Now, moving on to causality. You're right, of course, that correlation is insufficient to prove causation. It would be great to have a complete and accurate model Earth that we could run through its entire history, preventing the industrial revolution, and compare the resulting CO2 levels with real life ones. Failing that, we have to rely on a little reasoning.
We have, during the same time period: a) A rapid increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration b) Industrialization, and its concomitant increase in CO2 emissions In the absence of alternative explanations, it's reasonable to suppose that b) caused a). Of course it's not proof in a mathematical sense, but it's still the best explanation on offer. So, again: *do* you have a better explanation? Or even a reasonable one? Volcanoes? Then you need to show that there has been a sudden increase in volcanic activity, with respect to the past few hundred thousand years, over the same period as the CO2 concentration increase. Can you?
Are you with me so far? I haven't started on temperature or climate at all yet, I'm trying to do this one step at a time.
> As a side note, I think this is my favorite example of Correlation Does Not Imply Causation.
Um, that's supposed to be a joke. Did you notice the x axis scale on that? It's completely random; even if it were based on actual data that chart wouldn't show correlation, and therefore says nothing about the lack of relationship between correlation and causation (which I don't dispute, but anwyays. Getting a little pedantic here.)
> Besides, since you are so sure, riddle me this: we can calculate our CO2 output (it dwarfs natural emissions).
> Where do you get this stuff? Humanity is responsible for less than one tenth of one percent of the CO2 in our atmosphere. We are positively dwarfed by rotting vegetation, dead animals and the tundra. However, the vast bulk of atmospheric CO2 (~72%) is released from the ocean CO2 reservoir.
Human CO2 output doesn't "dwarf" natural emissions, but it is a major part of the total - roughly a third, cf: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4803460. stm Unless you can find another explanation, besides human activity, for atmospheric CO2 being "higher than we've been for over a million years, possibly 30 million years."
Come on, put some effort into this, the information is not that hard to find. If we can get past the basic facts, *then* we can argue correlation and causality with temperature and climate.
Yes, exactly: my first thought upon reading that quote was, "If that extra power is useless, then maybe they should've specced it down a bit so they didn't have to charge the same as a month's worth of food for a small third-world village."
Now the fact that the West uses apathy to control its population more than the Chinese who use fear more, doesn't mean we aren't being controlled.
I've read both 1984 and Brave New World, and I agree that of the two, Brave New World hits closest to home. But have you read Fahrenheit 451 lately? The book only briefly goes into the development of its consumerist dystopia, but it's intimated that it "just sort of happened" without any deliberate guidance from government or corporate elites.
Certainly the west, and especially North America, is concerned more with its shiny toys and food and sex than social or political issues; I'm with you that far. But is there, or has there really been a concerted effort to make it that way, as in BNW? It hasn't been discouraged very much at all, but I'm inclined to think that with increasing wealth and comfort comes laziness and apathy just by virtue of human nature. Preventing that is what would take a major effort by one or more of the predominating social forces.
The end result is the same, but I have trouble with the idea of a shadowy cabal deliberately arranging for everyone to become apathetic.
If someone rigs an election this site would in no way be culpable.
Of course it wouldn't. It's perfectly clear to anyone. But, unfortunately, that's completely irrelevant to whether they will be sued into oblivion. For goodness' sake, SunnComm threatened to sue the guy who figured out that holding down the shift key would disable their copy protection system.
I think that litigation, even if frivolous and idiotic, is still something that someone publicising potential election-hacking information needs to be very wary of. Hell, under the DMCA such a suit could even be successful.
Speaking as a Canadian whose spouse has both Colombian and Canadian citizenship, I can state with certainty that Canada does *not* require you to give up your old citizenship to become Canadian. 5 years of living in the country with resident status makes you eligible, and after that it's just the application, a few months' wait and a really easy test.
An interesting tidbit: Not that I'm trying to place blame here, but if Mr. Ebb had been really careful, he would've noticed an inconsistency in the defaced Wikipedia page: The correct term, "Català", had been replaced with "Polaco" (whatever that means). However, if you look at the "in other languages" box at the left hand side, you'll notice that the cross-reference to the catalan Wikipedia site still points to the correct term, "Català".
