If only criminals have guns it will be damn easy to identify them and lock them up.
True-ish, but the devil is in the details... you'd probably need a lot more law enforcers to be able to do that. AKA a "police state".
I, for one, prefer a society were it is generally acceptable that individual members take some responsibility for their own well-being. I always thought the liberal mindset is all about the individual and his liberties.
More probably, you're talking out of your ass. Hi, Australia here. No guns, no police state, we're very happy thank you very much. I take personal responsibility for my own well-being by voting for gun control. What a concept. Seems to be working fine, too. You're very welcome to your "I can protect mine, fuck you" mindset, if that's how you want to live. Call me crazy, but I always thought "civilisation" happened when a bunch of people get together and agree on ways to help and protect *each other*.
No doubt you're so amazed that your assumptions can be so completely incorrect that nothing I've said will be remembered tomorrow. It's ok, shock can do that.
> I prefer to have variables differentiated (scalars, arrays and hashes) and clearly identified from other syntax or text. It makes code more readable IMHO.
Not sure if that argument for perl is valid anymore, in the current age of IDEs and syntax highlighting text editors like Sublime etc. All the visual differentiation is done for you.
> This isn't empowering women. This is arguing that they are weaker than men far more profoundly than any MRA red piller gamer gater misogynist could ever hope to accomplish.
No, *labeling* something as "weaker" makes it weaker, which you just did.
> Or how the discovery of the Tomb of Jesus, which would appear to completely invalidate the ressurection and divine origin of Jesus, caused Christian worldwide to renounce their faith.
The article you linked to says very clearly it's a disputed claim.
Nice try but no banana. There's no harm in everyone being forced to reducing pollution and use clean energy sources. However there is harm in everyone being forced to believe in Jesus. Not a comparable argument by a long shot.
> I did away with all my icons I normally put on the desktop and, instead, they reside in the start menu.
Wow. I've been doing this since Windows XP.
Also, once you arrange XP's menu in a keyboard-friendly fashion, it acts much like Windows 7's search box on the Start menu... except faster, since you only need to hit the first key of each menu item.
I usually have "Quick" menu, at the top level of Start, with common programs in it, like Photoshop. Whereas, in Windows 7, I have to type "pho" or something, and wait for results, in XP it is simply "QP" (quick -> photoshop) and up she comes.
I'm buying an SSD tomorrow, which will basically make this old XP laptop zoom, and I won't even have to worry about the 4GB RAM limit anymore, since swapping on SSD is pretty quick.
Yep I love my XP and you can prise it from my cold, dead fingers.:)
> Except it's not about making the software better. It's about making more money by selling the information you get from this 'feedback'.
Sure, and I'd call this purely wrong if it was Apple, since they make a ton of money from premium pricing. However I'm less inclined to blame MS for going down this path, since almost everyone I know runs a "free" copy of Windows.
Perhaps MS could offer a free version, with all this anti-privacy stuff turned on, and a paid one which is more the traditional model. They're definitely testing the waters, to be sure. Remains to be seen if they decide to offer two models, or try to force this onto everyone.
But I'm no longer going to keep badgering people to pay for their copy of Windows, if it's obvious MS has a revenue model based on analysing the private data of their users. Seems a fair trade to me now, if that is the case, and I'm sure many others will see it that way too, which just seems to be a tit-for-tat downward spiral to me.
> instead of recognizing a subset of users who enjoy social media and offering a better product, Plus focused on offering the same product.
FWIW, that misses the obvious reason for Google having a social media platform in the first place. What would be the point - in Google's view - of G+ obtaining a "subset" of users, say 10% to 20%, when FB has the other 80%-90%? Would that make *advertisers*, Google's main revenue stream, sit up and take notice? Doubtful - it may even have the *opposite* effect, where advertisers *lose* confidence in Google's ability to attract eyes. Advertising revenue is the #1 goal; users enjoying a Google or FB product for its own sake, or finding it useful, is just the means to that end, simple as that.
The problem with a business model where you give products away for free in return for advertising revenue is a big one. Look at newspapers. If you don't get **enough eyes**, it makes the product unviable. But this is the kicker: It's not whether it's enough eyes for you, the company making the product; it's whether it's enough eyes to give advertisers the *impression* that your space is a good return on investment. When it comes to investment in advertising space, it's all about *perception* of value. To give customers (ie. the advertisers) a perception of value in advertising on G+, it needs a definite minimum market share. Otherwise it's not perceived as worthwhile, when FB is the market leader for advertising to certain demographics.
