I find it fascinating that this hacking has prompted a discussion about truth, objectivity and facts.
Perhaps we (the public) should apply these new-found reasoning skills to the science of climate change, and ignore some of the ad hominems (and other absurdities) that have been directed against climate scientists by organisations such as Heartland.
The problem is, the general public are not climate researchers, heck most scientists are not climate researchers, and are thus not really able to correctly evaluate the truth claims made by various researchers in the field.
To this end, however, its a fact the field acknowledges, and thus we have the IPCC who issue meta-reports that take broad surveys of the field and break it down into bite-size chunks for journalists and the public to digest (with the appropriate references if you wish to brave the hairier math and science in the original studies).
Its interesting thus that a lot of the so called debunkers rarely actually try and go after the research with a few exceptions like Mann's famous hockeystick, instead trying to go after the meta-studies, because quite simply most of the debunkers are themselves unqualified to comment on the science itself to be able to offer cogent responses to the original studies.
This should be instructive to people. If the deniers actually wanted to engage in science, they would be doing studies that attempt to refute the actual base studies and submitting these to the IPCC for inclusion, but either they don't, or in the few cases they have,they have mostly been found to be of low quality or plain out cranky pseudo-science.
The problem though is really with journalism. Journalists report fake controversies rather than going to the credible sources such as the IPCC which exist specifically to lay out what parts of the science are known and what parts are still under research or unknown. Joe public isn't expected to know this stuff, but Joe journalist damn well should.
And thus we have the parlourous state of debate on climate change where people are still bloody trying to debate whether a phenomena which has actually been happening around us and was first documented over 100 years ago is happening, rather than the actually interesting debates about how to mitigate it, and just how bad it might get.
Its the whole "scientists debate evolution vs creation" nonsense again. No scientists don't debate it. The science is settled on whether its happening or not. We actually know its happening. The science is now about "How bad, and what to do about it?"
Phillip-Morris famously hired doctors to tell folks that smoking was actually good for your health when the first medical studies were coming out that indicated that smoking was bad for you.
Then there were years of "second hand smoking doesn't cause harm" from the tobacco lobby sponsored "scientists".
Absolutely there were smoking denialists that wound up enabling the tobacco pushers to sell their deadly product for decades without full knowledge of the effect by their victims, and give smokers a much wanted mental crutch not to face the consequences of their actions.
Whats revealing is when you look at the various thinktanks, "scientists" and other companies involved with the campaign to create doubt about tobaccos health effects. Almost all of the thinktanks and "scientists" are the exact same ones now being seen doing climate change denialism.
So for instance the Heartland institute mentioned in this article started off in the 1980s going after what it called tobacco "junk science", that is the idea that you can get cancer or emphasyma from smoking. It used plenty of funding from philip morris to pay its experts (Most of whom had such scientific qualifications such as "marketing" and "law" degrees) But as it became clear that the funding for that was drying up, the heartlands experts used their scientific training in things like marketting to become "climate experts" for hire.
Likewise with groups such as the Heritage foundation, PR companies like Burston Marsala, and yes even such groups as the Cato institute.
People should not be under any illusions about this. The climate denial industry is a well funded, slick PR campaign, and should be treated as an inteesting branch of marketting , not science. It has nothing to do with marketing.
The main thing outback australia has going for it, is its remoteness and clear weather. Put it out far enough, and the EM pollution will be tiny, and the weather in the outback is really quite dry and still.
Its perfect for astronomy. Its probably the same in south africa too, they have fairly similar weather to us.
A doctor is going to be aware of these problems if you have albumin (or whtever it is) vaccinations. This is not what they are talking about.
They are talking about teeth-grinding retards who think exposing their children to whooping cough etc is an acceptable risk because vaccinations can cause magical autism SOMEHOW.
If you actually have a genuine medical reason,and they do exist, for not vaccinating, then no responsible doctor would turn you away for that.
But if your unnecessarily exposing his practice , which might include immunocompromised (HIV, lukemia etc) people, to pathogens purely because of negligent stupidity, then no, the doc doesnt have to put up with that shit.
Monsanto has not just been "cross-pollinating" crops. They have been mixing in genes from animals, not just plants, some of them genetically modified themselves. That is NOT something that normally happens in nature.
Monsanto, and certain other corporations, want to rule your food supply. It is as simple as that. And there is no way in Hell they should be allowed to do that.