From what I've seen, Wikipedia vandalism is almost always very blatant. And even in more subtle cases like this one, you can find evidence of the defacement even when you don't know much about the subject matter to begin with.
Unfortunately, when consulting Wikipedia you *have* to be alert and watch for this sort of thing. That doesn't make it any less of an invaluable resource however. Plus, as others have pointed out, it's generally a mistake to rely on any single source exclusively... although I'll admit that in the case of a quick lookup for a translation like this one, it's hard to sustain that kind of diligence.
I sure hope what you're describing is completely different from the procedure that would be necessary to determine if the data in the stolen laptop was compromised.
Or are you saying that professional forensics workers assume that hard discs can only be mounted by the installed OS, and therefore *any* access can be traced by the files' atimes?
Can't get on the net?
That's a paddlin'.
Can't load any program?
That's a paddlin'.
Interfering with the antivirus?
That's a paddlin'.
Not having antivirus/firewall/updates?
Oh you'd better *believe* that's a paddlin'.
</jasper>
After meeting with senior administration officials to hear their concerns, the newspaper delayed publication for a year to conduct additional reporting
Oh crap, I want a firmer number here. Did they wait exactly a year? Was it a roughly a year? Was it maybe a bit more than a year? Was the article originally going to be printed before election day 2004?
I think if every game featured only guys in very tight suits or loin cloths such that you could always see the carefully animated wobbles of his apparently massive penis, and many of the characters moves and animations were such as to emphasise that in a particularly sexual way, along with a number of patently sexualised animations (think a whole lot of deliberate hip grinding, crotch grabbing and such like)
Since none of the other helpful respondants have actually given you the answer to this: The word has several meanings in spanish. It's based on "pared" (wall). It means a particularly thick or sturdy wall, perhaps one designed that way as a defensive structure, and can refer more specifically to such a wall left standing in the middle of ruins.
The context of the original post, however, clearly points to one specific meaning: It's the wall against which stand the people who are condemned to death by firing squad, or the act of execution by firing squad itself.
You're correct that native Linux support for WiFi NICs is limited, but fortunately, you don't need native support if the laptop is ix86. ndiswrapper will allow your Linux kernel to use a Windows driver for virtually any NIC you care to name. I use it myself for a card with a Broadcom chipset, works like a charm.
And worse, everyone is starting to blindly believe that second hand smoke causes a significant increase in cancer. (Which it hasn't been proven to do; the one source we had that gave such a strong opinion was thrown out by a federal court because they used evidentiary selection,
The judge who in 1998 vacated most of the EPA study was William Osteen, who had previously worked as a tobacco industry lobbyist. He received criticism for not recusing himself from the case. Furthermore, he was overturned in 2002 by a court of appeals, although that was because his decision was deemed inapplicable given the type of report the EPA produced -- the court of appeals did not comment on his bias or the validity of his assessment of the EPA's study.
In any case, only the parts of the EPA report dealing with cancer were vacated in the first place -- final two sections, which examined the effect of secondhand smoke on other lung diseases such as acute respiratory illness, asthma and other problems like sudden infant death syndrome, were left to stand by judge Osteen.
and the other source that hasn't been thrown out presents a weak argument: showing 0 (zero) correlation between childhood exposure and lung cancer, and a statistically insignificant increase for adults. From 10 in a million, to 12.5 in a million... Let's all run out, stamp out those cigarettes and save those 744 people a year!!!
I assume you're referring to the 1998 report published by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (part of the World Health Organisation). The "statistically insignificant" increase of risk you mention is in fact 16%-17%, despite the phrasing you chose to make it sound meaningless. The problem with the study was not the results, which were consistent with most of the research on the topic, but the small sample size which made it uncertain how representative it was of the general situation. You are correct that it detected no increase in cancer risk due to childhood exposure, however.
