, it seems to me that what you _really_ mean to say is "If you disagree with me, then you have to shut up", which is kind of the point he's making.
Global warming is real, and the cause is most likely human. The proposed fixes aren't trying to roll back the industrial age. They proposed fixes are trying to avoid some really dangerous scenarios (like flooding all the worlds coastal cities and acidification of the oceans). If it turns out that the theories are incorrect, you can certainly go ahead and burn all that fuel. It'll still be in the ground in 20 years.
Oh, so now you're trying to tell the policy makers and economists how to do their job? It seems as though your wall between science and policy has become a door that only opens in one direction. Do you _actually_ know what would happen if we imposed the kind of restrictions that mainstream climate alarmists are talking about? Do you really conceive the kind of damage it would do to our quality of life, to our technological and medical development, and to our future? You can't just take a 20 year time out in a global economy, we would stagnate to the point where we'd never be able to recover.
This is constantly the point that I come back to in climate debates. It's silly to declare that the science is done, because it's just not. You can't study a massively chaotic system like the climate of the Earth for 20 years and then declare that, without any possible dissent, dispute, or disagreement, you are Right, and everyone else is Wrong. It seems to me that the great scientific discoveries of humanity have been as a result of people declaring that no, the Asserted Doctrinal Truth is not, in fact, correct, that there's an alternate reason for things we observe. Is humanity drastically increasin
So, this one day, I'm just chillin on my laptop, like usual, and I open up some new fangled thing called a bloog? a blorg? Whatever. Anyway, so I open up this bloogleborg, and TUBES LEPT OUT OF MY COMPUTER AND SODOMIZED ME .
This is serious business people. I had a friend get his house robbed by an Internet that one of his friends sent him. The dangers of the internet are no laughing matter, I know from experience!
The above may have actually been a quote from the debate (if there was any) leading up to this senseless resolution. It kind of shows what happens when you let a bunch of people who formed their ideas about how the world works under the Eisenhower administration run everything 50 years later, and it's damn depressing. The outcome is the same as it would be if you let your grandma's nursing home bridge group make InnerTubes (tm) policy for the country. Of course, it's also the natural outcome of letting a government become so large and expansive that it's willing to make vast pronouncements from on high about things that it knows absolutely nothing about, because, well, it's FOR THE CHIRREN!!!!
Are there dangers associated with the Internet? Of course there are. Life is dangerous. You go outside, you can be hit by a car. You stay inside, a meteor could come crashing down on you. Eat some food, could be poison! There are always risks. The way to NOT get screwed by cars/meteors/poison/interwebz is not to scream about how the things themselves are dangerous, because that's silly. Cars and houses and sidewalks and computers and guns (that's right, guns) are all things that will cause no harm when you a.) know how to use them, and b.) aren't stupid about it. Yes, you should not let your children go to www.wantsomecandylittleboy.com . You should also not step on the accelerator in the middle of a traffic jam.
I don't even know why I need to explain this. Is this the end time?
Less than a tenth of 100% is less than 10%, so no he didn't say that. He said that less than 10% is wasted, which is quite likely to be true.
He said:
Less than a tenth of a percent of welfare money goes to people who don't need it(
1/10th of 1% is, in fact, 0.1%. However, even if I granted you your crazy powers of 10, I'd still argue that it's wrong. Nobody _needs_ welfare. People put themselves in situations where they are either unwilling or incapable of caring for themselves, but they don't _need_ welfare, they _need_ to a.) stop making babies, and b.) get a fucking job. It's _all_ wasted. Every single dime of my hard-earned money that goes to someone that doesn't work for it is a fucking waste. They don't have a right to my money simply because they exist.
I do consider myself lucky that I don't have your welfare system. I'm not sure where you're from, but it sounds like some sad socialist European nation. And the benefits you describe aren't so great. Think of how much the cost of those services would fall if the state weren't paying, but individual consumers were. When you remove the need to pay for something, you increase the demand, and without an equal increase in supply, the price will go up. Also, with consumers footing the bill, opportunity cost calculations are made, and people say things like "Hrm... do I _really_ need to go to the doctor for this cold, or should I save the money and use it somewhere else".
Plus, it's just a matter of liberty. No one can impose upon me an obligation I don't want.
Wow. WOW. Did you REALLY just say that less that 0.1% of welfare money is wasted? I mean, seriously dude, REALLY? You just said that? Do you have _anything_ to back that up, or is it just your desire to sate your own feelings of guilt with other people's money?
Welfare is notoriously inefficient, and, in fact, I'd argue that no one who receives it needs it. They can compete in the free marketplace like the rest of us, and if they've made such piss poor decisions in their lives that they can't pull in enough money to survive in the greatest, most diverse and vibrant economy on the planet, well, then, maybe they should suck it up and die, and make some space for people who are productive and contribute to society.
Your final comment makes it obvious that you've never actually read anything on this topic, and are merely saying whatever you think sounds good. Crime, teen pregnancy, etc... have _increased_ as government social programs have increased, not the other way around. Which shouldn't be surprising. When you teach people that their actions have no negative consequences, and rely on their innate need to better themselves and achieve intellectual advancement, well, you get the scenario we have today, where we incentivize negative behavior because people like you feel that it's the right thing to do.
How about this. You want to give people that YOU think deserve and need it some of YOUR money, feel free. I will do the same. I won't force you to give money to people I give to, and vice versa. But there's no reason why I should be forced to subsidize the existence of people that would improve the world by dying.
Look, I hate stupid, anti-speech laws as much as the next guy, but taking money from the pockets of welfare mothers with more gold in their mouths than I wear on my wrist makes me cry no tears. I mean, it's funny that they're taking it from welfare, but it's hardly a uniquely fucked up action on the part of the state. Plus, think of it this way:
The government takes money that YOU ACTUALLY WORKED FOR to pay welfare queens.
Yeah, not so many tears for the whore with 6 kids now, are there?
If it's not censored. That "mainstream" media news outlets didn't spend all year trumpeting these stories from the rooftops does not mean that there was any censorship. No one was _prevented_ from talking about them, as the article itself proves. People did talk about them, and wrote things about them.
