I totally agree with you, that is why I got out of IT though, I have programming as well as IT skills, and I enjoy programming more, and there are A LOT more 8-5 programming jobs than 8-5 IT jobs at least in my market. I agree that my friends should totally bail, but they haven't yet.
I did quit:) I'm happy. But in the last 5 years or so, every IT job I've interviewed for or had friends in has been similar. If you want to make more than 50k/yr at least in the Utah market, for IT, you work insane hours. If you can program (I can, my other friends don't) you can get a better job, but pure IT pretty much sucks.
Should have used preview... Sorry slashdot ate my post, here is the whole thing:
I completely disagree with your assessment. I just got out of IT (as in help desk/support/system admin) and into a pure programming job. The reason was I've seen 3 good friends lose alot (wives, friends, any semblance of a life) in the IT industry because IT is anything but a steady state. IT people are still asked to deal with gargantuan complexity and growth. They are expected to roll out insanely complex systems at the drop of the CEO's hat, just because he feels like it. At least in the late 90's people expected this stuff to cost money. Now a days what used to get quoted at $5 million is expected to be handled by a single guy making less than 50k/yr. And when it doesn't happen, they are fired or required to work 24x7 to pull off a miracle. Any slight flaw is seen as a complete failure. Paradoxically, budgets have been cut so severely that there is no such thing as a "test environment" and IT is expected to have some sort of magic ball to predict exactly what is going to break when massive changes are rolled out.
I still have 2 good friends in IT. They both work 60-70+/wk. One travels 75%+. The other is officially on call 24x7. He estimates that he gets a call between 2-6AM at least 4 times a week. He is one of 2 people managing more than 600 users, Windows 2003 AD, Cisco Call Manager, Cisco IPCC, more than 40 PRI circuits, and 3 DS3 WAN circuits. These 2 guys manage the routers, switches, firewall, everything. When presented with the impossibility of these 2 people actually handling the workload managements response was "Sorry, if you don't like it, we already talked with xyz outsourcing corp, you're lucky to have this job". Mind you, this company is a very large call center. Their entire operation depends on IT. If the network is down they lose more than 100k/day. If users can't log in, it costs more than 1k/hr/person. And management isn't willing to address issues. It is also bizarre that they are pulling the "we'll outsource you" card, since they just brought IT back in house after a disasterous "outsourcing" expedition over the last 2 years.
I quit this world one month ago (after 7+ years at least partially performing general IT stuff). Now I purely develop software. I'm happier now than I've been in 8 years. I only work 40hrs/wk, my cell phone never rings after hours, and I don't have pissed off disdainful users cursing me at every turn because they forgot their password or had number lock turned on and couldn't log in for 10 minutes.
I completely disagree with your assessment. I just got out of IT (as in help desk/support/system admin) and into a pure programming job. The reason was I've seen 3 good friends lose alot (wives, friends, any semblance of a life) in the IT industry because IT is anything but a steady state. IT people are still asked to deal with gargantuan complexity and growth. They are expected to roll out insanely complex systems at the drop of the CEO's hat, just because he feels like it. At least in the late 90's people expected this stuff to cost money. Now a days what used to get quoted at $5 million is expected to be handled by a single guy making 600 users, Windows 2003 AD, Cisco Call Manager, Cisco IPCC, more than 40 PRI circuits, and 3 DS3 WAN circuits. These 2 guys manage the routers, switches, firewall, everything. When presented with the impossibility of these 2 people actually handling the workload managements response was "Sorry, if you don't like it, we already talked with xyz outsourcing corp, you're lucky to have this job". Mind you, this company is a very large call center. Their entire operation depends on IT. If the network is down they lose > 100k/day. If users can't log in, it costs > 1k/hr/person. And management isn't willing to address issues. It is also bizarre that they are pulling the "we'll outsource you" card, since they just brought IT back in house after a disasterous "outsourcing" expedition over the last 2 years.
I quit this world one month ago (after 7+ years at least partially performing general IT stuff). Now I purely develop software. I'm happier now than I've been in 8 years. I only work 40hrs/wk, my cell phone never rings after hours, and I don't have pissed off disdainful users cursing me at every turn because they forgot their password or had number lock turned on and couldn't log in for 10 minutes.
And this my friend is why I will always be a skeptic of all environmentalist causes. This is almost always the tact that environmentalists take. "We don't need proof, we don't need scientific evidence its obvious that change is happening and the EVIL MAN must be causing it".
Environmentalism is much more like a religion than anything else. They constantly ask everyone to change their lives based on their "say so" that man is causing irreparable damage. They rarely if ever release actual methodologies to their studies, and when they do they are quickly debunked or have huge holes in them (Like recent climate studies that dont take temperatures over the ocean into account at all, or have data collected solely from urban centers)
I always assumed that environmentalists want the planet to continue acting as if we weren't here. That is the usual argument I get. I didn't know that the global warming movement was actually about preventing natural processes from occurring. Thank you for enlightening me.
more or less that was my question whether or not Kazaa asks the server "What is my ip?" or if it just grabs the ip off the NIC? I was asking if anybody knew how it worked, or if this "expert" who doesn't seem so bright is just talking crap.
Besides humans who live on the coast I really don't think a 5-6C increase in temperature is going to effect anyone much. I really don't think very many people are living in a civilization "optimized" for a climate condition. In the summer in the city I live in it is > 100F in the winter it is rarely > 32F. I don't move into a different house for the different seasons. I turn on the AC or the furnace. In the industrialized nations at least, no one is living in a "climate optimized" situation (again excepting people on the coast).
As for the people on the coast, sea levels are rising currently at about 2mm (yes millimeters) per year. That's less than an inch every 100 years. I'm pretty sure we can either a) build levies and dykes that fast or b) move people out of coastal cities that fast.
In stating that we may not WANT a 5-6C increase in temperatures you are assuming that we can control 100% of the climate. Again, if this increase in temperature is due to a natural process we really don't and shouldn't have any say in it. You are assuming that even though there have been ice ages and temperate periods in the past, now that we are here we need to "normalize" the climate and make sure it stays within some arbitrary bounds of normal defined mostly by a) when we first made thermometers and b) when we first measured CO2 levels.
I'm not assuming that most species survived just that certainly some did.
If there were mass extinctions in the past why are we somehow responsible to ensure there are no mass extinctions ever in the future? Mass extinctions are part of life on this planet. It is unnatural to not have them. Just like it is unnatural to not have forest fires. I am simply arguing that if the current warming can be explained (and I think it can) by natural causes, then it is an insult to nature to try to reverse or stop those changes.
As to your contention about our staple crops... won't it be nice when siberia becomes readily arable? For every degree increase in temp that comes along you can farm and herd animals farther north.
"Humanity is too numerous to survive easily if we loose our staples"
Humanity will survive, I can't believe you really think that we can't adapt to a different climate. You are seriously contending that a 6C increase in temp will cause all land to be uninhabitable and that humanity will not survive, that we won't be able to grow any corn, wheat or rice and we won't be able to keep any animals alive to eat.
