The pause in temperature rise has been written off as merely the effect of solar minimum.
The supposed "pause" is only surface temps, which is caused by the El Niño dominated cycle of the 1990s switching to a La Niña dominated cycle since 2000. This changed the warming pattern from surface dominated to deep ocean dominated (due to the shift in trade-winds exposing different layers of ocean.) This has been known for... well, I've known it for nearly a decade. (It's also known that this normally correlates with a marked cooling of global surface temps (such as in the 1940s), but this cycle is notable that there's still a (slower) rise in surface temps in spite of being a strong "cooling" cycle.)
What is new and interesting is the correlation between the decline in sunspot activity during the same decade as the La Niña dominance. So some researchers wonder if variations in solar activity are a factor in the decadal variation in the El Niño/La Niña cycle.
The is completely different from the research in TFA, which concerns the longer term climate trends, for which there is good correlation with solar output variations across the last 1000 years, except over the last century. The last hundred years are a new thing which needs a factor besides solar variation, the most parsimonious explanation is changes to levels of known greenhouse gases.
Now, it should tell you something about the progress of climate science that the researchers are drilling down and teasing out specific smaller parts of how the climate works in detail; while opponents of the existence of climate change are still stuck on the first page. But I suspect it doesn't.
Except that's not actually a thing. It's a deliberate misreading of data by people who are lying to you for political reasons. (Specifically, separating out selective readings (variations in surface temps) from broader data which shows a pretty constant heating effect, and falsely presenting the selective readings as "Global temperatures".)
But they'd go from having one senator per 19 million people, to one per 3 million. A 6-fold increase in voter-power. It might not swing in favour of one party over another, but so what?
if states did not have equal representation in the Senate then states like Wyoming and Rhode Island would have no say in the Federal Government. They would then essentially have no representation in the government
Only if they didn't get any vote in the Senate. If the Senate places were distributed according to population, the smaller states would merely be part of a larger Senate district.
What makes Wyoming and Rhode Island more deserving of individual representation compared to the vastly more populous northern California, west Texas, or Long Island?
About 8 fires per day in the US occur in vehicle fuel tanks or fuel lines (excluding after crashes), and are responsible for about 1/6th of all vehicle-fire deaths.
U.S. fire departments responded to an estimated average of 152,300 automobile fires per year in 2006-2010. These fires caused an average of 209 civilian deaths, 764 civilian injuries, and $536 million in direct property damage. [...] On average, 17 automobile fires were reported per hour. These fires killed an average of four people every week.
For another, many phones currently don't have a built-in ID,
Every handset has a mandatory IMEI. If a thief has the ability to change the IMEI on a handset, then they can avoid being bricked anyway. (How else does the carrier know which handset to brick if not the IMEI?) So a system based on an IMEI blacklist is precisely as useful as an system based on an IMEI brick list, but without the potential for irreversible mistakes.
If you have enough cops to ticket people for rolling through a stop sign, you certainly have enough to chase millions of dollars worth of stolen handsets. Many of which will be used by people involved in other crimes (drug dealing being the obvious one, but also mugging and other thefts.)
I think he's saying that if the sim-module can't be removed, how is it different from the existing IMEI module? In which case, why not remove it entirely and just use the existing handset/device IMEI identification? (Since you will have to ask the provider to please-sir let you access the remote-sim function, why not push it onto the provider side anyway?)
[I hate the idea. I've recently had to swap sims back and forth between handsets for an ageing parent, trying to find one they can use, retrieve their data, etc, when their old one crapped out. I can see having to do something similar with always-connected devices.]
what happens when they refuse to assist you in switching?
Or charge you for the service. Essentially it's like locking the handset or device to a provider. It effectively eliminates "unlocked" devices, and allows major providers to significantly undermine cheap prepaid service resellers.
That much water would block the signal anyway, what's the point of bringing a phone underwater?
So that you have a phone when you surface a few miles from the dive-boat. (Or when the dive boat captain http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_and_Eileen_Lonergan">miscounts divers and leaves.) You'd be surprised how far out to sea you can get at least emergency coverage.
Or do tourists have to register their phones before they can roam? What about tourists who want a prepaid SIM for the duration of their stay - do they now need to register their physical phone too?
Yes. That's what the IMEI is for. When you connect to a new network, the phone registers its IMEI with that network. That allows the network to connect the handset-identity to your sim-identity. Without that, the network would be unable to connect your phone across cells.
you need a different working phone to call your carrier and have that phone added to this white list?
You've got it backwards. The IMEI list is black, not white. If you report your phone stolen, the IMEI for that phone goes on the blacklist. When a phone connects to any network, it reports its IMEI. The network can then check against a black-list of stolen phones and if it's on the list either refuse to connect the handset, or report information to the police who track down the phone. The former is what happens in my country, which slashed the rates of stolen phones. The latter seems more useful in the US, where phones have mandatory GPS.