Google used to be the king of advertising on the Internet, before FB came along. It's much harder to sell your product when clients realise you're no longer the "go-to guy" in your field any more. Particularly - and this is key - since FB can give advertisers very *focussed* advertising space, knowing so much detail about its users - age, sex, what they like, etc. Google sort of has that too - by analysing searches - but it's not as definite, as easily provable, as knowing who actually likes certain thing, not just searches on them for whatever unknown reason.
Also I think Google is (rightly) worried about the future of Facebook technology in general. Why else is Google investing heavily in other products, like self-driving cars, watches, Android, etc? Believe me, under all this fancy product hooplah, there is a fierce battle going on between Apple, MS, Google and FB for the possession of user data for advertisers.
What Google has lost to Facebook, they're trying to make up by saying to advertisers, "look, now we know everyone's movements and usage data in Android phones!" - they won that battle with Apple at least - Android market share is at least 50%.
So it's easy to see why the plan was to attract a *significant* % of FB users to G+. A small subset is *useless* to Google, as it does not improve their standing with advertisers - it has to be a significant slice, or there's no point. The pressure on execs to achieve that must have been enormous.
Google is being "attacked" from all sides in the data-gathering game, from MS, Apple, FB, etc. How all that affects Google's standing with advertisers is what guides Google's choices about what products they focus on.
Anyway, I think they've learned some valuable (though bleedingly obvious to many) lessons about user adoption. A major one is don't shove a product down people's throats - that only pisses off your users, even the loyal ones, undermining efforts to make it "popular". Google, of all companies, should know the value of "natural results".
The gun thing is also important. I'm not a gun nut... but I believe I have a right to be dangerous in my own country and in my home. Not for hunting... not even for self defense... to be DANGEROUS. I feel that is an important check on anyone that would try to intimidate the people. If they understand that the people can and will turn on them with an instant militia of millions. That forces the elites to be careful.
That made me laugh. How's that working out for you so far? Maybe you can't see from inside, but from out here America looks like elite paradise. Your government is run by corporate donors, workers' rights are eroding, don't get me started on public health. Half of you can't be bothered getting off their arse to vote, so don't expect them to join you in your game of Fantasy Militia. Your guns and bluster are at best useless, at worst a cultural sickness, so don't you dare project your failures onto the rest of the world like they're the only answer to anything.
As an Australian, we've dealt with guns to the point where we saw mass shootings and decided, as a country, NO FUCKING WAY, and you have no right to judge us as inferior. You obviously don't even see your own hypocrisy in doing so. At least we all voted for it, you stupid prat. Stay in your country, we certainly don't need your perverse American breed of self-centred, everyone-for-himself "freedom" here.
Enjoy your guns and militia fantasies while your social fabric continues to rot, worn away by the hand-rubbing of your greedy corporations. American has clearly forgotten what Democracy, not to mention the Economy, is all about - that is, to serve the people, collectively. Instead, you serve corporations, religions and gun lobbies, to the point you can't even think for yourself and instead spout meaningless rhetoric straight from television about what it means to be "free".
Kind of ironic, considering that we're well behind the rest of the world in just about everything else internet-related. Our country is going to shit under the current conservative government, and that's not hyperbole. See asylum seekers, mining companies, Murdoch penetration, climate change denial; name the doo-doo, we're deep in it.
which will entice any superintelligence to convert all matter on Earth (and then, the universe) to computronium. If the AI is not perfectly friendly, humans are unlikely to survive that conversion.
I believe there was a paper written on a similar topic, by a one W. Rhinoceros, about the dangers of the rise of human intelligence. He also believed his kind would not survive the conversion - if I recall correctly - to small, decorative cups.
reality is skewed by Corporations creating laws to benefit themselves. Thus proving that Government should not be involved in economics, since the moment it is, it is corrupted by its own involvement.
Wow that's a leap. Just because there is corruption is politics, your conclusion is government should not be involved in economics. That's clearly an argument made up to support a bias you clearly already have. No, the solution is pretty simple - take corporate money out of politics. It is bleeding obvious that since parties now need $millions to operate, they become beholden to the companies whose "donations" allow them to survive. The whole thing is dysfunctional and only getting more so.