Also, you should probably title this article "Top 25 Articles the Left Wanted the Media to Spend a Billion Hours On". I mean, come on, like 25% of the stories are ZOMFG CHENEY HALLIBURTON comments, including the "#2" story of the year by Jason Leopold, who has time and time again been proven a liar and a disreputable source as a journalist. The other stories are a mixture of internationalism and environmentalism. You _really_ mean to say that the top 25 "censored" stories of the year just magically happen to be about things that only Leftists give a shit about?
What about the confiscation of guns by authorities post-Katrina? You know, where the cops went by the houses of law-abiding citizens and demanded their guns at a time when looting and violence were at their peak? Nobody in the MSM talked about that. Or how about the 19 year old Iranian girl sentenced to death because she fought off one of her attempted rapists? Or the other Iranian girls who have been sentenced and executed for being whores after they were raped?
Bleh.
I don't know where I said that incompetence is the sole purview of the public sector. I wouldn't make that claim, obviously. There's tons of private sector inefficiency and failure. The difference is, in the private sector, the inefficient and stupid are weeded out (except for where overreaching employment laws prevent hte market from working). It might not be immediate, but no company is in it to _lose_ money, and a long enough pattern of failure will result in a company going out of business. That's not the case with the public sector. There's no competition, there's a federal employees union that makes the teamsters blush, and there's an institutional opposition to firing that simply doesn't exist in the public sector (see this). And perhaps most importantly, there's no intrinsic reason for government employees to be more productive than their counterparts. The money's going to keep coming in, because, last time I checked, taxes aren't optional, whereas buying from a private corporation.
Yes, there might be your truly altruistic, motivated public employee. But the government is a big bureaucracy, and bureaucracies don't exactly inspire brilliance. There's thousands of years of evidence for that as well. The Imperial Chinese, for example. There's also high pay in the private sector, which means that even the altruistic ones are going to be constantly staring a substantial pay increase in the face, taunting them.
It's not my fault that you're intellectually incapable of conceiving of a small government society. There's actually a ton of literature on the subject, an entire libertarian philosophical tradition. And there's plenty of recent historical evidence that shows that large government, which necessarily includes a large number of regulations and laws governing business transactions, tends to suppress economic growth. And the United States government does a fair amount more than just protect private property rights. It infringes upon the economic liberty of its citizenry with impunity, and the bureaucracy supports it. Explain to me why the government necessarily do more than have a police force and a court system to enforce contractual obligations.
That the United States is the greatest nation in the world is not BECAUSE of its quasi-socialism and infringement upon the liberties of its citizens, but in spite of it. Almost every major advancement of the United States is the result of the actions of private individuals working together, not overwhelming bureaucracies blowing billions of taxpayer dollars while they slide through.
Really, you're just wrong here. Any comparative study of the public sector vs. the private shows that private employees have much higher productivity and a much more useful skillset than the public.
This is probably a point that's been made elsewhere, but the most disturbing thing about the National ID is not just that it's an egregious encroachment of our freedoms, privacy, and right to stay out of federal and commercial databases, but that it's all these things AND absolutely useless as any kind of security check. All ID card systems assume that identity proves security, that if I appear to be who I say I am, that means that I am no longer a security risk. This is just security theater. Even under the National ID system, there's nothing preventing forgery or fraudulent usage of the base documents used to get an ID card (social security card, birth cert, whatever). There's no reason Achmed bin Terrorist can't roll up to the National ID store with some real documents that, for example, aren't his but also haven't been used to generate another National ID, and get a card for himself.
There's also no reason to assume that, unique among all other ID cards, the National ID will be unforgeable, or that even if it is, the staff employed to verify that an ID card is legit will do their jobs. Government employees are the lowest common denominator in the best case, and ID checking unskilled zombies aren't likely to be any better.
Identity is not security, and LACK of identity is not a lack of security.
RIght, I never claimed that there was an infinite number of hash values for SHA-512, or at least, if it came across that way, it wasn't my intention. I'm using SHA-512 because a.) It's based off of SHA2 which is a different algorithm than SHA1 and hasn't been successfully collided (as far as I know), and b.) it's got the longest output out at 512 bits.
A less than brute-force (2^80) attack against full SHA-1 was reported by Prof. Wang at the 2005 CRYPTO conference. I can't seem to find a copy of her paper, but there she reported a collision in 2^63 (within the realm of feasibility) operations.
Full collisions in MD5 were found shortly before that.
Neither hashing algorithm should be trusted for securing anything at this point. Not that these collisions mean that every script kiddie and l33t ahx0r are going to be out there changing digitally signed documents or cracking shadow files in mere seconds, but there are known flaws with both that make using them irresponsible.
While the article is pretty much useless, there may be something to the overall point. I mean, it's not as though anyone can expect your average newspaper reporter, much less a Chinese state run paper reporter, to know much about the subject of encryption/hashing/etc..., so I think it's useful to look past the obvious errors in the article, and talk about what the underlying story actually is.
_IF_ this is a new report of a collision in SHA-1, that wouldn't be surprising. Prof. Wang and her team have been responsible for discovering more than a few attacks against SHA and MD5 ( http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/02/sha1 _broken.html ), so it's possible that she discovered a method of causing a collision in full SHA-1 in even less than the 2^63 operations that had previously been the max. This article could just be poorly reporting that.
Or it could be 2 years behind the times.
Either way, MD5, SHA-0 and SHA-1 have been known to have collision issues for a while now. At least in my own applications, I've moved on to using SHA-512 (a SHA-2 variant with a larger block size and 512 bit output), and as far as I know, there've been no reports of a collision attack against it.
Did you even bother to read my post, Snarky McGee? Yes, you're right, the article does NOT say what I said. Nor did I claim that the article said what I said. See, I do this thing, it's called reading. I do it a lot, and helps me to learn things, and then go on to form my own opinions on matters, depending on how compelling one side or another is. Then, after I've learned, and I go and run my mouth about it, which is what produced that sentence. I wasn't writing a book report, I was making a point.
If you have any evidence of my "inventions" and "paranoia", please present it. As far as I can tell, my post is pretty rational, and hardly a tinfoilhatpartytime. And I am hardly on a "holy war" against the scientific community. I'm arguing FOR science, real science, not science molded to fit a political agenda, which is what the alarmists are doing every time they refuse to consider the possibility that maybe they're wrong. I mean, for fuck's sake, the Earth is a huge, chaotic system. It's pure hubris to say that OMFG WE UNDESTAND EVERT1NG BOUT IT SO STOP UR CARS. I want there to be research, on all sides of the argument, because that;s how you figure out what the truth really is.