I hope they lose their shirts.
I think your focusing on the wrong thing. I understand from an eco-systems point of view why GM can be a hazardous thing by creating over-successful eco-system invaders (like grasses that wipe out native species etc), but GM itself isn't an inherent harm. We've been at it as a species since we first started selectively breeding plants and animals. This is kind of the next level stuff.
The problem with GM is twofold 1) Creating dependence on harmful pesticides that are themselves probably far worse for the eco-system than anything inherent to the plant itself. This has been an environmental wrecking-ball in places like argentina
and
2) Creating dependency in third world countries on seed providers who sell terminator seeds meaning that traditional self-sufficiency practices like seed-saving become worthless, and are replaced with a situation where desparately poor people have to pay ridiculous annual fees to monsanto where in the past they paid none. This creates essentially a privatized taxation on farming practices and thats economically *very* harmful for poverty stricken third world people.
GM could be a godsend to the third world. Higher yields and better nutrition could save literally millions of lives. But at the hands of companies like monsanto its being turned into a weapon against the poor and the middle class, and thats a very bad thing.
Compression is a black art. You can *really* do nice things with dynamics with it, but more often its just used to loud-ify the whole thing as part of the loudness arms-race on radio.
With that said, I think ones foolish not to use a bit of compression on a bass guitar. The bass frequencies of even a fantastic bass are just to nasty for 90% of speakers without a bit of taming and shaping with a subtle compressor/limiter.
I would submit that the real birth of the internet was the first man who sent his mother some absurd cat photograph via email. His name likely forgotten, his legacy making us stupider for all time.
There used to be a great debugger called the Venkman debugger. Actually its still around , but more and more I just use firebug.
If your doing web, here are your main tools. webdeveloper toolbar & firebug. webdeveloper toolbar has a bunch of useful widgets like screen rulers and stuff, and firebug lets you poke under the hood of a page , run queries against the javascript , look at the calculated values of various DOM properties and so on.
You also NEED to aquaint yourself with jquery. Javascript is almost untolerable without it. Jquery provides an xpath-ish interface to getting at the dom and utilizes lots of anonymous-closure goodness (dont fear it, embrace it, its good) to let you build up fairly complex behaviors quickly.
You'll probably want a good whiskey supply to drown your sorrows after knock off time too. Javascript is bloody awful.
Wow. You must really be surrounded by a cluster fuck of people who think any conservative label (like "libertarian") automatically dismisses trumps every argument. The method that you accuse Penn and Teller of using would amount to slander. And they would have been sued for it numerous times (since they have deep pockets). This kind of method can only be used in a fiction setting (like "Borat") or in a setting where you don't intend to mock the person. But it can't be used in an interview setting. Once you start publicly mocking people for what they say, you better not slander, or you are might as well be writing them a check.
Oh, and comparing skepticism of highly-dubious, highly-politicized research to creationism may seem like you are attacking the same targets, but you are not. Libertarianism is neutral on the god debate. There is a cross-section between libertarians and creationists, but that cross-section is as large as the number of pro-choice libertarians. So it's a useless data point.
Except that libertarianism is for the most part economically incompetent randoid nonsense that tends to live in the same brain as people who think climate change isn't real and jesus lived at the same time as dinosaurs.
VOTE RON PAUL: BECAUSE SOME ME JUST WANT TO SEE THE WORLD BURN
Penn and teller are libertarian idiots who have no standing to be arbitrators on whats "bullshit" or not, especially when they tout so many kooky fucking ideas themselves.
No, he's making a point. This sort of shit penalizes people who buy the software whilst doing nothing against pirates, because lets be honest here: This game will be on pirate bay within a week of release and the version of pirate bay will have the DRM as severed as charlie sheens tv career.
And thats whats so bizare. What rational consumer wants to PAY for a product that has judasware when they can download for free the same-product with the judasware removed.
For all the jingoistic tea-party dumbfuckery of such a statement, theres actuallly sliver of truth in the idea that China owns a fair chunk of the US pie.
The chinese are a shrewd people, very frugal and clever and I admire them for that. A huge amount of the money that the chinese make are sunk into US investments in the private sector and loans to the US govt.
If the chinese ever decided to cash in those loans, or stop making them, the US would be in deep trouble.
So in a sort of way they do , in the same sort of way your bank owns your house.
The United States passed a law that all U.S. laws apply in foreign countries.
