Coming from the Soviet government, that was gratitude. In the old days, they sent men by the millions to the gulag for far less (often for nothing). Nearly all Russian POWs released back to Russia were immediately sent to the gulag -- officially under suspicion of being double agents, actually because they might endanger the propaganda about conditions on the other side.
Solzhenytsin was sent to the gulag after the war. As he was going in (I may be mangling this anecdote somewhat; I'm doing it from memory), a guard asked what he had done to get twenty years.
"I didn't do anything," said Solzhenytsin.
"You must be mistaken," said the guard. "The sentence for nothing is only ten years, comrade!" And he burst out laughing.
The anti-DRM provisions of the GPLv3 ARE a legal minefield.
Why are they a minefield, exactly? I've read them, and they make perfect sense to me.
And even if Linus was willing to bend over backwards for Richard Stallman, he couldn't convert the existing Linux codebase over to GPLv3. He would have to get permission from each and every copyright holder to relicense.
That's true, although there are incremental measures (like adding the "... or, at your option, any later version" clause into the license for newly written modules). To my mind, the semi-irrevocable v2-ness of the kernel makes it even sillier that Linus and friends are making a series of widely-publicized statements that v3 is bad.
Personally, Linus's attitude to the GPLv3 has never made a lick of sense to me. He (and the others on the LKML who drew up that position paper) seemed downright Republican in their determinedness to misrepresent the opposing point of view, their reliance on statements which, on examination, seem increasingly bizarre ("... the FSF's attempts at drafting and re-drafting these provisions have shown them to be a nasty minefield which keeps ensnaring innocent and beneficial uses of encryption and DRM technologies..." [emph. mine]), and their use of loaded language ("pick and choose soup" is a great way of criticizing freedom of choice when no other logical objection can be raised:-).
That's why I believe that this story, and the post you link to above, represent the first few of what The Meaning of Liff defines as glenties. I'll reproduce the definition below:
GLENTIES (pl.n.) Series of small steps by which someone who has made a serious tactical error in a conversion or argument moves from complete disagreement to wholehearted agreement.
A menu shortcut for opening 4 xterms, three on the left and one tall one on the right, filling all the space on the screen. I should have one for an emacs and three xterms (like in the above screenshot), but I don't.
Nine virtual desktops, each one accessible via Ctrl + Shift + one of the letters in the 3x3 block at the left edge of the keyboard (QWE / ASD / ZXC). I think of them as a big 3x3 square, and certain applications always live in certain places. A web browser is always in the top center (Ctrl-Shift-W), programming is in the left center (Ctrl-Shift-A), etc. I can keep as many applications open as I need, all full-screen, and I can shift to the one I want quickly with one (non-mousing) hand. Thinking of the desktops spatially makes it easier to remember where things are.
It's treated me well so far. I find it a lot easier to deal with than a Windows-style taskbar; I tried to duplicate it when I had to work in Windows for a job a while back (I even bought a virtual desktop manager), but Windows's support for virtual desktops still seems sort of broken, so it didn't work as well there.
For those of you convinced that you can get plenty of news from other places and that these print publications can adjust to new business models or die, are you crazy?!? One nice thing about having a huge newspaper is that they generally try to verify their stories, or at least avoid making things up. (I said generally...) When your paper owns buildings and huge printing presses and is sold at every newsstand your reputation means something. If you are a few people working out of a basement, then who cares? As long as you got people reading, you are happy. I like the idea of responsible journalism. It may be less than it was, but if I see it in the NYT I am inclinded to believe it. If it is in some tabloid, I am inclined to not believe it. In a strictly Internet world, how do you tell the difference?
I think that if you turn this argument around a bit, you'll see the reason for a lot of the muddleheaded thinking that newspapers do when they start publishing on the internet.
Big newspapers have squandered a lot of the reputation that they used to have. They've been subordinating more and more of their journalistic role, and instead serving as a mouthpiece for government and industry (especially their advertisers). That's nothing new (see also H.L. Mencken), but it's been getting worse as newspapers consolidate and come increasingly under the control of evil men and businesspeople instead of journalists.
The newspapers are accustomed to trading on this accumulated capital of trustworthiness -- they're better than the National Enquirer, better than the cable news shows, better than magazines filled with celebrity gossip. People know that, the newspapers know it, and it affects how they conduct themselves and their business. On the internet, though, no one gives a damn. Newspaper web sites want strange things -- requiring registration, wanting people to pay for content, wanting search engines to pay for indexing them, or not to index them, or not to "deep link" them -- and assume that people will accede to their wishes, because they're in charge. And if they were right, it would make sense. Someone else mentioned specialized services like Lexis-Nexis and PACER, which the "readers" will pay for. There's also Nature and Salon, which both charge for access. Why can they get away with it, but the NYT and Washington Post can't?
