The point is, a lot of environmental groups where claiming no so long ago that acid rain was killing trees. They had no scientific evidence to back this up and it turns out that acid rain has no noticable effect on tree growth.
It didn't take much searching to find an article on greenpeace's website that still states that acid rain is "degrading forest".
Yet envirnmental pressure groups are more believable to the general public than politicians or scientists.
That why you should be a skeptical environmentalist. Lomborg is not saying that
there are no environmental problems, he's saying
that just because an environmental group says there is a problem doesn't mean there is.
On your second point, why do I constantly here environmentalist saying that our air is getting more and more polluted, when in fact the opposite is happening? I think the environment is important, I just wish environmentalists wouldn't
lie to us when stating their case.
You certainly can't tell me that Lomborg is unfailingly polite in his attacks on environmentalists because he's not.
I don't remember him being rude to any environmentalists in his book. He criticised them, he disagreed with them, he pointed out what he thought were errors in their arguments and representation of data, but he didn't launch personal attacks.
Were you were refering to something outside this book, an interview perhaps? A reference would be useful.
The best thing about Lomborg's book is the tables and graphs. He gives you the raw data, with references, and then interprets it. You can argue with his interpretation, but you can't argue with the data.
Most of the criticisms that I have read of this book (including links from comments on this article) don't contest the data represented.
There are many interesting facts and figures in this book which you would not believe if Lomborg didn't supply references.
Examples:
The relative cancer risk (HERG) of the average daily intake of alcohol 3.6, ETU 0.002 (highest pesticide figure). [Figure 127]
Acid rain has no noticable effect on tree growth [Figure 98]
Smoke, lead, SO2, ozone, NO2, CO concentrations in the air (US and UK) decreased steadily over the last 25 years [Figures 88, 90, 92, 93, 94, 95]
There are many more. Look at the data he represents (ignore the interpretation if you like) and this book will give you something to think about. Also with all the references you can check his figures yourself. When was the last time you read anything from an environmental lobby group that you could say all this about?
At least, we like to think so, and our government sure likes to tell us so. Too bad the statistics say otherwise. Basically, if you're poor, you have only half the chance of attending university of someone who's rich. That may be better odds than the states, it may not, but it definitely doesn't fit with the "money doesn't make a difference" line.
These statistics don't show that universities discriminate on the basis of wealth. Are we to conclude that because men far outnumber women studying physics at university that this is because physics departments discriminate against female applicants?
Your wealth does affect your likelihood of going to university but it's not the university system doing the discriminating. If your parents are (well paid) intelligent professionals you are much more likely to grow up in an environment that values and encourages intellectual growth, which will give you a better chance of growing up to be a good university student. There's not a lot the state can do about this.
I think a quote from the Jargon File is in order here.
The sort of person who routinely uses phrases like `incompletely socialized' usually thinks hackers are. Hackers regard such people with contempt when they notice them at all.
The Jargon File has quite a bit to say about the hacker personality, worth looking at.
The 9-11 attacks were tactically brilliant, but strategically ineffectual. The U.S. could withstand an attack of that magnitude once a month indefinitely.
Imagine that every month somewhere in the US a large office block was destroyed, people would be afraid to go to work. Imagine that every month an airplane (or three) were brought down, people would be afraid to fly. The Sept 11th attacks did not have a disasterous affect on the US economy because we believe further attacks of this magnitude are preventable.
If people thought that they could not be protected from further attacks there would be widespred panic.
When I last installed linux the NT+linux dual boot HOWTO (or whatever it was called) strongly recommended using the NT bootloader. Now I notice that there are 2 (mini) HOWTOs one for using the NT bootloader and one for using LILO, so LILO must now boot NT ok.
My machine isn't a server, so I don't need to upgrade my kernel very often. My current setup with the NT bootloader loading LILO is not too bad and I've never bothered changing it. Although it's not as frightening as upgrading my BIOS I still don't like messing with my bootsectors when I don't have to.:-)
You don't need to reinstall grub every time you've modified its config file. Among other things, that means kernel updates can now add themselves to the boot loader. One of the big problems support was faced with in earlier (LILO based) releases was the number of people updating their kernel and forgetting to adapt/etc/lilo.conf and/or run/sbin/lilo.
And for those of us who dual boot via the NT bootloader LILO is even worse. At the moment when adding a kernel to lilo I have to:
Add the kernel to lilo.config
Run lilo -s
Copy resulting file to floppy *
Reboot to NT *
Copy file from floppy to C drive *
Modify boot.ini
Reboot
* my C drive is NTFS.
If anything goes wrong I could be left with an unbootable system. Luckily I don't do this very often.
With grub it seems that I will be able to do this:
Modify grub's config file
Reboot
Now I'll probably switch to grub (I know I could have done this earlier) and I might be tempted to try different kernels/configurations.
It's worth pointing out that in the UK we don't have ID cards. After Sept 11th it was suggested that voluntary ID cards might be introduced. BTW, during WWII UK citizens were required to carry ID cards and it did not lead to a facist state. It about time that some posters realised that the slippery slope argument needs evidence that the slope is indeed slippery.
