How about this for great security - the college I went to assigned email addresses that consisted of your initials followed by the last four digits of your social security number. My bank asks as identification - you guessed it - the last four digits of my social security number.
Because you can't just call it as if it were a function. You have to call invoke() on it. And prior to 1.5 you had to create an Object array with all the parameters (rather than just passing them in a comma-separated list as if it were a real function call), and wrap all the primitives. Not exactly ideal for general use, and about as fun as writing JNI that interfaces back into Java. And I never said having the metadata in there was a bad idea, so don't put words in my mouth. Reflection just isn't an ideal replacement for real function pointers.
As for goto, *snore* I've heard all the arguments before. Of course you never NEED gotos. You could write C code without ever using a for loop too. The problem with gotos is that people didn't know when to use them and just threw them in everywhere. There are (a very limited number of) times when a goto makes sense. But you're right, in C++/Java and other exception-supporting languages, there is no longer a need.
with all the sarcasm you are missing the simple point is that JVM provides managed memory, which is much easier to use for complex projects, and which allows to avoid many simple C/C++ errors like buffer overruns.
How am I missing that? I understand that. I've been working as a Java developer for the last 5 years, and dealt with it a lot in college for a couple years before that. I understand its strengths. And from that experience I recognize its weaknesses too. You seem too blinded by its strengths to recognize that it does have weaknesses. Function pointers don't have to be able to point to arbitrary memory addresses. As another poster said, the Method class is basically a function pointer. It's just ugly.
sometimes a 'goto' statement can be beneficial, but it doesn't mean that it is a good way to program.
Ah, so you're one of those "goto is evil, you should never ever use it!" fanatics. I'm not surprised.
The right tool for the job is all I'm advocating here.
Oh, you convinced me now. You're absolutely right, there is NEVER EVER a time when a function pointer could EVER be better than what Java provides. Give me a friggin break.
Let's take one simple, incredibly pervasive example of where function pointers would benefit Java: their listener paradigm. So I need to create a new class to get notified of button clicks, or mouse movement. And then I need to create a new instance of that class. So I now have a java.lang.Class object, as well as the object for the listener itself. To do what passing a function pointer just as easily would have accomplished. Yes, I know I could make a class that implements all these interfaces so I would only need to make one class - it's still more overhead. Or I could make the class that creates the buttons implement the interfaces - but that's ugly because now your "outer" class's API is cluttered with listener functions. I find Qt's paradigm much much cleaner.
Function pointers have their place, and to tell me I don't understand the language because sometimes I find they would be beneficial is just sticking your head in the sand.
No, your point doesn't escape me. I just disagree with it. Remember that line back in my original post, "talk about throwing the baby out with the bath water"? While it isn't incredibly often, I do come across things that are much more difficult to do (or do efficiently) in Java due to lack of pointers.
Yeah, thanks. My point, since it seemed to completely escape you, is that your example is pointless. Java doesn't have function pointers, so no shit the snippet you posted doesn't compile. What could it possibly mean?
[In Java] a call like this one: if (getUserID==0) is a compile time error.
Yeah, because Java doesn't have function pointers. Talk about throwing the baby out with the bath water.
Java is on to the intelligent fix, though: not treating NULL and the integer 0 as one and the same. 0 is an integer. NULL is a pointer. Comparing a pointer with 0 should at the least generate a warning. Easy enough, but that's not the way it works in C unfortunately (and it's even worse in C++, as another poster mentioned).
On the other hand, because its OSS now all of the machines that remain unpatched have an exploit that is not only known, but but publicized by the developer, with diffs showing *exactly* what line of code the error is on.
While I hate to sound like all the other OSS apologists that have posted so far ("yeah there's an exploit, but think of how many we could find if we could run it on the Windows source!" and other such tripe that ignores the fact that a serious bug was found in OSS software), your argument is a bunch of crap. You're basically saying that exploits in closed-source software are unknown and unpublicized, which is ridiculous.
