Percentage of signatories who published in a journal is meaningless, it means if someone who hasn't published signs a brief the "quality" of the brief decreases.
The researchers who published this chose to examine only one brief on each side. Comprehensive analysis would suggest that all briefs on both sides should receive similar treatment.
The researchers who published this are also signatories of one of the briefs, this means they are participants in the process and can hardly be deemed objective.
The study is of questionable value, and obviously biased. If an impartial group had done a thorough review and found the same results, I'd be a little more inclined to pay attention. However, given the self-promotion aspect and the obvious flaws, it really isn't worth wasting time on.
There is a very real difference between a temporary media type like movies and an immersive media type like TV... There is a very real difference between a written media type like novels and an immersive media type like movies... There is a very real difference between a factual media type like non-fiction and an immersive media type like novels...
There let it be shown that novels, movies, TV and video games are all responsible for plunging our society into the 30 year violence lows that we are currently experiencing. Obviously, without these diabolical media types we'd be at 100 year lows!
With all due seriousness, I'm not convinced it can even be identified as "a factor". After all before video games we used to play mock violent games where we ran around and "killed" each other. Those seem more immersive than sitting in a chair in the dark and shouting obscenities into a microphone while shooting the other team's players over and over again.
I'm pretty sure it was only about 20 years ago that the same argument was being held over TV, and Mighty Morphing Power Rangers, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and Beavis and Butthead. People fear new things. That's why around of the turn of the century, the same charlatans were telling people that novels were ruining the youth of America and turning them into violent sociopaths. All that fiction was dangerously inciting their imaginations. Hell, I think it was in the 1930s that the Sky Is Falling Charlatans were trying to convince people that pinball was inciting the youth to murder.
The theories just never seem to hold up very well.
Ah, but it's not the relative percentages that are important. Carbon is put into the air by natural processes and taken out of the air by natural processes. Those processes are at a natural equilibrium. Essentially they take the same amount of CO2 out of the air as they put in. Then we start pouring more in. The same amount goes in and the same amount goes out. You end up with a build up excess CO2 because what we are adding isn't part to the processes that produced the equilibrium.
If you don't understand what I'm saying try this: balance an old fashioned scale with equal weights on each side. The start adding grains of sand onto one side. Eventually that side of the scale will tip down regardless of how much weight is balanced on the scales.
The tipping points are about endless runaway global warming, but rather about certain items that will cause short term rapid heating (we think). For example when temperatures reach a certain level, peat bogs may unfreeze and release a massive amount of CO2 that could rival decades of human emissions. It's not endless run away heating, but a process that will a large but finite amount of CO2 into the atmosphere. It will probably shift us into a new, higher, CO2 equilibrium, which we may continue to unbalance with human emissions.
You're kidding right? There's probably a dozen posts on this particular story claiming that nothing is happening. One of our major problems is that there are several "skeptical sides":
Full out denial: It's not happening, that's actually the most common one I run into.
It's not us denial: Even if it's happening it's nature, the billions of tonnes of CO we've released can't possibly have an effect
It's not bad denial: Even if it is happening and it is us, it's not like it's going to be bad
It's not like we can do anything denial: Even if it is happening and it is us, it's going to be bad, it's not like we can do anything about it
It's not like we can afford to do anything denial: Even if it is happening and it is us, and it's going to be bad, and we can do something, we can't afford to do anything, it's too expensive
The real skeptical side isn't on that list, they're the ones who say "how do we know this coefficient is correct?". The real skeptics have already moved past all of those positions and are concerned about finding the most efficient and effective ways with dealing with the dangers of Global Warming. Why? Because real skeptics look at the evidence, not what they wish was true.