[BTW, phone networks opposed the black-list idea in this country, so I presume that's why California introduced the kill-switch plan, to push the burden onto international manufacturers rather than domestic networks.]
However, being artificial brains, they can be connected to both analogue or imperfect-digital "brains", and to precise digital systems. In the same way that you can use a computer, but much closer, more immediate. Best of both worlds.
The problem is that you seem to be creating a scenario in your head which doesn't actually exist (some imagined system where only "responsible" people are allowed to have firearms), then claiming that scenario is better than, say, an Australian style regulation of firearms, and using that to oppose people who suggest gun control.
But any system that restricted firearms to "responsible" people would be highly restrictive, and heavily opposed by people like you. Even simple restrictions like those on cars (registration and training; which hardly restricts driving to only "responsible" people) would drastically increase US gun laws, and is deeply opposed by gun advocates like the NRA.
What people in these threads are doing is comparing the actual system in the US with actual systems elsewhere; not imaginary systems with imaginary outcomes. The US system does not deter crime, it does not protect families, it does not help. The actual net result is negative. Therefore the actual system fails to perform as advertised.
You are just ignoring that drugs are, easy, the biggest motivator for crime
Drug prohibition. Legalise or nationalise drug production and sale and the motivation (and profits) of the drug criminals goes away. As does much of the drug-related crime.
at these same time you completely ignores that guns, on the right hands, also saves lives.
The question is whether the number of "right hands" with guns outweighs the number of "wrong hands" with guns. National murder stats comparing the US and other western countries suggests not. And stats comparing homes with guns versus homes without guns within just the US also suggests not. Therefore by your own argument, the net effect is negative, and the justification for firearms failed.
Suicide is also highly impulsive. There are examples of drops in suicide rates when methods for suicide are restricted.
For example, one of the biggest single drops in suicide rates occurred when oven-gas was switched over from carbon-monoxide rich "coal gas" to near-pure methane "natural gas". It didn't just displace suicides to another method, it prevented them outright. In the UK, the suicide rate dropped by a full third.
The same is likely true with firearm suicides, and domestic homicides with firearms. (For eg, having a gun in the home dramatically increases the chance of women/children in that home being killed. That might be because disturbed people are attracted to guns, but I suspect it's just the convenience factor. If you have to stop to think, you mostly just stop.)
As for accidents; it seems unlikely that there's any replacement factor at work. Eliminate accidental firearm deaths and you get an absolute reduction in the accidental death-rate.
The Australian experience suggests there's also a strong "convenience" factor at work in mass shootings, and hence no substitution. After restrictions were brought in (banning semi-autos and short-barrelled rifles, and heavily restricting handguns) the mass-shooting rate dropped to zero. This suggests that the nutters don't usually have access to criminal supply networks, nor the brains to make explosives/poisons/etc.
The crawler is being refurbished for SLS, which does require it (NASA haven't made the the same mistakes as they did with the shuttle.) SpaceX will likely build a rail system to deliver FH to 39A.
In the US, the average citizen enjoys more freedom than could ever be had by citizens of countries run by Snowden's new (and fair-weather) friends.
You mean countries where journalists who are embarrassing to the government are arrested or "disappeared"? Where defectors and whistle-blowers are poisoned? Where the family of any perceived opponent of government risks being harassed by loyal government men (with and without authorisation)? Countries that do what you want the US to do over the Snowden affair.
You're remarking on the difference between freedom in the US and that in Russia/China, while arguing without a shred of irony for the US to invoke precisely the same "strong-man" tactics of Russia/China which destroys freedom. You somehow fail to see that you are an enemy of the People of the United States.
While I disagree that Russia/China wouldn't take the documents if they could, whether they believed them or not, I would say that the most important information Snowden can provide is how weak the e-security is at the NSA. How he got access, rather than what he got access to.
We only know of Snowden because he chose to go public. Any competent US contractor would be using their access, legal or not, to spy on its rivals, on Congressional vote intentions, on bids, etc. And it seems unlikely, given how much Snowden had access to (for example, details on how Australia bugged the phones of East Timor politicians during negotiations over oil/gas deals), China and Russia would be crazy not to, for example, pose as US intelligence contractors to hire insiders at other contractors to illicitly gather information (or provide clearances) for them.
all it took was one man to blow the top off the NSA, [...] Yet nobody, out of the thousands that would be involved, managed to find their spine and come forward?
So you're saying that Snowden is a disinformation agent? Right, got it.
Slashdot Mirror
The pause in temperature rise has been written off as merely the effect of solar minimum.
