That is irrelevant. The fact of the matter is, they see Vonage as predatory to their other businesses. If they can shunt off 2 million VoIP subscribers to their service, and only a small percentage stay, that's still a few thousand more customers, and a major competitor gone.
While there are other VoIP companies, none of them have the traction of Vonage. And, you can bet this ruling will have a "chilling" effect on investment in the entire VoIP sphere: if this lawsuit successfully kills Vonage (which increasingly it looks like it will), investors will RUN FULL SPEED from any other VoIP company, even if they don't have any exposure to Verizon's patent claims. Wall Street understands patent law less than the typical/. troll, and there are too many other investment opportunities out there to study Packet8's or VoicePulse's (to throw out examples) exposure to a similar lawsuit.
Like SCO v. IBM, this lawsuit is more about spreading FUD in a business that is predatory to Verizon's core business. Unlike SCO, however, Verizon has a potentially valid claim and is suing a company with pretty shallow pockets that operates in a market sector that has yet to overwhelmingly demonstrate a lot of short-term profitability.
RIM was sideswiped by (arguably) a patent troll who had no tangible product, no customers, and nobody had ever heard of.
This is a lawsuit brought by a well-funded telephone company (the largest LEC in the United States, and one of the largest telecom companies on the planet). Wall Street will respond negatively to this news once it starts circulating.
The news is just now hitting the wire, and Vonage stock has already taken a 10% beating. Once the announcements are made by Vonage and Verizon later this afternoon, expect the stock to be in penny-stock territory range on Monday once trading ends.
That does not bode well for Vonage as a company.
Verizon fully intends, through the courts, to shut Vonage down. It appears, effectively, they have.
Next week's news story: Verizon acquires a majority stake in Vonage as a "settlement" to the lawsuit, and begins "transitioning Vonage customers to Verizon's VoIP offering". Six months down the road, Vonage will quietly cease operations, after Verizon uses the leverage of their stock position to shutter the company after all customers have been moved off Vonage's revenue column.
That's the problem. Vonage, like most young companies, is only solvent as long as they start taking in new customers. You slam the brakes on new signups, the whole house of cards can collapse.
I give Vonage six weeks. Hell, if they can't get this injunction lifted, and the don't find a way to work around it and sign up new customers, they may have six hours. We'll see how Wall Street responds to this news.
Legally, if you've made purchases in Oregon as a Washington resident you are supposed to file a "use tax" return at the end of the year itemizing your out-of-state purchases.
If you've purchased anything in Oregon (or, for that matter, any other state) and did not pay sales tax at time of purchase, you're supposed to file a "use tax" return in Washington.
Legally, residents of WA are supposed to file a tax return that is a sum of all their purchases made outside the state. For example, Vancouver WA is right across the state line from Oregon, which has no state sales tax, and many who live in what we (Portlanders) refer to as the "Leper Colony" make many major purchases in Oregon as a consequence. In fact, there is an entire shopping center (Jantzen Beach Mall) which exists right on the other side of the Interstate Bridge.. and on a typical Saturday the parking lot is filled with WA plates. It is somewhat out-of-the-way for the majority of those who live in Portland proper (and the neighborhoods it is near [Kenton and other North Portland 'hoods] aren't exactly the most affluent parts of the city).
That being said, nobody does it (something like 1% of WA residents actually do it).
According to the Master Merchant Agreement I signed with my credit card processor, I _CANNOT_ charge a customer's credit card without _EXPLICIT_ authorization. In the "quick guide" provided with the legalese, they _SPECIFICALLY_ state that even in the event of clerical error, once the transaction is complete you cannot charge a customer the difference between the price they should have paid and the price they actually paid (and this is the important part) WITHOUT CLEAR PERMISSION FROM THE CUSTOMER TO DO SO.
Maybe Amazon has a different Master Merchant Agreement than I have. All I know is, if I pulled this stunt, I'd be put on the master Declined Merchant list faster than you can say "credit card fraud."
