Well according to the article after Europe discovered the Americas, a series of epidemics swept the Americas and may have killed close to 90% of the Native Americans. This allowed trees to grow again on land that was cleared for farmland, thus taking up some of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and the researchers behind this paper think that's what caused a drop in the level of CO2 that shows up at about the same time in the ice core records. That reduction in CO2 would have had a small cooling effect, although as Mann points out in the article, there were probably other events at the same time that had a larger role in the LIA.
The first thing I thought upon seeing the results was "So they chose 100 malicious URLs from the IE9 black list and it managed to block 93% of them". Good to see Microsoft is working on their Kwality Engneerng. The results are so lopsided that you just know there's shenanigans going on.
the absolute worst people are being chosen to represent them in news interviews
That's certainly possible. After all the news media is owned by the 1%, and we know from recent history that Rupert tells his news directors what they can and can't show. I'm not sure how different the other networks would be.
Occupy This and That are not the 99% and they are not like us.
I think you're wrong. I think they're more like you than you realize. They want the same things that you want, they've just realized that the game is rigged, and you haven't yet. They're fighting for your right to government by the people, for the people and of the people too. I think they're more like you than you may ever understand.
That would be the 1% that controls most of the media again, after all you won't find any of them in a union. They want people to hate unions because when the "peons" stand together then they actually get some power, and that's just not acceptable.
As I understand, most of the extremely wealthy get their new wealth from investments. Were does that wealth come from? Stocks, bonds and derivatives. For the most part, the trade in each of these instruments does nothing for the real economy. When you buy a stock the previous owner gets the money, not the company (except in the rare case where new stock is issued). Increasingly new wealth generation is becoming less tied to real work and based more to financial games.
If the money were instead being invested in innovative new business, then where are they? The U.S. currently has historically low taxes. There have been several rounds of tax cuts that went disproportionately to the extremely wealthy since 2008. Where are all the companies that should have created? The jobs? Where is the money going? The answer is nowhere. The money is being invested in stock markets and credit default swaps and other financial games because wealth can be generated much faster by investing in phantoms than by investing in real companies that create real jobs and real economic output.
The Tea Party has shown that if you actually have enough support you can swamp the primaries are put your own candidates in. If they actually had support from 99% of Americans they could put anyone they wanted into office. They actually don't even need that much, thanks to the much lower participation in primaries, they can drag along the usual suspects who vote based on party loyalty by simply usurping the primaries. It'd be mildly amusing to see them swamp both the Republican and Democratic primaries to put their own people running for both parties.
Unless, of course, the guy who maintains the guns is in the mob. After all, all you need is one turncoat who can turn the defenses off. I remember hearing that the emperors of Rome were rarely killed by the mob, instead they were usually killed by their own bodyguards. It's an important lesson to consider.
Sometimes the problem is more complicated than that. For instance, while the approval of congress is somewhere around 10%, approval ratings for the voter's own congressman is often closer to 50%. The U.S. government system itself is broken because it contains far too many easily abused rules. Each congressman is encouraged by the system to try and bring as much of the federal bacon home with him as possible. The entire federal government often appears as nothing more than the tragedy of the commons in action. So while people can see how all of the representatives aren't working well together, a majority of people don't see how their own representative contributes to that problem. That's before even considering partisan politics, gerrymandering, and all of the other ways that the American people have systematically been robbed of having their vote actually count for something.
It can probably be fixed, but it won't happen without a popular uprising so big that keeping the status quo looks riskier than the alternatives.
Conclusion does not follow. Corporations are owned by citizens of some country, hence, they inherit the rights of those owners. Further, even in cases where owners are foreign, there's reciprocity which typically requires one to respect the rights of foreigners so that their citizens have their ownership rights respected in that foreign country.
I reach a different conclusion from you. If the owners and employees of the corporations are citizens and it already has a host of voices, I don't see why money personified (a corporation) should get an additional voice.
If you tax the rich more, where do you think that money would have gone? It would have been spent, reinvested, etc, which keeps capitalism going.
That's where it would go in theory, and like communism, it only works that way in theory. In practice, most of that money is being used to play the stock market, derivative option roulette, or currency speculation or any of the other games that the extremely rich play. None of those games do anything to keep the economy running.
That's actually a very poor description of the protesters, it's obviously biased, self-serving and self-righteous. None of which are good signs for accuracy or insight.
If the OpenSource method were more profitable then more people would do it.
That doesn't follow. The old method is established and still profitable. Few people are going to be willing to risk their current profits on a model that few people are using. There would have to be uncontested evidence that the new method was better in all of the respects that matter before the majority of people with money in the game would switch. Change can take a long time to build up.
