Sure it tells me something: that there are good models and models that stink and it tells me which camp the GCM models fall in. That doesn't mean the models are entirely useless, they do give a good indication of who's working real hard to approximate science and who's actually doing science.
Fer instance. You don't have to go beyond "Myth #0" on your link to realclimate.org to find some pretty good examples of cheesy tendentiousness. The "hockey stick" is revealed truth because "state of the art" computer models done say it is and those state of the art computer models are incontestable because it says so in an Executive Summary of the IPCC 2001 report which is based on - wait for it - computer modeling!
And now we have a great, big surprise. Did those computer models correctly predict atmospheric methane introduction? No they didn't. That's why all these worthy fellows are scratching their heads. Perhaps there are mechanisms which aren't well understood! Perhaps there are mechanisms which haven't been discovered?!
Maybe we ought to have a pretty good idea that there aren't any large-scale influences that haven't been discovered or well characterized before we start issuing "the sky is falling" warnings. Say, how about that good, old sun? Got any "global climate" models for the sun's output over the next hundred years? No? Think maybe solar output might have, oh I don't, a measureable effect on the Earth's climate? Maybe you'd like to point out were in the various GCMs the solar output is predicted or used as an input to the models?
Maybe the models ought to be tested by predicting results that are already known? How well do those models do when predicting the observed weather in the 1950's? 60's? Any time period for which the information has already been collected? No? Maybe an inability to predict the past casts doubt on the validity of the model's ability to predict future? Waddya think?
Perhaps the models aren't anywhere near being useful for purposes other then fading the rubes and comforting the faithful. I'm sure Charles Ponzi would've found a profitable way to put them to use.
Although it would be frowned upon a few devices will inevitably end up on ebay.
A few? Try "a few pallet loads". Or "a few dozen pallet loads". Maybe "a few hundred pallet loads".
These gadgets are going to countries where graft and corruption are an accepted part of daily life. Who's going to hand the OLPCs out? The government officials who unashamedly solicit graft at every turn.
And who are they supposed to go to? Poor children. How much clout to poor children have? How much clout to their poor parents have? Their teachers? The most powerful people in countries with culturally-ingrained corruption are just going to hand these OLPCs, which will be resellable, by the tens of thousands to the least powerful people in those countries.
Yeah, I can see that happening.
If Negroponte weren't so taken with the role of Great White Father, Champion of the Less Fortunate, Prince of the Poor and Guide Across the Bridge to the Twenty-First Century he might understand that what's simply given away is often thrown away and the people at whom the OLPCs are aimed are people who won't have a clue what they are or what they're good for.
The reason I'm sure Negroponte sees himself as the Great White Father is his disdainful attitude toward commercialization. If he had a lick of sense he'd try to get some big retailer, Wallmart comes to mind, interested because when a $150 or $180 computer with the OLPCs capabilities hits the shelves they'll sell out in a heartbeat. Hit up manufacturers for reasonable licensing fees and he's got the money to design Son of OLPC without having to go begging for the money.
The manufacturing capacity is self-supporting, not dependent on the unreliable flow of government money, and the price point alone guarantees that the machines will make it into the hands of anyone who wants one in the US/Europe. The form-factor/price-point is established as viable so other outfits get into the fray coming out with their own knock-offs. In the countries currently targeted for OLPC distribution, the machines are bought by people who understand their value and can make use of their capabilities. Purpose-designed chipsets will follow making Son of OLPC cheaper, more capable and more attractive to the poor people at whom it was originally aimed.
On the other hand, if millions of OLPCs are simply handed out then the manufacturers, knowing the money comes from people who may decide tomorrow that some new, exciting technology/cause/crisis is more important then the OLPC, will get while the getting is good foregoing investment in a market that could disappear like a cool breeze. If Negroponte defends the OLPC vigorously enough he'll delay the development of the commercial market and the price-cutting power of the market.