Next time I post, though, I'll be sure to just re-hash the claims made in the article I'm responding to, because clearly, intelligent debate stems from high school summary papers.
In your first post, you said:
"They are releasing FUD plain and simple. What is it going to take to make you believe that global warming is an issue that needs to be addressed, watching your children die of melanoma?"
I believe that qualifies as alarmist, even though I have no children myself. Clearly, the implication there is "FIX GLOBAL WARMING OR DIE". If you're NOT a member of the GW alarmist camp, I apologize for my assumption, but that's what it seems like from what you wrote.
.
As for the 2 organizations that label Exxon as a "mis-informer", from the article, these are their objections:
raised doubts about even the most indisputable scientific evidence
I'm sorry, but if I had a nickel for every time since the early 80's that some climatologist has declared his evidence to be "indisputable", and was then proven wrong a decade later, I'd be a rich man. Julian Bond wrote some really interesting stuff in this area. Plus, more importantly, isn't science ABOUT doubting supposedly indisputable evidence? Tell the quantum physics guys that they're jerks for doubting what "Everyone knows". Now, the article doesn't say exactly which "indisputable" facts that Exxon dared to question, so I can't evaluate those on the merits.
funded an array of front organizations to create the appearance of a broad platform for a tight-knit group of vocal climate change contrarians who misrepresent peer-reviewed scientific findings
Unfortunately, there aren't a lot of climate skeptics left in academia, because they've all been chased out. It's not just the Italians I listed in my previous post. Henk Tennekes, a Dutch (I think) meteorologist and head of the Royal Dutch Meteorological Society, Aksel Winn-Nielsen, former director of the U.N.'s World Meteorological Organization, and plenty of other have also been shut down by the global warming alarmist establishment. Is it any wonder then that companies with an interest in the matter would fund research going the other way? The fact is, climate skeptics are almost routinely ignored by the alarmist camp because, well, they ask questions about crazy things like data. It's not Exxon's fault, it's the
scientific communities fault for being so rigid in the face of what I thought defined their field: the search for truth.
attempted to portray its opposition to action as a positive quest for "sound science" rather than business self-interest
As opposed to all the other groups that have a chip in the global warming game that are so pure and chaste and free from ideological rigor? Look, it doesn't matter what their motivation is. If they're right, they're right. That's the whole science thing there. Even if their desire is to prove that burning African babies to power their sprinkler systems, if they're _right_, and the climate debate really ISN'T settled, then their actions are still correct, and we shouldn't dismiss the possibility simply because having the alarmists be wrong would be to their profit. Actually, if the alarmists are wrong, that benefits all of our pocketbooks, but that's a different story.
* used its access to the Bush administration to block federal policies and shape government communications on global warming
That's called lobbying. Everyone does it, because hte government has its damn fingers in everything. Hardly out of the ordinary, or nefarious in any way.
Re: my political persuasion. I'm American, but not a conservative. Libertarian, if you have to buttonhole me.
I answered your original question in my first reply. "I will believe that global warming is an issue that we need to address when there's data to prove that there is, not a bunch of discarded and disproven hockey stick models, empirically false predictions, and hysterics. When the skeptics are given a chance to, I dunno, do some research and crunch some numbers of their own, and then those theories are compared to the alarmist theories in a rational, scientific manner, and THEN the alarmists show to be right, I'll worry."
See, this is the exact behavior I'm talking about.
) No, I'm not an Exxon stock holder, unless the company managing my 401(k) has put some of my contributions into it, but I don't think that the general plan I picked would result in investments in oil companies.
) Wait, so you're saying that Exxon should stand by and take it while leftists and alarmists scream from the top of the mountaintop "EXXON IS RAPING MY BABIES"? What would be the point of that? Even if their _sole_ motive is profit, that doesn't mean that the research produced by their funding is wrong.
) I'm sorry, how does additional research "confuse the issue"? The issue is _already_ confusing because there's simply not enough data out there to draw a conclusion. Research _decreases_ the confusion, unless, of course, you define "confusion" as "wholeheartedly subscribing to the alarmist global warming view and riding a bike everywhere".
) If you actually bothered to look into the matter, Exxon does fund a lot of straight up private research, in addition to having their own in-house people. But back to my earlier point, which is that there's no reason to assume that a university or any other research institution is intrinsically free of bias or preconception. Not wanting to piss off your boss and get canned is a universal drive, and it applies to the climate science department run by a crazy alarmist as much as it does a researcher working for Exxon. Neither one of them wants to piss their boss off an lose their job, so maybe all the research they do is a little less credible than it might otherwise be. That's why we don't just throw down the flag and declare that, yes, the ISSUE has been DECIDED THANK YOU VERY MUCH. We do more research from as many sources as possible, playing with as much data as possible, and from there we being to form ideas about what's really going on. It's the marketplace of scientific discovery.
) Oh, yeah, Exxon is the only one guilty of FUD. It's not the anti-technocrats who run commercials with little kids talking about how global warming is going to kill them. It's not the British government, which is getting ready to embark on some of the most anti-freedom and anti-progress measures in its history in order to COMBAT THE DEADLY GLOBAL WARMING MONKEY. It's not the climatologists who have been declaring since the 80's that THIS IS THE YEAR WE ALL DIE, while temperatures have increased moderately (about a degree C in the past century, hardly anything to go bat shit over). It's all the Dirty Evil Capitalist Oil Robber Barons. Aren't you happy that you're aligned with people who are so pure and right and good in everything that they do that they're above reproach? Also, what's the FUD on Exxon's part? Seems to me like they're trying to dispel Fear and make Uncertain the idea that Death is imminent.
) I will believe that global warming is an issue that we need to address when there's data to prove that there is, not a bunch of discarded and disproven hockey stick models, empirically false predictions, and hysterics. When the skeptics are given a chance to, I dunno, do some research and crunch some numbers of their own, and then those theories are compared to the alarmist theories in a rational, scientific manner, and THEN the alarmists show to be right, I'll worry.
) That global warming might be an issue doesn't then lead to the myriad of stupid Leftist policies that fascists of all political stripes would impose upon us to SOLVE TEH PROBELM. OMFG U KANT DRIVE UR KAR R TRUCK AND I H8 INFRASTRUCTURE is _not_ a valid policy, it's an anti-technology, anti-capitalist, and anti-progress agenda that these people _already have_, and are using hte global warming debate to advance, regardless of the science.
