I don't expect that the book properly defends global warming, but the fact that a such an argument can be made and backed up with numerous scientific articles shows that the theory of global warming isn't nearly as strong as most people think that it is.
Please understand this simple fact - global warming is NOT a theory. Its happening. There is no doubt at all. What is apparently controversial is whether human activity is contributing.
A theory doesn't get to be more correct/accurate just because more and more people are repeating it...
Well, yes it does. That is how science works. Does the opposite suggestion - that a belief is truer the fewer believe it - make sense?
And I have a hard time respecting scientists mindlessly repeating this without actually bothering to look at the facts and keep the basic scientific methods in mind.
What a dramatic condemnation of thousands of experts - they are all so ignorant of scientific method?
And for some reason almost all these 'respectable scientists' insist on the energy input from the Sun being irrelevant and without significance...
Who says that?
Yet without it the Earth would be a very cold place indeed. So the Sun is a very significant element in our climate and we know very little about the periodic instabilities in the nuclear processes up there, so that's another bit of shaky ground.
We know that they happen, and we know that the current warming is not related to a change in solar activity, as much of the warming has taken place in the last century, during which time we have been monitoring solar activity in detail.
# We know very little about the complex balances in the atmosphere and we're far from knowing with any certainty that additional CO2 will increase the apparent greenhouse effect. It may even decrease it!
No - this is not true. Models of CO2 effect on the atmosphere are clear. Any chemist will tell you that CO2 results in warming. However, you are right about the complexity - which is a good argument for not messing it about!
# The 'ancient' meteorological data is full of inaccuracies and you cannot 'measure' (calculate) a 0.5 degree change based on data that's only accurate to +/- 2.0 degrees. Yet this is done even by the UN people!
Where did you come up with that accuracy - its just not true. Some of the measurements have a statistical accuracy of around +/-0.1 C.
# There's no viable alternatives to most of the CO2-producing technologies. Solar and Wind power is useless for anything but a nice supplement to a core technology that sustains business and city consumption without fail. Cars that run on anything but gas are still more or less on the prototype stage, and airplanes are not even on the drawing boards. We simply cannot give up our CO2-producing technologies yet!
There is nuclear, and we are going to have to give up these technologies soon anyway, as the oil reserves will decline.
I do not believe that man has anything to do with it. If we cut all emissions and go back to the stone age I think it would still be happening.
yes, but the problem is that we can't base how we deal with a potential disaster on personal belief and what individual people think - we have to work with evidence, and we have do something, even if there is a small chance of disaster.
By "respectable", you probably mean "those who agree with global warming." Also, science isn't something you put up to a vote. A majority of "respectable scientists" thought the sun revolved around the earth until Copernicus proved otherwise.
How would you suggest you get an idea of what is happening? Who would YOU ask? If not 'experts', who?
If it's so readily apparent, why can't I see it where I live? You want to prove global warming is happening, then provide the proof. Don't expect me to go looking for something I don't think is there. The burden of proof lies with you, my friend.
Well, by the same principle I assume you don't believe in Ozone depletion. You can't see it, so it's not there. Thank goodness some people did understand what was happening.
You can see global warming. I certainly can - Spring is arriving earlier.
We've been hearing this sort of thing for three decades now. Eco distaster is always just around the corner. We are always near the tipping point, close to the point of no return. Horror is coming!
You have been hearing it from a few for a long time. Now you are hearing from a majority of respectable scientists.
Despite the dire claims, we have yet to see any REAL environmental disaster. Nothing truly spectacular has happened (not on the scale the doomsayers have been predicting) and now we get Kyoto.
The problem is that by the time the average citizen notices major changes, its too late.
If you want evidence, look at your Glacier National Park. Check the temperature changes and mass changes of the glaciers. The evidence for climate change is there if you bother to look.
Then what does Microsoft have a monopoly on? There are other OSes I can easily use.
Easy for you perhaps. But, put a PC with Windows pre-installed in front of a typical user and ask them to switch to Linux. How easy would they find it? It's a bit more than typing a URL (which is all you need to use an alternative search engine).
So then Microsoft doesn't have a monopoly on desktop OSes, as I can easily use others... I'm confused:-P
Easily? Where are those other desktop OSes pre-installed on your PC, and available at the click of a mouse?