Frankly, I don't really run into many people who believes there will be a catastrophic (run-away) temperature feedback like the one on Venus. The catastrophic feedbacks that people actually worry about have to do with changing local climates in ways that will be catastrophic for human society. For example, imagine we hit a tipping point and temperature warms rapidly for a bit. We don't know exactly what that will do. We know that it is likely to cause (more) crop failures across our agricultural areas. Imagine if over the course of a few years our maximum food production capability was reduced by 50% over the medium term then imagine then that we have a bad year and storm, floods, or droughts hit us for another 50% for that year. What do we do when we need to feed the entire world on a quarter of the food we're used to growing?
Then there's the water level rise that might cause, what happens if we hit a tipping point and in we have a large sea level rise over the course of a few years? Florida, for example, could be destroyed by a significant sea level rise. Do you think the U.S. can afford to relocate 90% of the population of Florida over the course of two years?
This isn't really a consumer issue. There's no easy way for a purchaser to determine how much energy went into creating a computer, on the other hand, the amount of electricity used by the device however is easily determined and verifiable independently. Plus the purchasers pays the cost of running the machine as a separate cost, while the cost of the energy to produce the device in bundled in the purchase price. That's why people look more at how much power the computer uses (when they look at all).
Reducing the energy required to produce computers is essentially a manufacturer concern and they should already be working on that as a competitive cost advantage. I would guess it's probably not happening because most of these items are manufactured in countries that heavily subsidize their power systems and thus encourage waste by not requiring users to pay the full cost of the power they use. You want to reduce the power wasted during the production of goods? Stop subsidizing power usage and make sure the full costs are bore by the manufacturers. That's one of the reasons why a carbon tax would be disastrous. Companies will adapt to the tax and focus their efforts on more efficient production.
"The word god is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honorable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this."
Einstein was not religious, but he occasionally used religious expression to convey complex ideas simply. In this case he seems to be expressing the idea that a true scientist should be moral and have an aspiration to discover the truth. He was railing against a pure rationalist point of view that denied the very existence of morality. Of course, you don't have to take my word for it, you can read the original text.
Natural selection doesn't necessarily take a long time. How long it takes depends on the mutation rate and the magnitude of the changes. If there is considerable variability in the average beak size of offspring and most of the unsuited offspring die, it may only take a few generations for the average finch beak size to change.
I'd imagine there probably are a lot of dead finches, usually they get eaten by predators and/or scavengers, though.
There is no difference between your "reverting" and evolution. If conditions change, natural selection will cause species to adapt to the new conditions. If those conditions are the same as previous condition the species may adapt in the same way that they previously had.
In computer terms, this is not a special case, it's the expected result. You sound like the guy who denies that 3 left turns are the same as a right turn.
You sir, are absolutely wrong. Children must be protected from the dangerous examples set by Howdy-Doody and Gene Autry. Why little Stevey punched my little Billy in the face while playing Cowboys and Indians! This would never have happened if we hadn't allowed these violent cowboy shows on the air.
Oh wait, am I on the wrong bandwagon again?
The violent video game scare is just the latest in an endless series of scares about something ruining today's youth. I'm not sure how far it goes back, but I remember seeing a list that practically every decade had a different issue, many of which would be just laughed at today by any reasonable person. For example, I think it was the 1920s when the youth of America was being ruined by novels. Then it was movies, pinball, comic books, rock and roll, TV, disco, rap, hip hop and now video games.
Anyone who thinks video games might be dangerous to children needs to be reminded that people just like them used to be worry that literacy would ruin the youth of America.
Simple. If making a good tablet isn't enough to sell a good tablet, that means that the demand for tablets is being driven by Apple rather than a need for tablets. That seems, to me, to be a classic indicator that a product is meeting a fad-driven need as opposed to a real need.
Additionally, if the need was real, then similar products should be also be popular particularly if they enter the market with a lower price point because price-conscious customers should prefer the cheaper alternatives. If there are no price-conscious customers, then the demand is also likely to be driven by style rather then meeting a need the public has. Anything not meeting a real public need, is extremely likely to be a fad.
I'm not convinced that tablets are a fad. However, while I do see a lot of potential for their use in niche areas, I have little desire for one and I have to wonder if they will have staying power.
