I agree. I really don't understand why people are so upset about this. Apple is not selling a device (a system) for geeks and nerds. They are selling it to the know-nothings who just want a TV or refrigerator, a box that does one or a small number of things without confusing them (too much). This is not to say that these people aren't smart, they just don't care about Computing. I think the nerds are upset because it is an amazing device and it's not easy to tinker with. It's envy.
No one is assuming anything (*). Scientists are analysing data and trying to understand what's causing the patterns that they observe. At the moment the best fit includes significant forcing by anthropogenic greenhouse gases. If that changes the scientists will incorporate the new knowledge and change the "theory". This is how it works. They aren't assuming that it's caused by the anthropogenic gases, they are finding that it is caused by them.
Also, the climate does shift "on its own". That natural variability is taken into account.
There are many data available. They come from different, independent measuring systems. This is well established.
I can understand the lay person's reluctance to just accept pronouncements delivered from authority. We used to do that more but now that's not an acceptable reason to believe something. However, to assume that everyone doing this research is wrong and worse knows even less about it than you do is not going to help. If you won't trust scientists to do their research why do you trust anyone? Is every specialist in the world is just somehow making things up as they go? Every engineer worthless, every medical doctor guessing? These people spend years at universities studying. Is that worth nothing? The entire system would have to be a sham. Physics and mathematics would have to be wrong.
Also, the magnetic poles have nothing to do with this.
* OK there are assumptions but they are constantly being tested and revised. When possible assumptions are eliminated by developing better theoretical underpinnings based on observations and evidence. It really does work that way and every specialist does it. They have to or they wouldn't be able to proceed.
They do use standard modelling software. Most major climate models are composed of pieces of the other ones. Many research groups use a small number of ocean models. The source codes are all available for download. In some cases straight from the web, in other cases you just have to ask. Why is this all so difficult to understand? The data are all on the web too. It was all and is all on the web.
Nobody is talking about cooling. Where do you get that? No one is distorting findings for money. The problem with this issue is the intensely political response to the science. It's not the scientists causing the trouble or the controversy. Scientists do have a responsibility to present their findings honestly and in a straightforward manner. The policy makers and general public make this a difficult topic to deal with because they bring their personal concerns (political concerns) into the discussion. Unfortunately for the naysayers out there, anthropogenic climate change is real. The planet is warming. It is caused by the incredibly short sighted emission of millions of years worth of sequestered carbon over the past few hundred years. Since it should be apparent to everyone that stopping the emission of carbon is not likely we need to decide what we are going to do to mitigate the worst effects, the magnitude of which we don't know yet and are working hard to understand. Whether you are on the left or right of the political spectrum this is the reality you need to think about. It really is time to begin planning a response to the likeliest changes and spending more effort on understanding the system. If this doesn't make sense to you, you need to go away from your computer for a while and think about it. Your political beliefs and deeply held personal convictions are irrelevant.
The argument over whether what humans are doing is natural or not is irrelevant. What is important is the question of whether or not we are going to be able to continue to live the way we want to. If we will be able to then we shouldn't change anything. If we aren't then we should try to change things so that we can.
Civilisation in Europe may have done well during the MWP. However, the MWP was a local phenomenon not a global one. This means that if it was warmer in Europe it was colder somewhere else. This is also true with regard to the LIA which also was not global. AGW is a global phenomenon. It is warming, on average (over time and space) everywhere on the Earth.
Just because land previously unusable for crops due to being frozen now thaws doesn't mean it becomes farmland. Available water at the right time of year, light levels and types of soil are also important. Some extra CO2 may indeed fertilise growth in existing croplands if there are sufficient water and nutrients available. Is that going to be case? What if warming also results in drying of existing croplands? Don't forget that the change from non-cropland to cropland may come with significant local albedo changes.
Finally, global warming has nothing to do with the heat capacity of the atmosphere. CO2 in the atmosphere is not a problem because of heat capacity. It is a problem because it changes the radiative equilibrium. The heat capacity of the ocean is important (it is a vast sink for heat at the moment) and is one of the main reasons for the reduced warming signal that we are already seeing. If it weren't for the ability of the ocean to absorb heat from the atmosphere we would see a much greater warming response than we are.
None of this is simple. Every system is tied by feedback loops to many other processes. Just as an example, methane released from permafrost or underwater methane hydrates is involved in (at least) these processes: radiative equilibrium, atmospheric carbon chemistry, soils and soil processes, microbes in the soils, plant growth and decomposition, mineral weathering, absorption in the ocean (with simple temperature and concentration dependence) where there are biological and inorganic carbon cycles with their own nested interrelationships. All of these are taking place at all time and space scales. Nothing is changing in isolation.
Thank you. I agree completely. Units are important and are not just letters to be applied willy-nilly. The m and M are not lower and upper case versions of a letter they are completely different symbols.
