...it usually means I'm getting a phone call from an international telemarketer.
Last week, I got a VOIP call from a telemarketer named "Steve Dallas". Although you wouldn't think that someone named "Steve Dallas" would have such a strong Indian accent.
What are you reading these days?
on
Ask Neal Stephenson
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
Since you're Neal Stephenson, I suspect the answer could be something like "surveys of ancient Sumerian accounting systems".
If that's the case, please include a work of modern fiction or two in your list; something you think that a fan of your work might also enjoy.:)
There are facts and then there are biased and slanted presentations of facts.
Certainly. When Drudge posts "Clinton got a blow job in the Whitehouse from an intern"; well, that's a fact. When Drudge chooses to post every unflattering picture of Kerry but no unflattering pictures of Bush, well, that strikes me as at least unfair, if not approaching bias.
This slashdot article doesn't seem like a biased representation of the facts as presented in the article. Feel free to present evidence to the contrary (although since this thread now has broken the K-comment level, maybe just point me to one of the other comments that I may have missed...)
The statement, if true, doesn't scream bias. It sounds like a fact, which like most fact seems either refutable, or true.
Feel free to refute it and show how it's false, but on the fact of it, just because a fact helps one side more than another doesn't mean that it's automatically bias.
Are you disagreeing with the NASA data I presented? I can't quite tell. They're pretty unabmigious about attributing the recent increase in CO2 to human activity. Are you saying there other reasons atmospheric CO2 has gone up in the past? I suppose there probably were, although you've failed to present any alternative explanation for the existing data yourself. I still like the NASA link, and haven't seen anything to make me question it.
Anyone can say "specious reasoning" and "All heat, no light" in an attempt to look like they're coming from a position of authority and knowledge. Most people can do it more concisely than you did. The single piece of hard piece of evidence you seem to have presented has been the words "Vostok ice core data", but you can't even be bothered to find a link or explain what that data means. Lofty assertions about some strawmen "on both sides" isn't evidence; it's bluster. You end up attempting a weird analogy to christian fundamentalists teaching creationism; huh?
Are you going to present some links and data, or are you going to keep giving us a bunch of soundbites about "soundbiting"? I've put the evidence I've seen up, explained what I think it means, and waited for someone to give a good, clear counterexample. I'm still waiting.
The ability to assert an axiom does not make an axiom valid or relevant to the issue at hand.
Well said, although I suspect you didn't intend it to be so ironic.
I see that you are trying to make a correlation here
Hey, it's not just me. I've got NASA in my corner; on the very page I linked to, they make the correlation. As it turns out, I tend to believe NASA.
so answer me this: How do you explain CO2 concentrations that rapidly increase with a similar magnitude, pre-industrial revolution, pre-history, and even pre-homo-sapien?
I don't know what data you're talking about. Link, please?
You can't get a neat and tidy solution to anything in a half hour, and as is true of many types of systems, we may in fact be impotent when it comes to directing outcomes in a meaningful sense
Our best data says that CO2 has gone up because of the industrial revolution, and our best computer models show that increased CO2 will have an effect on climate change. Do we have all the variables? No, and it's unlikely that we ever will. Can we explain every climate change in the fossil record? Nope. But at what point do we say, "Hey, almost all of our historical data and dozens of multi-million dollar computer models say that there's a looming problem...let's consider what we could do to solve the problem?"
There are plenty of small, non-drastic, non-costly steps we could take at this point to lessen the amount of impact we're having on the atmosphere. It sure feels better than saying, "There might not be a problem, and if there is, we should just fatalistically resign ourselves to our fate rather than trying anything."
(And yes, there are large, drastic, costly steps too, but I'm certainly not advocating them, yet. But I'm optimistic about human ingenuity, and I'm convinced that we will soon have less polluting, less wasteful vehicles, and this seems like a good thing to me.)
