Yes, like Hangouts too. At least Google tried. They used xmpp for Google Talk and tried to get other companies to follow suit, but none of the major players did, so there was no interoperability.
> The actual science that actual scientist do. AGW is real, it's been measured and matches the predictions of the scientists. In fact, since scientists are conservative with data, their predictions
"Actual scientist" as in the guys from UC Berkeley, Stanford, Princeton, and NASA? Let's have a look at what they've been saying.
Dr. Stephen H. Schneider, Stanford and ClimateChange.Net: "To capture the public imagination... we have to... make simplified dramatic statements, and little mention of any doubts one might have.... Each of us has to decide the right balance between being effective and being honest".
In the 1970s, Dr Schnieider was warning of the dangers of global cooling, and getting grant money to study the dangers of cooling caused by pollution. His colleague ecology professor Kenneth E.F. Watt at the University of California explained their view: "If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but 11 degrees colder by the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us in an ice age."
You may notice 2000 has come and gone, and we're not in an ice age.
Stanford University professor Paul Ehrlich: "By the year 2000 the United Kingdom will be simply a small group of impoverished islands, inhabited by some 70 million hungry people"
United Nations Environmental Program, in 2005: "Amid predictions that by 2010 the world will need to cope with as many as 50 million people escaping the effects of creeping environmental deterioration, United Nations University experts say the international community urgently needs to define, recognize and extend support to this new category of refugee."
They are actually still making that same "50 million refugees" claim, after doing a search-and-replace to change "2005" to "2020". Cristina Tirado (University of California) made the claim of 50 million climate refugees by 2020 at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).
James Hansen headed NASA's Goddard Institute for 30 years before moving to University. In 1988, Hansen was asked by journalist greenhouse effect would affect New York by 2008. "The West Side Highway [then an elevated freeway] will be under water" , Hansen said. 2008 was seven years ago. New York isn't underwater.
UN IPCC author Michael Oppenheimer was "chief scientist" for the Environmental Defense Fund in 1990. He said that by 1995 global warming will be "desolating the heartlands of North America and Eurasia with horrific drought, causing crop failures and food riots."
Just for fun, along with all of these climate scientists, let's throw in our favorite leader of the global warming movement, Al Gore. Oppenheimer (above) was also an advisor to Al Gore, who claimed:
"the entire North Polar ice cap will disappear in five years. Five years is the period of time during which it is now expected to disappear." (The polar ice caps have actually INCREASED since then, significantly).
United Nations Environmental Program, Director of New York office in 1989: Entire nations could be wiped off the face of the earth by rising sea levels if global warming is not reversed by the year 2000
We're spending $360 billion dollars a year based on these people's predictions - several thousand dollars per family in the US.
I'm going to repeat once more, it is true that today it is warmer than it was 500 years ago, and much colder than it was 1,000 years ago. So yes, the climate changes in cycles, absolutely. Stanford, Berkeley, and Princeton have just ridiculously exaggerated the effect, while pitching for yet another $10 million grant to continue their work. Are these crazy "warnings" which never come true a bit of a sales a pitch for the grants they're asking for, perhaps?
Let's listen to what some subject matter experts have said.
Dr. Stephen H. Schneider, Stanford and ClimateChange.Net: "To capture the public imagination... we have to... make simplified dramatic statements, and little mention of any doubts one might have.... Each of us has to decide the right balance between being effective and being honest".
In the 1970s, Dr Schnieider was warning of the dangers of global cooling, and getting grant money to study the dangers of cooling caused by pollution. His colleague ecology professor Kenneth E.F. Watt at the University of California explained their view: "If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but 11 degrees colder by the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us in an ice age."
You may notice 2000 has come and gone, and we're not in an ice age.
Stanford University professor Paul Ehrlich: "By the year 2000 the United Kingdom will be simply a small group of impoverished islands, inhabited by some 70 million hungry people"
United Nations Environmental Program, in 2005: "Amid predictions that by 2010 the world will need to cope with as many as 50 million people escaping the effects of creeping environmental deterioration, United Nations University experts say the international community urgently needs to define, recognize and extend support to this new category of refugee."
They are actually still making that same "50 million refugees" claim, after doing a search-and-replace to change "2005" to "2020". Cristina Tirado (University of California) made the claim of 50 million climate refugees by 2020 at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).
James Hansen headed NASA's Goddard Institute for 30 years before moving to University. In 1988, Hansen was asked by journalist greenhouse effect would affect New York by 2008. "The West Side Highway [then an elevated freeway] will be under water" , Hansen said. 2008 was seven years ago. New York isn't underwater.
UN IPCC author Michael Oppenheimer was "chief scientist" for the Environmental Defense Fund in 1990. He said that by 1995 global warming will be "desolating the heartlands of North America and Eurasia with horrific drought, causing crop failures and food riots."
Just for fun, along with all of these climate scientists, let's throw in our favorite leader of the global warming movement, Al Gore. Oppenheimer (above) was also an advisor to Al Gore, who claimed:
"the entire North Polar ice cap will disappear in five years. Five years is the period of time during which it is now expected to disappear." (The polar ice caps have actually INCREASED since then, significantly).
United Nations Environmental Program, Director of New York office in 1989: Entire nations could be wiped off the face of the earth by rising sea levels if global warming is not reversed by the year 2000
We're spending $360 billion dollars a year based on these people's predictions - several thousand dollars per family in the US.
I'm going to repeat once more, it is true that today it is warmer than it was 500 years ago, and much colder than it was 1,000 years ago. So yes, the climate changes in cycles, absolutely. Stanford, Berkeley, and Princeton have just ridiculously exaggerated the effect, while pitching for yet another $10 million grant to continue their work. Are these crazy "warnings" which never come true a bit of a sales a pitch for the grants they're asking for, perhaps?
