The real problem surrounding global warming is that any data we gather is in SOME way affected by our presence. We don't have a control earth next door that we can just fly over to and take measurements independent of human effects.
We need to evaluate warming trends using other criteria rather than whether they are "natural" or not.
I heard "protesting corporate greed in America", but I mean that's a tough thing to protest.. you're basically protesting capitalism.
I agree. Protesting without a clear, achievable goal is not going to solicit any support from politicians, and will only cause the public to become indifferent to future protests.
Unfortunately, I think many of the activists of our generation are recreational protesters, who are there more for the experience than because they have a solution to a problem. Protest if you must, but do your homework first.
This topic has been getting a lot of attention recently. The guys at Red Letter Media just interviewed the director of the movie The People vs. George Lucas which examines the question in detail.
I think rebel forces finally taking the capital qualifies as "...stuff that matters". Do we really need to search for a tech angle just to talk about it on Slashdot?
As for the rebels, I have been impressed with how they have persisted despite awful organization and very weak help from the West. I am happy to see them finally prevail.
I admit this is offtopic, but I recently tried to activate a nexus s with ATT which I bought off ebay. It's my first smartphone, and in my excitement I simply assumed that a pay-as-ou-go data plan would be available (I really only need the phone and wifi). To my disappointment, Att REQUIRES a $15/mo minimum data plan to activate the phone. They refuse to activate the voice and text capabilities only.
I looked around at other carriers and slowly realized that this is standard industry practice. I of course am seriously pissed. Does anyone on slashdot have a similar experience, and have any solution been found?
We humans have been inventing stuff to make the workday easier for 15,000 years, and we STILL work 40+ hours a week with literally suicidal conditions in some places. What gives?
I have mixed feelings about bitcoin. On one hand, I really like the (supposed) anonymity, distributed infrastructure, and open source nature of bitcoin. However, I cannot pay my property tax with bitcoins. And as much as I love the romantic notion of a society totally free of government control, the reality is that we really do need some form of central organization to administer justice. And that organization must collect taxes in order to function.
So the question is, do I ignore alternative currencies and use the dollar for better or worse because that is what they collect taxes with, or do I go off the libertarian deep end and totally embrace bitcoin just because I like the implementation?
"Rowthorn says that while fertility is determined by culture, an individual's predisposition toward religion is likely to be influenced by genetics"
If I had to choose one or the other, I would probably go with the desire to reproduce as more "genetic" rather than a set of abstract belliefs that must be taught. But then again, I don't teach at Cambridge
Let me tell you about the p2p policy at my school, Indiana University. They officially forbid sharing of copyrighted materials, but do not enforce the policy themselves. Bittorrent, ftp, emule, limewire, etc all work with default settings, and as far as I can tell they are not throttled. It is not uncommon for me to get 2Mbit/s total bandwidth over wireless. They also don't seem to care how much bandwidth you use. Between the four people in my dorm room, I would estimate there have been hundreds of gigabytes downloaded this fall (not exaggerating) without so much as an email. If a media company complains to the University, they well simply forward you the letter and charge you a $50 fine, but ONLY if they receive a letter themselves. This seems acceptable, because they are protecting themselves without acting as police. It seems to me that the only reason a university would take Valdosta's approach is because they are too cheap to beef up the campus infrastructure, which is a sad and disgraceful excuse for turning 19yo kids over to the police.
This is something I have suspected for a long time. It is only speculation, but I am sure that they would have gained more paying customers with a DRM scheme than they would have lost. So no matter how much I might hate DRM in principle, it really is a necessary evil because it provides the incentive for companies to invest more money into better games.
However, there are good and bad ways of doing DRM. I remember buying Far Cry 2 on a DVD, and the DRM was such a disaster that it wouldn't run at all simply because I had Alcohol 120 installed! From that day on I have only used Steam to buy games, and I am very satisfied. If I want to reinstall Windows or buy a new computer, Steam will completely reinstall every game I have ever bought, fully patched and ready to play. With large games like Company of Heroes that have a a gazillion patches, the price of a game on Steam is well worth the time I would have to spend getting a pirated or CD version up and running.
So if I had to buy the game again, I would pass up this "Pirates Amnesty" version and buy it for four times as much on Steam. I am paying for convenience in the future.
