Apple movies have DRM, yes. As does every other movie rental service. Apple music, though, hasn't had DRM in a very, very, long time now. They actually were one of the first music stores to strip DRM, this is one thing I actually liked Apple for, they were the good guys here.
The only caveat is that music from iTMS does have some watermarks, which doesn't really affect anyone unless they release it into the wild (even then, I haven't heard of it hurting anyone, but the potential is there). For normal use, it is completely open music.
My last home-built PC that had any cycle like that was almost 10 years ago, and it broke around 3 years after building it (upgrading GPU and HDD meant new PSU, new PSU was bad, and fried pretty much everything). Before that I had a problem building one due to a string of bad motherboards, but all of that was Fry's fault (before they had to label used/returned parts), never cost me a cent, and Newegg saved the day (and some money). This PC runs like a charm, and its on year 4. The only bits I replace are for upgrades.
I'm sorry you had a bad time of it, it seems, but this is pretty rare once you know what your doing. I've been building my own PCs since the mid-90's, and rarely have had a problem. But I've had terrible luck on pre-builts, and when I don't, I need to buy a new one every time I upgrade something since they generally suck for expanding, and have pretty crappy components. I'm not willing to spend $800+ (about the level of components I have,pre-build price) every 2-3 years, just to upgrade my graphics card.
If you are as educated as you believe, why do you write this nonsense:
It's called a reductio ad absurdum, and was in response to the simplistic logic you replied to me with. Just because CO2 is a greenhouse gas, and humans produce CO2, artificially or not, doesn't imply AGW automatically. It isn't sufficient to arrive at any meaningful, valid, conclusion.
As I said before, there was no need for the whole debate if the USA had not suddenly blocked any progress in Kyoto etc. and invented all the FUD about "natural climate changes", "ice ages", "oh humans can't do anything about it" etc.
Politics doesn't equal science. Kyoto is meaningless to the topic at hand. Also I don't understand the FUD about "ice ages" (we were just in one, geologically recently), or "natural climate change" (the Earth's climate has varied wildly over it's history). These aren't new ideas. And I was skeptical on those grounds long before the Kyoto talks. Those two phenomena are the first things a sane person should look at when talking about immediate climate change, how would those two facts possibly effect our current climate. Ignoring them ignores the big picture. Ideally a rational person would weigh and evaluate ALL of the evidence and factors, and not just accept one and move on.
I did not try to convince you about AGW, but about the fact that we did not have any need for a "scientific debate" on top of the scientific knowledge we already had.
I hope the scientific debate about this goes on long after I die. There is always need for scientific debate, even if we are relatively sure of the topic.
I think we're just looking at this from two sides, I'm trying for the purely rational, scientific side, and your shooting for the sociopolitical action side. I understand your point, and I do think we must do something about it (I thought this before I came to any direct judgement. Better safe than sorry.), but I also fear that the actual science is being sacrificed for political ends, on both sides. The leaked memos made me a bit sick, not because of fraud or malfeasance (there wasn't any), but because of the "us vs. them" tone of the scientists. This attitude doesn't lend itself to good science very well.
I think you misread me a bit, I'm not refuting the AGW hypothesis, I'm just saying why I had some problems with it in the past. In the earlier days of the debate. The modern debate, since much of the science in the 70's was deeply flawed, and it really didn't get past my innate skepticism until rather recently (the last 7-10 years). Further, I never doubted global warming, I was skeptical of how much, if any, effect we had on it. This is a very different question. Ice cores (and such) can point to a trend, but more work is involved to point towards a cause. To be honest I'm still skeptical that it is due to 100% human actions, we're probably exasperating a natural trend, more so than causing one whole hog.
Just because the rest of the planet believes something (which I doubt, I'm guessing most people in the world don't know, or are apathetic) doesn't matter one bit. This is something that still pisses me off about this debate (and makes my internal philosopher of science very happy) is how somehow conscensus is supposed to matter, where if 80% of a population believes something it is magically true. This isn't, or at least shouldn't, be how science works. Nature doesn't give a shit what we believe, no matter how many people believe it.
No one wins anything, either way. Science isn't a sport. Its a dialogue, no one can win, but one can present their points better, but that isn't the point. The point is learning the nature of things, the dialogue is important because it allows two sides of the issue to learn from each other. The amount of "nyah nyah" in this debate is absolutely embarrassing, and makes it very hard to actually listen to proponents of either side of the debate. Thus "us vs. them" bullshit belongs in junior high, not in adult science.
That is what the ANTI AGW faction made you believe.
Really? They MADE me believe something? How exactly did they do that? Did they give me an awareness of very long term climate cycles throughout the history of the earth? Did they make me aware of the recent ice ages, and our current abnormally "comfortable" global temperature, which is a couple degrees cooler than the mean temperature of our planet? Did they make me question any theory that smacks of dogma, laced with too much emotion (if so, thank you!)? Did they make me realize that psychology has much more to do with popular acceptance than actual science does? Did they make me realize that our experience, expectations, and context exist in a temporally insignificant period of time, and the trends in our life-time are relatively meaningless?
Did they make it so it takes a good deal of work and research to allow me to make judgement about theories? Damn, those "ANTI AGW" people are awesome (that was sarcasm, btw).
There was never any doubt since the fact that CO2 is a greenhouse gas was discovered. And that was something in the late 19th century, 1870 or something.
So animals cause global warming? We're talking about a hugely complex system, with many sinks, and feedback loops. This make the basic logical statement "CO2 is a greenhouse gas, humans make CO2; therefore humans cause global warming" unsatisfying. It sounds good, sure, but it really has nothing to do with nature. Its meaningless without a ton of bullet points, tangents, and explanations; i.e. science.
Believing you need "proof" beyond mere simple facts is just an illusion.
So I should have a knee-jerk response? I should lower my credibility levels to the lowest possible threshold? Further, there are no "simple facts", facts are meaningless in themselves. Facts are points of data, and are nothing without context and sound connective theories.
This whole issue is a good illustration of what happens when politics and social biases pollute science.
