Yeah, that hasn't been active in a couple of years. I really should do something with that address.
I do encourage you to follow up here. Many people browse with the moderation off, and it's not like we Slashdotters will put down the Cheetos, leave our mom's basement and come after you.
Do you think that industry-created "think tank" fronts are in any way comparable to scientists working on grants? Have you considered that a scientist who fakes evidence and fudges numbers to garner reputation is taking a tremendous risk of being utterly discredited and never trusted again, while these "think tanks" can do so with impunity, secure in the knowledge that the funds will keep rolling in?
Your attempts at drawing a moral equivalence are feeble, and were I a working scientist, I'd probably be offended.
You're welcome to question global warming, just as you're welcome to question the theory of evolution. It gets old when the sametired crap is thrown out time and again, designed not to advance anyone's understanding of anything, but to sow public confusion and doubt.
But we are supposed to believe them when they say that the film is 99% correct on long term forecasts when they can't tell me if it is going to rain today or not.
I can tell you that next July 1 in New York City will be warmer than next January 1 in New York City. But I can't tell you whether or not it's going to rain/snow on those dates.
If you can understand this, you can understand the difference between climate and weather. That's a nice soundbite, but it's intellectually void, and you should know better.
Consider, for example, a thread about IQ testing. Someone drops a post about how IQ tests have conclusively shown that black people are inferior to white people, and have for many years; it's a conspiracy of liberal race-mixin' scientists who are keeping the results quiet. This guy gets modded troll for posting that.
By your lights, he was modded troll simply for "disagreeing" with the majority. Not for willful ignorance, for baseless assertions which have been refuted a thousand times, but for "disagreement".
By your lights, "all known living organisms descend from a common ancestor" is also unproven by "decent scientific standards", as is "HIV causes AIDS", and possibly "the Earth is more than six thousand years old", depending on how charitable we're being. Because not only is the science not unanimous, I can find you plenty of axe-grinders who'll be willing to bend your ear on these topics.
Not to mention that if any of this buys us five or ten years, it's important. It can make the difference between transitioning to nuclear fusion and transitioning back to the stone age. This isn't important to you?
Yes, the great Steven Milloy! Lobbyist for the American Petroleum Institute who stuck his name on content provided by RJR Tobacco and Philip Morris, enemy of "special, and often hidden interests" wherever they may be found!
Who, by the way, won't utter a peep against creationism, even when asked. Possibly because the NSF isn't employing him; I don't know.
By golly, if ever there was a man with an ironclad reputation for fairness, honesty and resistance to the encroachment of hidden interests, it must be Steven Milloy!
Ugh, not this Michael Crichton crap again. The man thinks that an underground conspiracy of cackling socialists in lab coats debasing their fields for some vague political reason is way more plausible than moneyed interests debasing science for their own ends, when there are plainly billions of dollars at stake, and there's a demonstrable money trail from said interests to fake science.
I think his sense of perspective is a bit... skewed.
Accepting the DVDs, they wrote, would place "unnecessary risk upon the [NSTA] capital campaign, especially certain targeted supporters."
Given that Exxon-Mobil et al. donate money and propaganda to the NSTA, could you explain what this could possibly mean other than that they're afraid of offending their corporate overlords? It takes a certain amount of sticking one's fingers in one's ears and singing LA LA LA I CAN'T HEAR YOU to not see this.
What, exactly, did wytcld fail to understand, how did he demonstrate actual hate for this thing he failed to understand, and how did this make him look like a complete tool?
That's not from the edit summary, that's from Frogbeater's story submission. Now, the editors may have picked that particular summary in order to piss off Slashdotters because we'd all point out how baldly inaccurate ("preferential treatment"?!) it was, so they'd get scads of comments. It wouldn't be the first time, but it's not quite the same as the editors themselves saying anything quite so stupid.
They're Mary Sues! Come on, their eyes change color! And they have magical scent-based mind-control powers! And the grownups just don't understand them!
All Bear would have had to do is give them pink hair and epic flying unicorn mounts. And make them all Dumbledore's daughter.
And you're absolutely right. Radio was kind of interesting; I wanted to see where he was taking the concept. But the sequel didn't do anything SFnal; it was as though Bear was afraid of heaping too many ideas on his audience and decided to play it as a straight thriller, which isn't nearly as interesting. And that weirdness about religious experiences which never went anywhere--what was up with that?