On the other hand, I don't know that the open content method would be more profitable. The point wasn't that you could make more money that way, but that the "artists" could make sufficient money that way to compensate them. They're the reason copyright exists, not the corporate hydras that currently control almost all of the copyright material produced and systematically cheat most of the actors, writers and musicians of their fair share of the profits.
That's bad advice, you never take the counter-offer. Once you've admitted to considering an offer from another company you are now branded disloyal. Your boss will make sure he has someone else who can do your job ready for when you leave and if you don't leave soon enough they'll get tired of waiting and kick you out.
It's a bad risk to take because it usually means you end up with neither job. It's better to explain to the new company that your current company is at a critical juncture and find out how much leeway you have on starting date, if they can give you an extra week or two you can offer that to your current company. But make it clear that your are doing this because you are awesome. If they offer you more money to stay it's either because they're afraid to lose you right now, or because they intentionally underpaid you previously. Eitehr way it's not good.
I'm afraid it is stealing... and your system of doing nothing is analogous to replacing the police with nothing.
No he's right. It's infringement, if that doesn't sound like a real crime, that's because it's not. It's infringement of a government granted monopoly. Do you feel diminished and victimized because I have quoted you? Why not? According to your position I have "stolen" your words and have committed a property crime.
Getting rid of copyright would change many things and hurt many people and benefit many others. It would cause an immediate stock market crash as stock in the content companies would become worthless. TV Stations would go bankrupt and there would be massive street protests in California and other locations where people who make their money from producing copyright works protested a change they fear. You are right that it likely won't happen anytime soon, however, a gradual scaling back of the laws could eventually lead to situation where it would be less disruptive to remove them.
Plus it's "patents" not "patients", I don't usually complaint about spelling, but you've spelled it incorrectly the same way in at least 3 different posts now. Patients are sick people, patents are limited time legal monopolies on an implementation of an idea.
I'm not sure why you should have to pay for any content. The Open Source world has shown that you can actually make significant amounts of money by giving away the content and selling services. Of course, that would fundamentally change the nature of how business is conducted. For instance, we'd see a lot more "sponsored" content and the current commercial-laden TV system would die out. I'm not sure exactly how the shakeout would end, but some things wouldn't change much. Most musicians would still make the majority of their income from concerts. The few top-level mega-stars would make slightly less money, and the RIAA would disappear. The Hollywood movie studio system would likely collapse into the theater system so that both the theaters and the studios are owned by the same company (thus limiting access to copies of the movie through physical means rather than copyright). Potentially new movies could be reclassified as trade secrets and distributing a copy of the movie before it's exclusivity period was over would be the equivalent of corporate espionage. I think the world would survive the removal of copyright and patents.
Of course, for the less courageous we could also just severely curtail the extent and duration of both. Dr. Rufus Pollock calculated that the ideal length for copyright was 15 years. Similarly, in the modern world where the duration of patents should likely be reduced on account of advancements in technology and business methodology. It takes less time to implement a new a patent so reducing it's duration would keep the benefit of the patent in line with what it was when it was originally introduced. Merely keep patent duration at the same level, leads to a slow inflation in the value of a new patent because more can be done, and thus more money earned as technology advances.
This is just more environmental fear mongering and finger pointing without scientific proof.
Exactly how would that be different from what you're doing?
Other than the people supposedly doing the fear mongering and finger pointing are scientists and have evidence, where as you aren't, you don't, and you have already demonstrated the depth of your ignorance on the topic. You are demonstrating the classic symptoms of the Dunning-Kruger effect.
Really, if I were to pour some water in a glass, could you tell me how many molecules were in water in the glass? Does the fact that you couldn't mean there are no molecules of H20 in the glass?
The CBO’s estimate that there were 1.3 million to 3.5 million people employed in the fourth quarter of 2010 who would not have been were it not for the stimulus represents a decline from the 1.4 million to 3.6 million people CBO estimated were employed as a result the stimulus during the third quarter of 2010.
So, no that's between 1.3 million and 3.5 million jobs that would have been lost. One of the reasons the numbers are difficult to estimate is because of network effects. If you keep one person employed their additional spending may keep another person employed as well.
That's funny, because U.S. governments (federal, state and local) employ about 3,809,697 full time and 1,521,698 part time people according to the census.
If you're talking about the "stimulus" packages they've been somewhat undersized for the U.S. economy (on the order of 1-2% of GDP). They haven't net created job but have assuredly reduced job losses. The best estimate, is I understand around 1-2 million fewer jobs lost from the parts that actually involved stimulus. On the other hand, the part of the package which consisted of roughly the same amount of lost revenue in tax give aways has had no measurable impact at all on job creation or stopping job losses.