"Hey, wait a minute. Apple puts out a point release of Mac OS X every 18 months, and gets a lot of hype. We wait six years to put out a significant upgrade to our OS, and the general public's response is underwhelming. Maybe more frequent releases will work!"
What they don't seem to forget is that Mac OS X keeps improving the base user experience. Since Windows 2000, we've had three significantly different Windows OS user experiences. The little I've already worked with Vista, it was a big pain in the ass to figure out how to mount a Samba file share. I kept expecting to just do a \\server\share in Explorer or something, that didn't work.
Meanwhile, META-K on Finder has worked to pull up the Connect to Server.. dialog ever since at least 10.2. Now, whether or not SMB support was working or not was debatable, but at least the UI never changed dramatically.
The relocation "bonus" is just that: a bonus that is paid for you to relocate. This is in addition to them paying for a commercial mover and other "benefits".
Many of the expenses involved in "relocation" aren't necessarily tax deductible. For example, I don't believe that the numerous flights I took back and forth "commuting" is necessarily tax deductible (well, they might be with some work, but not on the face of it). Additionally, expenses like maintaining two utility accounts between two places and long distance charges calling "home" similarly are not tax deductible.
The relocation "bonus" is officially designed to make your life easier in a time when your finances would be stretched. What you do with it is your business: as far as the company is concerned, you can take that $4k and make it a nice down payment on a new car or a new computer or something.
If you're so poor that you can't afford a document that costs $80 every ten years, maybe you need to evaluate whether or not you can afford to travel across an international border.
Canada can (and does) deny entry to people from the US who have "no visible means of support" or are carrying inadequate amounts of cash and no credit cards or other means of support. My S/O, who was traveling on an Amtrak Thruway bus from Seattle to Vancouver, was only allowed entry provisionally for seven days when she was traveling with $200 and no credit cards.. and that was only because Canadian customs called me and asked me about my financial status (comfortably middle-class, own a home in Oregon, gainfully employed but on sabbatical) and plans in Canada.
Fire your accountant if they can't figure out the problem.
My employer pays a flat relocation benefit of $4,000 for people moving more than 500 miles. They have their payroll service (ADP) do the math so your relocation check is $4,000 AFTER taxes.
If ADP can do the math, it can't possibly be that hard.
As much as you might hand wave it away, it is a valid point to discuss. The fact of the matter is, Apple UNDERPROMISES and OVERDELIVERS, whereas Microsoft does the exact opposite. That's my whole point, and probably a significant reason the "Reality Distortion Field" exists. I can honestly say that I have never been disappointed by an Apple product I have purchased.. and I was a user that got bit by the Apple G3 iBook logic board problems. In the end, Apple made it right.
I wish I could say the same for other laptop manufacturers. Only IBM/Lenovo, in my experience, even comes close to offering any kind of customer service worth talking about.
In contrast, I'm still waiting for Microsoft to support things that were announced in the Windows NT/98 days.
But, it's so nice that you missed that entire part of the argument, and went straight for the Microsoftie "Oh! Evidence of the Jobsian Distortion Field!" For those who read this thread from a neutral perspective, you just made my point louder, and more definitively, than I ever could. Thanks.
There are plenty of applications that cannot be run exclusively through a browser that a "smartphone" needs to have.
Regardless of what you might think, the thing is a smartphone. People who have used smartphones, be they Treos, Blackberries, or even the old Nokia flip-open communicator are going to be the first people who buy these phones. And, the article's whole point is that these people are likely to be sorely disappointed not by what the iPhone does, but what it doesn't.
Big deal, it has a smart connector. By all appearances, it has a smart connector, and stupid software (that is, there is no third-party API).
Right now, feature for feature, the iPhone would be an inferior replacement to my Treo 650. All the features you state (one-button contacts, intelligent ringer deactivation of music playback) the Treo 650 already does. Granted, it is third-party software that makes it happen, but considering that I bought my 650 for $199 after rebates, a $100 "big fat memory card", and $200 worth of third-party software costs the same as the iPhone, with nothing else.
