This... has nothing whatsoever to do with global warming.
I'm absolutely certain your certainty is based on what you *wish* to be true, and not what you *know* to be true.
The article is deeply dishonest about this
The article states exactly this.
and does the cause of climate science a massive disservice.
Possibly. However, you've not made a very solid case.
We know the difference between erosion, sinking islands, and rising sea levels. If you wish to disprove the article, it would be very easy. The number of facts required are small, are extremely easy to measure and interpret, and are infinitely superior to assertions, generalities, and misrepresentations.
Large swaths of land become uninhabitable all the time.
Due to rising sea levels?
Volcanic activity makes and breaks entire civilizations, deserts grow, landmasses get covered by huge ice crusts, lakes turn into swamps or dry out. Earth constantly changes.
None of which is being discussed. Pointing out things that happen all the time (minus your volcano example) does not somehow make them relevant. "Life's no picnic, people die all the time. They get run over, drown, fall in the tub, have heart attacks, cancer. It's awful! Huh? What's that got to do with whether I'm guilty of murder? Nothing, really. I was just trying to confuse the issue."
Pointing to one instance of change doesn't prove anything.
Straw man. Of course it doesn't "prove" anything.
It shouldn't even raise eyebrows.
WTF? A island with the population of a small American city becomes uninhabitable, and you don't think it's worth while to look into it? (that's what "raise an eyebrow" means. It means, "gee, that's interesting. Might be important, better look into it!").
if you want to be taken seriously, you can't ignore that man-made changes to climate may be fast compared to natural cycles, but in relation to our life-span, they're still rather slow.
Straw man. Where did this "slow" nonsense come from?
They're also not obvious, because the system is very complex and not at all a simple chain of causality (greenhouse gas, higher temperature, sea level rises). And the effects are still mostly masked by a huge amount of noise.
And this straw man has what to do with what again? No one is saying climate and weather are not complex, chaotic systems.
As drastic as the change may be, nature is still much more chaotic and stronger than man.
Planes are stronger than man, but somehow we can control them. That's basically the point. Small changes can lead to highly significant outcomes.
It's like you took a list of everything global warming scientists have stated, and you're pretending like not only do they *not* say it, but that it somehow contradicts them!
Not to rain on anyone's parade, but compared to serious examination of long-term sea level trends, one island isn't a very useful measuring stick. The article--hell, the *summary*--pointed out that it's not just one island that's going under. This is just the first one that used to be habited.
If "there used to be an island here big enough for people to live on. Now it's uninhabitable." isn't enough to raise your eyebrow, you've really got to remove your blinders.
You also forgot to mention that we have laws that state that when you cut a tree down in the US, you need to plant 2 more somewhere.... Either way, we're not really net killing trees. Because two saplings >= a full-grown tree?
Thank you, fellow OS X user, for making my day with this comment. Unfortunately, I must sue you for the loss of my MacBook's keyboard due to a sudden, violent outburst of tea you just caused.
The weird thing is, Conanymous Award has never drank tea.
I agree that a physical, non-software-controlled shutter would be best, but I think the green LED is meant to serve a similar role. It doesn't disable the iSight, but it does notify you if it's activated.
The obvious counter-argument is to point out the dearth of exploits in the wild for unix-based systems compared to Windows, although that point really isn't proof so much as evidence.
More to the point, however, is that the hurdle of gaining root through user interaction limits the rate at which any exploits can spread. It doesn't make exploits impossible (in fact, there have been a few "proofs-of-concept"), but it does make a wide-spread outbreak extremely unlikely.
I really have no fear of viruses and worms on the Mac. While possible, they are extremely unlikely. More worrisome (but still a long ways off) is spyware. Fortunately, given the open nature of the Unix underpinnings (not open as in "open source", but as in the easy access to the underlying system), it will be much more difficult for spyware to hide and defend itself on a Mac (or other Unixes) like it does on Windows.
Salesperson: What color iMac would you like? Customer: Oh, I didn't know they still came in different colors. Do you have blue? S: Nope, sorry. All out. C: Shoot. Well, how about green? S: Um... No. No green. C: Orange? S: Let me check. <goes into the back, returns a few minutes later> Sorry, no orange. C: How about black? That would be cool. S: Yes. C: Yes? S: Yes. I mean, no. We're fresh out of black iMacs. C: What color *do* you have in stock? S: White. C: That's it? White? They don't really come in colors anymore, do they? S: No, sorry. C: Why did you run me through this nonsense? S: I thought for sure you were going to pick white.
