" The New York Times' Dot Earth blog offers some reasons to be skeptical of the findings."
Why is it that everyone seems to accept the findings that man is doing all this harm to the planet people tend to accept it. When someone says oh we aren't doing as much damage to the planet as we thought then there is someone right there saying oh there is reasons to be skeptical of the findings. Give me a break. At this point the people who are pushing the whole man made global warming argument are sounding like the guy on the street corner with the sign that says "Jesus is coming are you ready?" There have been people predicting the end of the world for a millennia now. When is it that we started listening to them and ignoring the facts?
Windows XP is now 10 years old. It was released in 2002. How long do developers have to keep supporting it? Its time we moved on. I say we drop flash too in favour of HTML5 canvas with webGL.
I think the important thing to take from such an article is that we need more evidence. Getting to the truth is very important. Especially since climate scientists are calling for significant changes to the way we live. If your going to convince the people of the world this is the right thing to do then you must do it by showing them solid evidence. But at least this is a major improvement to where we were years ago where the climate was absolutely hostile to sceptics.
Personally I feel that the major threat is not CO2. I think its all the other stuff we do. CO2 build up is just a symptom to problems with how we build our cities, the cutting down and burning of forests, the draining of bogs and the pollution of our oceans. We keep doing these things and the end will come but it will be much more sudden then we think. I don't deny that.
The newest version of gnome 3 is awesome. KDE lacks a certain refinement of what is in gnome. KDE draws too much from one platform, windows, and then puts in customization features that go too far and actually hinder productivity. I'm talking about the task bar and how its managed. Some of the stuff in KDE is good. The desktop widgets are nice. But they don't make me any more productive. The fact that KDE has trouble with some gnome applications makes it even less appealing. There really needs to be an agreed upon standard on interprocess communications. These two platforms should be interchangeable.
Right now there is an artificial scarcity in that there are many programmers who are creating software for free. However, when people start leaving the industry because they can't make a living then it becomes a real scarcity. There will be nothing artificial about it. It may not happen today, it may not happen tomorrow. But eventually it will happen. We've seen it before. Years ago this is exactly what happened with the graphics art industry. It took the graphics artist guild to stop it from happening and a change in culture eventually allow artists to make a living again. But decades went by when times were very lean.
But given this the idea that open source is more ethical then closed source given such situations is laughable. Don't get me wrong. I love Linux. I love the quality I get from open source over closed source systems right now. However, the fact that programmers lose money given such high quality software is a little hard to take. Its not about scarcity. Its about getting paid for the work you do. I find that many programmers don't seem to care about money and getting paid. They don't seem to value their time. Otherwise they would be charging for the stuff they give away for free in open source. There is a cost to this software. Its important to understand what that cost is. The cost will be that people who can't make a living making software will end up leaving the industry. It will be a cost of lost jobs, lost economic activity and the benefits that this activity brings.
There are two sides to the argument about Free software. I understand the concept of free software being free as in freedom. I appreciate the freedom that Linux has given me over the years and I'd pay good money to have it on my desktop. However, there is something to be said about the negative economic effect that all this Free software has. When you flood the market with "Free Software" there is a cost incurred. That cost is incurred by the developers and workers in the software industry. Free software does have a cost. That cost is the jobs that would have been created had the software been sold. You can say that bill gates is rich enough but what about all those people who work for him or for other companies that compete against him. Releasing that software as free along with the source code you crash and burn the market. It then becomes difficult if not impossible to make money in that market segment. The people who argue that free software is more ethical then non free software are really very short sighted in my view or they don't care that workers are not able to make a living.
Ask yourselves. What happens when all those workers who work in the software industry decide its not profitable to make software anymore? Where will you get the software from? This is a similar argument made in an interview I once watched with Dambisa Moyo. She talked about African aid. She indicated an example of Mosquito nets for Africa. She said that when aid groups dumped mosquito nets on the market in Africa it crashed the market. The people who had local businesses making and selling mosquito nets would then go out of business and there would be no one to repair the mosquito nets when they broke. This is an unintended consequence. I would argue that flooding the market with free software also has an unintended consequence of driving software developers out of the market. Eventually no one will make software and we won't have an industry.
