The greatest greenhouse gas in the Earth's atmosphere is water.
True.
Water vapor accounts for something around 95% of the greenhouse effect.
Not according to any credible science sources I've ever seen.
The other guy replying to my post linked a website with that figure. I checked the site's citations backing up their claimed figures. The first of their sources that I looked up turned out to be an already discredited denialist of the old CFC-ozone issue, he was also paid big bucks by a fossil fuel electric power industry association, and he's apparently been making his living literally selling pop global warming denialism for the last decade. The second source of theirs that I looked up was a guy apparently most notable for his novel theory on the sinking of the USS Titanic, he's a material scientist with a specialty in combustion, and in particular an expert on how to burn coal better. Then a third source to back up their figures turned out to be a dead link. Then a fourth source they were citing to back up their figures was literally a work of fiction. They were literally citing a fiction story to back up their claim that water constitutes 95% of the greenhouse gas effect.
Two sources with all the credibility of a tobacco industry scientist claiming tobacco doesn't cause lung cancer, one dead link source, and a source that was literally a fiction story at a satire website. And for ironic bonus, the fiction article they cited was a satire piece ridiculing global warming denialists opposing CO2 regulation.
It took me less than two minutes to randomly grab and Google the first source and confirm that the source (and the website) was crackpot. I checked the extra sources I mentioned above just for the amusement factor of more thoroughly debunking the 95% claim and debunking the site.
I'm sure you saw that 95% figure somewhere, but please take a moment to check the credibility of the source.
the Earth has warmed but now seems to be cooling for the last decade
I hesitate to even call that claim junk science, it is just junk. It came from gross abuse statistical-nature data and cherry picking data points to manufacture a cooling claim.
Imagine you're on a beach, and "Rising Tide Theory" says that the tide is slowly rising over the next few hours (slow global warming). So you're on the shore measuring the water level and there are random waves and boats passing by and swimmers splashing on the beach (the day-to-day and even year-to-year temperature has random fluctuations). To check Rising Tide Theory you need to ignore the waves and splashing noise in your water level measurements. There are long established statistical methods for averaging out that sort of random noise and looking for the actual trend in average water level.
So what happens is you're on the beach measuring the water level, and a rare freakishly big wave crashes on the shore and during that minute you get a really high reading for the water level. Some people then look at the sudden increase in measured water level during that minute and shout that it is proof of the Rising Tide Theory, the water level went up. But then a bunch of scientists say No, it was just a random big wave and it had nothing to do with Rising Tide, and they say you cannot make valid claims about Tide Theory by pointing to that particular minute's reading. Then naturally that freak wave goes away and you the usual splashing of the water going up and down. Then ten minutes after the big wave you have a random low point between waves, and someone points to it and says the water level has gone down.
By pointing to the TOP of a random high point and then pointing to the BOTTOM of a random low point several minutes later, one can cherry pick those two points to draw a completely fictional downwards graph for the water level over the last ten minutes, even when the tide is in fact slowly rising.
That's exactly what happened. The year 1998 was a freakishly hot yea
In my first post I made multiple mentions of the RATE of change, and the sentence with "unprecedented" in it read "The real issue here is that we are facing a rate of climate change unprecedented in the earth's history". In my second post I again made multiple mention of the RATE of change. I again used the word "unprecedented" in the sentence "As I explained in my post the problem today is the absolutely unprecedented rate of change", where I was explicitly correcting you for missing it the first time. That distinction moots or in effect refutes most of your points.
Between that and the fact that you didn't even care that you're citing a crackpot website with bogus data based on crackpot citations, I'm not sure there's any point in continuing here.
You did not even appear to grasp the significance of the satire citation - the significance was that your website was literally citing a work of fiction as source for their "scientific data". Does that even register in your mind? Do you even grasp the staggering sub-zero credibility level of someone citing a work of fiction for (supposedly) scientific data?
In fact I started a reply to much of the rest of your post, but I decided it was worse than pointless to post it. I don't want all the other scattershot junk to distract from those two fundamental problems. They don't even have anything to do with Global Warming. I think they demonstrate a fundamental failure to engage in reasonable rational debate, and the futility of even trying to reach agreeable resolution on the most trivial point of argument.