I would imagine that you would want to cut (most of the) power from the engine in the event that both the brake and gas pedals are pressed. Cutting power to the engine doesn't make sense to me as the engine should stay running to help with power-assisted steering and braking. Probably I'm making too much of this.
I also agree. There are certainly some smart people here who don't see the large pool of potential buyers for simplified, locked down, easy to use technology. There is also a large pool of potential buyers of completely exposed, complicated technology. There is no ultimate objective standard that could help declare one form better than the other. The technologies and the user communities each have their own strengths and weaknesses and they don't have to overlap in every way.
1 million dollars per day just to run printing presses! You still think that "[i]t ends-up being essentially a wash... no significant difference in paper versus website costs"?
I find it a bit hard to believe that the daily cost of presses, press staff and press consumables is equal to or less than the daily cost of web servers. Do you have any numbers to back up your claim? After all, the computers that the advertising, journalism and production staff use are there whether or not you are printing on paper.
This guy says that the cost of printing the New York times is of the order of US$500 million per year. That seems pretty unbelievable too but if true would amount to something like US$1.4 million per day. I looked at the financial statement of the New York times where they list the cost of raw materials for 2006, 2005 and 2004 as (millions US$ per year) 331, 321 and 297.
This site suggests daily paper costs for the New York Times to be about 1/10 of the above estimate. Based on the financial report this is just wrong.
US$1 million per day would run a hell of a server room.
"It's a web appliance for people who don't want computers."
Exactly. They don't want a computer but they want the benefits of a computer. Access to "content" and "services". I think this (simple or single use user interfaces on cheap hardware) is the future of mass-market computing.
Lots of people want to be able to use a computer without having to use one. They don't want to ever see the computer geek side of computer ownership. They only want the benefits. Access to the the content they consume etc. Non geek benefits are not the same as geek benefits. Geeks value multi-use, multi-configuration devices and software. Geeks may also value learning complex rituals that they have to use to get the computer to work. Non-geeks want to turn on the device and maybe change the channel. There are very many people who want an appliance not a computer. These are the people this type of device is designed for.
I think toy is probably better replaced with a word like appliance. There are many people who want to access content on the internet but struggle with general purpose computers. They want a TV. TVs have complex hardware inside them. They use complex communication protocols. All of this is hidden, as it should be for most people, from the users. In this sense the iPad is a toy with serious internals. I think it is likely to be successful and it probably is the future of computing. Eventually we will have single use devices like this scattered around our homes and workplaces. Each device limited in what it can do but with mutable, simple interfaces. There will always be a need for other types of computers but most people won't use them. Most people don't want them. I'm certainly not the first to believe this to be the case.
I don't think it is pedantic to point out (well maybe it is) that mega uses an M not an m and byte is signified with B not b. I see errors with unit symbols too often. Please remember that units are important. Remember Spinal Tap (" and ' are units too though I prefer to avoid them if possible).
You took the time to capitalise your writing according to standard rules of english. Just try to remember that Mb and MB are not letters as you are used to using but symbols with special meaning that coincidentally look like letters. This goes for all of the metric system prefixes and SI symbols.
I'll probably regret writing this but it hurts my head when I see these mistakes.
The main point you made was clear and I agree with you. Access to the source is a benefit to the user community.
I don't remember Holmes ever saying "Elementary" in the stories. Wikipedia confirms this:
A third major reference is the oft-quoted but non-canonical phrase: "Elementary, my dear Watson." This phrase was never actually said by Holmes, since it does not appear in any of the sixty Holmes stories written by Conan Doyle.
I occasionally see a kernel panic with Ubuntu (intel64) on two kinds of hardware (older IBM x series and brand new Dell Intel 5500 series). It seems to have something to do with NFS though I haven't been able to get it sorted out. The OS seems to keep working but one can't log on or get a response from connected terminals. In any case we can watch the load climb up as something eats all of the memory on the machine. We can see records of user processes being killed to save memory. The only thing that works (aside from removing power) is to press alt+sysRq+h to remind yourself whether the reboot combination uses a B or and R and then reboot it with the magic sysRq key.
If anyone has any suggestions I am happy to hear them. We have an environment that requires a few older machines running an older version of linux as well as new stuff. My guess is that there is some interaction between old and new flavours of NFS. I have seen some discussions of problems like the one I have described out there and some of them have pointed to patches to the kernel to deal with NFS problems. I haven't been able to get these to work though.
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I agree. I really don't understand why people are so upset about this. Apple is not selling a device (a system) for geeks and nerds. They are selling it to the know-nothings who just want a TV or refrigerator, a box that does one or a small number of things without confusing them (too much). This is not to say that these people aren't smart, they just don't care about Computing. I think the nerds are upset because it is an amazing device and it's not easy to tinker with. It's envy.