If you talk to a lawyer and he says that software patents and patents on business processes are a good thing. Show them this. I bet you they will change their minds.
One more thing. As a self proclaimed skeptic I wish the people who are for the man made global warming theory would stop trying to shoot the messenger and take the scientific findings of the skeptics and address them. Those findings are not based in skepticisim they are based on real evidence. People like Dr. John Christy should be cheered for their skepticism because with that skepticism we will discover the truth.
The people who are pushing this card like to say there is no impact if the theory of AGW is wrong. Well there is an impact. That impact is the world economy and the very thing that has helped improve the longevity of human life.
6. Some have listened to both sides of the argument and have realized that the skeptics have driven a bus through the theory of man made global warming and just don't believe the scientists who tend to support that theory anymore.
The site belongs to facebook. It is hosted in the US. That data is sitting on their computers. Who are these law makers that tell facebook what to do with the data that is sitting on facebooks own computers. This idea of trying to regulate what people do with the devices they own is simply laughable. I have a solution. If you don't want facebook to have your personal stuff then don't put your personal stuff on facebook.
In my view I see facebook far more responsible with peoples data then the very politicians trying to police them. I guess the EU politicians are not done messing up their own country they have to go mess up other peoples businesses as well? good grief.
Fuck the Liberals as well who had a majority for more then 15 years with less then 40% of the overall vote and alienated Quebec in the process. Canadian politics is a nasty business and one that most of the country doesn't have the stomach for. Just putting this on the conservatives isn't really fair. Its been like this for the 140 years that Canada has existed.
Actually the desert in the western USA does expand North into Canada. It always has. That area in Canada is called the Okanagan of British Columbia. In that area the desert has created a flourishing wine industry in Canada that produces some of the best wines in the world. So if Climate change is man made, and I'm not prepared to admit such a thing, Its been one of the best things that has ever happened to Canada.
One thing that people need to realize. If Canada had stayed in Kyoto the country would have had to pay upwards of $14 billion in penalties for not reaching its targets. The agreement was writen in a way that was very bad for the Country and agreed to by a government who didn't care about the economic consequences that would have happened if we had stayed in that agreement. They were more concerned with Canada's reputation in the world then with what is good for the people who live in the country. Hence the reason why they are no longer the government and the political party responsible for Kyoto is now fighting for its very existence.
I think people need to understand something about green techologies. We need the oil industries to produce the components that will make up much of that so called green techology. There is no such thing as green energy. From the plastics that coat the magnet wire to produce your wind turbines to the copper that is heated up to create the oxides that create solar cells its all done by burning oil. We need oil and Canada has lots of it. In fact oil has been the primary reason why Canada is doing far better then all the other western countries during the financial slow down.
Keep something else in mind. CO2 constitutes less then 2% of all greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Its about 350-400 parts per million. There have been studies now that have said that the effects of CO2 have been over estimated. None of these so called climate scientists take into consideration the effects of the sun. The thing that is by far the most important thing to govern climate change on this planet. They didn't take into consideration for instance the increased number of sun spots on the sun over the last 20 years. Climate scientists keep trying to prove that climate change exists. Ok It exists. What they haven't tried to prove is what the cause is. They just assume its man made and don't take into account possible natural causes. But if you don't take my word for it perhaps you will take the work of scientists who are reported skeptics and have the numbers to back up what they say. http://www.john-daly.com/
One thing. I am not a global warming denier. I am a person who just believes that the world is complex place and we still don't have a complete understanding of how the ecosystem works. Saying we are the cause of climate change seems to be a little far fetched to me. We also don't know if the effects are negative or positive so taking such drastic measures seems a bit premature to me as well.