As for your Apache example, it would be just as simple to see what version of IIS a machine is running and look through MS KB to find the known exploits against it. Or look at bugtraq. Or anywhere else on the Internet. Just because the source is a secret doesn't mean the details of the available exploits are too.
Oh and knowing the line of source code on which that the error exists is entirely irrelevant to the discussion -- having that knowledge doesn't make using an exploit any easier or more difficult. It may assist in developing new exploits, but when attempting to use one that has been found, that knowledge is superfluous.
Oh please, everything else in the guy's post is referring to the U.S. so it's a reasonable assumption that he was talking about income tax in the U.S. I know trashing Americans is in style now, but give me a break.
The irony is you disgreed with every one the specifics and supplied corrections which supported the intent. Clever.
*Shrug* I never said I disagreed with the point you were trying to make. I said I stopped reading. You may call it quibbling, but when you make assertions that are factually incorrect, listeners tend to ignore or distrust your conclusions because they assume you don't know what you're talking about.
As for the safety bit, I never said it was a valid claim (hence "Correlation not causation, perhaps"). I said that was the rationale. And if it's long since been proven wrong, that's great. The federal speed limit law has long since been abolished too.
I wrote a bit about this in a paper back in college, and I'm not entirely sure it was with the failure of secession that this change in usage occurred. During the war itself Lincoln often referred to the U.S. as a single entity; a country rather than a union. Take a look at the Gettysburg Address - he consistently referred to the U.S. as a "nation" and didn't use the word "union" even a single time. So perhaps the mere attempt at secession did it, or perhaps Lincoln himself pushed it in an attempt to sway public thought. But the change was well underway before the end of the war.
Income tax was a temporary measure to fund World War 1.
Well, I got to here, and I almost stopped reading. Sorry, but the income tax in the U.S. has been around since the Civil War, which was more than 50 years before WWI. There were some issues with constitutionality for a while there, but the 16th Amendment, which brought about the income tax for good, was ratified in February 1913, a year and a half before WWI started, and four years before the U.S. got involved. Wikipedia.
But I decided to keep reading, until I got to:
The 65 mph speed limit began as another temporary measure to reduce gas consumption during an oil embargo by Middle East producers in the 1970's.
(a) That was 55mph, not 65.
(b) It was kept around for safety, because there was a drop in highway deaths after the limit was lowered. Correlation not causation, perhaps, but that was the rationale.
Didn't read the rest of your post, since I figured with such glaring mistakes in the first three sentences the rest of it would be pretty suspect.
Hello, Bill Gates, world's richest man. Uh, Steve Jobs. Those names are known.
Yeah, and so is the name Hitler. Just because a name is known does not mean it's respected.
Not that I think Bill Gates's name is not respected, but I would say that it's respected because he's the richest man in the world, not because of any nerdiness that may have gotten him there. For example, most people I know (non-geeks) joke that the only reason Bill Gates is married is because of his money.
Come back and talk to us after you've been working there five years. I, like you, was very eager to be done with college and to start working. Now, after several years on the job, I wish I could go back to the easy days of college. Being at work 40 hours a week doesn't leave a whole lot of free time, especially compared to the measly 16 hours a week I spent in class in college.
As for understanding why anybody would need six weeks of vacation time, I'd love it. Right now I have three. I usually take a two-week vacation with my gf in the summer, and then a week backpacking somewhere. That doesn't leave me any vacation to just take a day off because it's nice out, or anything like that. Sure you could tell me not to take the two weeks straight, but a day off here and there without an extended break from work doesn't have the same effect. If I had an extra couple weeks, I could take the long vacation and still take those days off when I want to.
Bottom line, I enjoy my work, but I enjoy my free time more. And I wish I had more of it. I'm not alone in this, either -- in the 2005 ComputerWorld Salary Survey, tops on the list of things people wished their company offered was more time off, at 42% of the respondents. 36% said more vacation time would influence them to switch jobs, while 45% said a "better work/life balance" would, which sounds a lot like working less to me.
You see, there's nothing stopping you from starting a business in America and allowing your employees to work just 35 hours every week. All you have to do is tell them that you'll pay them a salary equivalent to 40 hours of work.
