Such authors will now have to register with the state watchdog Roskomnadzor, disclose their real identity and follow the same rules as journalists working in conventional state-registered mass media.
The restrictions include the demand to verify information before publishing it and abstain from releasing reports containing slander, hate speech, extremist calls or other banned information such as, for example, advice on suicide. Also, the law bans popular bloggers from using obscene language, drawing heavy criticism and mockery from the online crowd.
So.., now you're not legally allowed to lie to a large number of people or incite violence based on those lies. Gee. That's bad how? Might be nice to have something like that in the West, because right now it's perfectly legal for FOX News to outright lie to their viewers.
Russia, like any large nation the US hates, (see Venezuela) must defend against the standard CIA tactics used to de-stabilize governments and population bases through grass roots propaganda tactics. Forcing creeps and liars out of the game seems like a pretty good way to do this. You don't want to be forced out? Then follow the law and back up your claims with fact checking verification of what you are writing, don't use hate speech and don't incite violence. How hard is that?
There's a reason you're not allowed to yell "Fire" in a crowded theater, and this falls neatly beneath the same rubric.
Honestly, think of the gossips and cruel kids in school spreading lies in deliberate attempts to undermine healthy energies. Putin has the guts to whip the carpet out from under such types.
So now, once you reach 3000 readers, the Russian government says you are a news source with real pull and must start acting in a manner befitting such responsibility. Is 3000 the right magic number to have picked? I don't know, but it makes perfect sense to draw a line somewhere.
Of course, any law can be abused, but right now I don't see this as an abuse. I see it as a sensible measure as Russia is under increasing media attack by a truly psychopathic nation whose leadership is completely disconnected from objective reality, has a tail-spinning economy and seemingly bottomless war lust. Of course you have to take measures to protect your populace from that kind of sickness.
But naturally, this proactive move is being spun with wicked and/or childish glee in the West (depending on whether you are CIA or just ignorant and easily led).
Five minutes of reading about volcanic gas emisions and sun spots should convince you that your claims are false....
Except I wasn't talking about gas emissions from volcanoes.
I was talking about the basic frequency of volcanic and geologic activity. Let's just say "Earthquakes" so we can stay clear of preconceptions.
Earthquake frequency is steadilyrising, and this, among the other non-emission related items indicated, are tightly linked to the climate change events we are experiencing today.
People are clinging to the belief that climate change MUST be our fault, and therefore is also within our power to fix.
It isn't.
As for reading about sun spots. . , I suggest you do some.
Nobody seems to know for sure one way or the other, not the CEO who is still running tests to see, and not their detractors who can only speak in percentage certainties.
Prediction: When the question collapses into one state or the other, it will either turn out to be just an exotic classical computer, or it won't work at all. Because if it turned out to work as intended, then it would effectively prove that particles are both waves and particles and that we know what they are doing, and AFAIK that's against the rules.
But until then, the whole question is in a super-position.
What is usually going on in cases like this, (and they are far more frequent that you'd suspect) is that you're not going to look simply because you don't want to feel 'wrong' about something. In your mind, you honestly believe that if you don't see it, then you can maintain your illusion of reality. Most adults reach the emotional maturity of a five to eight year-old and then stop developing, and this is why such childish systems of management are so common among adults. This is not your fault. Society does this to you by design to keep you weak and ignorant.
It is the result of growing up in a hyper-competitive culture, in a school system which pits children against one another, causing them to build emotional and mental shields for protection.
I've done the work to move beyond that. As a result, I don't care about winning arguments. I care about knowing reality and sharing that knowledge with others who don't have it, such as yourself. I don't want your outrage and I certainly don't mind what you go away thinking.
But until you explore the world and the (easily) available material on a subject, it means your opinions on that subject are worth exactly nothing.
Those who profess wisdom while refusing to explore the world are insignificant. This is a sad truth. You can fix it, but it is a rare, rare thing when people actually do.
It takes a monumental amount of work to take down those walls and build new systems of spiritual management which will then allow the processing of actual knowledge.
I could be wrong, of course, but I'm probably not. In any case, please feel free to ignore and forget the preceding. This is for the benefit of others reading here as much as for your own.
Yeah, also you shouldn't let the fact that I don't use drugs alarm you. You're certain I'm full of nonsense, right? So there you go! You're fine. The things you ignore can't hurt you, right?
Secondly, 2) if you knew that was such a fucking weak piece of evidence, why didn't you explain it in your original post, thereby diverting everybody who instantly thinks "wow this guy is wrong" reading it? So you're wrong and dumb.
No. People who are not programmed to be offended by these ideas would quickly recognize what I was talking about.
The question you could benefit from asking yourself is "Why am I reacting so strongly to this?"
The answer is this, and it's worth taking a long moment to consider this, because it may be the only truly important and valuable thing you will hear all year: There is a predator in your mind which knows that it is being threatened by ideas which would make you stronger and it weaker. It's response is to pump anger into your mind which you will mistake for your own. This is how it controls you. This is how it has always controlled you.
You are a prisoner. When you understand that, then you will have a chance of moving forward.
So what I come away with from this is, "My words don't mean what they say, they mean something else! If you can't figure out what that is, it's your own fault."
No, I was actually being relatively clear; more so than is normal around here. The fact is, I was specifically addressing another person who was using the fact that people generally hold different definitions for many common wordings to evade an idea s/he was uncomfortable with. It wasn't that this person did not understand; s/he did not WANT to understand.
You are doing something similar; you are deliberately getting hung up on inconsequential differences in the stream of communication while avoiding the central ideas, which if they were truly hard for you to grasp, you could ask for clarifications on. But instead you attack nonsense.
Did it occur to you to actually check that before typing it? Cars only look expensive if you fail to account for cost-of-living and inflation-- they're cheaper now than ever before.
This is false in a couple of ways. I've covered this in my responses to others.
