Either way, defamation isn't a criminal statute. Nobody is going to be put in jail for this, either way.
On the other hand, I've been defamed recently, and was incapable of taking legal action because the person in question isn't likely to be believed, thus eliminating any ability to prove liability.
I don't think anonymous posters to a website would meet the standard of believability, and thus would be 'libel proof'.
That said, I lie every time I join a forum. "Oh sure, my name is Bob Dylan, and I'm from Beverly Hills, California -- Zip Code 90210!"
Sue away, in that case. I'm sure Bob will appreciate it.
Honestly, I thought the greatest thing Doom 3 did was make me want to dust off System Shock 2. Every time I clicked on anything in the world, I kept on thinking "Gee, you know what would make this great? What they did in System Shock 2."
Bioshock was pretty cool too, but a lot of freedom was removed to cater to the console crowd.
Here you go, I prepared the data so I could post it in my journal for future reference:
The human race has thrived on what is effectively borrowed time.
Fossil fuels are, everyone agrees, finite in supply. After we deplete our resources, they won't be replenished within the probable lifespan of the human race.
"Carrying capacity" is the maximum population an ecosystem can support before becoming unsustainable. You don't see it right away, but over time exceeding the carrying capacity of an ecosystem will cause the population to crash. For example, if an island has enough vegetation to sustainably feed 200 deer, you could get 201 deer and there wouldn't be an immediate destruction, but eventually the island would be stripped bare and the entire population would die out.
Once our reserves are depleted, the ability of the human race to feed itself will be restricted. We'll be suddenly trapped by the natural carrying capacity of the planet's ecosystems. It is essential that before then, the human race become technologically advanced enough to push the natural carrying capacity upwards to create enough food without fossil fuels, and equally essential that the human race manage their size to lower the target carrying capacity we'll need to reach with technology.
If the population keeps growing at the current rate and technology to increase the natural carrying capacity of our farming ecosystems without fossil fuels continues to be ignored, humanity will be destroyed.
We've got renewable power today. It's no magical source of infinite energy, even though it works extremely well for providing cheap renewable energy to places blessed to have the geography and the infrastructure.
Today, we exist in the numbers we do only because fossil fuels power our expansion. Without them, we'd have to rely on biofuels, which history shows us can't even provide enough power for a population a fraction of the current size.
Before fossil fuels were used to heat homes, wood was. That was the cause of deforestation in England -- with a much smaller population than today. After wood became impractical, coal was used. Similarly, after whale oil became much more difficult to procure, natural gas was used to light lanterns. Fossil fuels offset the fact that renewable sources of energy were all used in an unrenewable fashion. This devastation of renewable sources of energy was brought about by a population much much smaller than the population inhabiting the same area today. That's exactly the problem. Once the fossil fuels disappear, the population that was already sucking the natural renewable resources of the island dry is orders of magnitude larger, and will suffer. Even fish stocks have been decimated, leading to the collapse of fishing economies, like Newfoundland.
Many people will respond with their favourite pet vapourware technology. Year after year, we continue to be promised a flying car[1], but we don't get it. Don't rely on vapourware to provide energy for a population 6 times greater[2] than the one that deforested England[3] and brought whales to the brink of extinction[4].
I believe in technology, but I don't believe in miracles. I don't believe that technology is a perfect machine that will always provide us exactly the solution we desire. Much of the incredible advancement of the past couple centuries has been the elimination of biofuels in favour of cheaper fossil fuels.
We're far past the carrying capacity of natural or man-made means of collecting solar energy. At our current rate, the amount of food we need just to feed outselves will double by 2080[5]. This is before we think about the amount of food that will have to be grown for conventional biofuels. The problem is that using biofuels with current technology is terribly inefficient. "In fact, even if the entire corn crop in the United States were used to make ethanol, that fuel would replace only 12 percent of current U.S. gasoline use."[6]
There's no free lunch -- literally. No matter how you roll the n
I love how your post pretty much proves the article right.
