Well, that's very true in Physics, Biology, Chemistry, etc. But the issue is that a lot of climate study work is based around these data sets, which often take a long period of time, and lots of money to get. If we had to wait another 20 years for another data set (which would be insufficient), we would have already made a choice, possibly a bad one. Worse, it seems the only way to get the necessary money these days is to tow the AGW line before starting, or side with those for which AGW would be a disaster (oil companies), neither of which seems academically honest to me.
Besides, unless if you royally messed up the collection of data, collecting a new set would be a waste of time. What needs to be done is a testing (not verification as they say) of their models, and a checking of their statistics. Claim all you want, but I think that'd be a lot easier with raw data as well. I'd like to see proof that the data was actually destroyed in the 1980's, they were talking about it in their emails more recently.
I've never seen a debunking. All I've seen is "It's out of context." And it's harder to deal with "hide the decline." Besides, the computer code (and the comments from their hapless programmer) are far more damning.
You gotta eat. If you want to ignore the GNP, and sacrifice it completely for the environment, start farming again (whoops! That's our #1 producer of CO2), as your job, and all the super markets you probably buy your food at (or those organic markets that I can't afford to shop at) will go away real quick.
And many people who loudly advocate AGW are willing to cut the standard of life for everyone else. This is why a lot of people doubt, it doesn't look so good when your major prophets (yes, AGW is becoming a religion, since people have begun to speak in terms of "Believers" and "Deniers"), fly around in private jets (hello Al Gore!).
Does it mean AGW is false? No, of course not. Do I believe it's true? Not really, but I think reducing our output of CO2 and other pollutants would be a great idea anyways, for a myriad of reasons.
How much proof would it take to convince you that the whole AGW thing was merely a power grab by those who would strongly curb every westerners lifestyle except their own? Not saying that's necessarily the truth, but you're missing the massive amount of hypocrisy in your little rant there.
I agree whole heartedly. Plus with a system like that, you'll actually have a decent video card you can use for BIOS settings changes, upgrades, etc.
Although I'd like to point out, that if you set it up well, you shouldn't have to need to change any settings like that. Most modern Linux distros allow for updates through the console (Ubuntu, Debian, etc.), so I'm a bit baffled why you're so concerned about it. And I can't really think of many reasons to change BIOS settings that often.
"""... which is basically one of the tenets of OSS."""
And where did you hear that? Because, I never have and I've been around for a while.
It's implied, in my opinion. Because OSS stuff rarely gets the benefit of expensive and time consuming security analysis. Mostly because often nobody has the money/time/skill set, or because the code moves so damned fast. Admittedly, this setup appears to work quite nicely (I'm a *nix user myself).
I believe the implied meaning of this is "in the absence of exhaustive security analysis, a code's age/maturity is one of the better indicators of its security". While I'm not particularly sold on this notion myself, it does bear a lot of semblance to the idea that code can be proven "secure" if it stands after a multitude of random attacks, which is basically one of the tenets of OSS.
No. Not windows 7. If you partition your hard drive, and install windows, it will take all partitions as it's own. If the other partitions are already occupied (and it can tell that there's something there, even if it can read Reiser, Ext3, etc.), it will not overwrite. You'll need to repair grub afterward, but it's a lot less painful than discovering the partition is wrong and you need to redo everything, trust me.
My oh my. You certainly are ignorant. You do realize that the purpose of pesticides and antibiotics is to be poisons right? The hope is that they're poisonous enough to kill harmful bacteria/pests, but not bad enough to kill you. The issue is, once put in the environment, it's kinda hard to get back out. So the pesticides wash into the water, killing off species (many of which are important to the food chain, which includes us), and generally causing havoc.
Antibiotics, on the other hand, are not good for the human body. Strong antibiotics are rough on the human body, ask anyone who has had to take antibiotics to fight off a super bug. So, they constantly treat cows with antibiotics when they're not sick (which contributes to bacteria being resistant to antibiotics), which wreaks even more havoc.
The general point is, shouldn't you understand what's going into you? Processed stuff clearly is not good for you. Trans fats, high fructose corn syrup, etc. Just take a look at Americans. We consume easily the most processed food of any nation (the vast majority of the fruits and vegetables that Americans consume that 's "FDA Approved" is french fries and ketchup), and we also have the worst obesity problem of any nation.
I'm not sure if humanity is ready to handle the issues with creating a human brain in an electronic test tube. What do you do when it comes time to turn the experiment off and it yells "Don't do that! I don't want to die!"?