Again you state that these problems WILL happen. It's a forgone certainty then? 100% sure, bet your life 100%. Just like there were going to be 15 major hurricanes last year. Just like in the 1970's we were heading into the next ice age. Just like the first IPCC report predicted a 5C rise in temps by 2005 (we got a.8C rise).
I've said this before, I'll say it again, I don't think we should be burning fossil fuels, I don't think we should be polluting. I'll drive an electric car, I'll put solar panels on my roof, I'll use biodiesel, whatever. But I'll do those things because of the following reasons: a) Hate oil companies b) Hate being beholden to some of the biggest criminals on the planet (yes Arab leaders, you) c) Believe strongly in personal independence and self sufficiency d) Believe a distributed system of power generation would be more efficient and reliable e) Like technology and love to see advances in energy technology
If the goal of the global warming movement is to get people to use renewable energy, be more self sufficient, and free us from unstable relationships with thugs (which I think it is, maybe I'm wrong) then the global warming people should argue to their strong points.
You have at least 3 and maybe 4 very strong talking points which you can prove 100% would be better if we got off oil. Instead you choose to argue "The planet might be hurt, and all the cute furry animals might die".
I don't object to your goals, I object to your methods.
If you are purporting to *KNOW* what is causing this climate change I expect you to be able to explain past climate changes in similar terms. What the global warming theorists are saying is "We know that the climate has changed drastically in the past for natural reasons, but this time we are 100% certain the reasons are not natural" Well, I'm not 100% certain, I know that CO2 concentrations have been higher in the past, I know that ice ages happen as well as warm periods, and none of these events in the past can be explained by man's interference with the planet. So, if we are inside of a known normal range for this planet, why are we supposed to assume that any little variation or change is caused by man or that it is inherently bad?
Ok, then explain ice ages and temperate ages without those things? If you are saying that the earth's orbit and the sun have 0 effect on the climate then explain how ice ages happen.
I see a hundred posts here flaming the guy because "You can't write an enterprise realtime xyz app in a browser". Luckily that isn't at all what he recommended or said in his article. He stated quite clearly that in certain limited cases, when users need xyz FEATURE (not necessarily a whole app) it is easier, faster, and less error prone to throw up a quick CGI script to do the job.
I've done this tons of times for clients that just want a feature, not an app. Maybe 1-3 forms with a database backend and a search bar. That is not an application, maybe they want to track some arcane bit of data about their clients for a couple months, maybe they want to see how an advertising campaign is going, so they tell the receptionist to always ask where the customer heard of them and she keeps track on the little web form. Yes this data would normally be tracked in some sort of CRM app, but a lot of small businesses don't have CRM apps and even Sugar CRM is way to complex and involved for a 15 person firm to learn and use effectively.
The customer doesn't need a CRM/ERP SAP type system, they aren't going to pay me to develop an application that will be installed on all 25 machines and then maintained. But if I can throw something up on their file server in 2 hours they are totally happy.
Granted, this guy goes a little crazy and suggests actually installing web server/db server/cgi environment on every client machine, which to me seems retarded. But he isn't recommending replacing a companies entire business process management system with a browser either.
In his defense he specifically mentions writing *SIMPLE* applications this way. I've written quite a few one off perl and php CGI "applications" that are a simple 1 or 2 web pages to do something very simple. One such "app" is for turning on and off the "answering" machine in Asterisk (IE the office is closed outside of their normal open/closed hours and the receptionist needs to make all calls go to voicemail).
If I wrote this application as a thick client GUI app, it would have taken at least 30-40 hours (GUI app itself, xml-rpc daemon on the asterisk server to handle the on/off request, code in the gui to get status from the database, debugging communication problems from each machine to the asterisk server) then I'd have to install it on everyone's system, and every time I found a bug I'd have to go through and upgrade 25+ systems. Not fun at all. As a webapp, it took less than 2 hours to write, when problems crop up, I make a change in one place everyone's updated, and as a bonus the receptionist can turn it on/off from any computer in the office and any computer with an internet connect (ssl vpn).
This is where I disagree with his approach, if you are writing an application that you are going to install on every machine (or even 2 or 3 machines) you would be an idiot to take his approach and install a web server on each machine, a db server, and the rest of the architectural stuff you need for a webapp. Unless you build all that stuff into a nice little install package, its going to be a nightmare. But for alot of one off little things like this, it is much easier to just throw a web server on the file server or whatever server they are using and build a webapp for need xyz. Now if you are building a huge, distributed, application for forex yeah you'll probably want to do a thick client app. The article wasn't suggesting to try to do that in a browser though. He specifically mentioned small one off things.
"may be moving too fast for them to keep up in the long run"
And based on this compelling evidence and argument the world is being asked to spend trillions. There is my problem with the whole environmental movement. It isn't that I hate animals, or want to pollute, I would be happy to use renewable energy, drive an electric car, whatever.
But, I'm not willing to make sacrifices based on mights and maybes. None of you can come up with even the smallest risk/reward for what you are asking people to do. You say "Calamity will descend upon us if we don't stop driving cars tomorrow" and when I say "Ok, Calamity meaning a few species will die off and some people will have to move away from the coast, and it will cost 500 billion this year, and then another 300 billion every year after that for the next 100 years to avert something you think might happen". None of it is certain. It is all based on computer models and incomplete data sets. The fact is the IPCC predicted in their first report in 1990 a 5C increase by like 2005. Well, they got a.8C increase, they're off by more than 500%.
It would be like I go get a contractor and he says "I can build that house for you for 250,000" and I say ok sure and then he comes back after its built and says "Actually it cost 1.25 million to build" That is how far off their predictions were. When people can't get an estimate within say a 10-15% window, well that estimate isn't worth anything, you can't build policy or make decisions when the data you are using is off by that much. Now, they may be better now, and we'll see, of course now they've lowered their estimates so much that they can be right no matter what because they are within the standard deviation for temperature change anyway (a 1-3C increase over the next 100 years, with an inch or two of sea level rise).
I don't know where you get the "rapid increase" the IPCCs report says we've had a.8C increase since 1951. That is not an unprecedented increase even going back just 1000 years, and certainly not going back over the history of earth. The rate of change as stated in other posts is not unheard of the IPCC is predicting 2mm-6mm/yr rise in sea level over the next 100 years (how they measure that who knows, I would think measuring something like the ocean in millimeters would be a problem filled experience, a 2mph wind causes a 1mm wave), but that's beside the point, the average annual sea level increase since the last ice age is around 7mm/yr so this isn't abnormal or high, or "rapid" in any sense of the word.
No where do I state that the earth is in a special state at this point. I'm stating that the earth has moved over this trajectory in its climate pattern many times in the past, and we are still on that same trajectory. I am stating that if we were burning fossil fuels or not, the pattern of our orbit around the sun and the sun's output are greater drivers of our climate than anything we can do. Those things are what control the ebb and flow of ice ages and we are still in the ebb pattern of the last ice age (meaning the ice is ebbing).
How does a few degrees C and a few more feet of water = COLLAPSING ECOSYSTEM?!?!
Again, as stated above, we are not outside of "normal" climate patterns in any way in any metric that we have, temperature, temp change, sea level, sea level change. These things fluctuate, species have been able to adapt and survive through ice ages, through temperate times (including times with higher temps by at least 5-6C than we have now). Why is this time going to be so much worse? Species adapt and survive. If warmer sea temps are going to kill all the coral, well then how did coral survive the last temperate period when almost all the polar ice caps melted?