If that's true, then the Microsoft guy might have been right. That tablets computers are a fad that will fade into a niche product that isn't worth their time to pursue.
That would make it the first time in many years that the world "Microsoft might have been right" have appeared in a sentence written by me. I feel a chill. Is the world ending?
Why? Microsoft has used it's monopoly power to retard innovation in operating system for decades.
The problem with idealizing Microsoft is that you can't see the things that weren't made because of them. I put them firmly in the column of doing more harm than good.
Do tell, can you name a single contribution Bill Gates has made to science?
As far as I can tell almost everything associated with Microsoft was done by someone else first and often better. The only truly inventive thing to ever come out of Microsoft was BOB and that truly was an abomination.
You can't really steal ideas. They're not property. Doing what someone else used to do only bigger, better, faster, and more accurately, is what many people like to call "progress".
Bill Gates, on the other hand, literally used fraud, deception, and theft to become a billionaire.
I'd bet the music industry would be for this as long as everyone was required to pay it, and you'd require 24 hour coverage. So the world would only have to pay them $613.2 billion a year for the privilege of not being harassed.
Of course, that money would immediately be re-invested in increasing the hourly price to $0.02/hr.
That, of course, depends on how you define reasonable. According to Rufus Pollock, he determined that about 14 years is the optimal balance point for copyright. I think at that point the author has earned about 97% of the copyright rents that can be earned from most works.
I can believe in moral solipsism but not other forms of moral relativity.
To be accurate, I believe it is fair to judge people by the morals they profess. So it can be perfectly acceptable to execute someone for blasphemy, adultery, or changing religion, as long as the person to be executed agrees that it is a fair and just punishment for the action. However, it is morally reprehensible to enforce those laws on people who do not agree with them*.
* Please note that it takes more than merely being present or living in a country with such laws to constitute consent.
It's worse than that. According to studies increasing road capacity directly causes additional traffic volume to the tune of 9% after 4 years for every 10% increase in capacity. So by increasing road capacity by 10% you get a 1% reduction in congestion on that road. Of course if you haven't also upgraded all the roads around the one you've upgrade you've increased their traffic loads by 9% without increasing their capacity at all.
There seem to be three basic ways to make commuting better: 1) Move the job 2) Move the commuter 3) Improve public transit
Building more roads is a temporary solution that has permanent costs (unless the road is destroyed).
1. Says everyone who's not you. Why should we give a damn about you? Maybe we just want to make our lives easier. If it makes our lives easier why should we care about whether it makes your life easier. After all, it's all about what's easier for me, right? Who cares what other people (i.e. you) think?
That really is the issue: If you don't care about other people, I don't see why other people should care about you.
To be fair, we can 4 elections for the same price as we paid for the G20. And the Conservatives plan to waste at least 20 elections worth of spending on the fighter jets they decided not to tender.
The burning issue is simple: Does the government have the right to hide important information from Parliament. You may notice the fighter jets, corporate tax cuts, and prison expenses were not included in the budget. There's a reason for that, the Conservatives are hiding the cost of each and have refused for months to provide any information on that. In the end the information they only provided some of the costs and continued hiding the largest parts of the cost. You can't expect the representatives of the majority of Canada to vote on policies when the cost is listed as "It'll be low, low, low - Trust me, Harper".
This minority parliament is so dysfunctional because the Conservatives refuse to work with any of the other parties. It's pure arrogance and it's why they need to be kicked out of power. If they're this bad with a minority government how insufferable would they be with a majority?
People tend to vote for what would improve their lives, not for what would be better for society. No one votes for more taxes over a party which offers lower taxes -- no matter how those taxes are to be distributed
Actually, that's the opposite of true. The vast majority of votes actually vote altruistically. They vote for what they think will make the country a better place to live for everyone, not just themselves. The problem is that more than half of the people voting are either uninformed or misinformed. They are unable to determine which people and which policies will achieve the ends they desire because they know very little about economics, politics and society.
