Honda Accords have gotten bigger over the years. That has nothing to do with safety regulations, and everything to do with consumer preferences. Heck, a Honda Civic today is bigger than an Accord from 1980. Take a look at Wikipedia's descriptions of the various models and notice how the wheelbase grew from 93.7 inches for the first generation (that's what your 1980 model was) to 102.4 inches in the third generation and 106.9 inches in the fifth generation. There are lots of cars today that are much smaller than an Accord, and they still meet all the safety requirements.
Here's the page on your Mazda. Once again, the wheelbase has grown steadily with time: 2190 mm (1st gen), 2260 mm (2nd gen), 2311 mm (3rd gen), 2400 mm (5th gen), 2500 mm (6th gen), 2607 mm (7th gen), 2610 mm (8th gen).
There's absolutely nothing preventing car companies from making small cars, and with recent high gas prices, they're even starting to gain popularity again. See, for example, the MINI Cooper or the Smart car. But for a long time, that just wasn't what consumers wanted, which is exactly what the author of the article said.
Ok, take a deep breath.:) Relax. It's ok, really. Don't let your blood pressure go up like that. It's bad for your health!
As lots of other people have been saying, a gas tax is not to punish you, it's to compensate for externalities. Every time you drive your car, you put wear on the roads and produce pollution. Those are real costs that people other than you have to bear. And since they are bearing those costs, not you, you have no incentive to reduce them by driving less or buying a smaller vehicle. You, in turn, are bearing the cost of other people's driving, and they have no incentive to drive less either. So that's why a gas tax is a good idea. Every time you (or I, or anyone else) drive, you should pay as close as possible to the actual cost of the damage you are doing. Then you can make more rational (in the economic sense) decisions about how much to drive and what car to buy. Your decisions will reflect realistic tradeoffs between various harms and benefits.
While the 98% number is clearly something he pulled off the top of his head, it's true that economists tend to strongly support a carbon tax (basically the same as a gas tax, but across the whole economy, not just for cars). Here are a couple of the top hits for a google search on "economists favor carbon tax":
Ok, some of the humor is a bit esoteric for those who don't know much molecular biology. You'll just have to take my word for it that it's really funny!
So what you're saying is that you can't cite a single country in the entire world that currently has a minimal government but strong individual liberties? Not a single one? Doesn't that say something to you? Take a step back and try, even for just a moment, to consider the possibility that your theory might be flawed. According to your theory, countries with small governments should universally have strong individual liberties. Yet out of nearly 200 countries in the world, you can't find a single one that actually supports that prediction. In science, you propose theories, make predictions based on them, and then look at evidence to see whether it matches your predictions. If it doesn't, that means your theory isn't a good description of the real world. It's time to discard or modify your theory and try again.
In reality, post Civil War America had much less individual liberty than America, or most other western nations, do today.
- is pure nonsense. USA didn't have the central government with any sort of power of any other nation exactly because of the system that was built, that didn't provide for a 'strong' federal government.
That's a very... curious response. Here's what I said earlier about individual liberty in post Civil War America:
If you were black and lived in the South, the whole concept of "civil rights" barely existed. It was better in the north, but not that much better. Many towns openly banned blacks, Jews, and other "undesirable" people from living there. Interracial marriage was illegal in many states. So was homosexuality. Discrimination on the basis of race, sex, religion, national origin, etc. was both legal and openly practiced. We've come a very long way in the last century, and until you take a good look at how things used to be, it's hard to realize just how much.
Notice that I gave lots of concrete examples of ways in which individual liberty was severely restricted back then - much more so than today. And your response? My claim is nonsense, because the US didn't have a strong central government. And what does that have to do with it? Well, nothing at all, except that your theory says that a country without a strong central government must have strong individual liberty. You didn't actually respond to any of the ways I brought up in which it didn't. You didn't argue that blacks, Jews, immigrants, homosexuals, etc. had their liberty severely restricted. You just said that, according to your theory, that can't be true, and therefore my claim is nonsense.
I am sure you still don't get it, but I have reached the point in this thread where it makes no sense to continue.