Yes. We've gone from having periodic famines to an having an obesity epidemic. Haven't you been paying attention?
We have rising standards of living around the world. That is how it worked out.
Oh dear.
If you think we are beyond famines, you will be having a very difficult awakening quite soon, I think. Our industrial revolution thus far has been a blip.
In any case, I wasn't being quite so literal, and I think you knew that. There is an economic crash still in progress, wars, homelessness and a general chaos wherein many millions of people are being squeezed ever more tightly. THAT is the end result of our activities in the industrialized West. It should have been a panacea, but instead people are losing their homes and going hungry.
Facts on the ground, right? THAT is how things are currently 'working' out, and this is all a direct result of our business practices wherein we treat people as though they are commodities.
You were talking about makework jobs inasmuch as the person you were responding to was talking about automation. Denying automation on the basis of creating/maintaining jobs is the definition of makework jobs. If you wanted to talk about something else, you should have made that clear, because nobody else was talking about that.
If you want to get hung up on definitions, then you will make no progress. I'm talking about something larger which does in fact make sense. Try to step outside the equation you have been taught, because that equation has resulted in the economic mess we are all living in at the moment. Clearly it doesn't work very well.
And tribalism is not the same as neighbourliness. Neighbourliness isn't exclusive. Tribalism is. Neighbourliness is also inherently limited in scope (people in New York are not the neighbours of people in California -- if they were, why wouldn't people in India be your neighbours?). Tribalism is not.
Sorry. I have no interest in diving into a nonsense semantic argument filled with revolving definitions. If you cannot understand the intent behind my words it is because you are being evasive. What good is that? It's the same as covering your eyes and singing loudly rather than learning. The old patterns have failed us. Why cling to them?
Typically a stay-at-home parents were still doing work; it's not a lifetime vacation.
Yes, and the work of parenting still needs to be done on top of the regular jobs mothers and fathers have to hold. The difference is that today there is less time and energy available for this exactly because both parents need to be working in order to earn a living income. This leads to exhaustion and a weakened family structure. I'm not sure what your point is.
Can you see how this plays into the economic structure? If people are having to work harder for the same end results, then the numerical price tag on a car is not a true reflection of its real cost.
Automation should result in a freeing up of time, but our time is tighter than ever. Clearly, the system is leaking wealth, and the point of that leak is the banking system with its usery/interest scam and the oligarchy which is milking the populace dry.
Sending jobs away without replacing them is just a symptom of a psychopathic system where people ignore the needs of the others in their community. That's a small piece of the puzzle, but it is very telling.
Try to grasp what I am saying here rather than seize on those definitions which do not happen to match your own. One can always find discrepancies among words.
That is useful data, but it doesn't really address the point of my post.
I suggest going back to read what I wrote, unless you were deliberately ignoring it and were simply offering these calculations for the sake of interest.
And people in other countries don't need to buy food? Shareholders don't need to buy food or save to pay their expenses (food again) after they retire? Lawnmower engine customers don't need to buy food? Mechanical engineers doing factory automation don't need to buy food?
Of course they do. What does any of that have to do with automation? Since you didn't supply a point with your questions, I'll do it for you:
Automation should make it easier to feed everybody. Except that's not how it worked out, is it? That means there's a leak in the system. That leak is two-fold; banks charging interest on money which cannot be paid back because not enough exists to pay it back, and oligarchical greed.
Together, these small improvements are the difference between a modern 21st century lifestyle and a 17th century subsistence farming lifestyle. Which one is better?
That's not a fair comparison. Industrialization isn't the problem. The problem is that it was perverted and corrupted so that the populace barely sees a fraction of the wealth which has been created. And that little fraction of a bone the psychopathic bosses toss us isn't even enough to prevent the coming food riots.
That's because psychopaths are not capable of forward thinking beyond their immediate desires.
Shipping jobs overseas without first ensuring alternative systems are in place to feed and employ the newly unemployed is an apt example of that kind of psychopathic greed.
"The Free Market" is just a lofty-sounding excuse for "Unfettered Fuck You Jack Greed".
Many people will object to that on grounds that it makes them sound as bad as they actually are. And that's the point. They are.
Um, actually, yes, they are. The car of today is cheaper (after adjusting for inflation), more efficient and more reliable then it has ever been.
"Um" yourself. You're just plain wrong.
1989 average car price was around $15,000
1999 average was around $21,000
2009 average is closer to $27,000
Adjusting for inflation doesn't cover that by a long shot. Why? Because the number of hours the average family needs to work has nearly doubled since the 80's.
In the 80's, it was quite possible for a middle class family to have a stay at home parent and still maintain a comfortable lifestyle. Today, that's a fantasy. And even with that, people *still* don't have enough left over income. That's the result of industry feeding on people, not the other way around.
Exactly. I couldn't have put it better myself. And intentionally perpetuating inefficiencies in order to create makework jobs is trying to make the population at large serve industry.
Don't put words into my mouth, please. I'm not talking about makework jobs. I'm talking about banks fucking off and stopping the practice of usery which is destroying us all. I'm talking about preventing the psychopathic executives, the top 5% of the population taking home 75% of the national income.
And also. . , there is nothing wrong with tribalism. Why? Because it's just another word for "Neighborliness". Taking care of the people in your immediate community is the *point* of this wonderful industry; to allow people more time and free energy to explore and grow in spirit.
If people far away need better lives, then what we need to do is leave them alone rather than poison them and corrupt their systems for our benefit.
The flaw in your argument is that people still have to pay their mortgage and buy food, etc. The labor, at the moment, is free now to starve, because the banks have enslaved everybody and the jobs are not within walking or driving distance. Is the labor supposed to move overseas?
If the automation process allowed people to work less, then you'd have a point, but they still need to put in as many hours to get paid in order to survive.
Put another way. . .