Further, you're trying to convince me of something I already accept, which is sort of odd. I had to make up my own mind, in my own way. I
I think that this is the strongest psychological argument there is. We humans like the status quo, and have a hard time picturing it not existing anymore, picturing the world different in the future than it is now. This makes AGW hard to swallow for lots of people. The converse is also true, every generation of people is the last generation of people, we can't picture a world without us (individually) as we are the common context for our understanding of the world. Every generation has to stand on a mountain top waiting for the end, only to be bitterly disappointed. This is a strong psychological reason to embrace AGW. Further, certain sects of environmentalists are highly keyed to the "doom and gloom" message, since it matches their pre-existing world view, a lot of enviromentalist literature is very bleak and pessimistic.
The "methodologies" for aggregating data verge on mysticism
This probably will never go away. Data of this type is very different than most collected scientific data (I ran an experiment, got a list of numbers. I ran the same experiment, got another list of numbers, compare. repeat.), in that it is largely interpretation and assumption being that it is historical data, and there is no way to ever get first-hand, repeatable, results thanks to the time scales involved, and the complexity of the systems that we are trying to measure. There will always be some fuzz. This doesn't invalidate the theory, or measurements though, it requires more rigor than most data sets. If you toss it out because of its intrinsic nature, then you preclude ever having any data on historical, long term, climate records.
Also, I'm guessing their isn't one computer code to rule them all here, I'm guessing there are several big ones, and hundreds of small, ad hoc, in house models at play. That one code doesn't really say much towards the body of research as a whole. Also, we don't know the actual context of that single bit of code, it could have been a work in progress, it could have been a preliminary model...
Please note, I'm not arguing for the "truthiness" of AGW here, I have an opinion, and I know very well I might be wrong, and invariably am not even mostly correct. I'm just a student of the history and philosophy of science, and find this area a very interesting area to think about.
Where's the easy rebuttals then? WIth evolution, you can point to features of the human body and our behavior for demonstrations of evolution in action. We literally are immersed in supporting and very elegant evidence with every living organism (and a lot of dead ones) providing independent verification of aspects of the theory of evolution.
If only there was some. I meant more in the non-scientist realm of this debate, the sociological and psychological aspects. This discussion isn't scientific, really, I have no background in the science here, and I doubt you do (I might be wrong, who knows?), we're arguing about it on a very different level than the actual science. We're arguing how we, as educated lay people, could accept it, and what criteria there would be. This is divorced from the actual data, theory, and science of it.
The real debate is the science, not this. This is a fun diversion, and at most it starts to diverge into economics and politics, but never science. This is what I meant by comparing it to the evolution debate, it doesn't reflect on the facts (whatever they may be).
There's no scientific basis for discussion of the most radical online claims (particularly that we need to do something about AGW now
There is no basis (scientific or otherwise) to pretty much all online claims, no matter the topic. The internet is an idiot concentrator, for the most part. Snark aside, my view is that we probably should do something now, even if the sparks haven't settled within the actual science. I'm a ske
Well, isn't it an amazing coincidence that when there's a huge battle over such things, that certain researchers and government organizations with a vested interest in AGW related funding, suddenly come up with particularly dramatic and urgent claims?
The same can be said for the groups with opposing results, isn't amazing that they support the status quo and business as usual? Also, the anti-AGW crowd can't make big claims, since they are only supporting the status quo. "Everything is going to be fine" will never sound as dramatic as "the world will change, big time." Which, you must admit, is just as convenient for companies making tons of money as any potential funding is for public sector scientists.
Again, given the "cui bono"You don't need a vast conspiracy. You just need to control chokepoints, such as aggregation of paleoclimate data.
Its a good thing that data is public, and available to most anyone, then. The methodologies for aggregating such data is also very well known, so what is to keep some neutral observer (without any external funding or horse in the race, somehow) from either combing the existent data, or making their own aggregates?
Further, I find this whole issue hilarious. How can someone have such an emotional reaction to a scientific issue. Emotions should never come to play, nature doesn't give a shit how upset you are. I often ponder how much psychology has infected this issue, as opposed to actual empirical, and theoretical science. I do feel that this issue has more in common with the evolution "debate" than any other actual scientific discussion.
I do wonder if they would get more support by voicing the politically popular view though, so they can make the Republicans holding the purse strings happy, and make the big money interests happy.
The whole "these guys are funded!" argument strikes me as fallacious though, since if applied universally the result would be that no empirical research would be trustworthy. All research needs funding, and someone needs to fund everything. Does this also hold true for the vast majority of industry funded research as well? If so, how can one actively doubt anthropogenic climate change, being that there is no trustworthy data being generated in favor or against it, since all the data is backed by someone with some interest in the issue?
This argument only works if there is actual proof of wrong doing actually connected to funding sources. Otherwise it is a somewhat empty argument. Further, it verges on a conspiracy theory, since it hinges on the fact that a vast majority of scientists are dishonest, and corrupt, and are willing to act as a conspiracy to dupe the world. If there was truth in this, surely there would be some strong evidence pointing to this international conspiracy. It also doesn't explain how some government funded, university, scientists are skeptical, while some corporately funded scientists have embraced it.
If you believe GW is not man made then you only need to explain 2 things:
I have come to think that the human bits of GW are probably correct, mainly for your "a" point. There seems to be too strong a correlation between human emissions, greenhouse gas levels, and actual warming for it to be entirely a natural occurrence. Your point "b" is a bit more tricky, and hits the the reason that I was skeptical in the first place.
The reason I was cautious in accepting climate change as a primarily anthropogenic event is because the huge amount of time and variation involved in historical (pre-human) climate cycles. We are living in a very small shard of the total history of the earth, and we are living in a very unusual climate within general historical variation of global climates. We humans also are generally fallaciously inclined to take our current context as some sort of norm. With the time scales, and variation involved, and the amount of human temporal bias that we bring to the table, it is hard to tell weather the current and projected warming is just a continuation of a natural event. We're dealing with very long term trends in the very short term. Early in the debate, the historical evidence wasn't strong enough to get past my internal doubt threshold. There was no way to know if our current climate trends were just evidence of natural processes evolving over long time periods.
Concerned about global warming in general, or anthropogenic global warming in particular? I've believed in global warming (solid science) for a long time, but was skeptical of the human impact (murkier science) on it (though took the better safe than sorry stance). Lately I've pretty much become convinced that there is some degree of truth in AGW, though it still is a bit murky on the whole.
