the answer is a) obviously; If the terrorists were capable of increasing their activity they would do that already.
If they're already doing enough to get noticed and taken seriously, they don't need to.
I agree with the rest though - the media is an effective tool for terrorists. But how can you deal with this without removing freedom of speech?
The point that started this was that terrorism didn't matter because the casualties were low. In fact the IRA often (but not always) gave warnings of their attacks, allowing evacuations. This was still effective terrorism, because of the credible threat that if they were ignored there wouldn't be a warning next time. Terrorism doesn't require casualties to have an impact, and the IRA problem wasn't dealt with by ignoring them.
Of course terrorism is about fear. The clue's in the name.
The fact is that terrorism forces a reaction from the population and government, if only to stop it becoming a more serious problem. This means it's not irrelevant to the lives of the population. If everyone ignored terrorism, do you think the terrorists would just leave it at that, or perhaps increase their activity until they weren't ignored?
Laugh tracks are done because laughter is a communal thing - other people laughing at something can make you find it funnier than it otherwise would be. So it's not to tell you that it's funny, it's to make it funnier.
Of course, none of that excuses bad laugh tracks, or ones done to try to disguise a poor quality programme.
Um, you do know it's really tough for an IPv4 system to find you if you only have an IPv6 address, right?
It's really tough for an IPv4 system to find you if you only have a NATted IPv4 address, too, and that's the likely alternative once the addresses run out.
I am more concerned with the time and effort it will take to format data for external users. An accompanying more detailed methodology will surely have to be provided for the data to be used correctly.
That is indeed an issue. Presumably the methodology is already published, as is the rule for scientific papers. What could happen is that competent scientists have to waste their time debunking incompetent analyses by axe-grinding cranks.
Actually, if the requirement is specified up front as terms for the grant, I'm not opposed to it. I don't think it'll do any good, mind you, as a rule all that's useful is published, and scientists are generally happy to cooperate if you need more, as long as you have honest intent. But the current system is a charter for arseholes using FoI requests to harass scientists.
That doesn't matter. The important thing is that the attacks are made. Even if every one is shown to be completely wrong, people will still remember all those (erroneous) anti-global warming reports. Especially since the media will enthusiastically report the initial attack and relegate the news of its rebuttal to a small paragraph on page 34, if they report it at all.
While I haven't seen this one, I've been able to get a reasonable handle on what's going on - as in, I followed them well enough to be useful, not understood them completely - for papers in various fields which were not my own. They're not all incomprehensible gibberish.
You cant even change isp in uk without going through a year of bt as both network and isp.
Of course you can. You *never* have to deal with BT retail - you can get a telephone line from, say, the Post Office, and add an LLU ASDL provider like Be.
Again, with the accusations of "thief". What have I stolen, exactly? You still have everything you started with. If I were to use the free stuff, it will have exactly the same effect on you as if I use "your" stuff without paying - either way you get no money. The enthusiastic anti-pirates typically claim that piracy costs them money, but if the pirate would use a free alternative if they were unable to pirate then it doesn't.
Ignoring for a moment that I don't actually use any pirated software, that you've written or otherwise.
Isn't theirs? Why should it be anyone's? You can do what you like with your copy of the software - my use of it doesn't affect you in any way. You're assigning ownership not to an object, but to an idea, which is a different kettle of fish.
If I come up with a piece of software, or an artwork, or a scientific or engineering innovation, do I have the automatic right to dictate how other people use that idea? I don't think so. I deserve some reward, but not to restrict the rights of others.
As it happens, no I don't think copyright violation should be legal, as it would damage an important incentive for production of ideas. But nor should it be treated in the heavy handed way beloved of our politicians and big businesses. And to hell with this idea of claiming ownership of ideas - if there was some other way of fairly rewarding people I would not support copyright.
But even if you were not rewarded for your effort, you're still not a slave, as you were never forced to work to produce it in the first place.
Did I say I did? However, a case could be made that why should you have a right to restrict it? We have these restrictions to encourage production of creative works. It's a pragmatic thing, not a moral one.
Either way, failing to control someone else's use of a piece of software does not make you a slave. Not even if you wrote it. Now, if someone pointed a gun at your head and said "write some software to do X for me"...