> but unless you can show how the scientists are wrong
Ok, no problem there. Let's have a look at what "scientists" from Princeton, UC Berkeley, and the UN have said, and see if they've been right or wrong.
It might help to keep in mind this information from Dr. Stephen H. Schneider, Stanford and ClimateChange.Net: "To capture the public imagination... we have to... make simplified dramatic statements, and little mention of any doubts one might have.... Each of us has to decide the right balance between being effective and being honest".
In the 1970s, Dr Schnieider was warning of the dangers of global cooling, and getting grant money to study the dangers of cooling caused by pollution. His colleague ecology professor Kenneth E.F. Watt at the University of California explained their view: "If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but 11 degrees colder by the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us in an ice age."
You may notice 2000 has come and gone, and we're not in an ice age.
Stanford University professor Paul Ehrlich: By the year 2000 the United Kingdom will be simply a small group of impoverished islands, inhabited by some 70 million hungry peopleÃ
United Nations Environmental Program, in 2005: "Amid predictions that by 2010 the world will need to cope with as many as 50 million people escaping the effects of creeping environmental deterioration, United Nations University experts say the international community urgently needs to define, recognize and extend support to this new category of refugee."
They are actually still making that same "50 million refugees" claim, after doing a search-and-replace to change "2005" to "2020". Cristina Tirado (University of California) made the claim of 50 million climate refugees by 2020 at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).
James Hansen headed NASA's Goddard Institute for 30 years before moving to University. In 1988, Hansen was asked by journalist greenhouse effect would affect New York by 2008. "The West Side Highway [an elevated freeway] will be under water", Hansen said. 2008 was seven years ago. New York isn't underwater
UN IPCC author Michael Oppenheimer was "chief scientist" for the Environmental Defense Fund in 1990. He said that by 1995 global warming will be "desolating the heartlands of North America and Eurasia with horrific drought, causing crop failures and food riots."
Just for fun, along with all of these climate scientists, let's throw in our favorite leader of the global warming movement, Al Gore. Oppenheimer (above) was also an advisor to Al Gore, who claimed:
"the entire North Polar ice cap will disappear in five years. Five years is the period of time during which it is now expected to disappear." (The polar ice caps have actually INCREASED since then, significantly).
United Nations Environmental Program, Director of New York office in 1989: Entire nations could be wiped off the face of the earth by rising sea levels if global warming is not reversed by the year 2000
We're spending $360 billion dollars a year based on these people's predictions - several thousand dollars per family in the US.
I'm going to repeat once more, it is true that today it is warmer than it was 500 years ago, and much colder than it was 1,000 years ago. So yes, the climate changes in cycles, absolutely. Stanford, Berkeley, and Princeton have just ridiculously exaggerated the effect, while pitching for yet another $10 million grant to continue their work. Are these crazy "warnings" which never come true a bit of a sales a pitch for the grants they're asking for, perhaps?
Dr. Stephen H. Schneider, Stanford and ClimateChange.Net: "To capture the public imagination... we have to... make simplified dramatic statements, and little mention of any doubts one might have.... Each of us has to decide the right balance between being effective and being honest".
In the 1970s, Dr Schnieider was warning of the dangers of global cooling, and getting grant money to study the dangers of cooling caused by pollution. His colleague ecology professor Kenneth E.F. Watt at the University of California explained their view: âoeIf present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but 11 degrees colder by the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us in an ice age."
You may notice 2000 has come and gone, and we're not in an ice age.
Stanford University professor Paul Ehrlich: By the year 2000 the United Kingdom will be simply a small group of impoverished islands, inhabited by some 70 million hungry peopleâ
United Nations Environmental Program, in 2005: "Amid predictions that by 2010 the world will need to cope with as many as 50 million people escaping the effects of creeping environmental deterioration, United Nations University experts say the international community urgently needs to define, recognize and extend support to this new category of refugee."
They are actually still making that same "50 million refugees" claim, after doing a search-and-replace to change "2005" to "2020". Cristina Tirado (University of California) made the claim of 50 million climate refugees by 2020 at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).
James Hansen headed NASAâ(TM)s Goddard Institute for 30 years before moving to University. In 1988, Hansen was asked by journalist greenhouse effect would affect New York by 2008. âoeThe West Side Highway [an elevated freeway] will be under waterâ , Hansen said.
UN IPCC author Michael Oppenheimer was âoechief scientistâ for the Environmental Defense Fund in 1990. He said that by 1995 global warming will be "desolating the heartlands of North America and Eurasia with horrific drought, causing crop failures and food riots."
Just for fun, along with all of these climate scientists, let's throw in our favorite leader of the global warming movement, Al Gore. Oppenheimer (above) was also an advisor to Al Gore, who claimed:
âoethe entire North Polar ice cap will disappear in five years. Five years is the period of time during which it is now expected to disappear.â (The polar ice caps have actually INCREASED since then, significantly).
United Nations Environmental Program, Director of New York office in 1989: Entire nations could be wiped off the face of the earth by rising sea levels if global warming is not reversed by the year 2000
We're spending $360 billion dollars a year based on these people's predictions - several thousand dollars per family in the US.
I'm going to repeat once more, it is true that today it is warmer than it was 500 years ago, and much colder than it was 1,000 years ago. So yes, the climate changes in cycles, absolutely. Stanford, Berkeley, and Princeton have just ridiculously exaggerated the effect, while pitching for yet another $10 million grant to continue their work. Are these crazy "warnings" which never come true a bit of a sales a pitch for the grants they're asking for, perhaps?