"True fiscal conservative" usually boils down to "don't tax the rich and don't spend on the poor". Look what happened when the party of "fiscal conservatives" controlled the whole US government for six years during the last decade.
Quite true. Mind you, the fiscal conservatives didn't control the U.S. government at any point in the last decade. Bush and his cronies have always been neo-conservatives. Fiscal conservatives don't invade countries without contingency plans to make sure the the country ends up getting more money than it spends.
Fiscal conservatives should be an important facet of the makeup of government. I think their primary role should be to cut poorly performing programs so that money can be spent more productively elsewhere (whether it be by taxpayers or government). I don't see any legitimate role for neo-conservatives who are more concerned with empire building and lining their own pockets.
Playing devil's advocate, those facts are not contradictory. If a larger percentage of students are allowed to take the entrance tests, you would see a correlated rise in exam failures unless the quality of education was improving at a faster rate than the increase in university exam positions.
That's true. Science is not a replacement for reason and compassion. How, science should inform the debate, it can for example answer questions like how much welfare would provide for maximal economic output, how much welfare is required to generate the most benefit for the least cost and other similar questions. I suppose science should be the bedrock upon which we build our society. Which might make it even more important than the King...
Frankly, Bob Inglis sounds like a true fiscal conservative.
I suspect people have forgotten what they are, ever since talk radio began turning "conservative" into "people we like" and "liberal" into "people we don't like", there seems to have been a coarsening of the public debate. Nixon officially ended the days of the Republican party being the party of fiscal conservatives, he alienated scientists and universities and began the descent of the Republican party into social conservatism.
Frankly, I suspect that the Republican party is on the verge of a huge collapse that will have them spending 20 years in the wilderness again, if they're lucky. They are deliberately or ignorantly leading their followers astray, and this will blow up in their faces unless they continue to lose to the Democrats. If they win in 2012 it just may destroy the party. It seems highly unlikely the current Republican fiscal policy will make the U.S. economy better. If it doesn't the party could implode like it has so many times before.
Slashdot Mirror
Well according to the article after Europe discovered the Americas, a series of epidemics swept the Americas and may have killed close to 90% of the Native Americans. This allowed trees to grow again on land that was cleared for farmland, thus taking up some of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and the researchers behind this paper think that's what caused a drop in the level of CO2 that shows up at about the same time in the ice core records. That reduction in CO2 would have had a small cooling effect, although as Mann points out in the article, there were probably other events at the same time that had a larger role in the LIA.
The first thing I thought upon seeing the results was "So they chose 100 malicious URLs from the IE9 black list and it managed to block 93% of them". Good to see Microsoft is working on their Kwality Engneerng. The results are so lopsided that you just know there's shenanigans going on.
Yes, I find it vastly amusing that I've been marked down because I'm using Firefox on Linux:
Security Problem: You're not using Windows.
Oh really? I wonder if I also have a money problem, in that I have too much that I haven't been spent on Microsoft products.
the absolute worst people are being chosen to represent them in news interviews
That's certainly possible. After all the news media is owned by the 1%, and we know from recent history that Rupert tells his news directors what they can and can't show. I'm not sure how different the other networks would be.
Occupy This and That are not the 99% and they are not like us.
I think you're wrong. I think they're more like you than you realize. They want the same things that you want, they've just realized that the game is rigged, and you haven't yet. They're fighting for your right to government by the people, for the people and of the people too. I think they're more like you than you may ever understand.
That would be the 1% that controls most of the media again, after all you won't find any of them in a union. They want people to hate unions because when the "peons" stand together then they actually get some power, and that's just not acceptable.
As I understand, most of the extremely wealthy get their new wealth from investments. Were does that wealth come from? Stocks, bonds and derivatives. For the most part, the trade in each of these instruments does nothing for the real economy. When you buy a stock the previous owner gets the money, not the company (except in the rare case where new stock is issued). Increasingly new wealth generation is becoming less tied to real work and based more to financial games.
If the money were instead being invested in innovative new business, then where are they? The U.S. currently has historically low taxes. There have been several rounds of tax cuts that went disproportionately to the extremely wealthy since 2008. Where are all the companies that should have created? The jobs? Where is the money going? The answer is nowhere. The money is being invested in stock markets and credit default swaps and other financial games because wealth can be generated much faster by investing in phantoms than by investing in real companies that create real jobs and real economic output.