Of course. I don't get it.:) I'm clearly too stupid or stubborn or something to accept that your theories are obviously right, despite the complete lack of evidence to support them. If it makes you feel better to tell yourself that, go ahead. Just don't pretend you actually are basing your theories on evidence.
You keep trying to change the subject. You asserted that "keeping government at its smallest" will keep individual liberties at their maximum. That's not a philosophical question. It's a concrete assertion about facts, that can be tested by looking for real world evidence. Just look at countries around the world. If your claim is true, we should find that countries with small governments have strong individual liberties. And that isn't what we find at all. We actually find that countries with small governments tend to have very weak support for individual liberties. I cited two examples: Somalia and Afghanistan. Somalia probably comes closer than any other country on earth to having no government at all. And it's a terrible place for individual liberties.
I asked you (three times now!) to cite counter examples of countries with little government and lots of individual liberties. The only thing you've come up with is a fantasy version of post Civil War America that never existed. In reality, post Civil War America had much less individual liberty than America, or most other western nations, do today.
Please present some real examples of real countries that exist in the real world today that have minimal government and maximal individual liberty. Please do not talk about countries with big governments and weak liberty. No one here has questioned that governments can be abusive, and there are plenty of governments in the world that are. But that's a completely different matter. You asserted that government is inherently evil, and the way to protect liberty is to minimize the government. I believe that government can be either good or bad, and a powerful central government is absolutely essential to protect liberty. If you don't agree with that, then prove it's wrong by giving examples of countries that maintain strong liberty without relying on the government to protect it.
Your idea of history is so wrong on so many points, I hardly know where to begin.
First, the US was not a libertarian country prior to 1905 (that's 40 years after the end of the Civil War). It had public schools, public libraries, and a government run postal service. It had publicly maintained roads. It had public police and fire services. And so on, and so on. All of these services were financed by compulsory taxes. The government was much smaller than today, but it was not even vaguely libertarian.
Second, you seem to believe that the US at the start of the 20th century was a bastion of individual liberty compared to its current degraded state. That could hardly be less true. If you were black and lived in the South, the whole concept of "civil rights" barely existed. It was better in the north, but not that much better. Many towns openly banned blacks, Jews, and other "undesirable" people from living there. Interracial marriage was illegal in many states. So was homosexuality. Discrimination on the basis of race, sex, religion, national origin, etc. was both legal and openly practiced. We've come a very long way in the last century, and until you take a good look at how things used to be, it's hard to realize just how much.
Third, you seem to believe that America started to decline economically as soon as its government started to grow, and was in decline throughout the 20th century. You could hardly be more exactly opposite to the truth if you tried. In fact, the second half of the 20th century was a time of economic growth unparalleled in US history, almost unparalleled in world history.
You still haven't offered a shred of evidence to support your claim that minimum government equals maximum liberty. Please cite some examples of countries with minimal government and strong individual liberty, because I don't believe they exist.
So, by your definition, name some strong nations that don't have strong governments.
I'd suggest (and it appears to me that overwhelming evidence shows) that a strong government is an essential prerequisite to get a strong nation. Without a strong government, the rule of law is not respected and individual liberties are not protected. Please present counter examples.
More precisely, I'd say he's slightly left of center on economic issues, slightly right of center on foreign policy and military, and about as exactly in the middle as you can get on social issues. But he's not very far from the center on much of anything.
Ummm... right. Government is evil by design and keeping government at its smallest will keep individual liberties at maximum. That's why countries with weak or non-functional governments all are fantastic places for individual liberties. Like Somalia. Or Afghanistan. I'm sure you'd just love living in one of those, if you care a lot about your individual liberties. And that's why, almost without exception, countries with comparatively good records on individual rights have strong central governments that spend a lot of time and energy protecting your rights.
Sorry if those facts don't match your world view, but facts are facts. How many countries can you name with minimal governments and strong individual rights?
True, many of the treasures of 20th century culture are locked up behind copyrights, and will remain so for decades to come. But 21st century? Not as much. So many things are already being given away. Linux? No problem, you're already free to use it, share it, and create distributed works from it. Millions of people are doing so, and society benefits enormously. Wikipedia? In a different age, that would have been a company's crown jewels, something to be tightly controlled, but instead it's given away for free (both in terms of money and freedom). Countless software products, books, audio recordings, data collections, and other works are being given away under open licenses, and that trend is likely to keep growing with time. Companies are starting to open source their products because it's the only way they can compete with the existing open products.