Because Salon and Nature really are better. They offer something you can't find on 100 other internet sites, and they do a good job for their readers instead of pandering to their advertisers and the upper management's buddies.
This really seems to piss off the newspapers. "But we're better!", they say. "We own buildings, we're sold at the newsstand!" But on the internet, as you said, the NYT's content shows up right next to the Des Moines Register's identical content. It makes it a little more obvious that the whole thing is a house of cards; since we can't trust the newspapers not to report war-mongering lies about Iraq^HIran, why treat them any differently than Joe Schmoe's Blog of Rambling? The sooner they realize that, the sooner they'll be able to either start working on something that will actually make them more appealing (like, say, trustworthiness). That or just settle down into their role as happy typists serving up pageviews and stop trying to redesign the internet.
The obvious first step is that my library has to verify that it is itself uncompromised
If changing the software (at the option of the computer's owner) counts as "compromising" the software, the GPL was never for you in the first place. You shouldn't have been using those GPLv2 libraries that you mention depending on.
There are other problems facing humanity, true. If there people claiming that AIDS was not a proven fact, or that protecting ourselves against tsunamis would damage the economy and so should be avoided, I'd be unhappy with them as well.
The second group will focus on the nature of the problem and try to fix it.
The third group will focus on the cause of the problem and try to find who to blame.
When did those two groups become disjoint, then? In my experience nearly all of the second kind of people are also in the third group (though not vice versa).
In my experience, those in the third group can always find someone else to blame for any problem so they can feel they are not responsible for it.
I'm certainly partly responsible for global warming. Never said I wasn't.
Sudden massive uptrend in CO2? So what? If, as you choose to believe, the uptick in CO2 is purely manmade, and the uptrick in CO2 is purely the cause of global change, then you might have a point. I'm not at all so sure that either are established.
Okay. Climatologists worldwide are convinced; you seem to be saying that they should be less confident than they are. I'm not going to debate the science with you, here on slashdot, but answer me this: If the downside to them being right and the world not doing anything about it is a worldwide catastrophe, how much evidence should we have before dismissing their claims as "not certain"?
I'll just touch on a few of your sillier points.
Why should things ALWAYS be the way they are today? It's somewhat interesting as the kind of ultimate in conservatism.
That's so ridiculous that I think I'll just let it stand on its own:-).
Melting icecaps--well, that doesn't totally jive with actual evidence out there--in fact there's been some recent articles discussing glacial growth.
Glaciers are growing in some areas because of increased precipitation, which is often a local effect of global warming (as is local drought; it depends on the area). Are you actually saying that that means that the ice caps aren't melting right now?
You seem awfully invested in being sure that EVERYTHING that happens environmentally is a sign of the coming apocalypse that you laid out in your last post--THIS is the reason I have trouble with people that take stands like you, and I don't think the so-called global consensus is anything like you make it out to be. Besides which, since when has "consensus" EVER had anything to do with science? Science isn't a consensus game--we're not talking english lit or such here.
I should warn you, I also take stands on the existence of gravity and evolution:-). Conviction is fine as long as you back it up with evidence. There is a scientific consensus on global warming. Broad agreement among scientists does actually mean that the thing being agreed upon is more likely to be true than not. I can't believe I even have to argue these statements.
Again, let's talk the 1970s--30 years ago, there was STRONG consensus towards global cooling.
When I read your post I see fear fear fear, in that many words--look back on your posts--they are obsessed with how bad things will be. I don't get it. Things always change.
That's it -- argue the person, not the facts. That's the spirit!
Where did that come from, then? I never said that I wasn't part of the problem. I am. That's why I said that the things I listed were "little enough" to do to solve the problem. When I said, "global warming is real, and people who disingenuously say it isn't are harmful," how did you hear, "I am not responsible for global warming?"
I don't think it's a sin for me to criticize others for misbehavior that I, to a lesser degree, possess.
fucking hypocrite... jack shit... amounts to jack shit... Fuck you... all that other shit
Do you talk like that to people in real life, when you can see them face to face?
As I said in my post--I don't know what's going to happen. Given how much our scientific knowledge is changing, it seems short-sighted to say the least to make such serious and excessive claims. Just last year everyone claimed that due to global warming, this year would, like last year, be hugely abnormal in the number and strength of hurricanes. Indeed this year HAS been abnormal so far--it's been below average.
Ah, yes -- your anecdotal evidence has overwhelmed me. Sudden massive uptrend in CO2? Record-hot years, year after year? Melting permafrost and icecaps? Worldwide scientific consensus? Oh, wait -- we didn't have very many hurricanes one season. Never mind.