My earlier post, the one you were replying to, it was a joke. I'm not sure if you caught it, and I'm not sure I'm understanding your post correctly. It's possible there are multiple levels of misunderstanding here.
Say that's a nice iphone you have there. I need it, you know, for the "public good".
I'm uncertain, but it sounds like you're presenting the generic anti-tax argument, it sounds like the argument that taxes are stealing people's iPhones to pay "opublic good" police officers. I know there are Libertarian extremists that use that argument and want to eliminate all public fire departments and eliminate all public police and eliminate all public parks and eliminate all public roads and eliminate all public schools and more, but I don't follow how it connects to my last post.
As I said I could be misreading your post, and you may have misread my post, and I have no idea what is going on.
Notice how the figures are all nice round numbers. No-one making up results does that
Yep, I work as a programmer at Diebold preparing for the 2012 election. We decided to go with a 100,000,000 vs 10,000,000 final total. We call it the Babblefish argument, and all charges of election fraud vanish in a puff of logic.
This was not a "coup" by the lawful government, but rather the lawful government thwarting a coup by the president
You know what this is seriously starting to sound like?
I'm picturing it taking place in hell. On one side you have Satan trying to do a coup over hell with the aid of Saddam, and Satan's demonic minions are running some sort of counter-coup to overthrow Satan. The demonic minions cast Satan into exile in South Park. The kids are running around trying to figure out which of the two coups they are supposed to be supporting. Jesus comes down to help the kids sort out hell's constitution, but heaven doesn't have any lawyers who can figure out what the hell hell's constitution says. And while the other kids are trying to figure out which side to support, Cartman (backed by his new buddy-in-hell, Hitler) round up all of hell's lawyers and runs his own double coup against both Satan and Satan's minions.
What is "yours" is only what is "yours" by government protection and social contract. There is nothing which says my TV is mine. It has no intrinsic ownership beyond what I can defend.
Right, except copyright. Copyright is intellectual property, it has the word 'property' right there in the name because it is property. You intellected it and you own it. Anyone who infringes it is still a thief because they stole your property from you.
Caution: This post produced in a facility that also processes nuts, and like, other stuff.
The moon-hoax thing and flat-earthism are indeed repeatedly raised in endless gag posts, but only because it is such desperately needed comic relief from the fact of the all-too-common all-too-relevant creationists, holocaust deniers, global warming deniers.
While holocaust denialism is almost as irrelevant as moon-hoaxists here within the US, I would hardly call the President of Iran insignificant.
As far as global warming denialists, I would hardly consider a sizable minority of the population and a fair chunk of congress to be insignificant.
As far as creationism, I would hardly consider nearly half the population and a chunk of congress and many state board of education officials and countless principals and teachers and three of the candidates for the Republican nomination to president in the last election, to be insignificant.
So yes, people will continue to make flat earth and moon landing comments, if only for desperately needed comic relief from sick sad reality.
So in conclusion, on this story and the photos, I have to say it's good we can now put all the speculation to rest. We now no longer have to wonder if some Nixon plot faked moon landings or if NASA is part of some huge ongoing conspiracy to manufacture evidence. With these photos we finally have proof it's the latter.
You're being deliberately facetious, because it's not a third party country
No, I'm not. While I'm not aware of China trying to use copyright in relation to Tiananmen Square, there's no reason they couldn't. China could certainly pass a law asserting government ownership of the copyright in any and all photo of Tiananmen Square, just as the UK law (might) assert copyright in photos of public domain images and lacking meaningful novel creative expression, just as the US did retroactively extend copyright to some works.
In each and every case the images can be either public domain, or fair use, or copyrightholder-authorized in one country and infringement in another country.
Seriously, if some Chinese refugee came to you in your country with photos of Tiananmen Square, and under the laws of your country he is the copyrightholder and he authorities you to post the, and you put those pictures on a website, are you SERIOUSLY going to tell me that you would consider it legitimate if someone in China accused you of copyright infringement?
And let me adjust that with a second example. Lets say it's the same situation and your friend is the copyright holder on those images, and those images are on some official Chinese website for whatever reason, and you browse to that website, and they willingly transmit/distribute that webpage to you along with that image, and that image gets automatically saved in your browser cache, all completely legal both under Chinese law and under your local copyright law, and you take that absolutely legal copy of the image you have, and with the permission of the copyright holder you then post that image on Wikipedia.