If you believe copyright law is messed up and hurts society, the single best thing you can do is create things and give them away under open licenses. The more that is available without unreasonable restrictions, the less valuable the restricted works become.
I feel like theaters are doing everything they can to make going to a movie an unpleasant experience. It used to be I could take a book to the theater and read until they turned down the lights. Or if I went with friends, we could chat while waiting for the movie to start. Sure, there were ads showing on the screen while you waited, but they were easy to ignore.
Then they switched to showing video ads for TV shows, toys, food, upcoming movies, etc., all narrated by an aggressively cheerful person with the volume turned way up. That makes it impossible to carry on a conversation, or to pay attention to a book or much of anything other than the ads. Which I assume is what they want, but it sure makes the whole experience a lot less pleasant and a lot more obnoxious. You'd almost think they didn't want my business.
Actually it's not a simplification. Take a look at Apple's patent. It's nothing more than "an electronic device" which, as shown in a few very vague drawings, is rectangular with rounded corners. Perhaps Samsung's devices resemble Apple's in other respects too, but that's a side issue. All that's needed to violate this patent is that it be rectangular with rounded corners. The changes you suggest, like having a dark blue border, would make no difference at all.
I have a Nexus One that I bought at full price, and a T-Mobile Pay As You Go plan. I love having a computer in my pocket all the time, but I do very little talking on the phone, and I spend nearly all my time in places with wi-fi access. My cellular bills add up to about $25/year.
The article addresses many of these points. Regarding strength and weight:
The founders estimate that printing parts in space could reduce the structural mass of objects by at least 30 percent, because the objects would not need to survive Earth's gravity or the extreme G-forces of launching into orbit aboard a rocket.
So in many cases, the current parts are stronger than they need to be because that's the only way to get them safely into orbit. Regarding materials:
They plan to focus on an extrusion printer capable of building objects out of plastic polymers, but say that the printer could still make a huge number of the space station's $1-billion-worth of spare parts.
"We think that one-third of those parts could be built using the machine we're building right now," Dunn explained. "We're starting with polymers because they're extrusion-based, and in some cases we're starting to produce our own space-qualified polymers."
And of course, all those people who used to live in Miami, New York, etc. will be looking for somewhere to move to... perhaps in your backyard? But no, that won't affect you or your descendents, not at all. Oh yes, and marine ecosystems (which produce a large part of the world's food supply) are under threat from warming and acidification (also caused by CO2). But that won't have any effect on you or your descendents, not at all.
As you (Chemisor) say, the earth is not a fragile ornament. Life will go on. But "life" does not mean "human society in precisely its current form". A million years from now, there will still be life on earth (maybe some of it even descended from present day humans) and it will be thriving in whatever environment exists. But that doesn't mean climate change won't cause enormous suffering to billions of people. If you don't care about that, then feel free to take the long view and ignore it.
China's total fertility rate is 1.7, which means that, on average, each woman gives birth to 1.7 children throughout her life. The necessary total fertility rate for a stable population is 2.1; nonetheless, China's population is expected to grow over the next few decades. This can be attributed to immigration and a decrease in infant mortality and a decrease in death rate as national health improves.
We've done a lot of testing of different GPUs to look at basic reliability: things like writing data to memory, waiting a while, and reading it back to see if any bits have spontaneously flipped. The conclusion is that on GTX boards, this really does happen. If you're doing production work where consistently getting the right result matters, you should stay away from them. On the other hand, we've never seen any memory errors on Tesla boards, even with ECC disabled. This might just be because Nvidia tends to clock their Teslas a little lower. Or maybe they test chips as they come off the assembly line, and ones with marginal results get sold as GTXs. But one way or another, there really is a difference.
No. That is simply wrong. Nothing in science is ever indisputable. Everything is open to debate. That is absolutely fundamental to how science works. And the definition of a "theory" has nothing to do with whether it is open to debate: as I said, everything is open to debate, and if you think otherwise then you're not doing science. In science, a "theory" is defined as a description that makes testable predictions. Nothing more and nothing less.
