And why would that matter? If we believe the climate will change to reduce our living space thorough riding sea levels then we should do something about that, regardless of the root cause.
The cause is important because if climate change is not at all or predominantly caused by humans, why should we think that we can do anything to stop the climate from changing anyway? If there's one thing we can all agree on, it's that the climate changes. (Period.) The Earth goes through an ice age; the glaciers grow. The ice age ends; the glaciers recede. We know this happens, and that it occurs apparently without human intervention (or interference). Therefore, nobody should be alarmed that Earth is warming; that's what it does. Will a warmer planet be bad for humans? Maybe, maybe not. There are a lot of unanswered questions remaining, but they're all mostly irrelevant if we don't know the answer to the most important question: is there even anything humans could do to stop climate change if we wanted to? It would be great if we could find answers to the questions that remain before passing sweeping global warming legislature. Unfortunately, the debate has turned ugly. Name-calling such as "denialist" certainly doesn't contribute much to the dialog or convince many people...
Why? Because you say so? The idea that the GPL magically protects users' interests better than a freer license is simply unfounded. BSD code cannot be closed any easier than can GPL code; the only one who can relicense (and therefore potentially close) code is the owner of the copyright and only for code which has not already been licensed. A copyright owner can do that whether the code is BSD, GPL, or any other license. Code that is released opened under BSD, MIT, Apache2, etc cannot be arbitrarily closed after-the-fact.
The only other issue is the GPL requirement to license code changes under the same license. The claim is that this is somehow better for the user. In reality, companies are either going to release their code or they're not. If they're not, they're not; they will simply not use GPL code. If they are, they may use the GPL, but recent contributions from companies have tended to ignore the GPL in favor of MIT and sometimes Apache2 (of which the GPL is incompatible). Interesting...
What the GPL does succeed at is being incompatible with other reasonable and free licenses. I don't think anyone wants to argue the point that license incompatibilities result in a better user experience or more freedom for users. Just the opposite is true.
In the end, terms and conditions of the release of a person's code is up to that person. There are many reasonable people who agree with the requirements imposed by the GPL and others who prefer another license. That's all fine. But the idea that the GPL is protecting users' freedoms should definitely not be one of those deciding factors since the notion is not founded on a reasonable model of reality. It's one of those things that has been repeated so many times that people now just assume it's true. There definitely are instances where a thoughtful person would choose the GPL, but "user freedom" shouldn't apply.
You may be underestimating the penetration of products with BSD-derived code into the market. The difference is we get a slashdot story every time Linux is associated in any way with business (we even have the nifty penguin-briefcase icon), but BSD remains relatively hype-free, by design. But the real humor in your post is that both Linux and BSD on the desktop (which is what we're talking about in this thread) are essentially hobbyist operating systems. To pretend otherwise is like one hungry man gloating over another hungry man because he has a few more peas than the other in his soup.
Is this at all related to Apple selling the same model Cinema Displays since April, 2007? 982 days without a refresh, following an average of 230.
Maybe, only because Apple is only able to sell displays based on demand but were paying prices on the supply side that were artificially higher than demand. If the price-fixing stops (and this is a good sign that it has or will), presumably there will be more profits for Apple, Dell, HP, etc in LCD displays and we may therefore look forward to refreshed product lines. Price fixing can have far-reaching consequences in a global market.
I can't wait to hear what really happened here. It's wouldn't be so outlandish if Watts' version of the story is entirely true
Wow, give me a break. It would very much be outlandish. Some cops may be jerks, but we don't get stories like this every day for a reason. I get very skeptical when somebody telling me about an incident is obviously trying really hard to paint a sob story ("omg they didn't even give him a coat?"), and I'm a bit disappointed so many are playing right into it without any clue as to what lead to these events. I know general sentiment toward border agents is lower than just about any occupation, but come on...
Do you somehow think that we can place greater trust results of science paid for by corporations?
Actually, that doesn't sound unreasonable. I know this is Slashdot and we're all supposed to be anti-corporations and all, but corporations have an interest in correct science simply because they want to hire students who know correct science. Incorrect science doesn't usually do a lot to help them make money, but it sure is a good tool the government has and uses to push through their agenda.
The reason that climate change has been resisted and argued by so many, for so long, is exactly this. We do not trust the people interpreting this for us at the national level.
I wish. What I see instead is a large number of credulous people who believe whatever certain pundits tell them is the best way to screw with liberals.