Which is meaningless, because no matter what the US claim, their laws with 100% certainty do not apply outside of the united states, *especially* not in China.
Any US cop who turned up in bejing trying to arrest someone would likely find themselves with a bullet between the eyes courtesy of chinese law enforcement.
This is a civil case. Its not about punishments. Its about renumerating for percieved losses.
I'd argue that theres nothing to pay here because nothing was lost, but this wierd and immoral copyright system still exists, so I suppose this would be the reasonable renumeration; the price of the software.
Actually much of the whaling has been happening illegally in australian waters, and believe me, firearms would absolutely be the last straw in our governments very thin patience with these poachers.
I dont really understand how its punishing the publisher in this case. Like any piracy, there isn't any theft (piracy isn't theft unless you somehow take someone elses copy of them) , but unlike regular piracy, there isn't even an oportunity lost. There can be no lost transaction when the publisher *cant* make a transaction in the first place.
Slashdot Mirror
unmanned drones sniping the shit out of each other over ridiculous distances using lasers and maybe perhaps anti-matter "nukes".
It would be brief, anonymous, and if any of the targets where manned, mercifully swift. It'd make a boring anime.
Whats revealing is when you look at the various thinktanks, "scientists" and other companies involved with the campaign to create doubt about tobaccos health effects. Almost all of the thinktanks and "scientists" are the exact same ones now being seen doing climate change denialism.
So for instance the Heartland institute mentioned in this article started off in the 1980s going after what it called tobacco "junk science", that is the idea that you can get cancer or emphasyma from smoking. It used plenty of funding from philip morris to pay its experts (Most of whom had such scientific qualifications such as "marketing" and "law" degrees) But as it became clear that the funding for that was drying up, the heartlands experts used their scientific training in things like marketting to become "climate experts" for hire.
Likewise with groups such as the Heritage foundation, PR companies like Burston Marsala, and yes even such groups as the Cato institute.
People should not be under any illusions about this. The climate denial industry is a well funded, slick PR campaign, and should be treated as an inteesting branch of marketting , not science. It has nothing to do with marketing.
Which would be fine if it wasnt for the fact the version with the JOIN isn't just faster, but simpler to understand.
Seriously there is no excuse for bad SQL. Subqueries have their places, but using them like that is just bad programming.
The main thing outback australia has going for it, is its remoteness and clear weather. Put it out far enough, and the EM pollution will be tiny, and the weather in the outback is really quite dry and still.
Its perfect for astronomy. Its probably the same in south africa too, they have fairly similar weather to us.
Because we're ridiculously rich here in west australia, frankly. The money that goes through this place from mining is mind boggling.
China makes a fair wad of cash too, but theres a billion or so people. Theres what, 2 million here in WA.
And anyway, science owns.
A doctor is going to be aware of these problems if you have albumin (or whtever it is) vaccinations. This is not what they are talking about.
They are talking about teeth-grinding retards who think exposing their children to whooping cough etc is an acceptable risk because vaccinations can cause magical autism SOMEHOW.
If you actually have a genuine medical reason ,and they do exist, for not vaccinating, then no responsible doctor would turn you away for that.
But if your unnecessarily exposing his practice , which might include immunocompromised (HIV, lukemia etc) people, to pathogens purely because of negligent stupidity, then no, the doc doesnt have to put up with that shit.
I think your focusing on the wrong thing. I understand from an eco-systems point of view why GM can be a hazardous thing by creating over-successful eco-system invaders (like grasses that wipe out native species etc), but GM itself isn't an inherent harm. We've been at it as a species since we first started selectively breeding plants and animals. This is kind of the next level stuff.
The problem with GM is twofold
1) Creating dependence on harmful pesticides that are themselves probably far worse for the eco-system than anything inherent to the plant itself. This has been an environmental wrecking-ball in places like argentina
and
2) Creating dependency in third world countries on seed providers who sell terminator seeds meaning that traditional self-sufficiency practices like seed-saving become worthless, and are replaced with a situation where desparately poor people have to pay ridiculous annual fees to monsanto where in the past they paid none. This creates essentially a privatized taxation on farming practices and thats economically *very* harmful for poverty stricken third world people.
GM could be a godsend to the third world. Higher yields and better nutrition could save literally millions of lives. But at the hands of companies like monsanto its being turned into a weapon against the poor and the middle class, and thats a very bad thing.
