I'm not far enough along in my math studies (will I ever be?) to understand their papers, but if it's true Yau is pretty sleazy.
There's a blog called the Poincare project that is seeking to build up enough math, from the ground up, to understand the proof. So far it's only just past stating the conjecture (which still takes a lot of work if you're going to cover all the technical material required to state it properly), but it's pretty god work and understandable by most anyone.
I agree that the current executive is a bit of an aberration in that, unlike the major parties, they do seem to have some driving ideology (and boy is it a weird one) and are pushing ahead with it as they please. They do, however, conform to the marketing, focus group, push button, powerpoint politics as a means of pushing people around - in fact they are quite the masters of it. Ultimately, however, the current executive is a transitory thing. No matter what they'll be gone in a couple years, and as objectionable as they may have been they aren't, in the grand scheme of things, the real problem. The real problem is the increasingly reductionist, trivialized, purely emotionally driven, divisive and polarizing form that US politics and democracy is taking. The current administration, as bad as they are, are ultimately just a very nasty hiccup that the US can and will recover from. The slow but steady long term trend of deep cultural change in how democracy and politics is executed in general is definitely a significant threat to the long term viability of the US.
I agree that the polarization is getting worse, but I don't think the Internet is to blame. I believe the traditional coalitions of "left" and "right" that once wanted similar things (and differed only on the details) are drifting further apart as the extremists take control of the respective major parties. In the past (past 30-40 years), it typically happened to only one party and the other captured the "center".
The parties aren't getting wider apart in their policy, they are simply getting more divisive in the marketing. In practice the two parties are more similar in ideology than ever. Certainly they're more similar in methodology than ever - politics has ceased to be about ideas or leadership and has become about marketing, focus groups, and push button issues. The key to political campaigns in this day and age is analyse your potential voters and find whatever issues have emotional ties. Usually those issues are trivial ones because ultimately it's the little things that we encounter in day to day life that irk us, it's the things that often don't matter in the grand scheme that tend to piss us off in that deep emotional way that is being exploited by politicians. Once the political strategists have gotten a decent list of irrelevant but emotionally charged issues they use them as convenient push buttons to try and herd people in the direction they want. But they've gotten so obsessed with all the trivial issues themselves that they don't even have a direction anymore and are, ultimately, themselves driven by whatever helps them push the electorates buttons. Mostly that means cash for marketing campaigns. Both major parties in the US have become parties of corporate control. Sure they have their hand picked issues to bicker over, and certainly those are highly emotionally charged issues so that they're highly divisive, but ultimately they re both selling the same thing.
So let's repeat that: the parties haven't gotten more extremist over the last few decades. Rather they have simply gotten a lot better at mining the public psyche to find out what particular issues and bullet points currently carry the greatest emotional weight, and at focussing all discussion on those bullet points. Instead of considering the powerpoint style rhetoric on the hot button issues of the day, try comparing actual legislative records - what actually gets done - and compare that to legislative records of the past: In practical terms the two parties are more similar than ever.
You still have to install the package as an admin user. Lots of tools on Linux create admin user accounts without prompting for a password when run as root.
My understanding of the issue is that an admin user is simply someone on the sudoers list, and not actually root. This would akin to a.deb file that, when installed by a user on the sudoers list and not root, doesn't prompt for any password at all, but has root access none the less. This would seem to be an issue if I am, in fact, interpreting all of this correctly.
I'm just saying that it is relatively easy to pick a version of Linux remarkably similar to SuSE that doesn't have SuSE firewall. Find me the opportunity to readily pick a version of Windows that doesn't have IE and I don't think I would be at all concerned about IE's integration into a version of Windows.
When I install SuSE Linux, it installs SuSE Firewall. When I want to uninstall it, a whole list of other items that "depend on" this SuSE Firewall pop up, hindering its removal. The best thing I can do is "disable firewall", but it still remains installed (mostly a set of scripts to manipulate a very complex set of iptables rules that never gets loaded because it is disabled).
I think the important point here is that in many ways SuSE is closer to an OEM than it is to Microsoft. They don't exclusively build the vast majority of what goes into a SuSE system, rather they gather together and package a vast array of software from diverse sources that everyone else who wants to make a distribution has equal access to. Sure they may have proprietary add-ons, but you can (and many people have) produce a system that is largely identical to SuSE, simply with a few bits swapped out for something different. Because of that SuSE can't monopolise the market - at least not unless they start building the better chunk of their OS out of their own proprietary work, at which point it won't be much a "Linux" distribution anymore.
Look at it this way - imagine there is a third party that makes software that does X, and tomorrow SuSE starts packaging their own proprietary software to do X. The third party will have an easy enough time going to other Linux distributions and making a case for why they ought to include the third parties software with their standard distribution - and even if there were no other distributions in existence besides SuSE it would be (realatively speaking) easy enough to start one. If the third party felt strongly enough about this they could always do it themselves.
