This is pretty cool. Now there are non-human posters on slashdot.
Since you have the advantage of objectivity, seeing as how you distinguish yourself from the human race, and this is slashdot, would this be the appropriate place to welcome our non-human, environmentally-noble overlords?
That is true. But that is not the only thing that affects how hot an object gets when heated, and how long it remains hot. I must have missed the point at which proof was offered that anthropogenic global warming is distinguishable from solar warming. When you manage that trick perhaps you could shed some light on what sort of secondary effects solar global warming would kick off.
Also, if it's not too much, trouble could you include how the effects of solar global warming are accounted for in computerized global climate models? Are there predictions about solar output? How are those arrived at? What's their record?
No, it's more like all the people the little boy who cried "wolf" enjoyed alarming for his own, selfish reasons.
Where's that "population bomb" that was supposed to result in hundreds of millions of starvation deaths? I believe it was widely heralded in the '60s as arriving in the '80s. Strangely enough, far from wide-spread starvation the world is experiencing a wide-spread lack of starvation.
How about all those resource depletion scares that were touted as imminent? You know, weighty tomes like "Limits to Growth"? I might be wrong but it looks like tin, gold, silver and zinc didn't run out in the '90s. And before you go there, they were predictions. I went out and found the book (not an easy task, who wants to read such an obviously flawed document?) and read it and they made a whole slew of predictions, the author's words not mine which were uniformly wrong.
Still waiting to see the predictions about fresh water shortages come true.
In case you read too many greenie-weenie sites and think that's still somewhere off in the future, the predictions have been around since the fifties and were going to come true "within twenty years". Well, twenty years in the future is now thirty years in the past so maybe you can offer a reason why anyone would give you the time of day let alone tie their children's futures to your record of busted predictions?
It'll be a lot more interesting an idea when some state that isn't in the toilet economically boosts their test scores via iPod. Until then it's just another half-assed idea put forth by people who aren't held responsible for results.
Japanese classrooms are significantly larger than American, yet they regularly beat the Americans in every subject. Class sizes are a myth. Not if you're a union rep or a unionized teacher. To them the words "smaller class size" is always followed by a "cha-ching".
Those must be some pretty good models if they take into account phenomena that have only recently been discovered or are not even close to being sufficiently well understood to incorporate into a model.
Do the models incorporate climatic effects of and on methane hydrates? How about the effect of auroras on climate?
Do the models take into account the volume of biota in the lithosphere? What is the volume of biota in the lithosphere?
How about solar flux? Do the models make any predictions about solar weather?
What's the effect of megalightning on the climate?
Do cosmic rays have any effect on the climate?
Who knows? Who cares? It's the volume of PhD's chanting in unison that defines science.
Well then, perhaps you should run yourself (or find someone you can trust who will). After all, if it's really that bad, it should be a snap to win against all those lying, cheating politicians, right?
What? And face the ugly realization that it really is a representative form of government? It's far easier to think yourself superior when you carefully avoid situations which make evidence to the contrary unavoidable. Also, that'd be a lot of work. Who needs that?
Long range climate predictions are easier because they're less specific than weather predictions.
They're also a little more difficult to verify since we've got to wait around until "long range" becomes "recent past" to give the predictions any credibility.
Your weatherman predicts that it'll rain in your city tomorrow.
And gets it wrong about 20% of the time and that's only too a couple of days out.
A climatologist predicts that it'll be chilly on your continent in January every year for the next 50 years.
Do they? How do you verify their predictions? What level of confidence can you ascribe to these fifty year predictions? Anything approaching oh, say, 80% likelihood of calling it right?
So, actually, it would be more akin to you predicting that there will be a presidential election than it is to you predicting who the candidates are.
Ah, so the climatologists who claim to be able to predict global climate change are actually predicting that there will be a global climate? Because it seems me that when they predict it'll be hotter and by how much they sure as hell are predicting who the candidates are.
But it's not just the unverified, and unverifiable, nature of global climate models that undercuts the credibility of all the overheated predictions of hot times ahead. It's also the fact that the computerized global climate models are self-evidently inadequate. After all, how good can a model be that doesn't account for the basic influences that are involved in the phenomenon being modeled?
You know, stuff like methane clathrates, mega-lightening, solar mass ejections and the effect of a changing planetary magnetic field. How about the contribution of cow versus termite farts? Gold's deep, hot bioshpere? High energy cosmic rays? Oh, and let's not forget about the sun. If you have valid predictions about global climate change then you'd better have valid predictions about solar climate change as well. Otherwise you're just blowing smoke.