This process is already occurring in those countries but not with computers, with cell phones. Those folks just love their cell phones and it's not hard to understand why. For the first time in their lives that have reliable, affordable, convenient communication. No bribing of a government telephone monopoly clerk, no multi-year waits, no worries about getting a dial tone. You just hand over a reasonable amount of money to someone who'd love to see you again - that "repeat" business thing - and you're talking to cousin Waldo on the other side of town or the other side of the world. No government handouts necessary and no wringing your hands over somebody making an honest dollar off the gadgets.
Ah, but you're wrong. There's a very good reason to burn 6 million dollars of taxpayer money. It's available for burning.
If you want to cause a ruckus ask for the particular educational outcome the computers will facilitate then ask for examples. i.e. who's already done this successfully? You won't get much of reply to that question because no one's been able to tap the obvious educational potential of computers.
What you will get is a bunch of hand-waving about "preparing our children for the 25th century" and even less meaningful edu-drivel then that but you won't get a straight answer that you can check on. You'll also have irate parents who don't know and don't care whether there's any educational benefit to handing out computers to the kids, but do understand that their kid is going to get something worth $1200 at taxpayers expense. If it's worthless, no harm. If it works out, cool!
Either way, your intransigence is standing in the way of their kid getting something of possible value and no one does that!
If you want to do something useful for the kids and get some value out of the education establishment, as well as stir up a hornet's nest, float a proposal to have unreasonably tough standards like, oh, 95% of the kids achieve minimal literacy by third grade. See if you can break out the grades by teacher and school as well and screw the damned computers.
Considering the source, I'd want a look at the uneditted footage and other tapes shot on the same premises. Even then, I'd have a tough time granting much creditibility to the animal rights organization that shot the video.
If you're willing to commit arson I don't think it's much of a stretch to a little "Michael Moore" on the video you shot.
...the damned drug smugglers figure out that a lot of that technology is available to them as well. Remotely-piloted and UAVs aren't bleeding edge any more and sooner or later those mutts are going to figure out how to use them. God knows they've got the money to buy them.
I can see it now...
The Coca Prize!
$50,000 to the builder of the first UAV that can fly all the way from anywhere in Columbia to anywhere in the
continental U.S. with a payload big enough to pay for a U.S. senatorial campaign. Prize money to be awarded
behind the Kroger at the corner of Buelah and M-22 at 3:00AM the Friday following certification by the DEA
of successful completion the flight and will be in the form non-sequentially numbered, circulated, $100 bills.
I also am enraptured when the ignorant hoi polloi exposure their shortcomings. They just don't understand that sneering contempt is the defining characteristic of great intellects.
So agriculture spread because farmers were too stupid to realize that they could get by perfectly well being hunter-gatherers and with less effort? I don't think so.
Assuming stupidity on the part of someone whose actions you don't understand or don't approve of seems a bit too conveniently self-serving to be likely.
Let's try another possibility.
Hunter-gatherers carry or drag everything they own when the move. They move because they inevitably exhaust the resources of their immediate surroundings. They hunt out and scare off the animals and they dig up and gather everything that's edible. Then they move.
If the area they're in is especially productive they stay until they exhaust the resources. Why would they move one? They've got eats and for hunter-gatherers that's pretty much enough. What they don't do is busily harvest lots of food to put by for when times are lean. Why would they? When they move on they can only take what they can carry and that isn't much.
If they move to an area that doesn't have much game or plant foods, they get hungry. If their luck is bad for long enough, they starve and that's the end of them. Once they get hungry a couple of times the novelty wears off and anything that'll prevent hunger starts looking pretty interesting. Like agriculture even if you have to work more then 2-4 hours a day.
In 1971 proven reserves were 612 billion barrels. Since then we've used 767 billion barrels. Currently, proven reserves are 1,082 billion barrels. If things go on this way much longer we'll run out of places to put all that oil and humanity might drown in a world-wide tsunami of petroleum.