Are cars getting cheaper because labor costs have dropped? No, they aren't. Cars are getting more expensive. -In a balanced system, the cars would need to get cheaper in order to compensate for the fact that people are getting paid less.
The thing people are forgetting is that industry was invented to serve the population, not the other way around.
Here is an overview of Antarctic ice with references to studies. There are references to scientific papers on the subject there. Measurements indicate Antarctica is losing 100-300 Gt/year from the ice sheets and the rate is accelerating.
I like that site and I appreciate the link you've provided; Robert Way covers the arguments for and against in depth with lots of references and current dialogue.
The interesting thing, though, is that the state of current knowledge, especially regarding Antarctica and continental ice-sheet measurement is anything but straight-forward and anything but settled. The means for measuring yearly ice-melt versus ice-gain on the South pole is really rather sketchy and open to biased interpretation.
I was also fascinated to learn that in his rebut of the "It's the Sun" argument, it is noted that the Sun is indeed doing some strange things. This is consistent with the idea that the solar system itself is undergoing a change due to outside forces and that the Earth and other planets are similarly affected. The theory being that the dark star, or so-called, "Nemesis" is grounding the whole system, pulling energy out and resulting in numerous effects system-wide.
I think you're making a lot of assumptions about how easy it would be to bring together all of the data necessary to do what you want and as I said above what the NSIDC produces is probably a better representation of the situation anyway.
I think you're partly correct. I think my assumptions about NASA's databases are entirely reasonable given what we know about computer systems and the kinds of systems reported to be in use there, etc. But I must admit, I didn't realize that Antarctica was completely ice-covered with no edges of the actual land itself showing from beneath the ice sheets. I can understand why photographs of top-views wouldn't be terribly useful since there is nothing to measure in terms of retreat/expansion.
It's a shame that the other means of measurement and the results are so weak. It would be interesting to know what is actually happening. Reading some of the essays and discussions indicates a varying lack of objectivity and a fairly wide expanse of uncertainty (in spite of what Mister Way claims).
If someone comes out with a revolutionary new theory that explains the current climate better current theory then I'll accept that (after some research) but until such a time I accept the current science.
I agree. The revolutionary new theory isn't 100% there, but rather is a collection of ideas which make me scratch my head. James McCanney, (interviewed in the two links in my original post) offers some of those ideas. Though, he's also a bit of a crazy-man suggesting some other things which I find hard to swallow, but then many of history's most famous and productive scientists have shown similar qualities.
Other aspects are hard-to-ignore points of interest which suggest larger forces at work than simple climate change models. One of those points of interest I noted earlier is the story about Greenland seeing first Sunrise two days too early. The accepted theory being that the horizon line melted due to global warming, but this is patently ridiculous for several reasons, not the least of which being that sunrise isn't measured over ice sheet and which leaves us with the question of, "What the heck is going on?"
In any case, I think it might be prudent to wrap this up here.(?) If you agree, then I want to thank you for being intelligent and for offering a good resistance to my thinking, proving once again that Slashdot can be a fine knowledge crucible. I don't have all the answers, but I feel more informed and stronger in mind today than before we started to dialogue.
I clicked on your "comparison" link and got Arctic sea ice for January (and 2008 missing). The Arctic always freezes up in the winter and will for a long time. After 2 months of darkness it gets cold up there. Did you switch to September when the yearly minimum sea ice occurs and compare? Compare any September since 2007 to any September before 2000 and you see a marked difference.
My intent was to direct you to the search function itself, not those particular results. That's why I suggested you plug in your own parameters. You just got my last search results before I cut & pasted the address.
So anyway, yes, ice certainly freezes in the winter time. I didn't check September, just January and June, hot and cold six months apart, right? That gives a pretty good spread. And yes, 2007 was a hot year up North! In fact, it is the year most quoted on the web in comparative models, and I can see why that is if somebody is trying to make a strong point. The problem is that this is quite typical of the AGW hysteria. We don't get honest representations. Showing only 2007 provides a misleading representation, and that kind of reporting is half the problem.
It also makes me wonder if 1979 was an atypically cold year and what 1978 was like..?
But in spite of all that, there's no doubt in my mind; according to this particular data set, the Northern Ice caps are certainly showing a strong retreating trend to the tune of a couple million square kilometers over the last thirty years.
On a technical note it's important to get the terminology right so you don't confuse your audience. Ice sheets are the ice on Greenland and Antarctica (and a few smaller areas). Ice shelves are the tongues of glaciers floating on the ocean. What we're talking about is sea ice which is the ice that forms when the ocean itself freezes.
Noted.
As far as Antarctica, it is losing ice as well from the ice sheets and ice shelves.
Really? I'm having a difficult time verifying that one way or the other.
Antarctic sea ice has grown. There are a couple of factors that lead to that. The ozone hole over Antarctica causes stronger circumpolar winds that open more polynyas in the existing sea ice exposing more open water to the cold air. Increasing rain, snow and glacial run-off freshen the surface water reducing its density so it floats on top of the denser warmer water below so less heat is transmitted to the surface from below allowing the surface to get colder.
That's a lovely rationalization, but it doesn't answer my original question; Why only in Antarctica? Do fluid and saline dynamics only work south of the equator?
I'm not sure the satellites that the sea ice scientists use take actual photographs.
Then be sure. Weak assumptions of that sort are worse than useless. A flimsy excuse to stop asking important questions is in fact dangerous.
In any case, specifying, "Sea Ice Scientists" rather than, "Climate Change Scientists" is a little evasive. Please remember that the media tells us that thousands of scientists have come forward to assure us that Global Warming is a crisis issue requiring immediate government intervention. For changes of that magnitude, I do in fact think that we deserve all the evidence we can get, and that satellite photo-evidence would go a long way to supporting the claim. While you appear to be satisfied in coming up with weak, (and frankly, ignorant) assumptions for why obvious blank spots are not being addressed, I am not.