Just what do you think is meant by the phrase "scientific fact" that is different from "a theory backed by lots of evidence"? (Actually, scientists almost never use the phrase "scientific fact", which is really a contradiction in terms. It's more of a lay term, used by people who don't understand what science is)
Lax verification for carbon-offset projects has been a problem for several schemes. For the credit-creating projects to be effective at reducing overall greenhouse-gas emissions, the scheme operators are supposed to approve only projects that would otherwise not have gone ahead. The auditor-general criticized the Alberta Department of Environment and Water for allowing carbon credits for emissions-reducing activities that have become common practice.
The Alberta report found a lack of standards for how agricultural credits were verified — not one of the credits the auditors checked could be confirmed. It also pointed out that there was no standardized, accurate method for measuring the emissions from oil-sands tailing ponds, which store contaminated water, clay, sand and bitumen from oil-sands processing.
Many opponents of emissions trading programmes also argue that companies are likely to purchase carbon offsets instead of reducing emissions by adopting new technologies or changing their operating practices.
Let's hope the "mental process" test gets upheld as a basis for denying patents. Because no manager has ever rated someone down on an evaluation for wearing inappropriate clothes or being rude in meetings before.
I have a Mac at home. At work, my main computer is a Mac, though I regularly use Windows and Linux machines: we support our software on all three OSes, so I do lots of testing, optimization, etc. on all three. But really, I don't find any need to use Windows. All the software I want or need is available for Mac (and almost all of it for Linux). Gaming used to be a major weak point for Macs, but that has improved enormously in the last few years. The factors that used to tie people to Windows have largely disappeared, at least for me.
Darn it! I guess I'd better stop using 4 bit encryption. I'll move up to 16 bit keys - that should keep me safe from quantum computers for the next 20 years.
Slashdot Mirror
Honda Accords have gotten bigger over the years. That has nothing to do with safety regulations, and everything to do with consumer preferences. Heck, a Honda Civic today is bigger than an Accord from 1980. Take a look at Wikipedia's descriptions of the various models and notice how the wheelbase grew from 93.7 inches for the first generation (that's what your 1980 model was) to 102.4 inches in the third generation and 106.9 inches in the fifth generation. There are lots of cars today that are much smaller than an Accord, and they still meet all the safety requirements.
Here's the page on your Mazda. Once again, the wheelbase has grown steadily with time: 2190 mm (1st gen), 2260 mm (2nd gen), 2311 mm (3rd gen), 2400 mm (5th gen), 2500 mm (6th gen), 2607 mm (7th gen), 2610 mm (8th gen).
There's absolutely nothing preventing car companies from making small cars, and with recent high gas prices, they're even starting to gain popularity again. See, for example, the MINI Cooper or the Smart car. But for a long time, that just wasn't what consumers wanted, which is exactly what the author of the article said.
Citation please? Do you have any data for how much of the weight increase is caused by safety features?
Ok, take a deep breath. :) Relax. It's ok, really. Don't let your blood pressure go up like that. It's bad for your health!
As lots of other people have been saying, a gas tax is not to punish you, it's to compensate for externalities. Every time you drive your car, you put wear on the roads and produce pollution. Those are real costs that people other than you have to bear. And since they are bearing those costs, not you, you have no incentive to reduce them by driving less or buying a smaller vehicle. You, in turn, are bearing the cost of other people's driving, and they have no incentive to drive less either. So that's why a gas tax is a good idea. Every time you (or I, or anyone else) drive, you should pay as close as possible to the actual cost of the damage you are doing. Then you can make more rational (in the economic sense) decisions about how much to drive and what car to buy. Your decisions will reflect realistic tradeoffs between various harms and benefits.
While the 98% number is clearly something he pulled off the top of his head, it's true that economists tend to strongly support a carbon tax (basically the same as a gas tax, but across the whole economy, not just for cars). Here are a couple of the top hits for a google search on "economists favor carbon tax":
http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2011/09/climate-policy
http://www.carbontax.org/who-supports/scientists-and-economists/
Journal of Failed Crystallization Experiments
Ok, some of the humor is a bit esoteric for those who don't know much molecular biology. You'll just have to take my word for it that it's really funny!