The supposed "pause" is only surface temps, which is caused by the El Niño dominated cycle of the 1990s switching to a La Niña dominated cycle since 2000. This changed the warming pattern from surface dominated to deep ocean dominated (due to the shift in trade-winds exposing different layers of ocean.) This has been known for... well, I've known it for nearly a decade. (It's also known that this normally correlates with a marked cooling of global surface temps (such as in the 1940s), but this cycle is notable that there's still a (slower) rise in surface temps in spite of being a strong "cooling" cycle.)
What is new and interesting is the correlation between the decline in sunspot activity during the same decade as the La Niña dominance. So some researchers wonder if variations in solar activity are a factor in the decadal variation in the El Niño/La Niña cycle.
The is completely different from the research in TFA, which concerns the longer term climate trends, for which there is good correlation with solar output variations across the last 1000 years, except over the last century. The last hundred years are a new thing which needs a factor besides solar variation, the most parsimonious explanation is changes to levels of known greenhouse gases.
Now, it should tell you something about the progress of climate science that the researchers are drilling down and teasing out specific smaller parts of how the climate works in detail; while opponents of the existence of climate change are still stuck on the first page. But I suspect it doesn't.
the now decade long pause in global warming.
Except that's not actually a thing. It's a deliberate misreading of data by people who are lying to you for political reasons. (Specifically, separating out selective readings (variations in surface temps) from broader data which shows a pretty constant heating effect, and falsely presenting the selective readings as "Global temperatures".)
+1 Redundant?
But they'd go from having one senator per 19 million people, to one per 3 million. A 6-fold increase in voter-power. It might not swing in favour of one party over another, but so what?
if states did not have equal representation in the Senate then states like Wyoming and Rhode Island would have no say in the Federal Government. They would then essentially have no representation in the government
Only if they didn't get any vote in the Senate. If the Senate places were distributed according to population, the smaller states would merely be part of a larger Senate district.
What makes Wyoming and Rhode Island more deserving of individual representation compared to the vastly more populous northern California, west Texas, or Long Island?
"Science fiction" doesn't have to be pewpewpew Star Wars fantasy. Gravity could be a straight golden-era SF short story.
About 8 fires per day in the US occur in vehicle fuel tanks or fuel lines (excluding after crashes), and are responsible for about 1/6th of all vehicle-fire deaths.
If, in 2007, Ford suddenly started having Mustangs catching fire, it would have been front page news to.
There are 17 vehicle fires every hour. Or 150,000/yr. There aren't enough front pages.
[Ford did have fires from their overheating cruise-control, which caused actual deaths.]
U.S. fire departments responded to an estimated average of 152,300 automobile fires per year in 2006-2010. These fires caused an average of 209 civilian deaths, 764 civilian injuries, and $536 million in direct property damage. [...] On average, 17 automobile fires were reported per hour. These fires killed an average of four people every week.
http://www.nfpa.org/safety-information/for-consumers/vehicles
U.S. Vehicle Fire Trends and Patterns (pdf)
For another, many phones currently don't have a built-in ID,
Every handset has a mandatory IMEI. If a thief has the ability to change the IMEI on a handset, then they can avoid being bricked anyway. (How else does the carrier know which handset to brick if not the IMEI?) So a system based on an IMEI blacklist is precisely as useful as an system based on an IMEI brick list, but without the potential for irreversible mistakes.
If you have enough cops to ticket people for rolling through a stop sign, you certainly have enough to chase millions of dollars worth of stolen handsets. Many of which will be used by people involved in other crimes (drug dealing being the obvious one, but also mugging and other thefts.)
Broken windows.
I think he's saying that if the sim-module can't be removed, how is it different from the existing IMEI module? In which case, why not remove it entirely and just use the existing handset/device IMEI identification? (Since you will have to ask the provider to please-sir let you access the remote-sim function, why not push it onto the provider side anyway?)
[I hate the idea. I've recently had to swap sims back and forth between handsets for an ageing parent, trying to find one they can use, retrieve their data, etc, when their old one crapped out. I can see having to do something similar with always-connected devices.]
what happens when they refuse to assist you in switching?
Or charge you for the service. Essentially it's like locking the handset or device to a provider. It effectively eliminates "unlocked" devices, and allows major providers to significantly undermine cheap prepaid service resellers.
That much water would block the signal anyway, what's the point of bringing a phone underwater?
So that you have a phone when you surface a few miles from the dive-boat. (Or when the dive boat captain http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_and_Eileen_Lonergan">miscounts divers and leaves.) You'd be surprised how far out to sea you can get at least emergency coverage.
Or do tourists have to register their phones before they can roam? What about tourists who want a prepaid SIM for the duration of their stay - do they now need to register their physical phone too?
Yes. That's what the IMEI is for. When you connect to a new network, the phone registers its IMEI with that network. That allows the network to connect the handset-identity to your sim-identity. Without that, the network would be unable to connect your phone across cells.
