I've been home taking care of my son since he was three months old. He'll be 18 months when I get back to work.
That's not a typo - I'm a proud Swedish dad.
#1 Sweden is the most socially advanced country in the world.
Sweden is ranked 1st in Personal Safety, 3rd in Air, Water, and Sanitation, and 4th in Nutrition and Basic Medical Care. However, it ranked 37th in Ecosystem Sustainability. In terms of Opportunity, the Scandinavian country has stellar rankings — 2nd overall, 1st in Personal Freedom and Choice and Personal Rights, and 5th in Access to Higher Education. Its lowest score in this category is Equity and Inclusion, with a ranking of 7th.
In fact, I would argue that the distribution of intelligence among the popuplation today is the same as (or even skewed in the negative direction) 500 years ago, 1000 years ago, 5000 years ago, and 10,000 years ago. The local maxima and minima with respect to time are also unchanged
"The Flynn effect is the substantial and long-sustained increase in intelligence test scores measured in many parts of the world from roughly 1930 to the present day."
but insurance records of storm damage are probably a better way to detect any meaningful change in storm damage.
In studying hurricanes, we can make rough comparisons over time by adjusting past losses to account for inflation and the growth of coastal communities. If Sandy causes $20 billion in damage (in 2012 dollars), it would rank as the 17th most damaging hurricane or tropical storm (out of 242) to hit the U.S. since 1900—a significant event, but not close to the top 10. The Great Miami Hurricane of 1926 tops the list (according to estimates by the catastrophe-insurance provider ICAT), as it would cause $180 billion in damage if it were to strike today. Hurricane Katrina ranks fourth at $85 billion.
To put things into even starker perspective, consider that from August 1954 through August 1955, the East Coast saw three different storms make landfall—Carol, Hazel and Diane—that in 2012 each would have caused about twice as much damage as Sandy.
Here is one thing the industry agrees is true: The cost from hurricane damages is increasing. That's largely because population density and the cost of coastal property increases every year.
[---]
"Are we really seeing more storms, or are we just recording more storms? That's the big question," says longtime expert Karen Clark, who runs her own risk-management consultancy.
Clark says the problem is that hurricane prediction is a very young science. She notes that records documenting hurricanes go back only about a century, a data set far too small to draw big conclusions.
She says after Hurricane Katrina — the most expensive of all documented storms — some predicted a warming cycle would produce more powerful storms. That forecast did not bear out.
"It just shows you that we just are not that smart, you know, when it comes to what's really going on," Clark says.
Bill Keogh, president of Eqecat, one of the major risk-modeling firms in the U.S., says that despite what it may seem, we are now in a statistically low period of hurricane activity. After Katrina, few powerful hurricanes have made landfall in the U.S.
There's no scientific data that supports your opinion. The warming of the oceans is miniscule compared to seasonal variations - and corals have existed when the oceans have been much much warmer than today. The same goes for pH-levels - the global variance is an order of magnitude larger than the changes we believe we've seen over the last few hundred years (there's an issue with instrument calibration and number of significant digits far back).
The reefs are in no danger from either cooling or warming. They rebuild quickly, and have done so over many ice age cycles (where the last warm period was much warmer than ours today).
Coral reefs mostly bleach because of cooling and warming - the causes of which are natural changes in ocean circulation. The reefs are also much more resilient than we thought:
New research shows that an isolated reef off the northwest coast of Australia that was severely damaged by a period of warming in 1998 has regenerated in a very short time to become nearly as healthy as it was before. What surprises scientists, though, is that the reef regenerated by itself, found a study published Thursday in the journal Science
"The time span of the past few million years has been punctuated by many rapid climate transitions, most of them on time scales of centuries to decades or even less. The most detailed information is available for the Younger Dryas-to-Holocene stepwise change around 11,500 years ago, which seems to have occurred over a few decades. The speed of this change is probably representative of similar but less well-studied climate transitions during the last few hundred thousand years. These include sudden cold events (Heinrich events/stadials), warm events (Interstadials) and the beginning and ending of long warm phases, such as the Eemian interglacial. Detailed analysis of terrestrial and marine records of climate change will, however, be necessary before we can say confidently on what timescale these events occurred; they almost certainly did not take longer than a few centuries."
So, [...] Alexandria were all in different places few hundred years ago?