I grant the distinction you are trying to make (between different types of rights). But I don't see that distinction as having any bearing on the matter at hand.
Fair use isn't one of the "inalienable rights" enumerated in the Constitution (which is what I believe you are referring to). It is still a right, however. Specifically, I have the right to copy works for which I do not own the copyright, under certain circumstances. That right, unlike the rights specifically enumerated in the Constitution, can be revoked or transferred (it is alienable).
You are under the mistaken assumption that the doctrine of Fair Use is a right. It is not, and never has been, a right. It is a defence to the charge of copyright infringement.
You are wrong on two counts.
First, that I am unaware of the actual legal standing of fair use.
Second, that it does not grant rights. It, in fact, does. I am allowed the *right* to copy copyrighted works, if my copying falls under fair use.
This *right* has been repeatedly affirmed by the courts.
This legal distinction appears to be lost on most who contribute to the neverending copyright debate on slashdot.
Not in any generally meaningful way. While people do tend to misunderstand the details of fair use, the fact that it exists and allows for some rights for the consumer is both fact and law.
You must know this and get used to saying it bacause from a legal, and political view point, you still ahve those rights. SO when you say we 'lost our rights' it makes you look ignorant, and can be rubutted with "No we didn't you still ahve the right to do that."
I agree, in general, with the rest of your post, but disagree with this point.
If you have a right, but are prevented from using it, you really *don't* have that right anymore. Just being written down somewhere doesn't make a right a right. The written form is just the description of the right. A right is only a right when it can actually be exercised. Regarding the topic at hand, the corporations have actually taken away (violated) our right to fair use.
The flaw in your argument, as I see it, is the implicit assumption that only the government can take away or grant rights. In reality, it's those with power that grant or take away rights. It just so happens that usually it's the state that has ultimate power, but if the state leaves things to their own devices (ie: free market fundamentalism), all they have done is given the crown of ultimate power over to the next in line, which in the case of America, is the corporations (in other countries, the next in line might be corporations, organized crime organizations, warlords, etc).
Your argument, while it does make the corporations look bad, also absolves them of any legal (which for some, equates to moral) wrong-doing, and undermines efforts to have the government step in to protect our rights.
There are a lot of downsides. To transport hydrogen, you have to pressurise it into liquid - this takes even more energy. Once it's liquid, it is extremely corrosive, and will leak out of any seal, since the hydrogen atom is so tiny. It's also explosive. And you still have to transport it to gas stations, using yet more energy.
Some of what you've stated is not true (esp. the first point. hydrogen can be stored in solids, for example), but even if it is, all except one falls under the category of efficiency. The one different aspect you bring up is the fact that hydrogen can explode. My understanding is that this isn't a significant issue. Do you have credible evidence to the contrary?
Batteries have none of these drawbacks, so they are a much better choice for an energy source.
False conclusion. First off, batteries suffer from problems of efficiency as well. The specifics are different, but the end result is the same. Regardless, batteries have their own problems which are far worse than those of hydrogen. For example, batteries tend to be made from toxic chemicals (in fact, I don't know of any that aren't, but I'm no expert).
You are also fudging the purpose of hydrogen. It's not intended as an energy source, but as energy storage--the exact same role as a battery. Hydrogen is, in fact, more versatile than a traditional dry cell battery.
Well, you take your energy as hydrogen, I'll take it as electricity at 1/4 of the price...
So will I. BTW, I think you've left you strawman in my lawn, could you please get rid of it?
And it gets worse. Assume we're not going to use 100% *cough* renewable electricity.
I will absolutely *NOT* assume such a thing. If we use fossil fuels to generate hydrogen, of course it's foolish.
Until we are using 100% renewable or the magical *cough* fusion you're throwing around 90% of your energy away. Afterwards you're throwing 75% away. Either scenario is just fucking dumb.
Which is why I'm not promoting either. Seriously, get your strawman off my lawn.