I see the contrary. After healthcare, climate change is one topic that people have been willing to take the time to learn more about. While some on both sides have come to the debate with predetermined, unwavering opinions, climate change supporters had a real chance to convince a lot of people who had no stake in the matter and just wanted to know the truth or do the right thing. Public opinion of global warming was really shot by proposed radical legislature to fix the problem when the science wasn't settled in many people's minds, the fact that influential climate change proponents refused to debate, and now the revelation that some environmental scientists have been doing questionable things with data. In short, it didn't take much blathering by conservative pundits to tarnish the image of climate change. The movement shot down itself.
I wonder how many 'average' users would get XP, Vista or 7 working on a desktop, let alone a netbook.
Presumably 7 would be more manageable for common users to install on recent hardware than an OS that's eight years old. It doesn't really matter though--it's clear to most people that Linux netbook market share is definitely not even close to approaching 32%, and most netbooks come with some form of Windows pre-installed.
As a Linux user, I think it'd be grand if that statistic were true, but there is no way...
I'm not sure what the OP's source is, but he's probably referring to how the GPL is often thought of as the holy grail or end-all-be-all free license, and how most companies releasing free code nowadays tend to stick with MIT and Apache2.0 among others. That, plus the GPL probably isn't as prevalent as many assume. Many small, inconsequential projects and doodads choose the GPL (hey, it's what people think of when they think open source), but beyond the obvious big projects Linux and MySQL, there are a lot of big projects who have chosen other, arguably freer licenses, including Postgresql, Apache, postfix, etc.
It doesn't matter to me what "the industry" does. "The industry" can do whatever it wants, and it has no effect on my ability to run open-source software on my own machine.
Which is why the common argument that the GPL magically protects users' interest more than other free software licenses is so silly. The GPL could cease to exist tomorrow and we would all still be running our free software irregardless of what other companies choose to do with or without the free code. User experience would probably improve because there would be a lot less "incompatible" code and presumably a lot less reinventing the wheel and therefore better software.
Anyway, concerning the story at hand, if Palm violated the GPL, they should settle. What else needs to be said about it? Yeah...
Fluxbox lets you do something that looks similar (screenshot with weird theme here... some programs I use run both an xterm and a separate GUI, so I can use the feature to keep the two windows together.
Yeah, it's nice. I've been doing it so long in flux that I forgot that more commonplace window managers don't have it, and that it might be considered an interesting idea worthy of a front-page Slashdot article. Well, we don't really have to wonder about the usefulness of such a feature since it's been available so long: it is useful. I don't think it's "the next big thing" since I doubt casual computer users would take advantage of it, but it's a godsend for power users who never restart their machines and always have a gazillion windows open. After workspaces, it's the most important feature for effective window management IMO--even better than Expose-style task-switching.
Is this some way Microsoft have found of getting round anti trust by setting the default search in IE to Yahoo not Bing thereby avoiding the accusation that they are yet again trying to illegally leverage a monopoly in one area to create one in another ?
I don't think the default search engine in IE has ever been an antitrust issue that anyone has ever cared about. But now that they're partnering with Yahoo, let's make it seem like it is? You do those of us who don't use Microsoft products a disfavor by trying to turn everything into some sort of evidence that Microsoft is the spawn of evil. They do enough unethical things that we don't need to cheapen our position by trying to fabricate more. You make our side seem desperate and irrational, and believe me we're not.
I think hoytak is referring to the number of people who go to bing and yahoo before any other search engine, not the total number of search engines that exist. Get it? It's funny... although probably not too far from the truth. Interesting link though?
"massive software slowed down educational programs in every classroom and cost the district more than $1 million in added utility fees and computer replacement parts."
If the school district is trying to make something up to charge him with theft of government resources, I think the increased electricity expense would be a better bet.
Someone needs to educate Ms. Birdwell, who is presented as overly dramatic in the linked article, about how these programs work. And how entirely appropriate it would be for local schools to donate unused computer time to running programs like these...
Wrong. It would be completely inappropriate for local public schools to donate anything to such causes. These school districts are funded by taxpayers who expect that portion of money to be spent as efficiently as possible doing only one thing, that is educating their kids. If somebody wants to help Folding@Home or SETI@Home, etc. they can do it on their own home computer(s). In fact, they can monetarily support any cause they wish and spend as much as they want and can afford, but when it comes to the tax money that has been set aside for public education, it should all be spent with minimum overhead for its intended purpose.