Corporations don't have anything to do with criminal charges, the only type of charge that would have a "guilty/not guilty" verdict.
The courts are underfunded enough, and enough people aren't ever charged because it'd be a waste of resources, just to have the courts doling out money in cases where the accused is innocent.
A 1/4w resistor is virtually free and virtually indestructible. As long as I can remember, my father, a red seal instrument mechanic, has used this simple device in series with an LED when he wants a voltage indicator on an extension cord. It limits current to the levels required, and works great. A vacuum tube sounds like a horribly large, horribly expensive solution to a problem which can be solved with a basic electronic component. Everyone wants to stick a 5 dollar part on their 1 dollar LED. It's ridiculous.
As for the rest, the problem isn't that the electricity manufacturing capacity is lowered as much as the energy requirements of industry are so massively subsidized by fossil fuels. Ammonia production is a key industry because humanity requires nitrogen fertilizer to continue to feed itself. To replace the natural gas feedstock with electrolysis would take virtually all the renewable electricity generation on the planet(non-nuclear). There are a huge number of industries like this, hidden but relying on fossil fuels to keep energy inputs from being insanely high. The other two I chose for my little case study were Portland cement which requires massive amounts of natural gas, coal, or fuel oil to heat the lime rock to the proper temperature, and steel smelting, which also requires large amounts of natural gas or fuel oil or coal.
Ignorance isn't genetic. It's easily solved. It just takes the understanding that you don't understand everything, so if you're interested, read up.
Sorry, in Gibbs v. The United States, the Supreme Court ruled that the situation needs to meet a 6-point test in order for this rule to apply, because the state has an overriding interest in involving lawyers without making things more complicated.
Current law covers legislation from the federal, state, and local levels, but also common law, which is murky and requires knowledge of how common law has been applied in your jurisdiction.
This is abused sometimes. My last girlfriend tried to convince me that common law marriage starts after 3 months. Thankfully, I had already researched the matter thoroughly(Federal documents call common law 12 months, and provincial documents called it 12 months with children or 3 years without), but even after in-depth research, there's a question of whether there was a decision in some court somewhere that maybe did change the already unwritten law of common law marriage.
I'm not the grandparent, but I do process control for a living, which requires me to understand industrial processes. It's always shocking to me how ignorant people on slashdot can be about basic industry. I'd give specific examples, but we're talking "Not even wrong" sort of wrongness.
One time, I was having a discussion about the environmental impact of cardboard manufacturing. This guy is sure that chlorine dioxide is a horrible side-effect of this industry. Cardboard is made out of unbleached kraft pulp, and thus no bleaching agents are used.
Another time, I showed that the amount of renewable and nuclear energy on the planet isn't enough to support even a few critical industries, let alone do so and heat our homes or transport the raw goods to where they need to go. Someone actually tried to tell me that the photo-voltaic cell industry will double every year for 40 years, so we'll soon have more than the entire world electricity generating capacity just in PV cells. That's what I call "Not even wrong".
Most slashdotters tend to have a poor understanding of electronics, as well. In a recent thread I explained a technique that's been used by tradesmen for decades to connect LEDs directly to a 120VAC source, and slashdotters came from far and wide to explain why the common practice was impossible and wouldn't work.
Given slashdotters don't even know how to bias an LED with a resistor, I wouldn't be even remotely surprised to find they don't know about CPU design.
If I ever meet someone who doesn't think they've got a better handle on what's going on than everyone else, I'll let you know.
Re:Wow! Who ever would have guessed that!?
on
You Are Not a Lawyer
·
· Score: 3, Funny
PROTIP: Memorizing Latin phrases doesn't actually mean you didn't manage to completely miss the point of the post by quoting the example of his point, then reiterating the point he was trying to make.
I agree with you in abstract, but not with respect to MMOs.
Most MMOs I've tried are really just horribly boring job simulators. You get home from your real job, then you go kill slimes for 8 hours for crap pay and a remote chance at gaining a level.