I'm a bit surprised that the late Julian Simon, professor and "Cornucopian," didn't predict he would never die.
Why? Would that have made the job of misrepresenting his views easier?
I suppose that sort of name-calling is necessary though when you want to divert attention from the uniform record of failure of the alarmists and the uniform record of success of the "Cornucopians". Does the name "Paul Ehrlich" ring a bell?
While it is true that a lot of doom-and-gloom predictions have failed to materialize, most famously the "Club of Rome" report in the seventies which predicted running out of oil ludicrously soon, it is silly to ignore the clear signs of environmental and social degradation simply because we've been fine up until now.
And there's the whole issue wrapped up in one sentence. Oh sure, sayeth the alarmist, we've been wrong about everything up until now but is that any reason not to believe us this time? After all, any minute now our losing streak might break and then you'll be sorry.
I'm glad someone around here knows about Thomas Gold. It's just to bad his name and the links to his site have to be buried by a landslide of eco-bullshit.
Start with a WYSIWYG tool to make it easy. You ought to have a scanner handy, that'll help. Get them to hit some of the graphics repositories to gussy up their pages. The kids will have quick feedback, the'll be able to compare results which will get their competitive juices going and if you're using one of the free hosting sites they can show they're web page to people outside school.
Then have them get into the HTML, to make the connection between the HTML and what shows up on the browser. Modifications to the HTML using a text editor with side trips to Webmonkey and WDVL to show them where to find out more about HTML.
Lay in some canned Javascript. Then get into modifying that.
During all this they'll have to learn about directories, file formats, moving files around, editting files and debugging pages/scripts when they go wrong. That ought to keep 'em busy for a summer.
Slashdot Mirror
Sure it tells me something: that there are good models and models that stink and it tells me which camp the GCM models fall in. That doesn't mean the models are entirely useless, they do give a good indication of who's working real hard to approximate science and who's actually doing science.
Fer instance. You don't have to go beyond "Myth #0" on your link to realclimate.org to find some pretty good examples of cheesy tendentiousness. The "hockey stick" is revealed truth because "state of the art" computer models done say it is and those state of the art computer models are incontestable because it says so in an Executive Summary of the IPCC 2001 report which is based on - wait for it - computer modeling!
And now we have a great, big surprise. Did those computer models correctly predict atmospheric methane introduction? No they didn't. That's why all these worthy fellows are scratching their heads. Perhaps there are mechanisms which aren't well understood! Perhaps there are mechanisms which haven't been discovered?!
Maybe we ought to have a pretty good idea that there aren't any large-scale influences that haven't been discovered or well characterized before we start issuing "the sky is falling" warnings. Say, how about that good, old sun? Got any "global climate" models for the sun's output over the next hundred years? No? Think maybe solar output might have, oh I don't, a measureable effect on the Earth's climate? Maybe you'd like to point out were in the various GCMs the solar output is predicted or used as an input to the models?
Maybe the models ought to be tested by predicting results that are already known? How well do those models do when predicting the observed weather in the 1950's? 60's? Any time period for which the information has already been collected? No? Maybe an inability to predict the past casts doubt on the validity of the model's ability to predict future? Waddya think?
Perhaps the models aren't anywhere near being useful for purposes other then fading the rubes and comforting the faithful. I'm sure Charles Ponzi would've found a profitable way to put them to use.
Bill Gates an atheist? Hardly. If you believe you're a god how can you be an atheist?
Just find a Libyan kid and offer him twenty five bucks and a Coke.
Just find a Libyan government official and offer him twenty-five bucks and a Coke and you'll get a pallet-load of OLPCs.
Although it would be frowned upon a few devices will inevitably end up on ebay.
A few? Try "a few pallet loads". Or "a few dozen pallet loads". Maybe "a few hundred pallet loads".
These gadgets are going to countries where graft and corruption are an accepted part of daily life. Who's going to hand the OLPCs out? The government officials who unashamedly solicit graft at every turn.