So yes, distributions bundle a lot of software. The point, however, is that there is an open market as to what gets bundled. If someone writes a better Linux office suite then they can lobby distributions to bundle that instead of OpenOffice. If no-one does, they can always bundle it themselves in their own distribution - if the office suite really is that much better then their distro will quickly gain a following. The hard part with Linux bundling is that a lot of the software that is currently bundled is free, and its hard for third parties that charge for software to compete with that. It doesn't mean it can't happen of course, you just need a different model: note that realplayer, and acrobat reader are bundled with some distributions.
The fun question is, will the studios ever get daft enough to want to take the Silmarillion to the silver screen?
Actually this is a distinct possibility, depending on how successful The Hobbit is. The trick, of course, is to not try and film "The Silmarillion" but rather just a single tale from it at a time (potentially supplemented by Lost Tales versions etc.) There is plenty of scope there: Tolkien's own versions of some of those tales evolved and changed, so there's flexibility in the retelling. Moreover, some of them are eminently filmable, up to a certain amount of change to make it more easily told in a single film. Something like the tale of Turin, or Beren and Luthien, or the Tuor and the fall of Gondolin, would work quite successfully as individual films. Why try to make one film when you can milk it for three (testing the waters with each one in turn to be sure there is demand). Personally I'd love to see a well executed film version of the tale of Turin.
Re:Here's another problem with Gnome branding
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GNOME 2.16 Released
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I think the point to remember is that these are project names, not what will be appearing in menus. Having distinctive project names does make sense. Tomboy is replacing a previous note taking application in GNOME: GNOME tends to pick and choose from various applications developed for the environment, and if something better comes along they'll move to that. If you have to be called "GNOME Notes" then what do you call the new note taking application you want to develop? Instead the projects have distinctive interesting names and include descriptions of what they are (Notes application, Menu editor, etc.) that are used to populate the menus. Besides, many of these names are no worse than names used for other applications. Why call it Safari instead of "Apple Web Browser"? If you say that Safari still connotes browsing/searching then you should note that Baobab is a distinctive type of tree (thus the natural association with disk usage trees etc.).
However AFAIK there is no solid proof that human activity is a major or even significant factor in the changes over the last 200 years.
I would have to disagree. Aside from the simple correlction of timing of changes, and accounting of carbon dioxide emissions, there is the analysis of carbon isotopes in atmospheric carbon dioxide. In summary, by measuring the ratios of different carbon isotopes in the atmosphere, and knowing that carbon from fossil fuels will have different isotope ratios than carbon from natural sources, it is possible to establish how much of the recent change in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels are due to human activities through burning of fossil fuels. The results are that the rise in carbon dioxide levels of the past 200 years are almost entirely anthropogenic.
This claim has been made many times, but so has the claim that human activity is only responsible for some tiny fraction of global CO2 emissions.
I have never seen any credible evidence to support the counter claim that the change in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels is not due to human activity. It is true that in terms of the total carbon dioxide produced in the carbon cycle, human produced carbon dioxide is just a fraction, but if I have a tank that is draining water at 10 liters per minute and having water added at 10 liters per minute then adding more water, even at a small fraction of that rate, will cause the otherwise stable tank to overflow. In terms of change human factors are very relevant, and quoting other figures about total carbon produced is, while accurate, disingenuous and misleading with regard to the actual issue at hand.
Our current cycle of global warming isn't natural. Note "hasn't happened before" isn't proof.
Well this isn't something that can be "proved", but in terms of history (last 800,000 years) we are in the middle of an interglacial which peaked some time ago, so we shouldn't be expecting further increases in temperature from the galcial/interglacial cycles. From a more recent historical perspective (last 200 years or so) the recent warming is quite unprecedented according to almost all historical temperature reconstructions (and there are many). In terms of our current understanding of climate and all the things that could effect it, without including atmospheric carbon dioxide changes, we cannot properly account for the present warming. That is, to the best of our current knowledge the warming is not natural. That could change, but we would have to learn some significant new informnation to change our understanding of the climate for that to occur.
Human activity is a major factor in global warming.
As noted above, recent increases in carbon dioxide levels are the only way to account for the recent warming given our curent understanding of climate. Also noted above is the fact that human activity has been a major factor in increasing levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide. If you want more details on how attribution of recent warming has been determined so far the IPCC TAR attribution chapter is a good place to start - it summarises a number of different studies using a variety of techniques to attempt to determine the most likely factors driving the current warming.
dentify the other factors influencing global warming.