Google would only have a monopoly if it was the default search option on all browsers and if there was a significant barrier to users typing the URLs of others.
I have a funny feeling if WMP was made by someone else, more people would be all over it.
Well of course - that is the whole point!
Let me repeat yet again: it is illegal for a company to use one monopoly (Operating System) to use that position to try and establish a monopoly in another (media handling).
Yes, but there is a critical point at which the rate of unused genes stops disappearing rapidly, and they for all intents and purposes, exist forever.
Well a particular length of DNA may exist, but not the original gene. The natural frequency of point mutations will ensure that the original sequence decays.
DNA sequences have to be maintained by positive selection pressure, otherwise random mutation ensures that they change.
In my opinion it's in the benefit of humans to have unused genes, as over time, mutations in them may spring beneficial genes.
Evolution doesn't work like that. Natural selection can't look to the future for possible benefits.
Lastly, I have a question for you. What evolutionary purpose would disappearing genes serve? The benefits seem so minuscule to me.
The benefits are indeed miniscule - mainly being the lack of energy and resources needed to replicate and maintain the DNA sequence. But, as I said, evolution doesn't have to work actively to get rid of genes - they decay naturally through mutation. Evolution has to work actively to keep them!
Great, so we end up with a linux-esque situation in Windows, where you have to specify which modules you have installed, and pray your software is aware of them, and can work with them.
You don't pray - you code to be sure it works. You say 'this software requires WMP or RealPlayer installed'. This is the way software development is supposed to work!
It's just hard to include those apps in your app, as there is no common framework for embedding them, yet
Since when has 'hard' been an excuse for writing bad code?
The same goes for media. Should the smallest application have a fully-blown media player in it if it wants to play an MP3? Of course not. Not only does that include licensing issues, but it means the smallest apps have to be megs bigger, just to play a sound.
Of course they don't have to be bigger! They don't have to include a player, they just have to be able to use alternatives. It can be up to the customer which player is to be used.
Sometimes I dispair of developers... Anyone with an ounce of sense would write portable code so as not to depend on one OS, one player, one HTML renderer. Seems like the lessons of decades have been forgotten.
Asking vendors to go through extra hassle of getting copies of software to include on their machines is silly. They should provide one that works, pre-installed, and give the user a choice to change if they want. As 99.9% of people don't care, they won't change. Your solution pisses off that 99.9% for the sake of the 0.1%. That's just mean:) What more do you want?
Its not mean - its good for the user long term. That is why there are laws against it. Let the user have a choice of what is bundled, or provide auto-run CDs that install whatever alternative software they want. This is easy to do and used to be standard practice.
If software is bundled there is a barrier to user choice, even if that barrier is just the user being too lazy to download an alternative. That barrier gives the bundled software producer an uncompetitive advantage.
Competition is vital to ensure quality. Look at what has happened with IE.
Why not let MS bundle Office? Why not bundle development environments?
Should you choose a language like Java, however, these issues are supposed to just go away - a nice ideal... ("Write once, test everywhere", I believe;-P )
It really isn't an ideal - it works, and works well. The 'test everywhere' was true years ago when there were portability problems with some aspects of Java (such as threading). But these days, portability is virtually complete.
There are many issues that developers may have with Java - licensing and redistribution etc., but portability is rarely a problem these days.
Recent studies of giardia have shown that this ancient organism has the genes for sexual reproduction. Apparently, sexual reproduction conferred some powerful advantage, given how early it developed in the history of life. But if this is so, why does giardia not actually use sexual reproduction?
It must use sexual reproduction, or have used sexual reproduction until very recently. Genetic information is fragile. Genes for sexual reproduction would not have survived intact unless they were of direct use (of course, that use could perhaps be for additional purpose other than sex).
The hooks aren't into "WMP", per se, they are into the Windows Media API, which the player is just a simple client of. This is more like DirectX than OpenGL -- it is a Microsoft framework could be used in a vendor-indepedant way.
I'm not saying that this isn't true, just that this was not what was stated in the post I was replying to.
The EU failed to make this distinction because Real and Apple choose also to use their own proprietary API frameworks and have no interest in using Microsoft's.