*** atnnn (atnnn@hv-hs-37-38.aei.ca) has joined #winprog
<atnnn> hi
<atnnn> what is the code for "+" on WM_KEYDOWN
<Wy4tt> VK_RTM
<atnnn> and minus?
<Wy4tt> VK_RTFM
<atnnn> i can't find it
The issue is not merely what the game allows, but rather what the game rewards. Although I haven't played either game in question, it seems pretty clear that you can't get very far by being nice to everybody. By allowing you to progress only through violent behaviour, it's pretty clear what the game is encouraging.
The argument that "the game is what you make it" really only applies in extremely open-ended games -- Civilisation and Alpha Centauri come to mind, which can be played equally well by being either diplomatic or brutally violent -- especially Alpha Centauri, which involves weapons and enhancements such as nerve gas, "punishment domes" and my personal favourite, "nerve stapling" your own citizens... (I say personal favourite because although I never use it, it's very telling to see if your opponents -- or allies -- will)
Finally, let me clarify that I'm not advocating censorship or banning violent games. However, I do think the ratings system is necessary to help out non-geek parents. It doesn't fix everything, obviously, but if you can't be bothered to at least pay attention to the box there's not much that'll help you anyways.
Yeah, I know, I was wondering if someone was going to point that out. But then, it was a grammar flame, who the hell cares if it was *that* closely relevant?
Slashdot Mirror
I was going to make a joke but I need to chase some kids off my lawn.
Surely though, that's due to preloaded crapplets rather than the OS itself?
In what jurisdiction are district attorneys/crown attorneys/prosecutors/etc. referred to as "persecutors"?
That's a *much* more palatable explanation than what I thought "sockets" was a euphemism for.
> this is the freshman philosophy class teaching the phrase "correlation does not imply causation."
h ange/images/carbon_dioxide.jpg , from http://www.seed.slb.com/en/scictr/watch/climate_ch ange/greenhouse.htm) could reasonably be called a "spike".
Baby steps, stonecypher, baby steps. Your original comment stated:
> That's funny, none of the scientists see said spike. Perhaps you would be so kind as to tell me what year(s) this spike is over [...]
Now you say:
> All you have discovered is that CO2 is going up. That it happened while we were in the industrial growth phase does not mean that we created it.
We're making progress, you've recognized that CO2 levels are in fact rising past pre-industrial levels. Great. I'd also say that a >20% increase in 200 years, past the highest *peak*, not average, in the past few hundred thousand years (NOAA data, see http://www.seed.slb.com/en/scictr/watch/climate_c
Now, moving on to causality. You're right, of course, that correlation is insufficient to prove causation. It would be great to have a complete and accurate model Earth that we could run through its entire history, preventing the industrial revolution, and compare the resulting CO2 levels with real life ones. Failing that, we have to rely on a little reasoning.
We have, during the same time period:
a) A rapid increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration
b) Industrialization, and its concomitant increase in CO2 emissions
In the absence of alternative explanations, it's reasonable to suppose that b) caused a). Of course it's not proof in a mathematical sense, but it's still the best explanation on offer. So, again: *do* you have a better explanation? Or even a reasonable one? Volcanoes? Then you need to show that there has been a sudden increase in volcanic activity, with respect to the past few hundred thousand years, over the same period as the CO2 concentration increase. Can you?
Are you with me so far? I haven't started on temperature or climate at all yet, I'm trying to do this one step at a time.
> As a side note, I think this is my favorite example of Correlation Does Not Imply Causation.
Um, that's supposed to be a joke. Did you notice the x axis scale on that? It's completely random; even if it were based on actual data that chart wouldn't show correlation, and therefore says nothing about the lack of relationship between correlation and causation (which I don't dispute, but anwyays. Getting a little pedantic here.)
> Besides, since you are so sure, riddle me this: we can calculate our CO2 output (it dwarfs natural emissions).