I can see television being a contributing factor to autism but Video Games? Thats a little harder to believe. Video games engages the mind and forces the user to build skill, dexterity, and problem solving. This is a good thing. Television on the other hand causes a person to become mentally detached to the world around them. I think that would be more of a contributing factor. Maybe the good professor should try to map the increase between the amount of television people watch and autism.
I'm just thinking about all the wonderful viruses that could be written with this technology. Cudose to you Microsoft for shooting yourselves in the foot once again.
You can't default on student loans, they never go away. The fed will garnish your wages forever until they are paid off.
All the students should just go on welfare and say they can't pay. If enough do that the fed will turn around with a bail out package. Good way to get a free education.
You want to reduce CO2? Plant a tree. That will reduce tones of CO2. In Vancouver Canada they they brought in a carbon tax to tax gasoline. While the Carbon tax did nothing to reduce peoples driving habbits it did have one effect. It encouraged government to cut down tones of tree's all over the city and build highrises. It is also one of the primary reasons why so many small businesses have gone out of business here. Thats what it will cost in trying to force this policy of CO2 reduction.
Contrary to popular belief CO2 is not a pollutant. 98% of the life on this planet needs it to live. Plants take in CO2 and put out oxygen for us to breath. Having a little more the atmosphere is not necessarily a bad thing. We are now talking about 400ppm. Thats parts per MILLION! Less then 2% of all the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. The number 1 greenhouse gas is water vapour and that isn't a pollutant either.
I think people need to look at the whole scheme of things. We are so fixated on CO2 which is not a real disaster and we do nothing to protect wet lands which is a real disaster. Wetlands are natures filtration system. They help pull toxins out of water so that its safe to enter the ocean. They are home to many different and vital species on the planet and they are increasingly being threatened. But we don't look at that. We don't look at habitat for wild animals to live. We just whine and complain about oil companies because of a precieved threat that isn't even real.
In Canada since the results of the royal commission on the death of Robert Dziekanski there is no doubt that these are dangerous weapons and their use should be restricted to a last resort weapon. Mr Dziekanski was tasered five times and the recommended usage is once or twice. As a result Mr Dziekanski died. Even today Taser is trying to dispute the results of the commission. I don't think they are going to get very far though.
For any of you who know patent lawyers that think that software patents and patents on business processes are a good idea show them this patent. Here is the link.
Finally Microsoft is starting to come around. Now maybe we can build a healthier industry together. An open source OS really is key to this. Now maybe they can finally start building apps for Linux and cut with this nonsense of only supporting Windows. Considering how unusable Windows is these days they would serve their customers well by adopting this open source technology. Maybe one day we will see a Microsoft Linux distribution and they can compete on software configuration of their distribution just like Ubuntu and Fedora does today. The software industry would be well served if this happens. Microsoft does one thing very well and that is make software is intuitive for the novice. I'm not saying Linux is not intuitive. I've certainly seen some really awesome work come out of the Open Source community over the years but Microsoft with their market research in user interface design would really add to this field. Imagine Microsoft software running on a stable platform like Linux. It would change everything.
We have to look at this in the context of whats going on in the Canadian parliament. They are a minority government and they don't want to necessarily do anything stupid that would alienate half the population. So they have decided to not go forward with that legislation. They may decide to go ahead anyways. Right now they are consulting not with the public but with so called most successful CEO's in industry. Which means that they are just going tow the party line and not do anything all that innovative. So put your faith in the snakes that are the Canadian politicians. They are bigger liars then George W Bush.
$100 video cards have been the norm for almost 18 years now. I don't know why this is news. However there will always be the market for the $600 graphics card as new technology comes in. Just because AMD and NVidia haven't come up with anything new doesn't mean anything. One day a new player will enter the market and blow both those companies out of the water. This is the nature of the industry.
Slashdot Mirror
" The New York Times' Dot Earth blog offers some reasons to be skeptical of the findings."
Why is it that everyone seems to accept the findings that man is doing all this harm to the planet people tend to accept it. When someone says oh we aren't doing as much damage to the planet as we thought then there is someone right there saying oh there is reasons to be skeptical of the findings. Give me a break. At this point the people who are pushing the whole man made global warming argument are sounding like the guy on the street corner with the sign that says "Jesus is coming are you ready?" There have been people predicting the end of the world for a millennia now. When is it that we started listening to them and ignoring the facts?