That article refers to a refinement of estimates; the new estimates were that future temperatures would fall within a broad range, and now a refined model has narrowed the range. I fail to see what you mean to say by bringing this article up. Do you mean that because scientific estimates sometimes get more specific, we can't... er... trust them?
Now, you can just laugh that off, but I think it's a profoundly interesting correlation.
Ah, yes -- now we get to the point where instead of addressing what I'm saying, you theorize at length on why I'm saying it, with the obvious answer ("because I think it's true") nowhere in evidence. Forget about carbon and hurricanes entirely -- let's make what I'm saying sound like religious gobbledegook by comparing it to something dissimilar.
Were any of these previous apocalyptic beliefs backed up by broad scientific evidence? There's a big difference between a TV special you watched one night and a theory, built up over decades and now agreed upon by a massive majority of the scientific community, that something bad is guaranteed to happen to us if we continue on the course we're on.
This is why I'm sarcastic: These seem like basic questions to me. You figure out how much real-world credibility you assign to the source, and factor in a bonus if their natural political leaning goes against what they're saying. For example, The Washington Post would be an especially credible source, as would be the Pentagon. As it happens, both of them take global warming seriously. Can you honestly give me more than one credible source that says that global warming isn't a problem? I know that stacking up unreliable sources against each other isn't productive, but I can't believe that you think that's your only option.
Surely you trust some source of information about the world.
One thing I'm sure of: If both "sides" of the political spectrum think it's advantageous for me to be misled about the state of the planet, I'm not going to be able to draw a sound conclusion.
Sure you can. Both "sides" of the US political spectrum wanted to go to war in Iraq, like the war on drugs, and don't like campaign finance reform. Nonetheless, large segments of the population disagree with them on those issues despite efforts to mislead the public. What are they doing that you aren't?
You're not doing your argument any favors with your sarcasm.
I'll marshall my arguments as it suits me, sir:-).
I must confess that your stunning insight has shown me the light and henceforth I will spread the poisoned gospel of global warming no more.
What has prevented Bill Clinton, together with Al Gore, from doing anything about global warming?
Yes, it all makes sense now -- because two politicians you assume that I like didn't manage to solve a massively difficult planetary problem, it doesn't exist. I understand!
Katrina isn't all that unusual, and there is no proof whatsoever that it was caused by global warming. There have always been hurricanes of varying strength in the region; it's certainly not a modern phenomenon (neither are the "heat waves").
Of course, of course. Because hurricanes existed before, the fact that they're getting worse is totally irrelevant. The same is true of heat. It gets hot in the summer. How could I not have realized that before?
Feeling ashamed is what environmentalists want us to do; this way they get to sell us green credits and give funding to their research projects.
I repent! I will give up my job converting rugged logging men into, er, green credits first thing tomorrow morning!
Aha! I think I've located your problem, sir. If the people you are listening to are crazy, shrill, or not-awfully-credible, then you should stop listening to them and look elsewhere for your information. Trying to interpolate between two crazy extremes will certainly not lead to the truth, no.
I realize that it's terribly difficult to avoid all the noise and confusion. Why, just the other day I was reading a report by those crazed eco-terrorists down at the Pentagon, and they said that "abrupt climate change could bring the planet to the edge of anarchy as countries develop a nuclear threat to defend and secure dwindling food, water and energy supplies" (that's quoting the Guardian, not the report). I got tired of their tree-hugging dogma, so I decided to check the report that president Bush commissioned from the National Academy of Sciences. All it said was that "Greenhouse gases are accumulating in the earth's atmosphere as a result of human activities, causing surface air temperatures and subsurface ocean temperatures to rise," so that sounded a bit better.
So I guess it really is impossible to find anyone giving honest information about global warming. Why, most of them are corrupted by the multi-billion-dollar wind power industry, nowadays.
Excellent post, sir -- not a fact to be found, and yet you've left me with a strong feeling that my opinions somehow must be incorrect, or at least doubtful!
I'm at least open minded enough to realize that all of the experts have not reached a reasonable concensus on this issue and the "skeptics" here have also brought up valid points worth researching and debating rather than the fallacy you put forth.
Which experts haven't reached a reasonable consensus, then? Why aren't they publishing their results in peer reviewed journals where they will be given the time and attention they deserve?
Which points have the "skeptics" brought up, exactly? I would dearly love to address them!
I regret to inform you that you have scored only two boxes in global warming skeptic bingo. They are, however, connected -- if you merely claim that 17,000 scientists signed a petition claiming that global warming is a lie, and that urban heat islands are contaminating the surface record, then I may complete my column and possibly win valuable prizes.