Wait, so you mean to tell me that maybe, just maybe, Exxon has a good reason to fund investigations that would otherwise go undone because of the irrational bias towards the catastrophic models of climate change? I'm stunned.
Look, privately funded science isn't automatically bad and twisted to prove a conclusion. Does it happen? Yes, of course it does, but it also happens in publicly funded research, and there's a lot less accountability there. That Exxon, or any oil company, has dumped money into disproving the high pitched hysterics of the climate fascists isn't nefarious in any way, it's their duty to their shareholders, and to the rest of us. Should we just blindly accept anyone's ideologically motivated declarations on the science of climate change, or should we, i dunno, do some experiments and try to arrive at real conclusions, based on empiricism and reason?
If this work were getting done by the "establishment" climate scientists, Exxon wouldn't have to kick start it itself. But establishment climate scientists _aren't_ doing the research on their own, and those who try are often run out of the field. As Italian climate scientists Alfonso Sutera and Antonio Speranza what happens when you question the global warming orthodoxy.
So there's no mistake, I'm open to the possibility that the alarmists are right, that the sky is falling, that human activity is the main cause of climate change, that the temperature is going to raise by a billion degrees tomorrow unless we all revert back to some pre-industrial anti-humanist cave society. I'm also open to the possiblity that there really isn't a problem, that everyone's freaking out about nothing, and that, in fact, dumping tons of pollution makes my skin softer and more huggable. The fact is, we don't have enough data either way to draw CONCLUSIONS yet. We can hypothesize, we can speculate, but we simply don't know enough to declare, in big red letters, THE END IS NEAR.
Unfortunately, that's what the alarmists are doing, and it's a disservice to the field and the world itself to declare that debate is over, no more discussion is allowed, and anyone who questions becomes verboten. It's stupid to pretend that somehow, climate scientists are the only pure, unbias thinkers in the world, and everyone else is a stooge of the Big Scary Mean Capitalist Oil companies.
I've run both WinXP 64 and the 64 bit beta of Vista, and in both cases, it's simply not worth it. There's a very small, almost imperceptible increase in the speed of some OS tasks, and there are two huge drawbacks for me:
1.) Driver support is AWFUL. ATI and NVidia have just started offering 64 bit drivers, and while everyone else may be on the bandwagon come boxed Vista release time, right now it's hard to find really simple things like soundcard drivers.
2.) Running processor/graphics intensive 32 bit apps (WoW, KOTR, Unreal, etc...) is not great, and since most applications only come in 32 bit versions, you'll be stuck with a performance hit exactly where you don't need it.
If I had it to do again, I'd go with a dual-core processor over a 64 bit.
Look, I'm the first person to think that unnecessary expansions of government power are something to be feared and resisted, but, I'm sorry, did nobody actually _read_ the bill in question? Did everyone see "Bush signs bill abolishing restrictions on martial law", freak, and immediately begin to paste their canned "OMFG BUSH IMPERIAL PRESIDENT EMPIRE KARL ROVE DARK SIDE OF THE FORCE REPUBLICAN HALLIBURTON" responses?
You know what this bill does? It adds natural disasters and terrorist acts to the already existent set of conditions under which the President can assume command of, and deploy, the National Guard, and bring the other Armed Forces of the United States into use on domestic soil. That's _it_. The bit about keeping down insurrections and revolutions is _already_ part of the US code.
10 U.S.C.331 - "Whenever there is an insurrections in any State against its government, the President may, upon the request of its legislature or of its governor if the legislature cannot be convened, call into Federal service such of the militia of the other States, in the number requested by that State, and use such of the armed forces, as he considers necessary to suppress the insurrection.";
10 U.S.C.332 - "Whenever the President considers that unlawful obstructions, combinations, or assemblages, or rebellion against the authority of the United States, make it impracticable to enforce the laws of the United States in any State or Territory by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings, he may call into Federal service such of the militia of any State, and use such of the armed forces, as he considers necessary to enforce those laws or to suppress the rebellion."
10 U.S.C. 333 - "The President, by using the militia or the armed forces, or both, or by any other means, shall take such measures as he considers necessary to suppress, in a State, any insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination, or conspiracy, if it--
(1) so hinders the execution of the laws of that State, and of the United States within the State, that any part or class of its people is deprived of a right, privilege, immunity, or protection named in the Constitution and secured by law, and the constituted authorities of that State are unable, fail, or refuse to protect that right, privilege, or immunity, or to give that protection; or
(2) opposes or obstructs the execution of the laws of the United States or impedes the course of justice under those laws.
In any situation covered by clause (1), the State shall be considered to have denied the equal protection of the laws secured by the Constitution. "
Oh no! He's trying to take over the country! He's establishing a monarchy by adding terrorist attacks and natural disasters to the list of reasons the Armed Forces can be deployed in a State! Wow! What a tyrant! What an evil action! OMFG OMFG BUSHCHIMPHITLER!!!!!!!! HE"S GOING TO ARREST ALL DEMOCRATS!!! THROW ALL NON-CHRISTIANS IN JAIL!!!!
So, in 2009, when, as expected, the office of the President transfers to the winner of the election, I fully expect every single one of you who are acting like teenage girls who've been grounded the weekend of the Homecoming dance to stand up and admit that, yes, you were over-reacting simpletons whose understanding of politics and the law is about as extensive as my own personal knowledge of the female orgasm. That would be the _responsible_ thing to do.
Then again, judging from the tenor of the previous comments, maybe you'll just explain how, really, Dick Cheney is sitting in a secret room 33 floors below the Pentagon controlling the new President with a mind-control device that Halliburton made for him, built from the same technology as his hurricane-making machine and his vote-suppression machine.
Slashdot Mirror
That the FDA found an excuse to stick its dick where it doesn't belong? The entire article reads like one great big FDA power grab. Lines about expanding the FDA's authority and jurisdiction to areas where it doesn't currently exist, and strengthening it where it's weak because the shibboleth of nanotechnology will provide them a FUD cover don't exactly fill me with joy. The FDA is already the single largest impediment to development of drugs, and allowing them to interfere with a fledgling technology under the banner of "safety" is only going to hurt future development and us, the consumers.