There are going to be applications for this thing that Apple didn't think of (as much as that might pain Jobs to admit). The kinds of people who shell out this kind of money for a smartphone are used to having things their way: heck, on the Palm, I don't even have to use the built-in contact and calendar functions if I don't like them. There are third-party calender and contact applications that INTEROPERATE WITH THE EXISTING DATABASE so that everything is seamless.
Do not OVERestimate the value of the thing being oriented to making calls. People who buy these things, generally, are interested in whiz-bang. If they were interested in making calls, they'd buy a $50 LG or Motorola PEBL and a good wired headset.
OS X 10.2 is five years old. Every single program written for 10.2 continues to run in Tiger (and likely Leopard), with a few exceptions. Similarly, most software written for OS X will generally run on (at least) 10.3, and while I can think of a few examples that don't run on 10.2, there are 10.2 versions of those programs that are still being maintained and bug-fixed.
Windows XP is five years old at this point because of Microsoft's managerial missteps, not because of some "technical" reason. The "Vista" operating system we're seeing today is a far cry, feature wise, from the "Longhorn" operating system Microsoft has promised. "Vista" is as revolutionary compared to XP as Tiger was to Panther. Can you name any MacOS X release that did not contain exactly what it was supposed to?
An even more compelling story is told in the fact the Microsoft is bending "backwards" to port.NET 3 for XP. It's probably because corporate America is balking at upgrading to Vista (I know my employer "has no plans"), and Microsoft's.NET plans are more important than forcing them to upgrade to Vista to get.NET 3's features.
So, to answer your original question, Apple doesn't HAVE TO port new features to the old releases. Apple users are generally "more than happy" to fork over the $129 for an OS upgrade, and aren't too pissed off when some new spiffy-wiz-bang feature doesn't work on their 2-4 year old machine.
Why is that? Maybe Microsoft needs to evaluate that.
There's plenty of software written for XP that does not run on Windows ME/98/95, that requires new APIs. Just like there were things in Windows 95 that could not be run with Windows 3.1. That's why you release a new version of the operating system.
When you bought your Apple G3 four or so years ago with 10.2 installed on it, you got exactly what you were told you were going to get. That computer does, today, exactly what that computer did the day you bought it. Why is it Apple's responsibility to give you new stuff for free?
Most Mac users probably don't even buy every single upgrade. I know, for me, I bought 10.3, because I had a bunch of 10.2 machines... but I have yet to directly buy 10.4, because I bought whole new machines. I'll probably buy 10.5, but I suspect that by the time 10.6 comes around, this dual-G5 is gonna be obsolete. Heck, I still have a machine running 10.3 (an old PowerBook G4).
My mom, who was about as tech savvy as a Pennsylvania Amish, hated working with Windows at work. Most of the office she worked in (a Federal government agency) similarly hated it, even though the local help desk employee was top notch and an all-around "good guy". Where I work, nobody "likes" Windows, everybody begrudgingly runs it because "corporate standards" dictate Office, Outlook, and a few other tools. Don't even get our call-center employees started: many of them remember the "old days" of IBM terminals, and grumble constantly about how Windows is inferior to what they had. Number 1 complaint seems to be perceived "slowness" of Windows (and it is worth noting that all of our machines are less than two years old) compared to the old text terminals.
It'd be easier to find non-techies who hate the Mac than non-techies who "like Windows."
That "ice age" theory was widely misreported, primarily by "Newsweek" magazine. The actual report didn't necessarily say that, and even then (if I remember correctly) was withdrawn by the authors anyway.
In some cases, the position IS valid. There is a small amount of good science that paints a lot less dire prediction than the mainstream "global warming" theories.
My only point is that skepticism, in healthy doses, is what makes a scientist a scientist. Sure there are crackpots in every profession. My point is, "don't throw the baby out with the bath water." Not everybody who has a small amount of skepticism on "global warming" is necessarily a crackpot.
Side note: it is worth noting that I started making changes to "reduce carbon output" a decade ago, mostly because I'm on the "even if global warming isn't caused by humans, we can't be making it any better" camp.