Also, what's this about "zeal and fervor?" I'm posting to slashdot, for Christ's sake. I'm assuming from your post that you don't believe any of this book larnin' about the planet getting warmer, so just look at it from my point of view: I believe that the planet is being pushed (essentially irreversibly) across a climatological barrier the far side of which contains massive flooding of costal cities, crop failure, drought, hurricanes, massive migration of starving or displaced people, war, and certainly the end of the comfortable first-world standard of living I (in the US) have become accustomed to.
What am I doing about it? I'm typing words into a little computer box, communicating with anonymous people who are picking their noses in basements thousands of miles from here and will never meet me or care what I have to say. That's basically my strategy.
And you're accusing me of too much zeal and fervor? Huh. That honestly hadn't crossed my mind.
Who is "us" exactly, and what did you propose to do? Cripple the world economy, thereby setting off mass warfare, disease, and starvation, leading to the decimation of huge numbers of people? Get off your high horse.
Ah, I see we've progressed from "global warming is all a lie, so shut up" to "there's legitimate disagreement among scientists, the climate is very complex, you can't possibly understand it all, maybe it's not even humans anyway, so shut up" to "of course there's a problem, but the solution is very complex, your simpleminded solutions will never work out, you're part of the problem anyway, so shut up." It's progress, of a kind:-).
Also, what did you do? Have you foregone all conveniences of modern life? No more health care, no more eating food that was transported by polluting trucks. Right? Yeah, thought so. It's not so clear-cut when it comes down to you losing out.
Yeah, maybe there is a critical problem here, but stop pretending like you have the "right" solution to it and everyone else is just being stupid.
I didn't really pretend to offer any solution -- like I said, I think we (by which I mean everyone on the planet right now) are fucked regardless of what we (by which I mean the governmental leaders who have some limited power to set policy which will reduce our CO2 emissions) do.
Since you, er, asked, I think that the solution (to the extent that one exists) lies in legal changes that forcibly change the behavior of wide ranges of people (e.g. high gas taxes), and that change the nature of the most harmful technology we're currently using (low-mileage cars and coal-burning power plants being the low-hanging fruit). Carbon sequestration will also be very important. Policy and international agreement is how we successfully attacked the ozone hole. It wasn't solved by environmental people making a world-wide decision to forgo CFC-using aerosols.
Ah. So you've been with the side of Truth and Rightness all along, huh? Care to document that fact? If you're going to hold other people accountable for their opinions, where's the record of your opinion that others can scrutinize?
What a ridiculous question. Go wild. I'm sure you can find some plenty stupid stuff in there; I encourage you to post it here to make me look silly:-).
What have YOU done?
I don't drive a car, and I try to convince people that it's a problem when I talk to them or when it comes up in slashdot stories. Little enough, I suppose.
I don't know if people contribute in a substantial way to climate change.
You were making a lot of sense up until there. We do.
If you are going to claim that as CO2 went up, the climate changed, and vice versa, then you are stating, unequivocally, that CO2 drives climate.
... and vice versa, yes. You said that right in the previous sentence -- you should wait at least a few sentences before you claim that someone said it was a one way street:-).
So, the question then becomes, if the CO2 varies from 200-300ppm over the last 800,000 years, then what drove those changes?
Wait -- are you saying that their measurements are in error, or are you saying that you believe the measurements, but would like more explanation of the process they reflect?
Once again, this article confuses correlation with causation. If you are going to state that CO2 changes cause climate change, then you must also demonstrate a mechanism for the changing CO2.
The article didn't actually state this, but it is accepted science at this point. All the article really stated was that the level of CO2 is drastically higher now than it has been within the visible past.
If, on the other hand, climate change causes changes in CO2 levels
These are fascinating links. The first is to a discussion on usenet, and the second is to an ice age causation theory from 1941 (which may well be true -- it's just that that being true doesn't magically mean that the connection between CO2 and climate is untrue). I would find them more compelling if they were links to, say, papers published in peer reviewed journals which cast the "CO2 theory" of global warming into question. I can understand that you might have trouble finding one of those, of course, since there aren't any to speak of.
(I know, I know, the scientists are all league in a secret cabal. They all know it's a lie, but they keep saying it is so they can get their grant money. The global warming "skeptics" like Bjørn Lomberg are in it for the pure love of truth, but the poor fellows just can't get their reports published because it threatens the monied orthodoxy. I know. I know.)
In fact, it's more correctly stated that CO2 levels tend to lag behind climate changes by up to 900 years. http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/299 /5613/1728 Although the folks at RealClimate like to just sweep this little fact under the carpet as unimportant. http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=13 To them, apparently, man made CO2 causes instant warming, but natural CO2 takes up to 800 years to have an effect.