If you assume that the United States of America is directly responsible for the massive increase in CO2 in the atmosphere on a global scale (a bunch of ifs so far I don't support)
I never mentioned the USA once in my post. Who exatly are you arguing with? As it turns out, I would like the US to be the world leader in cleaner, less wasteful technologies; Not only could we help keep the planet liveable for humans, but I think we could make a lot of money. But I didn't mention that in my post...weird.
Just don't tell me to become a hunter/gatherer again like my ancestors were many years ago and force me to choose which of my neighbors are going to get killed in the coming genocide, if your philosophies prevail.
In fact, it's damn near ridiculous. These arguments always are.
I'm not making an argument; I'm presenting evidence, gathered by NASA, measured several different ways, all of which agree.
You, on the other hand, are an anonymous coward making some unsuppored claims that disagree with all published data I've ever seen. Very convincing of you...
In any case, look for the phrase "Comparison of CO2 emissions from volcanoes vs. human activities." on this USGS page. Or you can choose any of the other pages you find on volcanic CO2. If you're too lazy to read it, let me summarize it: humans add about 100x the CO2 to the atmosphere than volcanos do.
There are many models for the effects of carbon dioxide in the atmostphere being proposed by scientists. Our best, most extensive computer models show that increased C02 will lead to climate change, and our best records show that humans activity has increased atmospheric C02 by about a third.
But the models all disagree exactly how much. And there are other sources of C02 (although there is no evidence any of them are responsible for the increases since the industial age). And since models always have to take a few shortcuts (instead of modelling every atom) they may have ignored something that could affect climate. Unfortunately, there are things we don't understand; our computer models don't explain all historical climate changes (even though every model has more C02 = climate change). And who knows, maybe the sun is hotter (even though the evidence for this is sketchier than any of the other data).
Some people turn these little bits of uncertainty into a complete lack of action. They argue that climate change is natural", ignoring the fact that it's catastrophic and we might be able to do something about it. They choose to do nothing, and rush us ever faster into the abyss in our giant, wasteful SUVS.
A large climate change is bad news for humans, and we have some evidence that we are responsible for some of it, and we have some evidence that we might be able to slow or reverse it. Do we need more evidence? Hell yes. But if we wait for the climate experiment known as "the earth's atmosphere" to finish, we'll be doomed. I believe that human ingenuity will be able make the world a place where humans can continue to thrive.
P.S. I don't understand why "less pollution, less waste" is seen as more as a burden and not an opportunity for business.
miniscule amounts of CO2 we pump into the atmosphere
Since the industrial age has begun, the amount of atmospheric carbon dioxide has increased from around 280ppmv to 380ppmv. You can argue about the effects of that carbon dioxide, but this does not strike me as a "miniscule" change; we've modified the carbon dioxide in the entire planet's atmosphere by almost a third!
The fact that humans can have such a drastic effect on an entire planet is pretty amazing.
I understand that the question is really asking "how do you get maps that can be enlarged", but...
Questions like: Find the largest city on the Mississippi River and what is the Capitol of the South American country to the west of Surinam are hard for the child as his view of the map is very constrained."
Put those questions into google, and you can pretty quickly find an answer using only text. Using google to answer questions about maps is probably not the skill they were trying to teach, but on the other hand, it is a skill of some kind.
Seriously, whenever I hear about any of the freedom-reducing provisions of the Patriot act, I can't help but ask myself, "What exactly do these people like about America? As for myself, I always felt very proud of our freedom, but these jokers keep taking it away bit by bit, and don't even appear to feel bad about it."
Bush calls the terrorists "freedom-haters", but ironically I see his administration as one of the biggest "freedom-reducers" in the past 20 years. Heck, under their own logic, by cutting our freedoms, aren't they giving the freedom-hating terrorists what they want?
Is having a free country hard? Yes. But as a country, don't we pride ourselves on doing the right thing, even if it's tough? I thought we did. Is there an alternative to the Patriot act that would preserve our safety and yet not place such restrictive burden on our freedom? I think there is, but it doesn't feel like we even tried looking for it.