No one is assuming anything (*). Scientists are analysing data and trying to understand what's causing the patterns that they observe. At the moment the best fit includes significant forcing by anthropogenic greenhouse gases. If that changes the scientists will incorporate the new knowledge and change the "theory". This is how it works. They aren't assuming that it's caused by the anthropogenic gases, they are finding that it is caused by them.
Also, the climate does shift "on its own". That natural variability is taken into account.
There are many data available. They come from different, independent measuring systems. This is well established.
I can understand the lay person's reluctance to just accept pronouncements delivered from authority. We used to do that more but now that's not an acceptable reason to believe something. However, to assume that everyone doing this research is wrong and worse knows even less about it than you do is not going to help. If you won't trust scientists to do their research why do you trust anyone? Is every specialist in the world is just somehow making things up as they go? Every engineer worthless, every medical doctor guessing? These people spend years at universities studying. Is that worth nothing? The entire system would have to be a sham. Physics and mathematics would have to be wrong.
Also, the magnetic poles have nothing to do with this.
* OK there are assumptions but they are constantly being tested and revised. When possible assumptions are eliminated by developing better theoretical underpinnings based on observations and evidence. It really does work that way and every specialist does it. They have to or they wouldn't be able to proceed.
They do use standard modelling software. Most major climate models are composed of pieces of the other ones. Many research groups use a small number of ocean models. The source codes are all available for download. In some cases straight from the web, in other cases you just have to ask. Why is this all so difficult to understand? The data are all on the web too. It was all and is all on the web.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/data-sources/
Really this is getting pathetic.
Well said.
Nobody is talking about cooling. Where do you get that? No one is distorting findings for money. The problem with this issue is the intensely political response to the science. It's not the scientists causing the trouble or the controversy. Scientists do have a responsibility to present their findings honestly and in a straightforward manner. The policy makers and general public make this a difficult topic to deal with because they bring their personal concerns (political concerns) into the discussion. Unfortunately for the naysayers out there, anthropogenic climate change is real. The planet is warming. It is caused by the incredibly short sighted emission of millions of years worth of sequestered carbon over the past few hundred years. Since it should be apparent to everyone that stopping the emission of carbon is not likely we need to decide what we are going to do to mitigate the worst effects, the magnitude of which we don't know yet and are working hard to understand. Whether you are on the left or right of the political spectrum this is the reality you need to think about. It really is time to begin planning a response to the likeliest changes and spending more effort on understanding the system. If this doesn't make sense to you, you need to go away from your computer for a while and think about it. Your political beliefs and deeply held personal convictions are irrelevant.
1 millibit per second is really, really slow. m and M are not interchangeable in this context. It looks like you understand b and B though.
I, at least, appreciate your effort. Unfortunately, it's hopeless.
The argument over whether what humans are doing is natural or not is irrelevant. What is important is the question of whether or not we are going to be able to continue to live the way we want to. If we will be able to then we shouldn't change anything. If we aren't then we should try to change things so that we can.
Civilisation in Europe may have done well during the MWP. However, the MWP was a local phenomenon not a global one. This means that if it was warmer in Europe it was colder somewhere else. This is also true with regard to the LIA which also was not global. AGW is a global phenomenon. It is warming, on average (over time and space) everywhere on the Earth.
Just because land previously unusable for crops due to being frozen now thaws doesn't mean it becomes farmland. Available water at the right time of year, light levels and types of soil are also important. Some extra CO2 may indeed fertilise growth in existing croplands if there are sufficient water and nutrients available. Is that going to be case? What if warming also results in drying of existing croplands? Don't forget that the change from non-cropland to cropland may come with significant local albedo changes.
Finally, global warming has nothing to do with the heat capacity of the atmosphere. CO2 in the atmosphere is not a problem because of heat capacity. It is a problem because it changes the radiative equilibrium. The heat capacity of the ocean is important (it is a vast sink for heat at the moment) and is one of the main reasons for the reduced warming signal that we are already seeing. If it weren't for the ability of the ocean to absorb heat from the atmosphere we would see a much greater warming response than we are.
None of this is simple. Every system is tied by feedback loops to many other processes. Just as an example, methane released from permafrost or underwater methane hydrates is involved in (at least) these processes: radiative equilibrium, atmospheric carbon chemistry, soils and soil processes, microbes in the soils, plant growth and decomposition, mineral weathering, absorption in the ocean (with simple temperature and concentration dependence) where there are biological and inorganic carbon cycles with their own nested interrelationships. All of these are taking place at all time and space scales. Nothing is changing in isolation.
No.
Apparently it is in (at least) IEEE 1541. b is for bits, B is for bytes.
Thank you. I agree completely. Units are important and are not just letters to be applied willy-nilly. The m and M are not lower and upper case versions of a letter they are completely different symbols.