Since we are quite provably not outside of normal fluctuations for earth's climate, how can any species still be alive here? How did they make it through the last ice age?
I've said this before but how does he come up with a 10-20% drop after warming? The worst case scenario according to IPCC is only a 1 inch sea level rise in 100 years, how is that going to cause a 20% drop in GDP? I really just don't see these huge catastrophic effects of global warming. What is going to stop me from going to work every day? Or the 2 million people in the city I live in that is 2500ft above sea level? Sure if sea levels rise 6m it will displace quite a few people, but I still don't think it would cause that much upheaval. It isn't going to happen instantly. It isn't going to be like a sudden tsunami that kills millions of people and destroys trillions of dollars of real estate. Yes people may have to move, yes some places will lose larger amounts of real estate as they are lower in elevation. I still think it would be cheaper for world governments to just buy that real estate from people at market prices when the water rises than spending trillions now to try to stop it from ever happening.
As far as the asteroid is concerned what would your recommendation be? At least with that we would *KNOW* what we were up against, we would *KNOW* exactly how big it was, we'd be able to predict with near 100% accuracy where it would hit, what day, what time of day. We would have an exceptionally good guess as to the forces needed to divert it from our path. We would have facts. I would recommend the following:
1) once we have calculations on trajectory, impact zone, etc and we know the size of the asteroid and how much dust its going to throw up we move all humans and whatever animals we feel we should out of that area (across the world, whatever) 2) we perform calculations to see do we have anything that could move this thing out of our path? How much will it cost to build something to do it? What is the probability that it would work? 3) based on the feasibility study from 2 we decide "Ok, is an x% chance of success worth x trillion to build this thing in the x number of months we have" If its not worth it, then its better to save the money for rebuilding/adaptation after the event than to spend it on some pipe dream which then when it fails you don't have any resources to recover from the devastation.
That is what you environmentalists don't get, you never factor in risk/reward you say "This isn't natural, this is caused by man we have to stop this now at all costs on principle". The world doesn't work that way. If you applied just a little bit of the capitalism you so obviously hate to your analysis of problems you would get a lot further.
On the CO2 front I guess Scientific American got it wrong then I'm just quoting their article verbatim. They clearly stated (and had a nice graph and everything) a decline over the last 2 million years from 1400ppm to ~200ppm in the 17-1800s. It was a gradual decline with a couple huge spikes in the middle, and I'm sure that 50% of the way across the graph it was still ~700ppm. So either they are lying, or you are, but whatever.
The IPCC did not state anywhere any sort of statistical probability as you state. They said and I quote "It is highly likely that human activity has on average caused most of the warming of the last half century". Well.. I don't know how you pull from that a 90% certainty of causing warming, but it certainly isn't what they said. Of course their statement was intentionally ambiguous to provide zealots like yourself firepower. The following 2 statements are both accurate according to the IPCCs conclusion statement:
1) There is a 60% chance that humans are responsible for at least 51% of the warming of the last 50 years 2) There is a 90% certainty that humans have caused 99% of the warming in the past 50 years
Obviously you choose to interpret their statement according to rule number 2, I choose number 1. Scientists who use subjective terms to describe their findings are not scientists. Scientists describe their findings in facts, numbers, statistics, and proofs. If you don't have those don't come ask me to turn off my AC and give you millions in taxes.
I agree that getting away from oil is a good thing. Personally I think it would be great. However, the current leading proposal for getting off oil is mandatory carbon taxes. The only way we can currently meet a carbon cap that would have any sort of meaningful effect would be to simply turn off 30-40% of the electrical grid and take 30% of the cars off the road. This would instantly shrink our economy by at least 20%.
Yes we should work toward energy independence, we should invest in and create renewable energy sources. But we shouldn't do it because of global warming, we should do it because they are worthwhile things to work towards in their own right. Scare mongering and trying to get people to rush into these changes will only cause pain and suffering, and that is why I strongly dislike the global warming movement. It is irresponsible of the global warming proponents to use such tactics, it is seriously akin to MS's FUD campaigns.
The fact is, even if the worst case scenario plays out the IPCC is saying we might have a 1-2C degree increase in the next 100 years. They are saying we will have a 1-2cm rise in sea levels in 100 years. Those are stats directly from their report. That is the worst case. A 1 inch rise in sea level. How many people is that really going to effect? How much is that 4 sq miles of real estate world wide really worth? Should we spend hundreds of billions today to save it? Even in 5-600 years if it continues and all the ice melts and the sea level rises 6 meters. People can move. What is the worth of that real estate? I would like to see a map of the world with 6m of extra water to see how many square miles it would be, but I bet it would be cheaper for governments to just accept this as inevitable and start a fund to start buying people's property from them as the sea level rises instead of trying to save that real estate through who knows how many billions in research, development, and all the rest.
My point is you state quite clearly that you think global warming has the possibility to "eradicate this iteration of civilization" I contend that that statement is so grossly overstating global warming's possible effect as to be criminal. Yes global warming could cause us some inconvenience. People who live within 15 or 20 miles of the coast may have to move. Major cities may have to be relocated (or placed on stilts, heck they figured that out in Venice hundreds of years ago, I'm sure we could manage today). Global warming will never be listed as the "cause of death" on a single death certificate. It will never even be listed as a "probable cause" of a major weather event such as a hurricane.
I love how you think that burning a few billion barrels of oil could have more effect on our planet than a huge fusion reactor just 8 light minutes away. That is so hideously egotistical it would be funny if it weren't so sad. Look, we are on this planet spinning around a huge fusion reactor, if its output fluctuates slightly or our orbit wobbles slightly (both known and accepted facts) then it is going to get warmer or cooler here. The earth has had huge fluctuations in CO2 in the past (200ppm-1400ppm) and the ice caps have melted before and glaciers used to cover huge parts of Canada. We can adapt to these changes, we can't control them. Get over yourself.
I think global warming is a bunch of crap. But I'd pay 10k extra to drive a fully electric car. I'm planning on spending ~30k this year to put solar panels on my roof (save ~250/mo in utility bills). I'd love to hook those solar panels up to a water electrolizer, produce hydrogen and use that to drive, store for non-sunny days, whatever.
I am so put off by the global warming religion that it drives me nuts. There are so many viable, provable, rational arguments for using renewable energy and polluting less. Using this crackpot, unprovable, faith based excuse of global warming to convince people to pollute less is insulting to anyone who has a brain.
There are ways to do it (pollute less, consume less) without inconvenience. I telecommute 3 days a week now, saves me ~90/mo in gasoline. If 50% of the US telecommuted 50% of the time I bet we'd comply with the Kyoto Protocol.