I know. I regularly predict stock prices fifty years out and haven't been wrong yet.
Sometimes, just for fun, I predict presidential races eighty and ninety years in the future. Compared to predicting the next race it's a breeze.
Trouble is, I don't have a friggin' clue whether my predictions are right but they sure are easy to make. Maybe you can explain why climate prediction is any easier long range then short and how anyone would know whether long range climate predictions were worth a shit?
Uh, guys? It was a riff on Matrix where the dumbass computers get the power they need by hooking up zillions of people so as to get each of their "125 watts of bio-electric power" whatever the hell that is.
Wow, you Aussies really have this socialized medicine thing worked out pretty well then. You might want to pick up the phone and tell the Canadians, the English, the Swedes, the Russians and just about every other country that's embraced the wonders of socialized medicine how to do it right. In those countries the cost of the medical system is eating up everything else while the quality of service for almost everybody is in a graceful, downward spiral.
It's almost everybody because one of the less-talked about aspects of all socialized medicine systems is that they are, by nature, unfair.
I think it's safe to say that John Howard, the prime minister, doesn't sit around a waiting room as long as you expect too and that his wait to see a specialist is rather shorter then yours is likely to be as well.
Probably the same for the wife and kids. And his and her mothers and fathers. How about Mr. Howard's brothers? Mr. Howard's secretary? Members of his security detail?
Just how close to the center of power do you have to be to get the same sort of special treatment accorded the PM? How much are people willing to do to get on the short list? Who makes the yes/no decision? Which side of the divide is that person on?
So you're right, some things do work better under socialism. Provided you're politically connected.
Actually, it's not more then a bullet. Your ~2933 fps is right in the middle of centerfire rifle territory, some cartridges faster, some slower. I believe that's a somewhat lower velocity then the main gun on the Abrams and it sure as hell doesn't have a range of 200 miles.
One thing to consider is that it's a ballistic trajectory which is a good deal further through the atmosphere and space then across the ground. But that still doesn't give a couple of pound slug all that much destructive power.
If global warming is causing the water in the oceans to expand and islands in the Sunderbads to disappear, why is this island emerging? If this isn't a volcanic island then what's causing it to show up?
I wonder when Branson will announce point-to-point travel via Virgin Galactic? Probably after he gets all the rich, early adopters to pay for Spaceship 2 and White Knight Two. Like Branson's going to waste time with the world's biggest roller coaster ride.
He just beat a real rocket scientist for the presidency. Twice.
But that's what's liable to happen when you let just anybody vote. It is fortunate though that while global climate change is contentious the natural supply of uninspired invective far exceeds the demand.
There sure as hell isn't any reason to panic over this piece of drek reporting.
You get a clue at the intent of the piece when, in the first paragraph, you find out that the islands are part of a river delta. Well, you kind of find out. But nowhere does the piece just come out and say that river deltas are always changing shape, i.e. some parts wash away and other parts build up. Nope, right away there's a diatribelet about global warning right where there ought to be an explanation about how river delta islands come and go.
I've got an apocalyptic prediction to make:
If the story about these islands doesn't kick off a global panic there'll be another gas-inflated story, probably out of the Guardian, before January is done. Oh the humanity!
...everyone hates Microsoft? If you've asked everyone you missed me and I don't hate Microsoft any more then I hated the neighbors dog for biting me on the ass after I teased it. Biting is what dogs are built to do and squeezing as much out of the consumer is what sellers, like Microsoft, exist to do.
That may seem like a bad thing but capitalist greed-mongering should be viewed in context, just like a dog-bite on the ass.
The context is societies in which capitalism is actively suppressed. They're identifiable by people not complaining about them in a public forum like, oh, Slashdot because those sorts of societies don't overlook criticism and people living in those societies know it.
What all that means is that I don't approve of some of Microsoft's business practices but the cost to society of getting rid of Microsoft is much higher then the cost of any harm Microsoft might inflict on society.
And the speciousness of those arguments is so obvious that to make them is to prove silliness? How convenient. How self-serving.
Silly right-wingers are capable of grasping all sorts of things. Like the fact that the obvious policy implication of "personal enrichment beyond a certain point is pure greed" has a uniform record of failure. There not being a single, long-term case of anything but disaster when income redistribution is put into effect but plenty of cases of the most horrible abuses of every sort being perpetrated by regimes which claim as a central tenet, income redistribution.