. stm
> Where do you get this stuff? Humanity is responsible for less than one tenth of one percent of the CO2 in our atmosphere. We are positively dwarfed by rotting vegetation, dead animals and the tundra. However, the vast bulk of atmospheric CO2 (~72%) is released from the ocean CO2 reservoir.
Human CO2 output doesn't "dwarf" natural emissions, but it is a major part of the total - roughly a third, cf: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4803460
Unless you can find another explanation, besides human activity, for atmospheric CO2 being "higher than we've been for over a million years, possibly 30 million years."
Come on, put some effort into this, the information is not that hard to find. If we can get past the basic facts, *then* we can argue correlation and causality with temperature and climate.
I'm not supposed to tell you this, but the poppy coins were just a decoy. The real tracking devices are embedded in these:
K N0328796820070503
http://uk.reuters.com/article/oddlyEnoughNews/idU
We're still working on the miniaturization issue.
Yes, exactly: my first thought upon reading that quote was, "If that extra power is useless, then maybe they should've specced it down a bit so they didn't have to charge the same as a month's worth of food for a small third-world village."
How deep a grave does Sony want to dig, exactly?
Now the fact that the West uses apathy to control its population more than the Chinese who use fear more, doesn't mean we aren't being controlled.
I've read both 1984 and Brave New World, and I agree that of the two, Brave New World hits closest to home. But have you read Fahrenheit 451 lately? The book only briefly goes into the development of its consumerist dystopia, but it's intimated that it "just sort of happened" without any deliberate guidance from government or corporate elites.
Certainly the west, and especially North America, is concerned more with its shiny toys and food and sex than social or political issues; I'm with you that far. But is there, or has there really been a concerted effort to make it that way, as in BNW? It hasn't been discouraged very much at all, but I'm inclined to think that with increasing wealth and comfort comes laziness and apathy just by virtue of human nature. Preventing that is what would take a major effort by one or more of the predominating social forces.
The end result is the same, but I have trouble with the idea of a shadowy cabal deliberately arranging for everyone to become apathetic.
If someone rigs an election this site would in no way be culpable.
Of course it wouldn't. It's perfectly clear to anyone. But, unfortunately, that's completely irrelevant to whether they will be sued into oblivion. For goodness' sake, SunnComm threatened to sue the guy who figured out that holding down the shift key would disable their copy protection system.
I think that litigation, even if frivolous and idiotic, is still something that someone publicising potential election-hacking information needs to be very wary of. Hell, under the DMCA such a suit could even be successful.
Speaking as a Canadian whose spouse has both Colombian and Canadian citizenship, I can state with certainty that Canada does *not* require you to give up your old citizenship to become Canadian. 5 years of living in the country with resident status makes you eligible, and after that it's just the application, a few months' wait and a really easy test.
An interesting tidbit: Not that I'm trying to place blame here, but if Mr. Ebb had been really careful, he would've noticed an inconsistency in the defaced Wikipedia page: The correct term, "Català", had been replaced with "Polaco" (whatever that means). However, if you look at the "in other languages" box at the left hand side, you'll notice that the cross-reference to the catalan Wikipedia site still points to the correct term, "Català".
From what I've seen, Wikipedia vandalism is almost always very blatant. And even in more subtle cases like this one, you can find evidence of the defacement even when you don't know much about the subject matter to begin with.
Unfortunately, when consulting Wikipedia you *have* to be alert and watch for this sort of thing. That doesn't make it any less of an invaluable resource however. Plus, as others have pointed out, it's generally a mistake to rely on any single source exclusively... although I'll admit that in the case of a quick lookup for a translation like this one, it's hard to sustain that kind of diligence.
My personal favourite, on the same page, is the guy who thought using pow() was a good way to do bitshifts.
I sure hope what you're describing is completely different from the procedure that would be necessary to determine if the data in the stolen laptop was compromised.
Or are you saying that professional forensics workers assume that hard discs can only be mounted by the installed OS, and therefore *any* access can be traced by the files' atimes?
If so, AIEEEEEE!
Can't get on the net?
That's a paddlin'.
Can't load any program?
That's a paddlin'.
Interfering with the antivirus?