There is nothing wrong with healthy skepticism on any subject. There are many in the meteorological and climatological community who have some issues with the science behind "global warming." Some believe that it might not be human caused, or are skeptical of the nature of the change.
Your analogy is incorrect. "Leeches and bleeding" is a valid medical procedure for some diseases. I have a disease called hemochromatosis, where part of the accepted treatment program is exactly that (although leeches aren't used, I have heard of cases where leeches ARE used with people with circulatory issues).
It's more like some doctors saying "we've found that leeches might be an appropriate treatment in these cases, and we'd like some leeway to continue to research this." There's nothing about that statement, on it's face, that makes the doctor a crackpot.
Similarly, just because somebody is a skeptic doesn't make them a crackpot. Quite to the contrary: believing, wholesale, in a particular thing and NOT maintaining a small amount of skepticism is exactly what makes a crackpot.
Re:Exit Polls are Inaccurate
on
Who won?
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· Score: 5, Interesting
Historically, exit polls have been amazingly accurate. Only in the last two elections have there been a wide disparity between the exit polling numbers and the official vote count. Secondly, in the last election data, why is there a wide disparity between exit polling data and the official vote count primarily in areas that used touch-screen voting with no paper trail, but yet be dead-on in areas with paper ballots?
Sony's VHS won the Beta-VHS war and much was made about it in the news, but they've since lost out to DVRs, PVRs, and other digital formats. Was there mourning for VHS??
Umm.. no. JVC's VHS. Sony's was Beta, and they lost. Just like Sony has lost every other format war they've ever fought.
Slashdot Mirror
That is irrelevant. The fact of the matter is, they see Vonage as predatory to their other businesses. If they can shunt off 2 million VoIP subscribers to their service, and only a small percentage stay, that's still a few thousand more customers, and a major competitor gone.
/. troll, and there are too many other investment opportunities out there to study Packet8's or VoicePulse's (to throw out examples) exposure to a similar lawsuit.
While there are other VoIP companies, none of them have the traction of Vonage. And, you can bet this ruling will have a "chilling" effect on investment in the entire VoIP sphere: if this lawsuit successfully kills Vonage (which increasingly it looks like it will), investors will RUN FULL SPEED from any other VoIP company, even if they don't have any exposure to Verizon's patent claims. Wall Street understands patent law less than the typical
Like SCO v. IBM, this lawsuit is more about spreading FUD in a business that is predatory to Verizon's core business. Unlike SCO, however, Verizon has a potentially valid claim and is suing a company with pretty shallow pockets that operates in a market sector that has yet to overwhelmingly demonstrate a lot of short-term profitability.
RIM was sideswiped by (arguably) a patent troll who had no tangible product, no customers, and nobody had ever heard of.
This is a lawsuit brought by a well-funded telephone company (the largest LEC in the United States, and one of the largest telecom companies on the planet). Wall Street will respond negatively to this news once it starts circulating.
The news is just now hitting the wire, and Vonage stock has already taken a 10% beating. Once the announcements are made by Vonage and Verizon later this afternoon, expect the stock to be in penny-stock territory range on Monday once trading ends.
That does not bode well for Vonage as a company.
Verizon fully intends, through the courts, to shut Vonage down. It appears, effectively, they have.
Next week's news story: Verizon acquires a majority stake in Vonage as a "settlement" to the lawsuit, and begins "transitioning Vonage customers to Verizon's VoIP offering". Six months down the road, Vonage will quietly cease operations, after Verizon uses the leverage of their stock position to shutter the company after all customers have been moved off Vonage's revenue column.
That's the problem. Vonage, like most young companies, is only solvent as long as they start taking in new customers. You slam the brakes on new signups, the whole house of cards can collapse.
I give Vonage six weeks. Hell, if they can't get this injunction lifted, and the don't find a way to work around it and sign up new customers, they may have six hours. We'll see how Wall Street responds to this news.