My real life is more interesting than the MMOs I've tried. In-game, I'm a faceless sword killing nameless creatures for tiny rewards with the promise that after months or years of work I might someday become a L80 of my class. In real life, by contrast, when I do something, it has a real, lasting impact on the world. When I design a new control system, it affects the production capacity of the industrial plant, as well as how the plant is operated. Further, my skill increases.
By contrast, I've got a L11 Paladin Dwarf in WoW. Why do I care?
Most games don't make this mistake, so you CAN be a corporate giant or a king or a god. Then you CAN suspend reality and pretend you're something greater than you are.
It's like you idiots believe in "The law of gravity", just because most people believe it doesn't mean it's true!
Sure, the person who finally proved the law of gravity wrong would have his or her name in this history books, but you CULTISTS in the CHURCH OF GRAVITY would just laugh them off the stage!
Sorry, I stopped reading after the first paragraph.
Science works because it doesn't give a crap about who you are. A sensor doesn't turn around to see if you've got the proper certifications to see the numbers, or if your skin is the right colour to discover something this year, or if you're a slave or a citizen. Some of the most important discoveries made are by complete outsiders to their fields, such as Albert Einstein.
GTFO my science. Go be born into an elite caste of warrior priests or something.
Slashdot Mirror
You know, if authorities known for torture, murder, and making people "disappear" demanded something from me, I'd give it to 'em.
Call me an evil capitalist pig, but I don't want to piss off people like that.
Either way, defamation isn't a criminal statute. Nobody is going to be put in jail for this, either way.
On the other hand, I've been defamed recently, and was incapable of taking legal action because the person in question isn't likely to be believed, thus eliminating any ability to prove liability.
I don't think anonymous posters to a website would meet the standard of believability, and thus would be 'libel proof'.
That said, I lie every time I join a forum. "Oh sure, my name is Bob Dylan, and I'm from Beverly Hills, California -- Zip Code 90210!"
Sue away, in that case. I'm sure Bob will appreciate it.
....now, my journal contains the information in full form, with references.
Honestly, I thought the greatest thing Doom 3 did was make me want to dust off System Shock 2. Every time I clicked on anything in the world, I kept on thinking "Gee, you know what would make this great? What they did in System Shock 2."
Bioshock was pretty cool too, but a lot of freedom was removed to cater to the console crowd.
I came to the same conclusion you did -- we need to reduce the population of the planet.
I posted my exact calculations and sources on my journal.
Here you go, I prepared the data so I could post it in my journal for future reference:
The human race has thrived on what is effectively borrowed time.
Fossil fuels are, everyone agrees, finite in supply. After we deplete our resources, they won't be replenished within the probable lifespan of the human race.
"Carrying capacity" is the maximum population an ecosystem can support before becoming unsustainable. You don't see it right away, but over time exceeding the carrying capacity of an ecosystem will cause the population to crash. For example, if an island has enough vegetation to sustainably feed 200 deer, you could get 201 deer and there wouldn't be an immediate destruction, but eventually the island would be stripped bare and the entire population would die out.
Once our reserves are depleted, the ability of the human race to feed itself will be restricted. We'll be suddenly trapped by the natural carrying capacity of the planet's ecosystems. It is essential that before then, the human race become technologically advanced enough to push the natural carrying capacity upwards to create enough food without fossil fuels, and equally essential that the human race manage their size to lower the target carrying capacity we'll need to reach with technology.
If the population keeps growing at the current rate and technology to increase the natural carrying capacity of our farming ecosystems without fossil fuels continues to be ignored, humanity will be destroyed.
We've got renewable power today. It's no magical source of infinite energy, even though it works extremely well for providing cheap renewable energy to places blessed to have the geography and the infrastructure.
Today, we exist in the numbers we do only because fossil fuels power our expansion. Without them, we'd have to rely on biofuels, which history shows us can't even provide enough power for a population a fraction of the current size.
