> They've found fossils with traces of blood, skin, flesh and feathers.
For dinosaurs? They've certainly found fossilized impressions of skin and feathers, and there was an interesting discovery of some bone structure a few months back that was initially (but incorrectly) described as "soft tissue". I don't think there's anything else, but I'd certainly like to know about it if there is.
> Actually, it raises the question. Begging the question is a formal logic term that does not mean what most people seem to think.
But for better or worse languages change over time, and now the "wrong" meaning is encontered quite often - perhaps more often than the "right" meaning.
Where you go from there depends on whether you're a descriptionist or a prescriptionist.
> Interestingly, the word 'dragon' is used a number of times in the Old Testament. In most instances, the word dinosaur could substitute for dragon and it would fit very nicely. Dinosaurs were called dragons before the word dinosaur was invented in the 1800s. We would not expect to find the word dinosaur in Bibles like the Authorized Version (1611), as it was translated well before the word dinosaur was ever used.
> Also, there are many very old history books in various libraries around the world that have detailed records of dragons and their encounters with people. Such as that of English King Morvidus. Surprisingly, many of these descriptions of dragons fit with how modern scientists would describe dinosaurs, even Tyrannosaurus.
Yeah, but "big and scary" covers a lot of territory.
> I'd say it had something to do with the environmental lobby being fucking enormous and requiring a multitude of human-caused environmental problems to justify its existence.
Yep. For example when GWB was setting his energy policy he invited in a clique of environmental lobbyists to help him, and worked with them behind closed doors to make sure the energy companies didn't butt in and enforce good sense on the proceedings.
> twenty years ago the "prevailing wisdom" among climatologists was that the earth was in danger of another ice age.
Prevailing wisdom? I ask about this every time that claim is made, and the only response I've ever got was a link to a single newsweek article.
Can you cite something that would suggest the claim is actually true? I was alive 20 years ago, and don't remember any such prevailing wisdom.
BTW, there are some scientists now who think we should be heading into an ice age right now - if not for the fact that global warming is overcompensating for it. (I don't know whether that's prevailing opinion, but at least the idea is out there.)
> Well, the intelligent response then is to minimize activity that could potentially be causing global warming until we better understand the impact and the implications. Look before we leap. No?
But it costs money to look before you leap! Think of the lost productivity!
> Well, consider. This isn't a really bad Hollywood movie like "The Day After Tomorrow", it is reality, and there is natural law to mediate between nature and your nightmares. The fact is, if the flooding you speak of occurs, it won't happen such that a bunch of lowland dwellers go to sleep Tuesday night, dry, and wake up Wednesday morning floating on their mattresses.
No scientist thinks that's what will happen. These stupid movies (like the stupid monster movies that grossly misrepresent evolution) are probably contributing to the rampant science denial in our society.
> We will see it coming, people and businesses can migrate (and they will... believe me, they will.)
And that won't be disruptive? How much do you think it's going to cost to move coastal cities to higher ground?
People and businesses object to the cost of reducing emissions, but won't mind the cost of migrating?
> And so on. The one thing you can be certain of is that things will change, and as they change, humans will adapt.
But will it be a zero-sum change, even if you discount the transition costs?
When changes in arability change haves to have-nots, is that change going to be resolved peaceably?
> I see no reason for anyone to panic, or even seriously worry, at this point. We should pay attention, and we are. There is no indication we are facing any big changes in the near future, nor any sudden ones in any future as far as global warming goes. Nature will supply us with the facts no matter what they are. In the meantime, the sky isn't falling, and that's a fact. The sky might move a little, though we cannot be certain of this, and if it does, it'll do so slowly and gently and we will have plenty of time to rearrange ourselves as required, both as a civilization and as individuals.
The accelerating meltdown at both poles suggests that we've already reached a tipping point, and if we want to adapt it's time to start adapting now.
> Sure there are lots of Greenhouse deniers, and no shortage of oil-business newspapers, like the Calgary Alberta Sun, that will print them. Because there's no shortage of oil and coal money to buy their hot air the press that keeps them in business.
Maybe if they bought more of the hot air the warming problem would go away.
> Those models do not "predict" global warming. They show a trend towards warming with an increase in atmospheric CO2.
So, you reject the physics of greenhouse gasses?
> Trillions of dollars and Millions of lives will be lost if the "we should take action just in case" crowd wins. Some of the best estimates say that cutting CO2 by 50% will cost 1.5 BILLION LIVES by 2100. Are you so eager to pull the trigger?
> We're talking about a BIG problem, and all I can see is +5 funny posts.
It seems to be human nature to respond to tragedy in part with humor.
Also, it seems to me that +funny is becoming far more common among Slashdot moderation. Presumably because the average quality of the stories and the average quality of the non-humor comments are falling.
> The union of the republican and christian sets minus their intersection is nonempty.
No, the Republican base - like that of any political party - is a coalition of various groups.
Likewise, Christianity includes a lot of social conservatives who presumably vote Republican, but also lots of people with progressive social views, who presumably don't.