I had read The Forge of God some years earlier, and I'd really enjoyed it. I was pretty damned disappointed in the Darwin books.
Right, time is a shell keyword, even though typing "man time" brings up the man page, which you'd think would describe the program to be run. Either way, the memory-counting features don't seem to work, so... darn. How hard is it to find the maximum resident-set-size of a program over its short lifetime?
If one part of a license or contract is ruled unenforceable, does that mean that the other parts still hold?
If I leave a hundred grand to my daughter in my will, but on the condition that she marry someone in particular, can she still get the money even if she doesn't marry the guy? If I leave a hundred grand to my daughter in my will, but on the condition that she retains her citizenship for at least a year, can she still get the money even if she gets thrown out of the country next week?
Damn, I asked a lawyer friend about this at some point, and he said it depended on the nature of the requirement, but I don't exactly remember. I think one of those is a legitimate requirement and the other isn't, but I don't recall.
I devoured the complete works of Heinlein (with one or two exceptions) my first semester in college. (It mght have been my second; it was a long time ago.) Thank goodness for interlibrary loan. It seemed like the greatest thing in the world to me, like Asimov's robot stories had a few years earlier, but the prospect of more Heinlein seems about as exciting as more Ayn Rand at this point.
It's not like I'm trashing everything I read back then; I'm re-reading Godel, Escher, Bach and enjoying it just as much as I did the first time around. But something about Heinlein hasn't aged well for me.
Wait, wait, I can tell you how this is going to go down.
The LAPD is discovered to be corrupt. Officers from Rampart Division are dipping into the dope stash in the evidence room, or some officers are engaging in "monkey slapping time". There's an outcry. Something Must Be Done. The Christopher Commission or its like is convened. Anti-corruption measures are proposed. Memory fades, and they never really get implemented. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Your taxes are going to go up because the Republicans have been cutting taxes and spending like drunken schoolboys for the last six years. Just because they didn't pay for it then doesn't make it the fault of the people who inherit their mess.
Maybe for their next move, they can send in some guy with baseball bats to break the knees of those darn journalists. That'd be sure to fix all their PR problems!
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, that hasn't been active in a couple of years. I really should do something with that address.
I do encourage you to follow up here. Many people browse with the moderation off, and it's not like we Slashdotters will put down the Cheetos, leave our mom's basement and come after you.
Do you think that industry-created "think tank" fronts are in any way comparable to scientists working on grants? Have you considered that a scientist who fakes evidence and fudges numbers to garner reputation is taking a tremendous risk of being utterly discredited and never trusted again, while these "think tanks" can do so with impunity, secure in the knowledge that the funds will keep rolling in?
Your attempts at drawing a moral equivalence are feeble, and were I a working scientist, I'd probably be offended.
No, no, not bible-beating rednecks, well-heeled industry shills! And that stereotype exists largely because there's a well-documented conspiracy to debase science and muddy the waters on behalf of said industry. (There's an analogue for creationism as well.)
You're welcome to question global warming, just as you're welcome to question the theory of evolution. It gets old when the same tired crap is thrown out time and again, designed not to advance anyone's understanding of anything, but to sow public confusion and doubt.
If you can understand this, you can understand the difference between climate and weather. That's a nice soundbite, but it's intellectually void, and you should know better.
Consider, for example, a thread about IQ testing. Someone drops a post about how IQ tests have conclusively shown that black people are inferior to white people, and have for many years; it's a conspiracy of liberal race-mixin' scientists who are keeping the results quiet. This guy gets modded troll for posting that.
By your lights, he was modded troll simply for "disagreeing" with the majority. Not for willful ignorance, for baseless assertions which have been refuted a thousand times, but for "disagreement".
By your lights, "all known living organisms descend from a common ancestor" is also unproven by "decent scientific standards", as is "HIV causes AIDS", and possibly "the Earth is more than six thousand years old", depending on how charitable we're being. Because not only is the science not unanimous, I can find you plenty of axe-grinders who'll be willing to bend your ear on these topics.
Not to mention that if any of this buys us five or ten years, it's important. It can make the difference between transitioning to nuclear fusion and transitioning back to the stone age. This isn't important to you?
Yes, the great Steven Milloy! Lobbyist for the American Petroleum Institute who stuck his name on content provided by RJR Tobacco and Philip Morris, enemy of "special, and often hidden interests" wherever they may be found!
