However, it has not been shown that humans are the primary cause of this warming. This is also true.
True? That has been shown over and over, infact if you want a 'smoking gun' you could look at some simple measurements: Mankind has increased greenhouse gas 40% over pre industrial levels. This issue is convenient ignored, because this is kind of a damning direct epirical measurement. The real question is how much it is going to warm up or more specifically is a given ammount of warming a minor issue or a epic fucktastrophe.
Now, I don't know if you would call that a smoking gun, but to me that really smokes.
Looking closely he's opening images attached to an email in what appears to be Outlook. He can hardly be blamed for control over what has been sent to him, especially considering all those implicit in the previous hops of the forwarded email (which will be most of the office!).
If you've worked in a contemporary office environment, you KNOW this kind of email gets passed around just about everyone, even some pretty explicit stuff, and 90% of the time the managers look the other way (some of that the managers would ask not to be left out, especially if she's hot). If he gets fired then he has a hell of a comeback if he wants to use it; this will not be an isolated incident in this workplace, and there will be a precedent of management staff being in on the dirty office emails.
"Mundie and other experts have said there is a growing need to police the internet to clampdown on fraud, espionage and the spread of viruses." - From TFA
A bit rich coming from the worlds largest purveyor virus vulnerable software, almost single handedly responsible for the back doors that enable the above three threats. Rampant viruses are a feature of the Microsoft software environment, and not any other.
It sometimes makes me wonder (while tightening my tinfoil hat) if this is suspiciously convenient, as part of a plan to introduce a cyber police state. Ok, for sure, there are lots of interested parties out there pushing for this kind of thing - even quite overtly. Problem is though, for any such plan you need to have the worlds largest operating system vendor on side, which it seems, they do.
Microsoft has no interest and now no reason to get it's security sorted out.
I think the term 'Internet Drivers Licence' is a poor description of what the original dimwit actually proposed, and it's not a new idea thrown around.
Reading more about this it seems the core idea is a uniquely identical signature for any Internet activity, that corresponds to a person who is legally responsible for the transaction/connection/data payload.
Much as a drivers licence is a form of identification first and for most, gives you clearance for you to drive particular vehicles (commercial, passenger etc). That it also proves you have learned how to control a vehicle and obey the road rules is almost incidental (especially since it seems many drivers can't). A licensed driver is also legally responsible for the vehicle (for example in most nations the driver gets fined if the occupants don't wear seat-belts).
So this is where this idea begins to scare me and bothers me that no one has really read into thinking behind TFA. This is not about CERTIFICATION to use the internet this is about IDENTIFICATION on the internet.
Not only would China and the MafRIAA love this kind of thing, needs no explanation, but there are other parties that would love this too. Content providers and hosts, youtube, myspace, others would be delighted with the identification system since it positively assures they have no legal liability for the actions of the users. ISPs and the service provision sector would also have the liability moved to the licensed user.
It'd be a simple matter to block unlicensed traffic, and nobody can upload ripped Top Gear episodes to a youtube channel.
The internet would soon be divided into 'licensed' traffic and 'unlicensed' anonymous traffic. This would of course drive illicit activity into the unlicensed realm, thus further justifiying blocking such traffic all together and making it unusable even. You'd have to go get a IDL because the anonymous internet would be crap. Going further, routing would break down between the legal "whitenet" and the anonymous "undernet", thus another potential Internet apocalypse.
[:: Posting Licence: Authorized Licensed post under section 4 of the Internet Identies Act - 2018. IDL EU6434-3243-4356. United States of Eurasia. Long Live our Glorious Leader.::]
I think it's safe enough to beam out messages that advertise ourselves to any potential ETs that might at best ruin our civilization with contact, at worst invade and steal our resources.
If a advanced civilization develops the ability to colonize space and cross interstellar distances... why exactly would they need anything from a biosphere at the bottom of a gravity well? Presumably they would be well adapted to space, have all they might need in terms of energy and resources, and no doubt would be more than capable of staying hidden from us if they so chose.
Of course they may just come here out of scientific curiosity, which would necessarily mean a non-interference approach to data gathering.
Simple economics, getting into and out of a gravity well is expensive.
I'd sooner believe a Dyson sphere suddenly popping up around our star, or our gas giants being strip mined for useful elements (and the earth being taken out as colateral damage) than I would alien hordes showing up just to say "hi you're not alone" or to steal all our biomass and our beer recipes.
So this brings me to one of Douglas Adams astute observations hidden in his sci-fi comedy. In Hitchiker's we have the parable of the Vogons destroying earth to make way for a hyperspace bypass. Which was really pointing out that advanced spacefaring species might have absolutely no economic interest in our biosphere.