People are much less likely to vote for higher taxes now (we used to accept that taxes were a price we paid for policies we wanted) because we are constantly told be conservative groups that taxes are evil and, of course, the people who believe that will never vote for higher taxes because they think taxes are evil.
Slashdot Mirror
In short, yes.
The study is of questionable value, and obviously biased. If an impartial group had done a thorough review and found the same results, I'd be a little more inclined to pay attention. However, given the self-promotion aspect and the obvious flaws, it really isn't worth wasting time on.
There is a very real difference between a temporary media type like movies and an immersive media type like TV...
There is a very real difference between a written media type like novels and an immersive media type like movies...
There is a very real difference between a factual media type like non-fiction and an immersive media type like novels...
There let it be shown that novels, movies, TV and video games are all responsible for plunging our society into the 30 year violence lows that we are currently experiencing. Obviously, without these diabolical media types we'd be at 100 year lows!
With all due seriousness, I'm not convinced it can even be identified as "a factor". After all before video games we used to play mock violent games where we ran around and "killed" each other. Those seem more immersive than sitting in a chair in the dark and shouting obscenities into a microphone while shooting the other team's players over and over again.
I'm pretty sure it was only about 20 years ago that the same argument was being held over TV, and Mighty Morphing Power Rangers, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and Beavis and Butthead. People fear new things. That's why around of the turn of the century, the same charlatans were telling people that novels were ruining the youth of America and turning them into violent sociopaths. All that fiction was dangerously inciting their imaginations. Hell, I think it was in the 1930s that the Sky Is Falling Charlatans were trying to convince people that pinball was inciting the youth to murder.
The theories just never seem to hold up very well.
Then they're not really libertarians.
Ah, but it's not the relative percentages that are important. Carbon is put into the air by natural processes and taken out of the air by natural processes. Those processes are at a natural equilibrium. Essentially they take the same amount of CO2 out of the air as they put in. Then we start pouring more in. The same amount goes in and the same amount goes out. You end up with a build up excess CO2 because what we are adding isn't part to the processes that produced the equilibrium.
If you don't understand what I'm saying try this: balance an old fashioned scale with equal weights on each side. The start adding grains of sand onto one side. Eventually that side of the scale will tip down regardless of how much weight is balanced on the scales.
The tipping points are about endless runaway global warming, but rather about certain items that will cause short term rapid heating (we think). For example when temperatures reach a certain level, peat bogs may unfreeze and release a massive amount of CO2 that could rival decades of human emissions. It's not endless run away heating, but a process that will a large but finite amount of CO2 into the atmosphere. It will probably shift us into a new, higher, CO2 equilibrium, which we may continue to unbalance with human emissions.
You're kidding right? There's probably a dozen posts on this particular story claiming that nothing is happening. One of our major problems is that there are several "skeptical sides":
The real skeptical side isn't on that list, they're the ones who say "how do we know this coefficient is correct?". The real skeptics have already moved past all of those positions and are concerned about finding the most efficient and effective ways with dealing with the dangers of Global Warming. Why? Because real skeptics look at the evidence, not what they wish was true.
Frankly, I don't really run into many people who believes there will be a catastrophic (run-away) temperature feedback like the one on Venus. The catastrophic feedbacks that people actually worry about have to do with changing local climates in ways that will be catastrophic for human society. For example, imagine we hit a tipping point and temperature warms rapidly for a bit. We don't know exactly what that will do. We know that it is likely to cause (more) crop failures across our agricultural areas. Imagine if over the course of a few years our maximum food production capability was reduced by 50% over the medium term then imagine then that we have a bad year and storm, floods, or droughts hit us for another 50% for that year. What do we do when we need to feed the entire world on a quarter of the food we're used to growing?
Then there's the water level rise that might cause, what happens if we hit a tipping point and in we have a large sea level rise over the course of a few years? Florida, for example, could be destroyed by a significant sea level rise. Do you think the U.S. can afford to relocate 90% of the population of Florida over the course of two years?