Yep, for a local restaurant or dry cleaner, your priorities are to get a nice looking site up within a very reasonable budget. It should be reasonably usable on a smart phone for travelers and people out for a night on the town. Using third party templates makes the most sense. If the site needs to be updated often, use a CMS with those templates.
If you're building Slashdot, the pages need to load fast, they should be accessible for all browsers, including audio for the blind, you should think about people in different countries, etc. The budget is a thousand times higher than the one for the local restaurant. Coding it carefully by hand makes the most sense. (Obviously the hand-coded HTML is attached to a script that displays the actual posts).
So yes, HTML hand-coded expertly has it's place. Downloaded templates have their place. CMS systems have their place. Frameworks - for collaborative projects, so that elements coded by different people are consistent.
WordPress has been mentioned several times. It is popular. It is flexible. There are about a million plugins. Those million plugins contain a billion significant security issues. If you choose Wordpress, remove any plugins that end up not being essential and stay on top of updates. Regularly your backups that are at least a month old as well as the fresh ones - you'll probably need them eventually. A combined off site backup and hot spare solution like Clonebox might be a really good idea. There's a lot to like about Wordpress, but you just have to plan on getting hacked eventually, so you in need to have prepared with Clonebox or regularly tested backups and if the site makes money, have a spare server ready to go.
> everyone has a computer so they should know the basics of programming
I agreed with that statement 20 years ago. Now, everything is constantly communicating with the open internet. Playing at programming your own systems, without actually knowing what you're doing, carries a thousand times as much risk today than it used to.
To continue (stretch?) the medical analogy, we can usefully distinguish between "for external use only" and surgery, messing with the internals. Messing with the internals is much, much riskier than taking care of the exposed surfaces.
Or if you prefer, buying drugs vs designing your own drugs. It's good to know how to buy the right medicine (and software). It's much riskier to synthesize your own drugs (or internet-connected software).
There is someone real called "Saint Nick". There is a mass of gross fiction also called "Saint Nick", originally inspired by the real Saint Nick.
There is something real called "global warming". There is a mass of gross fiction also called "global warming", originally inspired by the real warming.
Asking someone if they believe in global warming is kind of like asking them if they believe in jolly old Saint Nick. Political opponents can spin either answer (yes or no) to sound ridiculous by associating the term with their choice of meaning.
Another example - did Saddam have a nuclear program, vote yes or no. He didn't have a program that was a significant threat in the short or medium term. He did buy uranium, which he wanted to weaponize in some form. If you someone says he had a nuclear program, I can make that person sound stupid. If someone says he did not have a nuclear program I can make that person sound ridiculous too.
For that particular example, I had in mind the University of California climatology department's models from the nineties. That's just one example, though - pick up any issue of Greenpeace magazine or any of All Gore's stuff that's had time to come true. You'll find plenty of claims about what will happen in twenty years or fifty years. Now that it IS twenty years later, we can see which of those are utter bullshit, and which aren't.
Which is NOT to say that anyone who is concerned about the man's impact on the earth is wrong. There are some models out there that may be reasonable. So if you ask "is global warming a hoax", you kind of have to be more specific. Like Saint Nick, there was a real guy by that name, and there's the myth with the reindeer. There's science, and there's fear-mongering to pitch your book on CNN. Maybe an even better parallel is Saddam's attempts at a nuclear program. Were they a threat to region? No, not in the near term to medium term. Their old chemical weapons were more dangerous than their DESIRE for nukes. On the other hand, they had bought uranium, so there was nugget of truth suggesting something to keep an eye on in the long term.
> Law and contract doesn't work like that. Law > Contract. If you agree to something in a contract that would violate a law, the law trumps it.
The computer fraud and abuse act (CFAA) is federal law. it says that unauthorized access is a crime. Do you think a school district's policies trump federal law?
I think that approximately everyone who is smart enough to get elected to the senate understands that climate does change. Past that point, you can say that "climate change" is as real as Saint Nick.
It's warmer today than it was 100,00 years ago, and it's colder today than it was 150,000 years ago. If that's what you mean by "climate change", we can all agree. San Francisco will not in fact by underwater by the year 2020. That meaning of "climate change" is a hoax, it's false. Recently, the Obama administration updated the dire predictions in some of their stuff from "by 2010" to "by 2050". Maybe the predictions will come true this time, but the search-and-replace nature of changing all references to "2010" to "2050" is a bit suspect. Some informed people think those claims are false, scare mongering, a hoax.
When I've pointed out some of the stuff that professors of climatology said in the 1990s, the environmentalists here on Slashdot have said "that guy is a wacko, he doesn't represent the mainstream of liberal thought on the issue". I'll take them at their word. So we all agree the UC climatologist's "science" was false/bogus/wrong. And we all agree that the climate has changed. Not really useful.
> If there is a structural problem with those businesses, or their product is no longer needed (like buggy whips), I can understand letting them go under. For everything else, it is almost always who is running the business, as opposed to the business itself, which is the problem.
Good points. Also, sometimes an unusual external event is a significant factor. You build homes to withstand thunderstorms, not to withstand a record-breaking monsoon. Similarly, you build a business to withstand the threats you expect it to face, plus a bit of safety margin.
Not that I liked TARP - it was bad enough as the law was written (ie the government trading cash for non-voting stock), even worse as Obama warped it ("exercise our [the adminisitrations's] ownership and management responsibilities of these companies"). However, it was a shitty situation, with no good options. TARP might have been less bad than the other choices available.
> Exactly what makes a school (or employer) subject to the Facebook TOS
When they log into Facebook (using the student's password), their use of Facebook's system is subject to Facebook's policies. There's a law about "unauthorized access to a secured computer system". You are only authorized to access Facebook's computer system in accordance with it's TOS. Any access outside of the TOS is unauthorized access. Not that school officials would actually be prosecuted in a situation like this, of course.