1) The Earth has been warmer than it is now before! We are not seeing temperatures outside the spectrum of nature. 2) CO2 levels are not high now. There was an article in Scientific American which documented this, CO2 over the last 2 million years has fluctuated between ~200ppm and ~1400ppm. Right now we are at about 300ppm. 3) The Sun and the Orbit of the Earth both fluctuate and are beyond our control and both influence the climate much more than anything we could possibly do. (This is mentioned though not explored in the latest IPCC report, but it is a known fact and the cause of ice ages and temperate ages in the past) 4) The Earth has been through many cycles of ice age and temperate age all before we were here. 5) The last temperate age melted almost all of the polar ice and caused sea levels to rise 4-6 meters this was 125000 years ago. It is safe to assume it will happen again (with our without us). (This data was specifically pulled from the IPCC report, your 650000 year comment is obviously false even according to your supporters). 6) We are still coming out of the last ice age, and we haven't seen temperatures comparable to the last temperate age yet, so we can easily assume temperatures still need to go up before the cycle starts again.
I find your thesis incorrect. I am quick to look at the historical record to debunk global warming. Based on the historical data we are no where close to an "abnormal" state. I think that global warming supporters are quick to look at the last 50-100 years and state that obviously we are destroying the planet. I don't buy it. I think that 50 years is nothing compared to the millions of years the Earth has been here. I think it is incredibly short sighted. Looking back 10s of thousands or hundreds of thousands of years only supports the fact that current temperatures, sea levels, etc are not abnormal. It even supports that the CO2 concentration is not abnormal.
In saying this I hope you don't think I'm some son of an oil man. I hate fossil fuels. I hate oil companies. I would love to drive an electric car, have solar panels on my roof and not pay the electric co. Unfortunately, what's going to happen is the global warming clan are going to get all sorts of subsidies passed for the oil companies et al to "research" alternative energy sources. Research which I am going to have to pay for with tax dollars. Tax dollars I could have spent on a solar array for my roof.
So, your recommendation would be to cause oh lets just say a 10-15% decline in global GDP because it *MIGHT* help... Here are the FACTS:
1) The Earth has been warmer than it is now before! We are not seeing temperatures outside the spectrum of nature, and even assuming worst case according to the IPCC we won't be outside normal for more than 500 years. 2) CO2 levels are not high now. There was an article in Scientific American which documented this, CO2 over the last 2 million years has fluctuated between ~200ppm and ~1400ppm. Right now we are at about 300ppm. 3) The Sun and the Orbit of the Earth both fluctuate and are beyond our control and both influence the climate much more than anything we could possibly do. 4) The Earth has been through many cycles of ice age and temperate age all before we were here. 5) The last temperate age melted almost all of the polar ice and caused sea levels to rise 4-6 meters this was 125k years ago. It is safe to assume it will happen again (with our without us) 6) We are still coming out of the last ice age, and we haven't seen temperatures comparable to the last temperate age yet, so we can easily assume temperatures still need to go up before the cycle starts again.
These things are completely beyond our control, if we spend billions (and I'd argue it would cost many trillions) to "fight" global warming, well if you want to fight against the solar system, go ahead but I'm not giving you my tax dollars to do it.
So, one thing no one has commented on, and I wonder if its true or not. Does Kazaa really put your computer's IP address in its packet payload for other nodes on the network to see? If so, why? If not why hasn't anyone pointed this out as the greatest problem with their case?
Obviously the "expert" witness is completely useless at explaining technology to lay people (sorry attorneys, you're lay people in this context). At least 1 hour was wasted with the expert trying to explain the difference between an internal IP address and an external publicly routable address. Of course, the best way to explain it would be to draw it... but anyway, I searched a bit, couldn't find anything about kazaa but if anyone can enlighten us, that would be great.
I was over at my friends house, he's all excited "I just got this new Vista Ultimate! Check out the Media Center". He turns on his TV, grabs the remote and starts up media center... goes to his recorded TV shows, hits play on a show from a couple days ago... we watch it for a couple minutes, then he goes back hits play on another show and.... Crash "Do you want to send a message to Microsoft?", no, start media center back up, hit play again on a different show, plays for about 3 seconds, crash again.
Then he says "Yeah, I can't get it to play more than one show per reboot... I don't know why, once you hit play on a show you have to watch that show all the way through, if you stop it or try to play another show it crashes. Once that show is done, it crashes, and you have to reboot to get it to play again"
His is just set up on a whitebox that he built and I don't know the stats or hardware he's got in it... but seriously, after seeing that and my other friend had it on his laptop (uninstalled and went back to XP after 2 weeks, couldn't get his development environment working under vista, also HATED UAC) watched him work for about 30 minutes one day, he had to have 15-20 UAC warnings in those 30 minutes, all for very normal things to do (like joining a wifi network) I'm never installing Vista, I'm glad I've got a non-OEM copy of XP that I can install on new hardware.
I'm a bit younger than you, however I quite agree with your post. I wired my fathers coax network ~92 (when I was 13 years old), upgraded it to utp in 95, and wrote a client management application for his business in 96. I do everything from wire phone and ethernet jacks to write applications. I also throw in a bit of system admin stuff (email, DNS, DHCP, DBA, etc). I have my own company now and finding people who are able to think rationally about anything is extremely difficult. I'm mostly looking to hire younger people (students, just out of college 20-24 years old). I've gone through 6 employees in the last 4 months. None of them can handle 1/4 of the tech that I can. Yeah maybe one of them is an ok programmer, but every time they want to do something "non-standard" I have to be there babysitting to set up the server "just so" so that what they are trying to do is possible. They get an error message when they try to compile something and say "Oh, its broken" and call me and say the server is broken. Maybe school taught them the basics of programming, but they weren't taught or didn't care enough to learn even the smallest amount of sysadmin skills which are in my opinion required to be a good programmer. There are absolutely zero true troubleshooting skills being taught anywhere in school as far as I can see.
Same thing with networking and everything else. Maybe they know how to wire an ethernet jack, but if they plug it in and it doesn't work they don't know the next step. Yeah some of this is training that I need to do, but honestly I taught myself this crap when I was 14-16, it isn't rocket science. If you plug in a network cable and you don't get link there are some pretty obvious things to try.
None of the people I've run into have the ability to apply any sort of reasoning to a problem outside of their "expertise". Programmers think they can just program and be fine, sysadmins think that they can effectively do their job without knowing a little programming (not true, a sysadmin without perl is like a fish out of water), network engineers think that they can get by without understanding the services running on the network. Really its all the same, technology works very similarly across these domains, and you can generally apply the same sort of logic to problems in all spaces, but if I sit a programmer down in front of a Cisco router they say "This is different, I can't troubleshoot this". Sit a sysadmin in front of a simple PHP script that is acting up, suddenly the fact that yesterday they were able to read a 3000 line sendmail config file and find the error in it is completely erased from their memory and they can't apply the same reasoning to this new problem domain.
In short, I think we are creating some great "consumers" of technology, but very few people who understand and can actually manage and fix said technology. This is in my opinion the great danger that the US faces. If the trend continues much longer we will all be enslaved by China and India because they will be the only ones who can keep our systems running, and we'll be paying them everything we make just to get another hit on the crackberry.
you comment is laughable... Dell while in decline (and has been for 5+ years now) is no where near "bankruptcy". They still have billions in revenues and profits every year, they just aren't "growing" enough to encourage people to buy their stock.