The realclimate.org rebuttal you linked to above is actually pretty good on its own. For the peanut gallery, I'll quote the nut of it: "The reason has to do with the fact that the warmings take about 5000 years to be complete. The lag is only 800 years. All that the lag shows is that CO2 did not cause the first 800 years of warming, out of the 5000 year trend. The other 4200 years of warming could in fact have been caused by CO2, as far as we can tell from this ice core data.... It comes as no surprise that other factors besides CO2 affect climate. Changes in the amount of summer sunshine, due to changes in the Earth's orbit around the sun
Now, as always, we can cue a horde of astroturfers and deluded followers, rushing in to tell us all how global warming is a myth, and that the shocking recent rise in CO2 levels is somehow not demonstratable, or not significant, or something.
Well, that's okay: Now that the Siberian permafrost is melting, along with Antarctica, it looks like the Earth's processes have been pushed into a region within which global warming will continue, even if humans reduce their carbon emissions, which itself isn't likely. So congratulations, guys: you won. You kept us from doing something about the problem until it was too late, and now we're going to be stuck with it.
You "skeptics": in twenty years, when the problems caused by global warming make Katrina and heat waves that kill 35,000 people look pretty trivial, are you going to look back on your postings on slashdot -- and whatever else you're doing to spread the idea that global warming can be ignored -- and feel ashamed? Are you going to feel partly responsible?
Anyone who kept track of Joerg Schilling, and his prominent ego, was able to clearly see the inevitable fork from quite a distance away.
Seconded. I used to use Schilling's "prodvd" fork of cdrecord to burn DVDs at work. Since prodvd is shareware (free for personal use, but registration required for commercial use), I talked to my boss about registering my copy, and then tried to contact Schilling to pay him the money to get a legal license. I tried two email addresses listed in his webspace, got no response from either, and gave up.
A little while later, I tried unsuccessfully to get the then-new free patches to support DVD burning under cdrecord to work, and filed a bug against them. Schilling then suddenly piped up (from one of the email addresses I'd tried before), criticizing the patches without providing any useful information. I sent him email privately explaining that I was currently using cdrecord-prodvd in a business context, and hence needed to give him money, and asking where to send the check. He never responded.
Also, if you compare the current cdrecord page with the wayback archive, you'll see that quite recently he has added the following statement to the project page:
Warning: do not use Debian binaries as they include many Debian specific bugs and still do not run correctly on Linux-2.6
In short, the man seems to have a bit of programming skill, but he's also a big pain in the ass.
What if Ovit's software DOES run on other hardware, but for some reason, in practice, that is not a good solution. For example, some third party hardware manufacturer can make hardware that works like Tivo, but doesn't check signed code (so Ovit's software will run), BUT the hardware is expensive/unreliable/etc
... then Tivo hardware is the "recommended or principle context of use" for Ovit's software, so Ovit's redistibution is illegal. There are grey areas, but legal questions are full of grey areas that need to be decided on a case-by-case basis. The Tivo situation, and the situation you describe, are both clear-cut cases by the text of the GPL.
If the keys are not provided and needed to install and execute modified versions that looks like a clear violation to me.
If the manufacturer isn't redistributing GPLed software (but instead making his end-users download and install it), then there's not a thing in the world that he can do that's a clear violation of the GPLv3. The GPL is an optional license which allows redistribution of software, not a contract -- if you don't need to agree to it, then don't, and you won't be bound by its conditions.
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Coming from the Soviet government, that was gratitude. In the old days, they sent men by the millions to the gulag for far less (often for nothing). Nearly all Russian POWs released back to Russia were immediately sent to the gulag -- officially under suspicion of being double agents, actually because they might endanger the propaganda about conditions on the other side.
Solzhenytsin was sent to the gulag after the war. As he was going in (I may be mangling this anecdote somewhat; I'm doing it from memory), a guard asked what he had done to get twenty years.
"I didn't do anything," said Solzhenytsin.
"You must be mistaken," said the guard. "The sentence for nothing is only ten years, comrade!" And he burst out laughing.
Why are they a minefield, exactly? I've read them, and they make perfect sense to me.
That's true, although there are incremental measures (like adding the "... or, at your option, any later version" clause into the license for newly written modules). To my mind, the semi-irrevocable v2-ness of the kernel makes it even sillier that Linus and friends are making a series of widely-publicized statements that v3 is bad.
Personally, Linus's attitude to the GPLv3 has never made a lick of sense to me. He (and the others on the LKML who drew up that position paper) seemed downright Republican in their determinedness to misrepresent the opposing point of view, their reliance on statements which, on examination, seem increasingly bizarre ("... the FSF's attempts at drafting and re-drafting these provisions have shown them to be a nasty minefield which keeps ensnaring innocent and beneficial uses of encryption and DRM technologies ..." [emph. mine]), and their use of loaded language ("pick and choose soup" is a great way of criticizing freedom of choice when no other logical objection can be raised :-).