Government must be involved in economics, as they can make decisions for the good of the *entire country*, regardless of who has the most money. That is how it should be. However that function has been corrupted beyond recognition, due to parties now being dependent on corporate money, like a drug addict needing bigger and bigger hits until something gives.
Europe is more important than the life of a single human or indeed of whole generations, but small folk do not have the scope to understand this.
Interesting point of view, considering Europe is made up of lots of single human beings, and would not exist but for each generation of them. Are you really proposing that the set of standards to which a nation adheres is a completely separate issue to those its people wish for?
No Bullshit Boilerplate (TM), no needing 5KLoC of code and configuration, no application server to babysit 24/7, no need for catalina+tomcat+jakarta+jre+struts+hibernate+Xmxwtfbbq16GB, just load one module and every single customer sharing the server can use it... No need to understand the CGI protocol, no need to understand the HTTP protocol, no need to understand HTML even.
Apart from that, your "hello world" example is not a PHP code file, it's a plain text file. Describing a file with no php code as an example of php is being disingenuous.
Depends how you use it. Yahoo have one of the best systems for creating throwaway email addresses, I've been using them for years and have accumulated around 70 of them. Their UI gets more cumbersome and slow with each fab new design iteration, but I don't check email online, I use POP down to Thunderbird.
Except that the POP account is Gmail, as Gmail has the best spam detection, but for some reason an utterly useless alias system (some email forms don't even accept "+" signs). So my Yahoo account, with the great aliases, forwards to the Gmail account, which then comes down to Thunderbird on my laptop, while still letting me check emails on the go with the Gmail app.
You don't have to use the services the way they'd prefer you to. The only time I visit mail.yahoo.com.au is to add another email alias. Works great, I like it.
"About 40% of the extra CO2 entering the atmosphere due to human activity is being absorbed by natural carbon sinks, mostly by the oceans. The rest is boosting levels of CO2 in the atmosphere."
Here again you can see that we are contributing more than what the natural Carbon Cycle can absorb, which is the problem. The issue is NOT how much CO2 humans produce vs how much nature produces. The issue is that our added emissions tip the scale and the Carbon Cycle cannot compensate any longer. I hope you can re-think your position to understand the distinction between this and what you are saying.
> My understanding is [...] As far as I can tell [...]
Kudos for being honest that those parts are just your opinion / your understand. So I skipped those bits, as I doubt you're qualified to reliably inform me on the topic.
> No one is denying the scientific effect of atmospheric CO2, or that the Earth is warming - what is under debate is the balance between natural climatic variation and human CO2 emission
So you concede the reality and importance of climate change, and that CO2 in the atmosphere is one of the major contributors, yet somehow want to debate "cause". This implies your only difficulty is with the idea that human activity has been the major contributor to CO2 in the atmosphere, right? Well, that's easily fixed, allow me to direct you to the simple answer:
TL;DR: Yes natural CO2 is emitted, but it also *naturally absorbed*. It is a cycle, called the "Carbon Cycle". The problem is this: *Human emissions create an IMBALANCE between what is emitted what is absorbed*. Get it now? It's not about "how much is sent UP by us vs nature", it's about how we send up an EXCESS that cannot be absorbed back into the cycle.
> what is under debate is the balance between natural climatic variation and human CO2 emission
As you can see, no; it is not under debate. Like most in your camp, it is only under debate in your own mind, probably because you have only heard the rhetoric from other sources and not really understood the issues at all. Someone probably said to you "this is crap because nature sends up FAR more CO2 than humans do!" and that's all you heard. But it's a false, deceptive, pathetic argument, meant to mislead in order to allow companies to keep polluting. As such, it is also an immoral argument and those pedalling it should feel ashamed for contributing to ignorance and quite possibly future misery.
> My beloved 7 crashed, bad, again, this past week and I finally decided to try out 10, I am running 10074 and it made my....5? year old pavilion DV6 6135 feel like a brand new computer.
> Want better teachers? Increase pay and better teachers will enter the profession.