The (physical, not economic) efficiency of hydrogen compared to fossil fuels is irrelevant so long as we don't use fossil fuels to create it. And of course I'm not advocating using hydrogen to power people's homes. Better to just use the existing electrical distribution system we already have in place. On the other hand, for circumstances where dedicated electrical transmission is not feasible or ideal, such as in transportation and portable electronics, why not use hydrogen? I'm sure even a significant loss in efficiency is more than offset by the benefits.
Because it's inextricably connected to the politics of oil.
Imagine someone outside the US suggesting that we starve the US economy as a means to stop power crazed US presidents from threatening, manipulating and invading foriegn governments?
And? Am I supposed to be shocked that some people feel that way? I fully understand such a position, and see it as fully rational from their point of view. So what? Am I supposed to throw away reason just because sometimes reason leads people to come to conclusions I might not like?
Drop the terror obsession, its unbecoming.
What obsession? I just noted it in a rational way. Obsession implies I'm focusing on it, and it would take a serious mental deficiency to read my post as obsessing on terrorism.
pumping money into the middle east is not the same as funding terrorism
Of course it isn't. Of course that's not what I said, either.
A non-trivial amount of money generated by the sale of oil in the middle east *is* used to fund terrorism, war, and other things which make the area such an abysmal place (there is also much greatness in the region, but that's not the issue I'm addressing here).
Both of those are being researched, and I fail to see how either are more promising than hydrogen. Geothermal and fusion(*) are ways of generating energy. Hydrogen is all about storage and distribution of energy.
(*)I know you said fission. Fission has extreme drawbacks which, while addressable, keep it from being an ideal energy source.
The hydrogen economy was an idea dreamed up by those with a vested interest to divert attention and money away from more promising and immediate technologies Such as?
Before that, hydrogen is a cumbersome, impractical, lossy way to transport energy. We might as well look into synthesizing hydrocarbons from CO2 and H2O instead of just splitting water into H2 and O2. Any hydrocarbon is less troublesome to handle than hydrogen. If we make the chains long enough, we might even end up with stuff that's pretty much identical to oil-based gasoline.
That makes no sense. The problem with hydrogen as an energy carrier is that you have to first put the energy into it to separate it from H2O. By creating energy from CO2 and H2O suffers from the same problem. You first have to put the energy into it that you plan to get out of it (different end-products than CO2 and H2O will affect the ratio of energy in to energy out, but the fundamental issue still applies).
The only reason fossil fuels are efficient is that they already exist. Essentially, they are pre-charged batteries.
Who cares how efficient it is? It's far cleaner than any other presently available energy store. If we use solar, wind and tidal energy to charge the hydrogen batteries, what difference does energy efficiency make, so long as current and future energy needs can be met?
Why? If energy can be cheaply and cleanly created, transported and consumed, what reason is there at all to decrease its use?
What we actually need to do, at present, is reduce the consumption of fossil fuels, because it's the burning of carbon-based fuels that is the source of all the drawbacks of energy usage.
If you had a battery that never depleted and produced no pollution whatsoever, what would be the benefit of not using it?
Efficiency is irrelevant. Fossil fuels are essentially fully charged batteries. Water is essentially a flat hydrogen battery. Of course using an already charged battery is going to be more efficient than charging a flat battery.
The problem with fossil fuels isn't that they are efficient. That's their sole benefit. The drawbacks are pollution, global warming, scarcity and terrorism.
The hydrogen economy has absolutely *NONE* of those problems. The only problem it has is efficiency. We have to first charge the battery (separate H2 from H2O). Fortunately, there is a virtually unlimited supply of both H2O (the ocean!) and energy (the sun, wind, waves, etc). We can tap both the fuel supply (water) and generate hydrogen from it, even at extreme inefficiencies, without *ANY DRAWBACKS WHATSOEVER*, once the initial investment is paid for.
Cheaper, cleaner, doesn't fund terrorism, doesn't emit greenhouse gasses. What's the downside?
Slashdot Mirror
I'm absolutely certain your certainty is based on what you *wish* to be true, and not what you *know* to be true.
The article states exactly this.
Possibly. However, you've not made a very solid case.