Who, by the way, won't utter a peep against creationism, even when asked. Possibly because the NSF isn't employing him; I don't know.
By golly, if ever there was a man with an ironclad reputation for fairness, honesty and resistance to the encroachment of hidden interests, it must be Steven Milloy!
Ugh, not this Michael Crichton crap again. The man thinks that an underground conspiracy of cackling socialists in lab coats debasing their fields for some vague political reason is way more plausible than moneyed interests debasing science for their own ends, when there are plainly billions of dollars at stake, and there's a demonstrable money trail from said interests to fake science.
I think his sense of perspective is a bit... skewed.
What, exactly, did wytcld fail to understand, how did he demonstrate actual hate for this thing he failed to understand, and how did this make him look like a complete tool?
That's not from the edit summary, that's from Frogbeater's story submission. Now, the editors may have picked that particular summary in order to piss off Slashdotters because we'd all point out how baldly inaccurate ("preferential treatment"?!) it was, so they'd get scads of comments. It wouldn't be the first time, but it's not quite the same as the editors themselves saying anything quite so stupid.
The story about the space shuttle and the horse's ass you linked to? Urban legend.
They're Mary Sues! Come on, their eyes change color! And they have magical scent-based mind-control powers! And the grownups just don't understand them!
All Bear would have had to do is give them pink hair and epic flying unicorn mounts. And make them all Dumbledore's daughter.
And you're absolutely right. Radio was kind of interesting; I wanted to see where he was taking the concept. But the sequel didn't do anything SFnal; it was as though Bear was afraid of heaping too many ideas on his audience and decided to play it as a straight thriller, which isn't nearly as interesting. And that weirdness about religious experiences which never went anywhere--what was up with that?
I had read The Forge of God some years earlier, and I'd really enjoyed it. I was pretty damned disappointed in the Darwin books.
Destructive testing? DESTRUCTIVE TESTING? WOOOO!!!
Lameness filter encountered. Post aborted!
Reason: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.
Right, time is a shell keyword, even though typing "man time" brings up the man page, which you'd think would describe the program to be run. Either way, the memory-counting features don't seem to work, so... darn. How hard is it to find the maximum resident-set-size of a program over its short lifetime?
If one part of a license or contract is ruled unenforceable, does that mean that the other parts still hold?
If I leave a hundred grand to my daughter in my will, but on the condition that she marry someone in particular, can she still get the money even if she doesn't marry the guy? If I leave a hundred grand to my daughter in my will, but on the condition that she retains her citizenship for at least a year, can she still get the money even if she gets thrown out of the country next week?
Damn, I asked a lawyer friend about this at some point, and he said it depended on the nature of the requirement, but I don't exactly remember. I think one of those is a legitimate requirement and the other isn't, but I don't recall.
I devoured the complete works of Heinlein (with one or two exceptions) my first semester in college. (It mght have been my second; it was a long time ago.) Thank goodness for interlibrary loan. It seemed like the greatest thing in the world to me, like Asimov's robot stories had a few years earlier, but the prospect of more Heinlein seems about as exciting as more Ayn Rand at this point.
It's not like I'm trashing everything I read back then; I'm re-reading Godel, Escher, Bach and enjoying it just as much as I did the first time around. But something about Heinlein hasn't aged well for me.
With the exception of some guy in 1889 (it didn't catch on), that prick was Heinlein himself.
Wait, wait, I can tell you how this is going to go down.
The LAPD is discovered to be corrupt. Officers from Rampart Division are dipping into the dope stash in the evidence room, or some officers are engaging in "monkey slapping time". There's an outcry. Something Must Be Done. The Christopher Commission or its like is convened. Anti-corruption measures are proposed. Memory fades, and they never really get implemented. Lather, rinse, repeat.
You can go back to 1902 with this shit.
Of course; if you like Java, you can read it that way.
Your taxes are going to go up because the Republicans have been cutting taxes and spending like drunken schoolboys for the last six years. Just because they didn't pay for it then doesn't make it the fault of the people who inherit their mess.
Maybe for their next move, they can send in some guy with baseball bats to break the knees of those darn journalists. That'd be sure to fix all their PR problems!
In Windows, at least, there are class drivers for a variety of USB device classes.