P.S. Would the Patriot act have prevented 9/11? This is a guessing game, and it's hard to characterize such a giant bloated act, but most of the provisions under the Patriot act don't seem like they even begin to address the real problems that allowed 9/11 to happen. So ironically, we've given away a lot of freedom for a bunch of laws that wouldn't have made us safer.
The TRACHTENBURG FAMILY SLIDESHOW PLAYERS are an indie-vaudeville conceptual art-rock pop band. We take vintage slide collections that have been found at estate sales,garage sales,thrift stores,etc., and turn the lives of annonymous strangers into pop-rock musical exposes based on the contents of these slide collections.
Since it is illegal to test people's intelligence in the U.S. for a job
Reference, please? I don't think that's true (unless it's relatively recent). For example, seven years ago IBM was still giving aptitude tests as a part of the interview process for new hires.
Not that YOU personally would do this, but I have seen discussions arguing over "Beer X is better than Beer Y" where both sides clearly need to widen their beer horizons.
So let's get edjumucated. (and seriously, what could be more fun?) Here are two lists of (mostly) great beers that have very wide distribtuions--go out and find something on these lists that you haven't had, and try it tonight!
There are other lists, too, these are just to get you started. You can go to both site's "Top beers" to find a list of even better beers, although many of those could be hard to find.
Here's what scares me: all of the money rapidly being poured into surveillance today is creating an industry that will (obviously) lobby for more and more surveillance tomorrow. I don't see our freedoms stabilizing; I see the emergence of a business model that relies on stripping away our privacy.
And yes, I know that privacy has been eroding for a while, but it feels like it's getting much worse, much faster, now.
There's only minor technical details available so far, but the author of this piece describes seeing the system allow the test vehicle to jump over obstacles in its path!"
I've always wanted this: a suspension that would see a speed bump and pull the wheel in automatically.
P.S. To my speed-bump-happy city: screw you, and your hundreds of speed bumps, too.
Self-cooling cans have been around (in prototype form, at least) for years now. The problem seems to have been the environmental impact. The innovation fro Tempratech seems to be more in their specific, non-damanging (in theory) technology. Article on self-cooling cans from 2001.
I just learned that for news on cans, ain't nowhere better than CanTechOnline.
It's a little ambiguous the way it's phrased, but I suspect this device is used for gross position along the course, not for official final times at the finish.
I don't understand why Microsoft cares about the browser wars anymore. IE development costs them money, and I don't see what the benefit is.
I mean, back in the day, I used to think that the scenario was, "IE will be so much better than Netscape that websites and web users will flock to it, thus furthering our Windows monopoly." But that scenario seems pretty far-fetched today; Netscape the company is gone, and nobody choses Windows because they like IE.
At some point, it looked like MS had just abandoned IE development, but what's the case for picking it back up?
I mean, I don't want to be on Disney's bad side, and since the scope so easily records waveforms, I guess I'm going to need a firmware upgrade or something.
I've found that by playing only at night, in pitch black, so that my eyes start to adjust to the dark, the extreme darkness of this game isn't that annoying.
If I play in the morning before work, when the sun has risen, my eyes can't dynamically adjust from the light room to the dark screen, and I can't see anything. Maybe I need to eat more carrots or something.
In any case, the bonus about doing it this way is that the game is way scarier at night.:)
In order to appreciate films like [...] Final Fantasy, you definetly need a better understanding of spirtual beliefs. [...]Final Fantasy, lends itself to the Gaia Theory, and taking it further to suggest that planets are living enties with their own soul.
Hey, hold on. I'm not buying into the "You didn't appreciate FF because you lack a spiritual understanding" thing.
It's not that I didn't understand the Gaia premise; I did. It's just that I put it in the same category as people who believe in aromatherapy, Wicca, and unicorns.
Slashdot Mirror
...it usually means I'm getting a phone call from an international telemarketer.