We know the difference between erosion, sinking islands, and rising sea levels. If you wish to disprove the article, it would be very easy. The number of facts required are small, are extremely easy to measure and interpret, and are infinitely superior to assertions, generalities, and misrepresentations.
None of which is being discussed. Pointing out things that happen all the time (minus your volcano example) does not somehow make them relevant. "Life's no picnic, people die all the time. They get run over, drown, fall in the tub, have heart attacks, cancer. It's awful! Huh? What's that got to do with whether I'm guilty of murder? Nothing, really. I was just trying to confuse the issue."
Straw man. Of course it doesn't "prove" anything.
WTF? A island with the population of a small American city becomes uninhabitable, and you don't think it's worth while to look into it? (that's what "raise an eyebrow" means. It means, "gee, that's interesting. Might be important, better look into it!").
Straw man. Where did this "slow" nonsense come from?
And this straw man has what to do with what again? No one is saying climate and weather are not complex, chaotic systems.
Planes are stronger than man, but somehow we can control them. That's basically the point. Small changes can lead to highly significant outcomes.
It's like you took a list of everything global warming scientists have stated, and you're pretending like not only do they *not* say it, but that it somehow contradicts them!
If "there used to be an island here big enough for people to live on. Now it's uninhabitable." isn't enough to raise your eyebrow, you've really got to remove your blinders.
We asked for you, but they said they couldn't give a flyingfskck. Sorry.
You ought to read the article. It's quite short.
It states, "visitors to Google's sites rose". In other words, they are counting all the sites.
It also states, "visitors at YouTube, bought by Google for $1.65 billion in November, rose more than 24-fold to 107.9 million, ComScore said."
The article doesn't explicitly state that YouTube was counted in Google's numbers, but it's highly implied.
I agree that a physical, non-software-controlled shutter would be best, but I think the green LED is meant to serve a similar role. It doesn't disable the iSight, but it does notify you if it's activated.
The obvious counter-argument is to point out the dearth of exploits in the wild for unix-based systems compared to Windows, although that point really isn't proof so much as evidence.
More to the point, however, is that the hurdle of gaining root through user interaction limits the rate at which any exploits can spread. It doesn't make exploits impossible (in fact, there have been a few "proofs-of-concept"), but it does make a wide-spread outbreak extremely unlikely.
I really have no fear of viruses and worms on the Mac. While possible, they are extremely unlikely. More worrisome (but still a long ways off) is spyware. Fortunately, given the open nature of the Unix underpinnings (not open as in "open source", but as in the easy access to the underlying system), it will be much more difficult for spyware to hide and defend itself on a Mac (or other Unixes) like it does on Windows.
Salesperson: What color iMac would you like?
Customer: Oh, I didn't know they still came in different colors. Do you have blue?
S: Nope, sorry. All out.
C: Shoot. Well, how about green?
S: Um... No. No green.
C: Orange?
S: Let me check. <goes into the back, returns a few minutes later> Sorry, no orange.
C: How about black? That would be cool.
S: Yes.
C: Yes?
S: Yes. I mean, no. We're fresh out of black iMacs.
C: What color *do* you have in stock?
S: White.
C: That's it? White? They don't really come in colors anymore, do they?
S: No, sorry.
C: Why did you run me through this nonsense?
S: I thought for sure you were going to pick white.
Fair use isn't one of the "inalienable rights" enumerated in the Constitution (which is what I believe you are referring to). It is still a right, however. Specifically, I have the right to copy works for which I do not own the copyright, under certain circumstances. That right, unlike the rights specifically enumerated in the Constitution, can be revoked or transferred (it is alienable).
First, that I am unaware of the actual legal standing of fair use.
Second, that it does not grant rights. It, in fact, does. I am allowed the *right* to copy copyrighted works, if my copying falls under fair use.
This *right* has been repeatedly affirmed by the courts.
Not in any generally meaningful way. While people do tend to misunderstand the details of fair use, the fact that it exists and allows for some rights for the consumer is both fact and law.
If you have a right, but are prevented from using it, you really *don't* have that right anymore. Just being written down somewhere doesn't make a right a right. The written form is just the description of the right. A right is only a right when it can actually be exercised. Regarding the topic at hand, the corporations have actually taken away (violated) our right to fair use.