Well that is a fact of life. These other players have been around for a very long time. They should have an equal chance to be installed on Windows so that developers have the choice to use the APIs and hooks of those products as well. Bundling WMP gives it an unfair advantage, is uncompetitive and has been found to be illegal.
So you are basically asking for something that nobody else wants (end users, developers, or third parties).
It is something that benefits end users because preventing the use of a monopoly in one area (OS) to create a monopoly in another (media players) benefits end users - monopolies stifle innovation and (as we have seen with IE) encourage poor quality. Developers and third parties have known full well for some time that there was the possibility of unbundling WMP and targetting its API was unwise.
Preventing bundling helps stop highly questionable business practises such as when, in 2001, Microsoft was found to be pressuring AOL to block its users from accessing content via Real Player, and requesting caps on content streamed in non-Microsoft formats.
It is actually rather hard to come up with plausible natural selection scenarios in which population-limiting mechanisms evolve spontaneously and are not eliminated by mutation.
There is a good example of such a mechanism - meiotic drive. It can be disastrous for a population, yet can be selected for because selection works for the relative benefit of the genes causing this drive, not for the future survival of the species.
Basically, it requires group selection mechanisms that clearly are not applicable to most species.
And there are virtually no uncontroversial examples of 'group selection'. Selection works to benefit genes, not groups or species.
However, the EU is forcing them to unbundle the whole infrastructure and not just the player. This actually hurts many 3rd parties (like DivX or ZoomPlayer) in the guise of helping others (Real). That was dave420's point.
I think we may have been talking at cross purposes. Dave420 mentioned an alternative product that was based on WMP, and hooked into it. This is not the same as a product that provides an alternative infrastructure that presents the same API to applications.
But anyway, the fact is that RealPlayer is out there, and has been for ages. If Microsoft developed an infrastructure that encouraged the use of their specific player, and made that part of a monopoly product (Windows), that is problematic.
My point is that it would have been better if Microsoft had published an open specification, jointly with other media player suppliers, that allowed alternative suppliers to provide alternative infrastructures, and developers could target a common API. Something equivalent to OpenGL, but for media.
It is not adequate for MS to develop a product (WMP), then provide hooks into it. This is not an infrastructure or a specification - its a tie-in. Its not just the player that is the issue - its the whole process of handling multimedia that should be open to other vendors to target. So, I can understand what the EU is doing.
Codecs are already an issue, so you'll need more than handwaving to convince me.
I was handwaving because I was ignorant. I know almost nothing about codecs!
Also, a developer can use the Windows Media stuff without using Microsoft's player (see WinAmp) or codecs (see DivX). So, the generic API you're asking for seems to already be built in to Windows. Feel free to be more technically specific if that's not what you mean.
You know a lot more about this that I do, but don't think this relates directly to the bundling issue. I was replying to a post that said that the Windows Media player was a requirement for developers. I was assuming that because of this statement, there were no plug-in replacements (in other words, that the situation was the same as for embedded web browsing). Looks like I was wrong! This means that WMP is not directly required for the use of media APIs, making the case for unbundling even stronger.
It seems like a rather moot argument, because even if one could define a "generic media API", you would still have the problem that nearly all of the codecs are proprietary and must be otained from Vendor XYZ.
I don't think its moot, because by controlling the player, Microsoft controls the distribution of media, no matter what the codec. If the codecs become an issue at some point, that can be dealt with separately.
This is somewhat similar to the idea of the IE-API, where Marc Andresson of Netscape came out and told everyone that the idea of an embeddable web browser was stupid.
Surely that was YEARS ago, when the market for browsers was different. Now, embedded browsers are very common.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't expect that the book properly defends global warming, but the fact that a such an argument can be made and backed up with numerous scientific articles shows that the theory of global warming isn't nearly as strong as most people think that it is.
Please understand this simple fact - global warming is NOT a theory. Its happening. There is no doubt at all. What is apparently controversial is whether human activity is contributing.
A theory doesn't get to be more correct/accurate just because more and more people are repeating it...
Well, yes it does. That is how science works. Does the opposite suggestion - that a belief is truer the fewer believe it - make sense?