Last week, I got a VOIP call from a telemarketer named "Steve Dallas". Although you wouldn't think that someone named "Steve Dallas" would have such a strong Indian accent.
Since you're Neal Stephenson, I suspect the answer could be something like "surveys of ancient Sumerian accounting systems".
:)
If that's the case, please include a work of modern fiction or two in your list; something you think that a fan of your work might also enjoy.
The chick in HR who's downloaded the "kitty-cat screen saver" spam zombie is doing just fine.
There are facts and then there are biased and slanted presentations of facts.
Certainly. When Drudge posts "Clinton got a blow job in the Whitehouse from an intern"; well, that's a fact. When Drudge chooses to post every unflattering picture of Kerry but no unflattering pictures of Bush, well, that strikes me as at least unfair, if not approaching bias.
This slashdot article doesn't seem like a biased representation of the facts as presented in the article. Feel free to present evidence to the contrary (although since this thread now has broken the K-comment level, maybe just point me to one of the other comments that I may have missed...)
That you do not know the difference is sad.
No need to be hatin'.
The statement, if true, doesn't scream bias. It sounds like a fact, which like most fact seems either refutable, or true.
Feel free to refute it and show how it's false, but on the fact of it, just because a fact helps one side more than another doesn't mean that it's automatically bias.
Are you disagreeing with the NASA data I presented? I can't quite tell. They're pretty unabmigious about attributing the recent increase in CO2 to human activity. Are you saying there other reasons atmospheric CO2 has gone up in the past? I suppose there probably were, although you've failed to present any alternative explanation for the existing data yourself. I still like the NASA link, and haven't seen anything to make me question it.
Anyone can say "specious reasoning" and "All heat, no light" in an attempt to look like they're coming from a position of authority and knowledge. Most people can do it more concisely than you did. The single piece of hard piece of evidence you seem to have presented has been the words "Vostok ice core data", but you can't even be bothered to find a link or explain what that data means. Lofty assertions about some strawmen "on both sides" isn't evidence; it's bluster. You end up attempting a weird analogy to christian fundamentalists teaching creationism; huh?
Are you going to present some links and data, or are you going to keep giving us a bunch of soundbites about "soundbiting"? I've put the evidence I've seen up, explained what I think it means, and waited for someone to give a good, clear counterexample. I'm still waiting.
The ability to assert an axiom does not make an axiom valid or relevant to the issue at hand.
Well said, although I suspect you didn't intend it to be so ironic.
I see that you are trying to make a correlation here
Hey, it's not just me. I've got NASA in my corner; on the very page I linked to, they make the correlation. As it turns out, I tend to believe NASA.
so answer me this: How do you explain CO2 concentrations that rapidly increase with a similar magnitude, pre-industrial revolution, pre-history, and even pre-homo-sapien?
I don't know what data you're talking about. Link, please?
You can't get a neat and tidy solution to anything in a half hour, and as is true of many types of systems, we may in fact be impotent when it comes to directing outcomes in a meaningful sense
Our best data says that CO2 has gone up because of the industrial revolution, and our best computer models show that increased CO2 will have an effect on climate change. Do we have all the variables? No, and it's unlikely that we ever will. Can we explain every climate change in the fossil record? Nope. But at what point do we say, "Hey, almost all of our historical data and dozens of multi-million dollar computer models say that there's a looming problem...let's consider what we could do to solve the problem?"
There are plenty of small, non-drastic, non-costly steps we could take at this point to lessen the amount of impact we're having on the atmosphere. It sure feels better than saying, "There might not be a problem, and if there is, we should just fatalistically resign ourselves to our fate rather than trying anything."
(And yes, there are large, drastic, costly steps too, but I'm certainly not advocating them, yet. But I'm optimistic about human ingenuity, and I'm convinced that we will soon have less polluting, less wasteful vehicles, and this seems like a good thing to me.)
You are very quick to openly dismiss the potential for sources other than industrial pollution causing an increase in CO2.