That is certainly being worked on. I'll again refer to the IPCC TAR for a figure showing various radiative forcings, which is to say factors affecting global warming (both positive anmd negative effects). There are several besides atmospheric carbon dioxide. One of the most s
It seems to me that, contrary to your strawman version of their claims, the realclimate article has a very valid point. Reading that summary, and also the linked references to published papers on the topic, there is a perfectly reasonable explanation: In the past carbon dioxide has not been the initial cause of climate changes, but rather a feedback mechanism. That is, Milankovitch cycles cause some initial warming. Warming is known to cause the oceans to be less able to sequester carbon, and hence carbon dioxide levels tend to rise when the planet warms. Once this initial kickstart has produced more atmospheric carbon dioxide (which takes, apparently, around 600 to 1200 years) a feedback cycle ensues with the increased levels of carbon dioxide producing yet more warming. The resulting warming continues for a period of around 4200 years, during which carbon dioxide is very likely to be a factor.
This seems very reasonable - one would hardly expect atmospheric carbon dioxide to necessarily be the initial driver for warming given that, historically anyway, there wasn't anything (other than warming) that could cause a significant enough change in atmospheric carbon dioxide to induce warming. Just because the intergalicials required orbital variation to kick off the warming and start the process of carbon dioxide induced warming hardly invalidates carbon dioxide potentially being a factor in warming. Rather, the burden of proof lies more with those who claim it doesn't: we know that atmospheric carbon dioxide, due to its absorption spectra, will trap heat by allowing incoming energy from the sun to pass (due to wavelength) while trapping and radiating back the reflected heat energy from the earth (due to its different waverlength to that of incoming energy from the sun); what is need is an explanation of why that effect is either of no significance, or why it in fact does not occur for some reason. No one has provided such an explanation.
In summary, instead of, as you claim, "...to them, apparently, man made CO2 causes instant warming, but natural CO2 takes up to 800 years to have an effect", it is the opposite: to them man made carbon dioxide can cause carbon dioxide levels to change and precede warming effects, but natural changes in carbon dioxide levels require warming to occur and thus lag behind warming events from other causes (such as Milankovitch cycles).
I personally love KDevelop, which is integrated with Qt Designer. If you want to use GNOME as a platform, there are tools that I haven't looked in on in a while but should be easy to find.
I believe the GNOME equivalent is Anjuta, which has a lot of the features the OP was asking for. I haven't really used it myself so I can't really say. As you note for KDE developers, my understanding that a lot of GNOME devs just use Emacs. Still, if you want something with a nice GUI then Anjuta looksdecent (choice of GTK theme used for screenshots not withstanding).
There are MORE than 2 sides to every issue. People who want to limit your choices to either Bush is good or bad are simplifying things for their own manipulative purposes.
I would suggest that it is not always for their own manipulative purposes, but instead it is often because that is what they have been taught to do. As the saying goes "The more issues a person tries to shoehorn down into a simplistic dichotomy, the more certain you can be that the person is an American". For some reason extreme partisanship and polarisation has become an integral part of US culture. To be frank, given how culturally entrenched this seems to have become, I don't see it changing any time soon (have a look around, it extends well beyond politics; it is a pervasive cultural outlook).
All this "adapt to the user" talk is, as you say, fine and well, but no-one has the faintest idea how to do that. What little there is of that technology is pitifully bad, in a large part because it adapts to what the user does, as opposed to what the user wants. That just generally results in a lot of time spent with the user going "no, I didn't mean that!", "no, I don't want you to do that now!" etc.
You may as well talk about the OS of the future which just has a single button in the middle of the screen that says "do what I want". The gap between intention and action is bad enough, trying to model future intention based on past action is just asking for trouble.
...he's just not making his point very well. Even if the experts aren't ignoring this, the media is.
And that I'll readily grant. The media has done a particularly poor job on the issue of global warming, in a large part because, being the media they prefer sensationalism because it sells better, and simplified soundbites for a similar reason. That means you tend to get the extremist doomsayers, and very little in the way properly qualified statements. Of course just because the media is overselling, and excessively simplifying things doesn't mean that there aren't issues, nor that they aren't of some concern - for that you need to actually read the science.
You said the SUMMARY not the chapter. The centerpiece of the SUMMARY was the thoroughly discredited "Mann Hockey Stick" a piece of shit so bad that not even Mann bothered to defend it when he testified in Congress recently.
Sigh. I said to read "the IPCC summary of climate attribution studies" which was a link to chapter 12, the attribution chapter of the IPCC TAR, which was a summary of around 13 different attribution studies (not a single one of which was by Mann). The hint was to click on the link and to read what was there. The question is one of attribution, and in that discussion Mann is essentially never mentioned, and plays no role - the entire chapter only mentions him once. The quality or otherwise of Mann' particular study has no bearing on the results of the 13 studies considered in the attribution chapter. Feel free to actually read it this time.
How effective is the IPCC at predicting natural climate changes? How have they tested their climate models? What kind of statistics are they getting?
Generally pretty good. They test their models by training on one historical dataset and running it on a different one. For the most part the models use purely observed data - this gives a smaller range to play with, but results in much smaller uncertainties in the resulting model.