I disagree. Personally I'd consider taking a 12.5% pay cut for working 12.5% less hours per week, and I imagine a lot of other people out there would too. But you know what? I may be just as productive in those 35 hours as I currently am in 40, because I've about had it by the last hour of the day.
I do agree with the rest of your post though, about mandating any particular work-week not being the best solution.
without social security (which is screwed up) for a reasonable comparison of federal government services
Uh, sorry, you lost me. How can you ignore social security??? It's over 7% out of your paycheck, for Christ's sake! If "it's screwed up" is a valid reason for ignoring a tax, then let's just ignore federal taxes too because they're "screwed up" too. I'm with you on ignoring the employer's portion of FICA, because that doesn't really come directly out of my pocket, but ignoring the employee's portion is just horse hockey.
Second of all, look at the federal government... Note that many of us live in tax free states.
That's why they list the AVERAGE tax rate. And as an aside, there are only seven states in the U.S. that levy no income tax, and another 2 that don't tax wage income. So that leaves 41 states that have their hand out for your hard-earned. Given that half of the 9 lucky states are quite small population-wise, that means the vast majority of Americans (over 80%, by my quick calculations) live in states with an income tax.
One big problem of the GP's table is that as far as I can tell it ignores sales tax or VAT or whatever you want to call it. So Canada's tax rate may look low, but their combined PST/GST is around 15% depending on the province. It also seems to ignore property taxes, local income tax (NYC charges income tax on top of what the feds and the state want), and any other tax you can come up with. In other words you'd be stupid to do anything useful with it.
Oh, found another good one for you: the site claims that wind power won't help us reduce our dependence on foreign oil because less than 3% of our electricity is generated using oil. However, there was an article in today's Rochester paper that broke down where New York's electricity comes from, and 14% of New York's comes from oil. Since the website is trying to save upstate New York, it would probably be better to use a New York statistic rather than a nationwide one. Of course, for their purposes 3% is much more convenient than 14%.
No no no, I was wondering if there was a single documented case of someone getting a migraine or a seizue due to shadow flicker, not whether shadow flicker actually occurs.
I don't doubt that it occurs and that it is terribly annoying, but the site doesn't claim that it's terribly annoying - the site claims that it can cause migraines and seizures. Had they just left it at "shadow flicker is terribly annoying" I could have nodded my head and said yes, but the fact that they say shadow flicker "has the potential to cause" migraines/seizures, rather than "has actually caused" makes me wonder.
Interesting website, since I live in upstate NY. Personally I think a lot of their arguments are bunk.
Their paragraph on noise in the health and safety page is full of suspicious things. "At their loudest, wind turbines generate up to 102dB of noise." Well how often are they at their loudest? So at the loudest they ever get, they generate UP TO 102dB. This indicates that at their loudest they could generate less than 102dB. Is 102dB the max anyone has ever measured from a wind turbine? Or is this the noise you would expect to hear 24/7? It makes a big difference. If it's 102dB for 10 seconds a day, who cares. And in reality, 102db isn't that loud - it's about the same as a snowblower. A little louder than a lawn mower, and a little quieter than a car horn. It's probably not even audible from a quarter mile away. And remember that's the LOUDEST it ever gets.
The source on the property values page reporting declining property values is a single report by one town. Hardly conclusive.
Under jobs, the claim is that construction jobs will be created, then the site goes on to tear down the strawman that few ongoing jobs will be created, and they will be minimum-wage maintenance jobs.
Same page, it says that "factoring in all the costs, wind power is nearly twice as expensive as fossil fuel electric power generation." But it's impossible to factor in all the costs of fossil fuel generation, because a lot of the costs are not financial. How do you put a price on global warming?
Bottom of that page, the question that's asked is "Will wind power help to prevent global warming?" and the given answer is "The WTGs will not free us from pollution and greenhouse gases." But no one asked if wind would free us from greenhouse gases. The question was if it would help to prevent global warming. And if wind power is causing less fossil fuels to be burned, it's difficult to argue that it wouldn't help reduce CO2 emissions.
