Well, it's fairly obvious that something is happening and that the results appear to be consistent with adding more energy to the system. (increases in the occurrence rate of extreme weather events for example) Currently the prediction models aren't doing a very good job of telling us what is going to happen going forward though. In the past large changes in climate were generally a "bad thing" for the species alive at the time and it's likely something we should try to avoid. An obvious first step should be to force internalization of all costs since that's something that's good for the market anyways, a pigovian carbon tax being the least distorting solution. Increases in basic research for all phases of energy production would also be pretty much a no brainer since we'd get some nice science out of it regardless of whether AGW is occurring. *shrug* Neither of those things are likely to happen, let alone common sense things like switching commercial trucking to natural gas or increasing the number nuclear power plants.
For some reason we have the civilian crypto folks, the overseas & local info spies and the cyber warfare command all packed into the same agency. It's a bad design that compromises their mission.
We don't make millions of guns and bombs because it's really fun to shoot them. We make weapons of mass destruction because it's profitable for someone to do so.
Nonsense, we make them because we're afraid. Of course, since we're also greedy we made WAY too many, but that's a secondary effect not a primary.
It could work out that way, but it wouldn't. You're making the faulty assumption that the government spending process is rational. More likely the money would just get hoovered off to some constituency with lots of lobbyists (feel free to pick whichever ones you support least since both sides have them).
A major percentage of the posters here on Slashdot are openly hostile to the "non-aggression principle" and its proponents
In theory it sounds obvious and logical, for about 20 seconds. Once you start introducing a variety of test cases the rule either A) Fails terribly or B) Gets stacked with so many convoluted justifications, odd definitions and tortured logic that you might as well not assert it in the first place. If we must have one sentence principles then a better one is "We don't start things, but if you do we'll finish it and you won't like that."
Why waste all that time on nuclear winter when you could just detonate a few EMP devices and watch while we tear ourselves to pieces. Wait a year or two for starvation, violence and disease to kill 99.9% of the humanity and then move in and take whatever real estate you're interested in. The remaining inhabitants should be easy to handle for a group with modern weaponry and complete air superiority.
FTL travel, or even FTL communication, is forbidden by the laws of physics.
Not exactly. There are a variety of ways around the limitations without breaking the laws as we know them. Of course we currently don't have the knowledge to implement those methods but that's not the same thing. Additionally it's highly unlikely that we understand all there is to know of physics or even most of it, there is a high probability that significant new knowledge will be discovered in the future that could change our understanding of how things work and that could lead to additional possibilities for avoiding the current limitations. I'm not expecting star travel any time soon, but assuming we don't wipe ourselves out as a species then eventually it's virtually certain we'll figure something out.
There are many pieces of those jobs that have been automated and more will be going forward. Drafting and PCB layout for example are both areas where massive amounts of automation have been introduced. I agree that design work is likely to be one of the last bastions but there will be ever more pressure to support the best designers with fantastic tools while leaving the rest unemployable. However, even if I were completely wrong there are large portions of the populace that couldn't cut it in any of those fields.
Not having to work may seem like a good thing but for many people, it's not : we need some kind of occupation, that's human nature, and work is a way of doing it.
Perhaps you can't think of anything better to do with your time, I doubt most people share that problem. The majority of workers are kept at the wheel via use of the lash (threat of homelessness and starvation), make work unnecessary for bare survival and they'll drop out in droves. Now, some might indeed become lazy couch surfers for the rest of their lives, but most would take time to enjoy their hobbies and things that interest them instead.
The problem is that creativity jobs tend to follow a superstar pattern. A few of the best make a ton of cash while the rest make nearly nothing. That's not a good model for a whole economy.
As a librarian's husband, I feel a bit of a duty to point out that a larger company (say, of the size where document control and user training are becoming real problems) may be well-served by hiring a corporate librarian.
One moment while I laugh myself sick. Sorry, you're not wrong it's just that doing something sensible like hiring an expert and then listening to their advice is pretty rare these days.