Windows XP is now 10 years old. It was released in 2002. How long do developers have to keep supporting it? Its time we moved on. I say we drop flash too in favour of HTML5 canvas with webGL.
I think the important thing to take from such an article is that we need more evidence. Getting to the truth is very important. Especially since climate scientists are calling for significant changes to the way we live. If your going to convince the people of the world this is the right thing to do then you must do it by showing them solid evidence. But at least this is a major improvement to where we were years ago where the climate was absolutely hostile to sceptics.
Personally I feel that the major threat is not CO2. I think its all the other stuff we do. CO2 build up is just a symptom to problems with how we build our cities, the cutting down and burning of forests, the draining of bogs and the pollution of our oceans. We keep doing these things and the end will come but it will be much more sudden then we think. I don't deny that.
The newest version of gnome 3 is awesome. KDE lacks a certain refinement of what is in gnome. KDE draws too much from one platform, windows, and then puts in customization features that go too far and actually hinder productivity. I'm talking about the task bar and how its managed. Some of the stuff in KDE is good. The desktop widgets are nice. But they don't make me any more productive. The fact that KDE has trouble with some gnome applications makes it even less appealing. There really needs to be an agreed upon standard on interprocess communications. These two platforms should be interchangeable.
Right now there is an artificial scarcity in that there are many programmers who are creating software for free. However, when people start leaving the industry because they can't make a living then it becomes a real scarcity. There will be nothing artificial about it. It may not happen today, it may not happen tomorrow. But eventually it will happen. We've seen it before. Years ago this is exactly what happened with the graphics art industry. It took the graphics artist guild to stop it from happening and a change in culture eventually allow artists to make a living again. But decades went by when times were very lean.
But given this the idea that open source is more ethical then closed source given such situations is laughable. Don't get me wrong. I love Linux. I love the quality I get from open source over closed source systems right now. However, the fact that programmers lose money given such high quality software is a little hard to take. Its not about scarcity. Its about getting paid for the work you do. I find that many programmers don't seem to care about money and getting paid. They don't seem to value their time. Otherwise they would be charging for the stuff they give away for free in open source. There is a cost to this software. Its important to understand what that cost is. The cost will be that people who can't make a living making software will end up leaving the industry. It will be a cost of lost jobs, lost economic activity and the benefits that this activity brings.
There are two sides to the argument about Free software. I understand the concept of free software being free as in freedom. I appreciate the freedom that Linux has given me over the years and I'd pay good money to have it on my desktop. However, there is something to be said about the negative economic effect that all this Free software has. When you flood the market with "Free Software" there is a cost incurred. That cost is incurred by the developers and workers in the software industry. Free software does have a cost. That cost is the jobs that would have been created had the software been sold. You can say that bill gates is rich enough but what about all those people who work for him or for other companies that compete against him. Releasing that software as free along with the source code you crash and burn the market. It then becomes difficult if not impossible to make money in that market segment. The people who argue that free software is more ethical then non free software are really very short sighted in my view or they don't care that workers are not able to make a living.
Ask yourselves. What happens when all those workers who work in the software industry decide its not profitable to make software anymore? Where will you get the software from? This is a similar argument made in an interview I once watched with Dambisa Moyo. She talked about African aid. She indicated an example of Mosquito nets for Africa. She said that when aid groups dumped mosquito nets on the market in Africa it crashed the market. The people who had local businesses making and selling mosquito nets would then go out of business and there would be no one to repair the mosquito nets when they broke. This is an unintended consequence. I would argue that flooding the market with free software also has an unintended consequence of driving software developers out of the market. Eventually no one will make software and we won't have an industry.
http://www.google.com/patents?id=ZUUNAAAAEBAJ&pg=PA4&dq=Jury+selection+Mock+Trials&hl=en&sa=X&ei=b8K5T6vsK5TJiQLG_aj4Bg&sqi=2&ved=0CDcQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=Jury%20selection%20Mock%20Trials&f=false
If you talk to a lawyer and he says that software patents and patents on business processes are a good thing. Show them this. I bet you they will change their minds.