They say that "The US Department of Energy projects that wind power won't even represent 1% of all US electricity generation 20 years from now." And that's an argument against using wind why?
On the recreation page there's one I've never heard before: Risk to wildlife due to "electrocution by contact with live electrical wires." Interesting. Like there aren't any power lines in New York already. Newsflash: unless the electricity is generated in your house, there will be power lines involved to get it to your house, no matter how the electricity is generated.
Under Safety they make the rather bold claim that there is no solution for ice throw. I bet the de-icing technology that was posted on/. a few days back would work. And as for this brochure they talk about that was designed for an airplane fuselage, just because it was designed for a fuselage doesn't mean it couldn't work on a turbine. But without any more details it's impossible to look into it myself.
They actually discuss the risk of a tower falling over. Compared to an explosion at a gas-fired power plant or a nuclear incident, I'd be happy with a tower falling over. There are these other tall things that are all over the place around here too, and they're called trees. Guess what, they fall over every now and again. Maybe we should cut them all down so they can't fall on anyone? Give me a break.
They talk about the strobe effect at sunrise and sunset having the potential to cause seizures and migraines. I'd be interested to know if there is a single documented case of this ever happening.
I could go on.
I'm still waiting to find an agenda-free group that provides a real non-biased examination of the pros and cons of wind power, specifically for upstate New York, because I am well aware that there are drawbacks but want to see an honest assessment of how serious they are. Do I think it will ever happen? No. Too many people have a vested interest, and groups that present both sides of the argument piss both sides off.
Look at the DDT restrictions which have been proven unneeded
Proven unneeded? Sorry, I don't think so. There really isn't a whole lot of debate in the scientific community that DDT causes eggshell thinning in raptors. Did DDT need to be banned outright? No, probably not, because it was ridiculously overused. Using it more sparingly would have been just as effective (if not moreso due to reduced mosquito resistance) without the massive environmental buildup and corresponding decline in raptor populations. And the quantity of DDT required to dust a house for malaria prevention is ridiculously small.
the emissions laws in California that caused blackouts several years ago
Umm, the cause of those blackouts was much more complex than just emissions laws. Issues surrounding deregulation, market manipulation by companies such as Enron, drought in areas from where California obtains hydro power, etc. Shortage of supply due to lack of in-state generating capacity was certainly an issue, but reducing the entire crisis to just that and ignoring the other factors is disingenuous at best.
Sounds like the environmentalists aren't the only ones with an agenda.
The tickets prices, if you could buy one at face value, were quite reasonable: maybe $40 tops. Even adjusted for inflation, that's nowhere near the face value of tickets today.
While I've seen a few concerts come through here with outrageous prices, most are in the $40 to $60 range still (and $60 is today's equivalent of your $40 from 15 years ago). The couple times I saw Dave Matthews the tickets were $50, so I'm not talking small-name acts. I think that $200+ concerts are the exception rather than the rule.
Actually Kelly Clarkson has her name on the writing credits on a number of her songs. Including that "Because of You" that's on the radio all the time now. There usually are a couple co-writers listed, though.
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How about this for great security - the college I went to assigned email addresses that consisted of your initials followed by the last four digits of your social security number. My bank asks as identification - you guessed it - the last four digits of my social security number.
why is it ugly?
Because you can't just call it as if it were a function. You have to call invoke() on it. And prior to 1.5 you had to create an Object array with all the parameters (rather than just passing them in a comma-separated list as if it were a real function call), and wrap all the primitives. Not exactly ideal for general use, and about as fun as writing JNI that interfaces back into Java. And I never said having the metadata in there was a bad idea, so don't put words in my mouth. Reflection just isn't an ideal replacement for real function pointers.