You'd be surprised how resistant the military is to any sort of change. Both as a cultural issue (trying to preserve previous things that work) and as a logistics issue (five zillion different kinds of ammo are hard to keep re-supplied). Since it's not some fancy high technology thing you'd have a hard time getting much research money to study the problem and test out various smaller sizes to see what offered the best trade offs. Personally I think you could run up a variety of different smaller calibers and test them with a platoon or so of grunts for measly few million dollars. (ok, it's the government so maybe a few tens of millions)
Yeah, they really need to look into using smaller grenades. Those 40mm ones are nice but quite heavy, which is fine for vehicle mounted, crew served weapons and some specialists but not for your standard rifle. The 40mm x 46mm M381 has a 130m casualty radius with a weight of 230g. You'd need to do some testing, but I'm betting that a half size version 20mm x 23mm would be sufficient for most tasks. The original version has a volume of 57,776mm3 while the smaller one would have a volume of 7,222mm3 so you'd expect a casualty radius of around 16.25m with a weight of 28.75g or so. (minus some losses for size inefficiencies) Instead of a three pack of 40mm grenades weighing 690g you could carry a ten pack for only 287.5g Sure, they pack less punch, but you could fire several in a row to cover a bigger area as necessary. You'll lose range, but for a lot of tasks that would be an acceptable trade off. They'd be awesome for building clearing or ambushes.
The vast majority of individuals who commit crimes operate on the assumption that they won't get caught, and thus the potential consequences are largely irrelevant to them.
So you're choosing as a sample the people who weren't deterred and using that for evidence that deterrence doesn't work?
The only reason for locking someone away is if they are a danger to society.
That's a good reason but it's not the only reason. Punishment also acts as a deterrent to those who would commit crime and helps to balance the scales of justice by ensuring that there are consequences for bad action. Currently we use imprisonment way too frequently and the system is poorly designed but that doesn't mean there is no appropriate use for it.
I'm well aware of what the definition of Fascism is. The EU and US are not currently Fascist, they're certainly moving in that direction. Currently I'd describe them as corporatist, which is admittedly only two sides of the Fascist triangle, with labor being the missing component. In this case I was referring more to the feature of intrusive national government and priority of the state over the individual.
Slashdot Mirror
What climate mess?
Well, it's fairly obvious that something is happening and that the results appear to be consistent with adding more energy to the system. (increases in the occurrence rate of extreme weather events for example) Currently the prediction models aren't doing a very good job of telling us what is going to happen going forward though. In the past large changes in climate were generally a "bad thing" for the species alive at the time and it's likely something we should try to avoid. An obvious first step should be to force internalization of all costs since that's something that's good for the market anyways, a pigovian carbon tax being the least distorting solution. Increases in basic research for all phases of energy production would also be pretty much a no brainer since we'd get some nice science out of it regardless of whether AGW is occurring. *shrug* Neither of those things are likely to happen, let alone common sense things like switching commercial trucking to natural gas or increasing the number nuclear power plants.
For some reason we have the civilian crypto folks, the overseas & local info spies and the cyber warfare command all packed into the same agency. It's a bad design that compromises their mission.
Perhaps. Do you have measurements of before and after fracking methane content?
Apparently he was vaccinated against it so it didn't work.
We don't make millions of guns and bombs because it's really fun to shoot them. We make weapons of mass destruction because it's profitable for someone to do so.
Nonsense, we make them because we're afraid. Of course, since we're also greedy we made WAY too many, but that's a secondary effect not a primary.
It could work out that way, but it wouldn't. You're making the faulty assumption that the government spending process is rational. More likely the money would just get hoovered off to some constituency with lots of lobbyists (feel free to pick whichever ones you support least since both sides have them).
A major percentage of the posters here on Slashdot are openly hostile to the "non-aggression principle" and its proponents
In theory it sounds obvious and logical, for about 20 seconds. Once you start introducing a variety of test cases the rule either A) Fails terribly or B) Gets stacked with so many convoluted justifications, odd definitions and tortured logic that you might as well not assert it in the first place. If we must have one sentence principles then a better one is "We don't start things, but if you do we'll finish it and you won't like that."
Well, it's being played out in Syria right now. It's generally not pretty though.
Speak for yourself, although there are many flavors of libertarians I can't imagine any of them supporting this.
If the natives weapons have _any_ effect, home turf advantage and guerrilla warfare are well established and critical factors.
Guerrilla warfare relies on the enemy not being willing to commit genocide.
Why waste all that time on nuclear winter when you could just detonate a few EMP devices and watch while we tear ourselves to pieces. Wait a year or two for starvation, violence and disease to kill 99.9% of the humanity and then move in and take whatever real estate you're interested in. The remaining inhabitants should be easy to handle for a group with modern weaponry and complete air superiority.