And you'd be dead due to the forces you'd be subject to in such a severe collision. "Pushed out of the way" is rather downplaying the enormous momentum transfer in a very short time. If your car was perfectly rigid and you were hit by a 75 mph truck, you'd accelerate over 50mph in a fraction of a second. Consider how well you'd survive flying into a wall unprotected at 50 mph, because that's the kind of force you'd be subjected to.
The Ford Focus over there only seems to be sold with one engine choice - a 2 litre petrol. Similarly, the Mondeo equivalent's smallest engine is a 2.4 litre. There isn't even an option of accepting less power in exchange for efficiency. While I can see that maybe some people will want the more powerful car, surely there are some who'd like higher fuel efficiency but aren't currently given the option.
Actually, just looking at Volkswagen's UK page, they do a 1.6 litre model that gets 47 miles per (imperial) gallon (39 mpg US) - and it's not diesel, and it still has 160 horsepower and a 0-60 time of 8 seconds. Clearly the technology to have decent performing efficient cars already exists.
You're starting from the assumption that the results are deliberately falsified, rather than just a mistake. This is rather unlikely, to say the least, given how many different analyses in different countries, from different organisations tend to support the same conclusion.
But if that is what you thought, what could you do about it? Raw data can be falsified too, so getting everyone to release data won't help much. If the conspiracy is that sophisticated, faking the raw data too is a small extra step - I don't think there's any scientific method of dealing with this problem.
To do something they don't really want to do? Look at the outcome of talks like Copenhagen - pretty much nothing. Hard to believe that there'd be a grand international conspiracy orchestrated by the world's governments, who then don't take advantages of opportunities to implement their devious plans.
2) Serve the interests of environmentalism and related ideologies.
On the list of things your average politician is interest in, "appeasing environmentalists" is pretty damn far down. Certainly below "appeasing industry", and definitely below getting votes - and there aren't many votes in telling people they can't do things, or in making things more expensive.
That's a pretty pathetic excuse for not releasing that information. Suppose I repeat the experiment, given your description and come up with a different outcome. Then it's not reproducible. But we don't know why it's not reproducible. It could be a mistake on either of our parts.
Indeed, or perhaps both. Both parties should check their results again. Maybe a mistake will be discovered. If not, some discussion between parties would be useful, and perhaps an exchange of data may be a part of this - but probably not the first part. Ultimately though, this would be for debugging - after the mistake has been discovered, you should go back to working with your own independent data sets. If you need the same data set, you haven't really reproduced the result.
However, the people demanding the data are notable for having not done this - they have no analyses of their own in the first place. They're typically not competent to do so, so they stick to trying (and failing, usually) to poke holes in other people's work.
The US government alone has a revenue of somewhere around 3 trillion dollars a year and they don't ever have to turn a profit. A similar amount goes to state and local governments collectively. I imagine the revenue for the governments of the EU region are similar. Government also has a lot more real power and resources at their disposal than the oil companies do.
But they have no motivation for misleading people on this issue. They'd rather the whole thing went away - the measures to deal with it will be politically unpopular, both to industry and the public.
Now, the essence of science is replicability, correct? If you're going to claim 'cold fusion' you publish your data and your methods and other scientists attempt to replicate your findings, or not.
Your methods, maybe. In practice, you publish a good enough description of the method that another competent scientist could reproduce it. This generally does *not* mean source code - a competent scientist could write his own code to apply a method described in conventional scientific language. It also generally doesn't involve all the raw data - a competent scientist could obtain his own data. It's the *result* that's supposed to be reproducible, not every particular step in minute detail.
The so-called Big Oil monetary contributions are dwarfed in comparison to the billions of dollars governments habe poured into Global warming.
Are you smoking crack? The global oil industry is worth orders of magnitude more than climate science. Exxon alone have an income around 300 billion dollars per year, and that's just one company among many. What's the value of anyone who'd benefit from misleading people the other way? Er... solar panel and wind turbine manufacturers? Compared to the oil industry they're nothing.
Slashdot Mirror
the answer is a) obviously; If the terrorists were capable of increasing their activity they would do that already.
If they're already doing enough to get noticed and taken seriously, they don't need to.
I agree with the rest though - the media is an effective tool for terrorists. But how can you deal with this without removing freedom of speech?
The point that started this was that terrorism didn't matter because the casualties were low. In fact the IRA often (but not always) gave warnings of their attacks, allowing evacuations. This was still effective terrorism, because of the credible threat that if they were ignored there wouldn't be a warning next time. Terrorism doesn't require casualties to have an impact, and the IRA problem wasn't dealt with by ignoring them.