As for goto, *snore* I've heard all the arguments before. Of course you never NEED gotos. You could write C code without ever using a for loop too. The problem with gotos is that people didn't know when to use them and just threw them in everywhere. There are (a very limited number of) times when a goto makes sense. But you're right, in C++/Java and other exception-supporting languages, there is no longer a need.
with all the sarcasm you are missing the simple point is that JVM provides managed memory, which is much easier to use for complex projects, and which allows to avoid many simple C/C++ errors like buffer overruns.
How am I missing that? I understand that. I've been working as a Java developer for the last 5 years, and dealt with it a lot in college for a couple years before that. I understand its strengths. And from that experience I recognize its weaknesses too. You seem too blinded by its strengths to recognize that it does have weaknesses. Function pointers don't have to be able to point to arbitrary memory addresses. As another poster said, the Method class is basically a function pointer. It's just ugly.
sometimes a 'goto' statement can be beneficial, but it doesn't mean that it is a good way to program.
Ah, so you're one of those "goto is evil, you should never ever use it!" fanatics. I'm not surprised.
The right tool for the job is all I'm advocating here.
Oh, you convinced me now. You're absolutely right, there is NEVER EVER a time when a function pointer could EVER be better than what Java provides. Give me a friggin break.
Let's take one simple, incredibly pervasive example of where function pointers would benefit Java: their listener paradigm. So I need to create a new class to get notified of button clicks, or mouse movement. And then I need to create a new instance of that class. So I now have a java.lang.Class object, as well as the object for the listener itself. To do what passing a function pointer just as easily would have accomplished. Yes, I know I could make a class that implements all these interfaces so I would only need to make one class - it's still more overhead. Or I could make the class that creates the buttons implement the interfaces - but that's ugly because now your "outer" class's API is cluttered with listener functions. I find Qt's paradigm much much cleaner.
Function pointers have their place, and to tell me I don't understand the language because sometimes I find they would be beneficial is just sticking your head in the sand.
Not only bad programming practice, but incredibly ugly.
No, your point doesn't escape me. I just disagree with it. Remember that line back in my original post, "talk about throwing the baby out with the bath water"? While it isn't incredibly often, I do come across things that are much more difficult to do (or do efficiently) in Java due to lack of pointers.
Yeah, thanks. My point, since it seemed to completely escape you, is that your example is pointless. Java doesn't have function pointers, so no shit the snippet you posted doesn't compile. What could it possibly mean?
[In Java] a call like this one: if (getUserID==0) is a compile time error.
Yeah, because Java doesn't have function pointers. Talk about throwing the baby out with the bath water.
Java is on to the intelligent fix, though: not treating NULL and the integer 0 as one and the same. 0 is an integer. NULL is a pointer. Comparing a pointer with 0 should at the least generate a warning. Easy enough, but that's not the way it works in C unfortunately (and it's even worse in C++, as another poster mentioned).
On the other hand, because its OSS now all of the machines that remain unpatched have an exploit that is not only known, but but publicized by the developer, with diffs showing *exactly* what line of code the error is on.
While I hate to sound like all the other OSS apologists that have posted so far ("yeah there's an exploit, but think of how many we could find if we could run it on the Windows source!" and other such tripe that ignores the fact that a serious bug was found in OSS software), your argument is a bunch of crap. You're basically saying that exploits in closed-source software are unknown and unpublicized, which is ridiculous.
As for your Apache example, it would be just as simple to see what version of IIS a machine is running and look through MS KB to find the known exploits against it. Or look at bugtraq. Or anywhere else on the Internet. Just because the source is a secret doesn't mean the details of the available exploits are too.
Oh and knowing the line of source code on which that the error exists is entirely irrelevant to the discussion -- having that knowledge doesn't make using an exploit any easier or more difficult. It may assist in developing new exploits, but when attempting to use one that has been found, that knowledge is superfluous.
Oh please, everything else in the guy's post is referring to the U.S. so it's a reasonable assumption that he was talking about income tax in the U.S. I know trashing Americans is in style now, but give me a break.
The irony is you disgreed with every one the specifics and supplied corrections which supported the intent. Clever.