And I have a hard time respecting scientists mindlessly repeating this without actually bothering to look at the facts and keep the basic scientific methods in mind.
What a dramatic condemnation of thousands of experts - they are all so ignorant of scientific method?
And for some reason almost all these 'respectable scientists' insist on the energy input from the Sun being irrelevant and without significance...
Who says that?
Yet without it the Earth would be a very cold place indeed. So the Sun is a very significant element in our climate and we know very little about the periodic instabilities in the nuclear processes up there, so that's another bit of shaky ground.
We know that they happen, and we know that the current warming is not related to a change in solar activity, as much of the warming has taken place in the last century, during which time we have been monitoring solar activity in detail.
# We know very little about the complex balances in the atmosphere and we're far from knowing with any certainty that additional CO2 will increase the apparent greenhouse effect. It may even decrease it!
No - this is not true. Models of CO2 effect on the atmosphere are clear. Any chemist will tell you that CO2 results in warming. However, you are right about the complexity - which is a good argument for not messing it about!
# The 'ancient' meteorological data is full of inaccuracies and you cannot 'measure' (calculate) a 0.5 degree change based on data that's only accurate to +/- 2.0 degrees. Yet this is done even by the UN people!
Where did you come up with that accuracy - its just not true. Some of the measurements have a statistical accuracy of around +/-0.1 C.
# There's no viable alternatives to most of the CO2-producing technologies. Solar and Wind power is useless for anything but a nice supplement to a core technology that sustains business and city consumption without fail. Cars that run on anything but gas are still more or less on the prototype stage, and airplanes are not even on the drawing boards. We simply cannot give up our CO2-producing technologies yet!
There is nuclear, and we are going to have to give up these technologies soon anyway, as the oil reserves will decline.
I do not believe that man has anything to do with it. If we cut all emissions and go back to the stone age I think it would still be happening.
yes, but the problem is that we can't base how we deal with a potential disaster on personal belief and what individual people think - we have to work with evidence, and we have do something, even if there is a small chance of disaster.
By "respectable", you probably mean "those who agree with global warming." Also, science isn't something you put up to a vote. A majority of "respectable scientists" thought the sun revolved around the earth until Copernicus proved otherwise.
How would you suggest you get an idea of what is happening? Who would YOU ask? If not 'experts', who?
If it's so readily apparent, why can't I see it where I live? You want to prove global warming is happening, then provide the proof. Don't expect me to go looking for something I don't think is there. The burden of proof lies with you, my friend.
Well, by the same principle I assume you don't believe in Ozone depletion. You can't see it, so it's not there. Thank goodness some people did understand what was happening.
You can see global warming. I certainly can - Spring is arriving earlier.
I suggest reading Michael Crichton's State of Fear if you haven't. One comparison in the book is between global warming and eugenics.
So you are basing a scientific opinion on the judgement of someone who came up with the non-science in Jurassic Park?
We've been hearing this sort of thing for three decades now. Eco distaster is always just around the corner. We are always near the tipping point, close to the point of no return. Horror is coming!
You have been hearing it from a few for a long time. Now you are hearing from a majority of respectable scientists.
Despite the dire claims, we have yet to see any REAL environmental disaster. Nothing truly spectacular has happened (not on the scale the doomsayers have been predicting) and now we get Kyoto.
The problem is that by the time the average citizen notices major changes, its too late.
If you want evidence, look at your Glacier National Park. Check the temperature changes and mass changes of the glaciers. The evidence for climate change is there if you bother to look.
Then what does Microsoft have a monopoly on? There are other OSes I can easily use.
Easy for you perhaps. But, put a PC with Windows pre-installed in front of a typical user and ask them to switch to Linux. How easy would they find it? It's a bit more than typing a URL (which is all you need to use an alternative search engine).
So then Microsoft doesn't have a monopoly on desktop OSes, as I can easily use others... I'm confused :-P
Easily? Where are those other desktop OSes pre-installed on your PC, and available at the click of a mouse?
Google would only have a monopoly if it was the default search option on all browsers and if there was a significant barrier to users typing the URLs of others.
I have a funny feeling if WMP was made by someone else, more people would be all over it.
Well of course - that is the whole point!