... and what a great opportunity it would have presented to the scientific education of the children in the district.
Except it wouldn't have contributed to better education for the children; it just increases utility costs without providing any education value for the kids.
Only a school district or the government could have taken 10 years to find a CPU hog running on 5,000 computers.
Things go undetected all the time in private organizations when the person doing them is also the person in charge of the unit that would normally be monitoring for that kind of problem. (Also, a school district is a government agency, they aren't two different things.)
He's an IT guy. Presumably he's not also one of the school district's accountants which is who should have caught this. An extra $100,000 per year spent on electricity would have been noticed by accounting in a private organization.
Instead, since this is government as you say, taxpayers spent over a million dollars searching for aliens when they thought they were paying for their children's education. How lovely.
The distinction is perhaps less important now, but perhaps you mean Oracle. It was Larry Ellison's vision that included "network computers" which are cut-down desktop machines which rely on central servers for software and storage. He doesn't look kindly on so-called "cloud" computing today, though.
when an app is written in JS it is more likely to be a resource hog than the same app written in compiled C
Actually, that's a perfectly reasonable thing to say, albeit pointless because of the obviousness of it. It doesn't matter what runtime implementation you use, Javascript will always use more resources than an equivalent C program can, if only because of the overhead of the unused but still loaded runtime features. That doesn't mean Javascript is necessarily a resource hog, but the statement your quoted is not very outrageous, especially since he qualified the statement with "more likely."
Absolutely. What makes me especially excited about trying G-WAN is that whenever it crashes I'll have the extra fun of figuring out whether the reason it crashed was because my own C code crashed, or because the code in his web server crashed.
Finding where a program crashed is way easier than finding a logic error, and those can occur in any language. Actually, debugging crashes can lead to discovery of certain kinds of logic and/or runtime errors that would be difficult to find if your runtime environment is protecting you from ever seeing a crash (heaven forbid).
I'm as much a fan of high-level languages, nice runtime environments, and useful abstractions as anyone, but I also happen to think that C gets more flak than it deserves. I really think universities are doing their graduates a disservice by educating them in the safe, comfortable confines of Java if they don't also teach them C. In my own subjective experience, the most capable and successful programmers I know (in any environment) are also the ones who are very comfortable in environments without garbage collection and restricted memory access.
Actually, you're both right. Or I should say, you are right and the OP may be right. You're right because it is obviously true that there exists at least some non-poser programmers who use Visual Studio and at least some "poser" programmers who use a text editor. But the OP may be right if it is statistically true (I don't know that it is) that there exists high correlations between "good" programmers preferring a text editor and/or "posers" preferring Visual Studio.
While it is obviously true that such correlation coefficients do not equal 1.0 (since supposedly at least some of us subjectively know of some good programmers who prefer Visual Studio or some poser programmers who prefer a text editor, it is my opinion that there probably does exist a pretty strong correlation on the basis (and assumptions) that programmers who are familiar with a text editor are older and therefore more experienced than those whose only real experience is with an IDE. If this is true, then the OP is generally correct (and it is obvious that he was generalizing).
I think you just missed out on the joke. It's unlikely the OP meant to show any kind of disrespect (heaven forbid) for the wonderful, lovely Euro, so try not to be so defensive huh? Relax.
Well not to say skepticism doesn't have its uses, but sometimes skepticism can caused a closed mind and impede progress. In this case skepticism against global warming has caused a slow down in research for green energy and green technology
That's not the fault of skeptics. That's the fault of extreme global warming (or climate change, whatever) proponents who were unwilling to compromise in the least. "It's either cap 'n trade or bust." Well, they got bust then. All the while, there could have been much smaller and far more productive steps we could have been taking in areas such as cleaner energy. In any case, I don't know how you can fault skepticism for what happened. If not for the skeptics, we may very well have cap 'n trade or some other sweeping legislation that isn't really what we need. Now that the frauds have been exposed to a certain extent, hopefully now we can begin meaningful debate about things we all agree on like clean energy without having to listen to the shrill OMG CAP 'n TRADE!!!~!
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But it seems he wants to have his cake and eat it.
What you meant to write is: he wants to eat his cake and have it too.
No... Bruce wrote the idiom correctly.
And why would that matter? If we believe the climate will change to reduce our living space thorough riding sea levels then we should do something about that, regardless of the root cause.
