"There are dynamics here we are still looking at and learning. Surface temperatures are the thin single layer of the onion when there are many layers of the atmosphere and many layers of the oceans to look at as well."
That's funny, I thought there was a consensus and a 99% certainty and being a skeptic was worse than denying the holocaust, etc.
The great thing about this explanation, if it is accepted, is that henceforth the data will no longer matter! Any and all deviations from whatever new climate models are made will be waved away by saying that the warm stuff went down into the layers somewhere. Nevermind that no one has explained why the temperature rise before 2000 did not go there also. Science is wonderful when you don't have to prove anything.
Nice rant. We have all heard of cases where someone was caught "making stuff up" to support some research paper, but in the cases I know of it was only one person acting alone. I wonder if there are proven cases of groups of scientists who knowingly manipulate, or outright invent, data to suit their purposes. While some might be saying that the AGW crowd are doing this, it seems to me that at worst they can only be accused of misapplying statistics, or making unwarranted extrapolations, rather than outright, intentional, fraud.
Can we agree in future not to post news items having to do with climate "science" unless we are at the same time including links to debunkers of said news?
It's obvious to everyone that the wheels have come off this particular scam. Obvious to everyone, that is, except to those whose livelihood depends on them continuing to find new ways of makinjg hockey sticks.
If documentation were free, then implementing all the suggestions would not be an issue. In the real world, however, time and resources are always constrained, so documentation is a balancing act between utility and achievability. Moreover, for a company whose revenue depends on service contracts, it might not be in the company's best interests to eliminate client confusion with better documentation. I vaguely recall some story about Bill Gates who objected to having (I think) docx structured in a way that would allow a person to modify it by hand because it would loosen Word's grip. In other words, complexity and opacity can align with corporate interests.
There is another problem with spending a lot of resources to produce great documentation, however, and that is that as the software being documented evolves, the original documentation becomes less and less valuable. Although the original documentation might win awards for clarity and usefulness, it might be close to useless in only a few years, and nothing but another herculean effort will suffice to update it. This might be worthwhile where millions of customers are involved, but for a user base of only thousands or tens of thousands, great documentation that is also current can eat up profits.
I agree that anonymity, including anonymity when meeting with journalists, is by far the most prudent course of action. What Manning and Snowden have both done by revealing themselves is shift the news away from the excesses of the American government and on to the leakers.
For my part, I think that both of them did a great service to Americans, and innocent citizens of other countries who had been unaware of the extent of government overreach. Their motives, as far as I am concerned, are irrelevant.
Gary Ridgeway, the Green River Killer and probably the most prolific serial killer in North America since the end of the Indian Wars, was married the whole time he was killing prostitutes. (He said that he was doing the work that the police should be doing, and felt that the reason that he got away with it so long was that the police secretly agreed with him.)
This is another example of how the criminalization of vice does more harm than the vice itself. When prostitutes can conduct their business in safe environments, with the same legal protections that apply to any business, this kind of atrocity cannot occur.
Reading between the lines, my guess is that many students thought an online course "inferior" to regular classes, and therefore okay to slack off when doing. Time, however, or time management, may be more the enemy than actual course matter.
I know a high school student who takes online school courses, and one of the ongoing problems for the parents is getting the student to understand that there are X modules to do and only Y days to do them in. Dividing X by Y means that every two or three days something must be completed and sent in for marking. If this requirement is difficult for a high school student to follow without parental hectoring, then it is entirely understandable that kids only a couple years older, who no longer have their parents to help keep them on track, are going to run into problems.
uh, he only went through your phone after he asked and you let him. you didn't have to waive your rights.
That's as may be, but it seems to me that the border, on both sides, is a kind of "no man's land", where the usual civil liberties don't apply. When US border agents have the authority to arbitrarily deny you admission to the US for years, it seems to me that refusing a "request" can be a high-risk game for the uninformed.
I think I want to move to Canada when I retire. They seem to have a lot more common sense than the idiots that run the US.
Canada is a fine place, but Americans should be warned that it lacks many wonderful products of "Murican" excess (like bacon-flavoured bacon bits, wrapped in bacon -- if that's a thing). And although most Canadians are proud of Canada and happy to be Canadian, flags do not wave on every building and in every front yard.