Slashdot Mirror
The real problem surrounding global warming is that any data we gather is in SOME way affected by our presence. We don't have a control earth next door that we can just fly over to and take measurements independent of human effects.
We need to evaluate warming trends using other criteria rather than whether they are "natural" or not.
I heard "protesting corporate greed in America", but I mean that's a tough thing to protest.. you're basically protesting capitalism.
I agree. Protesting without a clear, achievable goal is not going to solicit any support from politicians, and will only cause the public to become indifferent to future protests.
Unfortunately, I think many of the activists of our generation are recreational protesters, who are there more for the experience than because they have a solution to a problem. Protest if you must, but do your homework first.
This topic has been getting a lot of attention recently. The guys at Red Letter Media just interviewed the director of the movie The People vs. George Lucas which examines the question in detail.
I think rebel forces finally taking the capital qualifies as "...stuff that matters". Do we really need to search for a tech angle just to talk about it on Slashdot?
As for the rebels, I have been impressed with how they have persisted despite awful organization and very weak help from the West. I am happy to see them finally prevail.
I admit this is offtopic, but I recently tried to activate a nexus s with ATT which I bought off ebay. It's my first smartphone, and in my excitement I simply assumed that a pay-as-ou-go data plan would be available (I really only need the phone and wifi). To my disappointment, Att REQUIRES a $15/mo minimum data plan to activate the phone. They refuse to activate the voice and text capabilities only.
I looked around at other carriers and slowly realized that this is standard industry practice. I of course am seriously pissed. Does anyone on slashdot have a similar experience, and have any solution been found?
We humans have been inventing stuff to make the workday easier for 15,000 years, and we STILL work 40+ hours a week with literally suicidal conditions in some places. What gives?
It seems that a lot of these frivolous claims could be avoided if there was a stiff penalty for taking a patent issue to court and losing.
I have mixed feelings about bitcoin. On one hand, I really like the (supposed) anonymity, distributed infrastructure, and open source nature of bitcoin. However, I cannot pay my property tax with bitcoins. And as much as I love the romantic notion of a society totally free of government control, the reality is that we really do need some form of central organization to administer justice. And that organization must collect taxes in order to function.
So the question is, do I ignore alternative currencies and use the dollar for better or worse because that is what they collect taxes with, or do I go off the libertarian deep end and totally embrace bitcoin just because I like the implementation?
"Rowthorn says that while fertility is determined by culture, an individual's predisposition toward religion is likely to be influenced by genetics"
If I had to choose one or the other, I would probably go with the desire to reproduce as more "genetic" rather than a set of abstract belliefs that must be taught. But then again, I don't teach at Cambridge
Let me tell you about the p2p policy at my school, Indiana University. They officially forbid sharing of copyrighted materials, but do not enforce the policy themselves. Bittorrent, ftp, emule, limewire, etc all work with default settings, and as far as I can tell they are not throttled. It is not uncommon for me to get 2Mbit/s total bandwidth over wireless. They also don't seem to care how much bandwidth you use. Between the four people in my dorm room, I would estimate there have been hundreds of gigabytes downloaded this fall (not exaggerating) without so much as an email. If a media company complains to the University, they well simply forward you the letter and charge you a $50 fine, but ONLY if they receive a letter themselves. This seems acceptable, because they are protecting themselves without acting as police. It seems to me that the only reason a university would take Valdosta's approach is because they are too cheap to beef up the campus infrastructure, which is a sad and disgraceful excuse for turning 19yo kids over to the police.
This is something I have suspected for a long time. It is only speculation, but I am sure that they would have gained more paying customers with a DRM scheme than they would have lost. So no matter how much I might hate DRM in principle, it really is a necessary evil because it provides the incentive for companies to invest more money into better games. However, there are good and bad ways of doing DRM. I remember buying Far Cry 2 on a DVD, and the DRM was such a disaster that it wouldn't run at all simply because I had Alcohol 120 installed! From that day on I have only used Steam to buy games, and I am very satisfied. If I want to reinstall Windows or buy a new computer, Steam will completely reinstall every game I have ever bought, fully patched and ready to play. With large games like Company of Heroes that have a a gazillion patches, the price of a game on Steam is well worth the time I would have to spend getting a pirated or CD version up and running. So if I had to buy the game again, I would pass up this "Pirates Amnesty" version and buy it for four times as much on Steam. I am paying for convenience in the future.