The cause is important because if climate change is not at all or predominantly caused by humans, why should we think that we can do anything to stop the climate from changing anyway? If there's one thing we can all agree on, it's that the climate changes. (Period.) The Earth goes through an ice age; the glaciers grow. The ice age ends; the glaciers recede. We know this happens, and that it occurs apparently without human intervention (or interference). Therefore, nobody should be alarmed that Earth is warming; that's what it does. Will a warmer planet be bad for humans? Maybe, maybe not. There are a lot of unanswered questions remaining, but they're all mostly irrelevant if we don't know the answer to the most important question: is there even anything humans could do to stop climate change if we wanted to? It would be great if we could find answers to the questions that remain before passing sweeping global warming legislature. Unfortunately, the debate has turned ugly. Name-calling such as "denialist" certainly doesn't contribute much to the dialog or convince many people...
end users are always better with a GPL'd product.
Why? Because you say so? The idea that the GPL magically protects users' interests better than a freer license is simply unfounded. BSD code cannot be closed any easier than can GPL code; the only one who can relicense (and therefore potentially close) code is the owner of the copyright and only for code which has not already been licensed. A copyright owner can do that whether the code is BSD, GPL, or any other license. Code that is released opened under BSD, MIT, Apache2, etc cannot be arbitrarily closed after-the-fact.
The only other issue is the GPL requirement to license code changes under the same license. The claim is that this is somehow better for the user. In reality, companies are either going to release their code or they're not. If they're not, they're not; they will simply not use GPL code. If they are, they may use the GPL, but recent contributions from companies have tended to ignore the GPL in favor of MIT and sometimes Apache2 (of which the GPL is incompatible). Interesting...
What the GPL does succeed at is being incompatible with other reasonable and free licenses. I don't think anyone wants to argue the point that license incompatibilities result in a better user experience or more freedom for users. Just the opposite is true.
In the end, terms and conditions of the release of a person's code is up to that person. There are many reasonable people who agree with the requirements imposed by the GPL and others who prefer another license. That's all fine. But the idea that the GPL is protecting users' freedoms should definitely not be one of those deciding factors since the notion is not founded on a reasonable model of reality. It's one of those things that has been repeated so many times that people now just assume it's true. There definitely are instances where a thoughtful person would choose the GPL, but "user freedom" shouldn't apply.
You may be underestimating the penetration of products with BSD-derived code into the market. The difference is we get a slashdot story every time Linux is associated in any way with business (we even have the nifty penguin-briefcase icon), but BSD remains relatively hype-free, by design. But the real humor in your post is that both Linux and BSD on the desktop (which is what we're talking about in this thread) are essentially hobbyist operating systems. To pretend otherwise is like one hungry man gloating over another hungry man because he has a few more peas than the other in his soup.
I think the newest generations of free software developers take free software for granted.
Maybe, but the likes of Miguel de Icaza et alia are hardly newcomers to the free software scene.
Is this at all related to Apple selling the same model Cinema Displays since April, 2007? 982 days without a refresh, following an average of 230.
Maybe, only because Apple is only able to sell displays based on demand but were paying prices on the supply side that were artificially higher than demand. If the price-fixing stops (and this is a good sign that it has or will), presumably there will be more profits for Apple, Dell, HP, etc in LCD displays and we may therefore look forward to refreshed product lines. Price fixing can have far-reaching consequences in a global market.
I can't wait to hear what really happened here. It's wouldn't be so outlandish if Watts' version of the story is entirely true
Wow, give me a break. It would very much be outlandish. Some cops may be jerks, but we don't get stories like this every day for a reason. I get very skeptical when somebody telling me about an incident is obviously trying really hard to paint a sob story ("omg they didn't even give him a coat?"), and I'm a bit disappointed so many are playing right into it without any clue as to what lead to these events. I know general sentiment toward border agents is lower than just about any occupation, but come on...
Do you somehow think that we can place greater trust results of science paid for by corporations?
Actually, that doesn't sound unreasonable. I know this is Slashdot and we're all supposed to be anti-corporations and all, but corporations have an interest in correct science simply because they want to hire students who know correct science. Incorrect science doesn't usually do a lot to help them make money, but it sure is a good tool the government has and uses to push through their agenda.
I wish. What I see instead is a large number of credulous people who believe whatever certain pundits tell them is the best way to screw with liberals.