Skeptic doesn't mean denier, it just means cautious and undecided, and generally waiting for evidence to point in a convincing direction.
As I noted in my original reply, the AGW side has the better funding and engages in remarkably unscientific debate, even among its scientific supporters.
That claims needs support. Find me a tally of the amount spent by the AGW "side", compared to the amount spent by the hydrocarbon industry (chemical, plastics, oil, petroleum, natural gas) for lobbying, in house studies, interest advertisement, etc... Both "sides" have, also, had their share of pretty bad science. Some of it innocent, and some of it nefarious.
Some quick poking around finds that the oil and gas industry has spent well over 300 million this year on interest ads and lobbying. James Sensenbrenner's 3rd largest contributor is the oil and gas industry. Old and gas is Smiths 3rd largest as well (#1 by a big margin is old media, big surprise). Oddly two of the people listed have nuclear concerns as in their top 5 donors. Oil and Gas coughed up $63,641,759 this election on politicians, 67% of it going to Republicans.
There is a lot of money flowing around from big oil. Poking around a bit on Opensecrets.org hasn't really shown me much pointing to the contrary.
... environmentalists. They tend not to be very familiar with firearms
A lot of the environmentalists I know are hunters, and a lot of the hunters are know are environmentalists, they go hand in hand. Some of the biggest conversationalists I know are ranchers who pay big bounties for coyotes and mountain lions, but are happy to support projects off their land, which don't have a perceived impact on their livelihood.. Sport shooters are often a different story, as is the typical "gun nut" (guns as a form of manhood, as opposed to a mere tool). Not all environmentalists are creepy, naive, hippies who hate people.
Further, most of the people I've met who work for the BLM (who allocate grazing and mining rights, and work closely with hunters on their public lands) are all environmentalists, but believe that lands can be utilized for both human use and conservation, at the same time.
Further, these people aren't environmentalists, they are animal rights types, who can go much farther, and have a much less fringy lunatic fringe. PETA is insane by any objective measure, but they are the largest and most prominent. Once again, there is a sane middle ground, with idiots on both sides (the "animals are here for us, so who cares" people are equally idiotic as PETA, imo).
But I'm not sure about the agenda of either side. If they are just killing birds for pure sport (to kill them, because killing animals is fun!) then I don't have much sympathy. If the hunters are humane about it, then the animal rights people are a bit silly.
Racists are everywhere, in every nationality or race, this is true. Some of our largest atrocities came about because of it, and not all of them involved white people (Rwanda comes to mind). I disagree about Hispanics, though. First you brought up Puerto Ricans, which last I checked were Hispanic, and I have met some racist Mexicans (against other Latin Americans, or Blacks, mostly).
As for Jews, I have met some racist ones, and I have met some well-adjusted ones, in my experience the latter out weigh the former. With Jews you have to remember that there are still some among them who lived through the largest racist atrocity in recent memory, so the shadow remains. Also there religion has been plagued by persecution, and somewhat focuses on it (though this might be slowly changing, at least in the U.S.). Also Jews are among the most hated groups among everyone I know. Most of my friends are rather modern in their views (most of them being various flavors of not-white, and/or gay), but a lot of them still dislike Jews. People, especially people in poorer areas, hate them. I would be a bit wary too.
Also, a lot of racism is actually classism. Historically, a lot of American blacks had a beef with Koreans and Asians. Not because they are Asian, per se, but because they own businesses in Black dominant, depressed areas. The same is true with Jews. There is a race element, sure, but there also is a bit of economic frustration rearing its head in the most irrational way.
To fight an anecdote with an anecdote; I don't have a single friend who still owns an iPhone. A couple years ago (when they were a big thing) most of the people I know had them, and showed them off. Now... Samsung mostly, it seems. They aren't status symbols anymore, or novelties, they are just expensive phones with a hidden commitment to upgrade. Hell, even my not hip parents stopped thinking iPhones are cool, both are also eyeing Samsung Galaxy phones (I'm getting a Nexus in a couple weeks, when I can finally ditch my horrible Droid).
iPads still dominate though, though most people don't any own any form of tablet.
Actually the Pandarens are older than that, they were in Warcraft 3's expansion (as mercenaries, and silly flavor). They actually were first brought up, as a joke, in 2002 before the actual release of Warcraft 3 (much less Kung-Fu Panda). They've been a running gag for a very long time, though originally they were more "Japanese-style" samurai types, and not more "Chinese-style" monk types.
This doesn't make them any less stupid as a basis for an expansion, though. It does feel like they were really grasping. It does make me sad, I really want to like WoW, I played from Vanilla through the middle of Wrath of the Lich King, and formed some very fond memories of those times. Sadly something derailed them, at least as far as my tastes go. Looking at the info about Mists before release, I realized that there wasn't even a tiny bit of excitement left (there was a modicum for Cataclysm, but I managed to never get up the will to actually buy it). This makes me somewhat sad, I grew up on Blizzard games, and I love the universe of Warcraft. But with Mists and Diablo 3 (better than people say it is, but still deeply unsatisfying in the long run for some reason), I'm deeply skeptical that they will ever get another cent from me.
I'm sticking with Guild Wars 2 for now. I don't have to give them money. I don't have to "be hardcore or go home". And I can quit for a couple months and not really care, or play for 30 minutes a day, and it doesn't matter. I'm not endorsing GW2 as a replacement for WoW, as it isn't the same type of game, and isn't really for the same type of players, it just fills my need since I can almost emulate what I loved about Burning Crusade (outside of the neon clown armor), I can do casual PVP, without having to listen to raiders whine about me playing the game differently and still getting rewarded (which killed endgame in WotLK for me, and made me stop giving Blizzard money).
As a person who isn't a kid these days, and is completely unfamiliar with hip internet parlance (i.e. lives in the real world), terms like "faggot" and the n-word (I don't even want to type it) are still highly charged, and loaded with ugly context. I really doubt that most gay people or black people would also find these words fully acceptable (go find one, call them it, then try to tell them that its okay on 4chan so they should relax).