Let me repeat yet again: it is illegal for a company to use one monopoly (Operating System) to use that position to try and establish a monopoly in another (media handling).
Yes, but there is a critical point at which the rate of unused genes stops disappearing rapidly, and they for all intents and purposes, exist forever.
Well a particular length of DNA may exist, but not the original gene. The natural frequency of point mutations will ensure that the original sequence decays.
DNA sequences have to be maintained by positive selection pressure, otherwise random mutation ensures that they change.
In my opinion it's in the benefit of humans to have unused genes, as over time, mutations in them may spring beneficial genes.
Evolution doesn't work like that. Natural selection can't look to the future for possible benefits.
Lastly, I have a question for you. What evolutionary purpose would disappearing genes serve? The benefits seem so minuscule to me.
The benefits are indeed miniscule - mainly being the lack of energy and resources needed to replicate and maintain the DNA sequence. But, as I said, evolution doesn't have to work actively to get rid of genes - they decay naturally through mutation. Evolution has to work actively to keep them!
Same with Java - if you test in several systems, your threading and timing problems are more likely to be exposed now, instead at customers site.
What threading and timing problems? I was talking about the situation years ago.
That there appendix, how's she going?
She is going away. That is my point. The disappearance of unused genes takes millions of years, but they do disappear.
Great, so we end up with a linux-esque situation in Windows, where you have to specify which modules you have installed, and pray your software is aware of them, and can work with them.
You don't pray - you code to be sure it works. You say 'this software requires WMP or RealPlayer installed'. This is the way software development is supposed to work!
It's just hard to include those apps in your app, as there is no common framework for embedding them, yet
Since when has 'hard' been an excuse for writing bad code?
The same goes for media. Should the smallest application have a fully-blown media player in it if it wants to play an MP3? Of course not. Not only does that include licensing issues, but it means the smallest apps have to be megs bigger, just to play a sound.
Of course they don't have to be bigger! They don't have to include a player, they just have to be able to use alternatives. It can be up to the customer which player is to be used.
Sometimes I dispair of developers... Anyone with an ounce of sense would write portable code so as not to depend on one OS, one player, one HTML renderer. Seems like the lessons of decades have been forgotten.
Asking vendors to go through extra hassle of getting copies of software to include on their machines is silly. They should provide one that works, pre-installed, and give the user a choice to change if they want. As 99.9% of people don't care, they won't change. Your solution pisses off that 99.9% for the sake of the 0.1%. That's just mean :) What more do you want?
Its not mean - its good for the user long term. That is why there are laws against it. Let the user have a choice of what is bundled, or provide auto-run CDs that install whatever alternative software they want. This is easy to do and used to be standard practice.
If software is bundled there is a barrier to user choice, even if that barrier is just the user being too lazy to download an alternative. That barrier gives the bundled software producer an uncompetitive advantage.
Competition is vital to ensure quality. Look at what has happened with IE.
Why not let MS bundle Office? Why not bundle development environments?
Like, say, the gene for male nipples?
There is no gene for 'male nipples'. There is a gene for 'nipples', which is used (more) in females.
Should you choose a language like Java, however, these issues are supposed to just go away - a nice ideal... ("Write once, test everywhere", I believe ;-P )
It really isn't an ideal - it works, and works well. The 'test everywhere' was true years ago when there were portability problems with some aspects of Java (such as threading). But these days, portability is virtually complete.
There are many issues that developers may have with Java - licensing and redistribution etc., but portability is rarely a problem these days.
[Unused genes disappear.] That's only true for the more simple organisms, mind you. An intestinal parisite is by no means very simple.
Its true for all organisms. Genes mutate or are chopped about by transposition.
Recent studies of giardia have shown that this ancient organism has the genes for sexual reproduction. Apparently, sexual reproduction conferred some powerful advantage, given how early it developed in the history of life. But if this is so, why does giardia not actually use sexual reproduction?
It must use sexual reproduction, or have used sexual reproduction until very recently. Genetic information is fragile. Genes for sexual reproduction would not have survived intact unless they were of direct use (of course, that use could perhaps be for additional purpose other than sex).
Unused genes disappear.