One more thing. As a self proclaimed skeptic I wish the people who are for the man made global warming theory would stop trying to shoot the messenger and take the scientific findings of the skeptics and address them. Those findings are not based in skepticisim they are based on real evidence. People like Dr. John Christy should be cheered for their skepticism because with that skepticism we will discover the truth.
The people who are pushing this card like to say there is no impact if the theory of AGW is wrong. Well there is an impact. That impact is the world economy and the very thing that has helped improve the longevity of human life.
6. Some have listened to both sides of the argument and have realized that the skeptics have driven a bus through the theory of man made global warming and just don't believe the scientists who tend to support that theory anymore.
The site belongs to facebook. It is hosted in the US. That data is sitting on their computers. Who are these law makers that tell facebook what to do with the data that is sitting on facebooks own computers. This idea of trying to regulate what people do with the devices they own is simply laughable. I have a solution. If you don't want facebook to have your personal stuff then don't put your personal stuff on facebook.
In my view I see facebook far more responsible with peoples data then the very politicians trying to police them. I guess the EU politicians are not done messing up their own country they have to go mess up other peoples businesses as well? good grief.
Fuck the Liberals as well who had a majority for more then 15 years with less then 40% of the overall vote and alienated Quebec in the process. Canadian politics is a nasty business and one that most of the country doesn't have the stomach for. Just putting this on the conservatives isn't really fair. Its been like this for the 140 years that Canada has existed.
Actually the desert in the western USA does expand North into Canada. It always has. That area in Canada is called the Okanagan of British Columbia. In that area the desert has created a flourishing wine industry in Canada that produces some of the best wines in the world. So if Climate change is man made, and I'm not prepared to admit such a thing, Its been one of the best things that has ever happened to Canada.
One thing that people need to realize. If Canada had stayed in Kyoto the country would have had to pay upwards of $14 billion in penalties for not reaching its targets. The agreement was writen in a way that was very bad for the Country and agreed to by a government who didn't care about the economic consequences that would have happened if we had stayed in that agreement. They were more concerned with Canada's reputation in the world then with what is good for the people who live in the country. Hence the reason why they are no longer the government and the political party responsible for Kyoto is now fighting for its very existence.
I think people need to understand something about green techologies. We need the oil industries to produce the components that will make up much of that so called green techology. There is no such thing as green energy. From the plastics that coat the magnet wire to produce your wind turbines to the copper that is heated up to create the oxides that create solar cells its all done by burning oil. We need oil and Canada has lots of it. In fact oil has been the primary reason why Canada is doing far better then all the other western countries during the financial slow down.
Keep something else in mind. CO2 constitutes less then 2% of all greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Its about 350-400 parts per million. There have been studies now that have said that the effects of CO2 have been over estimated. None of these so called climate scientists take into consideration the effects of the sun. The thing that is by far the most important thing to govern climate change on this planet. They didn't take into consideration for instance the increased number of sun spots on the sun over the last 20 years. Climate scientists keep trying to prove that climate change exists. Ok It exists. What they haven't tried to prove is what the cause is. They just assume its man made and don't take into account possible natural causes. But if you don't take my word for it perhaps you will take the work of scientists who are reported skeptics and have the numbers to back up what they say. http://www.john-daly.com/
One thing. I am not a global warming denier. I am a person who just believes that the world is complex place and we still don't have a complete understanding of how the ecosystem works. Saying we are the cause of climate change seems to be a little far fetched to me. We also don't know if the effects are negative or positive so taking such drastic measures seems a bit premature to me as well.
I can see television being a contributing factor to autism but Video Games? Thats a little harder to believe. Video games engages the mind and forces the user to build skill, dexterity, and problem solving. This is a good thing. Television on the other hand causes a person to become mentally detached to the world around them. I think that would be more of a contributing factor. Maybe the good professor should try to map the increase between the amount of television people watch and autism.