Words do have power. Words shape our understanding and conception of the world. Words with a loaded history of venom and hate still maintain a portion of that long after they stop being completely pejorative. It doesn't even matter what the speaker means, as meaning is created mostly by the perceiver.
Further, your being a bit naive. If someone calls me a "fag", I'm pretty sure they aren't critiquing my fashion sense, they are trying to tie me to a group which (for some stupid reason) they find undesirable. It is an insult which hinged on the idea that homosexuals are bad or dirty. This is the actual content behind the word. The word isn't bad, but the connections it requires to have meaning are.
Unless of course they are asking for a cigarette, or some firewood.
Hell, "fuck" has pretty much become a normal word now, but there still are some connotations lurking in the background which keeps me from ever really wanting to use it (I do, and often, but don't find it a point of pride).
That's not even counting the marketshare of OS X(which iOS evolved from).
Does this mean I get to count every device using a *nix OS as well? There is a lot of machines that run *nix, a huge huge number, which probably dwarfs pretty much every other OS. Hell, my TV runs Linux, as does my Bluray...
the nexus one 'flagship' was quickly abandoned and to this day you cannot use it for more than a few hours before it loses its screen touch calibration and goes crazy, needing a power cycle.
Welcome to cellphone land, the land of throw away products. Its fixed hardware, with the rather rapid cycle, so there really isn't much of a point for supporting it for over a year or two.
Though at this moment, my Nexus 7 beats the crap out of my Asus Transformer, both in support (no support for you, once something better comes out. You should have quickly bought a Prime or Infinity the second they came out, cheapskate), and experience, even though the latter cost more, and is 10" (as opposed to 7"). I don't expect it to get good support past the two year mark.
Still better than my Verizon Motorola Droid, which has been stuck on Froyo for two years, and now won't even answer calls without substantial lag. This is true even without a single superfluous app installed on it anymore. Or my Dad's Droid Global, which has a well known defect that neither Motorola or Verizon wants to acknowledge (half the screen won't register touch input). Or... Actually I don't know anyone with a device that really works well after a year. Phones are crap, and no one bothers to support them.
I admit to some bias, the Nexus 7 has pretty much made me fall in love, it is the best device I've used in a long, long time. I'm sure this will wear off soon.
Nice insightful reply to my throw-away comment, thanks.
I actually can agree with most of your points, though I think many of them are somewhat moot. Most of my friends who entered, or tried to enter, the Armed Services who also smoked generally quit or dramatically cut back before joining. They had to do this to maintain the currently existing fitness requirements. Some of them did take up the habit again, but they generally were in non-combat tech jobs, and still had a lesser habit than they did before joining.
The criteria of the job is enough to either force people to stop, or to encourage them to do something about it on their own. Banning would be a bit redundant.
This topic annoys me, so some snark might sneak in. I'm pretty much against banning anything, or having employers dictate what I do at home. This includes smoking, and drinking, and various other activities, as well as politics, religion, sexual preference, and speech. If it doesn't effect performance, then it is none of your business. If your job has high enough standards, most addictions will be filtered out since they hurt performance. Beyond that, if someone enjoys a cigarette or a beer on their lunch break, it isn't anyone's business.
To be honest, I haven't read any Hubbard for years, and never really like him. As for Card, I gave up on him shortly after he started revisiting the Ender series, and was ready to after reading Speaker for the Dead (talk about a tone reversal...). I have, though, pretty much read all of Heinlein. Some of his books are brilliant (obviously), but most of them are neither run of the mill naive 50's sci-fi, or misogynist, libertarian (not insulting the beleifs, just his version of it), power-fantasies. I recently re-read Stranger In a Strange Land, it was on of my favorite books, but reading it now... It kind of made me a bit amused, and a bit sick.
First, that's bullshit. I'm not even a little religious, but the worst of the christians in this country are mousey little librarians by comparison. We did that, in part, by lopping religion off at the knees. And let's be clear, nobody is advocating for mass murder except foreign muslims.
This is arguable, considering the theological bent of America, and some of our actions abroad. Further, our resident Christians (not all of them, obviously, probably not even a majority, but a very powerful and vocal minority) are also slowly ramping up the crazy at home. They're already targetting gays, women, and children, and have the sights set higher. Sure they aren't as big of a threat yet, but given a chance they would be just as bad.
Sure, we "lopped religion off at the knees", but as any of the Libertarians or Tea Party folk (I'm neither) will tell you, the Constitution can be ignored, and mostly is. It isn't a protection from destructive "know better" nuts.
I'm saying that I'm tired of dealing with a massive percentage of the world population that doesn't care about anything more than destroying everything around them in the name of allah.
This is my problem. The percentage isn't really that massive. Islam is the second biggest religion on earth, and is more fractuous than Christianity or Judism, so its hard to really tell how massive the percentage of would-be terrorists actually is. Even in countries with pretty terrible Govermnents (Saudi Arabia, or Iran, to state the most obvious), its hard to tell how many of the people living in these countries support, or even give a damn, about terrorism. Think of America, I could easily decide that we're a country of anti-science, pro-war, ignorant Christian Evangelicals. As an American dove, atheist, nerd, who mostly associates with a large group of well educated, sceptical types, I can say that this is wrong. Further, looking at my family, most of them don't care about big politico-philosophical ideals, since they are too busy trying to make a living, raise their families, and generally get along during their breif span on this planet. I'm guessing the average resident of Iran is in the same boat as my average relatives.
One example isn't a very strong case. My mother recently went through a hassle with shipping a rifle to her brother. No one would touch it without a massive hassle, and a large paper trail. Basically the best way to ship a gun is from a licensed dealer to another licensed dealer.
Private enterprise is no better than the government when it comes to content restrictions (both do/would suck). Cox can throttle and censor me at will and I really have no recourse (literally, there is no other provider here), the Government can and I can wave the Constitution around and take them to court at least. Don't take this as "socialism", since I don't like or trust either of them. I at least know that with the government I have some theoretical recourse.
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Apple movies have DRM, yes. As does every other movie rental service. Apple music, though, hasn't had DRM in a very, very, long time now. They actually were one of the first music stores to strip DRM, this is one thing I actually liked Apple for, they were the good guys here.