What is more worrying is that the UK government is planning to make incitement to religious hatred a crime. At least us Jedis will be protected.
I posted this message because I have spent ages trying to get java working on my RedHat 7.1 machine and I'm sure others have too.
The LD_ASSUME_KERNEL trick doesn't always work.
My experience is that linux tends to have a lack of documentation aimed at the beginner and MS products lack documentation aimed at the expert/intermediate user.
Don't get me started on their "troubleshooters". The first question a MS troubleshooter should ask is "Are you an idiot?" and when you click "No" it should take you straight to the "The troubleshooter could not help you with this problem." screen. This would have saved me hours, I don't even bother to start up the troubleshooters anymore.
With linux I have some hope finding the info I need in the man/info pages, with windows it's straight to google.
But it's NOT teleporation. Teleportation involves taking an object from point A and moving it to point Z without crossing the in-between space, C through Y.
Then how do you know it's the same object and not a copy if you don't follow it through space from A to Z? What's the difference between destroying an object and creating an exact copy at another position and the object "traveling" between these points without existing between the points.
Please note that linux and other such GPLed products are always released under a certain version of the GPL, with the addition of the phrase "or at your option a later version of the GPL".
Linus releases his code under the GPL version 2 only because he's worried about the possible future direction of the licence. I'm not sure what proportion of the kernel contributers follow this practice.
I had something similar happen to me. A program I was writting was pretty processor intensive and core dumping every time I ran it. When stepping through the program with a debugger the problem disappeared. It turned out that I had inadvertantly blocked the machine's fan. Pausing the program during debugging allowed the processor to cool down. I unblocked the fan and the program ran fine.
I've missed out much hair pulling, bashing of head against wall, screaming WTF, but you get the general idea.
Responding to this by reducing freedoms will not keep it from happening (If it did, the UK and Israel would have less problems...)
Increased security causes terrorism? Could it perhaps be the other way round?
because security measures end up failing in the end (Realize that Israelites and UK citizens in the affected areas still get car-bombings, etc. even with the security that they have- people aren't all that safe in Northern Ireland and around the West Bank and Gaza.).
Car-bombing still happen so the security measures don't work, logic isn't your strong point is it?
Didn't I read somewhere that no Israeli aircraft has ever been hijacked. If Israeli security measures were as lax an on American internal flights do you think this would be the case?
One thing that irritated me was the US banning all flights from overseas after they had permitted internal flights to resume.
It was claimed that this was because of poor security on external flights. Guess why the terrorists chose internal flights, poor security! The security of internal US flights was extremely poor compared to external flights to and from Europe and many other nations as well. I suspect that this is still the case.
Seems to me like Short is deliberately continuing an urban legend (Fischer playing chess online). Note that the only record of the moves played is in Short's hands and he refuses to make this public. We only have Short's word that he was beaten after his opponent effectively threw several moves away.
Note how he gives an excuse as to why he will not be able to acquire additional evidence in his original article because Fischer will probably not play him anymore.
Several times in the article Short teases us with amazing evidence which he wishes he could share with us, but alas...
I think Short is having a bit of fun with us, chess GMs can have a sense of humour you know.:-)
You can't make a number system based on a non-positive integer. Number systems must be based on positive integers that are not one. Think about it. What would the digits of base-pi be? 0, 1, 2, 3, 3.141? I don't think so.
The digits would be 0,1,2,3 i.e. all the whole numbers below pi.
Here
is a java applet that will convert a decimal number to any base larger than 1 (even fractional bases). Source code is also available from this page although with a tiny bit of thought you could probably code it yourself.
For an example, consider the sequence "1,2,3,4". Most people would predict the next digit to be "5".
However if I was presented with the numbers "3, 1, 4, 1" and asked to predict the next number I would probably say "5".
In the "1,2,3,4" case you are using information about the likely source of the digits to predict the next one (would you still say 5 if you knew the digits were generated by rolling a die?)
All sequences provide no information about the next digit in the sequence unless you know something about the likely method used to generate that sequence.
For values of `random' that mean `uncompressible' of course, it can probably rate pretty highly.
Huh, pi is highly `compressible' if you pick the right compression algorithm:
XOR the input data with your representation of pi then compress the result with a conventional compression algorithm.
This algorithm will be quite bad with conventional input (text files etc) but will compress pi quite effectively.
The digits of pi are no more "random" than the digits of 1/3. There is a pattern to the digits of pi because there is an algorithm for calculating them. We just don't see the pattern a first glance.
You could say that pi is more random than 1/3 because of the even distribution of the digits, pairs of digits, etc. Is there a measure of the "randomness" of a sequence of digits? Isn't "randomness" in this sense as subjective as "compressibility".
A final thought, would we consider the digits of 1 random if our number system was base pi?
Slashdot Mirror
It didn't take much searching to find an article on greenpeace's website that still states that acid rain is "degrading forest".
Yet envirnmental pressure groups are more believable to the general public than politicians or scientists.
That why you should be a skeptical environmentalist. Lomborg is not saying that there are no environmental problems, he's saying that just because an environmental group says there is a problem doesn't mean there is.