And who are they supposed to go to? Poor children. How much clout to poor children have? How much clout to their poor parents have? Their teachers? The most powerful people in countries with culturally-ingrained corruption are just going to hand these OLPCs, which will be resellable, by the tens of thousands to the least powerful people in those countries.
Yeah, I can see that happening.
If Negroponte weren't so taken with the role of Great White Father, Champion of the Less Fortunate, Prince of the Poor and Guide Across the Bridge to the Twenty-First Century he might understand that what's simply given away is often thrown away and the people at whom the OLPCs are aimed are people who won't have a clue what they are or what they're good for.
The reason I'm sure Negroponte sees himself as the Great White Father is his disdainful attitude toward commercialization. If he had a lick of sense he'd try to get some big retailer, Wallmart comes to mind, interested because when a $150 or $180 computer with the OLPCs capabilities hits the shelves they'll sell out in a heartbeat. Hit up manufacturers for reasonable licensing fees and he's got the money to design Son of OLPC without having to go begging for the money.
The manufacturing capacity is self-supporting, not dependent on the unreliable flow of government money, and the price point alone guarantees that the machines will make it into the hands of anyone who wants one in the US/Europe. The form-factor/price-point is established as viable so other outfits get into the fray coming out with their own knock-offs. In the countries currently targeted for OLPC distribution, the machines are bought by people who understand their value and can make use of their capabilities. Purpose-designed chipsets will follow making Son of OLPC cheaper, more capable and more attractive to the poor people at whom it was originally aimed.
On the other hand, if millions of OLPCs are simply handed out then the manufacturers, knowing the money comes from people who may decide tomorrow that some new, exciting technology/cause/crisis is more important then the OLPC, will get while the getting is good foregoing investment in a market that could disappear like a cool breeze. If Negroponte defends the OLPC vigorously enough he'll delay the development of the commercial market and the price-cutting power of the market.
This process is already occurring in those countries but not with computers, with cell phones. Those folks just love their cell phones and it's not hard to understand why. For the first time in their lives that have reliable, affordable, convenient communication. No bribing of a government telephone monopoly clerk, no multi-year waits, no worries about getting a dial tone. You just hand over a reasonable amount of money to someone who'd love to see you again - that "repeat" business thing - and you're talking to cousin Waldo on the other side of town or the other side of the world. No government handouts necessary and no wringing your hands over somebody making an honest dollar off the gadgets.
Ah, but you're wrong. There's a very good reason to burn 6 million dollars of taxpayer money. It's available for burning.
If you want to cause a ruckus ask for the particular educational outcome the computers will facilitate then ask for examples. i.e. who's already done this successfully? You won't get much of reply to that question because no one's been able to tap the obvious educational potential of computers.
What you will get is a bunch of hand-waving about "preparing our children for the 25th century" and even less meaningful edu-drivel then that but you won't get a straight answer that you can check on. You'll also have irate parents who don't know and don't care whether there's any educational benefit to handing out computers to the kids, but do understand that their kid is going to get something worth $1200 at taxpayers expense. If it's worthless, no harm. If it works out, cool!
Either way, your intransigence is standing in the way of their kid getting something of possible value and no one does that!
If you want to do something useful for the kids and get some value out of the education establishment, as well as stir up a hornet's nest, float a proposal to have unreasonably tough standards like, oh, 95% of the kids achieve minimal literacy by third grade. See if you can break out the grades by teacher and school as well and screw the damned computers.
Considering the source, I'd want a look at the uneditted footage and other tapes shot on the same premises. Even then, I'd have a tough time granting much creditibility to the animal rights organization that shot the video.
If you're willing to commit arson I don't think it's much of a stretch to a little "Michael Moore" on the video you shot.
...the damned drug smugglers figure out that a lot of that technology is available to them as well. Remotely-piloted and UAVs aren't bleeding edge any more and sooner or later those mutts are going to figure out how to use them. God knows they've got the money to buy them.