The only caveat is that music from iTMS does have some watermarks, which doesn't really affect anyone unless they release it into the wild (even then, I haven't heard of it hurting anyone, but the potential is there). For normal use, it is completely open music.
My last home-built PC that had any cycle like that was almost 10 years ago, and it broke around 3 years after building it (upgrading GPU and HDD meant new PSU, new PSU was bad, and fried pretty much everything). Before that I had a problem building one due to a string of bad motherboards, but all of that was Fry's fault (before they had to label used/returned parts), never cost me a cent, and Newegg saved the day (and some money). This PC runs like a charm, and its on year 4. The only bits I replace are for upgrades.
I'm sorry you had a bad time of it, it seems, but this is pretty rare once you know what your doing. I've been building my own PCs since the mid-90's, and rarely have had a problem. But I've had terrible luck on pre-builts, and when I don't, I need to buy a new one every time I upgrade something since they generally suck for expanding, and have pretty crappy components. I'm not willing to spend $800+ (about the level of components I have,pre-build price) every 2-3 years, just to upgrade my graphics card.
If you are as educated as you believe, why do you write this nonsense:
It's called a reductio ad absurdum, and was in response to the simplistic logic you replied to me with. Just because CO2 is a greenhouse gas, and humans produce CO2, artificially or not, doesn't imply AGW automatically. It isn't sufficient to arrive at any meaningful, valid, conclusion.
As I said before, there was no need for the whole debate if the USA had not suddenly blocked any progress in Kyoto etc. and invented all the FUD about "natural climate changes", "ice ages", "oh humans can't do anything about it" etc.
Politics doesn't equal science. Kyoto is meaningless to the topic at hand. Also I don't understand the FUD about "ice ages" (we were just in one, geologically recently), or "natural climate change" (the Earth's climate has varied wildly over it's history). These aren't new ideas. And I was skeptical on those grounds long before the Kyoto talks. Those two phenomena are the first things a sane person should look at when talking about immediate climate change, how would those two facts possibly effect our current climate. Ignoring them ignores the big picture. Ideally a rational person would weigh and evaluate ALL of the evidence and factors, and not just accept one and move on.
I did not try to convince you about AGW, but about the fact that we did not have any need for a "scientific debate" on top of the scientific knowledge we already had.
I hope the scientific debate about this goes on long after I die. There is always need for scientific debate, even if we are relatively sure of the topic.
I think we're just looking at this from two sides, I'm trying for the purely rational, scientific side, and your shooting for the sociopolitical action side. I understand your point, and I do think we must do something about it (I thought this before I came to any direct judgement. Better safe than sorry.), but I also fear that the actual science is being sacrificed for political ends, on both sides. The leaked memos made me a bit sick, not because of fraud or malfeasance (there wasn't any), but because of the "us vs. them" tone of the scientists. This attitude doesn't lend itself to good science very well.
I think you misread me a bit, I'm not refuting the AGW hypothesis, I'm just saying why I had some problems with it in the past. In the earlier days of the debate. The modern debate, since much of the science in the 70's was deeply flawed, and it really didn't get past my innate skepticism until rather recently (the last 7-10 years). Further, I never doubted global warming, I was skeptical of how much, if any, effect we had on it. This is a very different question. Ice cores (and such) can point to a trend, but more work is involved to point towards a cause. To be honest I'm still skeptical that it is due to 100% human actions, we're probably exasperating a natural trend, more so than causing one whole hog.
Just because the rest of the planet believes something (which I doubt, I'm guessing most people in the world don't know, or are apathetic) doesn't matter one bit. This is something that still pisses me off about this debate (and makes my internal philosopher of science very happy) is how somehow conscensus is supposed to matter, where if 80% of a population believes something it is magically true. This isn't, or at least shouldn't, be how science works. Nature doesn't give a shit what we believe, no matter how many people believe it.
No one wins anything, either way. Science isn't a sport. Its a dialogue, no one can win, but one can present their points better, but that isn't the point. The point is learning the nature of things, the dialogue is important because it allows two sides of the issue to learn from each other. The amount of "nyah nyah" in this debate is absolutely embarrassing, and makes it very hard to actually listen to proponents of either side of the debate. Thus "us vs. them" bullshit belongs in junior high, not in adult science.
That is what the ANTI AGW faction made you believe.
Really? They MADE me believe something? How exactly did they do that? Did they give me an awareness of very long term climate cycles throughout the history of the earth? Did they make me aware of the recent ice ages, and our current abnormally "comfortable" global temperature, which is a couple degrees cooler than the mean temperature of our planet? Did they make me question any theory that smacks of dogma, laced with too much emotion (if so, thank you!)? Did they make me realize that psychology has much more to do with popular acceptance than actual science does? Did they make me realize that our experience, expectations, and context exist in a temporally insignificant period of time, and the trends in our life-time are relatively meaningless?
Did they make it so it takes a good deal of work and research to allow me to make judgement about theories? Damn, those "ANTI AGW" people are awesome (that was sarcasm, btw).
There was never any doubt since the fact that CO2 is a greenhouse gas was discovered. And that was something in the late 19th century, 1870 or something.
So animals cause global warming? We're talking about a hugely complex system, with many sinks, and feedback loops. This make the basic logical statement "CO2 is a greenhouse gas, humans make CO2; therefore humans cause global warming" unsatisfying. It sounds good, sure, but it really has nothing to do with nature. Its meaningless without a ton of bullet points, tangents, and explanations; i.e. science.
Believing you need "proof" beyond mere simple facts is just an illusion.
So I should have a knee-jerk response? I should lower my credibility levels to the lowest possible threshold? Further, there are no "simple facts", facts are meaningless in themselves. Facts are points of data, and are nothing without context and sound connective theories.
This whole issue is a good illustration of what happens when politics and social biases pollute science.
Further, you're trying to convince me of something I already accept, which is sort of odd. I had to make up my own mind, in my own way. I
Not merely tell me what I want to hear.