Someone else gave a good response o=to most of what you had to say, so I'll simply let their response cover those points. There was also the matter of
Do the studies you like to cite which attempt to attribute observed climate data to various models (anthropogenic and otherwise) include uncertainties on their theoretical natural climate models? If so, what are they?
Yes they do include uncertainties, in fact I've seen entire papers devoted to nothing but refining the accuracy of the uncertainty estimates. As to what the uncertainties are - it varies considerably depending what exactly it is you're trying to measure, and which model you are using to do it. With regard to attributing warming this figure has model estimates of attribution based on various collections of factors, along with uncertainties. You might note that, right off the bat, it is clear that CO2 alone is quite inadequate at accurately describing the current warming. Uncertainties are almost always given and can vary from quite large to very small depending on all manner of details. It's a matter of actually reading the studies to see.
"It's not like this is being ignored or anything...." Yes....basically it has.
Not by the people actually studying this. The IPCC TAR devotes an entire section to solar forcing of climate and, as I said, concludes it has had a significant (up to 30%) impact on the recent observed warming here on earth. Variation in solar radiation is considered in pretty much all climate models. I can't exactly see how you can call that ignoring it. If you want more then try somepapers bySolanki and others.
Are you asking me to provide data or reliable cites that prove a negative?
I was hoping you could provide whatever evidence you've read to support your point of view. I was figuring maybe you would point to Solanki's solar variation studies, which are the best I've seen for evidence of natural factors being the primary cause of current warming, or preferably something better than that that I simply hadn't seen yet. I'm not at all averse to having my opinion swayed, I would just like a reason to do so.
You seem to be from the group that is hell-bent on "proving" that climate change is caused by human activity via anecdote, dubious, short-term data and FUD.
Which is to say, the best scientific data, analysis, and predictions we currently have. I'm not saying its conclusive, I'm just saying that it is evidence, and some of it is actually pretty good (and quite a long way from anecdotal - try reading it). On the other hand we don't really have any good evidence or theories that can explain recent warming in terms of natural phenomena at the moment. To me that means that, barring new evidence to the contrary, I'm going to have to lean rather more toward the anthropogenic causes camp.
The climate changes on Earth are entirely explicable as natural variation as the IPCC TAR made clear in 2001. The man-made hypothesis is based upon the attribution studies based on climate models.
It's interesting you say that - could you provide me a reference for where the IPCC TAR concludes that the changes are "entirely explicable" as natural forcings? When I read through the conclusion of the attribution chapter I don't see anything about natural forcings providing adequate explanations. On the contrary we have
"The observed warming is inconsistent with model estimates of natural internal climate variability."
"The observed warming in the latter half of the 20th century appears to be inconsistent with natural external (solar and volcanic) forcing of the climate system."
"The observed change in patterns of atmospheric temperature in the vertical is inconsistent with natural forcing."
"Anthropogenic factors do provide an explanation of 20th century temperature change."
"It is unlikely that detection studies have mistaken a natural signal for an anthropogenic signal."
"The detection methods used should not be sensitive to errors in the amplitude of the global mean forcing or response."
The best I can grant you is: "Natural factors may have contributed to the early century warming." but the warming in the last several decades cannot adequately be attributed to natural factors alone.
Of course there's always the problem of the Sun increasing its radiation output. I wonder if that has any effect.......and if so, how much?
Yes, there is that. Of course in mentioned that in the post you just replied to:
Combine that with the current solar variation [wikipedia.org], to which the IPCC attributes around 30% of the Earth's observed warming, and it isn't that surprising that Mars might be experiencing some climatic change currently.
So the answer is that solar variation is likely having an effect, and our best current studies put that effect at up to 30% of current observed warming on earth. It's not like this is being ignored or anything - I'm not sure what your point is exactly.
Are you implying that more (reliable and relevant) data has been collected over the past five years or that computer climate modeling has gotten more sophisticated and impressive to the layman?
I'm simply saying that, since 2001, more data has been collected and further studies and papers have been published on the subject of attribution of climate change. Obviously all those studies are not going to be listed in an IPCC report from 2001. I'm not exactly sure what you're driving at here? Are you implying that perhaps no further work has been done? That recent studies have contradicted the general conclusion of past findings? Neither of those are the case as far as I am aware, but by all means if you have something I would be interested to read it.
Yes. Now we know that the centerpiece of that summary, the "Mann Hockey Stick", turned out to be a scientific fraud.
Which is to say, you didn't read it. Honestly, have a look at chapter 12 (Attribution) of the IPCC Third Assessment Report. You'll find just a single mention, buried in the qualitative section, of Mann's study, listed amongst 5 other different palaeological climate reconstructions by different authors, and only to note that "the 20th century warming is highly unusual." You can see those reconstructions (plus several others) charted together if you're curious. Mann's studies, let alone the "Hockey Stick", far from being "the centerpiece", get scant mention. Instead the attribution factor considers many studies using indices and time series methods, pattern correlation methods, and optimal fingerprint methods. This table provides a summary of the attribution studies considered, along with the method, the uncertainty, the timescale considered etc. You might care to note that Mann is not involved in any of the studies considered.