That's why I believe that this story, and the post you link to above, represent the first few of what The Meaning of Liff defines as glenties. I'll reproduce the definition below:
GLENTIES (pl.n.)
Series of small steps by which someone who has made a serious tactical error in a conversion or argument moves from complete disagreement to wholehearted agreement.
Pretty much any modern LCD can be turned vertically. On mine it's just a few screws in the back to reorient it.
It's treated me well so far. I find it a lot easier to deal with than a Windows-style taskbar; I tried to duplicate it when I had to work in Windows for a job a while back (I even bought a virtual desktop manager), but Windows's support for virtual desktops still seems sort of broken, so it didn't work as well there.
I think that if you turn this argument around a bit, you'll see the reason for a lot of the muddleheaded thinking that newspapers do when they start publishing on the internet.
Big newspapers have squandered a lot of the reputation that they used to have. They've been subordinating more and more of their journalistic role, and instead serving as a mouthpiece for government and industry (especially their advertisers). That's nothing new (see also H.L. Mencken), but it's been getting worse as newspapers consolidate and come increasingly under the control of evil men and businesspeople instead of journalists.
The newspapers are accustomed to trading on this accumulated capital of trustworthiness -- they're better than the National Enquirer, better than the cable news shows, better than magazines filled with celebrity gossip. People know that, the newspapers know it, and it affects how they conduct themselves and their business. On the internet, though, no one gives a damn. Newspaper web sites want strange things -- requiring registration, wanting people to pay for content, wanting search engines to pay for indexing them, or not to index them, or not to "deep link" them -- and assume that people will accede to their wishes, because they're in charge. And if they were right, it would make sense. Someone else mentioned specialized services like Lexis-Nexis and PACER, which the "readers" will pay for. There's also Nature and Salon, which both charge for access. Why can they get away with it, but the NYT and Washington Post can't?
Because Salon and Nature really are better. They offer something you can't find on 100 other internet sites, and they do a good job for their readers instead of pandering to their advertisers and the upper management's buddies.
This really seems to piss off the newspapers. "But we're better!", they say. "We own buildings, we're sold at the newsstand!" But on the internet, as you said, the NYT's content shows up right next to the Des Moines Register's identical content. It makes it a little more obvious that the whole thing is a house of cards; since we can't trust the newspapers not to report war-mongering lies about Iraq^HIran, why treat them any differently than Joe Schmoe's Blog of Rambling? The sooner they realize that, the sooner they'll be able to either start working on something that will actually make them more appealing (like, say, trustworthiness). That or just settle down into their role as happy typists serving up pageviews and stop trying to redesign the internet.
If changing the software (at the option of the computer's owner) counts as "compromising" the software, the GPL was never for you in the first place. You shouldn't have been using those GPLv2 libraries that you mention depending on.
There are other problems facing humanity, true. If there people claiming that AIDS was not a proven fact, or that protecting ourselves against tsunamis would damage the economy and so should be avoided, I'd be unhappy with them as well.
When did those two groups become disjoint, then? In my experience nearly all of the second kind of people are also in the third group (though not vice versa).
I'm certainly partly responsible for global warming. Never said I wasn't.
Okay. Climatologists worldwide are convinced; you seem to be saying that they should be less confident than they are. I'm not going to debate the science with you, here on slashdot, but answer me this: If the downside to them being right and the world not doing anything about it is a worldwide catastrophe, how much evidence should we have before dismissing their claims as "not certain"?
I'll just touch on a few of your sillier points.
That's so ridiculous that I think I'll just let it stand on its own
Glaciers are growing in some areas because of increased precipitation, which is often a local effect of global warming (as is local drought; it depends on the area). Are you actually saying that that means that the ice caps aren't melting right now?
I should warn you, I also take stands on the existence of gravity and evolution
We already talked about this.
That's it -- argue the person, not the facts. That's the spirit!
Where did that come from, then? I never said that I wasn't part of the problem. I am. That's why I said that the things I listed were "little enough" to do to solve the problem. When I said, "global warming is real, and people who disingenuously say it isn't are harmful," how did you hear, "I am not responsible for global warming?"
I don't think it's a sin for me to criticize others for misbehavior that I, to a lesser degree, possess.
Do you talk like that to people in real life, when you can see them face to face?
Ah, yes -- your anecdotal evidence has overwhelmed me. Sudden massive uptrend in CO2? Record-hot years, year after year? Melting permafrost and icecaps? Worldwide scientific consensus? Oh, wait -- we didn't have very many hurricanes one season. Never mind.