I think that this is the strongest psychological argument there is. We humans like the status quo, and have a hard time picturing it not existing anymore, picturing the world different in the future than it is now. This makes AGW hard to swallow for lots of people. The converse is also true, every generation of people is the last generation of people, we can't picture a world without us (individually) as we are the common context for our understanding of the world. Every generation has to stand on a mountain top waiting for the end, only to be bitterly disappointed. This is a strong psychological reason to embrace AGW. Further, certain sects of environmentalists are highly keyed to the "doom and gloom" message, since it matches their pre-existing world view, a lot of enviromentalist literature is very bleak and pessimistic.
The "methodologies" for aggregating data verge on mysticism
This probably will never go away. Data of this type is very different than most collected scientific data (I ran an experiment, got a list of numbers. I ran the same experiment, got another list of numbers, compare. repeat.), in that it is largely interpretation and assumption being that it is historical data, and there is no way to ever get first-hand, repeatable, results thanks to the time scales involved, and the complexity of the systems that we are trying to measure. There will always be some fuzz. This doesn't invalidate the theory, or measurements though, it requires more rigor than most data sets. If you toss it out because of its intrinsic nature, then you preclude ever having any data on historical, long term, climate records.
Also, I'm guessing their isn't one computer code to rule them all here, I'm guessing there are several big ones, and hundreds of small, ad hoc, in house models at play. That one code doesn't really say much towards the body of research as a whole. Also, we don't know the actual context of that single bit of code, it could have been a work in progress, it could have been a preliminary model...
Please note, I'm not arguing for the "truthiness" of AGW here, I have an opinion, and I know very well I might be wrong, and invariably am not even mostly correct. I'm just a student of the history and philosophy of science, and find this area a very interesting area to think about.
Where's the easy rebuttals then? WIth evolution, you can point to features of the human body and our behavior for demonstrations of evolution in action. We literally are immersed in supporting and very elegant evidence with every living organism (and a lot of dead ones) providing independent verification of aspects of the theory of evolution.
If only there was some. I meant more in the non-scientist realm of this debate, the sociological and psychological aspects. This discussion isn't scientific, really, I have no background in the science here, and I doubt you do (I might be wrong, who knows?), we're arguing about it on a very different level than the actual science. We're arguing how we, as educated lay people, could accept it, and what criteria there would be. This is divorced from the actual data, theory, and science of it.
The real debate is the science, not this. This is a fun diversion, and at most it starts to diverge into economics and politics, but never science. This is what I meant by comparing it to the evolution debate, it doesn't reflect on the facts (whatever they may be).
There's no scientific basis for discussion of the most radical online claims (particularly that we need to do something about AGW now
There is no basis (scientific or otherwise) to pretty much all online claims, no matter the topic. The internet is an idiot concentrator, for the most part. Snark aside, my view is that we probably should do something now, even if the sparks haven't settled within the actual science. I'm a ske
Well, isn't it an amazing coincidence that when there's a huge battle over such things, that certain researchers and government organizations with a vested interest in AGW related funding, suddenly come up with particularly dramatic and urgent claims?
The same can be said for the groups with opposing results, isn't amazing that they support the status quo and business as usual? Also, the anti-AGW crowd can't make big claims, since they are only supporting the status quo. "Everything is going to be fine" will never sound as dramatic as "the world will change, big time." Which, you must admit, is just as convenient for companies making tons of money as any potential funding is for public sector scientists.
Again, given the "cui bono"You don't need a vast conspiracy. You just need to control chokepoints, such as aggregation of paleoclimate data.
Its a good thing that data is public, and available to most anyone, then. The methodologies for aggregating such data is also very well known, so what is to keep some neutral observer (without any external funding or horse in the race, somehow) from either combing the existent data, or making their own aggregates?
Further, I find this whole issue hilarious. How can someone have such an emotional reaction to a scientific issue. Emotions should never come to play, nature doesn't give a shit how upset you are. I often ponder how much psychology has infected this issue, as opposed to actual empirical, and theoretical science. I do feel that this issue has more in common with the evolution "debate" than any other actual scientific discussion.
This is true for both sides of the issue.
I do wonder if they would get more support by voicing the politically popular view though, so they can make the Republicans holding the purse strings happy, and make the big money interests happy.
The whole "these guys are funded!" argument strikes me as fallacious though, since if applied universally the result would be that no empirical research would be trustworthy. All research needs funding, and someone needs to fund everything. Does this also hold true for the vast majority of industry funded research as well? If so, how can one actively doubt anthropogenic climate change, being that there is no trustworthy data being generated in favor or against it, since all the data is backed by someone with some interest in the issue?
This argument only works if there is actual proof of wrong doing actually connected to funding sources. Otherwise it is a somewhat empty argument. Further, it verges on a conspiracy theory, since it hinges on the fact that a vast majority of scientists are dishonest, and corrupt, and are willing to act as a conspiracy to dupe the world. If there was truth in this, surely there would be some strong evidence pointing to this international conspiracy. It also doesn't explain how some government funded, university, scientists are skeptical, while some corporately funded scientists have embraced it.
If you believe GW is not man made then you only need to explain 2 things:
I have come to think that the human bits of GW are probably correct, mainly for your "a" point. There seems to be too strong a correlation between human emissions, greenhouse gas levels, and actual warming for it to be entirely a natural occurrence. Your point "b" is a bit more tricky, and hits the the reason that I was skeptical in the first place.
The reason I was cautious in accepting climate change as a primarily anthropogenic event is because the huge amount of time and variation involved in historical (pre-human) climate cycles. We are living in a very small shard of the total history of the earth, and we are living in a very unusual climate within general historical variation of global climates. We humans also are generally fallaciously inclined to take our current context as some sort of norm. With the time scales, and variation involved, and the amount of human temporal bias that we bring to the table, it is hard to tell weather the current and projected warming is just a continuation of a natural event. We're dealing with very long term trends in the very short term. Early in the debate, the historical evidence wasn't strong enough to get past my internal doubt threshold. There was no way to know if our current climate trends were just evidence of natural processes evolving over long time periods.
Concerned about global warming in general, or anthropogenic global warming in particular? I've believed in global warming (solid science) for a long time, but was skeptical of the human impact (murkier science) on it (though took the better safe than sorry stance). Lately I've pretty much become convinced that there is some degree of truth in AGW, though it still is a bit murky on the whole.