Slashdot Mirror
I totally agree with you, that is why I got out of IT though, I have programming as well as IT skills, and I enjoy programming more, and there are A LOT more 8-5 programming jobs than 8-5 IT jobs at least in my market. I agree that my friends should totally bail, but they haven't yet.
I did quit :) I'm happy. But in the last 5 years or so, every IT job I've interviewed for or had friends in has been similar. If you want to make more than 50k/yr at least in the Utah market, for IT, you work insane hours. If you can program (I can, my other friends don't) you can get a better job, but pure IT pretty much sucks.
Should have used preview...
Sorry slashdot ate my post, here is the whole thing:
I completely disagree with your assessment. I just got out of IT (as in help desk/support/system admin) and into a pure programming job. The reason was I've seen 3 good friends lose alot (wives, friends, any semblance of a life) in the IT industry because IT is anything but a steady state. IT people are still asked to deal with gargantuan complexity and growth. They are expected to roll out insanely complex systems at the drop of the CEO's hat, just because he feels like it. At least in the late 90's people expected this stuff to cost money. Now a days what used to get quoted at $5 million is expected to be handled by a single guy making less than 50k/yr. And when it doesn't happen, they are fired or required to work 24x7 to pull off a miracle. Any slight flaw is seen as a complete failure. Paradoxically, budgets have been cut so severely that there is no such thing as a "test environment" and IT is expected to have some sort of magic ball to predict exactly what is going to break when massive changes are rolled out.
I still have 2 good friends in IT. They both work 60-70+/wk. One travels 75%+. The other is officially on call 24x7. He estimates that he gets a call between 2-6AM at least 4 times a week. He is one of 2 people managing more than 600 users, Windows 2003 AD, Cisco Call Manager, Cisco IPCC, more than 40 PRI circuits, and 3 DS3 WAN circuits. These 2 guys manage the routers, switches, firewall, everything. When presented with the impossibility of these 2 people actually handling the workload managements response was "Sorry, if you don't like it, we already talked with xyz outsourcing corp, you're lucky to have this job". Mind you, this company is a very large call center. Their entire operation depends on IT. If the network is down they lose more than 100k/day. If users can't log in, it costs more than 1k/hr/person. And management isn't willing to address issues. It is also bizarre that they are pulling the "we'll outsource you" card, since they just brought IT back in house after a disasterous "outsourcing" expedition over the last 2 years.
I quit this world one month ago (after 7+ years at least partially performing general IT stuff). Now I purely develop software. I'm happier now than I've been in 8 years. I only work 40hrs/wk, my cell phone never rings after hours, and I don't have pissed off disdainful users cursing me at every turn because they forgot their password or had number lock turned on and couldn't log in for 10 minutes.
I completely disagree with your assessment. I just got out of IT (as in help desk/support/system admin) and into a pure programming job. The reason was I've seen 3 good friends lose alot (wives, friends, any semblance of a life) in the IT industry because IT is anything but a steady state. IT people are still asked to deal with gargantuan complexity and growth. They are expected to roll out insanely complex systems at the drop of the CEO's hat, just because he feels like it. At least in the late 90's people expected this stuff to cost money. Now a days what used to get quoted at $5 million is expected to be handled by a single guy making 600 users, Windows 2003 AD, Cisco Call Manager, Cisco IPCC, more than 40 PRI circuits, and 3 DS3 WAN circuits. These 2 guys manage the routers, switches, firewall, everything. When presented with the impossibility of these 2 people actually handling the workload managements response was "Sorry, if you don't like it, we already talked with xyz outsourcing corp, you're lucky to have this job". Mind you, this company is a very large call center. Their entire operation depends on IT. If the network is down they lose > 100k/day. If users can't log in, it costs > 1k/hr/person. And management isn't willing to address issues. It is also bizarre that they are pulling the "we'll outsource you" card, since they just brought IT back in house after a disasterous "outsourcing" expedition over the last 2 years.
I quit this world one month ago (after 7+ years at least partially performing general IT stuff). Now I purely develop software. I'm happier now than I've been in 8 years. I only work 40hrs/wk, my cell phone never rings after hours, and I don't have pissed off disdainful users cursing me at every turn because they forgot their password or had number lock turned on and couldn't log in for 10 minutes.
"No need for statistics either"
And this my friend is why I will always be a skeptic of all environmentalist causes. This is almost always the tact that environmentalists take. "We don't need proof, we don't need scientific evidence its obvious that change is happening and the EVIL MAN must be causing it".
Environmentalism is much more like a religion than anything else. They constantly ask everyone to change their lives based on their "say so" that man is causing irreparable damage. They rarely if ever release actual methodologies to their studies, and when they do they are quickly debunked or have huge holes in them (Like recent climate studies that dont take temperatures over the ocean into account at all, or have data collected solely from urban centers)
I always assumed that environmentalists want the planet to continue acting as if we weren't here. That is the usual argument I get. I didn't know that the global warming movement was actually about preventing natural processes from occurring. Thank you for enlightening me.
more or less that was my question whether or not Kazaa asks the server "What is my ip?" or if it just grabs the ip off the NIC? I was asking if anybody knew how it worked, or if this "expert" who doesn't seem so bright is just talking crap.
Besides humans who live on the coast I really don't think a 5-6C increase in temperature is going to effect anyone much. I really don't think very many people are living in a civilization "optimized" for a climate condition. In the summer in the city I live in it is > 100F in the winter it is rarely > 32F. I don't move into a different house for the different seasons. I turn on the AC or the furnace. In the industrialized nations at least, no one is living in a "climate optimized" situation (again excepting people on the coast).
As for the people on the coast, sea levels are rising currently at about 2mm (yes millimeters) per year. That's less than an inch every 100 years. I'm pretty sure we can either a) build levies and dykes that fast or b) move people out of coastal cities that fast.
In stating that we may not WANT a 5-6C increase in temperatures you are assuming that we can control 100% of the climate. Again, if this increase in temperature is due to a natural process we really don't and shouldn't have any say in it. You are assuming that even though there have been ice ages and temperate periods in the past, now that we are here we need to "normalize" the climate and make sure it stays within some arbitrary bounds of normal defined mostly by a) when we first made thermometers and b) when we first measured CO2 levels.
I'm not assuming that most species survived just that certainly some did.
.8C rise).
If there were mass extinctions in the past why are we somehow responsible to ensure there are no mass extinctions ever in the future? Mass extinctions are part of life on this planet. It is unnatural to not have them. Just like it is unnatural to not have forest fires. I am simply arguing that if the current warming can be explained (and I think it can) by natural causes, then it is an insult to nature to try to reverse or stop those changes.
As to your contention about our staple crops... won't it be nice when siberia becomes readily arable? For every degree increase in temp that comes along you can farm and herd animals farther north.
"Humanity is too numerous to survive easily if we loose our staples"
Humanity will survive, I can't believe you really think that we can't adapt to a different climate. You are seriously contending that a 6C increase in temp will cause all land to be uninhabitable and that humanity will not survive, that we won't be able to grow any corn, wheat or rice and we won't be able to keep any animals alive to eat.