I'm sorry I did not repeat in this post, but please see my other post in this thread for the evidence.
If you assume that the United States of America is directly responsible for the massive increase in CO2 in the atmosphere on a global scale (a bunch of ifs so far I don't support)
I never mentioned the USA once in my post. Who exatly are you arguing with? As it turns out, I would like the US to be the world leader in cleaner, less wasteful technologies; Not only could we help keep the planet liveable for humans, but I think we could make a lot of money. But I didn't mention that in my post...weird.
Just don't tell me to become a hunter/gatherer again like my ancestors were many years ago and force me to choose which of my neighbors are going to get killed in the coming genocide, if your philosophies prevail.
What the hell are you talking about?
In fact, it's damn near ridiculous. These arguments always are.
I'm not making an argument; I'm presenting evidence, gathered by NASA, measured several different ways, all of which agree.
You, on the other hand, are an anonymous coward making some unsuppored claims that disagree with all published data I've ever seen. Very convincing of you...
In any case, look for the phrase "Comparison of CO2 emissions from volcanoes vs. human activities." on this USGS page. Or you can choose any of the other pages you find on volcanic CO2. If you're too lazy to read it, let me summarize it: humans add about 100x the CO2 to the atmosphere than volcanos do.
There are many models for the effects of carbon dioxide in the atmostphere being proposed by scientists. Our best, most extensive computer models show that increased C02 will lead to climate change, and our best records show that humans activity has increased atmospheric C02 by about a third.
But the models all disagree exactly how much. And there are other sources of C02 (although there is no evidence any of them are responsible for the increases since the industial age). And since models always have to take a few shortcuts (instead of modelling every atom) they may have ignored something that could affect climate. Unfortunately, there are things we don't understand; our computer models don't explain all historical climate changes (even though every model has more C02 = climate change). And who knows, maybe the sun is hotter (even though the evidence for this is sketchier than any of the other data).
Some people turn these little bits of uncertainty into a complete lack of action. They argue that climate change is
natural", ignoring the fact that it's catastrophic and we might be able to do something about it. They choose to do nothing, and rush us ever faster into the abyss in our giant, wasteful SUVS.
A large climate change is bad news for humans, and we have some evidence that we are responsible for some of it, and we have some evidence that we might be able to slow or reverse it. Do we need more evidence? Hell yes. But if we wait for the climate experiment known as "the earth's atmosphere" to finish, we'll be doomed. I believe that human ingenuity will be able make the world a place where humans can continue to thrive.
P.S. I don't understand why "less pollution, less waste" is seen as more as a burden and not an opportunity for business.
miniscule amounts of CO2 we pump into the atmosphere
Since the industrial age has begun, the amount of atmospheric carbon dioxide has increased from around 280ppmv to 380ppmv. You can argue about the effects of that carbon dioxide, but this does not strike me as a "miniscule" change; we've modified the carbon dioxide in the entire planet's atmosphere by almost a third!
The fact that humans can have such a drastic effect on an entire planet is pretty amazing.
Put those questions into google, and you can pretty quickly find an answer using only text. Using google to answer questions about maps is probably not the skill they were trying to teach, but on the other hand, it is a skill of some kind.
Seriously, whenever I hear about any of the freedom-reducing provisions of the Patriot act, I can't help but ask myself, "What exactly do these people like about America? As for myself, I always felt very proud of our freedom, but these jokers keep taking it away bit by bit, and don't even appear to feel bad about it."
Bush calls the terrorists "freedom-haters", but ironically I see his administration as one of the biggest "freedom-reducers" in the past 20 years. Heck, under their own logic, by cutting our freedoms, aren't they giving the freedom-hating terrorists what they want?
Is having a free country hard? Yes. But as a country, don't we pride ourselves on doing the right thing, even if it's tough? I thought we did. Is there an alternative to the Patriot act that would preserve our safety and yet not place such restrictive burden on our freedom? I think there is, but it doesn't feel like we even tried looking for it.