So what you're saying is that you can't cite a single country in the entire world that currently has a minimal government but strong individual liberties? Not a single one? Doesn't that say something to you? Take a step back and try, even for just a moment, to consider the possibility that your theory might be flawed. According to your theory, countries with small governments should universally have strong individual liberties. Yet out of nearly 200 countries in the world, you can't find a single one that actually supports that prediction. In science, you propose theories, make predictions based on them, and then look at evidence to see whether it matches your predictions. If it doesn't, that means your theory isn't a good description of the real world. It's time to discard or modify your theory and try again.
In reality, post Civil War America had much less individual liberty than America, or most other western nations, do today.
- is pure nonsense. USA didn't have the central government with any sort of power of any other nation exactly because of the system that was built, that didn't provide for a 'strong' federal government.
That's a very... curious response. Here's what I said earlier about individual liberty in post Civil War America:
If you were black and lived in the South, the whole concept of "civil rights" barely existed. It was better in the north, but not that much better. Many towns openly banned blacks, Jews, and other "undesirable" people from living there. Interracial marriage was illegal in many states. So was homosexuality. Discrimination on the basis of race, sex, religion, national origin, etc. was both legal and openly practiced. We've come a very long way in the last century, and until you take a good look at how things used to be, it's hard to realize just how much.
Notice that I gave lots of concrete examples of ways in which individual liberty was severely restricted back then - much more so than today. And your response? My claim is nonsense, because the US didn't have a strong central government. And what does that have to do with it? Well, nothing at all, except that your theory says that a country without a strong central government must have strong individual liberty. You didn't actually respond to any of the ways I brought up in which it didn't. You didn't argue that blacks, Jews, immigrants, homosexuals, etc. had their liberty severely restricted. You just said that, according to your theory, that can't be true, and therefore my claim is nonsense.
I am sure you still don't get it, but I have reached the point in this thread where it makes no sense to continue.
Of course. I don't get it. :) I'm clearly too stupid or stubborn or something to accept that your theories are obviously right, despite the complete lack of evidence to support them. If it makes you feel better to tell yourself that, go ahead. Just don't pretend you actually are basing your theories on evidence.
You keep trying to change the subject. You asserted that "keeping government at its smallest" will keep individual liberties at their maximum. That's not a philosophical question. It's a concrete assertion about facts, that can be tested by looking for real world evidence. Just look at countries around the world. If your claim is true, we should find that countries with small governments have strong individual liberties. And that isn't what we find at all. We actually find that countries with small governments tend to have very weak support for individual liberties. I cited two examples: Somalia and Afghanistan. Somalia probably comes closer than any other country on earth to having no government at all. And it's a terrible place for individual liberties.
I asked you (three times now!) to cite counter examples of countries with little government and lots of individual liberties. The only thing you've come up with is a fantasy version of post Civil War America that never existed. In reality, post Civil War America had much less individual liberty than America, or most other western nations, do today.
Please present some real examples of real countries that exist in the real world today that have minimal government and maximal individual liberty. Please do not talk about countries with big governments and weak liberty. No one here has questioned that governments can be abusive, and there are plenty of governments in the world that are. But that's a completely different matter. You asserted that government is inherently evil, and the way to protect liberty is to minimize the government. I believe that government can be either good or bad, and a powerful central government is absolutely essential to protect liberty. If you don't agree with that, then prove it's wrong by giving examples of countries that maintain strong liberty without relying on the government to protect it.
Your idea of history is so wrong on so many points, I hardly know where to begin.
First, the US was not a libertarian country prior to 1905 (that's 40 years after the end of the Civil War). It had public schools, public libraries, and a government run postal service. It had publicly maintained roads. It had public police and fire services. And so on, and so on. All of these services were financed by compulsory taxes. The government was much smaller than today, but it was not even vaguely libertarian.