As I recall, steganography might not make you uninteresting to the authorities, because although the bits that get loaded with data might not be understood, there is a detectible difference between a picture, for example, that has hidden data and one that does not. If there is a reasonable suspicion that you're hiding something, presumably you can be compelled to give up the means of revealing it. That said, information can come in many guises. For example, in a MMORPG there might be significance in a character's location or equipment at any given time.
I have a better idea. We discourage the students who aren't cut out for secondary school from enrolling in the first place. We also fight the stigma associated with trade and labor jobs. In many cases, the skilled trades person is going to be financially way ahead of the mediocre college grad by the time they're 30 anyway. There are also more real jobs in many trades than we can expect from many shitty college degrees.
The other notable advantage of trade jobs is that it is not so easy to offshore them. Replacing a hot water tank and adding a new electrical circuit still requires a guy in a truck who does house calls.
It's not fine. If they're knowingly lying in order to deceive others into taking actions that benefit the liar, that is textbook fraud.
There has never been "free speech" as you think it is. You can't say whatever you want, whenever you want, for any reason.
This is exactly the problem that sceptics have with proponents.
Ever since climate raw data was denied to people who had the effrontery to look for mistakes, the AGW movement has taken on the classic characteristics of a cult . Advocates who would deny critical response by saying "you can't say whatever you want" simply reveal one more facet.
"Ah, another "government is this monolithic entity that is sooooooo scary" post. Massive upmods incoming."
If you knew anything about the history of the current conservative party (reform party take over) you would not be saying such things. Most people commenting in this thread know nothing about canadian politics and how the canadian parliamentary system works. Right now Conservatives have a majority, what that means is they essentially get to shove any legislation they want through with impunity.
Whether they 'slightly soften' totally bankrupt laws is a non issue since the opposition has no power at all given the majority.
The poster has apparently not seen the memo where it is explained that the Conservatives scary "Hidden Agenda" doesn't actually exist. The fact is that the Conservatives have had a majority for a couple years, and yet, incredibly, the sky has not fallen and the black helicopters have failed to appear. What's more, the retreat from the bill in question shows that the Conservatives do pay attention when people shout loud enough.
All in all, the Conservatives have been handling their mandate with an astounding lack of drama -- for politics, that is. Prime Minister Harper is so boring that he has spent 15 minutes of each day writing a book on the history of hockey. As for the rest of the day, he seems to be handling the running of government like a CEO, where the shareholders are Canadian voters. Compared to the histrionics of previous PMs, I find his low-key approach to be comforting.
It's easy to second-guess someone with the benefit of hindsight, but many people forget that at the time, although there might not have been definitive proof of WMD, there was also no definitive proof that there was *no* WMD. What's more, Saddam had actually used WMD within Iraq in the past. In addition, Saddam was being anything but forthcoming in providing reassurance that he had stopped development of WMD. As a result, what you had was massive uncertainty, coupled with a demonstrated capacity for actually using WMD.
The worst-case scenario would have been that Bush takes his army and heads home, then six months later, Saddam uses WMD on Tehran and demands unconditional surrender of the surrounding region, incidentally wiping out Israel as a special concession to the Islamic crowd. If this had happened, Bush would have been blamed for millions of innocent civilian deaths, plus allowing Iraq to become a regional superpower ruled by a demonstrated madman. In short, Bush's options were very limited.
Obama is now in a vaguely similar position with Iran. Granted, Iran has not demonstrated prior use of WMD, but hardening of its research areas is strongly suggestive that it is up to no good. Unlike Bush, Obama seems willing to let the universe unfold as it will, so we may get to see what happens when a president does *not* act. No doubt the Left will give him a pass, no matter what happens.
As a Canadian, I like the connection we have to Australia through being in the Commonwealth, and never saw why so many of you guys got bent out of shape over what is really just a figurehead...