[...]They've got plenty of data to download without doing photos. [...] How do you want to pay for all of the effort it would take to put together the collection you want? There's no money for it in the grants for research they get. Their regular jobs aren't paying them to do that. What you want is not necessary to the science they do or it would alre
Jeezus. A little benefit of the doubt before hitting "Sumbit" would be nice. Rash assumptions make you look rather sanctimonious.
I don't own a car or a cell phone.
I was speaking to broad cultural trends in the West, where, if you'll notice, this story was produced by and for. It's about eBooks, for goodness sake. I think those consumers are going to be car and phone people, don't you?
A manipulation from Amazon would be nothing new, and this one costs them nothing and has the potential to create a profitable trend. Those Jonses and their Kindles.
But whatever. Let's take it at face value. . .
All those people who got an iPad thingy for Christmas are eager to try it out and never ever get bored with their cool new Buzz Lightyear.
So yeah, they're going to buy media, because that's the whole premise of the device. You don't get a Buzz Lightyear and *not* click his wings open a bunch of times.
And the same way everybody had to replace their album collections with CDs, there is a market spike as new media is adopted.
The question is. . . Will it stick, or is this just another digital watch?
Well, let's consider. . , all those iPads were bought at around the same time. But their batteries will wear out according to usage, and when your digital book stops holding a charge for long enough. . , do you replace it? Was the experience good enough for you? Can you port all your purchased 'books' over to a new reader easily? Do you have to stay brand-loyal just to read your stuff? Will there be law-suits forcing personal library porting because Apple is the new anti-competitive demon? Will people even care? (Do you still have all the same crap you downloaded from Napster or have you moved on, secure in the knowledge that all that old music is basically free any time you want it? Or are you willing to pay a buck to play it on your iPod?)
Will owning an eReader of some sort be like owning a car? Or a phone? Considered a basic necessity just so you can access your stuff?
Maybe.
I think eReaders are probably here to stay, and they will probably be a viable income source for publishers, but I wouldn't let all that limelight blind you. Paper ain't going away. It's just going to have to share.
Remember: Theater never died. There's a half dozen full stages within a ten minute walk from my place, and they're all booked regularly.
Want to learn more about Arctic sea ice, look here.
Ah! Now that site is more what I'm talking about.
And, I note, a comparison of the images doesn't exactly hold up to the AGW claims, do they?
Plug in data from the North and South poles for both the Summer and Winter across the full time spectrum from 1979 to 2010.
The ice seems to morph and breathe. I note that in the Summer in the North, there appears to be a greater degree of melt than in 1979, but that in the Winter today, the ice sheets are actually more extensive in some areas than they were back then. Overall, however, ice sheet in square kilometers is certainly less extensive today.
But on the South pole, and here's where it gets interesting, nothing much seems to have changed.
So, is there climate change? Obviously. That's not in question, but those changes behave oddly. Why would green house gasses only affect the North pole?
Now, there are other theories which fit the observations, are less sound-bite simplistic, which are not politically motivated, which are far more compelling to people who know how to read and think objectively, -and which don't have anything to do with pollution.
And anyway, I still wanted to see some photographs! Graphics are okay, but they're still just graphics.
Should some scientist take the time to patch together multiple photos (assuming they even exist) just for you?
These satellites are flying on public funds, and Yes, of course those photos exist. That's what those satellites DO. They were put in orbit for the express purpose of taking pictures. You make it sound as though organizing those pictures is somehow considered by scientists to be too much trouble. That's silly.
I'd just like to see them organized by date so that I can look at them. That's all. It's not like these satellites don't fly over the same land masses every day as a basic function of their existence.
To be fair, there are some efforts to provide this information, though it is still frustrating to go through, (and that particular collection only documents one year).
Scientists analyze and quantify those photographs in great detail. Once you have quantified the detail you can compare different years far more easily than you can from simple photographs. I don't assume the scientific community has all the power but I don't discount what they have to say either unless given a good reason to.
That's a nice assumption. But before I'm willing to accept it, I'd like to see the photographs myself. That's all.
Their absence is very much in keeping with other aspects of AGW which make it questionable.
Most of these acts of terror are manipulated from the ground up by various secret services precisely so the ignorant masses will have the very reactions you are experiencing.
When are people going to figure this stuff out and stop being so easily fooled?
Do some reading by ex-secret agents to see just to what crazy lengths agencies will go to in order to manipulate the world. There is NOTHING they won't stoop to. No act is too ridiculous. If it is possible to do, (and it usually is with their virtually bottomless budgets), and if it can advantage them in the field of population control and manipulation, then they absolutely WILL do it.
Eyeballing satellite images is not science without a much deeper analysis. Comparison photos are made for the edification of people who aren't knowledgeable enough to understand the deeper analysis.
Don't make that common and gross error whereby one assumes the scientific community has all the power. Don't discount your own senses and your own powers of reason. And don't forget that scientists are people too; many of them are no more wise, brave or insightful than the average university graduate. I know a lot of very well-educated people who, in spite of having absorbed a great deal of data, remain hopelessly naive and soft-minded in many respects. True insight comes from being able to connect patterns within data and to then map those observations onto the world beyond the safe borders of official culture. Wisdom is a very different animal than that of raw fact recall.
Science starts with our senses, and our eyes are extremely useful measurement tools. I use mine all the time to work out how my world works, and they do a great job.
Deeper analysis might involve using a ruler and overlays of photographs coupled with observations in different spectrum bandwidths and different angles of view. I'd love to have that information, but I don't. And that's my point.
We don't even have the starting materials to work from. We don't even have two photographs to compare.
Slashdot Mirror
From RT:
http://rt.com/politics/177248-...
So.., now you're not legally allowed to lie to a large number of people or incite violence based on those lies. Gee. That's bad how? Might be nice to have something like that in the West, because right now it's perfectly legal for FOX News to outright lie to their viewers.