Or, on a more pragmatic level, creating a brain is great and fine. Creating all the data that your eyes, ears, nose, and nerve endings create, or to basically make its own artificial world, would be insane. And even if you could, you wouldn't get a true human mind, because they wouldn't be exposed to other intelligent human beings in its environment, because that's what you've been trying to create in the first place!
Depends on the algorithm involved. Often one way algorithms rely on certain actions being computably inconvenient, not impossible. ElGamel and RSA basically break down to the idea that it's easier to multiply really big primes, than it is to factor the resulting really big composite. But in an embedded situation like a dish network box, they might not have the computational power to outrun a hacker with a desktop, so a bit of obscurity helps in slowing down any attacks. There's a strong chance that it'll be hacked at some point, as witnessed by the fact that they're on Nagra 3, not Nagra 1, but the hope is to hold off any attacks as possible, and make attacks prohibitively expensive.
Hate to break it to you. Most people won't create great culture. If everyone could paint like a renaissance master, then that would by definition be average. What makes actual works of art (paintings, photos, movies, books, music, plays, etc.) culture, is the fact that they're shared. Sometimes the creator needs some money back, which is fine. You buy books, and music, and you pay to see movies and plays. But once the artist has received their due (usually in less than 10 years, if I recall correctly), it is time for the art to move into public domain, to inspire and assist the next generation of creators.
To make a rough analogy, copyright today is similar to great pieces of art being locked up in private collections, rather than being on display in museums. Admittedly, you pay to enter a museum (usually), but this is merely to subsidize the protection of the art and the maintenance of the facility and staff. Digital mediums have very low upkeep cost (virtually non-existent on a per file basis), and therefore should be free (beer, speech) once the creators have received their due.
This, of course is not to say that illegal file sharing isn't a problem. It is. Creators do need to receive some sort of compensation, or they'll quit creating, or starve. The issue is that the system is becoming more and more slanted towards not the creators, but those who are more interested in controlling the copyrights even long after the creators have died (like the companies behind the RIAA).
"people willing to trade their freedom for temporary security deserve neither and will lose both" -- Benjamin Franklin
Sadly, most people's response to any problem these days is "the government should do something!" This unfortunately tends to cause many problems to get worse, while racking up an enormous bill. Not to say that everything the government does is useless (highways are nice), but many things they touch do go down the drain. Good example, Social Security started with the best of intentions. These days it's the "third rail," touch it (politically) and die, and it's becoming one of the biggest money sink holes we have. Sad really.
This is an interesting change. I'd rather Facebook be too stingy with my information, as compared to the usual loose attitude towards user's data and data security that most companies seem to have. Better safe than sorry.
No, there are several other scientists of note in the fields of biology (Richard Dawkins comes to mind) that have been saying this for (IIRC) a few decades.
Hell, as a tech support, I had someone come in with a Mac asking us to "Install the Internet for her." She truly thought Internet Explorer was the Internet, and didn't understand it as more of a portal (in fact one of the more inferior portals) to the Internet. Training her was a pain.
But let's not pretend for a second that it'll stop the theorists. They want to disbelieve, so nothing will prevent them. As was mentioned on the Conspiracy Theories episode of Penn and Teller's Bullshit, when someone says "You can't convince me," those aren't the words of a skeptic, merely of a jerk. That being said, they should be some neat photos.
In the democratic system, and people and general. But lately I've taken the stance that while some individuals may be smart, people as a whole are panicy and stupid. This whole "Open Government" thing, while honourable, is beginning to look like a futile attempt.
I can understand why they're looking into Google. They're a monopoly, which isn't illegal, but it does draw attention. But the reason they're a monopoly is because they're very, very good. They really have been churning out wonderful products at a continuous rate, that's why everyone works with google. What is annoying when the DOJ turns a blind eye as other monopolies, at least from my perspective, abuse their power to maintain their position as monopolies.
Yeah, that's a pretty good point. The other thing I was thinking about is since (American) society isn't completely white patriarchal any more, outrage is generally a more common response to racist/sexist material, rather than acceptance and self-censorship.
That being said, I think his argument rests more on a "It's not right, but self-censorship like this may just be human nature" kind of nature. Again, I don't really think I buy that, since I think nature can be overcome, and his argument strikes me as a fix the symptoms, not the problem, kind of solution.