The hooks aren't into "WMP", per se, they are into the Windows Media API, which the player is just a simple client of. This is more like DirectX than OpenGL -- it is a Microsoft framework could be used in a vendor-indepedant way.
I'm not saying that this isn't true, just that this was not what was stated in the post I was replying to.
The EU failed to make this distinction because Real and Apple choose also to use their own proprietary API frameworks and have no interest in using Microsoft's.
Well that is a fact of life. These other players have been around for a very long time. They should have an equal chance to be installed on Windows so that developers have the choice to use the APIs and hooks of those products as well. Bundling WMP gives it an unfair advantage, is uncompetitive and has been found to be illegal.
So you are basically asking for something that nobody else wants (end users, developers, or third parties).
It is something that benefits end users because preventing the use of a monopoly in one area (OS) to create a monopoly in another (media players) benefits end users - monopolies stifle innovation and (as we have seen with IE) encourage poor quality. Developers and third parties have known full well for some time that there was the possibility of unbundling WMP and targetting its API was unwise.
Preventing bundling helps stop highly questionable business practises such as when, in 2001, Microsoft was found to be pressuring AOL to block its users from accessing content via Real Player, and requesting caps on content streamed in non-Microsoft formats.
It is actually rather hard to come up with plausible natural selection scenarios in which population-limiting mechanisms evolve spontaneously and are not eliminated by mutation.
There is a good example of such a mechanism - meiotic drive. It can be disastrous for a population, yet can be selected for because selection works for the relative benefit of the genes causing this drive, not for the future survival of the species.
Basically, it requires group selection mechanisms that clearly are not applicable to most species.
And there are virtually no uncontroversial examples of 'group selection'. Selection works to benefit genes, not groups or species.
However, the EU is forcing them to unbundle the whole infrastructure and not just the player. This actually hurts many 3rd parties (like DivX or ZoomPlayer) in the guise of helping others (Real). That was dave420's point.
I think we may have been talking at cross purposes. Dave420 mentioned an alternative product that was based on WMP, and hooked into it. This is not the same as a product that provides an alternative infrastructure that presents the same API to applications.
But anyway, the fact is that RealPlayer is out there, and has been for ages. If Microsoft developed an infrastructure that encouraged the use of their specific player, and made that part of a monopoly product (Windows), that is problematic.
My point is that it would have been better if Microsoft had published an open specification, jointly with other media player suppliers, that allowed alternative suppliers to provide alternative infrastructures, and developers could target a common API. Something equivalent to OpenGL, but for media.
It is not adequate for MS to develop a product (WMP), then provide hooks into it. This is not an infrastructure or a specification - its a tie-in. Its not just the player that is the issue - its the whole process of handling multimedia that should be open to other vendors to target. So, I can understand what the EU is doing.
Codecs are already an issue, so you'll need more than handwaving to convince me.
I was handwaving because I was ignorant. I know almost nothing about codecs!
Also, a developer can use the Windows Media stuff without using Microsoft's player (see WinAmp) or codecs (see DivX). So, the generic API you're asking for seems to already be built in to Windows. Feel free to be more technically specific if that's not what you mean.
You know a lot more about this that I do, but don't think this relates directly to the bundling issue. I was replying to a post that said that the Windows Media player was a requirement for developers. I was assuming that because of this statement, there were no plug-in replacements (in other words, that the situation was the same as for embedded web browsing). Looks like I was wrong! This means that WMP is not directly required for the use of media APIs, making the case for unbundling even stronger.
It seems like a rather moot argument, because even if one could define a "generic media API", you would still have the problem that nearly all of the codecs are proprietary and must be otained from Vendor XYZ.
I don't think its moot, because by controlling the player, Microsoft controls the distribution of media, no matter what the codec. If the codecs become an issue at some point, that can be dealt with separately.
This is somewhat similar to the idea of the IE-API, where Marc Andresson of Netscape came out and told everyone that the idea of an embeddable web browser was stupid.
Surely that was YEARS ago, when the market for browsers was different. Now, embedded browsers are very common.
I like the idea of OSes bundling software. OS X and Linux both typically come with tons.
Yes, but typically Linux comes with tons of alternatives bundled. That is the key difference (well, apart from Linux not being a monopoly).