Are you SERIOUSLY going to tell me that you would then defend infringement claims against you from China as being legitimate?
Sure you can taunt and mock some eastern nation and it is unlikely to ever impact your life even if judgment does go against you... If that's your reasoned legal advice, I'm glad I'm not your lawyer.
If I were your lawyer, I was say as I said before that it seriously sucks for you that you are being threatened by anyone, regardless of the legitimacy of those threats. I would tell you that these claims against you are questionable even within the foreign country, I would tell you that the charges against you are completely fraudulent in your home country. I would tell you that the demands the museum is making against you are not only unreasonable, not only completely absurd, but that it is legally and physically impossible for you to comply with the demands being made by this intimidation letter. It's not even a question of whether or not you want to submit to their fraudulent claims and intimidation tactics, you are literally incapable of complying with their legally-fraudulent demands. I would tell you that it is impossible for you to comply, you can quite possible screw you if you travel to the foreign country, and they might even be able to abusively attempt to fuck with you in your home country. And I would advise you to ass for big-guns legal support from the EFF, that they love defending INNOCENT people like you from legally fraudulent claims and intimidation letters like this. And as it turned out, the EFF did jump in offering free support to defend this guy from this abusive letter and the threat of any abusive action against him.
As I said, being threatened by some bigger-bully is always a bad thing for you, no matter how legally groundless or abusive such threats or legal action may be. As your lawyer I would tell you that their claims are a crock of shit, but that you need to be damn careful anyway because ANYONE with a large legal staff can cause problems for you, even though you did absolutely nothing wrong. The risks against you are mostly financial costs if you are forced to defend your innocence, the chance of you facing any legal judgment against you at home are remote so long as you can actually afford to defend yourself, or some knight in shining armor jumps
Those people will not buy anything when you lock them up or sue their pants off. Either way they can't buy anything from you.
You don't get it. You just want to steal our stuff. These people are thieves, they're stealing our stuff and we're losing money. You have to put thieves in prison where they can't steal any more stuff and so they can't keep stealing our money from us. You're just another thief, and you're funding bin Laden and Hamas and other terrorists when you steal our music. Not only that, but P2P is filled with kiddyporn. You're a pedophile. By the way Britteny Spears is getting a bit old now, so we're re-releasing her debut album in a combo pack with Miley Cyrus.
More agreement than quibble, but generic meat-brains or other custom hardware would be a patentable-object invention, while particular people would be software process patents and running the process of "thinking" to activate a generic mind to "run" a general minds would be a software process patent.
I'm not sure whether or not there's anything to argue there.
The Supreme Court has ruled that algorithms cannot be patented, that any possible algorithm must be treated as familiar prior art for patent purposes. Some people argue that software is not algorithm, or not just algorithm, and is patentable.
If you agree that all software is nothing but algorithm, that software is merely a fancy way of writing a math calculation or math algorithm, that software is not a patentable invention and running software on a plain computer is not a patentable invention under that Supreme Court criteria, then I don't think there's really any quibble or significance in math-theory. Math does not cease to be math just because it's long or complex or difficult.
The pure math argument against all software patents is intillectually dishonest
You are right, they are wrong, what they are saying makes no sense to you and you don't understand it, therefore they are lying.
little more than "information longs to be free" nonsense.
Ah yes, you're a pinko commie atheist. There! Not only have I proved you're wrong and stupid, but I've proved you're evil too!
it certainly takes effort to produce.
A novel takes effort to produce. If you think a novel is patentable, you are wrong. Period. If you think a novel is patentable, then you clearly don't know anything about the law.
ANY patent is nothing more than a design or an idea put on paper.
Not all designs are patentable. Not all ideas are ideas for patentable inventions.
It is not the physical device you patent, but the design of the device. blah blah blah blah blah blahblah
Pointless yammering about devices. There's no argument here about device patents.
You apparently have never read the patent law, you apparently haven't read any of the Supreme Court rulings (or any other rulings) on patent law, and you appear to have no grasp of the actual issue that some people are attempting to have a reasoned informed debate over. Here's a hint: it's not about device patents.