Funny how some people claim that, when it comes to CEOs, high salaries are necessary to attract the best talent, but refuse to apply the same rationale to other professions like nurses, teachers, etc. Oh yes, doctors' and lawyers' salaries must also be high enough to attract the best people, but teachers - no, no, their profession doesn't work that way for some reason.
> I'd say it's pretty fucking obvious why users think music is free. The industry is presenting it that way.
Firstly, no, people don't think music is free, unless you're standing next to a busker or at a venue playing what they paid for to play. Everyone knows commercial music is commercial.
Secondly, by your reasoning, giving people samples of something makes everyone believe all the rest of that thing is also free.
Remember Kazaa back in 2001? Nobody thought they had a right to free music until Kazaa got plastered all over the news and everyone discovered they could be naughty kids and get stuff for free. The concept has stuck ever since - mainly because it's still easy to do with any torrent program. People love getting free stuff if they can, no matter what it is, that's just human nature. As long as it's easy.
If anything, companies giving away free music is a *response* to the how torrenting has presented music to people as free.
> I have much more meaningful discussions on G+ than I do FB, partly because the number of followers on G+ is less, so less crap.
It sounds like those conversations are with people you don't know. Which is odd, as FB an G+ are centred around networks of people who know each other. Hence the G+ invite-only thing. If you want to have meaningful conversations with people you *don't* know, the Internet has been providing that since it started (and BBSs before that). You already have it here on/. There's also Reddit. Heck, there are things called "forums" all over the place, which served as social networks decades before "social networks" came along.
I don't think G+ provides anything new in the way of meaningful discussions with strangers who share interests. The internet's had that covered in thousands of ways for a long time.
Slashdot Mirror
If only criminals have guns it will be damn easy to identify them and lock them up.
True-ish, but the devil is in the details... you'd probably need a lot more law enforcers to be able to do that. AKA a "police state".
I, for one, prefer a society were it is generally acceptable that individual members take some responsibility for their own well-being. I always thought the liberal mindset is all about the individual and his liberties.
More probably, you're talking out of your ass. Hi, Australia here. No guns, no police state, we're very happy thank you very much. I take personal responsibility for my own well-being by voting for gun control. What a concept. Seems to be working fine, too. You're very welcome to your "I can protect mine, fuck you" mindset, if that's how you want to live. Call me crazy, but I always thought "civilisation" happened when a bunch of people get together and agree on ways to help and protect *each other*.
No doubt you're so amazed that your assumptions can be so completely incorrect that nothing I've said will be remembered tomorrow. It's ok, shock can do that.
> I prefer to have variables differentiated (scalars, arrays and hashes) and clearly identified from other syntax or text. It makes code more readable IMHO.
Not sure if that argument for perl is valid anymore, in the current age of IDEs and syntax highlighting text editors like Sublime etc. All the visual differentiation is done for you.
> Is the direction in which Linux is driven simply the whim of people like Linus and Lennart who dictate "my way or the highway"?
Seemed to work for Apple. :)
> This isn't empowering women. This is arguing that they are weaker than men far more profoundly than any MRA red piller gamer gater misogynist could ever hope to accomplish.
No, *labeling* something as "weaker" makes it weaker, which you just did.
> Or how the discovery of the Tomb of Jesus, which would appear to completely invalidate the ressurection and divine origin of Jesus, caused Christian worldwide to renounce their faith.
The article you linked to says very clearly it's a disputed claim.
> > Many extinct species would beg to differ.
> How can they do that? They're extinct.
"Would". As in if they weren't extinct, they would say that. Oh wait, no they wouldn't!
Nice try but no banana. There's no harm in everyone being forced to reducing pollution and use clean energy sources. However there is harm in everyone being forced to believe in Jesus. Not a comparable argument by a long shot.
> I did away with all my icons I normally put on the desktop and, instead, they reside in the start menu.
Wow. I've been doing this since Windows XP.
Also, once you arrange XP's menu in a keyboard-friendly fashion, it acts much like Windows 7's search box on the Start menu... except faster, since you only need to hit the first key of each menu item.
I usually have "Quick" menu, at the top level of Start, with common programs in it, like Photoshop. Whereas, in Windows 7, I have to type "pho" or something, and wait for results, in XP it is simply "QP" (quick -> photoshop) and up she comes.