That article refers to a refinement of estimates; the new estimates were that future temperatures would fall within a broad range, and now a refined model has narrowed the range. I fail to see what you mean to say by bringing this article up. Do you mean that because scientific estimates sometimes get more specific, we can't... er... trust them?
Ah, yes -- now we get to the point where instead of addressing what I'm saying, you theorize at length on why I'm saying it, with the obvious answer ("because I think it's true") nowhere in evidence. Forget about carbon and hurricanes entirely -- let's make what I'm saying sound like religious gobbledegook by comparing it to something dissimilar.
Were any of these previous apocalyptic beliefs backed up by broad scientific evidence? There's a big difference between a TV special you watched one night and a theory, built up over decades and now agreed upon by a massive majority of the scientific community, that something bad is guaranteed to happen to us if we continue on the course we're on.
This is why I'm sarcastic: These seem like basic questions to me. You figure out how much real-world credibility you assign to the source, and factor in a bonus if their natural political leaning goes against what they're saying. For example, The Washington Post would be an especially credible source, as would be the Pentagon. As it happens, both of them take global warming seriously. Can you honestly give me more than one credible source that says that global warming isn't a problem? I know that stacking up unreliable sources against each other isn't productive, but I can't believe that you think that's your only option.
Surely you trust some source of information about the world.
Sure you can. Both "sides" of the US political spectrum wanted to go to war in Iraq, like the war on drugs, and don't like campaign finance reform. Nonetheless, large segments of the population disagree with them on those issues despite efforts to mislead the public. What are they doing that you aren't?
I'll marshall my arguments as it suits me, sir
Yes, it all makes sense now -- because two politicians you assume that I like didn't manage to solve a massively difficult planetary problem, it doesn't exist. I understand!
Of course, of course. Because hurricanes existed before, the fact that they're getting worse is totally irrelevant. The same is true of heat. It gets hot in the summer. How could I not have realized that before?
I repent! I will give up my job converting rugged logging men into, er, green credits first thing tomorrow morning!
Aha! I think I've located your problem, sir. If the people you are listening to are crazy, shrill, or not-awfully-credible, then you should stop listening to them and look elsewhere for your information. Trying to interpolate between two crazy extremes will certainly not lead to the truth, no.
I realize that it's terribly difficult to avoid all the noise and confusion. Why, just the other day I was reading a report by those crazed eco-terrorists down at the Pentagon, and they said that "abrupt climate change could bring the planet to the edge of anarchy as countries develop a nuclear threat to defend and secure dwindling food, water and energy supplies" (that's quoting the Guardian, not the report). I got tired of their tree-hugging dogma, so I decided to check the report that president Bush commissioned from the National Academy of Sciences. All it said was that "Greenhouse gases are accumulating in the earth's atmosphere as a result of human activities, causing surface air temperatures and subsurface ocean temperatures to rise," so that sounded a bit better.
So I guess it really is impossible to find anyone giving honest information about global warming. Why, most of them are corrupted by the multi-billion-dollar wind power industry, nowadays.
Which experts haven't reached a reasonable consensus, then? Why aren't they publishing their results in peer reviewed journals where they will be given the time and attention they deserve?
Which points have the "skeptics" brought up, exactly? I would dearly love to address them!
I regret to inform you that you have scored only two boxes in global warming skeptic bingo. They are, however, connected -- if you merely claim that 17,000 scientists signed a petition claiming that global warming is a lie, and that urban heat islands are contaminating the surface record, then I may complete my column and possibly win valuable prizes.
Also, what's this about "zeal and fervor?" I'm posting to slashdot, for Christ's sake. I'm assuming from your post that you don't believe any of this book larnin' about the planet getting warmer, so just look at it from my point of view: I believe that the planet is being pushed (essentially irreversibly) across a climatological barrier the far side of which contains massive flooding of costal cities, crop failure, drought, hurricanes, massive migration of starving or displaced people, war, and certainly the end of the comfortable first-world standard of living I (in the US) have become accustomed to.
What am I doing about it? I'm typing words into a little computer box, communicating with anonymous people who are picking their noses in basements thousands of miles from here and will never meet me or care what I have to say. That's basically my strategy.
And you're accusing me of too much zeal and fervor? Huh. That honestly hadn't crossed my mind.
Ah, I see we've progressed from "global warming is all a lie, so shut up" to "there's legitimate disagreement among scientists, the climate is very complex, you can't possibly understand it all, maybe it's not even humans anyway, so shut up" to "of course there's a problem, but the solution is very complex, your simpleminded solutions will never work out, you're part of the problem anyway, so shut up." It's progress, of a kind
I didn't really pretend to offer any solution -- like I said, I think we (by which I mean everyone on the planet right now) are fucked regardless of what we (by which I mean the governmental leaders who have some limited power to set policy which will reduce our CO2 emissions) do.