.. as opposed to all the wonderful help provided by the US Congress to the hurricane victims.
It's pretty pathetic that Wal-Mart did more to help the victims of Katrina than the US FEMA did, in the terms of cash and donated goods.
Legally, if you've made purchases in Oregon as a Washington resident you are supposed to file a "use tax" return at the end of the year itemizing your out-of-state purchases.
If you've purchased anything in Oregon (or, for that matter, any other state) and did not pay sales tax at time of purchase, you're supposed to file a "use tax" return in Washington.
Legally, residents of WA are supposed to file a tax return that is a sum of all their purchases made outside the state. For example, Vancouver WA is right across the state line from Oregon, which has no state sales tax, and many who live in what we (Portlanders) refer to as the "Leper Colony" make many major purchases in Oregon as a consequence. In fact, there is an entire shopping center (Jantzen Beach Mall) which exists right on the other side of the Interstate Bridge.. and on a typical Saturday the parking lot is filled with WA plates. It is somewhat out-of-the-way for the majority of those who live in Portland proper (and the neighborhoods it is near [Kenton and other North Portland 'hoods] aren't exactly the most affluent parts of the city).
That being said, nobody does it (something like 1% of WA residents actually do it).
According to the Master Merchant Agreement I signed with my credit card processor, I _CANNOT_ charge a customer's credit card without _EXPLICIT_ authorization. In the "quick guide" provided with the legalese, they _SPECIFICALLY_ state that even in the event of clerical error, once the transaction is complete you cannot charge a customer the difference between the price they should have paid and the price they actually paid (and this is the important part) WITHOUT CLEAR PERMISSION FROM THE CUSTOMER TO DO SO.
Maybe Amazon has a different Master Merchant Agreement than I have. All I know is, if I pulled this stunt, I'd be put on the master Declined Merchant list faster than you can say "credit card fraud."
"Hey, wait a minute. Apple puts out a point release of Mac OS X every 18 months, and gets a lot of hype. We wait six years to put out a significant upgrade to our OS, and the general public's response is underwhelming. Maybe more frequent releases will work!"
What they don't seem to forget is that Mac OS X keeps improving the base user experience. Since Windows 2000, we've had three significantly different Windows OS user experiences. The little I've already worked with Vista, it was a big pain in the ass to figure out how to mount a Samba file share. I kept expecting to just do a \\server\share in Explorer or something, that didn't work.
Meanwhile, META-K on Finder has worked to pull up the Connect to Server.. dialog ever since at least 10.2. Now, whether or not SMB support was working or not was debatable, but at least the UI never changed dramatically.
TiVo needs to fix the problems affecting many older Series2 users before they do anything else..
The relocation "bonus" is just that: a bonus that is paid for you to relocate. This is in addition to them paying for a commercial mover and other "benefits".
Many of the expenses involved in "relocation" aren't necessarily tax deductible. For example, I don't believe that the numerous flights I took back and forth "commuting" is necessarily tax deductible (well, they might be with some work, but not on the face of it). Additionally, expenses like maintaining two utility accounts between two places and long distance charges calling "home" similarly are not tax deductible.
The relocation "bonus" is officially designed to make your life easier in a time when your finances would be stretched. What you do with it is your business: as far as the company is concerned, you can take that $4k and make it a nice down payment on a new car or a new computer or something.
You're kidding, right?
If you're so poor that you can't afford a document that costs $80 every ten years, maybe you need to evaluate whether or not you can afford to travel across an international border.
Canada can (and does) deny entry to people from the US who have "no visible means of support" or are carrying inadequate amounts of cash and no credit cards or other means of support. My S/O, who was traveling on an Amtrak Thruway bus from Seattle to Vancouver, was only allowed entry provisionally for seven days when she was traveling with $200 and no credit cards.. and that was only because Canadian customs called me and asked me about my financial status (comfortably middle-class, own a home in Oregon, gainfully employed but on sabbatical) and plans in Canada.
What, like the dumbass entry on the top of your blog that states that the only way to delete a file is by dragging it to the trash?