I guess ultimately this is a question of "How far does the freedom of speech go?" Obviously in the US we have already restricted violent speech, and speech attempting to cause panic (such as yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theatre with no fire). While J.S. Mills would argue that we shouldn't ban speech/expressions because of their morally repugnant nature, are there any other side effects that we should consider? I'm inclined to say yes, because we probably will never know everything about sociology, but I oppose bans like this because I feel that limiting expression is generally more damaging than whatever that expression could've been.
Of course, I'd be happy to explain more. But, before I dive into this, let me note that I'm not totally sure if I agree with my professor. As a good student, I'm going to consider his opinion (and in this case, argue it), but not necessarily accept it as the truth.
Your examples point to a single idea (often capable of being practised alone) being put down. Example: The idea spreads that animals only exist for consumption, therefore vegetarians back down and self-censor themselves. The issue is, this is an ideological disagreement, not a discrimination issue. The idea is spreading contrary Vegetarian beliefs not existence and right/capability to express an opinion. Should the meat eaters get violent in repressing vegetarians, this is an issue entirely separate from whether or not to be carnivore/herbivore/omnivore.
The basic idea is, if you're spreading material that puts down a group of society specifically, not their ideas, but them, my right to say that under free speech is questionable at best. If I somehow begin spreading movies, using paid actors acting of their own free will, declaring the inferiority of "niggers," while not necessarily doing anything violent, most people would complain. However, should my movies/shows become super popular to the point where blacks begin to self-silence themselves because they are beginning to buy into the opinion that "those niggers" are incapable of intelligent thought, this would be extremely bad. Specifically, society is severely hurt when any major adult sector (male, female, black, white, asian, whatever) is silenced for any reason, self or otherwise.
Now, the important question when considering my professors point is, do women consider themselves to be less important in modern society due to the presence of violent pornography and these rape games? I honestly don't know. Sociology questions like this tend to be rather tricky. I would say, in the current atmosphere where most (non frat-boys) are ashamed to admit their usage of kinky/violent porn/videogames, no. If at any point it becomes normal for polite men in society to talk about their rape games, using lewd and aggressive terms towards the digital other gender, then we would begin to have an issue.
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Well, that's very true in Physics, Biology, Chemistry, etc. But the issue is that a lot of climate study work is based around these data sets, which often take a long period of time, and lots of money to get. If we had to wait another 20 years for another data set (which would be insufficient), we would have already made a choice, possibly a bad one. Worse, it seems the only way to get the necessary money these days is to tow the AGW line before starting, or side with those for which AGW would be a disaster (oil companies), neither of which seems academically honest to me.
Besides, unless if you royally messed up the collection of data, collecting a new set would be a waste of time. What needs to be done is a testing (not verification as they say) of their models, and a checking of their statistics. Claim all you want, but I think that'd be a lot easier with raw data as well. I'd like to see proof that the data was actually destroyed in the 1980's, they were talking about it in their emails more recently.
I've never seen a debunking. All I've seen is "It's out of context." And it's harder to deal with "hide the decline." Besides, the computer code (and the comments from their hapless programmer) are far more damning.
You gotta eat. If you want to ignore the GNP, and sacrifice it completely for the environment, start farming again (whoops! That's our #1 producer of CO2), as your job, and all the super markets you probably buy your food at (or those organic markets that I can't afford to shop at) will go away real quick.
And many people who loudly advocate AGW are willing to cut the standard of life for everyone else. This is why a lot of people doubt, it doesn't look so good when your major prophets (yes, AGW is becoming a religion, since people have begun to speak in terms of "Believers" and "Deniers"), fly around in private jets (hello Al Gore!).
Does it mean AGW is false? No, of course not. Do I believe it's true? Not really, but I think reducing our output of CO2 and other pollutants would be a great idea anyways, for a myriad of reasons.
How much proof would it take to convince you that the whole AGW thing was merely a power grab by those who would strongly curb every westerners lifestyle except their own? Not saying that's necessarily the truth, but you're missing the massive amount of hypocrisy in your little rant there.
I agree whole heartedly. Plus with a system like that, you'll actually have a decent video card you can use for BIOS settings changes, upgrades, etc.
Although I'd like to point out, that if you set it up well, you shouldn't have to need to change any settings like that. Most modern Linux distros allow for updates through the console (Ubuntu, Debian, etc.), so I'm a bit baffled why you're so concerned about it. And I can't really think of many reasons to change BIOS settings that often.
"""... which is basically one of the tenets of OSS."""
And where did you hear that? Because, I never have and I've been around for a while.