With a slightly longer definition of "a few" - indeed.
"how had the city sunk? Working with Goddio, geologist Jean-Daniel Stanley of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History examined dozens of drilled cores of sediment from the harbor depths. He determined that the edge of the ancient city had slid into the sea over the course of centuries because of a deadly combination of earthquakes, a tsunami and slow subsidence.
On August 21, in A.D. 365, the sea suddenly drained out of the harbor, ships keeled over, fish flopped in the sand. Townspeople wandered into the weirdly emptied space. Then, a massive tsunami surged into the city, flinging water and ships over the tops of Alexandria’s houses, according to a contemporaneous description by Ammianus Marcellinus based on eyewitness accounts. That disaster, which may have killed 50,000 people in Alexandria alone, ushered in a two-century period of seismic activity and rising sea levels that radically altered the Egyptian coastline."
The Arctic ocean is warming up, icebergs are growing scarcer and in some places the seals are finding the water too hot, according to a report to the Commerce Department yesterday from Consul Ifft, at Bergen, Norway.
Reports from fishermen, seal hunters and explorers, he declared, all point to a radical change in climate conditions and hitherto unheard-of temperatures in the Arctic zone. Exploration expeditions report that scarcely any ice has been met with as far north as 81 degrees 29 minutes. Soundings to a depth of 3,100 meters showed the gulf stream still very warm.
Great masses of ice have been replaced by moraines of earth and stones, the report continued, while at many points well known glaciers have entirely disappeared. Very few seals and no white fish are found in the eastern Arctic, while vast shoals of herring and smelts, which have never before ventured so far north, are being encountered in the old seal fishing grounds.
"The time span of the past few million years has been punctuated by many rapid climate transitions, most of them on time scales of centuries to decades or even less. The most detailed information is available for the Younger Dryas-to-Holocene stepwise change around 11,500 years ago, which seems to have occurred over a few decades. The speed of this change is probably representative of similar but less well-studied climate transitions during the last few hundred thousand years. These include sudden cold events (Heinrich events/stadials), warm events (Interstadials) and the beginning and ending of long warm phases, such as the Eemian interglacial. Detailed analysis of terrestrial and marine records of climate change will, however, be necessary before we can say confidently on what timescale these events occurred; they almost certainly did not take longer than a few centuries."
This is exactly the problem Flattr was invented to solve. Users simply tip for content they like - and since each user has set the max size of their monthly tipping jar themselves they'll never tip more than they can afford.
Disclaimer: While not associated with Flattr in any way, I know several of the people on the team. They really are out to make the world a better place for content authors.
*) Virtual items have value in virtual of the effort and time invested in obtaining them *) The value in Virtual items is recognised by those that play the game (including the defendents who went to the trouble to take them) *) The Virtual items were under the exclusive control of the player – who was relieved of this control
The court made reference to cases of electricity theft which is a similar intangible good but certainly has properties of power and control, and consequently can be stolen.
As far as I can see, we won this fight. As an Internet user of 20+ years I hope you appreciate the neatness and 'netness' of the solution:) In Gilmore's words (20 years ago, this year):
"The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it"
I say it again: anybody with an ounce of intelligence could figure out that your actions would've led to a legal battle
But of course. You could say that we've accomplished exactly what we were after - the copyright mafia having shown that they consider their interests to be above those of the common carrier principle. That forces other carriers, larger than us and with their own legal departments, to join us in lobbying.
I've been an internet user for 20+ years and am very concerned with the damage your pirate party is doing to our freedom on the net.
What damages would that be? I'm also a 20+ years Internet user (note the capital 'I') and I'm extremely happy that us oldies finally have representation in democratic parliaments. The pirates in the EU parliament were instrumental in defeating ACTA - if you've heard of it.
There are multiple angles to this issue. The Swedish Pirate Party is part of an international movement (with sister parties in ~60 countries) and we're represented in the European Parliament. Thus we are already well on our way to through political means change society to be more Internet friendly.
While providing Internet connection to The Pirate Bay is a political statement, it won't help our overall goal to have the party economy, as well as that of our leaders and administrators, in ruin. It makes for a less effective election period next year, when we have both EU and national elections during the span of a few months.