Ironically going back to the Moon and on to Mars and establishing permaent colonies would require the solving of the kind of science and engineering problems that we NEED right now to tackle global warming and feed millions of people. Nothing is more relevant. Sure we don't need to put people on the moon, but we NEED billions of dollars spent on science and engineering and I can't think of a better excuse.
Basicly everything we have now with computers and the internet, advanced materials, biotech etc has it's roots in the cold war (silicon valley has direct links even) when the American government injected billions into the knowledge economy post WWII. If we didn't have this, then we wouldn't have had the information revolution as we have had, or it would have come later, and we'd be in a lot worse position to deal with climate change and other problems.
In the absence of the effect of billions of government dollars on the knowledge economy, didn't space travel inspire many millions to become scientists and engineers?
It seems the fact we put someone on the moon was a nice side effect. It's also not the point.
Obama should have dangled the bailout money in front of GM and the banks and then said SIKE! and built a moon base instead.
Your moderation is deserved. Your username is apt even.
However you neglect to mention death and injury from drones falling out of the sky. I doubt people will take pot shots at UAVs in the UK, however a cheap laserpointer would render it blind or cause it crash.
This would not go down well stateside, first lawsuit and it's all over.
Once you lose the expertise and infrastructure, it costs a lot to rebuild it.
Yet private space start-ups are doing amazing things, for 10-100x cheaper, all from clean sheet design.
IMHO, NASA needs a clean-sheet reboot on everything it does, taking notes from the entrepreneurs. In many ways all that infrastructure has served it's purpose and becomes expensive to maintain.
When we see the space industry run like a semi-conductor industry (which is starting to happen) we're going to see a kind of law of accelerating returns like moore's law.
As a IT guy I hate being asked by a lay person "Do you understand what he's doing on that screen?" when we're watching some movie or TV show with a completely fake UI on some computer.
"100s of feet thick" they say. 2035 may be a made up number, but I really don't see how it isn't plausible speculation, even thought it'd be the ultimate worst case scenario.
Can anyone name one specific, numerically-quantified prediction made by IPCC researchers that has actually come to pass, by means other than obvious coincidence or luck?
Yes but we'll need to wait fifty years for that answer.
If these kind of errors are indicative of the standard by which scientific evidence is being gathered, then the public *should* lose faith in the claims of science.
Exactly why does science deserve to be put upon a pedestal unquestioned, anyway?
But science is still the best we've got. Considering we live in a society where people still forward chain letters, and avoid walking under ladders; I'd take slightly questionable science over the lay persons so-called 'common sense' in a heart beat.
Climate denial crackpots make dodgy conclusions from bad data, outright errors and blatant lies all the time, and it doesn't get this kind of press coverage.
But this is exactly why science should be trusted. They have not only admitted the error, but quickly so, and it's a error in a one-line anecdote in a very large mountain of scientific literature. More specifically one single date was inverted from 2350 to 2035. This is the complete opposite scenario to the garbage I've read on the other end of the argument.
It restores my faith in science that errors are so bravely admitted when found, and frightens me a little just how inainly dishonest the crackpots are.
Someone should do a study into the kind of people who participate in surveys to see if they are naturally inclined over-represented in potentially headline grabbing statistics. But I suspect the result would be biased.
These aren't OS vulnerabilities, they're application vulnerabilities (well, for the programs I recognize as a non-Mac person). The OS itself is fine. The trick is, of course, that some of these things are included practically by default. So as we wouldn't count a problem with notepad as a Windows OS issue, so we shouldn't count ones for other OS's non-essential programs.
Disagree.. a bit. If notepad is included by default on Windows (and is seldom removed/disabled from installations) then for all practical purposes it is part of the OS.
The same must apply to the standard apps with any OS distribution package.
Such default bundled applications are all attack surface area.
Saying that OSX is less secure due to these vulnerabilities is how MS said that Linux was less secure than windows.
Agree. Linux security is difficult to quantify, thus too easy for Microsoft to spread FUD. Linux is a collection of open source projects from all over the place (who calls the kernel one project?). Security can vary greatly from one package to the next, and vary between distros depending on the selection. MS naturally overlook the impressively hardened distro's out there, and look for examples in the more slack projects.
Slashdot Mirror
However, it has not been shown that humans are the primary cause of this warming. This is also true.
True? That has been shown over and over, infact if you want a 'smoking gun' you could look at some simple measurements: Mankind has increased greenhouse gas 40% over pre industrial levels. This issue is convenient ignored, because this is kind of a damning direct epirical measurement. The real question is how much it is going to warm up or more specifically is a given ammount of warming a minor issue or a epic fucktastrophe.
Now, I don't know if you would call that a smoking gun, but to me that really smokes.