I didn't even have to look at the help to try META-delete as a key combination. It's also on the right-click contextual menu as "Move to trash".
But, just for giggles, I opened up Help, typed in "keyboard shortcut delete", and found out how to do it quickly...
Fire your accountant if they can't figure out the problem.
My employer pays a flat relocation benefit of $4,000 for people moving more than 500 miles. They have their payroll service (ADP) do the math so your relocation check is $4,000 AFTER taxes.
If ADP can do the math, it can't possibly be that hard.
And, that's called an ad hominem.
As much as you might hand wave it away, it is a valid point to discuss. The fact of the matter is, Apple UNDERPROMISES and OVERDELIVERS, whereas Microsoft does the exact opposite. That's my whole point, and probably a significant reason the "Reality Distortion Field" exists. I can honestly say that I have never been disappointed by an Apple product I have purchased.. and I was a user that got bit by the Apple G3 iBook logic board problems. In the end, Apple made it right.
I wish I could say the same for other laptop manufacturers. Only IBM/Lenovo, in my experience, even comes close to offering any kind of customer service worth talking about.
In contrast, I'm still waiting for Microsoft to support things that were announced in the Windows NT/98 days.
But, it's so nice that you missed that entire part of the argument, and went straight for the Microsoftie "Oh! Evidence of the Jobsian Distortion Field!" For those who read this thread from a neutral perspective, you just made my point louder, and more definitively, than I ever could. Thanks.
There are plenty of applications that cannot be run exclusively through a browser that a "smartphone" needs to have.
Regardless of what you might think, the thing is a smartphone. People who have used smartphones, be they Treos, Blackberries, or even the old Nokia flip-open communicator are going to be the first people who buy these phones. And, the article's whole point is that these people are likely to be sorely disappointed not by what the iPhone does, but what it doesn't.
Big deal, it has a smart connector. By all appearances, it has a smart connector, and stupid software (that is, there is no third-party API).
Right now, feature for feature, the iPhone would be an inferior replacement to my Treo 650. All the features you state (one-button contacts, intelligent ringer deactivation of music playback) the Treo 650 already does. Granted, it is third-party software that makes it happen, but considering that I bought my 650 for $199 after rebates, a $100 "big fat memory card", and $200 worth of third-party software costs the same as the iPhone, with nothing else.
There are going to be applications for this thing that Apple didn't think of (as much as that might pain Jobs to admit). The kinds of people who shell out this kind of money for a smartphone are used to having things their way: heck, on the Palm, I don't even have to use the built-in contact and calendar functions if I don't like them. There are third-party calender and contact applications that INTEROPERATE WITH THE EXISTING DATABASE so that everything is seamless.
Do not OVERestimate the value of the thing being oriented to making calls. People who buy these things, generally, are interested in whiz-bang. If they were interested in making calls, they'd buy a $50 LG or Motorola PEBL and a good wired headset.
What is your point, then?
.NET 3 for XP. It's probably because corporate America is balking at upgrading to Vista (I know my employer "has no plans"), and Microsoft's .NET plans are more important than forcing them to upgrade to Vista to get .NET 3's features.
OS X 10.2 is five years old. Every single program written for 10.2 continues to run in Tiger (and likely Leopard), with a few exceptions. Similarly, most software written for OS X will generally run on (at least) 10.3, and while I can think of a few examples that don't run on 10.2, there are 10.2 versions of those programs that are still being maintained and bug-fixed.
Windows XP is five years old at this point because of Microsoft's managerial missteps, not because of some "technical" reason. The "Vista" operating system we're seeing today is a far cry, feature wise, from the "Longhorn" operating system Microsoft has promised. "Vista" is as revolutionary compared to XP as Tiger was to Panther. Can you name any MacOS X release that did not contain exactly what it was supposed to?
An even more compelling story is told in the fact the Microsoft is bending "backwards" to port
So, to answer your original question, Apple doesn't HAVE TO port new features to the old releases. Apple users are generally "more than happy" to fork over the $129 for an OS upgrade, and aren't too pissed off when some new spiffy-wiz-bang feature doesn't work on their 2-4 year old machine.