I'll give you another small hint: it's about process patents.
Software should not be exempt from this
The US Supreme Court has explicitly ruled that algorithms are exempt, and MUST be exempt under the US constitution.
If you disagree with the US Constitution, then I guess you should be arguing to change the Constitution.
If you disagree with the Supreme Court's interpretation and reasoning, well you can certainly argue that. I happen to agree with what they said on that point, but I might be interested in listening to your counter argument to the Supreme Court if you have a informed and well reasoned argument against the Supreme Court ruling.
The argument some people are engaging in is whether or not software is algorithm. All (or effectively all) mathematicians with any involvement in software state that software is algorithm, and that software is a field of math. Most programmer in general, and nearly all programmers who have studied the theory behind software or have studied software in relation to math, agree that software is algorithm and that it is a field of math.
The people who are relatively well informed about patent law and arguing that software is patentable, arguing that software is not a field of math, arguing that software is not algorithm, they are generally not "lying". They are generally sincere in their position and argument. The lower courts and patent lawyers who have taken that position are generally well informed about the law but the generally have little or no grasp of software, they generally little or no grasp of higher math theory and its relationship to software. And because of that misunderstanding they at times come to incorrect conclusions when attempting to apply patent law to software.
We need incentives to produce good software
Are you suggesting that copyright does not, or should not, exist? Or suggesting that copyright does not, or should not, apply to software?
If you are denying the existence or legitimacy of copyright, or denying the existence or legitimacy of copyright on software, that would be a pretty radical position.
However, because software is essentially just math for a specific purpose, the only thing really patentable is the method or structure of the math.
Ah good. You are confirming the legal statement that software is not patentable under current law. You are confirming that software is not patentable short of overturning standing Supreme Court law or amending the Constitution.
There definitely is a challenging gray area between what is legitimately a patentable invention, and what is not. It is definitely possible to zoom in on the boundary of any definition and find challenging cases. However I'd say that difficult line and those difficult cases are no where near where the US patent office has been trying to put it.
The Supreme Court rulings give some pretty good guidance. You have to look at the claimed invention, you have to look at what "new discovery" is being claimed, you have to look at what is actually being disclosed in that claim.
If the "new invention" is being disclosed is a some "new" number or "new" calculation or a "new" math algorithm, then that is not a patentable invention. The number or calculation or algorithm is treated as old familiar prior art.
Let me illustrate what I think it means and how I think it should work. Consider a transistor. If you try to consider the electricity coming in as "information" or "a number", the the "math" that a transistor is amplification, it basically preforms a multiplication. So now someone submits a patent application on the transistor. If you attempt to read it as a prohibited math patent, then what the patent would be disclosing is multiplication, period. Well, we already know multiplication, and if the patent were "merely disclosing multiplication", that would not actually enable you to build a transistor. The patent *does* disclose something more than math, it disclosed a useful physical device. The fact that the disclosed device was useful for preforming math does not prevent it from being an invention. You can invent and patent calculators and computers. And you can invent and patent the general device FPGA.
On the other hand lets say you have some interesting "new" equation, some "new" math algorithm, some "new" software, and you simply load that into an FPGA. Well the "new" think is just math. If you disclose the math, then anyone can trivially load that math into an FPGA, or they can trivially do an automated conversion into a transistor-circuit to do that calculation and burn it into a microchip. The only creative "invention" disclosed is that you came up with some cool new math, and we have already invented devices like FPGAs who's exact purpose and value as an invention is that they can and do carry out any and all possible math you throw at them.
And based on that, I would say that taking that non-patentable algorithm and permanently burning it into an FPGA does not constitute a patentable invention. Or taking that algorithm and systematically translating it into transistor array or other circuit layout would not constitute an invention.