That's a paddlin'.
Not having antivirus/firewall/updates?
Oh you'd better *believe* that's a paddlin'.
</jasper>
Oh crap, I want a firmer number here. Did they wait exactly a year? Was it a roughly a year? Was it maybe a bit more than a year? Was the article originally going to be printed before election day 2004?
Coming right up!
Since none of the other helpful respondants have actually given you the answer to this: The word has several meanings in spanish. It's based on "pared" (wall). It means a particularly thick or sturdy wall, perhaps one designed that way as a defensive structure, and can refer more specifically to such a wall left standing in the middle of ruins.
The context of the original post, however, clearly points to one specific meaning: It's the wall against which stand the people who are condemned to death by firing squad, or the act of execution by firing squad itself.
reference here
You're correct that native Linux support for WiFi NICs is limited, but fortunately, you don't need native support if the laptop is ix86. ndiswrapper will allow your Linux kernel to use a Windows driver for virtually any NIC you care to name. I use it myself for a card with a Broadcom chipset, works like a charm.
For your consideration:
And worse, everyone is starting to blindly believe that second hand smoke causes a significant increase in cancer. (Which it hasn't been proven to do; the one source we had that gave such a strong opinion was thrown out by a federal court because they used evidentiary selection,
The judge who in 1998 vacated most of the EPA study was William Osteen, who had previously worked as a tobacco industry lobbyist. He received criticism for not recusing himself from the case. Furthermore, he was overturned in 2002 by a court of appeals, although that was because his decision was deemed inapplicable given the type of report the EPA produced -- the court of appeals did not comment on his bias or the validity of his assessment of the EPA's study.
In any case, only the parts of the EPA report dealing with cancer were vacated in the first place -- final two sections, which examined the effect of secondhand smoke on other lung diseases such as acute respiratory illness, asthma and other problems like sudden infant death syndrome, were left to stand by judge Osteen.
and the other source that hasn't been thrown out presents a weak argument: showing 0 (zero) correlation between childhood exposure and lung cancer, and a statistically insignificant increase for adults. From 10 in a million, to 12.5 in a million... Let's all run out, stamp out those cigarettes and save those 744 people a year!!!
I assume you're referring to the 1998 report published by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (part of the World Health Organisation). The "statistically insignificant" increase of risk you mention is in fact 16%-17%, despite the phrasing you chose to make it sound meaningless. The problem with the study was not the results, which were consistent with most of the research on the topic, but the small sample size which made it uncertain how representative it was of the general situation. You are correct that it detected no increase in cancer risk due to childhood exposure, however.
Wikipedia concurs. Too good to be true, really.
http://bash.org/?2121
*** atnnn (atnnn@hv-hs-37-38.aei.ca) has joined #winprog
<atnnn> hi
<atnnn> what is the code for "+" on WM_KEYDOWN
<Wy4tt> VK_RTM
<atnnn> and minus?
<Wy4tt> VK_RTFM
<atnnn> i can't find it
The issue is not merely what the game allows, but rather what the game rewards. Although I haven't played either game in question, it seems pretty clear that you can't get very far by being nice to everybody. By allowing you to progress only through violent behaviour, it's pretty clear what the game is encouraging.
The argument that "the game is what you make it" really only applies in extremely open-ended games -- Civilisation and Alpha Centauri come to mind, which can be played equally well by being either diplomatic or brutally violent -- especially Alpha Centauri, which involves weapons and enhancements such as nerve gas, "punishment domes" and my personal favourite, "nerve stapling" your own citizens... (I say personal favourite because although I never use it, it's very telling to see if your opponents -- or allies -- will)
Finally, let me clarify that I'm not advocating censorship or banning violent games. However, I do think the ratings system is necessary to help out non-geek parents. It doesn't fix everything, obviously, but if you can't be bothered to at least pay attention to the box there's not much that'll help you anyways.
Yeah, I know, I was wondering if someone was going to point that out. But then, it was a grammar flame, who the hell cares if it was *that* closely relevant?