Luckily, we didn't have to make that choice. The Pirate Bay choose themselves to switch to other ISPs making the result of our internal debate moot.
the more people that join the pyramid the more the "bitcoins" held by people like the above poster are worth
No. During the last year and a half, when the value of a bitcoin went from $32 (at which price point I bought a few) down to just above $2 (at which price point I didn't manage to buy a few) and then back up to $30 again the number of bitcoin users has increased exponentially.
There's actually no correlation whatsoever between the number of bitcoin users and the price of a bitcoin, which could be seen as falsifying your statement.
Slashdot Mirror
I've been home taking care of my son since he was three months old. He'll be 18 months when I get back to work.
That's not a typo - I'm a proud Swedish dad.
#1 Sweden is the most socially advanced country in the world.
Sweden is ranked 1st in Personal Safety, 3rd in Air, Water, and Sanitation, and 4th in Nutrition and Basic Medical Care. However, it ranked 37th in Ecosystem Sustainability. In terms of Opportunity, the Scandinavian country has stellar rankings — 2nd overall, 1st in Personal Freedom and Choice and Personal Rights, and 5th in Access to Higher Education. Its lowest score in this category is Equity and Inclusion, with a ranking of 7th.
http://www.businessinsider.com/10-most-socially-advanced-countries-2013-4?op=1
Now we are in the information age and people are extrapolating computers implanted in our brains. I don't think it will happen.
http://scienceblogs.com/sciencepunk/2013/02/20/implanted-bionic-eye-allows-the-blind-to-see-again/
http://news.discovery.com/tech/biotechnology/two-rats-communicate-brain-to-brain-130227.htm
I see no reason why I wouldn't want more bandwidth between my mind and the Internet. Keyboards and touchscreens are clumsy.
In fact, I would argue that the distribution of intelligence among the popuplation today is the same as (or even skewed in the negative direction) 500 years ago, 1000 years ago, 5000 years ago, and 10,000 years ago. The local maxima and minima with respect to time are also unchanged
"The Flynn effect is the substantial and long-sustained increase in intelligence test scores measured in many parts of the world from roughly 1930 to the present day."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect
but insurance records of storm damage are probably a better way to detect any meaningful change in storm damage.
In studying hurricanes, we can make rough comparisons over time by adjusting past losses to account for inflation and the growth of coastal communities. If Sandy causes $20 billion in damage (in 2012 dollars), it would rank as the 17th most damaging hurricane or tropical storm (out of 242) to hit the U.S. since 1900—a significant event, but not close to the top 10. The Great Miami Hurricane of 1926 tops the list (according to estimates by the catastrophe-insurance provider ICAT), as it would cause $180 billion in damage if it were to strike today. Hurricane Katrina ranks fourth at $85 billion.
To put things into even starker perspective, consider that from August 1954 through August 1955, the East Coast saw three different storms make landfall—Carol, Hazel and Diane—that in 2012 each would have caused about twice as much damage as Sandy.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204840504578089413659452702.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
Here is one thing the industry agrees is true: The cost from hurricane damages is increasing. That's largely because population density and the cost of coastal property increases every year.
[---]
"Are we really seeing more storms, or are we just recording more storms? That's the big question," says longtime expert Karen Clark, who runs her own risk-management consultancy.
Clark says the problem is that hurricane prediction is a very young science. She notes that records documenting hurricanes go back only about a century, a data set far too small to draw big conclusions.
She says after Hurricane Katrina — the most expensive of all documented storms — some predicted a warming cycle would produce more powerful storms. That forecast did not bear out.
"It just shows you that we just are not that smart, you know, when it comes to what's really going on," Clark says.
Bill Keogh, president of Eqecat, one of the major risk-modeling firms in the U.S., says that despite what it may seem, we are now in a statistically low period of hurricane activity. After Katrina, few powerful hurricanes have made landfall in the U.S.
http://www.npr.org/2012/11/04/164185424/insurance-companies-rethink-business-after-sandy
(Observations trump models. Always)
Here's a graph on total cyclone energy over time. The global warming signal should be easily spotted:
http://policlimate.com/tropical/global_running_ace.png
There's no scientific data that supports your opinion. The warming of the oceans is miniscule compared to seasonal variations - and corals have existed when the oceans have been much much warmer than today. The same goes for pH-levels - the global variance is an order of magnitude larger than the changes we believe we've seen over the last few hundred years (there's an issue with instrument calibration and number of significant digits far back).