The flaw in your argument, as I see it, is the implicit assumption that only the government can take away or grant rights. In reality, it's those with power that grant or take away rights. It just so happens that usually it's the state that has ultimate power, but if the state leaves things to their own devices (ie: free market fundamentalism), all they have done is given the crown of ultimate power over to the next in line, which in the case of America, is the corporations (in other countries, the next in line might be corporations, organized crime organizations, warlords, etc).
Your argument, while it does make the corporations look bad, also absolves them of any legal (which for some, equates to moral) wrong-doing, and undermines efforts to have the government step in to protect our rights.
False conclusion. First off, batteries suffer from problems of efficiency as well. The specifics are different, but the end result is the same. Regardless, batteries have their own problems which are far worse than those of hydrogen. For example, batteries tend to be made from toxic chemicals (in fact, I don't know of any that aren't, but I'm no expert).
You are also fudging the purpose of hydrogen. It's not intended as an energy source, but as energy storage--the exact same role as a battery. Hydrogen is, in fact, more versatile than a traditional dry cell battery.
I will absolutely *NOT* assume such a thing. If we use fossil fuels to generate hydrogen, of course it's foolish.
Which is why I'm not promoting either. Seriously, get your strawman off my lawn.
The (physical, not economic) efficiency of hydrogen compared to fossil fuels is irrelevant so long as we don't use fossil fuels to create it. And of course I'm not advocating using hydrogen to power people's homes. Better to just use the existing electrical distribution system we already have in place. On the other hand, for circumstances where dedicated electrical transmission is not feasible or ideal, such as in transportation and portable electronics, why not use hydrogen? I'm sure even a significant loss in efficiency is more than offset by the benefits.
And? Am I supposed to be shocked that some people feel that way? I fully understand such a position, and see it as fully rational from their point of view. So what? Am I supposed to throw away reason just because sometimes reason leads people to come to conclusions I might not like?
What obsession? I just noted it in a rational way. Obsession implies I'm focusing on it, and it would take a serious mental deficiency to read my post as obsessing on terrorism.
A non-trivial amount of money generated by the sale of oil in the middle east *is* used to fund terrorism, war, and other things which make the area such an abysmal place (there is also much greatness in the region, but that's not the issue I'm addressing here).
The issue at hand isn't economic efficiency, but work (physics) efficiency.
Economic efficiency is a different issue, and it *is* relevant.
Both of those are being researched, and I fail to see how either are more promising than hydrogen. Geothermal and fusion(*) are ways of generating energy. Hydrogen is all about storage and distribution of energy.
(*)I know you said fission. Fission has extreme drawbacks which, while addressable, keep it from being an ideal energy source.
The only reason fossil fuels are efficient is that they already exist. Essentially, they are pre-charged batteries.
Who cares how efficient it is? It's far cleaner than any other presently available energy store. If we use solar, wind and tidal energy to charge the hydrogen batteries, what difference does energy efficiency make, so long as current and future energy needs can be met?
Why? If energy can be cheaply and cleanly created, transported and consumed, what reason is there at all to decrease its use?
What we actually need to do, at present, is reduce the consumption of fossil fuels, because it's the burning of carbon-based fuels that is the source of all the drawbacks of energy usage.
If you had a battery that never depleted and produced no pollution whatsoever, what would be the benefit of not using it?
Efficiency is irrelevant. Fossil fuels are essentially fully charged batteries. Water is essentially a flat hydrogen battery. Of course using an already charged battery is going to be more efficient than charging a flat battery.
The problem with fossil fuels isn't that they are efficient. That's their sole benefit. The drawbacks are pollution, global warming, scarcity and terrorism.
The hydrogen economy has absolutely *NONE* of those problems. The only problem it has is efficiency. We have to first charge the battery (separate H2 from H2O). Fortunately, there is a virtually unlimited supply of both H2O (the ocean!) and energy (the sun, wind, waves, etc). We can tap both the fuel supply (water) and generate hydrogen from it, even at extreme inefficiencies, without *ANY DRAWBACKS WHATSOEVER*, once the initial investment is paid for.
Cheaper, cleaner, doesn't fund terrorism, doesn't emit greenhouse gasses. What's the downside?