The Tea Party has shown that if you actually have enough support you can swamp the primaries are put your own candidates in. If they actually had support from 99% of Americans they could put anyone they wanted into office. They actually don't even need that much, thanks to the much lower participation in primaries, they can drag along the usual suspects who vote based on party loyalty by simply usurping the primaries. It'd be mildly amusing to see them swamp both the Republican and Democratic primaries to put their own people running for both parties.
Unless, of course, the guy who maintains the guns is in the mob. After all, all you need is one turncoat who can turn the defenses off. I remember hearing that the emperors of Rome were rarely killed by the mob, instead they were usually killed by their own bodyguards. It's an important lesson to consider.
Sometimes the problem is more complicated than that. For instance, while the approval of congress is somewhere around 10%, approval ratings for the voter's own congressman is often closer to 50%. The U.S. government system itself is broken because it contains far too many easily abused rules. Each congressman is encouraged by the system to try and bring as much of the federal bacon home with him as possible. The entire federal government often appears as nothing more than the tragedy of the commons in action. So while people can see how all of the representatives aren't working well together, a majority of people don't see how their own representative contributes to that problem. That's before even considering partisan politics, gerrymandering, and all of the other ways that the American people have systematically been robbed of having their vote actually count for something.
It can probably be fixed, but it won't happen without a popular uprising so big that keeping the status quo looks riskier than the alternatives.
Conclusion does not follow. Corporations are owned by citizens of some country, hence, they inherit the rights of those owners. Further, even in cases where owners are foreign, there's reciprocity which typically requires one to respect the rights of foreigners so that their citizens have their ownership rights respected in that foreign country.
I reach a different conclusion from you. If the owners and employees of the corporations are citizens and it already has a host of voices, I don't see why money personified (a corporation) should get an additional voice.
If you tax the rich more, where do you think that money would have gone? It would have been spent, reinvested, etc, which keeps capitalism going.
That's where it would go in theory, and like communism, it only works that way in theory. In practice, most of that money is being used to play the stock market, derivative option roulette, or currency speculation or any of the other games that the extremely rich play. None of those games do anything to keep the economy running.
That's actually a very poor description of the protesters, it's obviously biased, self-serving and self-righteous. None of which are good signs for accuracy or insight.
If the OpenSource method were more profitable then more people would do it.
That doesn't follow. The old method is established and still profitable. Few people are going to be willing to risk their current profits on a model that few people are using. There would have to be uncontested evidence that the new method was better in all of the respects that matter before the majority of people with money in the game would switch. Change can take a long time to build up.
On the other hand, I don't know that the open content method would be more profitable. The point wasn't that you could make more money that way, but that the "artists" could make sufficient money that way to compensate them. They're the reason copyright exists, not the corporate hydras that currently control almost all of the copyright material produced and systematically cheat most of the actors, writers and musicians of their fair share of the profits.
That's bad advice, you never take the counter-offer. Once you've admitted to considering an offer from another company you are now branded disloyal. Your boss will make sure he has someone else who can do your job ready for when you leave and if you don't leave soon enough they'll get tired of waiting and kick you out.
It's a bad risk to take because it usually means you end up with neither job. It's better to explain to the new company that your current company is at a critical juncture and find out how much leeway you have on starting date, if they can give you an extra week or two you can offer that to your current company. But make it clear that your are doing this because you are awesome. If they offer you more money to stay it's either because they're afraid to lose you right now, or because they intentionally underpaid you previously. Eitehr way it's not good.
I'm afraid it is stealing... and your system of doing nothing is analogous to replacing the police with nothing.
No he's right. It's infringement, if that doesn't sound like a real crime, that's because it's not. It's infringement of a government granted monopoly. Do you feel diminished and victimized because I have quoted you? Why not? According to your position I have "stolen" your words and have committed a property crime.
Getting rid of copyright would change many things and hurt many people and benefit many others. It would cause an immediate stock market crash as stock in the content companies would become worthless. TV Stations would go bankrupt and there would be massive street protests in California and other locations where people who make their money from producing copyright works protested a change they fear. You are right that it likely won't happen anytime soon, however, a gradual scaling back of the laws could eventually lead to situation where it would be less disruptive to remove them.
Plus it's "patents" not "patients", I don't usually complaint about spelling, but you've spelled it incorrectly the same way in at least 3 different posts now. Patients are sick people, patents are limited time legal monopolies on an implementation of an idea.