The reefs are in no danger from either cooling or warming. They rebuild quickly, and have done so over many ice age cycles (where the last warm period was much warmer than ours today).
Coral reefs mostly bleach because of cooling and warming - the causes of which are natural changes in ocean circulation. The reefs are also much more resilient than we thought:
New research shows that an isolated reef off the northwest coast of Australia that was severely damaged by a period of warming in 1998 has regenerated in a very short time to become nearly as healthy as it was before. What surprises scientists, though, is that the reef regenerated by itself, found a study published Thursday in the journal Science
http://science.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/04/04/17603478-isolated-coral-reef-surprises-scientists-by-healing-itself?lite
What international reseller isn't insuring against currency risks already?
The climate changes naturally but not like now
"The time span of the past few million years has been punctuated by many rapid climate transitions, most of them on time scales of centuries to decades or even less. The most detailed information is available for the Younger Dryas-to-Holocene stepwise change around 11,500 years ago, which seems to have occurred over a few decades. The speed of this change is probably representative of similar but less well-studied climate transitions during the last few hundred thousand years. These include sudden cold events (Heinrich events/stadials), warm events (Interstadials) and the beginning and ending of long warm phases, such as the Eemian interglacial. Detailed analysis of terrestrial and marine records of climate change will, however, be necessary before we can say confidently on what timescale these events occurred; they almost certainly did not take longer than a few centuries."
http://www.esd.ornl.gov/projects/qen/transit.html
You might mistakenly refer to limits of proxy resolution as proof of non-rapid natural climate change.
So, [...] Alexandria were all in different places few hundred years ago?
With a slightly longer definition of "a few" - indeed.
"how had the city sunk? Working with Goddio, geologist Jean-Daniel Stanley of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History examined dozens of drilled cores of sediment from the harbor depths. He determined that the edge of the ancient city had slid into the sea over the course of centuries because of a deadly combination of earthquakes, a tsunami and slow subsidence.
On August 21, in A.D. 365, the sea suddenly drained out of the harbor, ships keeled over, fish flopped in the sand. Townspeople wandered into the weirdly emptied space. Then, a massive tsunami surged into the city, flinging water and ships over the tops of Alexandria’s houses, according to a contemporaneous description by Ammianus Marcellinus based on eyewitness accounts. That disaster, which may have killed 50,000 people in Alexandria alone, ushered in a two-century period of seismic activity and rising sea levels that radically altered the Egyptian coastline."
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/Raising-Alexandria.html?c=y&page=3
The Arctic ocean is warming up, icebergs are growing scarcer and in some places the seals are finding the water too hot, according to a report to the Commerce Department yesterday from Consul Ifft, at Bergen, Norway.
Reports from fishermen, seal hunters and explorers, he declared, all point to a radical change in climate conditions and hitherto unheard-of temperatures in the Arctic zone. Exploration expeditions report that scarcely any ice has been met with as far north as 81 degrees 29 minutes. Soundings to a depth of 3,100 meters showed the gulf stream still very warm.
Great masses of ice have been replaced by moraines of earth and stones, the report continued, while at many points well known glaciers have entirely disappeared. Very few seals and no white fish are found in the eastern Arctic, while vast shoals of herring and smelts, which have never before ventured so far north, are being encountered in the old seal fishing grounds.
- Washington Post, 1922
( based on this original: http://docs.lib.noaa.gov/rescue/mwr/050/mwr-050-11-0589a.pdf )
"The time span of the past few million years has been punctuated by many rapid climate transitions, most of them on time scales of centuries to decades or even less. The most detailed information is available for the Younger Dryas-to-Holocene stepwise change around 11,500 years ago, which seems to have occurred over a few decades. The speed of this change is probably representative of similar but less well-studied climate transitions during the last few hundred thousand years. These include sudden cold events (Heinrich events/stadials), warm events (Interstadials) and the beginning and ending of long warm phases, such as the Eemian interglacial. Detailed analysis of terrestrial and marine records of climate change will, however, be necessary before we can say confidently on what timescale these events occurred; they almost certainly did not take longer than a few centuries."
http://www.esd.ornl.gov/projects/qen/transit.html
If the above hypothesis is true, we should be able to measure that Gulf Stream disruption.