I left the word "not" out by accident.
You're right, I meant to say "would not be disastrous". The point being that they'll adapt to the tax by reducing the behavior that's taxed.
This isn't really a consumer issue. There's no easy way for a purchaser to determine how much energy went into creating a computer, on the other hand, the amount of electricity used by the device however is easily determined and verifiable independently. Plus the purchasers pays the cost of running the machine as a separate cost, while the cost of the energy to produce the device in bundled in the purchase price. That's why people look more at how much power the computer uses (when they look at all).
Reducing the energy required to produce computers is essentially a manufacturer concern and they should already be working on that as a competitive cost advantage. I would guess it's probably not happening because most of these items are manufactured in countries that heavily subsidize their power systems and thus encourage waste by not requiring users to pay the full cost of the power they use. You want to reduce the power wasted during the production of goods? Stop subsidizing power usage and make sure the full costs are bore by the manufacturers. That's one of the reasons why a carbon tax would be disastrous. Companies will adapt to the tax and focus their efforts on more efficient production.
Actually, Einstein also wrote
"The word god is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honorable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this."
Einstein was not religious, but he occasionally used religious expression to convey complex ideas simply. In this case he seems to be expressing the idea that a true scientist should be moral and have an aspiration to discover the truth. He was railing against a pure rationalist point of view that denied the very existence of morality. Of course, you don't have to take my word for it, you can read the original text.
Natural selection doesn't necessarily take a long time. How long it takes depends on the mutation rate and the magnitude of the changes. If there is considerable variability in the average beak size of offspring and most of the unsuited offspring die, it may only take a few generations for the average finch beak size to change.
I'd imagine there probably are a lot of dead finches, usually they get eaten by predators and/or scavengers, though.
There is no difference between your "reverting" and evolution. If conditions change, natural selection will cause species to adapt to the new conditions. If those conditions are the same as previous condition the species may adapt in the same way that they previously had.
In computer terms, this is not a special case, it's the expected result. You sound like the guy who denies that 3 left turns are the same as a right turn.
You sir, are absolutely wrong. Children must be protected from the dangerous examples set by Howdy-Doody and Gene Autry. Why little Stevey punched my little Billy in the face while playing Cowboys and Indians! This would never have happened if we hadn't allowed these violent cowboy shows on the air.
Oh wait, am I on the wrong bandwagon again?
The violent video game scare is just the latest in an endless series of scares about something ruining today's youth. I'm not sure how far it goes back, but I remember seeing a list that practically every decade had a different issue, many of which would be just laughed at today by any reasonable person. For example, I think it was the 1920s when the youth of America was being ruined by novels. Then it was movies, pinball, comic books, rock and roll, TV, disco, rap, hip hop and now video games.
Anyone who thinks video games might be dangerous to children needs to be reminded that people just like them used to be worry that literacy would ruin the youth of America.
Simple. If making a good tablet isn't enough to sell a good tablet, that means that the demand for tablets is being driven by Apple rather than a need for tablets. That seems, to me, to be a classic indicator that a product is meeting a fad-driven need as opposed to a real need.
Additionally, if the need was real, then similar products should be also be popular particularly if they enter the market with a lower price point because price-conscious customers should prefer the cheaper alternatives. If there are no price-conscious customers, then the demand is also likely to be driven by style rather then meeting a need the public has. Anything not meeting a real public need, is extremely likely to be a fad.
I'm not convinced that tablets are a fad. However, while I do see a lot of potential for their use in niche areas, I have little desire for one and I have to wonder if they will have staying power.
If that's true, then the Microsoft guy might have been right. That tablets computers are a fad that will fade into a niche product that isn't worth their time to pursue.
That would make it the first time in many years that the world "Microsoft might have been right" have appeared in a sentence written by me. I feel a chill. Is the world ending?
Why? Microsoft has used it's monopoly power to retard innovation in operating system for decades.