It's implied, in my opinion. Because OSS stuff rarely gets the benefit of expensive and time consuming security analysis. Mostly because often nobody has the money/time/skill set, or because the code moves so damned fast. Admittedly, this setup appears to work quite nicely (I'm a *nix user myself).
I believe the implied meaning of this is "in the absence of exhaustive security analysis, a code's age/maturity is one of the better indicators of its security". While I'm not particularly sold on this notion myself, it does bear a lot of semblance to the idea that code can be proven "secure" if it stands after a multitude of random attacks, which is basically one of the tenets of OSS.
A million monkeys with typewriters....
It's a paradigm, technically. Although Haskell isn't a logic language, it's functional. Prolog is logical, and nigh useless for most applications.
No. Not windows 7. If you partition your hard drive, and install windows, it will take all partitions as it's own. If the other partitions are already occupied (and it can tell that there's something there, even if it can read Reiser, Ext3, etc.), it will not overwrite. You'll need to repair grub afterward, but it's a lot less painful than discovering the partition is wrong and you need to redo everything, trust me.
My oh my. You certainly are ignorant. You do realize that the purpose of pesticides and antibiotics is to be poisons right? The hope is that they're poisonous enough to kill harmful bacteria/pests, but not bad enough to kill you. The issue is, once put in the environment, it's kinda hard to get back out. So the pesticides wash into the water, killing off species (many of which are important to the food chain, which includes us), and generally causing havoc.
Antibiotics, on the other hand, are not good for the human body. Strong antibiotics are rough on the human body, ask anyone who has had to take antibiotics to fight off a super bug. So, they constantly treat cows with antibiotics when they're not sick (which contributes to bacteria being resistant to antibiotics), which wreaks even more havoc.
The general point is, shouldn't you understand what's going into you? Processed stuff clearly is not good for you. Trans fats, high fructose corn syrup, etc. Just take a look at Americans. We consume easily the most processed food of any nation (the vast majority of the fruits and vegetables that Americans consume that 's "FDA Approved" is french fries and ketchup), and we also have the worst obesity problem of any nation.
I'm not sure if humanity is ready to handle the issues with creating a human brain in an electronic test tube. What do you do when it comes time to turn the experiment off and it yells "Don't do that! I don't want to die!"?
Or, on a more pragmatic level, creating a brain is great and fine. Creating all the data that your eyes, ears, nose, and nerve endings create, or to basically make its own artificial world, would be insane. And even if you could, you wouldn't get a true human mind, because they wouldn't be exposed to other intelligent human beings in its environment, because that's what you've been trying to create in the first place!
Depends on the algorithm involved. Often one way algorithms rely on certain actions being computably inconvenient, not impossible. ElGamel and RSA basically break down to the idea that it's easier to multiply really big primes, than it is to factor the resulting really big composite. But in an embedded situation like a dish network box, they might not have the computational power to outrun a hacker with a desktop, so a bit of obscurity helps in slowing down any attacks. There's a strong chance that it'll be hacked at some point, as witnessed by the fact that they're on Nagra 3, not Nagra 1, but the hope is to hold off any attacks as possible, and make attacks prohibitively expensive.
Hate to break it to you. Most people won't create great culture. If everyone could paint like a renaissance master, then that would by definition be average. What makes actual works of art (paintings, photos, movies, books, music, plays, etc.) culture, is the fact that they're shared. Sometimes the creator needs some money back, which is fine. You buy books, and music, and you pay to see movies and plays. But once the artist has received their due (usually in less than 10 years, if I recall correctly), it is time for the art to move into public domain, to inspire and assist the next generation of creators.
To make a rough analogy, copyright today is similar to great pieces of art being locked up in private collections, rather than being on display in museums. Admittedly, you pay to enter a museum (usually), but this is merely to subsidize the protection of the art and the maintenance of the facility and staff. Digital mediums have very low upkeep cost (virtually non-existent on a per file basis), and therefore should be free (beer, speech) once the creators have received their due.
This, of course is not to say that illegal file sharing isn't a problem. It is. Creators do need to receive some sort of compensation, or they'll quit creating, or starve. The issue is that the system is becoming more and more slanted towards not the creators, but those who are more interested in controlling the copyrights even long after the creators have died (like the companies behind the RIAA).