Of course calling Mann's work a "scientific fraud" is rather unfounded too. You may note, in the chart linked above, that there are many other historical temperature reconstructions, done indepdently by different people, that arrive at a similar result to Mann. There is also the recent National Academy of Sciences report on the subject which concluded, with high confidence, that the earth was the warmest it had been in 400 years, and that while there was less confidence in reconstructions going further back, they still point to the earth undergoing unusual recent warming. On the other hand you have the Chairman of the Committee on Energy and Commerce, and an economist and someone from the mining industry claiming it is all bunk. At least McIntyre and McKitrick wrote some semi-respectable papers, though there is considerable dispute about their methodology (at least as much, if not far more, than there is about Mann's).
Let's cast all of that dispute aside however, and assume that Mann was full of crap - that still makes no difference whatsoever to the content of the attribution chapter of the IPCC report I linked to, and which you so very clearly didn't bother to read. I don't mind people having differing opinions, but when they are based on apparently willful ignorance I am a little appalled.
And in related news, scientists say Mars is emerging from an Ice Age.
Mars, just like earth, undergoes natural climate fluctuation. On Earth we have Milankovitch cycles, based on the eccentricity, axial tilt, and precession of the Earth's orbit. Mars also has interesting orbital variations, and significantly greater orbital eccentricity than the earth. This results in similar, though differently timed, significant variations in climate. Mars also suffers from severe dust storms which can have a large impact on climate due t changes in atmospheric opacity. Combine that with the current solar variation, to which the IPCC attributes around 30% of the Earth's observed warming, and it isn't that surprising that Mars might be experiencing some climatic change currently.
The real difference between climate change on Mars and climate change on Earth is that the degree of change currently observed on Mars is entirely explainable in terms of observed natural effects, while the climate change on Earth is not. Anthropogenic effects, to the very bestof our knowledge, are required to explain the currently observed warming on Earth.
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There's a blog called the Poincare project that is seeking to build up enough math, from the ground up, to understand the proof. So far it's only just past stating the conjecture (which still takes a lot of work if you're going to cover all the technical material required to state it properly), but it's pretty god work and understandable by most anyone.
I agree that the current executive is a bit of an aberration in that, unlike the major parties, they do seem to have some driving ideology (and boy is it a weird one) and are pushing ahead with it as they please. They do, however, conform to the marketing, focus group, push button, powerpoint politics as a means of pushing people around - in fact they are quite the masters of it. Ultimately, however, the current executive is a transitory thing. No matter what they'll be gone in a couple years, and as objectionable as they may have been they aren't, in the grand scheme of things, the real problem. The real problem is the increasingly reductionist, trivialized, purely emotionally driven, divisive and polarizing form that US politics and democracy is taking. The current administration, as bad as they are, are ultimately just a very nasty hiccup that the US can and will recover from. The slow but steady long term trend of deep cultural change in how democracy and politics is executed in general is definitely a significant threat to the long term viability of the US.
The parties aren't getting wider apart in their policy, they are simply getting more divisive in the marketing. In practice the two parties are more similar in ideology than ever. Certainly they're more similar in methodology than ever - politics has ceased to be about ideas or leadership and has become about marketing, focus groups, and push button issues. The key to political campaigns in this day and age is analyse your potential voters and find whatever issues have emotional ties. Usually those issues are trivial ones because ultimately it's the little things that we encounter in day to day life that irk us, it's the things that often don't matter in the grand scheme that tend to piss us off in that deep emotional way that is being exploited by politicians. Once the political strategists have gotten a decent list of irrelevant but emotionally charged issues they use them as convenient push buttons to try and herd people in the direction they want. But they've gotten so obsessed with all the trivial issues themselves that they don't even have a direction anymore and are, ultimately, themselves driven by whatever helps them push the electorates buttons. Mostly that means cash for marketing campaigns. Both major parties in the US have become parties of corporate control. Sure they have their hand picked issues to bicker over, and certainly those are highly emotionally charged issues so that they're highly divisive, but ultimately they re both selling the same thing.
So let's repeat that: the parties haven't gotten more extremist over the last few decades. Rather they have simply gotten a lot better at mining the public psyche to find out what particular issues and bullet points currently carry the greatest emotional weight, and at focussing all discussion on those bullet points. Instead of considering the powerpoint style rhetoric on the hot button issues of the day, try comparing actual legislative records - what actually gets done - and compare that to legislative records of the past: In practical terms the two parties are more similar than ever.
My understanding of the issue is that an admin user is simply someone on the sudoers list, and not actually root. This would akin to a
I'm just saying that it is relatively easy to pick a version of Linux remarkably similar to SuSE that doesn't have SuSE firewall. Find me the opportunity to readily pick a version of Windows that doesn't have IE and I don't think I would be at all concerned about IE's integration into a version of Windows.
