"We have had a number of detractors publicly claim to have had their life threatened"
There is no doubt that some people in this debate have acted immature. Those people should be ignored. There is no excuse for making death threats, and in such cases it may be worth while to get the police involved.
That being said having some idiots willing to go to such length to silence critics doesn't diminish the validity of the scientific debate.
"it was covered pretty much when the weather channel girl suggested kicking people out of the meteorological society or whatever it was of a TV weather person didn't tow the line"
Thats not how I interpreted that whole situation. What she said was that any member of the meteorological society that disagreed with the scientific consensus had better be supported by peer-reviewed literature. They better not be using arguments that have long been debunked by the scientific community, as many were (and still are). Remember that a weather man is not a climate scientists, and in virtually all cases they aren't qualified to challenge climate science.
It would be like a family doctor challenging the accepted consensus of how the flu is spread (without peer-reviewed data to back him up) and passing false advice on to his patients. Many would see that as a perfectly good reason to suspend his medical license, and in many ways there are some weathermen who are doing essentially the same thing.
"I have to ask, does peer reviewed actually reviewed by anyone who wouldn't disprove or hurt your work? or would peer reviewed mean reviewed by anyone, critics included?"
When your work is peer-reviewed the only evaluations of your conclusions that is made is weather it was arrived at logically. Many papers are published where the reviewers don't agree with the conclusions, but they do admit that they were arrived at logically.
This is essential for the peer-reviewed process to remain useful as the established medium for scientific debate. Scientific debate depends on being able to seriously look at new ideas even if they challenge the status quo. Journals gain recognition by publishing controversial articles (assuming that they meet the rigorous standards required to be published in the first place). This is where most of the anti-climate change 'research' falls short; it may be good enough to fool the general public but it does not hold up to scientific scrutiny, and thus is not published. The same thing goes for researchers, they gain recognition when they discover something new, not by agreeing to the status quo. A young researcher who can successfully challenge an established theory (again his arguments need to stand up to scientific scrutiny) will gain almost instant recognition, and spur many debates in the literature.
The simple fact is that if it isn't peer-reviewed then it isn't part of the scientific debate.
"If global warming is real,"
Thousands of scientists publishing in peer-reviewed journals have said it is real. That is good enough for me.
If you think a carbon tax is isn't a good solution what do you propose to deal with the problem?
"We still don't understand the problem of itself."
The the thousands of scientists on the IPCC seem to disagree with you. The thousands of scientists publishing in peer-reviewed literature seem to also disagree with you.
Kyoto was never meant to have much of an effect. It as meant as a first step. Nothing more.
The reason countries like China are ere excluded from caps under Kyoto is because they still emit MUCH less than developed nation on a per-capita basis.
That being said I believe that a properly implemented carbon tax is the best way to reduce emissions. How do you think we should deal with climate change?
"REAL concerns such as water pollution here in Canada are going unnoticed because of this nonsense."
Of course there are other environmental issues other than climate change and they need to be looked at as well, but that is no reason not to deal with climate change. As a voter I demand that politicians be able to deal with more than one issue at a time.
The problem is that copyright reform was mentioned in the throne speech. This means that it will likely be a confidence motion, and since the Liberals (the opposition) are in such rough shape they will probably want to ensure the bill passes so they don't have to fight an election in their weakened state.
That being said I hope you are right. This bill deserves to die.
"Kyoto protocol is a global socialist wealth redistribution scheme"
Ever hear of negative externalities? If not you might want to read up on them. This "socialist wealth redistribution scheme" is an attempt to internalize costs that used to be external.
Removing externalities is essential for the free market to function properly.
Surely you jest. The RIAA and MPAA have no problems getting our politicians to listen to them.
The MPAA lobbied to get the anti-camcording bill pasted in record time, and the government seems to completely ignore Canadian musicians while listening to CRIA (which represents no Canadian labels).
Like most politicians, ours listen to money, regardless of where it comes from.
I've found that putting cryptic MS error messages into google usually leads me to information on how to fix the problem, though there is no doubt that a certain knowledge of how thing work (or should work) is necessary to differentiate between the good info and the crap.
"Many of the author's points dont make any sense in comparison to MS and Vista. SP1 isn't due out (as of now) till Q1 2008... OSX's update is already out... don't see the similarity."
To be fair MS has released plenty of updates to address certain issues in Vista. Not all bug fixes/compatibility updates need to come as a service pack.