"people willing to trade their freedom for temporary security deserve neither and will lose both" -- Benjamin Franklin
Sadly, most people's response to any problem these days is "the government should do something!" This unfortunately tends to cause many problems to get worse, while racking up an enormous bill. Not to say that everything the government does is useless (highways are nice), but many things they touch do go down the drain. Good example, Social Security started with the best of intentions. These days it's the "third rail," touch it (politically) and die, and it's becoming one of the biggest money sink holes we have. Sad really.
This is an interesting change. I'd rather Facebook be too stingy with my information, as compared to the usual loose attitude towards user's data and data security that most companies seem to have. Better safe than sorry.
No, there are several other scientists of note in the fields of biology (Richard Dawkins comes to mind) that have been saying this for (IIRC) a few decades.
Hell, as a tech support, I had someone come in with a Mac asking us to "Install the Internet for her." She truly thought Internet Explorer was the Internet, and didn't understand it as more of a portal (in fact one of the more inferior portals) to the Internet. Training her was a pain.
But let's not pretend for a second that it'll stop the theorists. They want to disbelieve, so nothing will prevent them. As was mentioned on the Conspiracy Theories episode of Penn and Teller's Bullshit, when someone says "You can't convince me," those aren't the words of a skeptic, merely of a jerk. That being said, they should be some neat photos.
In the democratic system, and people and general. But lately I've taken the stance that while some individuals may be smart, people as a whole are panicy and stupid. This whole "Open Government" thing, while honourable, is beginning to look like a futile attempt.
Talk is cheap.
I can understand why they're looking into Google. They're a monopoly, which isn't illegal, but it does draw attention. But the reason they're a monopoly is because they're very, very good. They really have been churning out wonderful products at a continuous rate, that's why everyone works with google. What is annoying when the DOJ turns a blind eye as other monopolies, at least from my perspective, abuse their power to maintain their position as monopolies.
Hate to break it to you, but humans can't deal with the infinite possible scenarios either. The issue is which can deal with more of them.
Yeah, that's a pretty good point. The other thing I was thinking about is since (American) society isn't completely white patriarchal any more, outrage is generally a more common response to racist/sexist material, rather than acceptance and self-censorship.
That being said, I think his argument rests more on a "It's not right, but self-censorship like this may just be human nature" kind of nature. Again, I don't really think I buy that, since I think nature can be overcome, and his argument strikes me as a fix the symptoms, not the problem, kind of solution.
I guess ultimately this is a question of "How far does the freedom of speech go?" Obviously in the US we have already restricted violent speech, and speech attempting to cause panic (such as yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theatre with no fire). While J.S. Mills would argue that we shouldn't ban speech/expressions because of their morally repugnant nature, are there any other side effects that we should consider? I'm inclined to say yes, because we probably will never know everything about sociology, but I oppose bans like this because I feel that limiting expression is generally more damaging than whatever that expression could've been.
Of course, I'd be happy to explain more. But, before I dive into this, let me note that I'm not totally sure if I agree with my professor. As a good student, I'm going to consider his opinion (and in this case, argue it), but not necessarily accept it as the truth.
Your examples point to a single idea (often capable of being practised alone) being put down. Example: The idea spreads that animals only exist for consumption, therefore vegetarians back down and self-censor themselves. The issue is, this is an ideological disagreement, not a discrimination issue. The idea is spreading contrary Vegetarian beliefs not existence and right/capability to express an opinion. Should the meat eaters get violent in repressing vegetarians, this is an issue entirely separate from whether or not to be carnivore/herbivore/omnivore.
The basic idea is, if you're spreading material that puts down a group of society specifically, not their ideas, but them, my right to say that under free speech is questionable at best. If I somehow begin spreading movies, using paid actors acting of their own free will, declaring the inferiority of "niggers," while not necessarily doing anything violent, most people would complain. However, should my movies/shows become super popular to the point where blacks begin to self-silence themselves because they are beginning to buy into the opinion that "those niggers" are incapable of intelligent thought, this would be extremely bad. Specifically, society is severely hurt when any major adult sector (male, female, black, white, asian, whatever) is silenced for any reason, self or otherwise.
Now, the important question when considering my professors point is, do women consider themselves to be less important in modern society due to the presence of violent pornography and these rape games? I honestly don't know. Sociology questions like this tend to be rather tricky. I would say, in the current atmosphere where most (non frat-boys) are ashamed to admit their usage of kinky/violent porn/videogames, no. If at any point it becomes normal for polite men in society to talk about their rape games, using lewd and aggressive terms towards the digital other gender, then we would begin to have an issue.