I'm just thinking about all the wonderful viruses that could be written with this technology. Cudose to you Microsoft for shooting yourselves in the foot once again.
You can't default on student loans, they never go away. The fed will garnish your wages forever until they are paid off.
All the students should just go on welfare and say they can't pay. If enough do that the fed will turn around with a bail out package. Good way to get a free education.
You want to reduce CO2? Plant a tree. That will reduce tones of CO2. In Vancouver Canada they they brought in a carbon tax to tax gasoline. While the Carbon tax did nothing to reduce peoples driving habbits it did have one effect. It encouraged government to cut down tones of tree's all over the city and build highrises. It is also one of the primary reasons why so many small businesses have gone out of business here. Thats what it will cost in trying to force this policy of CO2 reduction.
Contrary to popular belief CO2 is not a pollutant. 98% of the life on this planet needs it to live. Plants take in CO2 and put out oxygen for us to breath. Having a little more the atmosphere is not necessarily a bad thing. We are now talking about 400ppm. Thats parts per MILLION! Less then 2% of all the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. The number 1 greenhouse gas is water vapour and that isn't a pollutant either.
I think people need to look at the whole scheme of things. We are so fixated on CO2 which is not a real disaster and we do nothing to protect wet lands which is a real disaster. Wetlands are natures filtration system. They help pull toxins out of water so that its safe to enter the ocean. They are home to many different and vital species on the planet and they are increasingly being threatened. But we don't look at that. We don't look at habitat for wild animals to live. We just whine and complain about oil companies because of a precieved threat that isn't even real.
I think the first thing google should uncensor is the tank man video.
Interesting. But let me guess its only compatible with windows.
In Canada since the results of the royal commission on the death of Robert Dziekanski there is no doubt that these are dangerous weapons and their use should be restricted to a last resort weapon. Mr Dziekanski was tasered five times and the recommended usage is once or twice. As a result Mr Dziekanski died. Even today Taser is trying to dispute the results of the commission. I don't think they are going to get very far though.
For any of you who know patent lawyers that think that software patents and patents on business processes are a good idea show them this patent. Here is the link.
http://www.google.com/patents?id=ZUUNAAAAEBAJ&printsec=abstract&zoom=4#v=onepage&q=&f=false
Linux is protected under the GPL also. So really it still works out.
Finally Microsoft is starting to come around. Now maybe we can build a healthier industry together. An open source OS really is key to this. Now maybe they can finally start building apps for Linux and cut with this nonsense of only supporting Windows. Considering how unusable Windows is these days they would serve their customers well by adopting this open source technology. Maybe one day we will see a Microsoft Linux distribution and they can compete on software configuration of their distribution just like Ubuntu and Fedora does today. The software industry would be well served if this happens. Microsoft does one thing very well and that is make software is intuitive for the novice. I'm not saying Linux is not intuitive. I've certainly seen some really awesome work come out of the Open Source community over the years but Microsoft with their market research in user interface design would really add to this field. Imagine Microsoft software running on a stable platform like Linux. It would change everything.
We have to look at this in the context of whats going on in the Canadian parliament. They are a minority government and they don't want to necessarily do anything stupid that would alienate half the population. So they have decided to not go forward with that legislation. They may decide to go ahead anyways. Right now they are consulting not with the public but with so called most successful CEO's in industry. Which means that they are just going tow the party line and not do anything all that innovative. So put your faith in the snakes that are the Canadian politicians. They are bigger liars then George W Bush.
$100 video cards have been the norm for almost 18 years now. I don't know why this is news. However there will always be the market for the $600 graphics card as new technology comes in. Just because AMD and NVidia haven't come up with anything new doesn't mean anything. One day a new player will enter the market and blow both those companies out of the water. This is the nature of the industry.
Sure would be nice to be able to download the Linux version of chrome some time soon. Been waiting for it for months.