Let me see if I understand this author's thesis. back in 2005, Adobe changed direction and needed different people, with a different type of education and experience. From this, they draw the conclusion that ten years the entire tech industry is made up of "disposable employees". I didn't work at Adobe in 2005, so I don't know the details of that reorganization. I do know that in all of the companies I've worked at, most people leave when they choose to pursue an opportunity elsewhere - the employee leaves the company more often than the company leaves the employee.
I'll tell you what, here's a proposal for you, liberal AC. You're good at coming up with complaints and dreaming up cool ideas while you're stoned. Not so good at 3rd grade arithmetic though, so your ideas for the great society have people starving to death on the way, because you didn't count the cost. We conservative bean counters are better at arithmetic, but not so keen on taking 'shrooms and dreaming up utopian daydreams. Maybe we can work together to combine our strengths.
How about next time you get really, really high, write down your awesome vision of the future, where you'd like to end up. Don't bother with how to get there, that's not your strength. Maybe paint a picture of what you'd like the world to look like, if writing isn't your thing. Then show the picture of your dream to us bean-counting logic-using republicans and we'll come up with a workable plan to get as close to your dream as practicable. We want eat as close as you'd like, or as quickly as you'd like, but we also won't all starve to death like we'd do if you did the planning.
> If only we paid doctors a tenth as much, the world would be able to afford to hire the other 90%.
That sounds like a great sound bite for the Occupy crowd. Let's have a look at that. You propose "a tenth as much". Currently, the median salary for physicians is $188,440. One tenth of that would be $18,844. The median cost of malpractice insurance is $32,000. So a doctor would get paid $19k, then spend $32k on insurance. With no paycheck, in about three to four weeks they starve to death. Yep, another perfect example of liberal "thinking:.
Yeah look at how far we've come with only 60 years and $200 billion taxpayer money of intense research in the area. 50 years ago, solar could only power a calculator. Now it can power a mobile phone. Well, it can provide almost 1/10th of 1% of the power for a mobile phone, anyway.
What alternative energy needs isn't MORE of the same fail, but some different thinking, primarily getting rid of the preoccupation with turning light into electricity. Solar works great for heating. The sun is a million degrees, after all, so simply piping water through a black pipe gives you hot water for showers - simply, cheaply, reliably, and cleanly. In a few places, geothermal is available and that works for making electricity. If we'd devoted 1/10th as much time and money into workable alternative energy like solar heating as we put into solar-electric, we'd probably have all of our heating and cooling needs provided by clean, reliable sources. We need to move forward on stuff that works.
> Nonsense. If you train a million doctors the worse that could happen is that you have nearly a million [more] paramedics
Not really, but let's assume that were true. The US needs a of 239,000 paramedics, and already has 235,000. So of the million you think you'd end up with, 99% would be unemployed. Excellent example of the thinking process of modern liberalism.
Funny you should mention that example. I work on an EMT/paramedic course. It has very little in common with medical school for doctors, and it's sure not all about medical coding. If you want paramedics or EMTs, train them in emergency medical practice. Don't train them in medical coding. Their is a vocabulary section, but for EMTs there are also lectures on theory, skills practice, etc. For paramedics, a huge portion of the study is about contraindications and interactions of various drugs. Teaching them medical coding doesn't help them one bit to get a job as a paramedic.
> Don't knock a community college education. It's not always a bad thing. A lot of it depends on the student, too. There are undoubtedly people that took those same courses and got nothing out of it.
I'm not knocking community college at all. In fact, I work on non-university courses for a living.
This is my point: > But most of my useful course load was relational database design, low-level systems courses...
So everything but the vocabulary aka code courses. You apparently learned at least little systems design, etc., which is what I'm saying is far more important. You got an AAS in (whatever fancy name) basically, programming. Just as learning medical codes doesn't make the student a doctor or nurse, and learning the vocabulary of anthropology doesn't make the student an anthropologist, learning the vocabulary words (code) of computer systems development doesn't make the student a systems developer.
I'm all for community college courses with names like "Relational Database, Theory and Practice". One that teaches just the code, the grammar of "CREATE TABLE", without teaching the normalization rules, just results in someone who can create horribly crappy databases that break and cost a low of money overhauling the system later. Much like teaching someone how to use a air ratchet and sending them off to work on engines, without teaching them how engines work.
I like this. I've been known to post links to Snopes in the comments of a lot of the stuff my friends re-post. Come to think of it, I hardly ever post to Facebook at all, so the Snopes.com links may make up the majority of my posts.
Suppose that's true, if you teach a million people medical coding, two will end up being doctors. And the rest end up unemployed because we only need a few thousand medical coding people. How is that good, to have 998,000 people waste their time (and your money)? Everyone would be much better off putting 1/100th the money into medical school scholarships - you end up with more doctors and nobody wasting their time, and you still have your money to spend on something useful.
Similarly, we need people who know systems architecture, comp sci, information security, electrical engineering, materials science - all of these disciplines are needed to build the systems of the future, and all pay well. Scholarships in these areas would be useful to the student and to the country. Teaching everyone a coding language doesn't advance anything they need or we need.
There are plenty of fields where a community college education is useful - welders, for example, earn more than code monkeys, starting with just a few weeks of schooling. In two years, they can get certified to do underwater welding, aerospace, etc - all of which pay much better than coding, because they are more useful than coding without understanding software systems design principles.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, like Hangouts too. At least Google tried. They used xmpp for Google Talk and tried to get other companies to follow suit, but none of the major players did, so there was no interoperability.