I would imagine that you would want to cut (most of the) power from the engine in the event that both the brake and gas pedals are pressed. Cutting power to the engine doesn't make sense to me as the engine should stay running to help with power-assisted steering and braking. Probably I'm making too much of this.
I also agree. There are certainly some smart people here who don't see the large pool of potential buyers for simplified, locked down, easy to use technology. There is also a large pool of potential buyers of completely exposed, complicated technology. There is no ultimate objective standard that could help declare one form better than the other. The technologies and the user communities each have their own strengths and weaknesses and they don't have to overlap in every way.
1 million dollars per day just to run printing presses! You still think that "[i]t ends-up being essentially a wash... no significant difference in paper versus website costs"?
I find it a bit hard to believe that the daily cost of presses, press staff and press consumables is equal to or less than the daily cost of web servers. Do you have any numbers to back up your claim? After all, the computers that the advertising, journalism and production staff use are there whether or not you are printing on paper.
This guy says that the cost of printing the New York times is of the order of US$500 million per year. That seems pretty unbelievable too but if true would amount to something like US$1.4 million per day. I looked at the financial statement of the New York times where they list the cost of raw materials for 2006, 2005 and 2004 as (millions US$ per year) 331, 321 and 297.
This site suggests daily paper costs for the New York Times to be about 1/10 of the above estimate. Based on the financial report this is just wrong.
US$1 million per day would run a hell of a server room.
The tablets that are already available are for the most part not simple or single-use user interfaces.
"It's a web appliance for people who don't want computers."
Exactly. They don't want a computer but they want the benefits of a computer. Access to "content" and "services". I think this (simple or single use user interfaces on cheap hardware) is the future of mass-market computing.
Lots of people want to be able to use a computer without having to use one. They don't want to ever see the computer geek side of computer ownership. They only want the benefits. Access to the the content they consume etc. Non geek benefits are not the same as geek benefits. Geeks value multi-use, multi-configuration devices and software. Geeks may also value learning complex rituals that they have to use to get the computer to work. Non-geeks want to turn on the device and maybe change the channel. There are very many people who want an appliance not a computer. These are the people this type of device is designed for.
I think toy is probably better replaced with a word like appliance. There are many people who want to access content on the internet but struggle with general purpose computers. They want a TV. TVs have complex hardware inside them. They use complex communication protocols. All of this is hidden, as it should be for most people, from the users. In this sense the iPad is a toy with serious internals. I think it is likely to be successful and it probably is the future of computing. Eventually we will have single use devices like this scattered around our homes and workplaces. Each device limited in what it can do but with mutable, simple interfaces. There will always be a need for other types of computers but most people won't use them. Most people don't want them. I'm certainly not the first to believe this to be the case.
"All spelling and grammar errors are intentional. Grammar Nazis' need entertainment."
Head spinning... Brain failing... fingers convulsing over keyboard...
Thanks for that!
This is an awesome moment of synchronicity.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9WP8Zwu260
I don't think it is pedantic to point out (well maybe it is) that mega uses an M not an m and byte is signified with B not b. I see errors with unit symbols too often. Please remember that units are important. Remember Spinal Tap (" and ' are units too though I prefer to avoid them if possible).
You took the time to capitalise your writing according to standard rules of english. Just try to remember that Mb and MB are not letters as you are used to using but symbols with special meaning that coincidentally look like letters. This goes for all of the metric system prefixes and SI symbols.
I'll probably regret writing this but it hurts my head when I see these mistakes.
The main point you made was clear and I agree with you. Access to the source is a benefit to the user community.
I don't remember Holmes ever saying "Elementary" in the stories. Wikipedia confirms this:
A third major reference is the oft-quoted but non-canonical phrase: "Elementary, my dear Watson." This phrase was never actually said by Holmes, since it does not appear in any of the sixty Holmes stories written by Conan Doyle.
Now, do we trust wikipedia? Discuss.
I occasionally see a kernel panic with Ubuntu (intel64) on two kinds of hardware (older IBM x series and brand new Dell Intel 5500 series). It seems to have something to do with NFS though I haven't been able to get it sorted out. The OS seems to keep working but one can't log on or get a response from connected terminals. In any case we can watch the load climb up as something eats all of the memory on the machine. We can see records of user processes being killed to save memory. The only thing that works (aside from removing power) is to press alt+sysRq+h to remind yourself whether the reboot combination uses a B or and R and then reboot it with the magic sysRq key.
If anyone has any suggestions I am happy to hear them. We have an environment that requires a few older machines running an older version of linux as well as new stuff. My guess is that there is some interaction between old and new flavours of NFS. I have seen some discussions of problems like the one I have described out there and some of them have pointed to patches to the kernel to deal with NFS problems. I haven't been able to get these to work though.