I'm not sure why you should have to pay for any content. The Open Source world has shown that you can actually make significant amounts of money by giving away the content and selling services. Of course, that would fundamentally change the nature of how business is conducted. For instance, we'd see a lot more "sponsored" content and the current commercial-laden TV system would die out. I'm not sure exactly how the shakeout would end, but some things wouldn't change much. Most musicians would still make the majority of their income from concerts. The few top-level mega-stars would make slightly less money, and the RIAA would disappear. The Hollywood movie studio system would likely collapse into the theater system so that both the theaters and the studios are owned by the same company (thus limiting access to copies of the movie through physical means rather than copyright). Potentially new movies could be reclassified as trade secrets and distributing a copy of the movie before it's exclusivity period was over would be the equivalent of corporate espionage. I think the world would survive the removal of copyright and patents.
Of course, for the less courageous we could also just severely curtail the extent and duration of both. Dr. Rufus Pollock calculated that the ideal length for copyright was 15 years. Similarly, in the modern world where the duration of patents should likely be reduced on account of advancements in technology and business methodology. It takes less time to implement a new a patent so reducing it's duration would keep the benefit of the patent in line with what it was when it was originally introduced. Merely keep patent duration at the same level, leads to a slow inflation in the value of a new patent because more can be done, and thus more money earned as technology advances.
This is just more environmental fear mongering and finger pointing without scientific proof.
Exactly how would that be different from what you're doing?
Other than the people supposedly doing the fear mongering and finger pointing are scientists and have evidence, where as you aren't, you don't, and you have already demonstrated the depth of your ignorance on the topic. You are demonstrating the classic symptoms of the Dunning-Kruger effect.
Actually, it's the hallmark of frustrated people everywhere. Some of those people are frustrated fanatics, some are not.
Really, if I were to pour some water in a glass, could you tell me how many molecules were in water in the glass? Does the fact that you couldn't mean there are no molecules of H20 in the glass?
The CBO’s estimate that there were 1.3 million to 3.5 million people employed in the fourth quarter of 2010 who would not have been were it not for the stimulus represents a decline from the 1.4 million to 3.6 million people CBO estimated were employed as a result the stimulus during the third quarter of 2010.
So, no that's between 1.3 million and 3.5 million jobs that would have been lost. One of the reasons the numbers are difficult to estimate is because of network effects. If you keep one person employed their additional spending may keep another person employed as well.
That's funny, because U.S. governments (federal, state and local) employ about 3,809,697 full time and 1,521,698 part time people according to the census.
If you're talking about the "stimulus" packages they've been somewhat undersized for the U.S. economy (on the order of 1-2% of GDP). They haven't net created job but have assuredly reduced job losses. The best estimate, is I understand around 1-2 million fewer jobs lost from the parts that actually involved stimulus. On the other hand, the part of the package which consisted of roughly the same amount of lost revenue in tax give aways has had no measurable impact at all on job creation or stopping job losses.
"True fiscal conservative" usually boils down to "don't tax the rich and don't spend on the poor". Look what happened when the party of "fiscal conservatives" controlled the whole US government for six years during the last decade.
Quite true. Mind you, the fiscal conservatives didn't control the U.S. government at any point in the last decade. Bush and his cronies have always been neo-conservatives. Fiscal conservatives don't invade countries without contingency plans to make sure the the country ends up getting more money than it spends.
Fiscal conservatives should be an important facet of the makeup of government. I think their primary role should be to cut poorly performing programs so that money can be spent more productively elsewhere (whether it be by taxpayers or government). I don't see any legitimate role for neo-conservatives who are more concerned with empire building and lining their own pockets.
Playing devil's advocate, those facts are not contradictory. If a larger percentage of students are allowed to take the entrance tests, you would see a correlated rise in exam failures unless the quality of education was improving at a faster rate than the increase in university exam positions.
That's true. Science is not a replacement for reason and compassion. How, science should inform the debate, it can for example answer questions like how much welfare would provide for maximal economic output, how much welfare is required to generate the most benefit for the least cost and other similar questions. I suppose science should be the bedrock upon which we build our society. Which might make it even more important than the King...
Frankly, Bob Inglis sounds like a true fiscal conservative.
I suspect people have forgotten what they are, ever since talk radio began turning "conservative" into "people we like" and "liberal" into "people we don't like", there seems to have been a coarsening of the public debate. Nixon officially ended the days of the Republican party being the party of fiscal conservatives, he alienated scientists and universities and began the descent of the Republican party into social conservatism.
Frankly, I suspect that the Republican party is on the verge of a huge collapse that will have them spending 20 years in the wilderness again, if they're lucky. They are deliberately or ignorantly leading their followers astray, and this will blow up in their faces unless they continue to lose to the Democrats. If they win in 2012 it just may destroy the party. It seems highly unlikely the current Republican fiscal policy will make the U.S. economy better. If it doesn't the party could implode like it has so many times before.