I think the important point here is that in many ways SuSE is closer to an OEM than it is to Microsoft. They don't exclusively build the vast majority of what goes into a SuSE system, rather they gather together and package a vast array of software from diverse sources that everyone else who wants to make a distribution has equal access to. Sure they may have proprietary add-ons, but you can (and many people have) produce a system that is largely identical to SuSE, simply with a few bits swapped out for something different. Because of that SuSE can't monopolise the market - at least not unless they start building the better chunk of their OS out of their own proprietary work, at which point it won't be much a "Linux" distribution anymore.
Look at it this way - imagine there is a third party that makes software that does X, and tomorrow SuSE starts packaging their own proprietary software to do X. The third party will have an easy enough time going to other Linux distributions and making a case for why they ought to include the third parties software with their standard distribution - and even if there were no other distributions in existence besides SuSE it would be (realatively speaking) easy enough to start one. If the third party felt strongly enough about this they could always do it themselves.
So yes, distributions bundle a lot of software. The point, however, is that there is an open market as to what gets bundled. If someone writes a better Linux office suite then they can lobby distributions to bundle that instead of OpenOffice. If no-one does, they can always bundle it themselves in their own distribution - if the office suite really is that much better then their distro will quickly gain a following. The hard part with Linux bundling is that a lot of the software that is currently bundled is free, and its hard for third parties that charge for software to compete with that. It doesn't mean it can't happen of course, you just need a different model: note that realplayer, and acrobat reader are bundled with some distributions.
Actually this is a distinct possibility, depending on how successful The Hobbit is. The trick, of course, is to not try and film "The Silmarillion" but rather just a single tale from it at a time (potentially supplemented by Lost Tales versions etc.) There is plenty of scope there: Tolkien's own versions of some of those tales evolved and changed, so there's flexibility in the retelling. Moreover, some of them are eminently filmable, up to a certain amount of change to make it more easily told in a single film. Something like the tale of Turin, or Beren and Luthien, or the Tuor and the fall of Gondolin, would work quite successfully as individual films. Why try to make one film when you can milk it for three (testing the waters with each one in turn to be sure there is demand). Personally I'd love to see a well executed film version of the tale of Turin.
I think the point to remember is that these are project names, not what will be appearing in menus. Having distinctive project names does make sense. Tomboy is replacing a previous note taking application in GNOME: GNOME tends to pick and choose from various applications developed for the environment, and if something better comes along they'll move to that. If you have to be called "GNOME Notes" then what do you call the new note taking application you want to develop? Instead the projects have distinctive interesting names and include descriptions of what they are (Notes application, Menu editor, etc.) that are used to populate the menus. Besides, many of these names are no worse than names used for other applications. Why call it Safari instead of "Apple Web Browser"? If you say that Safari still connotes browsing/searching then you should note that Baobab is a distinctive type of tree (thus the natural association with disk usage trees etc.).
I would have to disagree. Aside from the simple correlction of timing of changes, and accounting of carbon dioxide emissions, there is the analysis of carbon isotopes in atmospheric carbon dioxide. In summary, by measuring the ratios of different carbon isotopes in the atmosphere, and knowing that carbon from fossil fuels will have different isotope ratios than carbon from natural sources, it is possible to establish how much of the recent change in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels are due to human activities through burning of fossil fuels. The results are that the rise in carbon dioxide levels of the past 200 years are almost entirely anthropogenic.
I have never seen any credible evidence to support the counter claim that the change in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels is not due to human activity. It is true that in terms of the total carbon dioxide produced in the carbon cycle, human produced carbon dioxide is just a fraction, but if I have a tank that is draining water at 10 liters per minute and having water added at 10 liters per minute then adding more water, even at a small fraction of that rate, will cause the otherwise stable tank to overflow. In terms of change human factors are very relevant, and quoting other figures about total carbon produced is, while accurate, disingenuous and misleading with regard to the actual issue at hand.
Well this isn't something that can be "proved", but in terms of history (last 800,000 years) we are in the middle of an interglacial which peaked some time ago, so we shouldn't be expecting further increases in temperature from the galcial/interglacial cycles. From a more recent historical perspective (last 200 years or so) the recent warming is quite unprecedented according to almost all historical temperature reconstructions (and there are many). In terms of our current understanding of climate and all the things that could effect it, without including atmospheric carbon dioxide changes, we cannot properly account for the present warming. That is, to the best of our current knowledge the warming is not natural. That could change, but we would have to learn some significant new informnation to change our understanding of the climate for that to occur.
As noted above, recent increases in carbon dioxide levels are the only way to account for the recent warming given our curent understanding of climate. Also noted above is the fact that human activity has been a major factor in increasing levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide. If you want more details on how attribution of recent warming has been determined so far the IPCC TAR attribution chapter is a good place to start - it summarises a number of different studies using a variety of techniques to attempt to determine the most likely factors driving the current warming.