Of course, these new regulatory powers will necessitate budget increases for the FDA. Is there a single government agency that has ever, in the history of time, said "You know what guys? We actually have more money than we need. Go ahead and take this back, use it somewhere else, maybe give it back to the people."? Of course not. Government agencies ALWAYS try to increase their funding and power base, and it's silly that we let them just because they use big words and imply that, if they don't get what they want, Borg devices will make their way into everyone's bodies via a carrot or something. Remember, the government relies on the fact that most people are too stupid to tie their shoes, let alone parse the rhetoric they spit out.
We have to protect research and development of new tech, including nanotech, and suffocating the ability of companies to produce commercially profitable nanotechnology through over-regulation and intervention will only hold back advances in the tech and decreases in the cost.
Look, we're all hemming and hawing around the real issue. You want to see what the real agenda of the Blackle is? Everywhere they talk about black and white "backgrounds", think black and white "people".
That's right, the Blackle crew is seeking to replace all white people with black people. It's a well known fact that black people's internal batteries consume less power than those that power white people, and the dark tone of their skin means that they retain more of the sunlight that all humans need to enable the process of photosynthesis. Not only that, but as any student of physics knows, playing basketball and generally being cool by nature decrease the amount of entropy in the universe. That's right, black people violate the laws of thermodynamics via being hip and talking jive.
Also compare the lifestyles of each group. As an attempt to cover up their small penises, white people buy a lot of high tech gadgetry, creating, in essence, a proxy-dong out of cell phones, laptops, PDA's, Italian cars, etc... The preening of white people accounts for 85% of the world's energy consumption. Proven fact. What's the most extravagant black peacock display? Rims? They spin all by themselves! They're fucking perpetual motion machines! Black people have perpetual motion machines on their goddamn impalas. Does your iPhone have a fucking perpetual motion machine? No it doesn't, because Steve Jobs is white, and the knowledge of perpetual motion is forbidden to whites by the god Ogun. So suck it.
Look, mock me if you want, but I've seen this kind of thing before. Sure, you environmentalists are thinking "Well, if eradicating all people of my skin tone is what it takes to save mother earth, then I guess that I'll have to suck it up and take it." Well, to paraphrase Pastor Martin Niemöller, first they came for the whites, and you did nothing. Then they came for the kitties, and you did nothing. Then they came for the sort of caramel colored guys, but not the South Americans, just the kind of half-white/half black guys. Then they came for the old blues guitarist black guys from Alabama. And then they'll come for you. Is it really worth it?
I, for one, will fight against Blackle's attempt to eliminate all white people. It's an injustice,and must be stopped!
It leaves the determination of who has, in fact, committed such acts to the sole discretion of the Treasury department. It must "consult" with State and Defense, but there's nothing to indicate that consultation is binding. It also doesn't provide any outlet for judicial review of a Treasury decision, or even an appeals process within the Treasury department.
We should always be cautious whenever the State assigns itself further powers to seize personal property. The IRS, DOJ, DEA, FBI, CIA, NSA, Dept. of Ag, etc... already have seizure power and in many cases abuse it to the detriment of the citizenry in ways that are much more egregious than what Treasury could do with this new XO. We should really focus on the fact that people's lives are ruined for minor offenses such as tax evasion and drug possession before we start losing our minds over and XO that doesn't give the government MANY more new powers than it had before.
You know, this is why I'm a small/no government advocate, because the State will always expand its power at the expense of the rights of the citizenry.
Also, I know someone else has pointed this out already, but this has no impact on the 5th amendment at all. It's a poorly titled article that should have been corrected by the approval staff before being put on the site.
Actually, that's only partially true. A great deal of the Soviet war R&D (and let's not pretend that there was any real science going on outside the military in the USSR) was the result of the products of espionage. Yes, the Sov's did produce some neat things, but they straight jacked a lot of it from nations like the US and the UK.
But you _do_ tell him how to make policy. Or, if not you, your ideological compatriots. The implicit assertion behind your beliefs RE: global warming is that there are X Y and Z policy solutions to these problems. Pretending as though scientists aren't human, have no desires or pre-conceptions is silly. Yes, they are in a field where objective truth must eventually win out over political, philosophical, and other non-scientific concerns, but there's a lot of time between hypothesis and proof where those considerations _do_ take place. Look at quantum mechanics, or the cosmological constant, or the "global cooling" movement of the mid-70's. Or, for an even better example, look at some of the reactions to the work that's being done in biology today. Try to study the relationships between gender/race and brain development, and watch how quickly even scientists will react.
Furthermore, your position seems to be "keep a wall between the scientists and the politicians/writers", but do you criticize Gore or any of the other global warming alarmists when they attack the science of scientists who don't buy into the global warming Chicken Little scenario? You may, but that would make you an abnormally consistent person, and I know that many people who align themselves with your beliefs do not. And from the tone of your post, it seems to me that what you _really_ mean to say is "If you disagree with me, then you have to shut up", which is kind of the point he's making.
Oh, so now you're trying to tell the policy makers and economists how to do their job? It seems as though your wall between science and policy has become a door that only opens in one direction. Do you _actually_ know what would happen if we imposed the kind of restrictions that mainstream climate alarmists are talking about? Do you really conceive the kind of damage it would do to our quality of life, to our technological and medical development, and to our future? You can't just take a 20 year time out in a global economy, we would stagnate to the point where we'd never be able to recover.
This is constantly the point that I come back to in climate debates. It's silly to declare that the science is done, because it's just not. You can't study a massively chaotic system like the climate of the Earth for 20 years and then declare that, without any possible dissent, dispute, or disagreement, you are Right, and everyone else is Wrong. It seems to me that the great scientific discoveries of humanity have been as a result of people declaring that no, the Asserted Doctrinal Truth is not, in fact, correct, that there's an alternate reason for things we observe. Is humanity drastically increasin
So, this one day, I'm just chillin on my laptop, like usual, and I open up some new fangled thing called a bloog? a blorg? Whatever. Anyway, so I open up this bloogleborg, and TUBES LEPT OUT OF MY COMPUTER AND SODOMIZED ME .
This is serious business people. I had a friend get his house robbed by an Internet that one of his friends sent him. The dangers of the internet are no laughing matter, I know from experience!