And those "decent humanist governments" you're so enraptured by? Maybe you could explain how a decent, humanist government squares with a statutory underclass? You know, all those Muslims who are running around France, burning cars? Or a statutory, two-tiered medical system which is what your "healthcare" system - first-class care for people with political influence and the dregs for everyone else - actually consists of?
Yeah, Europe is a fine place to live if you're not old in Paris. Is that a contradiction in terms or didn't the heat wave, which the French government government's decent humanism didn't seem to do much about, get all the Parisian geezers? I'll bet quite a few of those folks might have opted for a tacky, double-wide with oil-on-velvet paintings of Elvis and a buzzing window air-conditioner over slowly roasting to death. Thank goodness for that decent, humanist government.
You know, for decent humanist governments, they sure do solve quite a few problems by hurrying the grim reaper. I'm sure lots of apartments became available in Paris, provided you didn't mind the lingering scent of parboiled grandpa, helping to solve the perennial shortage of housing in decent, humanist governments.
agriculture - Yamaha's been selling the RMAX for 18 years for crop-dusting. Surveying growing crops from the air for signs of insect infestations allows for early, effective and minimal application of pesticides.
utilities - power companies run regular surveys of their lines, some by air, some from the ground but it's always expensive human beings who have to use their personal eyeballs.
search and rescue -
police surveillance - now done by manned helicopter and very expensively. Related but not exactly the same as the previous usage.
post-catastrophe assessment - after a hurricane or earthquake one big problem is finding the places that need the aid the most. The life and property toll can be reduced if the rescue personnel know which roads are passable and which aren't and which areas need them the most. UAV's might also be useful as communications access points in a post-catastrophe situation.
flying weather stations - there are a couple of UAV's who's claim to fame is their endurance. The first UAV to fly the Atlantic managed the trick in 1992. Have them buzzing around where it's difficult, dangerous, expensive for people to do gathering data not accessible by satellites.
There's more but why go on? The point's made.
Thing is, all the tasks I listed are doable with current technology. I don't think the list will shrink as the technology improves.
Slashdot Mirror
This is pretty cool. Now there are non-human posters on slashdot.
Since you have the advantage of objectivity, seeing as how you distinguish yourself from the human race, and this is slashdot, would this be the appropriate place to welcome our non-human, environmentally-noble overlords?
Also, if it's not too much, trouble could you include how the effects of solar global warming are accounted for in computerized global climate models? Are there predictions about solar output? How are those arrived at? What's their record?
Thank you.
No, it's more like all the people the little boy who cried "wolf" enjoyed alarming for his own, selfish reasons.
Where's that "population bomb" that was supposed to result in hundreds of millions of starvation deaths? I believe it was widely heralded in the '60s as arriving in the '80s. Strangely enough, far from wide-spread starvation the world is experiencing a wide-spread lack of starvation.
How about all those resource depletion scares that were touted as imminent? You know, weighty tomes like "Limits to Growth"? I might be wrong but it looks like tin, gold, silver and zinc didn't run out in the '90s. And before you go there, they were predictions. I went out and found the book (not an easy task, who wants to read such an obviously flawed document?) and read it and they made a whole slew of predictions, the author's words not mine which were uniformly wrong.
Still waiting to see the predictions about fresh water shortages come true.
In case you read too many greenie-weenie sites and think that's still somewhere off in the future, the predictions have been around since the fifties and were going to come true "within twenty years". Well, twenty years in the future is now thirty years in the past so maybe you can offer a reason why anyone would give you the time of day let alone tie their children's futures to your record of busted predictions?
Now that's funny.
It'll be a lot more interesting an idea when some state that isn't in the toilet economically boosts their test scores via iPod. Until then it's just another half-assed idea put forth by people who aren't held responsible for results.
The state budget's already running a big, fat deficit. Do you think Michigan can afford to pay what Canada would demand to take Detroit?
Those must be some pretty good models if they take into account phenomena that have only recently been discovered or are not even close to being sufficiently well understood to incorporate into a model.
Do the models incorporate climatic effects of and on methane hydrates? How about the effect of auroras on climate?
Do the models take into account the volume of biota in the lithosphere? What is the volume of biota in the lithosphere?
How about solar flux? Do the models make any predictions about solar weather?