> t doesn't have a large satelite (relatively speaking) to regulate its movement, and as a consequence it has much more variation from (its) year to year.
???
> Furthermore, it's also farther from the Sun, and the variation in distance caused by the eliptical movement also affects the amount of light it's getting (not just the inclination, as is the case for Earth).
FYI, the earth's inclination doesn't affect the amount of light it's getting. It just affects what proportion of it falls on each hemisphere at any given time. Half the earth is illuminated at all times, except during solar eclipses.
> But as other people have pointed out, the answer is not trivially one or the other. It depends on the architecture you run and the compiler you use. And if you don't actually have access to the architectures and compilers where your code may be running, it makes sense to ask if there is a general rule of thumb to follow if you don't know.
Here are the big-picture rules of thumb:
don't use an exponential time algorithm when you could use a polynomial time algorithm (etc)
make the common case fast
It only pays to dick around with the little stuff in very special circumstances. And when hand optimizing you've got to consider issues such as pointer dereferences, register usage, cache misses, etc.
And perhaps most of all, what is the tradeoff for supercode vs. readability when it comes to delivering a bug-free application and maintaining it afterward.
There's a strong tendancy among programmers to be penny wise and dollar stupid.
> All year long, they have had no one at the helm for cybersecurity. It shouldn't surprise anyone. Let's take a job that many different agencies struggled to keep up with before, then add the requirement that they all reorganize into DHS, where instead of computer security being their number one focus, it is one of many concerns. I would bet the funding for DHS compsec is less than the total spent by the seperate agency committees. There is only so much you can save by pooling resources, and I would agrue it gets lost when you have to compete for attention with WMDs, IEDs and other serious physical security threats.
The DoHS was created by our politicians as a way of telling us that they were taking care of us after 9/11. Having a system that actually worked was a secondary consideration - if it was a consideration at all.
Slashdot Mirror
> They've found fossils with traces of blood, skin, flesh and feathers.
For dinosaurs? They've certainly found fossilized impressions of skin and feathers, and there was an interesting discovery of some bone structure a few months back that was initially (but incorrectly) described as "soft tissue". I don't think there's anything else, but I'd certainly like to know about it if there is.
> Houseflies live for about a month, not 3 days
Damn, I'd better start leaving out more food for them.
> Actually, it raises the question. Begging the question is a formal logic term that does not mean what most people seem to think.
But for better or worse languages change over time, and now the "wrong" meaning is encontered quite often - perhaps more often than the "right" meaning.
Where you go from there depends on whether you're a descriptionist or a prescriptionist.
> Interestingly, the word 'dragon' is used a number of times in the Old Testament. In most instances, the word dinosaur could substitute for dragon and it would fit very nicely. Dinosaurs were called dragons before the word dinosaur was invented in the 1800s. We would not expect to find the word dinosaur in Bibles like the Authorized Version (1611), as it was translated well before the word dinosaur was ever used.
> Also, there are many very old history books in various libraries around the world that have detailed records of dragons and their encounters with people. Such as that of English King Morvidus. Surprisingly, many of these descriptions of dragons fit with how modern scientists would describe dinosaurs, even Tyrannosaurus.
Yeah, but "big and scary" covers a lot of territory.
> I'd say it had something to do with the environmental lobby being fucking enormous and requiring a multitude of human-caused environmental problems to justify its existence.
Yep. For example when GWB was setting his energy policy he invited in a clique of environmental lobbyists to help him, and worked with them behind closed doors to make sure the energy companies didn't butt in and enforce good sense on the proceedings.
> twenty years ago the "prevailing wisdom" among climatologists was that the earth was in danger of another ice age.
Prevailing wisdom? I ask about this every time that claim is made, and the only response I've ever got was a link to a single newsweek article.
Can you cite something that would suggest the claim is actually true? I was alive 20 years ago, and don't remember any such prevailing wisdom.
BTW, there are some scientists now who think we should be heading into an ice age right now - if not for the fact that global warming is overcompensating for it. (I don't know whether that's prevailing opinion, but at least the idea is out there.)
> > So tell me again, what is the "political motivation" of those climatologists who believe in global warming?
> How about the billions of dollars in "global warming" research grant?
Yeah, and without those grants they'd be as poor as the oil companies.
> Well, the intelligent response then is to minimize activity that could potentially be causing global warming until we better understand the impact and the implications. Look before we leap. No?
But it costs money to look before you leap! Think of the lost productivity!
> After all, they're still finding Viking farms under the ice in Greenland.
And a few years ago Alpine snow melted back enough to reveal a man who had been frozen in for 5,000 years.
You can't just pick out one data point favorable to your views and offer it as a refutation of a global pattern.
> Well, consider. This isn't a really bad Hollywood movie like "The Day After Tomorrow", it is reality, and there is natural law to mediate between nature and your nightmares. The fact is, if the flooding you speak of occurs, it won't happen such that a bunch of lowland dwellers go to sleep Tuesday night, dry, and wake up Wednesday morning floating on their mattresses.