Looking closely he's opening images attached to an email in what appears to be Outlook. He can hardly be blamed for control over what has been sent to him, especially considering all those implicit in the previous hops of the forwarded email (which will be most of the office!).
If you've worked in a contemporary office environment, you KNOW this kind of email gets passed around just about everyone, even some pretty explicit stuff, and 90% of the time the managers look the other way (some of that the managers would ask not to be left out, especially if she's hot). If he gets fired then he has a hell of a comeback if he wants to use it; this will not be an isolated incident in this workplace, and there will be a precedent of management staff being in on the dirty office emails.
There's an operating system for that.
There, fixed that for you.
"Mundie and other experts have said there is a growing need to police the internet to clampdown on fraud, espionage and the spread of viruses." - From TFA
A bit rich coming from the worlds largest purveyor virus vulnerable software, almost single handedly responsible for the back doors that enable the above three threats. Rampant viruses are a feature of the Microsoft software environment, and not any other.
It sometimes makes me wonder (while tightening my tinfoil hat) if this is suspiciously convenient, as part of a plan to introduce a cyber police state. Ok, for sure, there are lots of interested parties out there pushing for this kind of thing - even quite overtly. Problem is though, for any such plan you need to have the worlds largest operating system vendor on side, which it seems, they do.
Microsoft has no interest and now no reason to get it's security sorted out.
I think the term 'Internet Drivers Licence' is a poor description of what the original dimwit actually proposed, and it's not a new idea thrown around.
::]
Reading more about this it seems the core idea is a uniquely identical signature for any Internet activity, that corresponds to a person who is legally responsible for the transaction/connection/data payload.
Much as a drivers licence is a form of identification first and for most, gives you clearance for you to drive particular vehicles (commercial, passenger etc). That it also proves you have learned how to control a vehicle and obey the road rules is almost incidental (especially since it seems many drivers can't). A licensed driver is also legally responsible for the vehicle (for example in most nations the driver gets fined if the occupants don't wear seat-belts).
So this is where this idea begins to scare me and bothers me that no one has really read into thinking behind TFA. This is not about CERTIFICATION to use the internet this is about IDENTIFICATION on the internet.
Not only would China and the MafRIAA love this kind of thing, needs no explanation, but there are other parties that would love this too. Content providers and hosts, youtube, myspace, others would be delighted with the identification system since it positively assures they have no legal liability for the actions of the users. ISPs and the service provision sector would also have the liability moved to the licensed user.
It'd be a simple matter to block unlicensed traffic, and nobody can upload ripped Top Gear episodes to a youtube channel.
The internet would soon be divided into 'licensed' traffic and 'unlicensed' anonymous traffic. This would of course drive illicit activity into the unlicensed realm, thus further justifiying blocking such traffic all together and making it unusable even. You'd have to go get a IDL because the anonymous internet would be crap. Going further, routing would break down between the legal "whitenet" and the anonymous "undernet", thus another potential Internet apocalypse.
[:: Posting Licence: Authorized Licensed post under section 4 of the Internet Identies Act - 2018. IDL EU6434-3243-4356. United States of Eurasia. Long Live our Glorious Leader.
that intergallactic travel will be just as confusing as the real tube.
Yet, if the websites were TOO slick and polished you wouldn't believe they were out there doing real work would you?
I think it's safe enough to beam out messages that advertise ourselves to any potential ETs that might at best ruin our civilization with contact, at worst invade and steal our resources.
If a advanced civilization develops the ability to colonize space and cross interstellar distances... why exactly would they need anything from a biosphere at the bottom of a gravity well? Presumably they would be well adapted to space, have all they might need in terms of energy and resources, and no doubt would be more than capable of staying hidden from us if they so chose.
Of course they may just come here out of scientific curiosity, which would necessarily mean a non-interference approach to data gathering.
Simple economics, getting into and out of a gravity well is expensive.
I'd sooner believe a Dyson sphere suddenly popping up around our star, or our gas giants being strip mined for useful elements (and the earth being taken out as colateral damage) than I would alien hordes showing up just to say "hi you're not alone" or to steal all our biomass and our beer recipes.
So this brings me to one of Douglas Adams astute observations hidden in his sci-fi comedy. In Hitchiker's we have the parable of the Vogons destroying earth to make way for a hyperspace bypass. Which was really pointing out that advanced spacefaring species might have absolutely no economic interest in our biosphere.
but the bottom line is that consumers don't care or they really wouldn't have bought it.
Many don't care because they don't understand, or only fully realised the limitations after purchasing it.
LIKE, the idea of being locked in to the App Store, because it introduces a significant amount of safety.
Guy in the gilded cage: "Look how shiny my room is!"