What's the effect of megalightning on the climate?
Do cosmic rays have any effect on the climate?
Who knows? Who cares? It's the volume of PhD's chanting in unison that defines science.
Well then, perhaps you should run yourself (or find someone you can trust who will). After all, if it's really that bad, it should be a snap to win against all those lying, cheating politicians, right?
What? And face the ugly realization that it really is a representative form of government? It's far easier to think yourself superior when you carefully avoid situations which make evidence to the contrary unavoidable. Also, that'd be a lot of work. Who needs that?
Long range climate predictions are easier because they're less specific than weather predictions.
They're also a little more difficult to verify since we've got to wait around until "long range" becomes "recent past" to give the predictions any credibility.
Your weatherman predicts that it'll rain in your city tomorrow.
And gets it wrong about 20% of the time and that's only too a couple of days out.
A climatologist predicts that it'll be chilly on your continent in January every year for the next 50 years.
Do they? How do you verify their predictions? What level of confidence can you ascribe to these fifty year predictions? Anything approaching oh, say, 80% likelihood of calling it right?
So, actually, it would be more akin to you predicting that there will be a presidential election than it is to you predicting who the candidates are.
Ah, so the climatologists who claim to be able to predict global climate change are actually predicting that there will be a global climate? Because it seems me that when they predict it'll be hotter and by how much they sure as hell are predicting who the candidates are.
But it's not just the unverified, and unverifiable, nature of global climate models that undercuts the credibility of all the overheated predictions of hot times ahead. It's also the fact that the computerized global climate models are self-evidently inadequate. After all, how good can a model be that doesn't account for the basic influences that are involved in the phenomenon being modeled?
You know, stuff like methane clathrates, mega-lightening, solar mass ejections and the effect of a changing planetary magnetic field. How about the contribution of cow versus termite farts? Gold's deep, hot bioshpere? High energy cosmic rays? Oh, and let's not forget about the sun. If you have valid predictions about global climate change then you'd better have valid predictions about solar climate change as well. Otherwise you're just blowing smoke.
I know. I regularly predict stock prices fifty years out and haven't been wrong yet.
Sometimes, just for fun, I predict presidential races eighty and ninety years in the future. Compared to predicting the next race it's a breeze.
Trouble is, I don't have a friggin' clue whether my predictions are right but they sure are easy to make. Maybe you can explain why climate prediction is any easier long range then short and how anyone would know whether long range climate predictions were worth a shit?
Uh, guys? It was a riff on Matrix where the dumbass computers get the power they need by hooking up zillions of people so as to get each of their "125 watts of bio-electric power" whatever the hell that is.
...produces 125 watts of bio-electric power.
So what, pray tell, would be the religion that keeps the people of Cuba and North Korea ignorant.
It's pretty obvious which states keep them poor.
... the Argentine consultants who helped select Windows are willing to stand behind their decision.
Wow, you Aussies really have this socialized medicine thing worked out pretty well then. You might want to pick up the phone and tell the Canadians, the English, the Swedes, the Russians and just about every other country that's embraced the wonders of socialized medicine how to do it right. In those countries the cost of the medical system is eating up everything else while the quality of service for almost everybody is in a graceful, downward spiral.
It's almost everybody because one of the less-talked about aspects of all socialized medicine systems is that they are, by nature, unfair.
I think it's safe to say that John Howard, the prime minister, doesn't sit around a waiting room as long as you expect too and that his wait to see a specialist is rather shorter then yours is likely to be as well.
Probably the same for the wife and kids. And his and her mothers and fathers. How about Mr. Howard's brothers? Mr. Howard's secretary? Members of his security detail?
Just how close to the center of power do you have to be to get the same sort of special treatment accorded the PM? How much are people willing to do to get on the short list? Who makes the yes/no decision? Which side of the divide is that person on?
So you're right, some things do work better under socialism. Provided you're politically connected.
Actually, it's not more then a bullet. Your ~2933 fps is right in the middle of centerfire rifle territory, some cartridges faster, some slower. I believe that's a somewhat lower velocity then the main gun on the Abrams and it sure as hell doesn't have a range of 200 miles.
One thing to consider is that it's a ballistic trajectory which is a good deal further through the atmosphere and space then across the ground. But that still doesn't give a couple of pound slug all that much destructive power.