Well in a two income family, I'm sure they can rustle up the cash for an ipad if they are so inconvenienced by it.
Compression is a black art. You can *really* do nice things with dynamics with it, but more often its just used to loud-ify the whole thing as part of the loudness arms-race on radio.
With that said, I think ones foolish not to use a bit of compression on a bass guitar. The bass frequencies of even a fantastic bass are just to nasty for 90% of speakers without a bit of taming and shaping with a subtle compressor/limiter.
I would submit that the real birth of the internet was the first man who sent his mother some absurd cat photograph via email. His name likely forgotten, his legacy making us stupider for all time.
Dude, stop trying to use jquery as an OO tool, and use it as a functional programming tool and it'll make a lot more sense.
jquery is a monad. Treat it that way, and you'll see its a very elegant tool for dealing with whats ultimately a retarded underlying language.
Its all about DosBOX these days. it runs very well and still actively maintained.
There used to be a great debugger called the Venkman debugger. Actually its still around , but more and more I just use firebug.
If your doing web, here are your main tools. webdeveloper toolbar & firebug. webdeveloper toolbar has a bunch of useful widgets like screen rulers and stuff, and firebug lets you poke under the hood of a page , run queries against the javascript , look at the calculated values of various DOM properties and so on.
You also NEED to aquaint yourself with jquery. Javascript is almost untolerable without it. Jquery provides an xpath-ish interface to getting at the dom and utilizes lots of anonymous-closure goodness (dont fear it, embrace it, its good) to let you build up fairly complex behaviors quickly.
You'll probably want a good whiskey supply to drown your sorrows after knock off time too. Javascript is bloody awful.
Stay relevant.
Well I'm glad SOMEONE here at least sees the elephant in the room of hetrosexual marriage being subsidized by non married gays.
But I dont think your clear (surely your not a hypocrite?) desire to ban hetrosexual marriage being that popular on the hill!
Except that libertarianism is for the most part economically incompetent randoid nonsense that tends to live in the same brain as people who think climate change isn't real and jesus lived at the same time as dinosaurs.
VOTE RON PAUL: BECAUSE SOME ME JUST WANT TO SEE THE WORLD BURN
Penn and teller are libertarian idiots who have no standing to be arbitrators on whats "bullshit" or not, especially when they tout so many kooky fucking ideas themselves.
No, he's making a point. This sort of shit penalizes people who buy the software whilst doing nothing against pirates, because lets be honest here: This game will be on pirate bay within a week of release and the version of pirate bay will have the DRM as severed as charlie sheens tv career.
And thats whats so bizare. What rational consumer wants to PAY for a product that has judasware when they can download for free the same-product with the judasware removed.
Well its certainly one way of making sure your indispensable to the lab.
"What do you mean boss that none of the new chemistry grads can do reg-ex's? I think its time I got a payrise!"
For all the jingoistic tea-party dumbfuckery of such a statement, theres actuallly sliver of truth in the idea that China owns a fair chunk of the US pie.
The chinese are a shrewd people, very frugal and clever and I admire them for that. A huge amount of the money that the chinese make are sunk into US investments in the private sector and loans to the US govt.
If the chinese ever decided to cash in those loans, or stop making them, the US would be in deep trouble.
So in a sort of way they do , in the same sort of way your bank owns your house.
Actually you're mistaken.
The United States passed a law that all U.S. laws apply in foreign countries.
Which is meaningless, because no matter what the US claim, their laws with 100% certainty do not apply outside of the united states, *especially* not in China.
Any US cop who turned up in bejing trying to arrest someone would likely find themselves with a bullet between the eyes courtesy of chinese law enforcement.
But he didn't steal anything?
This is a civil case. Its not about punishments. Its about renumerating for percieved losses.
I'd argue that theres nothing to pay here because nothing was lost, but this wierd and immoral copyright system still exists, so I suppose this would be the reasonable renumeration; the price of the software.
Actually much of the whaling has been happening illegally in australian waters, and believe me, firearms would absolutely be the last straw in our governments very thin patience with these poachers.
I dont really understand how its punishing the publisher in this case. Like any piracy, there isn't any theft (piracy isn't theft unless you somehow take someone elses copy of them) , but unlike regular piracy, there isn't even an oportunity lost. There can be no lost transaction when the publisher *cant* make a transaction in the first place.
Its literally victimless in all known senses.