I dunno what was the issue with your machine, but my athlon64 x2 4800+ with 2 gigs DDR runs vista just fine. A couple of months ago I played with a $600 HP laptop and best buy trying to get Aero to slow down. I opened 40+ windows used flip 3d and it ran very smooth. I couldn't get it to slow down.
Through I will admit boot up times are longer than they were with XP.
I know that Nvidia drivers were horrible until fairly recently. While driver issues are a good reason not to use vista I find that many people place the blame for such failures on Microsoft when in reality people should be angry and the hardware makers.
Perhaps the DVD player is an exception. Plus I have to wonder why a DVD player asked for permission 5 minutes into the movie, I have only seen UAC prompts when they are expected. If I started seeing prompts at random times I would be concerned that some software on my computer may be attempting to something fishy.
When a UAC prompt opens in the background I can continue to use all my applications; they run just fine... well except the one that was asking for permisssion.
I am not sure what caused the UAC prompt in your case but I DVD playback should not have caused the UAC prompt. Perhaps the playback software requires admin privileges to simply check for an upgrade, in which case the culprit is poorly designed software, not Vista.
Still if Vista isn't working out for you use XP, Linux or something else that meets your needs.
"Does OS X freeze all open applications when it decided it needs the user permission to check for an update?"
I don't know since I am not a mac user, but I know from experience that vista does NOT freeze all applications to ask a user for permission. the vista permission window will usually be minimized if you are in the middle of doing something else. It will sit in the task bar flashing until you click it and only then will it pop up and takeover the whole desktop, but you can always hit alt tab and its gone if you are not ready to give it permissions.
perhaps more realistically business will move to Vista once Windows 7 comes out.
After all there are quite a few places where they are only now moving to XP. Business will never be at the bleeding edge of technology, they usually prefer more stability.
Slashdot Mirror
"We have had a number of detractors publicly claim to have had their life threatened"
There is no doubt that some people in this debate have acted immature. Those people should be ignored. There is no excuse for making death threats, and in such cases it may be worth while to get the police involved.
That being said having some idiots willing to go to such length to silence critics doesn't diminish the validity of the scientific debate.
"it was covered pretty much when the weather channel girl suggested kicking people out of the meteorological society or whatever it was of a TV weather person didn't tow the line"
Thats not how I interpreted that whole situation. What she said was that any member of the meteorological society that disagreed with the scientific consensus had better be supported by peer-reviewed literature. They better not be using arguments that have long been debunked by the scientific community, as many were (and still are). Remember that a weather man is not a climate scientists, and in virtually all cases they aren't qualified to challenge climate science.
It would be like a family doctor challenging the accepted consensus of how the flu is spread (without peer-reviewed data to back him up) and passing false advice on to his patients. Many would see that as a perfectly good reason to suspend his medical license, and in many ways there are some weathermen who are doing essentially the same thing.
"I have to ask, does peer reviewed actually reviewed by anyone who wouldn't disprove or hurt your work? or would peer reviewed mean reviewed by anyone, critics included?"
When your work is peer-reviewed the only evaluations of your conclusions that is made is weather it was arrived at logically. Many papers are published where the reviewers don't agree with the conclusions, but they do admit that they were arrived at logically.
This is essential for the peer-reviewed process to remain useful as the established medium for scientific debate. Scientific debate depends on being able to seriously look at new ideas even if they challenge the status quo. Journals gain recognition by publishing controversial articles (assuming that they meet the rigorous standards required to be published in the first place). This is where most of the anti-climate change 'research' falls short; it may be good enough to fool the general public but it does not hold up to scientific scrutiny, and thus is not published. The same thing goes for researchers, they gain recognition when they discover something new, not by agreeing to the status quo. A young researcher who can successfully challenge an established theory (again his arguments need to stand up to scientific scrutiny) will gain almost instant recognition, and spur many debates in the literature.
The simple fact is that if it isn't peer-reviewed then it isn't part of the scientific debate.
"Last I heard it was very detrimental to your career if you disagreed with global warming in any way."
see this:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7092614.stm
"If global warming is real," Thousands of scientists publishing in peer-reviewed journals have said it is real. That is good enough for me. If you think a carbon tax is isn't a good solution what do you propose to deal with the problem?
"We still don't understand the problem of itself."
The the thousands of scientists on the IPCC seem to disagree with you.
The thousands of scientists publishing in peer-reviewed literature seem to also disagree with you.
"Kyoto will have a tangible effect is foolish"
Kyoto was never meant to have much of an effect. It as meant as a first step. Nothing more.