No scientist thinks that's what will happen. These stupid movies (like the stupid monster movies that grossly misrepresent evolution) are probably contributing to the rampant science denial in our society.
> We will see it coming, people and businesses can migrate (and they will... believe me, they will.)
And that won't be disruptive? How much do you think it's going to cost to move coastal cities to higher ground?
People and businesses object to the cost of reducing emissions, but won't mind the cost of migrating?
> And so on. The one thing you can be certain of is that things will change, and as they change, humans will adapt.
But will it be a zero-sum change, even if you discount the transition costs?
When changes in arability change haves to have-nots, is that change going to be resolved peaceably?
> I see no reason for anyone to panic, or even seriously worry, at this point. We should pay attention, and we are. There is no indication we are facing any big changes in the near future, nor any sudden ones in any future as far as global warming goes. Nature will supply us with the facts no matter what they are. In the meantime, the sky isn't falling, and that's a fact. The sky might move a little, though we cannot be certain of this, and if it does, it'll do so slowly and gently and we will have plenty of time to rearrange ourselves as required, both as a civilization and as individuals.
The accelerating meltdown at both poles suggests that we've already reached a tipping point, and if we want to adapt it's time to start adapting now.
> Sure there are lots of Greenhouse deniers, and no shortage of oil-business newspapers, like the Calgary Alberta Sun, that will print them. Because there's no shortage of oil and coal money to buy their hot air the press that keeps them in business.
Maybe if they bought more of the hot air the warming problem would go away.
> Those models do not "predict" global warming. They show a trend towards warming with an increase in atmospheric CO2.
So, you reject the physics of greenhouse gasses?
> Trillions of dollars and Millions of lives will be lost if the "we should take action just in case" crowd wins. Some of the best estimates say that cutting CO2 by 50% will cost 1.5 BILLION LIVES by 2100. Are you so eager to pull the trigger?
What is the source of these extra deaths?
> We're talking about a BIG problem, and all I can see is +5 funny posts.
It seems to be human nature to respond to tragedy in part with humor.
Also, it seems to me that +funny is becoming far more common among Slashdot moderation. Presumably because the average quality of the stories and the average quality of the non-humor comments are falling.
> The union of the republican and christian sets minus their intersection is nonempty.
No, the Republican base - like that of any political party - is a coalition of various groups.
Likewise, Christianity includes a lot of social conservatives who presumably vote Republican, but also lots of people with progressive social views, who presumably don't.
> First of all, let me state that I am no expert in this, so please don't take me too seriously.
Sorry, but on Slashdot the less someone knows about a topic the more seriously they're taken.
> t doesn't have a large satelite (relatively speaking) to regulate its movement, and as a consequence it has much more variation from (its) year to year.
???
> Furthermore, it's also farther from the Sun, and the variation in distance caused by the eliptical movement also affects the amount of light it's getting (not just the inclination, as is the case for Earth).
FYI, the earth's inclination doesn't affect the amount of light it's getting. It just affects what proportion of it falls on each hemisphere at any given time. Half the earth is illuminated at all times, except during solar eclipses.
> Mock the pseudo-science of the global warming lobby, though, and watch your karma float gently away on a stream of negative moderation.
Tell us more about this global warming lobby.
Here are the big-picture rules of thumb:
It only pays to dick around with the little stuff in very special circumstances. And when hand optimizing you've got to consider issues such as pointer dereferences, register usage, cache misses, etc.
And perhaps most of all, what is the tradeoff for supercode vs. readability when it comes to delivering a bug-free application and maintaining it afterward.
There's a strong tendancy among programmers to be penny wise and dollar stupid.
"The buck stops just before it gets passed to me."
My solution is, at the end of a politician's term hold an election where the only two options are:
- grant him another term
- send him to prison
Maybe that would help guide their behavior.OTOH, shouldn't the voters who put a bad man in office go to prison for it?
It's actually about visual guidelines for icons, not for "the desktop".
I'd estimate that about 1% of my desktop is taken up by icons right now, though I do prefer nice icons to crappy ones.
A city-wide Thieves Guild is understandable, but a National Crime Center is just going too far.
You are so cyber-right about that!
> All year long, they have had no one at the helm for cybersecurity. It shouldn't surprise anyone. Let's take a job that many different agencies struggled to keep up with before, then add the requirement that they all reorganize into DHS, where instead of computer security being their number one focus, it is one of many concerns. I would bet the funding for DHS compsec is less than the total spent by the seperate agency committees. There is only so much you can save by pooling resources, and I would agrue it gets lost when you have to compete for attention with WMDs, IEDs and other serious physical security threats.
The DoHS was created by our politicians as a way of telling us that they were taking care of us after 9/11. Having a system that actually worked was a secondary consideration - if it was a consideration at all.
> > If the media weren't in Bush's pocket...
> Just curious....What color is the sky on your planet?
Heh. "Blue" sounds like a doubly appropriate answer.