Of course terrorism is about fear. The clue's in the name.
The fact is that terrorism forces a reaction from the population and government, if only to stop it becoming a more serious problem. This means it's not irrelevant to the lives of the population. If everyone ignored terrorism, do you think the terrorists would just leave it at that, or perhaps increase their activity until they weren't ignored?
Something doesn't have to kill you to be "not completely irrelevant".
There aren't many, but I have seen one or two. They're *huge* for UK streets, quite unwieldy I suspect.
Laugh tracks are done because laughter is a communal thing - other people laughing at something can make you find it funnier than it otherwise would be. So it's not to tell you that it's funny, it's to make it funnier.
Of course, none of that excuses bad laugh tracks, or ones done to try to disguise a poor quality programme.
That's fine if you have control over the forwarding. In an IP-constrained world where you're assigned a private IP by your ISP, you probably won't.
I don't think you make an argument for IPv6 here. Skype works with IPv4, as do BitTorrent, FTP and the other examples.
They do now, but when the end user can't forward ports on the NAT device, good luck BitTorrenting.
1 IP address per subscriber also simplifies administration for ISPs.
How is that any simpler than 1 prefix per subscriber?
Um, you do know it's really tough for an IPv4 system to find you if you only have an IPv6 address, right?
It's really tough for an IPv4 system to find you if you only have a NATted IPv4 address, too, and that's the likely alternative once the addresses run out.
You can read the publications. Well, the ones that aren't behind journal paywalls, unfortunately, but that's not by the choice of scientists.
The raw data will not help you, but you can judge the validity of the analyses if you like.
Trol modl? Er, what? I don't think so. Note to moderator: "troll" does not mean "I don't agree".
I am more concerned with the time and effort it will take to format data for external users.
An accompanying more detailed methodology will surely have to be provided for the data to be used correctly.
That is indeed an issue. Presumably the methodology is already published, as is the rule for scientific papers. What could happen is that competent scientists have to waste their time debunking incompetent analyses by axe-grinding cranks.
Actually, if the requirement is specified up front as terms for the grant, I'm not opposed to it. I don't think it'll do any good, mind you, as a rule all that's useful is published, and scientists are generally happy to cooperate if you need more, as long as you have honest intent. But the current system is a charter for arseholes using FoI requests to harass scientists.
That doesn't matter. The important thing is that the attacks are made. Even if every one is shown to be completely wrong, people will still remember all those (erroneous) anti-global warming reports. Especially since the media will enthusiastically report the initial attack and relegate the news of its rebuttal to a small paragraph on page 34, if they report it at all.
While I haven't seen this one, I've been able to get a reasonable handle on what's going on - as in, I followed them well enough to be useful, not understood them completely - for papers in various fields which were not my own. They're not all incomprehensible gibberish.
You cant even change isp in uk without going through a year of bt as both network and isp.
Of course you can. You *never* have to deal with BT retail - you can get a telephone line from, say, the Post Office, and add an LLU ASDL provider like Be.
Again, with the accusations of "thief". What have I stolen, exactly? You still have everything you started with. If I were to use the free stuff, it will have exactly the same effect on you as if I use "your" stuff without paying - either way you get no money. The enthusiastic anti-pirates typically claim that piracy costs them money, but if the pirate would use a free alternative if they were unable to pirate then it doesn't.
Ignoring for a moment that I don't actually use any pirated software, that you've written or otherwise.
Isn't theirs? Why should it be anyone's? You can do what you like with your copy of the software - my use of it doesn't affect you in any way. You're assigning ownership not to an object, but to an idea, which is a different kettle of fish.
If I come up with a piece of software, or an artwork, or a scientific or engineering innovation, do I have the automatic right to dictate how other people use that idea? I don't think so. I deserve some reward, but not to restrict the rights of others.
As it happens, no I don't think copyright violation should be legal, as it would damage an important incentive for production of ideas. But nor should it be treated in the heavy handed way beloved of our politicians and big businesses. And to hell with this idea of claiming ownership of ideas - if there was some other way of fairly rewarding people I would not support copyright.
But even if you were not rewarded for your effort, you're still not a slave, as you were never forced to work to produce it in the first place.
Did I say I did? However, a case could be made that why should you have a right to restrict it? We have these restrictions to encourage production of creative works. It's a pragmatic thing, not a moral one.