On your second point, why do I constantly here environmentalist saying that our air is getting more and more polluted, when in fact the opposite is happening? I think the environment is important, I just wish environmentalists wouldn't lie to us when stating their case.
Were you were refering to something outside this book, an interview perhaps? A reference would be useful.
Most of the criticisms that I have read of this book (including links from comments on this article) don't contest the data represented.
There are many interesting facts and figures in this book which you would not believe if Lomborg didn't supply references.
Examples:
The relative cancer risk (HERG) of the average daily intake of alcohol 3.6, ETU 0.002 (highest pesticide figure). [Figure 127]
Acid rain has no noticable effect on tree growth [Figure 98]
Smoke, lead, SO2, ozone, NO2, CO concentrations in the air (US and UK) decreased steadily over the last 25 years [Figures 88, 90, 92, 93, 94, 95]
There are many more. Look at the data he represents (ignore the interpretation if you like) and this book will give you something to think about. Also with all the references you can check his figures yourself. When was the last time you read anything from an environmental lobby group that you could say all this about?
Your wealth does affect your likelihood of going to university but it's not the university system doing the discriminating. If your parents are (well paid) intelligent professionals you are much more likely to grow up in an environment that values and encourages intellectual growth, which will give you a better chance of growing up to be a good university student. There's not a lot the state can do about this.
That's why they call it terrorism.
But is a big clock.
$ find /usr/sbin /bin /sbin /usr/bin -size +1440k -type f | wc -l /usr/sbin /bin /sbin /usr/bin -size -1440k -type f | wc -l
10
$ find
2667
It's worth noting that both emacs and vim are in the 10 that would not fit on a floppy.
I know I'm ignoring libraries. I said it was just for fun. :-)
My machine isn't a server, so I don't need to upgrade my kernel very often. My current setup with the NT bootloader loading LILO is not too bad and I've never bothered changing it. Although it's not as frightening as upgrading my BIOS I still don't like messing with my bootsectors when I don't have to. :-)
Thanks, I would try this but as I'll soon upgrade to 7.2 (and grub) I won't need to. Also with grub I don't need to boot to NT at all. :-)
- Add the kernel to lilo.config
- Run lilo -s
- Copy resulting file to floppy *
- Reboot to NT *
- Copy file from floppy to C drive *
- Modify boot.ini
- Reboot
* my C drive is NTFS.If anything goes wrong I could be left with an unbootable system. Luckily I don't do this very often.
With grub it seems that I will be able to do this:
- Modify grub's config file
- Reboot
Now I'll probably switch to grub (I know I could have done this earlier) and I might be tempted to try different kernels/configurations.What is more worrying is that the UK government is planning to make incitement to religious hatred a crime. At least us Jedis will be protected.
However also adding:
ulimit -s 2000
worked for me. (See bug 94790)
I posted this message because I have spent ages trying to get java working on my RedHat 7.1 machine and I'm sure others have too. The LD_ASSUME_KERNEL trick doesn't always work.
But now (at last) I can dump Netscape 4.x
With a digital camera you can also post them on the internet.
Digital cameras win!
Don't get me started on their "troubleshooters". The first question a MS troubleshooter should ask is "Are you an idiot?" and when you click "No" it should take you straight to the "The troubleshooter could not help you with this problem." screen. This would have saved me hours, I don't even bother to start up the troubleshooters anymore.
With linux I have some hope finding the info I need in the man/info pages, with windows it's straight to google.
I've missed out much hair pulling, bashing of head against wall, screaming WTF, but you get the general idea.
One thing that irritated me was the US banning all flights from overseas after they had permitted internal flights to resume. It was claimed that this was because of poor security on external flights. Guess why the terrorists chose internal flights, poor security! The security of internal US flights was extremely poor compared to external flights to and from Europe and many other nations as well. I suspect that this is still the case.
Note how he gives an excuse as to why he will not be able to acquire additional evidence in his original article because Fischer will probably not play him anymore.
Several times in the article Short teases us with amazing evidence which he wishes he could share with us, but alas
I think Short is having a bit of fun with us, chess GMs can have a sense of humour you know.
My cup holder broke, does anyone have tech support's phone number?
Here is a java applet that will convert a decimal number to any base larger than 1 (even fractional bases). Source code is also available from this page although with a tiny bit of thought you could probably code it yourself.
In the "1,2,3,4" case you are using information about the likely source of the digits to predict the next one (would you still say 5 if you knew the digits were generated by rolling a die?)
All sequences provide no information about the next digit in the sequence unless you know something about the likely method used to generate that sequence.
XOR the input data with your representation of pi then compress the result with a conventional compression algorithm.
This algorithm will be quite bad with conventional input (text files etc) but will compress pi quite effectively.
The digits of pi are no more "random" than the digits of 1/3. There is a pattern to the digits of pi because there is an algorithm for calculating them. We just don't see the pattern a first glance.
You could say that pi is more random than 1/3 because of the even distribution of the digits, pairs of digits, etc. Is there a measure of the "randomness" of a sequence of digits? Isn't "randomness" in this sense as subjective as "compressibility".
A final thought, would we consider the digits of 1 random if our number system was base pi?