Since you, er, asked, I think that the solution (to the extent that one exists) lies in legal changes that forcibly change the behavior of wide ranges of people (e.g. high gas taxes), and that change the nature of the most harmful technology we're currently using (low-mileage cars and coal-burning power plants being the low-hanging fruit). Carbon sequestration will also be very important. Policy and international agreement is how we successfully attacked the ozone hole. It wasn't solved by environmental people making a world-wide decision to forgo CFC-using aerosols.
What a ridiculous question. Go wild. I'm sure you can find some plenty stupid stuff in there; I encourage you to post it here to make me look silly
I don't drive a car, and I try to convince people that it's a problem when I talk to them or when it comes up in slashdot stories. Little enough, I suppose.
You were making a lot of sense up until there. We do.
I'm not sure how you can call shenanigans on the idea that there's effective astroturf that pushes the idea that global warming is a myth.
I agree that sheer human laziness is a big part of the problem as well.
Wait -- are you saying that their measurements are in error, or are you saying that you believe the measurements, but would like more explanation of the process they reflect?
The article didn't actually state this, but it is accepted science at this point. All the article really stated was that the level of CO2 is drastically higher now than it has been within the visible past.
It does. It works both ways.
These are fascinating links. The first is to a discussion on usenet, and the second is to an ice age causation theory from 1941 (which may well be true -- it's just that that being true doesn't magically mean that the connection between CO2 and climate is untrue). I would find them more compelling if they were links to, say, papers published in peer reviewed journals which cast the "CO2 theory" of global warming into question. I can understand that you might have trouble finding one of those, of course, since there aren't any to speak of.
(I know, I know, the scientists are all league in a secret cabal. They all know it's a lie, but they keep saying it is so they can get their grant money. The global warming "skeptics" like Bjørn Lomberg are in it for the pure love of truth, but the poor fellows just can't get their reports published because it threatens the monied orthodoxy. I know. I know.)
The realclimate.org rebuttal you linked to above is actually pretty good on its own. For the peanut gallery, I'll quote the nut of it: "The reason has to do with the fact that the warmings take about 5000 years to be complete. The lag is only 800 years. All that the lag shows is that CO2 did not cause the first 800 years of warming, out of the 5000 year trend. The other 4200 years of warming could in fact have been caused by CO2, as far as we can tell from this ice core data. ... It comes as no surprise that other factors besides CO2 affect climate. Changes in the amount of summer sunshine, due to changes in the Earth's orbit around the sun
Now, as always, we can cue a horde of astroturfers and deluded followers, rushing in to tell us all how global warming is a myth, and that the shocking recent rise in CO2 levels is somehow not demonstratable, or not significant, or something.
Well, that's okay: Now that the Siberian permafrost is melting, along with Antarctica, it looks like the Earth's processes have been pushed into a region within which global warming will continue, even if humans reduce their carbon emissions, which itself isn't likely. So congratulations, guys: you won. You kept us from doing something about the problem until it was too late, and now we're going to be stuck with it.
You "skeptics": in twenty years, when the problems caused by global warming make Katrina and heat waves that kill 35,000 people look pretty trivial, are you going to look back on your postings on slashdot -- and whatever else you're doing to spread the idea that global warming can be ignored -- and feel ashamed? Are you going to feel partly responsible?
Probably not.
Seconded. I used to use Schilling's "prodvd" fork of cdrecord to burn DVDs at work. Since prodvd is shareware (free for personal use, but registration required for commercial use), I talked to my boss about registering my copy, and then tried to contact Schilling to pay him the money to get a legal license. I tried two email addresses listed in his webspace, got no response from either, and gave up.
A little while later, I tried unsuccessfully to get the then-new free patches to support DVD burning under cdrecord to work, and filed a bug against them. Schilling then suddenly piped up (from one of the email addresses I'd tried before), criticizing the patches without providing any useful information. I sent him email privately explaining that I was currently using cdrecord-prodvd in a business context, and hence needed to give him money, and asking where to send the check. He never responded.
Also, if you compare the current cdrecord page with the wayback archive, you'll see that quite recently he has added the following statement to the project page:
Warning: do not use Debian binaries as they include many Debian specific bugs and still do not run correctly on Linux-2.6
In short, the man seems to have a bit of programming skill, but he's also a big pain in the ass.
If the manufacturer isn't redistributing GPLed software (but instead making his end-users download and install it), then there's not a thing in the world that he can do that's a clear violation of the GPLv3. The GPL is an optional license which allows redistribution of software, not a contract -- if you don't need to agree to it, then don't, and you won't be bound by its conditions.