Again you state that these problems WILL happen. It's a forgone certainty then? 100% sure, bet your life 100%. Just like there were going to be 15 major hurricanes last year. Just like in the 1970's we were heading into the next ice age. Just like the first IPCC report predicted a 5C rise in temps by 2005 (we got a
I've said this before, I'll say it again, I don't think we should be burning fossil fuels, I don't think we should be polluting. I'll drive an electric car, I'll put solar panels on my roof, I'll use biodiesel, whatever. But I'll do those things because of the following reasons:
a) Hate oil companies
b) Hate being beholden to some of the biggest criminals on the planet (yes Arab leaders, you)
c) Believe strongly in personal independence and self sufficiency
d) Believe a distributed system of power generation would be more efficient and reliable
e) Like technology and love to see advances in energy technology
If the goal of the global warming movement is to get people to use renewable energy, be more self sufficient, and free us from unstable relationships with thugs (which I think it is, maybe I'm wrong) then the global warming people should argue to their strong points.
You have at least 3 and maybe 4 very strong talking points which you can prove 100% would be better if we got off oil. Instead you choose to argue "The planet might be hurt, and all the cute furry animals might die".
I don't object to your goals, I object to your methods.
If you are purporting to *KNOW* what is causing this climate change I expect you to be able to explain past climate changes in similar terms. What the global warming theorists are saying is "We know that the climate has changed drastically in the past for natural reasons, but this time we are 100% certain the reasons are not natural" Well, I'm not 100% certain, I know that CO2 concentrations have been higher in the past, I know that ice ages happen as well as warm periods, and none of these events in the past can be explained by man's interference with the planet. So, if we are inside of a known normal range for this planet, why are we supposed to assume that any little variation or change is caused by man or that it is inherently bad?
Ok, then explain ice ages and temperate ages without those things? If you are saying that the earth's orbit and the sun have 0 effect on the climate then explain how ice ages happen.
I see a hundred posts here flaming the guy because "You can't write an enterprise realtime xyz app in a browser". Luckily that isn't at all what he recommended or said in his article. He stated quite clearly that in certain limited cases, when users need xyz FEATURE (not necessarily a whole app) it is easier, faster, and less error prone to throw up a quick CGI script to do the job.
I've done this tons of times for clients that just want a feature, not an app. Maybe 1-3 forms with a database backend and a search bar. That is not an application, maybe they want to track some arcane bit of data about their clients for a couple months, maybe they want to see how an advertising campaign is going, so they tell the receptionist to always ask where the customer heard of them and she keeps track on the little web form. Yes this data would normally be tracked in some sort of CRM app, but a lot of small businesses don't have CRM apps and even Sugar CRM is way to complex and involved for a 15 person firm to learn and use effectively.
The customer doesn't need a CRM/ERP SAP type system, they aren't going to pay me to develop an application that will be installed on all 25 machines and then maintained. But if I can throw something up on their file server in 2 hours they are totally happy.
Granted, this guy goes a little crazy and suggests actually installing web server/db server/cgi environment on every client machine, which to me seems retarded. But he isn't recommending replacing a companies entire business process management system with a browser either.
In his defense he specifically mentions writing *SIMPLE* applications this way. I've written quite a few one off perl and php CGI "applications" that are a simple 1 or 2 web pages to do something very simple. One such "app" is for turning on and off the "answering" machine in Asterisk (IE the office is closed outside of their normal open/closed hours and the receptionist needs to make all calls go to voicemail).
If I wrote this application as a thick client GUI app, it would have taken at least 30-40 hours (GUI app itself, xml-rpc daemon on the asterisk server to handle the on/off request, code in the gui to get status from the database, debugging communication problems from each machine to the asterisk server) then I'd have to install it on everyone's system, and every time I found a bug I'd have to go through and upgrade 25+ systems. Not fun at all. As a webapp, it took less than 2 hours to write, when problems crop up, I make a change in one place everyone's updated, and as a bonus the receptionist can turn it on/off from any computer in the office and any computer with an internet connect (ssl vpn).
This is where I disagree with his approach, if you are writing an application that you are going to install on every machine (or even 2 or 3 machines) you would be an idiot to take his approach and install a web server on each machine, a db server, and the rest of the architectural stuff you need for a webapp. Unless you build all that stuff into a nice little install package, its going to be a nightmare. But for alot of one off little things like this, it is much easier to just throw a web server on the file server or whatever server they are using and build a webapp for need xyz. Now if you are building a huge, distributed, application for forex yeah you'll probably want to do a thick client app. The article wasn't suggesting to try to do that in a browser though. He specifically mentioned small one off things.
"may be moving too fast for them to keep up in the long run"
.8C increase, they're off by more than 500%.
And based on this compelling evidence and argument the world is being asked to spend trillions. There is my problem with the whole environmental movement. It isn't that I hate animals, or want to pollute, I would be happy to use renewable energy, drive an electric car, whatever.
But, I'm not willing to make sacrifices based on mights and maybes. None of you can come up with even the smallest risk/reward for what you are asking people to do. You say "Calamity will descend upon us if we don't stop driving cars tomorrow" and when I say "Ok, Calamity meaning a few species will die off and some people will have to move away from the coast, and it will cost 500 billion this year, and then another 300 billion every year after that for the next 100 years to avert something you think might happen". None of it is certain. It is all based on computer models and incomplete data sets. The fact is the IPCC predicted in their first report in 1990 a 5C increase by like 2005. Well, they got a
It would be like I go get a contractor and he says "I can build that house for you for 250,000" and I say ok sure and then he comes back after its built and says "Actually it cost 1.25 million to build" That is how far off their predictions were. When people can't get an estimate within say a 10-15% window, well that estimate isn't worth anything, you can't build policy or make decisions when the data you are using is off by that much. Now, they may be better now, and we'll see, of course now they've lowered their estimates so much that they can be right no matter what because they are within the standard deviation for temperature change anyway (a 1-3C increase over the next 100 years, with an inch or two of sea level rise).
I don't know where you get the "rapid increase" the IPCCs report says we've had a .8C increase since 1951. That is not an unprecedented increase even going back just 1000 years, and certainly not going back over the history of earth. The rate of change as stated in other posts is not unheard of the IPCC is predicting 2mm-6mm/yr rise in sea level over the next 100 years (how they measure that who knows, I would think measuring something like the ocean in millimeters would be a problem filled experience, a 2mph wind causes a 1mm wave), but that's beside the point, the average annual sea level increase since the last ice age is around 7mm/yr so this isn't abnormal or high, or "rapid" in any sense of the word.
No where do I state that the earth is in a special state at this point. I'm stating that the earth has moved over this trajectory in its climate pattern many times in the past, and we are still on that same trajectory. I am stating that if we were burning fossil fuels or not, the pattern of our orbit around the sun and the sun's output are greater drivers of our climate than anything we can do. Those things are what control the ebb and flow of ice ages and we are still in the ebb pattern of the last ice age (meaning the ice is ebbing).
How does a few degrees C and a few more feet of water = COLLAPSING ECOSYSTEM?!?!
Again, as stated above, we are not outside of "normal" climate patterns in any way in any metric that we have, temperature, temp change, sea level, sea level change. These things fluctuate, species have been able to adapt and survive through ice ages, through temperate times (including times with higher temps by at least 5-6C than we have now). Why is this time going to be so much worse? Species adapt and survive. If warmer sea temps are going to kill all the coral, well then how did coral survive the last temperate period when almost all the polar ice caps melted?