Russia, like any large nation the US hates, (see Venezuela) must defend against the standard CIA tactics used to de-stabilize governments and population bases through grass roots propaganda tactics. Forcing creeps and liars out of the game seems like a pretty good way to do this. You don't want to be forced out? Then follow the law and back up your claims with fact checking verification of what you are writing, don't use hate speech and don't incite violence. How hard is that?
There's a reason you're not allowed to yell "Fire" in a crowded theater, and this falls neatly beneath the same rubric.
Honestly, think of the gossips and cruel kids in school spreading lies in deliberate attempts to undermine healthy energies. Putin has the guts to whip the carpet out from under such types.
So now, once you reach 3000 readers, the Russian government says you are a news source with real pull and must start acting in a manner befitting such responsibility. Is 3000 the right magic number to have picked? I don't know, but it makes perfect sense to draw a line somewhere.
Of course, any law can be abused, but right now I don't see this as an abuse. I see it as a sensible measure as Russia is under increasing media attack by a truly psychopathic nation whose leadership is completely disconnected from objective reality, has a tail-spinning economy and seemingly bottomless war lust. Of course you have to take measures to protect your populace from that kind of sickness.
But naturally, this proactive move is being spun with wicked and/or childish glee in the West (depending on whether you are CIA or just ignorant and easily led).
This story has half the number of comments than the one about code after it, despite it being slightly older.
Just shows you don't know how to look at data.
Sweet Jesus, it's true.
And he even brought up that 97% turkey.
AGW True Believers are the quintessential "Correlation != Causation" offenders.
Five minutes of reading about volcanic gas emisions and sun spots should convince you that your claims are false....
Except I wasn't talking about gas emissions from volcanoes.
I was talking about the basic frequency of volcanic and geologic activity. Let's just say "Earthquakes" so we can stay clear of preconceptions.
Earthquake frequency is steadily rising, and this, among the other non-emission related items indicated, are tightly linked to the climate change events we are experiencing today.
People are clinging to the belief that climate change MUST be our fault, and therefore is also within our power to fix.
It isn't.
As for reading about sun spots. . , I suggest you do some.
It sure seems to be a Quantum Computer to me.
It either works or it doesn't.
Nobody seems to know for sure one way or the other, not the CEO who is still running tests to see, and not their detractors who can only speak in percentage certainties.
Prediction: When the question collapses into one state or the other, it will either turn out to be just an exotic classical computer, or it won't work at all. Because if it turned out to work as intended, then it would effectively prove that particles are both waves and particles and that we know what they are doing, and AFAIK that's against the rules.
But until then, the whole question is in a super-position.
You're welcome.
Nonsense.
What is usually going on in cases like this, (and they are far more frequent that you'd suspect) is that you're not going to look simply because you don't want to feel 'wrong' about something. In your mind, you honestly believe that if you don't see it, then you can maintain your illusion of reality. Most adults reach the emotional maturity of a five to eight year-old and then stop developing, and this is why such childish systems of management are so common among adults. This is not your fault. Society does this to you by design to keep you weak and ignorant.
It is the result of growing up in a hyper-competitive culture, in a school system which pits children against one another, causing them to build emotional and mental shields for protection.
I've done the work to move beyond that. As a result, I don't care about winning arguments. I care about knowing reality and sharing that knowledge with others who don't have it, such as yourself. I don't want your outrage and I certainly don't mind what you go away thinking.
But until you explore the world and the (easily) available material on a subject, it means your opinions on that subject are worth exactly nothing.
Those who profess wisdom while refusing to explore the world are insignificant. This is a sad truth. You can fix it, but it is a rare, rare thing when people actually do.
It takes a monumental amount of work to take down those walls and build new systems of spiritual management which will then allow the processing of actual knowledge.
I could be wrong, of course, but I'm probably not. In any case, please feel free to ignore and forget the preceding. This is for the benefit of others reading here as much as for your own.
Good luck.
Well put.
I see. All of the advances in the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries are "a blip".
Now you're catching on.
Look around you, look at the world. We're presently experiencing the tail end. Enjoy it while it lasts. These are the good times.
-FL
What the holy fuck are you talking about?
Don't worry about that. Forget I said anything.
Dude, the pot's made you paranoid.
Yeah, also you shouldn't let the fact that I don't use drugs alarm you. You're certain I'm full of nonsense, right? So there you go! You're fine. The things you ignore can't hurt you, right?
-FL
Secondly, 2) if you knew that was such a fucking weak piece of evidence, why didn't you explain it in your original post, thereby diverting everybody who instantly thinks "wow this guy is wrong" reading it? So you're wrong and dumb.
No. People who are not programmed to be offended by these ideas would quickly recognize what I was talking about.
The question you could benefit from asking yourself is "Why am I reacting so strongly to this?"
The answer is this, and it's worth taking a long moment to consider this, because it may be the only truly important and valuable thing you will hear all year: There is a predator in your mind which knows that it is being threatened by ideas which would make you stronger and it weaker. It's response is to pump anger into your mind which you will mistake for your own. This is how it controls you. This is how it has always controlled you.
You are a prisoner. When you understand that, then you will have a chance of moving forward.
-FL
So what I come away with from this is, "My words don't mean what they say, they mean something else! If you can't figure out what that is, it's your own fault."
No, I was actually being relatively clear; more so than is normal around here. The fact is, I was specifically addressing another person who was using the fact that people generally hold different definitions for many common wordings to evade an idea s/he was uncomfortable with. It wasn't that this person did not understand; s/he did not WANT to understand.
You are doing something similar; you are deliberately getting hung up on inconsequential differences in the stream of communication while avoiding the central ideas, which if they were truly hard for you to grasp, you could ask for clarifications on. But instead you attack nonsense.
-FL
Did it occur to you to actually check that before typing it? Cars only look expensive if you fail to account for cost-of-living and inflation-- they're cheaper now than ever before.