> The actual science that actual scientist do. AGW is real, it's been measured and matches the predictions of the scientists. In fact, since scientists are conservative with data, their predictions
"Actual scientist" as in the guys from UC Berkeley, Stanford, Princeton, and NASA? Let's have a look at what they've been saying.
Dr. Stephen H. Schneider, Stanford and ClimateChange.Net:
"To capture the public imagination... we have to... make simplified dramatic statements, and little mention of any doubts one might have.... Each of us has to decide the right balance between being effective and being honest".
In the 1970s, Dr Schnieider was warning of the dangers of global cooling, and getting grant money to study the dangers of cooling caused by pollution. His colleague ecology professor Kenneth E.F. Watt at the University of California explained their view:
"If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but 11 degrees colder by the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us in an ice age."
You may notice 2000 has come and gone, and we're not in an ice age.
Stanford University professor Paul Ehrlich:
"By the year 2000 the United Kingdom will be simply a small group of impoverished islands, inhabited by some 70 million hungry people"
United Nations Environmental Program, in 2005:
"Amid predictions that by 2010 the world will need to cope with as many as 50 million people escaping the effects of creeping environmental deterioration, United Nations University experts say the international community urgently needs to define, recognize and extend support to this new category of refugee."
They are actually still making that same "50 million refugees" claim, after doing a search-and-replace to change "2005" to "2020". Cristina Tirado (University of California) made the claim of 50 million climate refugees by 2020 at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).
James Hansen headed NASA's Goddard Institute for 30 years before moving to University. In 1988, Hansen was asked by journalist greenhouse effect would affect New York by 2008. "The West Side Highway [then an elevated freeway] will be under water" , Hansen said. 2008 was seven years ago. New York isn't underwater.
UN IPCC author Michael Oppenheimer was "chief scientist" for the Environmental Defense Fund in 1990. He said that by 1995 global warming will be "desolating the heartlands of North America and Eurasia with horrific drought, causing crop failures and food riots."
Just for fun, along with all of these climate scientists, let's throw in our favorite leader of the global warming movement, Al Gore. Oppenheimer (above) was also an advisor to Al Gore, who claimed:
"the entire North Polar ice cap will disappear in five years. Five years is the period of time during which it is now expected to disappear." (The polar ice caps have actually INCREASED since then, significantly).
United Nations Environmental Program, Director of New York office in 1989:
Entire nations could be wiped off the face of the earth by rising sea levels if global warming is not reversed by the year 2000
We're spending $360 billion dollars a year based on these people's predictions - several thousand dollars per family in the US.
I'm going to repeat once more, it is true that today it is warmer than it was 500 years ago, and much colder than it was 1,000 years ago. So yes, the climate changes in cycles, absolutely. Stanford, Berkeley, and Princeton have just ridiculously exaggerated the effect, while pitching for yet another $10 million grant to continue their work. Are these crazy "warnings" which never come true a bit of a sales a pitch for the grants they're asking for, perhaps?
Let's listen to what some subject matter experts have said.
Dr. Stephen H. Schneider, Stanford and ClimateChange.Net:
"To capture the public imagination... we have to... make simplified dramatic statements, and little mention of any doubts one might have.... Each of us has to decide the right balance between being effective and being honest".
In the 1970s, Dr Schnieider was warning of the dangers of global cooling, and getting grant money to study the dangers of cooling caused by pollution. His colleague ecology professor Kenneth E.F. Watt at the University of California explained their view:
"If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but 11 degrees colder by the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us in an ice age."
You may notice 2000 has come and gone, and we're not in an ice age.
Stanford University professor Paul Ehrlich:
"By the year 2000 the United Kingdom will be simply a small group of impoverished islands, inhabited by some 70 million hungry people"
United Nations Environmental Program, in 2005:
"Amid predictions that by 2010 the world will need to cope with as many as 50 million people escaping the effects of creeping environmental deterioration, United Nations University experts say the international community urgently needs to define, recognize and extend support to this new category of refugee."
They are actually still making that same "50 million refugees" claim, after doing a search-and-replace to change "2005" to "2020". Cristina Tirado (University of California) made the claim of 50 million climate refugees by 2020 at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).
James Hansen headed NASA's Goddard Institute for 30 years before moving to University. In 1988, Hansen was asked by journalist greenhouse effect would affect New York by 2008. "The West Side Highway [then an elevated freeway] will be under water" , Hansen said. 2008 was seven years ago. New York isn't underwater.
UN IPCC author Michael Oppenheimer was "chief scientist" for the Environmental Defense Fund in 1990. He said that by 1995 global warming will be "desolating the heartlands of North America and Eurasia with horrific drought, causing crop failures and food riots."
Just for fun, along with all of these climate scientists, let's throw in our favorite leader of the global warming movement, Al Gore. Oppenheimer (above) was also an advisor to Al Gore, who claimed:
"the entire North Polar ice cap will disappear in five years. Five years is the period of time during which it is now expected to disappear." (The polar ice caps have actually INCREASED since then, significantly).
United Nations Environmental Program, Director of New York office in 1989:
Entire nations could be wiped off the face of the earth by rising sea levels if global warming is not reversed by the year 2000
We're spending $360 billion dollars a year based on these people's predictions - several thousand dollars per family in the US.
I'm going to repeat once more, it is true that today it is warmer than it was 500 years ago, and much colder than it was 1,000 years ago. So yes, the climate changes in cycles, absolutely. Stanford, Berkeley, and Princeton have just ridiculously exaggerated the effect, while pitching for yet another $10 million grant to continue their work. Are these crazy "warnings" which never come true a bit of a sales a pitch for the grants they're asking for, perhaps?
> but unless you can show how the scientists are wrong
Ok, no problem there. Let's have a look at what "scientists" from Princeton, UC Berkeley, and the UN have said, and see if they've been right or wrong.