Before fossil fuels were used to heat homes, wood was. That was the cause of deforestation in England -- with a much smaller population than today. After wood became impractical, coal was used. Similarly, after whale oil became much more difficult to procure, natural gas was used to light lanterns. Fossil fuels offset the fact that renewable sources of energy were all used in an unrenewable fashion. This devastation of renewable sources of energy was brought about by a population much much smaller than the population inhabiting the same area today. That's exactly the problem. Once the fossil fuels disappear, the population that was already sucking the natural renewable resources of the island dry is orders of magnitude larger, and will suffer. Even fish stocks have been decimated, leading to the collapse of fishing economies, like Newfoundland.
Many people will respond with their favourite pet vapourware technology. Year after year, we continue to be promised a flying car[1], but we don't get it. Don't rely on vapourware to provide energy for a population 6 times greater[2] than the one that deforested England[3] and brought whales to the brink of extinction[4].
I believe in technology, but I don't believe in miracles. I don't believe that technology is a perfect machine that will always provide us exactly the solution we desire. Much of the incredible advancement of the past couple centuries has been the elimination of biofuels in favour of cheaper fossil fuels.
We're far past the carrying capacity of natural or man-made means of collecting solar energy. At our current rate, the amount of food we need just to feed outselves will double by 2080[5]. This is before we think about the amount of food that will have to be grown for conventional biofuels. The problem is that using biofuels with current technology is terribly inefficient. "In fact, even if the entire corn crop in the United States were used to make ethanol, that fuel would replace only 12 percent of current U.S. gasoline use."[6]
There's no free lunch -- literally. No matter how you roll the n
I love how your post pretty much proves the article right.
Corporations don't have anything to do with criminal charges, the only type of charge that would have a "guilty/not guilty" verdict.
The courts are underfunded enough, and enough people aren't ever charged because it'd be a waste of resources, just to have the courts doling out money in cases where the accused is innocent.
A 1/4w resistor is virtually free and virtually indestructible. As long as I can remember, my father, a red seal instrument mechanic, has used this simple device in series with an LED when he wants a voltage indicator on an extension cord. It limits current to the levels required, and works great. A vacuum tube sounds like a horribly large, horribly expensive solution to a problem which can be solved with a basic electronic component. Everyone wants to stick a 5 dollar part on their 1 dollar LED. It's ridiculous.
As for the rest, the problem isn't that the electricity manufacturing capacity is lowered as much as the energy requirements of industry are so massively subsidized by fossil fuels. Ammonia production is a key industry because humanity requires nitrogen fertilizer to continue to feed itself. To replace the natural gas feedstock with electrolysis would take virtually all the renewable electricity generation on the planet(non-nuclear). There are a huge number of industries like this, hidden but relying on fossil fuels to keep energy inputs from being insanely high. The other two I chose for my little case study were Portland cement which requires massive amounts of natural gas, coal, or fuel oil to heat the lime rock to the proper temperature, and steel smelting, which also requires large amounts of natural gas or fuel oil or coal.
Ignorance isn't genetic. It's easily solved. It just takes the understanding that you don't understand everything, so if you're interested, read up.
Sorry, in Gibbs v. The United States, the Supreme Court ruled that the situation needs to meet a 6-point test in order for this rule to apply, because the state has an overriding interest in involving lawyers without making things more complicated.
Current law covers legislation from the federal, state, and local levels, but also common law, which is murky and requires knowledge of how common law has been applied in your jurisdiction.
This is abused sometimes. My last girlfriend tried to convince me that common law marriage starts after 3 months. Thankfully, I had already researched the matter thoroughly(Federal documents call common law 12 months, and provincial documents called it 12 months with children or 3 years without), but even after in-depth research, there's a question of whether there was a decision in some court somewhere that maybe did change the already unwritten law of common law marriage.
It beats being randomly blackmailed by the RIAA. They hate that they can't blackmail us.
I'm not the grandparent, but I do process control for a living, which requires me to understand industrial processes. It's always shocking to me how ignorant people on slashdot can be about basic industry. I'd give specific examples, but we're talking "Not even wrong" sort of wrongness.