I'm buying an SSD tomorrow, which will basically make this old XP laptop zoom, and I won't even have to worry about the 4GB RAM limit anymore, since swapping on SSD is pretty quick.
Yep I love my XP and you can prise it from my cold, dead fingers. :)
> Except it's not about making the software better. It's about making more money by selling the information you get from this 'feedback'.
Sure, and I'd call this purely wrong if it was Apple, since they make a ton of money from premium pricing. However I'm less inclined to blame MS for going down this path, since almost everyone I know runs a "free" copy of Windows.
Perhaps MS could offer a free version, with all this anti-privacy stuff turned on, and a paid one which is more the traditional model. They're definitely testing the waters, to be sure. Remains to be seen if they decide to offer two models, or try to force this onto everyone.
But I'm no longer going to keep badgering people to pay for their copy of Windows, if it's obvious MS has a revenue model based on analysing the private data of their users. Seems a fair trade to me now, if that is the case, and I'm sure many others will see it that way too, which just seems to be a tit-for-tat downward spiral to me.
> instead of recognizing a subset of users who enjoy social media and offering a better product, Plus focused on offering the same product.
FWIW, that misses the obvious reason for Google having a social media platform in the first place. What would be the point - in Google's view - of G+ obtaining a "subset" of users, say 10% to 20%, when FB has the other 80%-90%? Would that make *advertisers*, Google's main revenue stream, sit up and take notice? Doubtful - it may even have the *opposite* effect, where advertisers *lose* confidence in Google's ability to attract eyes. Advertising revenue is the #1 goal; users enjoying a Google or FB product for its own sake, or finding it useful, is just the means to that end, simple as that.
The problem with a business model where you give products away for free in return for advertising revenue is a big one. Look at newspapers. If you don't get **enough eyes**, it makes the product unviable. But this is the kicker: It's not whether it's enough eyes for you, the company making the product; it's whether it's enough eyes to give advertisers the *impression* that your space is a good return on investment. When it comes to investment in advertising space, it's all about *perception* of value. To give customers (ie. the advertisers) a perception of value in advertising on G+, it needs a definite minimum market share. Otherwise it's not perceived as worthwhile, when FB is the market leader for advertising to certain demographics.
Google used to be the king of advertising on the Internet, before FB came along. It's much harder to sell your product when clients realise you're no longer the "go-to guy" in your field any more. Particularly - and this is key - since FB can give advertisers very *focussed* advertising space, knowing so much detail about its users - age, sex, what they like, etc. Google sort of has that too - by analysing searches - but it's not as definite, as easily provable, as knowing who actually likes certain thing, not just searches on them for whatever unknown reason.
Also I think Google is (rightly) worried about the future of Facebook technology in general. Why else is Google investing heavily in other products, like self-driving cars, watches, Android, etc? Believe me, under all this fancy product hooplah, there is a fierce battle going on between Apple, MS, Google and FB for the possession of user data for advertisers.
What Google has lost to Facebook, they're trying to make up by saying to advertisers, "look, now we know everyone's movements and usage data in Android phones!" - they won that battle with Apple at least - Android market share is at least 50%.
So it's easy to see why the plan was to attract a *significant* % of FB users to G+. A small subset is *useless* to Google, as it does not improve their standing with advertisers - it has to be a significant slice, or there's no point. The pressure on execs to achieve that must have been enormous.
Google is being "attacked" from all sides in the data-gathering game, from MS, Apple, FB, etc. How all that affects Google's standing with advertisers is what guides Google's choices about what products they focus on.
Anyway, I think they've learned some valuable (though bleedingly obvious to many) lessons about user adoption. A major one is don't shove a product down people's throats - that only pisses off your users, even the loyal ones, undermining efforts to make it "popular". Google, of all companies, should know the value of "natural results".
> Perhaps a Ballmerless company grew some balls here, listened to it's customers
Oh you can bet they're listening to you.
> Hundreds of retail sites which list the card, just because the page mentions 'review', before I get to an actual honest-to-god review.
Kind of like this site when I try searching for honest-to-god news.
The gun thing is also important. I'm not a gun nut... but I believe I have a right to be dangerous in my own country and in my home. Not for hunting... not even for self defense... to be DANGEROUS. I feel that is an important check on anyone that would try to intimidate the people. If they understand that the people can and will turn on them with an instant militia of millions. That forces the elites to be careful.