P.S. Would the Patriot act have prevented 9/11? This is a guessing game, and it's hard to characterize such a giant bloated act, but most of the provisions under the Patriot act don't seem like they even begin to address the real problems that allowed 9/11 to happen. So ironically, we've given away a lot of freedom for a bunch of laws that wouldn't have made us safer.
Reminds me of "The Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players". From their web site:
It's a little weirder than it sounds.
Since it is illegal to test people's intelligence in the U.S. for a job
Reference, please? I don't think that's true (unless it's relatively recent). For example, seven years ago IBM was still giving aptitude tests as a part of the interview process for new hires.
Not that YOU personally would do this, but I have seen discussions arguing over "Beer X is better than Beer Y" where both sides clearly need to widen their beer horizons.
So let's get edjumucated. (and seriously, what could be more fun?) Here are two lists of (mostly) great beers that have very wide distribtuions--go out and find something on these lists that you haven't had, and try it tonight!
RateBeer's top 'accessible' beer list.
BeerAdvocate's 'Best Most Available Beers' list.
There are other lists, too, these are just to get you started. You can go to both site's "Top beers" to find a list of even better beers, although many of those could be hard to find.
Here's what scares me: all of the money rapidly being poured into surveillance today is creating an industry that will (obviously) lobby for more and more surveillance tomorrow. I don't see our freedoms stabilizing; I see the emergence of a business model that relies on stripping away our privacy.
And yes, I know that privacy has been eroding for a while, but it feels like it's getting much worse, much faster, now.
More scariness in Emerging 'Surveillance-Industrial Complex' Is Turbo-Charging Government Monitoring, ACLU Warns in New Report.
There's only minor technical details available so far, but the author of this piece describes seeing the system allow the test vehicle to jump over obstacles in its path!"
I've always wanted this: a suspension that would see a speed bump and pull the wheel in automatically.
P.S. To my speed-bump-happy city: screw you, and your hundreds of speed bumps, too.
Self-cooling cans have been around (in prototype form, at least) for years now. The problem seems to have been the environmental impact. The innovation fro Tempratech seems to be more in their specific, non-damanging (in theory) technology. Article on self-cooling cans from 2001.
I just learned that for news on cans, ain't nowhere better than CanTechOnline.
It's a little ambiguous the way it's phrased, but I suspect this device is used for gross position along the course, not for official final times at the finish.
I don't understand why Microsoft cares about the browser wars anymore. IE development costs them money, and I don't see what the benefit is.
I mean, back in the day, I used to think that the scenario was, "IE will be so much better than Netscape that websites and web users will flock to it, thus furthering our Windows monopoly." But that scenario seems pretty far-fetched today; Netscape the company is gone, and nobody choses Windows because they like IE.
At some point, it looked like MS had just abandoned IE development, but what's the case for picking it back up?
I mean, I don't want to be on Disney's bad side, and since the scope so easily records waveforms, I guess I'm going to need a firmware upgrade or something.
I've found that by playing only at night, in pitch black, so that my eyes start to adjust to the dark, the extreme darkness of this game isn't that annoying.
:)
If I play in the morning before work, when the sun has risen, my eyes can't dynamically adjust from the light room to the dark screen, and I can't see anything. Maybe I need to eat more carrots or something.
In any case, the bonus about doing it this way is that the game is way scarier at night.
... where are the other "raunchy" photos?
Good question, because everybody knows those are really hard to find on P2P networks.In order to appreciate films like [...] Final Fantasy, you definetly need a better understanding of spirtual beliefs. [...]Final Fantasy, lends itself to the Gaia Theory, and taking it further to suggest that planets are living enties with their own soul.
Hey, hold on. I'm not buying into the "You didn't appreciate FF because you lack a spiritual understanding" thing.
It's not that I didn't understand the Gaia premise; I did. It's just that I put it in the same category as people who believe in aromatherapy, Wicca, and unicorns.