It might help to keep in mind this information from Dr. Stephen H. Schneider, Stanford and ClimateChange.Net:
"To capture the public imagination... we have to... make simplified dramatic statements, and little mention of any doubts one might have.... Each of us has to decide the right balance between being effective and being honest".
In the 1970s, Dr Schnieider was warning of the dangers of global cooling, and getting grant money to study the dangers of cooling caused by pollution. His colleague ecology professor Kenneth E.F. Watt at the University of California explained their view:
"If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but 11 degrees colder by the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us in an ice age."
You may notice 2000 has come and gone, and we're not in an ice age.
Stanford University professor Paul Ehrlich:
By the year 2000 the United Kingdom will be simply a small group of impoverished islands, inhabited by some 70 million hungry peopleÃ
United Nations Environmental Program, in 2005:
"Amid predictions that by 2010 the world will need to cope with as many as 50 million people escaping the effects of creeping environmental deterioration, United Nations University experts say the international community urgently needs to define, recognize and extend support to this new category of refugee."
They are actually still making that same "50 million refugees" claim, after doing a search-and-replace to change "2005" to "2020". Cristina Tirado (University of California) made the claim of 50 million climate refugees by 2020 at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).
James Hansen headed NASA's Goddard Institute for 30 years before moving to University. In 1988, Hansen was asked by journalist greenhouse effect would affect New York by 2008. "The West Side Highway [an elevated freeway] will be under water", Hansen said. 2008 was seven years ago. New York isn't underwater
UN IPCC author Michael Oppenheimer was "chief scientist" for the Environmental Defense Fund in 1990. He said that by 1995 global warming will be "desolating the heartlands of North America and Eurasia with horrific drought, causing crop failures and food riots."
Just for fun, along with all of these climate scientists, let's throw in our favorite leader of the global warming movement, Al Gore. Oppenheimer (above) was also an advisor to Al Gore, who claimed:
"the entire North Polar ice cap will disappear in five years. Five years is the period of time during which it is now expected to disappear." (The polar ice caps have actually INCREASED since then, significantly).
United Nations Environmental Program, Director of New York office in 1989:
Entire nations could be wiped off the face of the earth by rising sea levels if global warming is not reversed by the year 2000
We're spending $360 billion dollars a year based on these people's predictions - several thousand dollars per family in the US.
I'm going to repeat once more, it is true that today it is warmer than it was 500 years ago, and much colder than it was 1,000 years ago. So yes, the climate changes in cycles, absolutely. Stanford, Berkeley, and Princeton have just ridiculously exaggerated the effect, while pitching for yet another $10 million grant to continue their work. Are these crazy "warnings" which never come true a bit of a sales a pitch for the grants they're asking for, perhaps?
Dr. Stephen H. Schneider, Stanford and ClimateChange.Net:
"To capture the public imagination... we have to... make simplified dramatic statements, and little mention of any doubts one might have.... Each of us has to decide the right balance between being effective and being honest".
In the 1970s, Dr Schnieider was warning of the dangers of global cooling, and getting grant money to study the dangers of cooling caused by pollution. His colleague ecology professor Kenneth E.F. Watt at the University of California explained their view:
âoeIf present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but 11 degrees colder by the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us in an ice age."
You may notice 2000 has come and gone, and we're not in an ice age.
Stanford University professor Paul Ehrlich:
By the year 2000 the United Kingdom will be simply a small group of impoverished islands, inhabited by some 70 million hungry peopleâ
United Nations Environmental Program, in 2005:
"Amid predictions that by 2010 the world will need to cope with as many as 50 million people escaping the effects of creeping environmental deterioration, United Nations University experts say the international community urgently needs to define, recognize and extend support to this new category of refugee."
They are actually still making that same "50 million refugees" claim, after doing a search-and-replace to change "2005" to "2020". Cristina Tirado (University of California) made the claim of 50 million climate refugees by 2020 at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).
James Hansen headed NASAâ(TM)s Goddard Institute for 30 years before moving to University. In 1988, Hansen was asked by journalist greenhouse effect would affect New York by 2008. âoeThe West Side Highway [an elevated freeway] will be under waterâ , Hansen said.
UN IPCC author Michael Oppenheimer was âoechief scientistâ for the Environmental Defense Fund in 1990. He said that by 1995 global warming will be "desolating the heartlands of North America and Eurasia with horrific drought, causing crop failures and food riots."
Just for fun, along with all of these climate scientists, let's throw in our favorite leader of the global warming movement, Al Gore. Oppenheimer (above) was also an advisor to Al Gore, who claimed:
âoethe entire North Polar ice cap will disappear in five years. Five years is the period of time during which it is now expected to disappear.â (The polar ice caps have actually INCREASED since then, significantly).
United Nations Environmental Program, Director of New York office in 1989:
Entire nations could be wiped off the face of the earth by rising sea levels if global warming is not reversed by the year 2000
We're spending $360 billion dollars a year based on these people's predictions - several thousand dollars per family in the US.
I'm going to repeat once more, it is true that today it is warmer than it was 500 years ago, and much colder than it was 1,000 years ago. So yes, the climate changes in cycles, absolutely. Stanford, Berkeley, and Princeton have just ridiculously exaggerated the effect, while pitching for yet another $10 million grant to continue their work. Are these crazy "warnings" which never come true a bit of a sales a pitch for the grants they're asking for, perhaps?
Yep, for a local restaurant or dry cleaner, your priorities are to get a nice looking site up within a very reasonable budget. It should be reasonably usable on a smart phone for travelers and people out for a night on the town. Using third party templates makes the most sense. If the site needs to be updated often, use a CMS with those templates.