Agreed. As a fellow Canadian, I don't see the point in introducing a political element (in the form of elections) for a figurehead head of state. It seems to me that Canada, for one, has a value-for-money arrangement: Although the Governor General's office uses millions of dollars, for functionaries, upkeep of grounds, security, etc., the GG himself gets only a modest salary -- it was around $120,000 the last I recall. In addition, we get to have a monarch on the cheap: the UK provides housing, upkeep, perks, etc., while we only have to provide security (and room and board, I guess) when one of the family drops by on an official visit -- which is not often. For this comparatively small sum, Canada gets a hardworking, apolitical individual, backed by serious constitutional legal minds for those infrequent times when use of real power is called for (i.e. on the advice of the prime minister, deciding whether to prorogue parliament or call an election.)
For similar reasons, Canada's judiciary is appointed, not elected: these guys are doing serious jobs which require them to be apolitical.
I am using a Word plugin to save copies of my documents to Google Drive, so it is not necessary to drink the Microsoft koolaid to get online versioning.
If we are talking about the paid versions (Google Apps for Business), then there are no ads and every expectation of privacy -- a basic requirement for businesses.
There was an earlier posting to Slashdot that laid out the cost factor between Google Apps and Microsoft solutions, with the former being a small fraction of the latter. Given that, it may well be true that Microsoft can also do a lot of what Google can, but unless somebody needs exact Microsoft compatibility, why should they spend the additional cash?
This remark might seem insightful, but I wonder whether it is based on actual knowledge of Google's infrastructure. Let us not forget that some large companies, with many thousand employees, have gone over to Google Apps. This presumes that Google has a high degree of reliability. Assuming that taxi drivers have internet access via their smartphone, what is to stop them from, for example, monitoring a specific page or cell or whatever that pertains to them? This seems vastly more reliable to me than setting up some old-school antenna system that somehow has to punch through all the dead spots. Moreover, cabs can deliver fares far outside of their regular area and still stay in touch.
That's an interesting point. However, in terms of coding effort it doesn't seem that hard to copy the functionality. (And if you're truly serious about data analysis, R and the like are actually better suited.)
Compared to NK, even 1970s China was a paradise of freedom. That's not a joke but something I've heard from some Koreans that live in China that stare across the border in horror. When asked what should be done to NK one, who may or may not have living relatives over there (impossible to get a message to them if they are alive) said "wait until the wind is blowing the right way then nuke".
In cold, economic terms, nuking may be the cheapest solution, if you remove the human element. As I understand it, when East Germany rejoined West Germany, getting the former Soviet client state up to modern standards was a massive drain on the economy. What's more, East Germany was a relatively bright economic light in the soviet sphere. In order to integrate North Korea with the south, not only would pretty much everything need to be replaced, but almost everyone would need retraining and updated education. I doubt that South Korea would want to do that without asking for international financial aid.
I'd agree with you if you argued that they are not at war in any practical sense, but they are indeed "technically" still at war. The Armistice Agreement was signed, but by its terms it's a ceasefire that is ongoing until "a final peaceful settlement is achieved."
Regardless, if you think I'm being pedantic, as someone who lived 30 minutes from the border for many years and participated in invasion drills every few months, I can tell you that reality is far more complex than technical definitions.
I wonder if you wouldn't mind expanding on this reality. Most Western nations (Israel excluded) do not face looming existential threats. Even though North Korea has in some ways regressed to the Middle Ages, it seems to me that the fact it has nuclear weapons only minutes from a major population centre must be viewed with alarm by at least some people. Or, are Koreans more or less fatalistic about it all?
Oh right, the second massive 400 page omnibus bill due to hit the floor soon. The sort of bill Prime Minister Harper himself used to complain was undemocratic when he was in opposition. What giant hypocrites conservatives are!
A big problem with getting legislation through is simple logistics. There are only so many days in the legislative calendar, and only so many members of parliament that can sit on committees to scrutinize bills. Omnibus bills are nobody's favourite, but in practise there is no other way to get some bills into law. At least the Canadian version of an omnibus bill is readable, unlike in the States, where the Obamacare legislation that Obama ultimately signed into law was 2,700 pages.
Slashdot Mirror
As I recall, Samsung said that the "lock" existed only until it was activated.