That is certainly being worked on. I'll again refer to the IPCC TAR for a figure showing various radiative forcings, which is to say factors affecting global warming (both positive anmd negative effects). There are several besides atmospheric carbon dioxide. One of the most s
It seems to me that, contrary to your strawman version of their claims, the realclimate article has a very valid point. Reading that summary, and also the linked references to published papers on the topic, there is a perfectly reasonable explanation: In the past carbon dioxide has not been the initial cause of climate changes, but rather a feedback mechanism. That is, Milankovitch cycles cause some initial warming. Warming is known to cause the oceans to be less able to sequester carbon, and hence carbon dioxide levels tend to rise when the planet warms. Once this initial kickstart has produced more atmospheric carbon dioxide (which takes, apparently, around 600 to 1200 years) a feedback cycle ensues with the increased levels of carbon dioxide producing yet more warming. The resulting warming continues for a period of around 4200 years, during which carbon dioxide is very likely to be a factor.
This seems very reasonable - one would hardly expect atmospheric carbon dioxide to necessarily be the initial driver for warming given that, historically anyway, there wasn't anything (other than warming) that could cause a significant enough change in atmospheric carbon dioxide to induce warming. Just because the intergalicials required orbital variation to kick off the warming and start the process of carbon dioxide induced warming hardly invalidates carbon dioxide potentially being a factor in warming. Rather, the burden of proof lies more with those who claim it doesn't: we know that atmospheric carbon dioxide, due to its absorption spectra, will trap heat by allowing incoming energy from the sun to pass (due to wavelength) while trapping and radiating back the reflected heat energy from the earth (due to its different waverlength to that of incoming energy from the sun); what is need is an explanation of why that effect is either of no significance, or why it in fact does not occur for some reason. No one has provided such an explanation.
In summary, instead of, as you claim, "...to them, apparently, man made CO2 causes instant warming, but natural CO2 takes up to 800 years to have an effect", it is the opposite: to them man made carbon dioxide can cause carbon dioxide levels to change and precede warming effects, but natural changes in carbon dioxide levels require warming to occur and thus lag behind warming events from other causes (such as Milankovitch cycles).
Can it make me a cup of coffee?
I believe the GNOME equivalent is Anjuta, which has a lot of the features the OP was asking for. I haven't really used it myself so I can't really say. As you note for KDE developers, my understanding that a lot of GNOME devs just use Emacs. Still, if you want something with a nice GUI then Anjuta looks decent (choice of GTK theme used for screenshots not withstanding).
I would suggest that it is not always for their own manipulative purposes, but instead it is often because that is what they have been taught to do. As the saying goes "The more issues a person tries to shoehorn down into a simplistic dichotomy, the more certain you can be that the person is an American". For some reason extreme partisanship and polarisation has become an integral part of US culture. To be frank, given how culturally entrenched this seems to have become, I don't see it changing any time soon (have a look around, it extends well beyond politics; it is a pervasive cultural outlook).
All this "adapt to the user" talk is, as you say, fine and well, but no-one has the faintest idea how to do that. What little there is of that technology is pitifully bad, in a large part because it adapts to what the user does, as opposed to what the user wants. That just generally results in a lot of time spent with the user going "no, I didn't mean that!", "no, I don't want you to do that now!" etc.
You may as well talk about the OS of the future which just has a single button in the middle of the screen that says "do what I want". The gap between intention and action is bad enough, trying to model future intention based on past action is just asking for trouble.
And that I'll readily grant. The media has done a particularly poor job on the issue of global warming, in a large part because, being the media they prefer sensationalism because it sells better, and simplified soundbites for a similar reason. That means you tend to get the extremist doomsayers, and very little in the way properly qualified statements. Of course just because the media is overselling, and excessively simplifying things doesn't mean that there aren't issues, nor that they aren't of some concern - for that you need to actually read the science.
Sigh. I said to read "the IPCC summary of climate attribution studies" which was a link to chapter 12, the attribution chapter of the IPCC TAR, which was a summary of around 13 different attribution studies (not a single one of which was by Mann). The hint was to click on the link and to read what was there. The question is one of attribution, and in that discussion Mann is essentially never mentioned, and plays no role - the entire chapter only mentions him once. The quality or otherwise of Mann' particular study has no bearing on the results of the 13 studies considered in the attribution chapter. Feel free to actually read it this time.
Generally pretty good. They test their models by training on one historical dataset and running it on a different one. For the most part the models use purely observed data - this gives a smaller range to play with, but results in much smaller uncertainties in the resulting model.
Yes they do include uncertainties, in fact I've seen entire papers devoted to nothing but refining the accuracy of the uncertainty estimates. As to what the uncertainties are - it varies considerably depending what exactly it is you're trying to measure, and which model you are using to do it. With regard to attributing warming this figure has model estimates of attribution based on various collections of factors, along with uncertainties. You might note that, right off the bat, it is clear that CO2 alone is quite inadequate at accurately describing the current warming. Uncertainties are almost always given and can vary from quite large to very small depending on all manner of details. It's a matter of actually reading the studies to see.