I see the contrary. After healthcare, climate change is one topic that people have been willing to take the time to learn more about. While some on both sides have come to the debate with predetermined, unwavering opinions, climate change supporters had a real chance to convince a lot of people who had no stake in the matter and just wanted to know the truth or do the right thing. Public opinion of global warming was really shot by proposed radical legislature to fix the problem when the science wasn't settled in many people's minds, the fact that influential climate change proponents refused to debate, and now the revelation that some environmental scientists have been doing questionable things with data. In short, it didn't take much blathering by conservative pundits to tarnish the image of climate change. The movement shot down itself.
I wonder how many 'average' users would get XP, Vista or 7 working on a desktop, let alone a netbook.
Presumably 7 would be more manageable for common users to install on recent hardware than an OS that's eight years old. It doesn't really matter though--it's clear to most people that Linux netbook market share is definitely not even close to approaching 32%, and most netbooks come with some form of Windows pre-installed.
As a Linux user, I think it'd be grand if that statistic were true, but there is no way...
Your source for this fact?
I'm not sure what the OP's source is, but he's probably referring to how the GPL is often thought of as the holy grail or end-all-be-all free license, and how most companies releasing free code nowadays tend to stick with MIT and Apache2.0 among others. That, plus the GPL probably isn't as prevalent as many assume. Many small, inconsequential projects and doodads choose the GPL (hey, it's what people think of when they think open source), but beyond the obvious big projects Linux and MySQL, there are a lot of big projects who have chosen other, arguably freer licenses, including Postgresql, Apache, postfix, etc.
It doesn't matter to me what "the industry" does. "The industry" can do whatever it wants, and it has no effect on my ability to run open-source software on my own machine.
Which is why the common argument that the GPL magically protects users' interest more than other free software licenses is so silly. The GPL could cease to exist tomorrow and we would all still be running our free software irregardless of what other companies choose to do with or without the free code. User experience would probably improve because there would be a lot less "incompatible" code and presumably a lot less reinventing the wheel and therefore better software.
Anyway, concerning the story at hand, if Palm violated the GPL, they should settle. What else needs to be said about it? Yeah...
I don't suppose someone here with a Pre would mind checking out that folder and seeing if the source for the PDF viewer is there?
Umm, don't you think that is probably something they checked before filing the lawsuit?
Fluxbox lets you do something that looks similar (screenshot with weird theme here... some programs I use run both an xterm and a separate GUI, so I can use the feature to keep the two windows together.
Yeah, it's nice. I've been doing it so long in flux that I forgot that more commonplace window managers don't have it, and that it might be considered an interesting idea worthy of a front-page Slashdot article. Well, we don't really have to wonder about the usefulness of such a feature since it's been available so long: it is useful. I don't think it's "the next big thing" since I doubt casual computer users would take advantage of it, but it's a godsend for power users who never restart their machines and always have a gazillion windows open. After workspaces, it's the most important feature for effective window management IMO--even better than Expose-style task-switching.
Is this some way Microsoft have found of getting round anti trust by setting the default search in IE to Yahoo not Bing thereby avoiding the accusation that they are yet again trying to illegally leverage a monopoly in one area to create one in another ?
I don't think the default search engine in IE has ever been an antitrust issue that anyone has ever cared about. But now that they're partnering with Yahoo, let's make it seem like it is? You do those of us who don't use Microsoft products a disfavor by trying to turn everything into some sort of evidence that Microsoft is the spawn of evil. They do enough unethical things that we don't need to cheapen our position by trying to fabricate more. You make our side seem desperate and irrational, and believe me we're not.
I think hoytak is referring to the number of people who go to bing and yahoo before any other search engine, not the total number of search engines that exist. Get it? It's funny... although probably not too far from the truth. Interesting link though?
"massive software slowed down educational programs in every classroom and cost the district more than $1 million in added utility fees and computer replacement parts."
If the school district is trying to make something up to charge him with theft of government resources, I think the increased electricity expense would be a better bet.
What do you think "added utility fees" means?
Someone needs to educate Ms. Birdwell, who is presented as overly dramatic in the linked article, about how these programs work. And how entirely appropriate it would be for local schools to donate unused computer time to running programs like these ...