This is false in a couple of ways. I've covered this in my responses to others.
-FL
Yes. We've gone from having periodic famines to an having an obesity epidemic. Haven't you been paying attention?
We have rising standards of living around the world. That is how it worked out.
Oh dear.
If you think we are beyond famines, you will be having a very difficult awakening quite soon, I think. Our industrial revolution thus far has been a blip.
In any case, I wasn't being quite so literal, and I think you knew that. There is an economic crash still in progress, wars, homelessness and a general chaos wherein many millions of people are being squeezed ever more tightly. THAT is the end result of our activities in the industrialized West. It should have been a panacea, but instead people are losing their homes and going hungry.
Facts on the ground, right? THAT is how things are currently 'working' out, and this is all a direct result of our business practices wherein we treat people as though they are commodities.
-FL
You were talking about makework jobs inasmuch as the person you were responding to was talking about automation. Denying automation on the basis of creating/maintaining jobs is the definition of makework jobs. If you wanted to talk about something else, you should have made that clear, because nobody else was talking about that.
If you want to get hung up on definitions, then you will make no progress. I'm talking about something larger which does in fact make sense. Try to step outside the equation you have been taught, because that equation has resulted in the economic mess we are all living in at the moment. Clearly it doesn't work very well.
And tribalism is not the same as neighbourliness. Neighbourliness isn't exclusive. Tribalism is. Neighbourliness is also inherently limited in scope (people in New York are not the neighbours of people in California -- if they were, why wouldn't people in India be your neighbours?). Tribalism is not.
Sorry. I have no interest in diving into a nonsense semantic argument filled with revolving definitions. If you cannot understand the intent behind my words it is because you are being evasive. What good is that? It's the same as covering your eyes and singing loudly rather than learning. The old patterns have failed us. Why cling to them?
Typically a stay-at-home parents were still doing work; it's not a lifetime vacation.
Yes, and the work of parenting still needs to be done on top of the regular jobs mothers and fathers have to hold. The difference is that today there is less time and energy available for this exactly because both parents need to be working in order to earn a living income. This leads to exhaustion and a weakened family structure. I'm not sure what your point is.
Can you see how this plays into the economic structure? If people are having to work harder for the same end results, then the numerical price tag on a car is not a true reflection of its real cost.
Automation should result in a freeing up of time, but our time is tighter than ever. Clearly, the system is leaking wealth, and the point of that leak is the banking system with its usery/interest scam and the oligarchy which is milking the populace dry.
Sending jobs away without replacing them is just a symptom of a psychopathic system where people ignore the needs of the others in their community. That's a small piece of the puzzle, but it is very telling.
Try to grasp what I am saying here rather than seize on those definitions which do not happen to match your own. One can always find discrepancies among words.
-FL
That is useful data, but it doesn't really address the point of my post.
I suggest going back to read what I wrote, unless you were deliberately ignoring it and were simply offering these calculations for the sake of interest.
-FL
And people in other countries don't need to buy food? Shareholders don't need to buy food or save to pay their expenses (food again) after they retire? Lawnmower engine customers don't need to buy food? Mechanical engineers doing factory automation don't need to buy food?
Of course they do. What does any of that have to do with automation? Since you didn't supply a point with your questions, I'll do it for you:
Automation should make it easier to feed everybody. Except that's not how it worked out, is it? That means there's a leak in the system. That leak is two-fold; banks charging interest on money which cannot be paid back because not enough exists to pay it back, and oligarchical greed.
Together, these small improvements are the difference between a modern 21st century lifestyle and a 17th century subsistence farming lifestyle. Which one is better?
That's not a fair comparison. Industrialization isn't the problem. The problem is that it was perverted and corrupted so that the populace barely sees a fraction of the wealth which has been created. And that little fraction of a bone the psychopathic bosses toss us isn't even enough to prevent the coming food riots.
That's because psychopaths are not capable of forward thinking beyond their immediate desires.
Shipping jobs overseas without first ensuring alternative systems are in place to feed and employ the newly unemployed is an apt example of that kind of psychopathic greed.
"The Free Market" is just a lofty-sounding excuse for "Unfettered Fuck You Jack Greed".
Many people will object to that on grounds that it makes them sound as bad as they actually are. And that's the point. They are.
-FL
Um, actually, yes, they are. The car of today is cheaper (after adjusting for inflation), more efficient and more reliable then it has ever been.
"Um" yourself. You're just plain wrong.
1989 average car price was around $15,000
1999 average was around $21,000
2009 average is closer to $27,000
Adjusting for inflation doesn't cover that by a long shot. Why? Because the number of hours the average family needs to work has nearly doubled since the 80's.
In the 80's, it was quite possible for a middle class family to have a stay at home parent and still maintain a comfortable lifestyle. Today, that's a fantasy. And even with that, people *still* don't have enough left over income. That's the result of industry feeding on people, not the other way around.
Exactly. I couldn't have put it better myself. And intentionally perpetuating inefficiencies in order to create makework jobs is trying to make the population at large serve industry.
Don't put words into my mouth, please. I'm not talking about makework jobs. I'm talking about banks fucking off and stopping the practice of usery which is destroying us all. I'm talking about preventing the psychopathic executives, the top 5% of the population taking home 75% of the national income.
And also. . , there is nothing wrong with tribalism. Why? Because it's just another word for "Neighborliness". Taking care of the people in your immediate community is the *point* of this wonderful industry; to allow people more time and free energy to explore and grow in spirit.
If people far away need better lives, then what we need to do is leave them alone rather than poison them and corrupt their systems for our benefit.
-FL
The flaw in your argument is that people still have to pay their mortgage and buy food, etc. The labor, at the moment, is free now to starve, because the banks have enslaved everybody and the jobs are not within walking or driving distance. Is the labor supposed to move overseas?
If the automation process allowed people to work less, then you'd have a point, but they still need to put in as many hours to get paid in order to survive.