I will certainly agree that reasoning can be pushed to challenging cases where it is challenging to draw the line. I will even grant that it leads to a result that in some cases an identical patent application might be patentable in the 1950's and not patentable today, even if the thing being disclosed was just as novel today. The reason for that being that in the 1950's the state of the art was different, and we were discovering new ways to arrange transistors as physical objects to a achieve physical effects like creating the electrical oscillations to sweep the electron beam in a television. Today the state of the art is entirely different. Finding some way to connect transistors to crate a novel unexpected effect would still be patentable. However that is rarely the case today, today we generally use transistors as information processing elements and calculating elements. The state of the art is that we typically treat electrical signals as information. The state of the art is that we know how to translate essentially any equation/calculation/math_algorithm into a sequence of transistors preforming that calculation. The state of the art is such that there is absolutely nothing novel or unexpected in that. All numbers, all equations, all algorithms are considered to be a familiar part of prior art, and you cannot obtain a patent fo
This temperature change has actually happened cyclically and we have data.
No, *this* change has not happened cyclically. As I explained in my post the problem today is the absolutely unprecedented rate of change.
This smashes the concept that humans were responsible for this cycle or the ones before.
That is two entirely separate claims.
No one claims humans caused the previous climate shifts.
Nor does it refute the fact that humans are causing an unprecedented shift today.
The graph does not smash either of the things you claim it "smashes".
Look at the timescale on the graph you posted. Note that it is numbered in fifty-thousand-year increments. The rate of change in this shift is multiple degrees within a fraction of a single pixel on that graph. By my math, todays rate of change would be somewhere between 7 and 15 degrees-per-pixel rate on that graph.
Don't mix up cause with correlation.
And don't mix up correlation with cause.
Especially when the "correlation" isn't even close.
If someone claims there is a tsunami and you measure the sea level rising on the beach at a rate of many feet per minute, it would be absolutely insane to point to a graph of tide-history showing a cycle of water rise and fall of a few feet per twelve hours. You can't point to an orders-of-magnitude-mismatch "correlation" between a many-feet-per-minute increase in sea level and a few-feet-per-12-hours tide, and then conclude the CAUSE of the current sea level change is natural tides. You are mixing up a (false) correlation with a cause.
And it becomes even more absurd to point to historical tides when you do in fact know the current cause, if you recorded an earthquake at sea with a rise or drop in the seafloor and basic physics says it will cause a tsunami. When you dump global-scale quantities of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere then basic physics states that it will trap infrared radiation - it will trap heat. You know for a fact that the cause exists.
I have a question. Do you care if a source is reliable? Or are you happy to grab any old source so long as it supports the side you want?
The figures on that site conflict with accepted science, so I decided ok lets give them the benefit of the doubt take a look at how they are backing up their numbers. I clicked on one of their references and looked it up. The very first thing I checked them on, it took me less than two minutes to discover that the source they were citing - Patrick Michaels - is an already established crackpot denialist and paid at least six-figures by a fossil-fuel based power industry association. This guy was a denialist on the chlorofluorocarbon-ozone issue up until 2001. It also appears he long ago abandoned any career as a scientist and took up writing pop denialism books.
If someone wants to argue that cigarettes don't cause lung cancer, it might help if they avoid citing people paid the tobacco industry and literally selling "cigarettes-don't-cause-cancer" as a profession.
But then I think.... ok that's just one source. So lets give them another chance. I completely randomly scroll down their source list and the second source I check is Robert Essenhigh. I try a Wikipedia search and apparently the most notable thing about his is that he came up with an alternate theory on the sinking of the Titanic.... ummmm..... ok. So I turn to Google and find, he's a mechanical engineer. I think huh? Mechanical engineer? Ok, I keep looking and he's a specialist in combustion, and then as if someone set this up as a joke with a punchline.... he's apparently a specialist in coal combustion. So the second source I looked up.... and I find his expertise and qualifications in climatology are that he's a
I'm not sure exactly what it is you are objecting to.
Maybe I phrased something badly somewhere, but the basic point is that chromosomes can and do fuse with no loss of genes. This can happen and has been proven to happen. Humans can and have fusion-evolved from 46 to 44 chromosomes, just as human DNA shows the fusion evidence of our evolution from 48 chromosome apes.
I'm not sure if the problem is at my end trying to read your post, or at your end writing an unclear post, but I'm finding it very difficult to follow what you're disagreeing with or why. I do think I can address at least one point though: even plagiarism can (at least sometimes) qualify under Fair Use. Also quoting can be infringement, for example if it is excessive.