If you're building Slashdot, the pages need to load fast, they should be accessible for all browsers, including audio for the blind, you should think about people in different countries, etc. The budget is a thousand times higher than the one for the local restaurant. Coding it carefully by hand makes the most sense. (Obviously the hand-coded HTML is attached to a script that displays the actual posts).
So yes, HTML hand-coded expertly has it's place. Downloaded templates have their place. CMS systems have their place. Frameworks - for collaborative projects, so that elements coded by different people are consistent.
WordPress has been mentioned several times. It is popular. It is flexible. There are about a million plugins. Those million plugins contain a billion significant security issues. If you choose Wordpress, remove any plugins that end up not being essential and stay on top of updates. Regularly your backups that are at least a month old as well as the fresh ones - you'll probably need them eventually. A combined off site backup and hot spare solution like Clonebox might be a really good idea. There's a lot to like about Wordpress, but you just have to plan on getting hacked eventually, so you in need to have prepared with Clonebox or regularly tested backups and if the site makes money, have a spare server ready to go.
> everyone has a computer so they should know the basics of programming
I agreed with that statement 20 years ago. Now, everything is constantly communicating with the open internet. Playing at programming your own systems, without actually knowing what you're doing, carries a thousand times as much risk today than it used to.
To continue (stretch?) the medical analogy, we can usefully distinguish between "for external use only" and surgery, messing with the internals. Messing with the internals is much, much riskier than taking care of the exposed surfaces.
Or if you prefer, buying drugs vs designing your own drugs. It's good to know how to buy the right medicine (and software). It's much riskier to synthesize your own drugs (or internet-connected software).
I guess I could have been more clear.
There is someone real called "Saint Nick".
There is a mass of gross fiction also called "Saint Nick", originally inspired by the real Saint Nick.
There is something real called "global warming".
There is a mass of gross fiction also called "global warming", originally inspired by the real warming.
Asking someone if they believe in global warming is kind of like asking them if they believe in jolly old Saint Nick. Political opponents can spin either answer (yes or no) to sound ridiculous by associating the term with their choice of meaning.
Another example - did Saddam have a nuclear program, vote yes or no.
He didn't have a program that was a significant threat in the short or medium term. He did buy uranium, which he wanted to weaponize in some form. If you someone says he had a nuclear program, I can make that person sound stupid. If someone says he did not have a nuclear program I can make that person sound ridiculous too.
For that particular example, I had in mind the University of California climatology department's models from the nineties. That's just one example, though - pick up any issue of Greenpeace magazine or any of All Gore's stuff that's had time to come true. You'll find plenty of claims about what will happen in twenty years or fifty years. Now that it IS twenty years later, we can see which of those are utter bullshit, and which aren't.
Which is NOT to say that anyone who is concerned about the man's impact on the earth is wrong. There are some models out there that may be reasonable. So if you ask "is global warming a hoax", you kind of have to be more specific. Like Saint Nick, there was a real guy by that name, and there's the myth with the reindeer. There's science, and there's fear-mongering to pitch your book on CNN.
Maybe an even better parallel is Saddam's attempts at a nuclear program. Were they a threat to region? No, not in the near term to medium term. Their old chemical weapons were more dangerous than their DESIRE for nukes. On the other hand, they had bought uranium, so there was nugget of truth suggesting something to keep an eye on in the long term.
> Law and contract doesn't work like that. Law > Contract. If you agree to something in a contract that would violate a law, the law trumps it.
The computer fraud and abuse act (CFAA) is federal law. it says that unauthorized access is a crime. Do you think a school district's policies trump federal law?
I think that approximately everyone who is smart enough to get elected to the senate understands that climate does change. Past that point, you can say that "climate change" is as real as Saint Nick.
It's warmer today than it was 100,00 years ago, and it's colder today than it was 150,000 years ago. If that's what you mean by "climate change", we can all agree. San Francisco will not in fact by underwater by the year 2020. That meaning of "climate change" is a hoax, it's false. Recently, the Obama administration updated the dire predictions in some of their stuff from "by 2010" to "by 2050". Maybe the predictions will come true this time, but the search-and-replace nature of changing all references to "2010" to "2050" is a bit suspect. Some informed people think those claims are false, scare mongering, a hoax.
When I've pointed out some of the stuff that professors of climatology said in the 1990s, the environmentalists here on Slashdot have said "that guy is a wacko, he doesn't represent the mainstream of liberal thought on the issue". I'll take them at their word. So we all agree the UC climatologist's "science" was false/bogus/wrong. And we all agree that the climate has changed. Not really useful.
> If there is a structural problem with those businesses, or their product is no longer needed (like buggy whips), I can understand letting them go under. For everything else, it is almost always who is running the business, as opposed to the business itself, which is the problem.
Good points. Also, sometimes an unusual external event is a significant factor. You build homes to withstand thunderstorms, not to withstand a record-breaking monsoon. Similarly, you build a business to withstand the threats you expect it to face, plus a bit of safety margin.
Not that I liked TARP - it was bad enough as the law was written (ie the government trading cash for non-voting stock), even worse as Obama warped it ("exercise our [the adminisitrations's] ownership and management responsibilities of these companies"). However, it was a shitty situation, with no good options. TARP might have been less bad than the other choices available.
> Exactly what makes a school (or employer) subject to the Facebook TOS
When they log into Facebook (using the student's password), their use of Facebook's system is subject to Facebook's policies. There's a law about "unauthorized access to a secured computer system". You are only authorized to access Facebook's computer system in accordance with it's TOS. Any access outside of the TOS is unauthorized access. Not that school officials would actually be prosecuted in a situation like this, of course.