Either way, failing to control someone else's use of a piece of software does not make you a slave. Not even if you wrote it. Now, if someone pointed a gun at your head and said "write some software to do X for me"...
Which makes you a slave how exactly? You aren't forced to do any work, which is fundamental to slavery.
Not getting something you feel you deserve does not count as slavery, sorry.
And you'd be dead due to the forces you'd be subject to in such a severe collision. "Pushed out of the way" is rather downplaying the enormous momentum transfer in a very short time. If your car was perfectly rigid and you were hit by a 75 mph truck, you'd accelerate over 50mph in a fraction of a second. Consider how well you'd survive flying into a wall unprotected at 50 mph, because that's the kind of force you'd be subjected to.
The Ford Focus over there only seems to be sold with one engine choice - a 2 litre petrol. Similarly, the Mondeo equivalent's smallest engine is a 2.4 litre. There isn't even an option of accepting less power in exchange for efficiency. While I can see that maybe some people will want the more powerful car, surely there are some who'd like higher fuel efficiency but aren't currently given the option.
Actually, just looking at Volkswagen's UK page, they do a 1.6 litre model that gets 47 miles per (imperial) gallon (39 mpg US) - and it's not diesel, and it still has 160 horsepower and a 0-60 time of 8 seconds. Clearly the technology to have decent performing efficient cars already exists.
You're starting from the assumption that the results are deliberately falsified, rather than just a mistake. This is rather unlikely, to say the least, given how many different analyses in different countries, from different organisations tend to support the same conclusion.
But if that is what you thought, what could you do about it? Raw data can be falsified too, so getting everyone to release data won't help much. If the conspiracy is that sophisticated, faking the raw data too is a small extra step - I don't think there's any scientific method of dealing with this problem.
1) Increase government power.
To do something they don't really want to do? Look at the outcome of talks like Copenhagen - pretty much nothing. Hard to believe that there'd be a grand international conspiracy orchestrated by the world's governments, who then don't take advantages of opportunities to implement their devious plans.
2) Serve the interests of environmentalism and related ideologies.
On the list of things your average politician is interest in, "appeasing environmentalists" is pretty damn far down. Certainly below "appeasing industry", and definitely below getting votes - and there aren't many votes in telling people they can't do things, or in making things more expensive.
That's a pretty pathetic excuse for not releasing that information. Suppose I repeat the experiment, given your description and come up with a different outcome. Then it's not reproducible. But we don't know why it's not reproducible. It could be a mistake on either of our parts.
Indeed, or perhaps both. Both parties should check their results again. Maybe a mistake will be discovered. If not, some discussion between parties would be useful, and perhaps an exchange of data may be a part of this - but probably not the first part. Ultimately though, this would be for debugging - after the mistake has been discovered, you should go back to working with your own independent data sets. If you need the same data set, you haven't really reproduced the result.
However, the people demanding the data are notable for having not done this - they have no analyses of their own in the first place. They're typically not competent to do so, so they stick to trying (and failing, usually) to poke holes in other people's work.
The US government alone has a revenue of somewhere around 3 trillion dollars a year and they don't ever have to turn a profit. A similar amount goes to state and local governments collectively. I imagine the revenue for the governments of the EU region are similar. Government also has a lot more real power and resources at their disposal than the oil companies do.
But they have no motivation for misleading people on this issue. They'd rather the whole thing went away - the measures to deal with it will be politically unpopular, both to industry and the public.
Now, the essence of science is replicability, correct? If you're going to claim 'cold fusion' you publish your data and your methods and other scientists attempt to replicate your findings, or not.
Your methods, maybe. In practice, you publish a good enough description of the method that another competent scientist could reproduce it. This generally does *not* mean source code - a competent scientist could write his own code to apply a method described in conventional scientific language. It also generally doesn't involve all the raw data - a competent scientist could obtain his own data. It's the *result* that's supposed to be reproducible, not every particular step in minute detail.
The so-called Big Oil monetary contributions are dwarfed in comparison to the billions of dollars governments habe poured into Global warming.
Are you smoking crack? The global oil industry is worth orders of magnitude more than climate science. Exxon alone have an income around 300 billion dollars per year, and that's just one company among many. What's the value of anyone who'd benefit from misleading people the other way? Er... solar panel and wind turbine manufacturers? Compared to the oil industry they're nothing.