Not by the people actually studying this. The IPCC TAR devotes an entire section to solar forcing of climate and, as I said, concludes it has had a significant (up to 30%) impact on the recent observed warming here on earth. Variation in solar radiation is considered in pretty much all climate models. I can't exactly see how you can call that ignoring it. If you want more then try some papers by Solanki and others.
I was hoping you could provide whatever evidence you've read to support your point of view. I was figuring maybe you would point to Solanki's solar variation studies, which are the best I've seen for evidence of natural factors being the primary cause of current warming, or preferably something better than that that I simply hadn't seen yet. I'm not at all averse to having my opinion swayed, I would just like a reason to do so.
Which is to say, the best scientific data, analysis, and predictions we currently have. I'm not saying its conclusive, I'm just saying that it is evidence, and some of it is actually pretty good (and quite a long way from anecdotal - try reading it). On the other hand we don't really have any good evidence or theories that can explain recent warming in terms of natural phenomena at the moment. To me that means that, barring new evidence to the contrary, I'm going to have to lean rather more toward the anthropogenic causes camp.
It's interesting you say that - could you provide me a reference for where the IPCC TAR concludes that the changes are "entirely explicable" as natural forcings? When I read through the conclusion of the attribution chapter I don't see anything about natural forcings providing adequate explanations. On the contrary we have
The best I can grant you is: "Natural factors may have contributed to the early century warming." but the warming in the last several decades cannot adequately be attributed to natural factors alone.
Yes, there is that. Of course in mentioned that in the post you just replied to:
So the answer is that solar variation is likely having an effect, and our best current studies put that effect at up to 30% of current observed warming on earth. It's not like this is being ignored or anything - I'm not sure what your point is exactly.
I'm simply saying that, since 2001, more data has been collected and further studies and papers have been published on the subject of attribution of climate change. Obviously all those studies are not going to be listed in an IPCC report from 2001. I'm not exactly sure what you're driving at here? Are you implying that perhaps no further work has been done? That recent studies have contradicted the general conclusion of past findings? Neither of those are the case as far as I am aware, but by all means if you have something I would be interested to read it.
Which is to say, you didn't read it. Honestly, have a look at chapter 12 (Attribution) of the IPCC Third Assessment Report. You'll find just a single mention, buried in the qualitative section, of Mann's study, listed amongst 5 other different palaeological climate reconstructions by different authors, and only to note that "the 20th century warming is highly unusual." You can see those reconstructions (plus several others) charted together if you're curious. Mann's studies, let alone the "Hockey Stick", far from being "the centerpiece", get scant mention. Instead the attribution factor considers many studies using indices and time series methods, pattern correlation methods, and optimal fingerprint methods. This table provides a summary of the attribution studies considered, along with the method, the uncertainty, the timescale considered etc. You might care to note that Mann is not involved in any of the studies considered.
Of course calling Mann's work a "scientific fraud" is rather unfounded too. You may note, in the chart linked above, that there are many other historical temperature reconstructions, done indepdently by different people, that arrive at a similar result to Mann. There is also the recent National Academy of Sciences report on the subject which concluded, with high confidence, that the earth was the warmest it had been in 400 years, and that while there was less confidence in reconstructions going further back, they still point to the earth undergoing unusual recent warming. On the other hand you have the Chairman of the Committee on Energy and Commerce, and an economist and someone from the mining industry claiming it is all bunk. At least McIntyre and McKitrick wrote some semi-respectable papers, though there is considerable dispute about their methodology (at least as much, if not far more, than there is about Mann's).
Let's cast all of that dispute aside however, and assume that Mann was full of crap - that still makes no difference whatsoever to the content of the attribution chapter of the IPCC report I linked to, and which you so very clearly didn't bother to read. I don't mind people having differing opinions, but when they are based on apparently willful ignorance I am a little appalled.
Mars, just like earth, undergoes natural climate fluctuation. On Earth we have Milankovitch cycles, based on the eccentricity, axial tilt, and precession of the Earth's orbit. Mars also has interesting orbital variations, and significantly greater orbital eccentricity than the earth. This results in similar, though differently timed, significant variations in climate. Mars also suffers from severe dust storms which can have a large impact on climate due t changes in atmospheric opacity. Combine that with the current solar variation, to which the IPCC attributes around 30% of the Earth's observed warming, and it isn't that surprising that Mars might be experiencing some climatic change currently.
The real difference between climate change on Mars and climate change on Earth is that the degree of change currently observed on Mars is entirely explainable in terms of observed natural effects, while the climate change on Earth is not. Anthropogenic effects, to the very bestof our knowledge, are required to explain the currently observed warming on Earth.