Skeptic doesn't mean denier, it just means cautious and undecided, and generally waiting for evidence to point in a convincing direction.
As I noted in my original reply, the AGW side has the better funding and engages in remarkably unscientific debate, even among its scientific supporters.
That claims needs support. Find me a tally of the amount spent by the AGW "side", compared to the amount spent by the hydrocarbon industry (chemical, plastics, oil, petroleum, natural gas) for lobbying, in house studies, interest advertisement, etc... Both "sides" have, also, had their share of pretty bad science. Some of it innocent, and some of it nefarious.
Some quick poking around finds that the oil and gas industry has spent well over 300 million this year on interest ads and lobbying. James Sensenbrenner's 3rd largest contributor is the oil and gas industry. Old and gas is Smiths 3rd largest as well (#1 by a big margin is old media, big surprise). Oddly two of the people listed have nuclear concerns as in their top 5 donors. Oil and Gas coughed up $63,641,759 this election on politicians, 67% of it going to Republicans.
There is a lot of money flowing around from big oil. Poking around a bit on Opensecrets.org hasn't really shown me much pointing to the contrary.
Preview is your friend. Sorry, had a long day. I hope my point is still clear.
... environmentalists. They tend not to be very familiar with firearms
A lot of the environmentalists I know are hunters, and a lot of the hunters are know are environmentalists, they go hand in hand. Some of the biggest conversationalists I know are ranchers who pay big bounties for coyotes and mountain lions, but are happy to support projects off their land, which don't have a perceived impact on their livelihood.. Sport shooters are often a different story, as is the typical "gun nut" (guns as a form of manhood, as opposed to a mere tool). Not all environmentalists are creepy, naive, hippies who hate people.
Further, most of the people I've met who work for the BLM (who allocate grazing and mining rights, and work closely with hunters on their public lands) are all environmentalists, but believe that lands can be utilized for both human use and conservation, at the same time.
Further, these people aren't environmentalists, they are animal rights types, who can go much farther, and have a much less fringy lunatic fringe. PETA is insane by any objective measure, but they are the largest and most prominent. Once again, there is a sane middle ground, with idiots on both sides (the "animals are here for us, so who cares" people are equally idiotic as PETA, imo).
But I'm not sure about the agenda of either side. If they are just killing birds for pure sport (to kill them, because killing animals is fun!) then I don't have much sympathy. If the hunters are humane about it, then the animal rights people are a bit silly.
Racists are everywhere, in every nationality or race, this is true. Some of our largest atrocities came about because of it, and not all of them involved white people (Rwanda comes to mind). I disagree about Hispanics, though. First you brought up Puerto Ricans, which last I checked were Hispanic, and I have met some racist Mexicans (against other Latin Americans, or Blacks, mostly).
As for Jews, I have met some racist ones, and I have met some well-adjusted ones, in my experience the latter out weigh the former. With Jews you have to remember that there are still some among them who lived through the largest racist atrocity in recent memory, so the shadow remains. Also there religion has been plagued by persecution, and somewhat focuses on it (though this might be slowly changing, at least in the U.S.). Also Jews are among the most hated groups among everyone I know. Most of my friends are rather modern in their views (most of them being various flavors of not-white, and/or gay), but a lot of them still dislike Jews. People, especially people in poorer areas, hate them. I would be a bit wary too.
Also, a lot of racism is actually classism. Historically, a lot of American blacks had a beef with Koreans and Asians. Not because they are Asian, per se, but because they own businesses in Black dominant, depressed areas. The same is true with Jews. There is a race element, sure, but there also is a bit of economic frustration rearing its head in the most irrational way.
To fight an anecdote with an anecdote; I don't have a single friend who still owns an iPhone. A couple years ago (when they were a big thing) most of the people I know had them, and showed them off. Now... Samsung mostly, it seems. They aren't status symbols anymore, or novelties, they are just expensive phones with a hidden commitment to upgrade. Hell, even my not hip parents stopped thinking iPhones are cool, both are also eyeing Samsung Galaxy phones (I'm getting a Nexus in a couple weeks, when I can finally ditch my horrible Droid).
iPads still dominate though, though most people don't any own any form of tablet.
Actually the Pandarens are older than that, they were in Warcraft 3's expansion (as mercenaries, and silly flavor). They actually were first brought up, as a joke, in 2002 before the actual release of Warcraft 3 (much less Kung-Fu Panda). They've been a running gag for a very long time, though originally they were more "Japanese-style" samurai types, and not more "Chinese-style" monk types.
This doesn't make them any less stupid as a basis for an expansion, though. It does feel like they were really grasping. It does make me sad, I really want to like WoW, I played from Vanilla through the middle of Wrath of the Lich King, and formed some very fond memories of those times. Sadly something derailed them, at least as far as my tastes go. Looking at the info about Mists before release, I realized that there wasn't even a tiny bit of excitement left (there was a modicum for Cataclysm, but I managed to never get up the will to actually buy it). This makes me somewhat sad, I grew up on Blizzard games, and I love the universe of Warcraft. But with Mists and Diablo 3 (better than people say it is, but still deeply unsatisfying in the long run for some reason), I'm deeply skeptical that they will ever get another cent from me.
I'm sticking with Guild Wars 2 for now. I don't have to give them money. I don't have to "be hardcore or go home". And I can quit for a couple months and not really care, or play for 30 minutes a day, and it doesn't matter. I'm not endorsing GW2 as a replacement for WoW, as it isn't the same type of game, and isn't really for the same type of players, it just fills my need since I can almost emulate what I loved about Burning Crusade (outside of the neon clown armor), I can do casual PVP, without having to listen to raiders whine about me playing the game differently and still getting rewarded (which killed endgame in WotLK for me, and made me stop giving Blizzard money).
As a person who isn't a kid these days, and is completely unfamiliar with hip internet parlance (i.e. lives in the real world), terms like "faggot" and the n-word (I don't even want to type it) are still highly charged, and loaded with ugly context. I really doubt that most gay people or black people would also find these words fully acceptable (go find one, call them it, then try to tell them that its okay on 4chan so they should relax).