The above may have actually been a quote from the debate (if there was any) leading up to this senseless resolution. It kind of shows what happens when you let a bunch of people who formed their ideas about how the world works under the Eisenhower administration run everything 50 years later, and it's damn depressing. The outcome is the same as it would be if you let your grandma's nursing home bridge group make InnerTubes (tm) policy for the country. Of course, it's also the natural outcome of letting a government become so large and expansive that it's willing to make vast pronouncements from on high about things that it knows absolutely nothing about, because, well, it's FOR THE CHIRREN!!!!
Are there dangers associated with the Internet? Of course there are. Life is dangerous. You go outside, you can be hit by a car. You stay inside, a meteor could come crashing down on you. Eat some food, could be poison! There are always risks. The way to NOT get screwed by cars/meteors/poison/interwebz is not to scream about how the things themselves are dangerous, because that's silly. Cars and houses and sidewalks and computers and guns (that's right, guns) are all things that will cause no harm when you a.) know how to use them, and b.) aren't stupid about it. Yes, you should not let your children go to www.wantsomecandylittleboy.com . You should also not step on the accelerator in the middle of a traffic jam.
I don't even know why I need to explain this. Is this the end time?
I mean, seriously, come on.
I do consider myself lucky that I don't have your welfare system. I'm not sure where you're from, but it sounds like some sad socialist European nation. And the benefits you describe aren't so great. Think of how much the cost of those services would fall if the state weren't paying, but individual consumers were. When you remove the need to pay for something, you increase the demand, and without an equal increase in supply, the price will go up. Also, with consumers footing the bill, opportunity cost calculations are made, and people say things like "Hrm... do I _really_ need to go to the doctor for this cold, or should I save the money and use it somewhere else". Plus, it's just a matter of liberty. No one can impose upon me an obligation I don't want.
Wow. WOW. Did you REALLY just say that less that 0.1% of welfare money is wasted? I mean, seriously dude, REALLY? You just said that? Do you have _anything_ to back that up, or is it just your desire to sate your own feelings of guilt with other people's money?
Welfare is notoriously inefficient, and, in fact, I'd argue that no one who receives it needs it. They can compete in the free marketplace like the rest of us, and if they've made such piss poor decisions in their lives that they can't pull in enough money to survive in the greatest, most diverse and vibrant economy on the planet, well, then, maybe they should suck it up and die, and make some space for people who are productive and contribute to society.
Your final comment makes it obvious that you've never actually read anything on this topic, and are merely saying whatever you think sounds good. Crime, teen pregnancy, etc... have _increased_ as government social programs have increased, not the other way around. Which shouldn't be surprising. When you teach people that their actions have no negative consequences, and rely on their innate need to better themselves and achieve intellectual advancement, well, you get the scenario we have today, where we incentivize negative behavior because people like you feel that it's the right thing to do.
How about this. You want to give people that YOU think deserve and need it some of YOUR money, feel free. I will do the same. I won't force you to give money to people I give to, and vice versa. But there's no reason why I should be forced to subsidize the existence of people that would improve the world by dying.
Look, I hate stupid, anti-speech laws as much as the next guy, but taking money from the pockets of welfare mothers with more gold in their mouths than I wear on my wrist makes me cry no tears. I mean, it's funny that they're taking it from welfare, but it's hardly a uniquely fucked up action on the part of the state. Plus, think of it this way:
The government takes money that YOU ACTUALLY WORKED FOR to pay welfare queens.
Yeah, not so many tears for the whore with 6 kids now, are there?
If it's not censored. That "mainstream" media news outlets didn't spend all year trumpeting these stories from the rooftops does not mean that there was any censorship. No one was _prevented_ from talking about them, as the article itself proves. People did talk about them, and wrote things about them.
Also, you should probably title this article "Top 25 Articles the Left Wanted the Media to Spend a Billion Hours On". I mean, come on, like 25% of the stories are ZOMFG CHENEY HALLIBURTON comments, including the "#2" story of the year by Jason Leopold, who has time and time again been proven a liar and a disreputable source as a journalist. The other stories are a mixture of internationalism and environmentalism. You _really_ mean to say that the top 25 "censored" stories of the year just magically happen to be about things that only Leftists give a shit about?
What about the confiscation of guns by authorities post-Katrina? You know, where the cops went by the houses of law-abiding citizens and demanded their guns at a time when looting and violence were at their peak? Nobody in the MSM talked about that. Or how about the 19 year old Iranian girl sentenced to death because she fought off one of her attempted rapists? Or the other Iranian girls who have been sentenced and executed for being whores after they were raped? Bleh.
I don't know where I said that incompetence is the sole purview of the public sector. I wouldn't make that claim, obviously. There's tons of private sector inefficiency and failure. The difference is, in the private sector, the inefficient and stupid are weeded out (except for where overreaching employment laws prevent hte market from working). It might not be immediate, but no company is in it to _lose_ money, and a long enough pattern of failure will result in a company going out of business. That's not the case with the public sector. There's no competition, there's a federal employees union that makes the teamsters blush, and there's an institutional opposition to firing that simply doesn't exist in the public sector (see this). And perhaps most importantly, there's no intrinsic reason for government employees to be more productive than their counterparts. The money's going to keep coming in, because, last time I checked, taxes aren't optional, whereas buying from a private corporation.
Yes, there might be your truly altruistic, motivated public employee. But the government is a big bureaucracy, and bureaucracies don't exactly inspire brilliance. There's thousands of years of evidence for that as well. The Imperial Chinese, for example. There's also high pay in the private sector, which means that even the altruistic ones are going to be constantly staring a substantial pay increase in the face, taunting them.
It's not my fault that you're intellectually incapable of conceiving of a small government society. There's actually a ton of literature on the subject, an entire libertarian philosophical tradition. And there's plenty of recent historical evidence that shows that large government, which necessarily includes a large number of regulations and laws governing business transactions, tends to suppress economic growth. And the United States government does a fair amount more than just protect private property rights. It infringes upon the economic liberty of its citizenry with impunity, and the bureaucracy supports it. Explain to me why the government necessarily do more than have a police force and a court system to enforce contractual obligations.
That the United States is the greatest nation in the world is not BECAUSE of its quasi-socialism and infringement upon the liberties of its citizens, but in spite of it. Almost every major advancement of the United States is the result of the actions of private individuals working together, not overwhelming bureaucracies blowing billions of taxpayer dollars while they slide through.
Really, you're just wrong here. Any comparative study of the public sector vs. the private shows that private employees have much higher productivity and a much more useful skillset than the public.