That made me laugh. How's that working out for you so far? Maybe you can't see from inside, but from out here America looks like elite paradise. Your government is run by corporate donors, workers' rights are eroding, don't get me started on public health. Half of you can't be bothered getting off their arse to vote, so don't expect them to join you in your game of Fantasy Militia. Your guns and bluster are at best useless, at worst a cultural sickness, so don't you dare project your failures onto the rest of the world like they're the only answer to anything.
As an Australian, we've dealt with guns to the point where we saw mass shootings and decided, as a country, NO FUCKING WAY, and you have no right to judge us as inferior. You obviously don't even see your own hypocrisy in doing so. At least we all voted for it, you stupid prat. Stay in your country, we certainly don't need your perverse American breed of self-centred, everyone-for-himself "freedom" here.
Enjoy your guns and militia fantasies while your social fabric continues to rot, worn away by the hand-rubbing of your greedy corporations. American has clearly forgotten what Democracy, not to mention the Economy, is all about - that is, to serve the people, collectively. Instead, you serve corporations, religions and gun lobbies, to the point you can't even think for yourself and instead spout meaningless rhetoric straight from television about what it means to be "free".
So THANK YOU for deciding to stay in America.
We in Australia have just passed legislation requiring ISPs to retain users' "metadata" for 2 years. So there.
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-...
Kind of ironic, considering that we're well behind the rest of the world in just about everything else internet-related. Our country is going to shit under the current conservative government, and that's not hyperbole. See asylum seekers, mining companies, Murdoch penetration, climate change denial; name the doo-doo, we're deep in it.
which will entice any superintelligence to convert all matter on Earth (and then, the universe) to computronium. If the AI is not perfectly friendly, humans are unlikely to survive that conversion.
I believe there was a paper written on a similar topic, by a one W. Rhinoceros, about the dangers of the rise of human intelligence. He also believed his kind would not survive the conversion - if I recall correctly - to small, decorative cups.
reality is skewed by Corporations creating laws to benefit themselves. Thus proving that Government should not be involved in economics, since the moment it is, it is corrupted by its own involvement.
Wow that's a leap. Just because there is corruption is politics, your conclusion is government should not be involved in economics. That's clearly an argument made up to support a bias you clearly already have. No, the solution is pretty simple - take corporate money out of politics. It is bleeding obvious that since parties now need $millions to operate, they become beholden to the companies whose "donations" allow them to survive. The whole thing is dysfunctional and only getting more so.
Government must be involved in economics, as they can make decisions for the good of the *entire country*, regardless of who has the most money. That is how it should be. However that function has been corrupted beyond recognition, due to parties now being dependent on corporate money, like a drug addict needing bigger and bigger hits until something gives.
Europe is more important than the life of a single human or indeed of whole generations, but small folk do not have the scope to understand this.
Interesting point of view, considering Europe is made up of lots of single human beings, and would not exist but for each generation of them. Are you really proposing that the set of standards to which a nation adheres is a completely separate issue to those its people wish for?
Hello world in PHP:
Hello world!
No Bullshit Boilerplate (TM), no needing 5KLoC of code and configuration, no application server to babysit 24/7, no need for catalina+tomcat+jakarta+jre+struts+hibernate+Xmxwtfbbq16GB, just load one module and every single customer sharing the server can use it... No need to understand the CGI protocol, no need to understand the HTTP protocol, no need to understand HTML even.
So? You realise you've just perfectly described classic ASP, which was released in 1996, a year before PHP, which was officially released in 1997.
Apart from that, your "hello world" example is not a PHP code file, it's a plain text file. Describing a file with no php code as an example of php is being disingenuous.
their email sucks
Depends how you use it. Yahoo have one of the best systems for creating throwaway email addresses, I've been using them for years and have accumulated around 70 of them. Their UI gets more cumbersome and slow with each fab new design iteration, but I don't check email online, I use POP down to Thunderbird.
Except that the POP account is Gmail, as Gmail has the best spam detection, but for some reason an utterly useless alias system (some email forms don't even accept "+" signs). So my Yahoo account, with the great aliases, forwards to the Gmail account, which then comes down to Thunderbird on my laptop, while still letting me check emails on the go with the Gmail app.