Since we are quite provably not outside of normal fluctuations for earth's climate, how can any species still be alive here? How did they make it through the last ice age?
I've said this before but how does he come up with a 10-20% drop after warming? The worst case scenario according to IPCC is only a 1 inch sea level rise in 100 years, how is that going to cause a 20% drop in GDP? I really just don't see these huge catastrophic effects of global warming. What is going to stop me from going to work every day? Or the 2 million people in the city I live in that is 2500ft above sea level? Sure if sea levels rise 6m it will displace quite a few people, but I still don't think it would cause that much upheaval. It isn't going to happen instantly. It isn't going to be like a sudden tsunami that kills millions of people and destroys trillions of dollars of real estate. Yes people may have to move, yes some places will lose larger amounts of real estate as they are lower in elevation. I still think it would be cheaper for world governments to just buy that real estate from people at market prices when the water rises than spending trillions now to try to stop it from ever happening.
As far as the asteroid is concerned what would your recommendation be? At least with that we would *KNOW* what we were up against, we would *KNOW* exactly how big it was, we'd be able to predict with near 100% accuracy where it would hit, what day, what time of day. We would have an exceptionally good guess as to the forces needed to divert it from our path. We would have facts. I would recommend the following:
1) once we have calculations on trajectory, impact zone, etc and we know the size of the asteroid and how much dust its going to throw up we move all humans and whatever animals we feel we should out of that area (across the world, whatever)
2) we perform calculations to see do we have anything that could move this thing out of our path? How much will it cost to build something to do it? What is the probability that it would work?
3) based on the feasibility study from 2 we decide "Ok, is an x% chance of success worth x trillion to build this thing in the x number of months we have" If its not worth it, then its better to save the money for rebuilding/adaptation after the event than to spend it on some pipe dream which then when it fails you don't have any resources to recover from the devastation.
That is what you environmentalists don't get, you never factor in risk/reward you say "This isn't natural, this is caused by man we have to stop this now at all costs on principle". The world doesn't work that way. If you applied just a little bit of the capitalism you so obviously hate to your analysis of problems you would get a lot further.
On the CO2 front I guess Scientific American got it wrong then I'm just quoting their article verbatim. They clearly stated (and had a nice graph and everything) a decline over the last 2 million years from 1400ppm to ~200ppm in the 17-1800s. It was a gradual decline with a couple huge spikes in the middle, and I'm sure that 50% of the way across the graph it was still ~700ppm. So either they are lying, or you are, but whatever.
The IPCC did not state anywhere any sort of statistical probability as you state. They said and I quote "It is highly likely that human activity has on average caused most of the warming of the last half century". Well.. I don't know how you pull from that a 90% certainty of causing warming, but it certainly isn't what they said. Of course their statement was intentionally ambiguous to provide zealots like yourself firepower. The following 2 statements are both accurate according to the IPCCs conclusion statement:
1) There is a 60% chance that humans are responsible for at least 51% of the warming of the last 50 years
2) There is a 90% certainty that humans have caused 99% of the warming in the past 50 years
Obviously you choose to interpret their statement according to rule number 2, I choose number 1. Scientists who use subjective terms to describe their findings are not scientists. Scientists describe their findings in facts, numbers, statistics, and proofs. If you don't have those don't come ask me to turn off my AC and give you millions in taxes.
I agree that getting away from oil is a good thing. Personally I think it would be great. However, the current leading proposal for getting off oil is mandatory carbon taxes. The only way we can currently meet a carbon cap that would have any sort of meaningful effect would be to simply turn off 30-40% of the electrical grid and take 30% of the cars off the road. This would instantly shrink our economy by at least 20%.
Yes we should work toward energy independence, we should invest in and create renewable energy sources. But we shouldn't do it because of global warming, we should do it because they are worthwhile things to work towards in their own right. Scare mongering and trying to get people to rush into these changes will only cause pain and suffering, and that is why I strongly dislike the global warming movement. It is irresponsible of the global warming proponents to use such tactics, it is seriously akin to MS's FUD campaigns.
The fact is, even if the worst case scenario plays out the IPCC is saying we might have a 1-2C degree increase in the next 100 years. They are saying we will have a 1-2cm rise in sea levels in 100 years. Those are stats directly from their report. That is the worst case. A 1 inch rise in sea level. How many people is that really going to effect? How much is that 4 sq miles of real estate world wide really worth? Should we spend hundreds of billions today to save it? Even in 5-600 years if it continues and all the ice melts and the sea level rises 6 meters. People can move. What is the worth of that real estate? I would like to see a map of the world with 6m of extra water to see how many square miles it would be, but I bet it would be cheaper for governments to just accept this as inevitable and start a fund to start buying people's property from them as the sea level rises instead of trying to save that real estate through who knows how many billions in research, development, and all the rest.
My point is you state quite clearly that you think global warming has the possibility to "eradicate this iteration of civilization" I contend that that statement is so grossly overstating global warming's possible effect as to be criminal. Yes global warming could cause us some inconvenience. People who live within 15 or 20 miles of the coast may have to move. Major cities may have to be relocated (or placed on stilts, heck they figured that out in Venice hundreds of years ago, I'm sure we could manage today). Global warming will never be listed as the "cause of death" on a single death certificate. It will never even be listed as a "probable cause" of a major weather event such as a hurricane.
I love how you think that burning a few billion barrels of oil could have more effect on our planet than a huge fusion reactor just 8 light minutes away. That is so hideously egotistical it would be funny if it weren't so sad. Look, we are on this planet spinning around a huge fusion reactor, if its output fluctuates slightly or our orbit wobbles slightly (both known and accepted facts) then it is going to get warmer or cooler here. The earth has had huge fluctuations in CO2 in the past (200ppm-1400ppm) and the ice caps have melted before and glaciers used to cover huge parts of Canada. We can adapt to these changes, we can't control them. Get over yourself.
Amen!
I think global warming is a bunch of crap. But I'd pay 10k extra to drive a fully electric car. I'm planning on spending ~30k this year to put solar panels on my roof (save ~250/mo in utility bills). I'd love to hook those solar panels up to a water electrolizer, produce hydrogen and use that to drive, store for non-sunny days, whatever.
I am so put off by the global warming religion that it drives me nuts. There are so many viable, provable, rational arguments for using renewable energy and polluting less. Using this crackpot, unprovable, faith based excuse of global warming to convince people to pollute less is insulting to anyone who has a brain.
There are ways to do it (pollute less, consume less) without inconvenience. I telecommute 3 days a week now, saves me ~90/mo in gasoline. If 50% of the US telecommuted 50% of the time I bet we'd comply with the Kyoto Protocol.
1) The Earth has been warmer than it is now before! We are not seeing temperatures outside the spectrum of nature.
2) CO2 levels are not high now. There was an article in Scientific American which documented this, CO2 over the last 2 million years has fluctuated between ~200ppm and ~1400ppm. Right now we are at about 300ppm.