This is probably a point that's been made elsewhere, but the most disturbing thing about the National ID is not just that it's an egregious encroachment of our freedoms, privacy, and right to stay out of federal and commercial databases, but that it's all these things AND absolutely useless as any kind of security check. All ID card systems assume that identity proves security, that if I appear to be who I say I am, that means that I am no longer a security risk. This is just security theater. Even under the National ID system, there's nothing preventing forgery or fraudulent usage of the base documents used to get an ID card (social security card, birth cert, whatever). There's no reason Achmed bin Terrorist can't roll up to the National ID store with some real documents that, for example, aren't his but also haven't been used to generate another National ID, and get a card for himself.
There's also no reason to assume that, unique among all other ID cards, the National ID will be unforgeable, or that even if it is, the staff employed to verify that an ID card is legit will do their jobs. Government employees are the lowest common denominator in the best case, and ID checking unskilled zombies aren't likely to be any better.
Identity is not security, and LACK of identity is not a lack of security.
RIght, I never claimed that there was an infinite number of hash values for SHA-512, or at least, if it came across that way, it wasn't my intention. I'm using SHA-512 because a.) It's based off of SHA2 which is a different algorithm than SHA1 and hasn't been successfully collided (as far as I know), and b.) it's got the longest output out at 512 bits.
A less than brute-force (2^80) attack against full SHA-1 was reported by Prof. Wang at the 2005 CRYPTO conference. I can't seem to find a copy of her paper, but there she reported a collision in 2^63 (within the realm of feasibility) operations. Full collisions in MD5 were found shortly before that. Neither hashing algorithm should be trusted for securing anything at this point. Not that these collisions mean that every script kiddie and l33t ahx0r are going to be out there changing digitally signed documents or cracking shadow files in mere seconds, but there are known flaws with both that make using them irresponsible.
While the article is pretty much useless, there may be something to the overall point. I mean, it's not as though anyone can expect your average newspaper reporter, much less a Chinese state run paper reporter, to know much about the subject of encryption/hashing/etc..., so I think it's useful to look past the obvious errors in the article, and talk about what the underlying story actually is. _IF_ this is a new report of a collision in SHA-1, that wouldn't be surprising. Prof. Wang and her team have been responsible for discovering more than a few attacks against SHA and MD5 ( http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/02/sha1 _broken.html ), so it's possible that she discovered a method of causing a collision in full SHA-1 in even less than the 2^63 operations that had previously been the max. This article could just be poorly reporting that.
Or it could be 2 years behind the times.
Either way, MD5, SHA-0 and SHA-1 have been known to have collision issues for a while now. At least in my own applications, I've moved on to using SHA-512 (a SHA-2 variant with a larger block size and 512 bit output), and as far as I know, there've been no reports of a collision attack against it.
Did you even bother to read my post, Snarky McGee? Yes, you're right, the article does NOT say what I said. Nor did I claim that the article said what I said. See, I do this thing, it's called reading. I do it a lot, and helps me to learn things, and then go on to form my own opinions on matters, depending on how compelling one side or another is. Then, after I've learned, and I go and run my mouth about it, which is what produced that sentence. I wasn't writing a book report, I was making a point.
If you have any evidence of my "inventions" and "paranoia", please present it. As far as I can tell, my post is pretty rational, and hardly a tinfoilhatpartytime. And I am hardly on a "holy war" against the scientific community. I'm arguing FOR science, real science, not science molded to fit a political agenda, which is what the alarmists are doing every time they refuse to consider the possibility that maybe they're wrong. I mean, for fuck's sake, the Earth is a huge, chaotic system. It's pure hubris to say that OMFG WE UNDESTAND EVERT1NG BOUT IT SO STOP UR CARS. I want there to be research, on all sides of the argument, because that;s how you figure out what the truth really is.
Next time I post, though, I'll be sure to just re-hash the claims made in the article I'm responding to, because clearly, intelligent debate stems from high school summary papers.
"They are releasing FUD plain and simple. What is it going to take to make you believe that global warming is an issue that needs to be addressed, watching your children die of melanoma?"
I believe that qualifies as alarmist, even though I have no children myself. Clearly, the implication there is "FIX GLOBAL WARMING OR DIE". If you're NOT a member of the GW alarmist camp, I apologize for my assumption, but that's what it seems like from what you wrote.
. As for the 2 organizations that label Exxon as a "mis-informer", from the article, these are their objections:
I'm sorry, but if I had a nickel for every time since the early 80's that some climatologist has declared his evidence to be "indisputable", and was then proven wrong a decade later, I'd be a rich man. Julian Bond wrote some really interesting stuff in this area. Plus, more importantly, isn't science ABOUT doubting supposedly indisputable evidence? Tell the quantum physics guys that they're jerks for doubting what "Everyone knows". Now, the article doesn't say exactly which "indisputable" facts that Exxon dared to question, so I can't evaluate those on the merits.
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funded an array of front organizations to create the appearance of a broad platform for a tight-knit group of vocal climate change contrarians who misrepresent peer-reviewed scientific findings
Unfortunately, there aren't a lot of climate skeptics left in academia, because they've all been chased out. It's not just the Italians I listed in my previous post. Henk Tennekes, a Dutch (I think) meteorologist and head of the Royal Dutch Meteorological Society, Aksel Winn-Nielsen, former director of the U.N.'s World Meteorological Organization, and plenty of other have also been shut down by the global warming alarmist establishment. Is it any wonder then that companies with an interest in the matter would fund research going the other way? The fact is, climate skeptics are almost routinely ignored by the alarmist camp because, well, they ask questions about crazy things like data. It's not Exxon's fault, it's the scientific communities fault for being so rigid in the face of what I thought defined their field: the search for truth.- attempted to portray its opposition to action as a positive quest for "sound science" rather than business self-interest
As opposed to all the other groups that have a chip in the global warming game that are so pure and chaste and free from ideological rigor? Look, it doesn't matter what their motivation is. If they're right, they're right. That's the whole science thing there. Even if their desire is to prove that burning African babies to power their sprinkler systems, if they're _right_, and the climate debate really ISN'T settled, then their actions are still correct, and we shouldn't dismiss the possibility simply because having the alarmists be wrong would be to their profit. Actually, if the alarmists are wrong, that benefits all of our pocketbooks, but that's a different story.-
* used its access to the Bush administration to block federal policies and shape government communications on global warming
That's called lobbying. Everyone does it, because hte government has its damn fingers in everything. Hardly out of the ordinary, or nefarious in any way.Re: my political persuasion. I'm American, but not a conservative. Libertarian, if you have to buttonhole me.