You don't have to use the services the way they'd prefer you to. The only time I visit mail.yahoo.com.au is to add another email alias. Works great, I like it.
> what is under debate is the balance between natural climatic variation and human CO2 emission
http://www.newscientist.com/ar...
"About 40% of the extra CO2 entering the atmosphere due to human activity is being absorbed by natural carbon sinks, mostly by the oceans. The rest is boosting levels of CO2 in the atmosphere."
Here again you can see that we are contributing more than what the natural Carbon Cycle can absorb, which is the problem. The issue is NOT how much CO2 humans produce vs how much nature produces. The issue is that our added emissions tip the scale and the Carbon Cycle cannot compensate any longer. I hope you can re-think your position to understand the distinction between this and what you are saying.
> My understanding is [...] As far as I can tell [...]
Kudos for being honest that those parts are just your opinion / your understand. So I skipped those bits, as I doubt you're qualified to reliably inform me on the topic.
> No one is denying the scientific effect of atmospheric CO2, or that the Earth is warming - what is under debate is the balance between natural climatic variation and human CO2 emission
So you concede the reality and importance of climate change, and that CO2 in the atmosphere is one of the major contributors, yet somehow want to debate "cause". This implies your only difficulty is with the idea that human activity has been the major contributor to CO2 in the atmosphere, right? Well, that's easily fixed, allow me to direct you to the simple answer:
https://www.skepticalscience.c...
TL;DR: Yes natural CO2 is emitted, but it also *naturally absorbed*. It is a cycle, called the "Carbon Cycle". The problem is this: *Human emissions create an IMBALANCE between what is emitted what is absorbed*. Get it now? It's not about "how much is sent UP by us vs nature", it's about how we send up an EXCESS that cannot be absorbed back into the cycle.
> what is under debate is the balance between natural climatic variation and human CO2 emission
As you can see, no; it is not under debate. Like most in your camp, it is only under debate in your own mind, probably because you have only heard the rhetoric from other sources and not really understood the issues at all. Someone probably said to you "this is crap because nature sends up FAR more CO2 than humans do!" and that's all you heard. But it's a false, deceptive, pathetic argument, meant to mislead in order to allow companies to keep polluting. As such, it is also an immoral argument and those pedalling it should feel ashamed for contributing to ignorance and quite possibly future misery.
> My beloved 7 crashed, bad, again, this past week and I finally decided to try out 10, I am running 10074 and it made my ....5? year old pavilion DV6 6135 feel like a brand new computer.
So would a new install of XP. :)
> Want better teachers? Increase pay and better teachers will enter the profession.
Funny how some people claim that, when it comes to CEOs, high salaries are necessary to attract the best talent, but refuse to apply the same rationale to other professions like nurses, teachers, etc. Oh yes, doctors' and lawyers' salaries must also be high enough to attract the best people, but teachers - no, no, their profession doesn't work that way for some reason.
> I'd say it's pretty fucking obvious why users think music is free. The industry is presenting it that way.
Firstly, no, people don't think music is free, unless you're standing next to a busker or at a venue playing what they paid for to play. Everyone knows commercial music is commercial.
Secondly, by your reasoning, giving people samples of something makes everyone believe all the rest of that thing is also free.
Remember Kazaa back in 2001? Nobody thought they had a right to free music until Kazaa got plastered all over the news and everyone discovered they could be naughty kids and get stuff for free. The concept has stuck ever since - mainly because it's still easy to do with any torrent program. People love getting free stuff if they can, no matter what it is, that's just human nature. As long as it's easy.
If anything, companies giving away free music is a *response* to the how torrenting has presented music to people as free.
> I have much more meaningful discussions on G+ than I do FB, partly because the number of followers on G+ is less, so less crap.
It sounds like those conversations are with people you don't know. Which is odd, as FB an G+ are centred around networks of people who know each other. Hence the G+ invite-only thing. If you want to have meaningful conversations with people you *don't* know, the Internet has been providing that since it started (and BBSs before that). You already have it here on /. There's also Reddit. Heck, there are things called "forums" all over the place, which served as social networks decades before "social networks" came along.
I don't think G+ provides anything new in the way of meaningful discussions with strangers who share interests. The internet's had that covered in thousands of ways for a long time.