"There are dynamics here we are still looking at and learning. Surface temperatures are the thin single layer of the onion when there are many layers of the atmosphere and many layers of the oceans to look at as well."
That's funny, I thought there was a consensus and a 99% certainty and being a skeptic was worse than denying the holocaust, etc.
The great thing about this explanation, if it is accepted, is that henceforth the data will no longer matter! Any and all deviations from whatever new climate models are made will be waved away by saying that the warm stuff went down into the layers somewhere. Nevermind that no one has explained why the temperature rise before 2000 did not go there also. Science is wonderful when you don't have to prove anything.
Nice rant. We have all heard of cases where someone was caught "making stuff up" to support some research paper, but in the cases I know of it was only one person acting alone. I wonder if there are proven cases of groups of scientists who knowingly manipulate, or outright invent, data to suit their purposes. While some might be saying that the AGW crowd are doing this, it seems to me that at worst they can only be accused of misapplying statistics, or making unwarranted extrapolations, rather than outright, intentional, fraud.
Can we agree in future not to post news items having to do with climate "science" unless we are at the same time including links to debunkers of said news?
It's obvious to everyone that the wheels have come off this particular scam. Obvious to everyone, that is, except to those whose livelihood depends on them continuing to find new ways of makinjg hockey sticks.
If documentation were free, then implementing all the suggestions would not be an issue. In the real world, however, time and resources are always constrained, so documentation is a balancing act between utility and achievability. Moreover, for a company whose revenue depends on service contracts, it might not be in the company's best interests to eliminate client confusion with better documentation. I vaguely recall some story about Bill Gates who objected to having (I think) docx structured in a way that would allow a person to modify it by hand because it would loosen Word's grip. In other words, complexity and opacity can align with corporate interests.
There is another problem with spending a lot of resources to produce great documentation, however, and that is that as the software being documented evolves, the original documentation becomes less and less valuable. Although the original documentation might win awards for clarity and usefulness, it might be close to useless in only a few years, and nothing but another herculean effort will suffice to update it. This might be worthwhile where millions of customers are involved, but for a user base of only thousands or tens of thousands, great documentation that is also current can eat up profits.
I agree that anonymity, including anonymity when meeting with journalists, is by far the most prudent course of action. What Manning and Snowden have both done by revealing themselves is shift the news away from the excesses of the American government and on to the leakers.
For my part, I think that both of them did a great service to Americans, and innocent citizens of other countries who had been unaware of the extent of government overreach. Their motives, as far as I am concerned, are irrelevant.
Gary Ridgeway, the Green River Killer and probably the most prolific serial killer in North America since the end of the Indian Wars, was married the whole time he was killing prostitutes. (He said that he was doing the work that the police should be doing, and felt that the reason that he got away with it so long was that the police secretly agreed with him.)
This is another example of how the criminalization of vice does more harm than the vice itself. When prostitutes can conduct their business in safe environments, with the same legal protections that apply to any business, this kind of atrocity cannot occur.
Reading between the lines, my guess is that many students thought an online course "inferior" to regular classes, and therefore okay to slack off when doing. Time, however, or time management, may be more the enemy than actual course matter.
I know a high school student who takes online school courses, and one of the ongoing problems for the parents is getting the student to understand that there are X modules to do and only Y days to do them in. Dividing X by Y means that every two or three days something must be completed and sent in for marking. If this requirement is difficult for a high school student to follow without parental hectoring, then it is entirely understandable that kids only a couple years older, who no longer have their parents to help keep them on track, are going to run into problems.
uh, he only went through your phone after he asked and you let him. you didn't have to waive your rights.
That's as may be, but it seems to me that the border, on both sides, is a kind of "no man's land", where the usual civil liberties don't apply. When US border agents have the authority to arbitrarily deny you admission to the US for years, it seems to me that refusing a "request" can be a high-risk game for the uninformed.
I think I want to move to Canada when I retire. They seem to have a lot more common sense than the idiots that run the US.
Canada is a fine place, but Americans should be warned that it lacks many wonderful products of "Murican" excess (like bacon-flavoured bacon bits, wrapped in bacon -- if that's a thing). And although most Canadians are proud of Canada and happy to be Canadian, flags do not wave on every building and in every front yard.