It hasn't happened. It's thus not supporting that hypothesis.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8589512.stm
*) No quick way to select feed - I seldom read all but choose one at a time.
*) Not seeing any umlauts in my Swedish feeds.
Besides that I'm ok with the current layout and love that you use the same quick navigation keys as Reader.
Every 6 months we get a story about how the value of BTC has dropped 25%
http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/mtgoxUSD#tgSzm1g10zm2g25zl
This is exactly the problem Flattr was invented to solve. Users simply tip for content they like - and since each user has set the max size of their monthly tipping jar themselves they'll never tip more than they can afford.
http://flattr.com/
Disclaimer: While not associated with Flattr in any way, I know several of the people on the team. They really are out to make the world a better place for content authors.
The court ruled that:
*) Virtual items have value in virtual of the effort and time invested in obtaining them
*) The value in Virtual items is recognised by those that play the game (including the defendents who went to the trouble to take them)
*) The Virtual items were under the exclusive control of the player – who was relieved of this control
The court made reference to cases of electricity theft which is a similar intangible good but certainly has properties of power and control, and consequently can be stolen.
http://www.virtualpolicy.net/runescape-theft-dutch-supreme-court-decision.html
The MHL standard supports up to 1080p/60 high-definition (HD) video
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_High-Definition_Link
Demo video of an Xperia T connecting at 1080p24: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDJvgvbaR-w
who don't follow up
As far as I can see, we won this fight. As an Internet user of 20+ years I hope you appreciate the neatness and 'netness' of the solution :) In Gilmore's words (20 years ago, this year):
"The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it"
put their lives on the line, like the Egyptians.
Or the Tunisians?
http://torrentfreak.com/arrested-pirate-party-member-becomes-tunisian-minister-110117/
I'm saddened that you don't appreciate our victory today. We will however continue working politically for a world that's ... more Internet.
I say it again: anybody with an ounce of intelligence could figure out that your actions would've led to a legal battle
But of course. You could say that we've accomplished exactly what we were after - the copyright mafia having shown that they consider their interests to be above those of the common carrier principle. That forces other carriers, larger than us and with their own legal departments, to join us in lobbying.
I've been an internet user for 20+ years and am very concerned with the damage your pirate party is doing to our freedom on the net.
What damages would that be? I'm also a 20+ years Internet user (note the capital 'I') and I'm extremely happy that us oldies finally have representation in democratic parliaments. The pirates in the EU parliament were instrumental in defeating ACTA - if you've heard of it.
http://falkvinge.net/2012/05/31/three-strikes-against-acta-in-european-parliament-today/
As to the name - it's perfect. As evident by it having been adopted by 60 parties world wide.
There are multiple angles to this issue. The Swedish Pirate Party is part of an international movement (with sister parties in ~60 countries) and we're represented in the European Parliament. Thus we are already well on our way to through political means change society to be more Internet friendly.
While providing Internet connection to The Pirate Bay is a political statement, it won't help our overall goal to have the party economy, as well as that of our leaders and administrators, in ruin. It makes for a less effective election period next year, when we have both EU and national elections during the span of a few months.
Luckily, we didn't have to make that choice. The Pirate Bay choose themselves to switch to other ISPs making the result of our internal debate moot.
Only if you don't understand the difference between asymmetric and symmetric crypto.
the more people that join the pyramid the more the "bitcoins" held by people like the above poster are worth
No. During the last year and a half, when the value of a bitcoin went from $32 (at which price point I bought a few) down to just above $2 (at which price point I didn't manage to buy a few) and then back up to $30 again the number of bitcoin users has increased exponentially.
There's actually no correlation whatsoever between the number of bitcoin users and the price of a bitcoin, which could be seen as falsifying your statement.
On the other hand, it's well known that the bitcoin economy in no way functions as a pyramid or ponzi scheme: http://www.quora.com/Is-Bitcoin-a-ponzi-scheme
http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/mtgoxUSD#tgSzm1g10zm2g25zv
Even if you bought at the top of the previous peak, as long as you didn't sell you're back in black.
At all other times, buying and holding will have netted you a nice profit (if you sell now).
I don't know of any modern flat screen TV that isn't able to do 1080p60.