I answered your original question in my first reply. "I will believe that global warming is an issue that we need to address when there's data to prove that there is, not a bunch of discarded and disproven hockey stick models, empirically false predictions, and hysterics. When the skeptics are given a chance to, I dunno, do some research and crunch some numbers of their own, and then those theories are compared to the alarmist theories in a rational, scientific manner, and THEN the alarmists show to be right, I'll worry."
Wait, so you mean to tell me that maybe, just maybe, Exxon has a good reason to fund investigations that would otherwise go undone because of the irrational bias towards the catastrophic models of climate change? I'm stunned.
Look, privately funded science isn't automatically bad and twisted to prove a conclusion. Does it happen? Yes, of course it does, but it also happens in publicly funded research, and there's a lot less accountability there. That Exxon, or any oil company, has dumped money into disproving the high pitched hysterics of the climate fascists isn't nefarious in any way, it's their duty to their shareholders, and to the rest of us. Should we just blindly accept anyone's ideologically motivated declarations on the science of climate change, or should we, i dunno, do some experiments and try to arrive at real conclusions, based on empiricism and reason?
If this work were getting done by the "establishment" climate scientists, Exxon wouldn't have to kick start it itself. But establishment climate scientists _aren't_ doing the research on their own, and those who try are often run out of the field. As Italian climate scientists Alfonso Sutera and Antonio Speranza what happens when you question the global warming orthodoxy.
So there's no mistake, I'm open to the possibility that the alarmists are right, that the sky is falling, that human activity is the main cause of climate change, that the temperature is going to raise by a billion degrees tomorrow unless we all revert back to some pre-industrial anti-humanist cave society. I'm also open to the possiblity that there really isn't a problem, that everyone's freaking out about nothing, and that, in fact, dumping tons of pollution makes my skin softer and more huggable. The fact is, we don't have enough data either way to draw CONCLUSIONS yet. We can hypothesize, we can speculate, but we simply don't know enough to declare, in big red letters, THE END IS NEAR.
Unfortunately, that's what the alarmists are doing, and it's a disservice to the field and the world itself to declare that debate is over, no more discussion is allowed, and anyone who questions becomes verboten. It's stupid to pretend that somehow, climate scientists are the only pure, unbias thinkers in the world, and everyone else is a stooge of the Big Scary Mean Capitalist Oil companies.
I've run both WinXP 64 and the 64 bit beta of Vista, and in both cases, it's simply not worth it. There's a very small, almost imperceptible increase in the speed of some OS tasks, and there are two huge drawbacks for me: 1.) Driver support is AWFUL. ATI and NVidia have just started offering 64 bit drivers, and while everyone else may be on the bandwagon come boxed Vista release time, right now it's hard to find really simple things like soundcard drivers. 2.) Running processor/graphics intensive 32 bit apps (WoW, KOTR, Unreal, etc...) is not great, and since most applications only come in 32 bit versions, you'll be stuck with a performance hit exactly where you don't need it. If I had it to do again, I'd go with a dual-core processor over a 64 bit.
Look, I'm the first person to think that unnecessary expansions of government power are something to be feared and resisted, but, I'm sorry, did nobody actually _read_ the bill in question? Did everyone see "Bush signs bill abolishing restrictions on martial law", freak, and immediately begin to paste their canned "OMFG BUSH IMPERIAL PRESIDENT EMPIRE KARL ROVE DARK SIDE OF THE FORCE REPUBLICAN HALLIBURTON" responses?
You know what this bill does? It adds natural disasters and terrorist acts to the already existent set of conditions under which the President can assume command of, and deploy, the National Guard, and bring the other Armed Forces of the United States into use on domestic soil. That's _it_. The bit about keeping down insurrections and revolutions is _already_ part of the US code.
10 U.S.C.331 - "Whenever there is an insurrections in any State against its government, the President may, upon the request of its legislature or of its governor if the legislature cannot be convened, call into Federal service such of the militia of the other States, in the number requested by that State, and use such of the armed forces, as he considers necessary to suppress the insurrection.";
10 U.S.C.332 - "Whenever the President considers that unlawful obstructions, combinations, or assemblages, or rebellion against the authority of the United States, make it impracticable to enforce the laws of the United States in any State or Territory by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings, he may call into Federal service such of the militia of any State, and use such of the armed forces, as he considers necessary to enforce those laws or to suppress the rebellion."
10 U.S.C. 333 - "The President, by using the militia or the armed forces, or both, or by any other means, shall take such measures as he considers necessary to suppress, in a State, any insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination, or conspiracy, if it--
(1) so hinders the execution of the laws of that State, and of the United States within the State, that any part or class of its people is deprived of a right, privilege, immunity, or protection named in the Constitution and secured by law, and the constituted authorities of that State are unable, fail, or refuse to protect that right, privilege, or immunity, or to give that protection; or
(2) opposes or obstructs the execution of the laws of the United States or impedes the course of justice under those laws. In any situation covered by clause (1), the State shall be considered to have denied the equal protection of the laws secured by the Constitution. "
Oh no! He's trying to take over the country! He's establishing a monarchy by adding terrorist attacks and natural disasters to the list of reasons the Armed Forces can be deployed in a State! Wow! What a tyrant! What an evil action! OMFG OMFG BUSHCHIMPHITLER!!!!!!!! HE"S GOING TO ARREST ALL DEMOCRATS!!! THROW ALL NON-CHRISTIANS IN JAIL!!!!
So, in 2009, when, as expected, the office of the President transfers to the winner of the election, I fully expect every single one of you who are acting like teenage girls who've been grounded the weekend of the Homecoming dance to stand up and admit that, yes, you were over-reacting simpletons whose understanding of politics and the law is about as extensive as my own personal knowledge of the female orgasm. That would be the _responsible_ thing to do.
Then again, judging from the tenor of the previous comments, maybe you'll just explain how, really, Dick Cheney is sitting in a secret room 33 floors below the Pentagon controlling the new President with a mind-control device that Halliburton made for him, built from the same technology as his hurricane-making machine and his vote-suppression machine.
Dolts.