FTL travel, or even FTL communication, is forbidden by the laws of physics.
Not exactly. There are a variety of ways around the limitations without breaking the laws as we know them. Of course we currently don't have the knowledge to implement those methods but that's not the same thing. Additionally it's highly unlikely that we understand all there is to know of physics or even most of it, there is a high probability that significant new knowledge will be discovered in the future that could change our understanding of how things work and that could lead to additional possibilities for avoiding the current limitations. I'm not expecting star travel any time soon, but assuming we don't wipe ourselves out as a species then eventually it's virtually certain we'll figure something out.
There are many pieces of those jobs that have been automated and more will be going forward. Drafting and PCB layout for example are both areas where massive amounts of automation have been introduced. I agree that design work is likely to be one of the last bastions but there will be ever more pressure to support the best designers with fantastic tools while leaving the rest unemployable. However, even if I were completely wrong there are large portions of the populace that couldn't cut it in any of those fields.
Hah! I love that.
Not having to work may seem like a good thing but for many people, it's not : we need some kind of occupation, that's human nature, and work is a way of doing it.
Perhaps you can't think of anything better to do with your time, I doubt most people share that problem. The majority of workers are kept at the wheel via use of the lash (threat of homelessness and starvation), make work unnecessary for bare survival and they'll drop out in droves. Now, some might indeed become lazy couch surfers for the rest of their lives, but most would take time to enjoy their hobbies and things that interest them instead.
The problem is that creativity jobs tend to follow a superstar pattern. A few of the best make a ton of cash while the rest make nearly nothing. That's not a good model for a whole economy.
As a librarian's husband, I feel a bit of a duty to point out that a larger company (say, of the size where document control and user training are becoming real problems) may be well-served by hiring a corporate librarian.
One moment while I laugh myself sick. Sorry, you're not wrong it's just that doing something sensible like hiring an expert and then listening to their advice is pretty rare these days.
You'd be surprised how resistant the military is to any sort of change. Both as a cultural issue (trying to preserve previous things that work) and as a logistics issue (five zillion different kinds of ammo are hard to keep re-supplied). Since it's not some fancy high technology thing you'd have a hard time getting much research money to study the problem and test out various smaller sizes to see what offered the best trade offs. Personally I think you could run up a variety of different smaller calibers and test them with a platoon or so of grunts for measly few million dollars. (ok, it's the government so maybe a few tens of millions)
Yeah, they really need to look into using smaller grenades. Those 40mm ones are nice but quite heavy, which is fine for vehicle mounted, crew served weapons and some specialists but not for your standard rifle. The 40mm x 46mm M381 has a 130m casualty radius with a weight of 230g. You'd need to do some testing, but I'm betting that a half size version 20mm x 23mm would be sufficient for most tasks. The original version has a volume of 57,776mm3 while the smaller one would have a volume of 7,222mm3 so you'd expect a casualty radius of around 16.25m with a weight of 28.75g or so. (minus some losses for size inefficiencies) Instead of a three pack of 40mm grenades weighing 690g you could carry a ten pack for only 287.5g Sure, they pack less punch, but you could fire several in a row to cover a bigger area as necessary. You'll lose range, but for a lot of tasks that would be an acceptable trade off. They'd be awesome for building clearing or ambushes.
The vast majority of individuals who commit crimes operate on the assumption that they won't get caught, and thus the potential consequences are largely irrelevant to them.
So you're choosing as a sample the people who weren't deterred and using that for evidence that deterrence doesn't work?
The only reason for locking someone away is if they are a danger to society.
That's a good reason but it's not the only reason. Punishment also acts as a deterrent to those who would commit crime and helps to balance the scales of justice by ensuring that there are consequences for bad action. Currently we use imprisonment way too frequently and the system is poorly designed but that doesn't mean there is no appropriate use for it.
So let's start with the problem statement, what problem are you trying to solve?....crickets....
I'm well aware of what the definition of Fascism is. The EU and US are not currently Fascist, they're certainly moving in that direction. Currently I'd describe them as corporatist, which is admittedly only two sides of the Fascist triangle, with labor being the missing component. In this case I was referring more to the feature of intrusive national government and priority of the state over the individual.
Definitely one of the upsides.
One would hope he has some education relevant to managing projects.