Or, y'know, they could just use stenography.
As I recall, steganography might not make you uninteresting to the authorities, because although the bits that get loaded with data might not be understood, there is a detectible difference between a picture, for example, that has hidden data and one that does not. If there is a reasonable suspicion that you're hiding something, presumably you can be compelled to give up the means of revealing it. That said, information can come in many guises. For example, in a MMORPG there might be significance in a character's location or equipment at any given time.
I have a better idea. We discourage the students who aren't cut out for secondary school from enrolling in the first place. We also fight the stigma associated with trade and labor jobs. In many cases, the skilled trades person is going to be financially way ahead of the mediocre college grad by the time they're 30 anyway. There are also more real jobs in many trades than we can expect from many shitty college degrees.
The other notable advantage of trade jobs is that it is not so easy to offshore them. Replacing a hot water tank and adding a new electrical circuit still requires a guy in a truck who does house calls.
It's not fine. If they're knowingly lying in order to deceive others into taking actions that benefit the liar, that is textbook fraud.
There has never been "free speech" as you think it is. You can't say whatever you want, whenever you want, for any reason.
This is exactly the problem that sceptics have with proponents.
Ever since climate raw data was denied to people who had the effrontery to look for mistakes, the AGW movement has taken on the classic characteristics of a cult . Advocates who would deny critical response by saying "you can't say whatever you want" simply reveal one more facet.
"Ah, another "government is this monolithic entity that is sooooooo scary" post. Massive upmods incoming."
If you knew anything about the history of the current conservative party (reform party take over) you would not be saying such things. Most people commenting in this thread know nothing about canadian politics and how the canadian parliamentary system works. Right now Conservatives have a majority, what that means is they essentially get to shove any legislation they want through with impunity.
Whether they 'slightly soften' totally bankrupt laws is a non issue since the opposition has no power at all given the majority.
The poster has apparently not seen the memo where it is explained that the Conservatives scary "Hidden Agenda" doesn't actually exist. The fact is that the Conservatives have had a majority for a couple years, and yet, incredibly, the sky has not fallen and the black helicopters have failed to appear. What's more, the retreat from the bill in question shows that the Conservatives do pay attention when people shout loud enough.
All in all, the Conservatives have been handling their mandate with an astounding lack of drama -- for politics, that is. Prime Minister Harper is so boring that he has spent 15 minutes of each day writing a book on the history of hockey. As for the rest of the day, he seems to be handling the running of government like a CEO, where the shareholders are Canadian voters. Compared to the histrionics of previous PMs, I find his low-key approach to be comforting.
It's easy to second-guess someone with the benefit of hindsight, but many people forget that at the time, although there might not have been definitive proof of WMD, there was also no definitive proof that there was *no* WMD. What's more, Saddam had actually used WMD within Iraq in the past. In addition, Saddam was being anything but forthcoming in providing reassurance that he had stopped development of WMD. As a result, what you had was massive uncertainty, coupled with a demonstrated capacity for actually using WMD.
The worst-case scenario would have been that Bush takes his army and heads home, then six months later, Saddam uses WMD on Tehran and demands unconditional surrender of the surrounding region, incidentally wiping out Israel as a special concession to the Islamic crowd. If this had happened, Bush would have been blamed for millions of innocent civilian deaths, plus allowing Iraq to become a regional superpower ruled by a demonstrated madman. In short, Bush's options were very limited.
Obama is now in a vaguely similar position with Iran. Granted, Iran has not demonstrated prior use of WMD, but hardening of its research areas is strongly suggestive that it is up to no good. Unlike Bush, Obama seems willing to let the universe unfold as it will, so we may get to see what happens when a president does *not* act. No doubt the Left will give him a pass, no matter what happens.
As a Canadian, I like the connection we have to Australia through being in the Commonwealth, and never saw why so many of you guys got bent out of shape over what is really just a figurehead...