Put another way. . .
Are cars getting cheaper because labor costs have dropped? No, they aren't. Cars are getting more expensive. -In a balanced system, the cars would need to get cheaper in order to compensate for the fact that people are getting paid less.
The thing people are forgetting is that industry was invented to serve the population, not the other way around.
-FL
Here is an overview of Antarctic ice with references to studies. There are references to scientific papers on the subject there. Measurements indicate Antarctica is losing 100-300 Gt/year from the ice sheets and the rate is accelerating.
I like that site and I appreciate the link you've provided; Robert Way covers the arguments for and against in depth with lots of references and current dialogue.
The interesting thing, though, is that the state of current knowledge, especially regarding Antarctica and continental ice-sheet measurement is anything but straight-forward and anything but settled. The means for measuring yearly ice-melt versus ice-gain on the South pole is really rather sketchy and open to biased interpretation.
I was also fascinated to learn that in his rebut of the "It's the Sun" argument, it is noted that the Sun is indeed doing some strange things. This is consistent with the idea that the solar system itself is undergoing a change due to outside forces and that the Earth and other planets are similarly affected. The theory being that the dark star, or so-called, "Nemesis" is grounding the whole system, pulling energy out and resulting in numerous effects system-wide.
I think you're making a lot of assumptions about how easy it would be to bring together all of the data necessary to do what you want and as I said above what the NSIDC produces is probably a better representation of the situation anyway.
I think you're partly correct. I think my assumptions about NASA's databases are entirely reasonable given what we know about computer systems and the kinds of systems reported to be in use there, etc. But I must admit, I didn't realize that Antarctica was completely ice-covered with no edges of the actual land itself showing from beneath the ice sheets. I can understand why photographs of top-views wouldn't be terribly useful since there is nothing to measure in terms of retreat/expansion.
It's a shame that the other means of measurement and the results are so weak. It would be interesting to know what is actually happening. Reading some of the essays and discussions indicates a varying lack of objectivity and a fairly wide expanse of uncertainty (in spite of what Mister Way claims).
If someone comes out with a revolutionary new theory that explains the current climate better current theory then I'll accept that (after some research) but until such a time I accept the current science.
I agree. The revolutionary new theory isn't 100% there, but rather is a collection of ideas which make me scratch my head. James McCanney, (interviewed in the two links in my original post) offers some of those ideas. Though, he's also a bit of a crazy-man suggesting some other things which I find hard to swallow, but then many of history's most famous and productive scientists have shown similar qualities.
Other aspects are hard-to-ignore points of interest which suggest larger forces at work than simple climate change models. One of those points of interest I noted earlier is the story about Greenland seeing first Sunrise two days too early. The accepted theory being that the horizon line melted due to global warming, but this is patently ridiculous for several reasons, not the least of which being that sunrise isn't measured over ice sheet and which leaves us with the question of, "What the heck is going on?"
In any case, I think it might be prudent to wrap this up here.(?) If you agree, then I want to thank you for being intelligent and for offering a good resistance to my thinking, proving once again that Slashdot can be a fine knowledge crucible. I don't have all the answers, but I feel more informed and stronger in mind today than before we started to dialogue.
Cheers!
-FL
I clicked on your "comparison" link and got Arctic sea ice for January (and 2008 missing). The Arctic always freezes up in the winter and will for a long time. After 2 months of darkness it gets cold up there. Did you switch to September when the yearly minimum sea ice occurs and compare? Compare any September since 2007 to any September before 2000 and you see a marked difference.
My intent was to direct you to the search function itself, not those particular results. That's why I suggested you plug in your own parameters. You just got my last search results before I cut & pasted the address.
So anyway, yes, ice certainly freezes in the winter time. I didn't check September, just January and June, hot and cold six months apart, right? That gives a pretty good spread. And yes, 2007 was a hot year up North! In fact, it is the year most quoted on the web in comparative models, and I can see why that is if somebody is trying to make a strong point. The problem is that this is quite typical of the AGW hysteria. We don't get honest representations. Showing only 2007 provides a misleading representation, and that kind of reporting is half the problem.
It also makes me wonder if 1979 was an atypically cold year and what 1978 was like..?
But in spite of all that, there's no doubt in my mind; according to this particular data set, the Northern Ice caps are certainly showing a strong retreating trend to the tune of a couple million square kilometers over the last thirty years.
On a technical note it's important to get the terminology right so you don't confuse your audience. Ice sheets are the ice on Greenland and Antarctica (and a few smaller areas). Ice shelves are the tongues of glaciers floating on the ocean. What we're talking about is sea ice which is the ice that forms when the ocean itself freezes.
Noted.
As far as Antarctica, it is losing ice as well from the ice sheets and ice shelves.
Really? I'm having a difficult time verifying that one way or the other.
Antarctic sea ice has grown. There are a couple of factors that lead to that. The ozone hole over Antarctica causes stronger circumpolar winds that open more polynyas in the existing sea ice exposing more open water to the cold air. Increasing rain, snow and glacial run-off freshen the surface water reducing its density so it floats on top of the denser warmer water below so less heat is transmitted to the surface from below allowing the surface to get colder.
That's a lovely rationalization, but it doesn't answer my original question; Why only in Antarctica? Do fluid and saline dynamics only work south of the equator?
I'm not sure the satellites that the sea ice scientists use take actual photographs.
Then be sure. Weak assumptions of that sort are worse than useless. A flimsy excuse to stop asking important questions is in fact dangerous.
In any case, specifying, "Sea Ice Scientists" rather than, "Climate Change Scientists" is a little evasive. Please remember that the media tells us that thousands of scientists have come forward to assure us that Global Warming is a crisis issue requiring immediate government intervention. For changes of that magnitude, I do in fact think that we deserve all the evidence we can get, and that satellite photo-evidence would go a long way to supporting the claim. While you appear to be satisfied in coming up with weak, (and frankly, ignorant) assumptions for why obvious blank spots are not being addressed, I am not.