You've got it backwards. The IMEI list is black, not white. If you report your phone stolen, the IMEI for that phone goes on the blacklist. When a phone connects to any network, it reports its IMEI. The network can then check against a black-list of stolen phones and if it's on the list either refuse to connect the handset, or report information to the police who track down the phone. The former is what happens in my country, which slashed the rates of stolen phones. The latter seems more useful in the US, where phones have mandatory GPS.
[BTW, phone networks opposed the black-list idea in this country, so I presume that's why California introduced the kill-switch plan, to push the burden onto international manufacturers rather than domestic networks.]
However, being artificial brains, they can be connected to both analogue or imperfect-digital "brains", and to precise digital systems. In the same way that you can use a computer, but much closer, more immediate. Best of both worlds.
The problem is that you seem to be creating a scenario in your head which doesn't actually exist (some imagined system where only "responsible" people are allowed to have firearms), then claiming that scenario is better than, say, an Australian style regulation of firearms, and using that to oppose people who suggest gun control.
But any system that restricted firearms to "responsible" people would be highly restrictive, and heavily opposed by people like you. Even simple restrictions like those on cars (registration and training; which hardly restricts driving to only "responsible" people) would drastically increase US gun laws, and is deeply opposed by gun advocates like the NRA.
What people in these threads are doing is comparing the actual system in the US with actual systems elsewhere; not imaginary systems with imaginary outcomes. The US system does not deter crime, it does not protect families, it does not help. The actual net result is negative. Therefore the actual system fails to perform as advertised.
That seems strangely logical.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6MOnehCOUw
You are just ignoring that drugs are, easy, the biggest motivator for crime
Drug prohibition . Legalise or nationalise drug production and sale and the motivation (and profits) of the drug criminals goes away. As does much of the drug-related crime.
at these same time you completely ignores that guns, on the right hands, also saves lives.
The question is whether the number of "right hands" with guns outweighs the number of "wrong hands" with guns. National murder stats comparing the US and other western countries suggests not. And stats comparing homes with guns versus homes without guns within just the US also suggests not. Therefore by your own argument, the net effect is negative, and the justification for firearms failed.
I also prefer gun ownership required gun training similar to, but more extensive than, driver training
To be enforceable, that would require national gun registration. Something that the NRA fights tooth and nail.
Suicide is also highly impulsive. There are examples of drops in suicide rates when methods for suicide are restricted.
For example, one of the biggest single drops in suicide rates occurred when oven-gas was switched over from carbon-monoxide rich "coal gas" to near-pure methane "natural gas". It didn't just displace suicides to another method, it prevented them outright. In the UK, the suicide rate dropped by a full third.
The same is likely true with firearm suicides, and domestic homicides with firearms. (For eg, having a gun in the home dramatically increases the chance of women/children in that home being killed. That might be because disturbed people are attracted to guns, but I suspect it's just the convenience factor. If you have to stop to think, you mostly just stop.)
As for accidents; it seems unlikely that there's any replacement factor at work. Eliminate accidental firearm deaths and you get an absolute reduction in the accidental death-rate.
The Australian experience suggests there's also a strong "convenience" factor at work in mass shootings, and hence no substitution. After restrictions were brought in (banning semi-autos and short-barrelled rifles, and heavily restricting handguns) the mass-shooting rate dropped to zero. This suggests that the nutters don't usually have access to criminal supply networks, nor the brains to make explosives/poisons/etc.
The crawler is being refurbished for SLS, which does require it (NASA haven't made the the same mistakes as they did with the shuttle.) SpaceX will likely build a rail system to deliver FH to 39A.
In the US, the average citizen enjoys more freedom than could ever be had by citizens of countries run by Snowden's new (and fair-weather) friends.
You mean countries where journalists who are embarrassing to the government are arrested or "disappeared"? Where defectors and whistle-blowers are poisoned? Where the family of any perceived opponent of government risks being harassed by loyal government men (with and without authorisation)? Countries that do what you want the US to do over the Snowden affair.
You're remarking on the difference between freedom in the US and that in Russia/China, while arguing without a shred of irony for the US to invoke precisely the same "strong-man" tactics of Russia/China which destroys freedom. You somehow fail to see that you are an enemy of the People of the United States.
While I disagree that Russia/China wouldn't take the documents if they could, whether they believed them or not, I would say that the most important information Snowden can provide is how weak the e-security is at the NSA. How he got access, rather than what he got access to.
We only know of Snowden because he chose to go public. Any competent US contractor would be using their access, legal or not, to spy on its rivals, on Congressional vote intentions, on bids, etc. And it seems unlikely, given how much Snowden had access to (for example, details on how Australia bugged the phones of East Timor politicians during negotiations over oil/gas deals), China and Russia would be crazy not to, for example, pose as US intelligence contractors to hire insiders at other contractors to illicitly gather information (or provide clearances) for them.
So you're saying that Snowden is a disinformation agent? Right, got it.