Agreed. As a fellow Canadian, I don't see the point in introducing a political element (in the form of elections) for a figurehead head of state. It seems to me that Canada, for one, has a value-for-money arrangement: Although the Governor General's office uses millions of dollars, for functionaries, upkeep of grounds, security, etc., the GG himself gets only a modest salary -- it was around $120,000 the last I recall. In addition, we get to have a monarch on the cheap: the UK provides housing, upkeep, perks, etc., while we only have to provide security (and room and board, I guess) when one of the family drops by on an official visit -- which is not often. For this comparatively small sum, Canada gets a hardworking, apolitical individual, backed by serious constitutional legal minds for those infrequent times when use of real power is called for (i.e. on the advice of the prime minister, deciding whether to prorogue parliament or call an election.)
For similar reasons, Canada's judiciary is appointed, not elected: these guys are doing serious jobs which require them to be apolitical.
I am using a Word plugin to save copies of my documents to Google Drive, so it is not necessary to drink the Microsoft koolaid to get online versioning.
If we are talking about the paid versions (Google Apps for Business), then there are no ads and every expectation of privacy -- a basic requirement for businesses.
There was an earlier posting to Slashdot that laid out the cost factor between Google Apps and Microsoft solutions, with the former being a small fraction of the latter. Given that, it may well be true that Microsoft can also do a lot of what Google can, but unless somebody needs exact Microsoft compatibility, why should they spend the additional cash?
This remark might seem insightful, but I wonder whether it is based on actual knowledge of Google's infrastructure. Let us not forget that some large companies, with many thousand employees, have gone over to Google Apps. This presumes that Google has a high degree of reliability. Assuming that taxi drivers have internet access via their smartphone, what is to stop them from, for example, monitoring a specific page or cell or whatever that pertains to them? This seems vastly more reliable to me than setting up some old-school antenna system that somehow has to punch through all the dead spots. Moreover, cabs can deliver fares far outside of their regular area and still stay in touch.
That's an interesting point. However, in terms of coding effort it doesn't seem that hard to copy the functionality. (And if you're truly serious about data analysis, R and the like are actually better suited.)
Agreed. This is a non-story. Is it time, now, to talk about the decline of Slashdot?
Compared to NK, even 1970s China was a paradise of freedom. That's not a joke but something I've heard from some Koreans that live in China that stare across the border in horror. When asked what should be done to NK one, who may or may not have living relatives over there (impossible to get a message to them if they are alive) said "wait until the wind is blowing the right way then nuke".
In cold, economic terms, nuking may be the cheapest solution, if you remove the human element. As I understand it, when East Germany rejoined West Germany, getting the former Soviet client state up to modern standards was a massive drain on the economy. What's more, East Germany was a relatively bright economic light in the soviet sphere. In order to integrate North Korea with the south, not only would pretty much everything need to be replaced, but almost everyone would need retraining and updated education. I doubt that South Korea would want to do that without asking for international financial aid.
I'd agree with you if you argued that they are not at war in any practical sense, but they are indeed "technically" still at war. The Armistice Agreement was signed, but by its terms it's a ceasefire that is ongoing until "a final peaceful settlement is achieved."
Regardless, if you think I'm being pedantic, as someone who lived 30 minutes from the border for many years and participated in invasion drills every few months, I can tell you that reality is far more complex than technical definitions.
I wonder if you wouldn't mind expanding on this reality. Most Western nations (Israel excluded) do not face looming existential threats. Even though North Korea has in some ways regressed to the Middle Ages, it seems to me that the fact it has nuclear weapons only minutes from a major population centre must be viewed with alarm by at least some people. Or, are Koreans more or less fatalistic about it all?
Oh right, the second massive 400 page omnibus bill due to hit the floor soon. The sort of bill Prime Minister Harper himself used to complain was undemocratic when he was in opposition. What giant hypocrites conservatives are!
A big problem with getting legislation through is simple logistics. There are only so many days in the legislative calendar, and only so many members of parliament that can sit on committees to scrutinize bills. Omnibus bills are nobody's favourite, but in practise there is no other way to get some bills into law. At least the Canadian version of an omnibus bill is readable, unlike in the States, where the Obamacare legislation that Obama ultimately signed into law was 2,700 pages.