Words do have power. Words shape our understanding and conception of the world. Words with a loaded history of venom and hate still maintain a portion of that long after they stop being completely pejorative. It doesn't even matter what the speaker means, as meaning is created mostly by the perceiver.
Further, your being a bit naive. If someone calls me a "fag", I'm pretty sure they aren't critiquing my fashion sense, they are trying to tie me to a group which (for some stupid reason) they find undesirable. It is an insult which hinged on the idea that homosexuals are bad or dirty. This is the actual content behind the word. The word isn't bad, but the connections it requires to have meaning are.
Unless of course they are asking for a cigarette, or some firewood.
Hell, "fuck" has pretty much become a normal word now, but there still are some connotations lurking in the background which keeps me from ever really wanting to use it (I do, and often, but don't find it a point of pride).
That's not even counting the marketshare of OS X(which iOS evolved from).
Does this mean I get to count every device using a *nix OS as well? There is a lot of machines that run *nix, a huge huge number, which probably dwarfs pretty much every other OS. Hell, my TV runs Linux, as does my Bluray...
the nexus one 'flagship' was quickly abandoned and to this day you cannot use it for more than a few hours before it loses its screen touch calibration and goes crazy, needing a power cycle.
Welcome to cellphone land, the land of throw away products. Its fixed hardware, with the rather rapid cycle, so there really isn't much of a point for supporting it for over a year or two.
Though at this moment, my Nexus 7 beats the crap out of my Asus Transformer, both in support (no support for you, once something better comes out. You should have quickly bought a Prime or Infinity the second they came out, cheapskate), and experience, even though the latter cost more, and is 10" (as opposed to 7"). I don't expect it to get good support past the two year mark.
Still better than my Verizon Motorola Droid, which has been stuck on Froyo for two years, and now won't even answer calls without substantial lag. This is true even without a single superfluous app installed on it anymore. Or my Dad's Droid Global, which has a well known defect that neither Motorola or Verizon wants to acknowledge (half the screen won't register touch input). Or... Actually I don't know anyone with a device that really works well after a year. Phones are crap, and no one bothers to support them.
I admit to some bias, the Nexus 7 has pretty much made me fall in love, it is the best device I've used in a long, long time. I'm sure this will wear off soon.
Thank you.
Nice insightful reply to my throw-away comment, thanks.
I actually can agree with most of your points, though I think many of them are somewhat moot. Most of my friends who entered, or tried to enter, the Armed Services who also smoked generally quit or dramatically cut back before joining. They had to do this to maintain the currently existing fitness requirements. Some of them did take up the habit again, but they generally were in non-combat tech jobs, and still had a lesser habit than they did before joining.
The criteria of the job is enough to either force people to stop, or to encourage them to do something about it on their own. Banning would be a bit redundant.
This topic annoys me, so some snark might sneak in. I'm pretty much against banning anything, or having employers dictate what I do at home. This includes smoking, and drinking, and various other activities, as well as politics, religion, sexual preference, and speech. If it doesn't effect performance, then it is none of your business. If your job has high enough standards, most addictions will be filtered out since they hurt performance. Beyond that, if someone enjoys a cigarette or a beer on their lunch break, it isn't anyone's business.
Every military person is supposed to be combat-ready, and the effect of smoking on lung capacity alone would make them significantly less capable.
That explains the American military's performance during the last two World Wars, then...
Oh... wait.
To be honest, I haven't read any Hubbard for years, and never really like him. As for Card, I gave up on him shortly after he started revisiting the Ender series, and was ready to after reading Speaker for the Dead (talk about a tone reversal...). I have, though, pretty much read all of Heinlein. Some of his books are brilliant (obviously), but most of them are neither run of the mill naive 50's sci-fi, or misogynist, libertarian (not insulting the beleifs, just his version of it), power-fantasies. I recently re-read Stranger In a Strange Land, it was on of my favorite books, but reading it now... It kind of made me a bit amused, and a bit sick.
Eh, Heinlein is a bigger ass...
First, that's bullshit. I'm not even a little religious, but the worst of the christians in this country are mousey little librarians by comparison. We did that, in part, by lopping religion off at the knees. And let's be clear, nobody is advocating for mass murder except foreign muslims.
This is arguable, considering the theological bent of America, and some of our actions abroad. Further, our resident Christians (not all of them, obviously, probably not even a majority, but a very powerful and vocal minority) are also slowly ramping up the crazy at home. They're already targetting gays, women, and children, and have the sights set higher. Sure they aren't as big of a threat yet, but given a chance they would be just as bad.
Sure, we "lopped religion off at the knees", but as any of the Libertarians or Tea Party folk (I'm neither) will tell you, the Constitution can be ignored, and mostly is. It isn't a protection from destructive "know better" nuts.
I'm saying that I'm tired of dealing with a massive percentage of the world population that doesn't care about anything more than destroying everything around them in the name of allah.
This is my problem. The percentage isn't really that massive. Islam is the second biggest religion on earth, and is more fractuous than Christianity or Judism, so its hard to really tell how massive the percentage of would-be terrorists actually is. Even in countries with pretty terrible Govermnents (Saudi Arabia, or Iran, to state the most obvious), its hard to tell how many of the people living in these countries support, or even give a damn, about terrorism. Think of America, I could easily decide that we're a country of anti-science, pro-war, ignorant Christian Evangelicals. As an American dove, atheist, nerd, who mostly associates with a large group of well educated, sceptical types, I can say that this is wrong. Further, looking at my family, most of them don't care about big politico-philosophical ideals, since they are too busy trying to make a living, raise their families, and generally get along during their breif span on this planet. I'm guessing the average resident of Iran is in the same boat as my average relatives.
One example isn't a very strong case. My mother recently went through a hassle with shipping a rifle to her brother. No one would touch it without a massive hassle, and a large paper trail. Basically the best way to ship a gun is from a licensed dealer to another licensed dealer.
Private enterprise is no better than the government when it comes to content restrictions (both do/would suck). Cox can throttle and censor me at will and I really have no recourse (literally, there is no other provider here), the Government can and I can wave the Constitution around and take them to court at least. Don't take this as "socialism", since I don't like or trust either of them. I at least know that with the government I have some theoretical recourse.