His buddy on the open platform: "Dude, your in a cage"
001 Gather data
002 Hypothesise
003 Go To 1
Ironically going back to the Moon and on to Mars and establishing permaent colonies would require the solving of the kind of science and engineering problems that we NEED right now to tackle global warming and feed millions of people. Nothing is more relevant. Sure we don't need to put people on the moon, but we NEED billions of dollars spent on science and engineering and I can't think of a better excuse.
Basicly everything we have now with computers and the internet, advanced materials, biotech etc has it's roots in the cold war (silicon valley has direct links even) when the American government injected billions into the knowledge economy post WWII. If we didn't have this, then we wouldn't have had the information revolution as we have had, or it would have come later, and we'd be in a lot worse position to deal with climate change and other problems.
In the absence of the effect of billions of government dollars on the knowledge economy, didn't space travel inspire many millions to become scientists and engineers?
It seems the fact we put someone on the moon was a nice side effect. It's also not the point.
Obama should have dangled the bailout money in front of GM and the banks and then said SIKE! and built a moon base instead.
Your moderation is deserved. Your username is apt even.
However you neglect to mention death and injury from drones falling out of the sky. I doubt people will take pot shots at UAVs in the UK, however a cheap laserpointer would render it blind or cause it crash.
This would not go down well stateside, first lawsuit and it's all over.
Once you lose the expertise and infrastructure, it costs a lot to rebuild it.
Yet private space start-ups are doing amazing things, for 10-100x cheaper, all from clean sheet design.
IMHO, NASA needs a clean-sheet reboot on everything it does, taking notes from the entrepreneurs. In many ways all that infrastructure has served it's purpose and becomes expensive to maintain.
When we see the space industry run like a semi-conductor industry (which is starting to happen) we're going to see a kind of law of accelerating returns like moore's law.
Politicians take note: George Orwell's Ninteen Eighty-Four is not a manual for statecraft.
As a IT guy I hate being asked by a lay person "Do you understand what he's doing on that screen?" when we're watching some movie or TV show with a completely fake UI on some computer.
Chacaltaya glacier in La Paz, Bolivia is gone:
http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/18/must-31/
"100s of feet thick" they say. 2035 may be a made up number, but I really don't see how it isn't plausible speculation, even thought it'd be the ultimate worst case scenario.
Nevermind there are numerous smaller glaciers and icefields around the world that are just completely gone.
Can anyone name one specific, numerically-quantified prediction made by IPCC researchers that has actually come to pass, by means other than obvious coincidence or luck?
Yes but we'll need to wait fifty years for that answer.
If these kind of errors are indicative of the standard by which scientific evidence is being gathered, then the public *should* lose faith in the claims of science.
Exactly why does science deserve to be put upon a pedestal unquestioned, anyway?
But science is still the best we've got. Considering we live in a society where people still forward chain letters, and avoid walking under ladders; I'd take slightly questionable science over the lay persons so-called 'common sense' in a heart beat.
Climate denial crackpots make dodgy conclusions from bad data, outright errors and blatant lies all the time, and it doesn't get this kind of press coverage.
But this is exactly why science should be trusted. They have not only admitted the error, but quickly so, and it's a error in a one-line anecdote in a very large mountain of scientific literature. More specifically one single date was inverted from 2350 to 2035. This is the complete opposite scenario to the garbage I've read on the other end of the argument.
It restores my faith in science that errors are so bravely admitted when found, and frightens me a little just how inainly dishonest the crackpots are.
Someone should do a study into the kind of people who participate in surveys to see if they are naturally inclined over-represented in potentially headline grabbing statistics. But I suspect the result would be biased.
Multitasking is not examined in TFS.
Or maybe it does, I'm too lazy.
Computer 1:29 - As a computer scientist, well, let's just say I'm about 10x this. It can range from really good (research) to horrible (4chan).
Slashdot somewhere in that range? Or was that to beyond horrible to mention?
These aren't OS vulnerabilities, they're application vulnerabilities (well, for the programs I recognize as a non-Mac person). The OS itself is fine. The trick is, of course, that some of these things are included practically by default. So as we wouldn't count a problem with notepad as a Windows OS issue, so we shouldn't count ones for other OS's non-essential programs.
Disagree.. a bit. If notepad is included by default on Windows (and is seldom removed/disabled from installations) then for all practical purposes it is part of the OS.
The same must apply to the standard apps with any OS distribution package.
Such default bundled applications are all attack surface area.
Saying that OSX is less secure due to these vulnerabilities is how MS said that Linux was less secure than windows.
Agree. Linux security is difficult to quantify, thus too easy for Microsoft to spread FUD. Linux is a collection of open source projects from all over the place (who calls the kernel one project?). Security can vary greatly from one package to the next, and vary between distros depending on the selection. MS naturally overlook the impressively hardened distro's out there, and look for examples in the more slack projects.