> Beer is never free. Someone has to pay for it.
beer wants to be free
Not free as in free speech. :)
Not free as in free beer.
Free as in AOL.
> Agreed. I have been laid just once
That's about par for the course for Slashdot nerds. :)
>. I want to live in your world.
It's called Texas. There are advantages and disadvantages.
Let me see if I understand this author's thesis. back in 2005, Adobe changed direction and needed different people, with a different type of education and experience. From this, they draw the conclusion that ten years the entire tech industry is made up of "disposable employees". I didn't work at Adobe in 2005, so I don't know the details of that reorganization. I do know that in all of the companies I've worked at, most people leave when they choose to pursue an opportunity elsewhere - the employee leaves the company more often than the company leaves the employee.
I'll tell you what, here's a proposal for you, liberal AC. You're good at coming up with complaints and dreaming up cool ideas while you're stoned. Not so good at 3rd grade arithmetic though, so your ideas for the great society have people starving to death on the way, because you didn't count the cost. We conservative bean counters are better at arithmetic, but not so keen on taking 'shrooms and dreaming up utopian daydreams. Maybe we can work together to combine our strengths.
How about next time you get really, really high, write down your awesome vision of the future, where you'd like to end up. Don't bother with how to get there, that's not your strength. Maybe paint a picture of what you'd like the world to look like, if writing isn't your thing. Then show the picture of your dream to us bean-counting logic-using republicans and we'll come up with a workable plan to get as close to your dream as practicable. We want eat as close as you'd like, or as quickly as you'd like, but we also won't all starve to death like we'd do if you did the planning.
> If only we paid doctors a tenth as much, the world would be able to afford to hire the other 90%.
That sounds like a great sound bite for the Occupy crowd. Let's have a look at that. You propose "a tenth as much". Currently, the median salary for physicians is $188,440. One tenth of that would be $18,844. The median cost of malpractice insurance is $32,000. So a doctor would get paid $19k, then spend $32k on insurance. With no paycheck, in about three to four weeks they starve to death. Yep, another perfect example of liberal "thinking:.
Arithmetic - learn it, use it.
Yeah look at how far we've come with only 60 years and $200 billion taxpayer money of intense research in the area. 50 years ago, solar could only power a calculator. Now it can power a mobile phone. Well, it can provide almost 1/10th of 1% of the power for a mobile phone, anyway.
What alternative energy needs isn't MORE of the same fail, but some different thinking, primarily getting rid of the preoccupation with turning light into electricity. Solar works great for heating. The sun is a million degrees, after all, so simply piping water through a black pipe gives you hot water for showers - simply, cheaply, reliably, and cleanly. In a few places, geothermal is available and that works for making electricity. If we'd devoted 1/10th as much time and money into workable alternative energy like solar heating as we put into solar-electric, we'd probably have all of our heating and cooling needs provided by clean, reliable sources. We need to move forward on stuff that works.
> Nonsense. If you train a million doctors the worse that could happen is that you have nearly a million [more] paramedics
Not really, but let's assume that were true. The US needs a of 239,000 paramedics, and already has 235,000. So of the million you think you'd end up with, 99% would be unemployed. Excellent example of the thinking process of modern liberalism.
Funny you should mention that example. I work on an EMT/paramedic course. It has very little in common with medical school for doctors, and it's sure not all about medical coding. If you want paramedics or EMTs, train them in emergency medical practice. Don't train them in medical coding. Their is a vocabulary section, but for EMTs there are also lectures on theory, skills practice, etc. For paramedics, a huge portion of the study is about contraindications and interactions of various drugs. Teaching them medical coding doesn't help them one bit to get a job as a paramedic.
> Don't knock a community college education. It's not always a bad thing. A lot of it depends on the student, too. There are undoubtedly people that took those same courses and got nothing out of it.
I'm not knocking community college at all. In fact, I work on non-university courses for a living.
This is my point: ...
> But most of my useful course load was relational database design, low-level systems courses
So everything but the vocabulary aka code courses. You apparently learned at least little systems design, etc., which is what I'm saying is far more important. You got an AAS in (whatever fancy name) basically, programming. Just as learning medical codes doesn't make the student a doctor or nurse, and learning the vocabulary of anthropology doesn't make the student an anthropologist, learning the vocabulary words (code) of computer systems development doesn't make the student a systems developer.
I'm all for community college courses with names like "Relational Database, Theory and Practice". One that teaches just the code, the grammar of "CREATE TABLE", without teaching the normalization rules, just results in someone who can create horribly crappy databases that break and cost a low of money overhauling the system later. Much like teaching someone how to use a air ratchet and sending them off to work on engines, without teaching them how engines work.
I like this. I've been known to post links to Snopes in the comments of a lot of the stuff my friends re-post. Come to think of it, I hardly ever post to Facebook at all, so the Snopes.com links may make up the majority of my posts.
Now for a "dislike" button. :)
Suppose that's true, if you teach a million people medical coding, two will end up being doctors. And the rest end up unemployed because we only need a few thousand medical coding people. How is that good, to have 998,000 people waste their time (and your money)? Everyone would be much better off putting 1/100th the money into medical school scholarships - you end up with more doctors and nobody wasting their time, and you still have your money to spend on something useful.
Similarly, we need people who know systems architecture, comp sci, information security, electrical engineering, materials science - all of these disciplines are needed to build the systems of the future, and all pay well. Scholarships in these areas would be useful to the student and to the country. Teaching everyone a coding language doesn't advance anything they need or we need.
There are plenty of fields where a community college education is useful - welders, for example, earn more than code monkeys, starting with just a few weeks of schooling. In two years, they can get certified to do underwater welding, aerospace, etc - all of which pay much better than coding, because they are more useful than coding without understanding software systems design principles.