*Shrug* I never said I disagreed with the point you were trying to make. I said I stopped reading. You may call it quibbling, but when you make assertions that are factually incorrect, listeners tend to ignore or distrust your conclusions because they assume you don't know what you're talking about.
As for the safety bit, I never said it was a valid claim (hence "Correlation not causation, perhaps"). I said that was the rationale. And if it's long since been proven wrong, that's great. The federal speed limit law has long since been abolished too.
I wrote a bit about this in a paper back in college, and I'm not entirely sure it was with the failure of secession that this change in usage occurred. During the war itself Lincoln often referred to the U.S. as a single entity; a country rather than a union. Take a look at the Gettysburg Address - he consistently referred to the U.S. as a "nation" and didn't use the word "union" even a single time. So perhaps the mere attempt at secession did it, or perhaps Lincoln himself pushed it in an attempt to sway public thought. But the change was well underway before the end of the war.
Income tax was a temporary measure to fund World War 1.
Well, I got to here, and I almost stopped reading. Sorry, but the income tax in the U.S. has been around since the Civil War, which was more than 50 years before WWI. There were some issues with constitutionality for a while there, but the 16th Amendment, which brought about the income tax for good, was ratified in February 1913, a year and a half before WWI started, and four years before the U.S. got involved. Wikipedia.
But I decided to keep reading, until I got to:
The 65 mph speed limit began as another temporary measure to reduce gas consumption during an oil embargo by Middle East producers in the 1970's.
(a) That was 55mph, not 65.
(b) It was kept around for safety, because there was a drop in highway deaths after the limit was lowered. Correlation not causation, perhaps, but that was the rationale.
Didn't read the rest of your post, since I figured with such glaring mistakes in the first three sentences the rest of it would be pretty suspect.
Hello, Bill Gates, world's richest man. Uh, Steve Jobs. Those names are known.
Yeah, and so is the name Hitler. Just because a name is known does not mean it's respected.
Not that I think Bill Gates's name is not respected, but I would say that it's respected because he's the richest man in the world, not because of any nerdiness that may have gotten him there. For example, most people I know (non-geeks) joke that the only reason Bill Gates is married is because of his money.
I've never understood why sports are so heavily promoted at US universities.
Forget U.S. universities, you should see U.S. high schools.
Come back and talk to us after you've been working there five years. I, like you, was very eager to be done with college and to start working. Now, after several years on the job, I wish I could go back to the easy days of college. Being at work 40 hours a week doesn't leave a whole lot of free time, especially compared to the measly 16 hours a week I spent in class in college.
As for understanding why anybody would need six weeks of vacation time, I'd love it. Right now I have three. I usually take a two-week vacation with my gf in the summer, and then a week backpacking somewhere. That doesn't leave me any vacation to just take a day off because it's nice out, or anything like that. Sure you could tell me not to take the two weeks straight, but a day off here and there without an extended break from work doesn't have the same effect. If I had an extra couple weeks, I could take the long vacation and still take those days off when I want to.
Bottom line, I enjoy my work, but I enjoy my free time more. And I wish I had more of it. I'm not alone in this, either -- in the 2005 ComputerWorld Salary Survey, tops on the list of things people wished their company offered was more time off, at 42% of the respondents. 36% said more vacation time would influence them to switch jobs, while 45% said a "better work/life balance" would, which sounds a lot like working less to me.
You see, there's nothing stopping you from starting a business in America and allowing your employees to work just 35 hours every week. All you have to do is tell them that you'll pay them a salary equivalent to 40 hours of work.
I disagree. Personally I'd consider taking a 12.5% pay cut for working 12.5% less hours per week, and I imagine a lot of other people out there would too. But you know what? I may be just as productive in those 35 hours as I currently am in 40, because I've about had it by the last hour of the day.
I do agree with the rest of your post though, about mandating any particular work-week not being the best solution.
First of all, look at 2005, not year 2000.
... Note that many of us live in tax free states.