Why is that? Maybe Microsoft needs to evaluate that.
Why should they?
There's plenty of software written for XP that does not run on Windows ME/98/95, that requires new APIs. Just like there were things in Windows 95 that could not be run with Windows 3.1. That's why you release a new version of the operating system.
When you bought your Apple G3 four or so years ago with 10.2 installed on it, you got exactly what you were told you were going to get. That computer does, today, exactly what that computer did the day you bought it. Why is it Apple's responsibility to give you new stuff for free?
Most Mac users probably don't even buy every single upgrade. I know, for me, I bought 10.3, because I had a bunch of 10.2 machines... but I have yet to directly buy 10.4, because I bought whole new machines. I'll probably buy 10.5, but I suspect that by the time 10.6 comes around, this dual-G5 is gonna be obsolete. Heck, I still have a machine running 10.3 (an old PowerBook G4).
Most of the people that I know don't hate Windows
You need more friends that go out more.
My mom, who was about as tech savvy as a Pennsylvania Amish, hated working with Windows at work. Most of the office she worked in (a Federal government agency) similarly hated it, even though the local help desk employee was top notch and an all-around "good guy". Where I work, nobody "likes" Windows, everybody begrudgingly runs it because "corporate standards" dictate Office, Outlook, and a few other tools. Don't even get our call-center employees started: many of them remember the "old days" of IBM terminals, and grumble constantly about how Windows is inferior to what they had. Number 1 complaint seems to be perceived "slowness" of Windows (and it is worth noting that all of our machines are less than two years old) compared to the old text terminals.
It'd be easier to find non-techies who hate the Mac than non-techies who "like Windows."
Ummm.. Mac Pro. Ever heard of it?
That "ice age" theory was widely misreported, primarily by "Newsweek" magazine. The actual report didn't necessarily say that, and even then (if I remember correctly) was withdrawn by the authors anyway.
In some cases, the position IS valid. There is a small amount of good science that paints a lot less dire prediction than the mainstream "global warming" theories.
My only point is that skepticism, in healthy doses, is what makes a scientist a scientist. Sure there are crackpots in every profession. My point is, "don't throw the baby out with the bath water." Not everybody who has a small amount of skepticism on "global warming" is necessarily a crackpot.
Side note: it is worth noting that I started making changes to "reduce carbon output" a decade ago, mostly because I'm on the "even if global warming isn't caused by humans, we can't be making it any better" camp.
There is nothing wrong with healthy skepticism on any subject. There are many in the meteorological and climatological community who have some issues with the science behind "global warming." Some believe that it might not be human caused, or are skeptical of the nature of the change.
Your analogy is incorrect. "Leeches and bleeding" is a valid medical procedure for some diseases. I have a disease called hemochromatosis, where part of the accepted treatment program is exactly that (although leeches aren't used, I have heard of cases where leeches ARE used with people with circulatory issues).
It's more like some doctors saying "we've found that leeches might be an appropriate treatment in these cases, and we'd like some leeway to continue to research this." There's nothing about that statement, on it's face, that makes the doctor a crackpot.
Similarly, just because somebody is a skeptic doesn't make them a crackpot. Quite to the contrary: believing, wholesale, in a particular thing and NOT maintaining a small amount of skepticism is exactly what makes a crackpot.
Historically, exit polls have been amazingly accurate. Only in the last two elections have there been a wide disparity between the exit polling numbers and the official vote count. Secondly, in the last election data, why is there a wide disparity between exit polling data and the official vote count primarily in areas that used touch-screen voting with no paper trail, but yet be dead-on in areas with paper ballots?
Sony's VHS won the Beta-VHS war and much was made about it in the news, but they've since lost out to DVRs, PVRs, and other digital formats. Was there mourning for VHS??
Umm.. no. JVC's VHS. Sony's was Beta, and they lost. Just like Sony has lost every other format war they've ever fought.