Second, you seem to believe that the US at the start of the 20th century was a bastion of individual liberty compared to its current degraded state. That could hardly be less true. If you were black and lived in the South, the whole concept of "civil rights" barely existed. It was better in the north, but not that much better. Many towns openly banned blacks, Jews, and other "undesirable" people from living there. Interracial marriage was illegal in many states. So was homosexuality. Discrimination on the basis of race, sex, religion, national origin, etc. was both legal and openly practiced. We've come a very long way in the last century, and until you take a good look at how things used to be, it's hard to realize just how much.
Third, you seem to believe that America started to decline economically as soon as its government started to grow, and was in decline throughout the 20th century. You could hardly be more exactly opposite to the truth if you tried. In fact, the second half of the 20th century was a time of economic growth unparalleled in US history, almost unparalleled in world history.
You still haven't offered a shred of evidence to support your claim that minimum government equals maximum liberty. Please cite some examples of countries with minimal government and strong individual liberty, because I don't believe they exist.
So, by your definition, name some strong nations that don't have strong governments.
I'd suggest (and it appears to me that overwhelming evidence shows) that a strong government is an essential prerequisite to get a strong nation. Without a strong government, the rule of law is not respected and individual liberties are not protected. Please present counter examples.
More precisely, I'd say he's slightly left of center on economic issues, slightly right of center on foreign policy and military, and about as exactly in the middle as you can get on social issues. But he's not very far from the center on much of anything.
Ummm... right. Government is evil by design and keeping government at its smallest will keep individual liberties at maximum. That's why countries with weak or non-functional governments all are fantastic places for individual liberties. Like Somalia. Or Afghanistan. I'm sure you'd just love living in one of those, if you care a lot about your individual liberties. And that's why, almost without exception, countries with comparatively good records on individual rights have strong central governments that spend a lot of time and energy protecting your rights.
Sorry if those facts don't match your world view, but facts are facts. How many countries can you name with minimal governments and strong individual rights?
True, many of the treasures of 20th century culture are locked up behind copyrights, and will remain so for decades to come. But 21st century? Not as much. So many things are already being given away. Linux? No problem, you're already free to use it, share it, and create distributed works from it. Millions of people are doing so, and society benefits enormously. Wikipedia? In a different age, that would have been a company's crown jewels, something to be tightly controlled, but instead it's given away for free (both in terms of money and freedom). Countless software products, books, audio recordings, data collections, and other works are being given away under open licenses, and that trend is likely to keep growing with time. Companies are starting to open source their products because it's the only way they can compete with the existing open products.
If you believe copyright law is messed up and hurts society, the single best thing you can do is create things and give them away under open licenses. The more that is available without unreasonable restrictions, the less valuable the restricted works become.
I feel like theaters are doing everything they can to make going to a movie an unpleasant experience. It used to be I could take a book to the theater and read until they turned down the lights. Or if I went with friends, we could chat while waiting for the movie to start. Sure, there were ads showing on the screen while you waited, but they were easy to ignore.
Then they switched to showing video ads for TV shows, toys, food, upcoming movies, etc., all narrated by an aggressively cheerful person with the volume turned way up. That makes it impossible to carry on a conversation, or to pay attention to a book or much of anything other than the ads. Which I assume is what they want, but it sure makes the whole experience a lot less pleasant and a lot more obnoxious. You'd almost think they didn't want my business.
The rounded rectangle is a simplification.
Actually it's not a simplification. Take a look at Apple's patent. It's nothing more than "an electronic device" which, as shown in a few very vague drawings, is rectangular with rounded corners. Perhaps Samsung's devices resemble Apple's in other respects too, but that's a side issue. All that's needed to violate this patent is that it be rectangular with rounded corners. The changes you suggest, like having a dark blue border, would make no difference at all.
I have a Nexus One that I bought at full price, and a T-Mobile Pay As You Go plan. I love having a computer in my pocket all the time, but I do very little talking on the phone, and I spend nearly all my time in places with wi-fi access. My cellular bills add up to about $25/year.
The founders estimate that printing parts in space could reduce the structural mass of objects by at least 30 percent, because the objects would not need to survive Earth's gravity or the extreme G-forces of launching into orbit aboard a rocket.