The problem with idealizing Microsoft is that you can't see the things that weren't made because of them. I put them firmly in the column of doing more harm than good.
Do tell, can you name a single contribution Bill Gates has made to science?
As far as I can tell almost everything associated with Microsoft was done by someone else first and often better. The only truly inventive thing to ever come out of Microsoft was BOB and that truly was an abomination.
You can't really steal ideas. They're not property. Doing what someone else used to do only bigger, better, faster, and more accurately, is what many people like to call "progress".
Bill Gates, on the other hand, literally used fraud, deception, and theft to become a billionaire.
I'd bet the music industry would be for this as long as everyone was required to pay it, and you'd require 24 hour coverage. So the world would only have to pay them $613.2 billion a year for the privilege of not being harassed.
Of course, that money would immediately be re-invested in increasing the hourly price to $0.02/hr.
That, of course, depends on how you define reasonable. According to Rufus Pollock, he determined that about 14 years is the optimal balance point for copyright. I think at that point the author has earned about 97% of the copyright rents that can be earned from most works.
It may be within their rights, but it's also a clear example of why copyrights on computer games shouldn't last for 26 years.
I can believe in moral solipsism but not other forms of moral relativity.
To be accurate, I believe it is fair to judge people by the morals they profess. So it can be perfectly acceptable to execute someone for blasphemy, adultery, or changing religion, as long as the person to be executed agrees that it is a fair and just punishment for the action. However, it is morally reprehensible to enforce those laws on people who do not agree with them*.
* Please note that it takes more than merely being present or living in a country with such laws to constitute consent.
It's worse than that. According to studies increasing road capacity directly causes additional traffic volume to the tune of 9% after 4 years for every 10% increase in capacity. So by increasing road capacity by 10% you get a 1% reduction in congestion on that road. Of course if you haven't also upgraded all the roads around the one you've upgrade you've increased their traffic loads by 9% without increasing their capacity at all.
There seem to be three basic ways to make commuting better:
1) Move the job
2) Move the commuter
3) Improve public transit
Building more roads is a temporary solution that has permanent costs (unless the road is destroyed).
1. Says everyone who's not you. Why should we give a damn about you? Maybe we just want to make our lives easier. If it makes our lives easier why should we care about whether it makes your life easier. After all, it's all about what's easier for me, right? Who cares what other people (i.e. you) think?
That really is the issue: If you don't care about other people, I don't see why other people should care about you.
To be fair, we can 4 elections for the same price as we paid for the G20. And the Conservatives plan to waste at least 20 elections worth of spending on the fighter jets they decided not to tender.
The burning issue is simple: Does the government have the right to hide important information from Parliament. You may notice the fighter jets, corporate tax cuts, and prison expenses were not included in the budget. There's a reason for that, the Conservatives are hiding the cost of each and have refused for months to provide any information on that. In the end the information they only provided some of the costs and continued hiding the largest parts of the cost. You can't expect the representatives of the majority of Canada to vote on policies when the cost is listed as "It'll be low, low, low - Trust me, Harper".
This minority parliament is so dysfunctional because the Conservatives refuse to work with any of the other parties. It's pure arrogance and it's why they need to be kicked out of power. If they're this bad with a minority government how insufferable would they be with a majority?
People tend to vote for what would improve their lives, not for what would be better for society. No one votes for more taxes over a party which offers lower taxes -- no matter how those taxes are to be distributed
Actually, that's the opposite of true. The vast majority of votes actually vote altruistically. They vote for what they think will make the country a better place to live for everyone, not just themselves. The problem is that more than half of the people voting are either uninformed or misinformed. They are unable to determine which people and which policies will achieve the ends they desire because they know very little about economics, politics and society.
People are much less likely to vote for higher taxes now (we used to accept that taxes were a price we paid for policies we wanted) because we are constantly told be conservative groups that taxes are evil and, of course, the people who believe that will never vote for higher taxes because they think taxes are evil.