I'm with you there.
without social security (which is screwed up) for a reasonable comparison of federal government services
Uh, sorry, you lost me. How can you ignore social security??? It's over 7% out of your paycheck, for Christ's sake! If "it's screwed up" is a valid reason for ignoring a tax, then let's just ignore federal taxes too because they're "screwed up" too. I'm with you on ignoring the employer's portion of FICA, because that doesn't really come directly out of my pocket, but ignoring the employee's portion is just horse hockey.
Second of all, look at the federal government
That's why they list the AVERAGE tax rate. And as an aside, there are only seven states in the U.S. that levy no income tax, and another 2 that don't tax wage income. So that leaves 41 states that have their hand out for your hard-earned. Given that half of the 9 lucky states are quite small population-wise, that means the vast majority of Americans (over 80%, by my quick calculations) live in states with an income tax.
One big problem of the GP's table is that as far as I can tell it ignores sales tax or VAT or whatever you want to call it. So Canada's tax rate may look low, but their combined PST/GST is around 15% depending on the province. It also seems to ignore property taxes, local income tax (NYC charges income tax on top of what the feds and the state want), and any other tax you can come up with. In other words you'd be stupid to do anything useful with it.
When you spend 1.5-2.5 hours a day in your car (only going 35 miles total), you start to think some funny things are worthwhile...
;-)
Like moving closer to where you work, for example?
Oh, found another good one for you: the site claims that wind power won't help us reduce our dependence on foreign oil because less than 3% of our electricity is generated using oil. However, there was an article in today's Rochester paper that broke down where New York's electricity comes from, and 14% of New York's comes from oil. Since the website is trying to save upstate New York, it would probably be better to use a New York statistic rather than a nationwide one. Of course, for their purposes 3% is much more convenient than 14%.
No no no, I was wondering if there was a single documented case of someone getting a migraine or a seizue due to shadow flicker, not whether shadow flicker actually occurs.
I don't doubt that it occurs and that it is terribly annoying, but the site doesn't claim that it's terribly annoying - the site claims that it can cause migraines and seizures. Had they just left it at "shadow flicker is terribly annoying" I could have nodded my head and said yes, but the fact that they say shadow flicker "has the potential to cause" migraines/seizures, rather than "has actually caused" makes me wonder.
I could go on.
I'm still waiting to find an agenda-free group that provides a real non-biased examination of the pros and cons of wind power, specifically for upstate New York, because I am well aware that there are drawbacks but want to see an honest assessment of how serious they are. Do I think it will ever happen? No. Too many people have a vested interest, and groups that present both sides of the argument piss both sides off.
Look at the DDT restrictions which have been proven unneeded
Proven unneeded? Sorry, I don't think so. There really isn't a whole lot of debate in the scientific community that DDT causes eggshell thinning in raptors. Did DDT need to be banned outright? No, probably not, because it was ridiculously overused. Using it more sparingly would have been just as effective (if not moreso due to reduced mosquito resistance) without the massive environmental buildup and corresponding decline in raptor populations. And the quantity of DDT required to dust a house for malaria prevention is ridiculously small.
the emissions laws in California that caused blackouts several years ago
Umm, the cause of those blackouts was much more complex than just emissions laws. Issues surrounding deregulation, market manipulation by companies such as Enron, drought in areas from where California obtains hydro power, etc. Shortage of supply due to lack of in-state generating capacity was certainly an issue, but reducing the entire crisis to just that and ignoring the other factors is disingenuous at best.
Sounds like the environmentalists aren't the only ones with an agenda.
The tickets prices, if you could buy one at face value, were quite reasonable: maybe $40 tops. Even adjusted for inflation, that's nowhere near the face value of tickets today.
While I've seen a few concerts come through here with outrageous prices, most are in the $40 to $60 range still (and $60 is today's equivalent of your $40 from 15 years ago). The couple times I saw Dave Matthews the tickets were $50, so I'm not talking small-name acts. I think that $200+ concerts are the exception rather than the rule.
None of them are writing their own music
Actually Kelly Clarkson has her name on the writing credits on a number of her songs. Including that "Because of You" that's on the radio all the time now. There usually are a couple co-writers listed, though.