[...]They've got plenty of data to download without doing photos. [...] How do you want to pay for all of the effort it would take to put together the collection you want? There's no money for it in the grants for research they get. Their regular jobs aren't paying them to do that. What you want is not necessary to the science they do or it would alre
Jeezus. A little benefit of the doubt before hitting "Sumbit" would be nice. Rash assumptions make you look rather sanctimonious.
I don't own a car or a cell phone.
I was speaking to broad cultural trends in the West, where, if you'll notice, this story was produced by and for. It's about eBooks, for goodness sake. I think those consumers are going to be car and phone people, don't you?
-FL
Is this real?
A manipulation from Amazon would be nothing new, and this one costs them nothing and has the potential to create a profitable trend. Those Jonses and their Kindles.
But whatever. Let's take it at face value. . .
All those people who got an iPad thingy for Christmas are eager to try it out and never ever get bored with their cool new Buzz Lightyear.
So yeah, they're going to buy media, because that's the whole premise of the device. You don't get a Buzz Lightyear and *not* click his wings open a bunch of times.
And the same way everybody had to replace their album collections with CDs, there is a market spike as new media is adopted.
The question is. . . Will it stick, or is this just another digital watch?
Well, let's consider. . , all those iPads were bought at around the same time. But their batteries will wear out according to usage, and when your digital book stops holding a charge for long enough. . , do you replace it? Was the experience good enough for you? Can you port all your purchased 'books' over to a new reader easily? Do you have to stay brand-loyal just to read your stuff? Will there be law-suits forcing personal library porting because Apple is the new anti-competitive demon? Will people even care? (Do you still have all the same crap you downloaded from Napster or have you moved on, secure in the knowledge that all that old music is basically free any time you want it? Or are you willing to pay a buck to play it on your iPod?)
Will owning an eReader of some sort be like owning a car? Or a phone? Considered a basic necessity just so you can access your stuff?
Maybe.
I think eReaders are probably here to stay, and they will probably be a viable income source for publishers, but I wouldn't let all that limelight blind you. Paper ain't going away. It's just going to have to share.
Remember: Theater never died. There's a half dozen full stages within a ten minute walk from my place, and they're all booked regularly.
-FL
Want to learn more about Arctic sea ice, look here.
Ah! Now that site is more what I'm talking about.
And, I note, a comparison of the images doesn't exactly hold up to the AGW claims, do they?
Plug in data from the North and South poles for both the Summer and Winter across the full time spectrum from 1979 to 2010.
The ice seems to morph and breathe. I note that in the Summer in the North, there appears to be a greater degree of melt than in 1979, but that in the Winter today, the ice sheets are actually more extensive in some areas than they were back then. Overall, however, ice sheet in square kilometers is certainly less extensive today.
But on the South pole, and here's where it gets interesting, nothing much seems to have changed.
So, is there climate change? Obviously. That's not in question, but those changes behave oddly. Why would green house gasses only affect the North pole?
Now, there are other theories which fit the observations, are less sound-bite simplistic, which are not politically motivated, which are far more compelling to people who know how to read and think objectively, -and which don't have anything to do with pollution.
And anyway, I still wanted to see some photographs! Graphics are okay, but they're still just graphics.
Should some scientist take the time to patch together multiple photos (assuming they even exist) just for you?
These satellites are flying on public funds, and Yes, of course those photos exist. That's what those satellites DO. They were put in orbit for the express purpose of taking pictures. You make it sound as though organizing those pictures is somehow considered by scientists to be too much trouble. That's silly.
And there are some spectacular images available!
I'd just like to see them organized by date so that I can look at them. That's all. It's not like these satellites don't fly over the same land masses every day as a basic function of their existence.
To be fair, there are some efforts to provide this information, though it is still frustrating to go through, (and that particular collection only documents one year).
-FL
Scientists analyze and quantify those photographs in great detail. Once you have quantified the detail you can compare different years far more easily than you can from simple photographs. I don't assume the scientific community has all the power but I don't discount what they have to say either unless given a good reason to.
That's a nice assumption. But before I'm willing to accept it, I'd like to see the photographs myself. That's all.
Their absence is very much in keeping with other aspects of AGW which make it questionable.
-FL
Most of these acts of terror are manipulated from the ground up by various secret services precisely so the ignorant masses will have the very reactions you are experiencing.
When are people going to figure this stuff out and stop being so easily fooled?
Do some reading by ex-secret agents to see just to what crazy lengths agencies will go to in order to manipulate the world. There is NOTHING they won't stoop to. No act is too ridiculous. If it is possible to do, (and it usually is with their virtually bottomless budgets), and if it can advantage them in the field of population control and manipulation, then they absolutely WILL do it.
https://wikispooks.com/w/images/9/99/The_Secret_Team.pdf
-FL
Eyeballing satellite images is not science without a much deeper analysis. Comparison photos are made for the edification of people who aren't knowledgeable enough to understand the deeper analysis.
Don't make that common and gross error whereby one assumes the scientific community has all the power. Don't discount your own senses and your own powers of reason. And don't forget that scientists are people too; many of them are no more wise, brave or insightful than the average university graduate. I know a lot of very well-educated people who, in spite of having absorbed a great deal of data, remain hopelessly naive and soft-minded in many respects. True insight comes from being able to connect patterns within data and to then map those observations onto the world beyond the safe borders of official culture. Wisdom is a very different animal than that of raw fact recall.
Science starts with our senses, and our eyes are extremely useful measurement tools. I use mine all the time to work out how my world works, and they do a great job.
Deeper analysis might involve using a ruler and overlays of photographs coupled with observations in different spectrum bandwidths and different angles of view. I'd love to have that information, but I don't. And that's my point.
We don't even have the starting materials to work from. We don't even have two photographs to compare.
-FL