3) The Sun and the Orbit of the Earth both fluctuate and are beyond our control and both influence the climate much more than anything we could possibly do. (This is mentioned though not explored in the latest IPCC report, but it is a known fact and the cause of ice ages and temperate ages in the past)
4) The Earth has been through many cycles of ice age and temperate age all before we were here.
5) The last temperate age melted almost all of the polar ice and caused sea levels to rise 4-6 meters this was 125000 years ago. It is safe to assume it will happen again (with our without us). (This data was specifically pulled from the IPCC report, your 650000 year comment is obviously false even according to your supporters).
6) We are still coming out of the last ice age, and we haven't seen temperatures comparable to the last temperate age yet, so we can easily assume temperatures still need to go up before the cycle starts again.
I find your thesis incorrect. I am quick to look at the historical record to debunk global warming. Based on the historical data we are no where close to an "abnormal" state. I think that global warming supporters are quick to look at the last 50-100 years and state that obviously we are destroying the planet. I don't buy it. I think that 50 years is nothing compared to the millions of years the Earth has been here. I think it is incredibly short sighted. Looking back 10s of thousands or hundreds of thousands of years only supports the fact that current temperatures, sea levels, etc are not abnormal. It even supports that the CO2 concentration is not abnormal.
In saying this I hope you don't think I'm some son of an oil man. I hate fossil fuels. I hate oil companies. I would love to drive an electric car, have solar panels on my roof and not pay the electric co. Unfortunately, what's going to happen is the global warming clan are going to get all sorts of subsidies passed for the oil companies et al to "research" alternative energy sources. Research which I am going to have to pay for with tax dollars. Tax dollars I could have spent on a solar array for my roof.
So, your recommendation would be to cause oh lets just say a 10-15% decline in global GDP because it *MIGHT* help... Here are the FACTS:
1) The Earth has been warmer than it is now before! We are not seeing temperatures outside the spectrum of nature, and even assuming worst case according to the IPCC we won't be outside normal for more than 500 years.
2) CO2 levels are not high now. There was an article in Scientific American which documented this, CO2 over the last 2 million years has fluctuated between ~200ppm and ~1400ppm. Right now we are at about 300ppm.
3) The Sun and the Orbit of the Earth both fluctuate and are beyond our control and both influence the climate much more than anything we could possibly do.
4) The Earth has been through many cycles of ice age and temperate age all before we were here.
5) The last temperate age melted almost all of the polar ice and caused sea levels to rise 4-6 meters this was 125k years ago. It is safe to assume it will happen again (with our without us)
6) We are still coming out of the last ice age, and we haven't seen temperatures comparable to the last temperate age yet, so we can easily assume temperatures still need to go up before the cycle starts again.
These things are completely beyond our control, if we spend billions (and I'd argue it would cost many trillions) to "fight" global warming, well if you want to fight against the solar system, go ahead but I'm not giving you my tax dollars to do it.
So, one thing no one has commented on, and I wonder if its true or not. Does Kazaa really put your computer's IP address in its packet payload for other nodes on the network to see? If so, why? If not why hasn't anyone pointed this out as the greatest problem with their case?
Obviously the "expert" witness is completely useless at explaining technology to lay people (sorry attorneys, you're lay people in this context). At least 1 hour was wasted with the expert trying to explain the difference between an internal IP address and an external publicly routable address. Of course, the best way to explain it would be to draw it... but anyway, I searched a bit, couldn't find anything about kazaa but if anyone can enlighten us, that would be great.
I've seen it. It looks OK, but here's my story.
I was over at my friends house, he's all excited "I just got this new Vista Ultimate! Check out the Media Center". He turns on his TV, grabs the remote and starts up media center... goes to his recorded TV shows, hits play on a show from a couple days ago... we watch it for a couple minutes, then he goes back hits play on another show and.... Crash "Do you want to send a message to Microsoft?", no, start media center back up, hit play again on a different show, plays for about 3 seconds, crash again.
Then he says "Yeah, I can't get it to play more than one show per reboot... I don't know why, once you hit play on a show you have to watch that show all the way through, if you stop it or try to play another show it crashes. Once that show is done, it crashes, and you have to reboot to get it to play again"
His is just set up on a whitebox that he built and I don't know the stats or hardware he's got in it... but seriously, after seeing that and my other friend had it on his laptop (uninstalled and went back to XP after 2 weeks, couldn't get his development environment working under vista, also HATED UAC) watched him work for about 30 minutes one day, he had to have 15-20 UAC warnings in those 30 minutes, all for very normal things to do (like joining a wifi network) I'm never installing Vista, I'm glad I've got a non-OEM copy of XP that I can install on new hardware.
I'm a bit younger than you, however I quite agree with your post. I wired my fathers coax network ~92 (when I was 13 years old), upgraded it to utp in 95, and wrote a client management application for his business in 96. I do everything from wire phone and ethernet jacks to write applications. I also throw in a bit of system admin stuff (email, DNS, DHCP, DBA, etc). I have my own company now and finding people who are able to think rationally about anything is extremely difficult. I'm mostly looking to hire younger people (students, just out of college 20-24 years old). I've gone through 6 employees in the last 4 months. None of them can handle 1/4 of the tech that I can. Yeah maybe one of them is an ok programmer, but every time they want to do something "non-standard" I have to be there babysitting to set up the server "just so" so that what they are trying to do is possible. They get an error message when they try to compile something and say "Oh, its broken" and call me and say the server is broken. Maybe school taught them the basics of programming, but they weren't taught or didn't care enough to learn even the smallest amount of sysadmin skills which are in my opinion required to be a good programmer. There are absolutely zero true troubleshooting skills being taught anywhere in school as far as I can see.
Same thing with networking and everything else. Maybe they know how to wire an ethernet jack, but if they plug it in and it doesn't work they don't know the next step. Yeah some of this is training that I need to do, but honestly I taught myself this crap when I was 14-16, it isn't rocket science. If you plug in a network cable and you don't get link there are some pretty obvious things to try.
None of the people I've run into have the ability to apply any sort of reasoning to a problem outside of their "expertise". Programmers think they can just program and be fine, sysadmins think that they can effectively do their job without knowing a little programming (not true, a sysadmin without perl is like a fish out of water), network engineers think that they can get by without understanding the services running on the network. Really its all the same, technology works very similarly across these domains, and you can generally apply the same sort of logic to problems in all spaces, but if I sit a programmer down in front of a Cisco router they say "This is different, I can't troubleshoot this". Sit a sysadmin in front of a simple PHP script that is acting up, suddenly the fact that yesterday they were able to read a 3000 line sendmail config file and find the error in it is completely erased from their memory and they can't apply the same reasoning to this new problem domain.
In short, I think we are creating some great "consumers" of technology, but very few people who understand and can actually manage and fix said technology. This is in my opinion the great danger that the US faces. If the trend continues much longer we will all be enslaved by China and India because they will be the only ones who can keep our systems running, and we'll be paying them everything we make just to get another hit on the crackberry.
you comment is laughable... Dell while in decline (and has been for 5+ years now) is no where near "bankruptcy". They still have billions in revenues and profits every year, they just aren't "growing" enough to encourage people to buy their stock.