One time, I was having a discussion about the environmental impact of cardboard manufacturing. This guy is sure that chlorine dioxide is a horrible side-effect of this industry. Cardboard is made out of unbleached kraft pulp, and thus no bleaching agents are used.
Another time, I showed that the amount of renewable and nuclear energy on the planet isn't enough to support even a few critical industries, let alone do so and heat our homes or transport the raw goods to where they need to go. Someone actually tried to tell me that the photo-voltaic cell industry will double every year for 40 years, so we'll soon have more than the entire world electricity generating capacity just in PV cells. That's what I call "Not even wrong".
Most slashdotters tend to have a poor understanding of electronics, as well. In a recent thread I explained a technique that's been used by tradesmen for decades to connect LEDs directly to a 120VAC source, and slashdotters came from far and wide to explain why the common practice was impossible and wouldn't work.
Given slashdotters don't even know how to bias an LED with a resistor, I wouldn't be even remotely surprised to find they don't know about CPU design.
If I ever meet someone who doesn't think they've got a better handle on what's going on than everyone else, I'll let you know.
PROTIP: Memorizing Latin phrases doesn't actually mean you didn't manage to completely miss the point of the post by quoting the example of his point, then reiterating the point he was trying to make.
AC was actually posting from Afghanistan. He's an Al Qaeda recruiter, and business is great thanks to Iraq!
I agree with you in abstract, but not with respect to MMOs.
Most MMOs I've tried are really just horribly boring job simulators. You get home from your real job, then you go kill slimes for 8 hours for crap pay and a remote chance at gaining a level.
My real life is more interesting than the MMOs I've tried. In-game, I'm a faceless sword killing nameless creatures for tiny rewards with the promise that after months or years of work I might someday become a L80 of my class. In real life, by contrast, when I do something, it has a real, lasting impact on the world. When I design a new control system, it affects the production capacity of the industrial plant, as well as how the plant is operated. Further, my skill increases.
By contrast, I've got a L11 Paladin Dwarf in WoW. Why do I care?
Most games don't make this mistake, so you CAN be a corporate giant or a king or a god. Then you CAN suspend reality and pretend you're something greater than you are.
I can't help but wonder how your attitude would be different if the Chinese were invading and it was your homeland you're fighting in.
Not rhetoric, I just wonder. I'm not a warrior, I don't know.
There's a world of difference between saying "The president is a chimp" and saying "The president is a chimp and we should kill him".
It doesn't matter if it's Obama or Bush. If you tried to incite people to kill the president, you'd be lucky if you simply disappeared.
I agree with this.
It's like you idiots believe in "The law of gravity", just because most people believe it doesn't mean it's true!
Sure, the person who finally proved the law of gravity wrong would have his or her name in this history books, but you CULTISTS in the CHURCH OF GRAVITY would just laugh them off the stage!
Sorry, maybe it's better to just call them lobbyists.
It's a common tactic of lobbyists to create controversy where there is little controversy, in order to suppress legislation they don't like.
So I guess that brings me to my next question: Whose side are you on?
I know, it's strange seeing someone trying to be the president of the whole country, instead of just the 30% who voted for him.
ZAP!
Yes, I liked it when the rapture happened following the fall of the Roman Empire at the hands of the almighty LORD.
What's that? Roman Empire became a powerful Christian empire and fell during that time, not in a time of firey retribution from God?
Oh, I guess this prophecy thing is more hit and miss.
Sorry, I stopped reading after the first paragraph.
Science works because it doesn't give a crap about who you are. A sensor doesn't turn around to see if you've got the proper certifications to see the numbers, or if your skin is the right colour to discover something this year, or if you're a slave or a citizen. Some of the most important discoveries made are by complete outsiders to their fields, such as Albert Einstein.
GTFO my science. Go be born into an elite caste of warrior priests or something.
You've stumbled into a fully fledged logical fallacy.
It's called the "No True Scotsman" fallacy.
Read up on it, and you'll realise that whatever the merits of your argument, you can't use this one to say that there's consensus on global warming.