The reason countries like China are ere excluded from caps under Kyoto is because they still emit MUCH less than developed nation on a per-capita basis.
That being said I believe that a properly implemented carbon tax is the best way to reduce emissions. How do you think we should deal with climate change?
"REAL concerns such as water pollution here in Canada are going unnoticed because of this nonsense."
Of course there are other environmental issues other than climate change and they need to be looked at as well, but that is no reason not to deal with climate change. As a voter I demand that politicians be able to deal with more than one issue at a time.
The problem is that copyright reform was mentioned in the throne speech. This means that it will likely be a confidence motion, and since the Liberals (the opposition) are in such rough shape they will probably want to ensure the bill passes so they don't have to fight an election in their weakened state.
That being said I hope you are right. This bill deserves to die.
"Kyoto protocol is a global socialist wealth redistribution scheme"
Ever hear of negative externalities? If not you might want to read up on them. This "socialist wealth redistribution scheme" is an attempt to internalize costs that used to be external.
Removing externalities is essential for the free market to function properly.
"anything American based will be ignored."
Surely you jest. The RIAA and MPAA have no problems getting our politicians to listen to them.
The MPAA lobbied to get the anti-camcording bill pasted in record time, and the government seems to completely ignore Canadian musicians while listening to CRIA (which represents no Canadian labels).
Like most politicians, ours listen to money, regardless of where it comes from.
I don't want a faster iMac, I want a slower Mac pro.
I've found that putting cryptic MS error messages into google usually leads me to information on how to fix the problem, though there is no doubt that a certain knowledge of how thing work (or should work) is necessary to differentiate between the good info and the crap.
"Many of the author's points dont make any sense in comparison to MS and Vista. SP1 isn't due out (as of now) till Q1 2008... OSX's update is already out... don't see the similarity."
To be fair MS has released plenty of updates to address certain issues in Vista. Not all bug fixes/compatibility updates need to come as a service pack.
not to mention that the liberals have proposed similar bad copyright laws in the past.
I always assumed that was because people frequently ran wordpress on servers that can't handle much simultaneous visitors.
Is wordpress really that bad? or is it frequently being run on under-powered servers.
Obviously you have never heard of the Ballmer peak. And you cal yourself a programmer...
I dunno what was the issue with your machine, but my athlon64 x2 4800+ with 2 gigs DDR runs vista just fine. A couple of months ago I played with a $600 HP laptop and best buy trying to get Aero to slow down. I opened 40+ windows used flip 3d and it ran very smooth. I couldn't get it to slow down.
Through I will admit boot up times are longer than they were with XP.
I think it is supposed to improve performance on the low end. On the med-high end vista is plenty fast (at least for me).
I know that Nvidia drivers were horrible until fairly recently. While driver issues are a good reason not to use vista I find that many people place the blame for such failures on Microsoft when in reality people should be angry and the hardware makers.
I counter you anecdote with one of my own
I did the same thing with a low end HP laptop at best buy. It wouldn't crash, and even after having 30+ windows open everything was pretty smooth.
Hardware/software makers only seriously work towards eliminating all the issues with a new OS after it has been released.
what did XP bring to the table that was better than 2000 for the average business user?
Thats how UAC works on my system
Perhaps the DVD player is an exception. Plus I have to wonder why a DVD player asked for permission 5 minutes into the movie, I have only seen UAC prompts when they are expected. If I started seeing prompts at random times I would be concerned that some software on my computer may be attempting to something fishy.
When a UAC prompt opens in the background I can continue to use all my applications; they run just fine... well except the one that was asking for permisssion.
I am not sure what caused the UAC prompt in your case but I DVD playback should not have caused the UAC prompt. Perhaps the playback software requires admin privileges to simply check for an upgrade, in which case the culprit is poorly designed software, not Vista.
Still if Vista isn't working out for you use XP, Linux or something else that meets your needs.
"Does OS X freeze all open applications when it decided it needs the user permission to check for an update?"
I don't know since I am not a mac user, but I know from experience that vista does NOT freeze all applications to ask a user for permission. the vista permission window will usually be minimized if you are in the middle of doing something else. It will sit in the task bar flashing until you click it and only then will it pop up and takeover the whole desktop, but you can always hit alt tab and its gone if you are not ready to give it permissions.
perhaps more realistically business will move to Vista once Windows 7 comes out.
After all there are quite a few places where they are only now moving to XP. Business will never be at the bleeding edge of technology, they usually prefer more stability.
raping a girl would be the greater (by a very large extent) of the two evils.