Wrong. It would be completely inappropriate for local public schools to donate anything to such causes. These school districts are funded by taxpayers who expect that portion of money to be spent as efficiently as possible doing only one thing, that is educating their kids. If somebody wants to help Folding@Home or SETI@Home, etc. they can do it on their own home computer(s). In fact, they can monetarily support any cause they wish and spend as much as they want and can afford, but when it comes to the tax money that has been set aside for public education, it should all be spent with minimum overhead for its intended purpose.
... and what a great opportunity it would have presented to the scientific education of the children in the district.
Except it wouldn't have contributed to better education for the children; it just increases utility costs without providing any education value for the kids.
Things go undetected all the time in private organizations when the person doing them is also the person in charge of the unit that would normally be monitoring for that kind of problem. (Also, a school district is a government agency, they aren't two different things.)
He's an IT guy. Presumably he's not also one of the school district's accountants which is who should have caught this. An extra $100,000 per year spent on electricity would have been noticed by accounting in a private organization. Instead, since this is government as you say, taxpayers spent over a million dollars searching for aliens when they thought they were paying for their children's education. How lovely.
Sun called, they want their concept back.
The distinction is perhaps less important now, but perhaps you mean Oracle. It was Larry Ellison's vision that included "network computers" which are cut-down desktop machines which rely on central servers for software and storage. He doesn't look kindly on so-called "cloud" computing today, though.
... you cannot say something like
when an app is written in JS it is more likely to be a resource hog than the same app written in compiled C
Actually, that's a perfectly reasonable thing to say, albeit pointless because of the obviousness of it. It doesn't matter what runtime implementation you use, Javascript will always use more resources than an equivalent C program can, if only because of the overhead of the unused but still loaded runtime features. That doesn't mean Javascript is necessarily a resource hog, but the statement your quoted is not very outrageous, especially since he qualified the statement with "more likely."
Absolutely. What makes me especially excited about trying G-WAN is that whenever it crashes I'll have the extra fun of figuring out whether the reason it crashed was because my own C code crashed, or because the code in his web server crashed.
Finding where a program crashed is way easier than finding a logic error, and those can occur in any language. Actually, debugging crashes can lead to discovery of certain kinds of logic and/or runtime errors that would be difficult to find if your runtime environment is protecting you from ever seeing a crash (heaven forbid).
I'm as much a fan of high-level languages, nice runtime environments, and useful abstractions as anyone, but I also happen to think that C gets more flak than it deserves. I really think universities are doing their graduates a disservice by educating them in the safe, comfortable confines of Java if they don't also teach them C. In my own subjective experience, the most capable and successful programmers I know (in any environment) are also the ones who are very comfortable in environments without garbage collection and restricted memory access.
Actually, you're both right. Or I should say, you are right and the OP may be right. You're right because it is obviously true that there exists at least some non-poser programmers who use Visual Studio and at least some "poser" programmers who use a text editor. But the OP may be right if it is statistically true (I don't know that it is) that there exists high correlations between "good" programmers preferring a text editor and/or "posers" preferring Visual Studio.
While it is obviously true that such correlation coefficients do not equal 1.0 (since supposedly at least some of us subjectively know of some good programmers who prefer Visual Studio or some poser programmers who prefer a text editor, it is my opinion that there probably does exist a pretty strong correlation on the basis (and assumptions) that programmers who are familiar with a text editor are older and therefore more experienced than those whose only real experience is with an IDE. If this is true, then the OP is generally correct (and it is obvious that he was generalizing).
I think you just missed out on the joke. It's unlikely the OP meant to show any kind of disrespect (heaven forbid) for the wonderful, lovely Euro, so try not to be so defensive huh? Relax.
To me, my constraints all seem reasonable:
You want all that, but you don't also want a pony?
Well not to say skepticism doesn't have its uses, but sometimes skepticism can caused a closed mind and impede progress. In this case skepticism against global warming has caused a slow down in research for green energy and green technology
That's not the fault of skeptics. That's the fault of extreme global warming (or climate change, whatever) proponents who were unwilling to compromise in the least. "It's either cap 'n trade or bust." Well, they got bust then. All the while, there could have been much smaller and far more productive steps we could have been taking in areas such as cleaner energy. In any case, I don't know how you can fault skepticism for what happened. If not for the skeptics, we may very well have cap 'n trade or some other sweeping legislation that isn't really what we need. Now that the frauds have been exposed to a certain extent, hopefully now we can begin meaningful debate about things we all agree on like clean energy without having to listen to the shrill OMG CAP 'n TRADE!!!~!