So in many cases, the current parts are stronger than they need to be because that's the only way to get them safely into orbit. Regarding materials:
They plan to focus on an extrusion printer capable of building objects out of plastic polymers, but say that the printer could still make a huge number of the space station's $1-billion-worth of spare parts. "We think that one-third of those parts could be built using the machine we're building right now," Dunn explained. "We're starting with polymers because they're extrusion-based, and in some cases we're starting to produce our own space-qualified polymers."
And of course, all those people who used to live in Miami, New York, etc. will be looking for somewhere to move to... perhaps in your backyard? But no, that won't affect you or your descendents, not at all. Oh yes, and marine ecosystems (which produce a large part of the world's food supply) are under threat from warming and acidification (also caused by CO2). But that won't have any effect on you or your descendents, not at all.
As you (Chemisor) say, the earth is not a fragile ornament. Life will go on. But "life" does not mean "human society in precisely its current form". A million years from now, there will still be life on earth (maybe some of it even descended from present day humans) and it will be thriving in whatever environment exists. But that doesn't mean climate change won't cause enormous suffering to billions of people. If you don't care about that, then feel free to take the long view and ignore it.
China's population growth is still positive, which means their actual rate is the near the usual 2.3 children per family, not "one child per family".
No, that's wrong. From about.com:
China's total fertility rate is 1.7, which means that, on average, each woman gives birth to 1.7 children throughout her life. The necessary total fertility rate for a stable population is 2.1; nonetheless, China's population is expected to grow over the next few decades. This can be attributed to immigration and a decrease in infant mortality and a decrease in death rate as national health improves.
Do you have a source for the 2.3 figure?
We've done a lot of testing of different GPUs to look at basic reliability: things like writing data to memory, waiting a while, and reading it back to see if any bits have spontaneously flipped. The conclusion is that on GTX boards, this really does happen. If you're doing production work where consistently getting the right result matters, you should stay away from them. On the other hand, we've never seen any memory errors on Tesla boards, even with ECC disabled. This might just be because Nvidia tends to clock their Teslas a little lower. Or maybe they test chips as they come off the assembly line, and ones with marginal results get sold as GTXs. But one way or another, there really is a difference.
No. That is simply wrong. Nothing in science is ever indisputable. Everything is open to debate. That is absolutely fundamental to how science works. And the definition of a "theory" has nothing to do with whether it is open to debate: as I said, everything is open to debate, and if you think otherwise then you're not doing science. In science, a "theory" is defined as a description that makes testable predictions. Nothing more and nothing less.
Just what do you think is meant by the phrase "scientific fact" that is different from "a theory backed by lots of evidence"? (Actually, scientists almost never use the phrase "scientific fact", which is really a contradiction in terms. It's more of a lay term, used by people who don't understand what science is)
What are the problems with the credit methods?
Lax verification for carbon-offset projects has been a problem for several schemes. For the credit-creating projects to be effective at reducing overall greenhouse-gas emissions, the scheme operators are supposed to approve only projects that would otherwise not have gone ahead. The auditor-general criticized the Alberta Department of Environment and Water for allowing carbon credits for emissions-reducing activities that have become common practice.
The Alberta report found a lack of standards for how agricultural credits were verified — not one of the credits the auditors checked could be confirmed. It also pointed out that there was no standardized, accurate method for measuring the emissions from oil-sands tailing ponds, which store contaminated water, clay, sand and bitumen from oil-sands processing.
Many opponents of emissions trading programmes also argue that companies are likely to purchase carbon offsets instead of reducing emissions by adopting new technologies or changing their operating practices.
Let's hope the "mental process" test gets upheld as a basis for denying patents. Because no manager has ever rated someone down on an evaluation for wearing inappropriate clothes or being rude in meetings before.
I have a Mac at home. At work, my main computer is a Mac, though I regularly use Windows and Linux machines: we support our software on all three OSes, so I do lots of testing, optimization, etc. on all three. But really, I don't find any need to use Windows. All the software I want or need is available for Mac (and almost all of it for Linux). Gaming used to be a major weak point for Macs, but that has improved enormously in the last few years. The factors that used to tie people to Windows have largely disappeared, at least for me.
Darn it! I guess I'd better stop using 4 bit encryption. I'll move up to 16 bit keys - that should keep me safe from quantum computers for the next 20 years.