I can see it now...
The Coca Prize!
$50,000 to the builder of the first UAV that can fly all the way from anywhere in Columbia to anywhere in the
continental U.S. with a payload big enough to pay for a U.S. senatorial campaign. Prize money to be awarded
behind the Kroger at the corner of Buelah and M-22 at 3:00AM the Friday following certification by the DEA
of successful completion the flight and will be in the form non-sequentially numbered, circulated, $100 bills.
Sorry bucko, that doesn't work either.
But if you do a search from the home page, enter "Semiconductor Technology" as the search term, you get one search result and that's the one you want.
...about contestant's incontinence? Why would I want to know about that? That's disgusting. We should be talking about more impor....
Oh.
Never mind.
Yeah, but then he wouldn't finish in thirty seconds.
I also am enraptured when the ignorant hoi polloi exposure their shortcomings. They just don't understand that sneering contempt is the defining characteristic of great intellects.
So agriculture spread because farmers were too stupid to realize that they could get by perfectly well being hunter-gatherers and with less effort? I don't think so.
Assuming stupidity on the part of someone whose actions you don't understand or don't approve of seems a bit too conveniently self-serving to be likely.
Let's try another possibility.
Hunter-gatherers carry or drag everything they own when the move. They move because they inevitably exhaust the resources of their immediate surroundings. They hunt out and scare off the animals and they dig up and gather everything that's edible. Then they move.
If the area they're in is especially productive they stay until they exhaust the resources. Why would they move one? They've got eats and for hunter-gatherers that's pretty much enough. What they don't do is busily harvest lots of food to put by for when times are lean. Why would they? When they move on they can only take what they can carry and that isn't much.
If they move to an area that doesn't have much game or plant foods, they get hungry. If their luck is bad for long enough, they starve and that's the end of them. Once they get hungry a couple of times the novelty wears off and anything that'll prevent hunger starts looking pretty interesting. Like agriculture even if you have to work more then 2-4 hours a day.
...if Linux'll run.
Sounds like we'll never run out to me.
Actually, it's much worse then that.
In 1971 proven reserves were 612 billion barrels. Since then we've used 767 billion barrels. Currently, proven reserves are 1,082 billion barrels. If things go on this way much longer we'll run out of places to put all that oil and humanity might drown in a world-wide tsunami of petroleum.
Oh the humanity!
Why? Would that have made the job of misrepresenting his views easier?
I suppose that sort of name-calling is necessary though when you want to divert attention from the uniform record of failure of the alarmists and the uniform record of success of the "Cornucopians". Does the name "Paul Ehrlich" ring a bell?
While it is true that a lot of doom-and-gloom predictions have failed to materialize, most famously the "Club of Rome" report in the seventies which predicted running out of oil ludicrously soon, it is silly to ignore the clear signs of environmental and social degradation simply because we've been fine up until now.
And there's the whole issue wrapped up in one sentence. Oh sure, sayeth the alarmist, we've been wrong about everything up until now but is that any reason not to believe us this time? After all, any minute now our losing streak might break and then you'll be sorry.
I'm glad someone around here knows about Thomas Gold. It's just to bad his name and the links to his site have to be buried by a landslide of eco-bullshit.
Start with a WYSIWYG tool to make it easy. You ought to have a scanner handy, that'll help. Get them to hit some of the graphics repositories to gussy up their pages. The kids will have quick feedback, the'll be able to compare results which will get their competitive juices going and if you're using one of the free hosting sites they can show they're web page to people outside school.
Then have them get into the HTML, to make the connection between the HTML and what shows up on the browser. Modifications to the HTML using a text editor with side trips to Webmonkey and WDVL to show them where to find out more about HTML.
Lay in some canned Javascript. Then get into modifying that.
During all this they'll have to learn about directories, file formats, moving files around, editting files and debugging pages/scripts when they go wrong. That ought to keep 'em busy for a summer.