If global warming is causing the water in the oceans to expand and islands in the Sunderbads to disappear, why is this island emerging? If this isn't a volcanic island then what's causing it to show up?
Not outside the programming community.
I wonder when Branson will announce point-to-point travel via Virgin Galactic? Probably after he gets all the rich, early adopters to pay for Spaceship 2 and White Knight Two. Like Branson's going to waste time with the world's biggest roller coaster ride.
Right.
He just beat a real rocket scientist for the presidency. Twice.
But that's what's liable to happen when you let just anybody vote. It is fortunate though that while global climate change is contentious the natural supply of uninspired invective far exceeds the demand.
There sure as hell isn't any reason to panic over this piece of drek reporting.
You get a clue at the intent of the piece when, in the first paragraph, you find out that the islands are part of a river delta. Well, you kind of find out. But nowhere does the piece just come out and say that river deltas are always changing shape, i.e. some parts wash away and other parts build up. Nope, right away there's a diatribelet about global warning right where there ought to be an explanation about how river delta islands come and go.
I've got an apocalyptic prediction to make:
If the story about these islands doesn't kick off a global panic there'll be another gas-inflated story, probably out of the Guardian, before January is done. Oh the humanity!
...everyone hates Microsoft? If you've asked everyone you missed me and I don't hate Microsoft any more then I hated the neighbors dog for biting me on the ass after I teased it. Biting is what dogs are built to do and squeezing as much out of the consumer is what sellers, like Microsoft, exist to do.
That may seem like a bad thing but capitalist greed-mongering should be viewed in context, just like a dog-bite on the ass.
The context is societies in which capitalism is actively suppressed. They're identifiable by people not complaining about them in a public forum like, oh, Slashdot because those sorts of societies don't overlook criticism and people living in those societies know it.
What all that means is that I don't approve of some of Microsoft's business practices but the cost to society of getting rid of Microsoft is much higher then the cost of any harm Microsoft might inflict on society.
And the speciousness of those arguments is so obvious that to make them is to prove silliness? How convenient. How self-serving.
Silly right-wingers are capable of grasping all sorts of things. Like the fact that the obvious policy implication of "personal enrichment beyond a certain point is pure greed" has a uniform record of failure. There not being a single, long-term case of anything but disaster when income redistribution is put into effect but plenty of cases of the most horrible abuses of every sort being perpetrated by regimes which claim as a central tenet, income redistribution.
And those "decent humanist governments" you're so enraptured by? Maybe you could explain how a decent, humanist government squares with a statutory underclass? You know, all those Muslims who are running around France, burning cars? Or a statutory, two-tiered medical system which is what your "healthcare" system - first-class care for people with political influence and the dregs for everyone else - actually consists of?
Yeah, Europe is a fine place to live if you're not old in Paris. Is that a contradiction in terms or didn't the heat wave, which the French government government's decent humanism didn't seem to do much about, get all the Parisian geezers? I'll bet quite a few of those folks might have opted for a tacky, double-wide with oil-on-velvet paintings of Elvis and a buzzing window air-conditioner over slowly roasting to death. Thank goodness for that decent, humanist government.
You know, for decent humanist governments, they sure do solve quite a few problems by hurrying the grim reaper. I'm sure lots of apartments became available in Paris, provided you didn't mind the lingering scent of parboiled grandpa, helping to solve the perennial shortage of housing in decent, humanist governments.
- agriculture - Yamaha's been selling the RMAX for 18 years for crop-dusting. Surveying growing crops from the air for signs of insect infestations allows for early, effective and minimal application of pesticides.
- utilities - power companies run regular surveys of their lines, some by air, some from the ground but it's always expensive human beings who have to use their personal eyeballs.
- search and rescue -
- police surveillance - now done by manned helicopter and very expensively. Related but not exactly the same as the previous usage.
- post-catastrophe assessment - after a hurricane or earthquake one big problem is finding the places that need the aid the most. The life and property toll can be reduced if the rescue personnel know which roads are passable and which aren't and which areas need them the most. UAV's might also be useful as communications access points in a post-catastrophe situation.
- flying weather stations - there are a couple of UAV's who's claim to fame is their endurance. The first UAV to fly the Atlantic managed the trick in 1992. Have them buzzing around where it's difficult, dangerous, expensive for people to do gathering data not accessible by satellites.
There's more but why go on? The point's made. Thing is, all the tasks I listed are doable with current technology. I don't think the list will shrink as the technology improves.