Thanx for the complement, and for all your efforts. I'm "just a computer and tech geek", and I would have thought it insane if someone had come to me a couple of years ago and said to me I'd be developing anywhere near this level of amature expertise studying copyright law.
I think I may actually have gotten into an argument with you on copyright way way back when, and lets just say I had no idea what I was talking about at the time:) For what it's worth, you should consider one idiot-argument scratched off what I'm sure must be a long history of atrocious arguments you've faced on here:)
Any case where you think Copyright Law is being unconstitutional just means it doesn't actually apply, even if its text as written says it does, because Copyright Law can't possibly be unconstitutional, so it can't apply to something that would render it thus". Is that what you're saying Fair Use is?
You get a cookie.
Yes, your definition is pretty accurate. Chuckle.
amend the constitution to jive with the desirable copyright law:)
You might not want to be so casual with that smiley face. They are already hijacking the international treaty process to massively redefine the law as they wish, the Senate automatically passes most any treaty unless it would subject the US to the international war crimes court, and the Supreme Court is not so eager to strike down laws passed to fulfill international treaty obligations.
That's how we got the DMCA. They actually failed to get the law in the US so they invented a treaty for it, then came back and demanded the law be passed in compliance of the treaty. They bypassed the legislative process completely. There are no checks or democratic accountability to the treaty process. The process gets dominated by industry and a handful of unelected government bureaucrats.
Sometimes I think the best solution would be to (quietly) get a handful of people together with a handful of agreeable government officials from a couple of countries and manufacture our own "international treaty", and put on a good show presenting it to the Senate as such, and try to get the Senate ratification process completed before Industry realizes what's going on and they lobby it off the table.
Based on that, any DRM scheme which prevents fair use (especially if it is a simple anti-circumvention trap) would not be permissible.
The DMCA is a steaming pile of shit, but the devil's advocate answer there is that the DMCA explicitly does not alter Fair Use rights. It merely criminalizes some means of engaging in Fair use, and it merely criminalizes any product that assists in engaging in Fair Use in any reasonable manner.
For example the MPAA has repeatedly stated that teachers or anyone else wanting to engage in Fair Use in relation to encrypted DVDs should play the DVD on a standard DVD player and point a fucking video camera at the TV screen and use THAT as their Fair Use copy.
See? No one's Fair Use rights are being denied, LOL.
Slashdot Mirror
The greatest greenhouse gas in the Earth's atmosphere is water.
True.
Water vapor accounts for something around 95% of the greenhouse effect.
Not according to any credible science sources I've ever seen.
The other guy replying to my post linked a website with that figure. I checked the site's citations backing up their claimed figures. The first of their sources that I looked up turned out to be an already discredited denialist of the old CFC-ozone issue, he was also paid big bucks by a fossil fuel electric power industry association, and he's apparently been making his living literally selling pop global warming denialism for the last decade. The second source of theirs that I looked up was a guy apparently most notable for his novel theory on the sinking of the USS Titanic, he's a material scientist with a specialty in combustion, and in particular an expert on how to burn coal better. Then a third source to back up their figures turned out to be a dead link. Then a fourth source they were citing to back up their figures was literally a work of fiction. They were literally citing a fiction story to back up their claim that water constitutes 95% of the greenhouse gas effect.
Two sources with all the credibility of a tobacco industry scientist claiming tobacco doesn't cause lung cancer, one dead link source, and a source that was literally a fiction story at a satire website. And for ironic bonus, the fiction article they cited was a satire piece ridiculing global warming denialists opposing CO2 regulation.
It took me less than two minutes to randomly grab and Google the first source and confirm that the source (and the website) was crackpot. I checked the extra sources I mentioned above just for the amusement factor of more thoroughly debunking the 95% claim and debunking the site.
I'm sure you saw that 95% figure somewhere, but please take a moment to check the credibility of the source.
the Earth has warmed but now seems to be cooling for the last decade
I hesitate to even call that claim junk science, it is just junk. It came from gross abuse statistical-nature data and cherry picking data points to manufacture a cooling claim.
Imagine you're on a beach, and "Rising Tide Theory" says that the tide is slowly rising over the next few hours (slow global warming). So you're on the shore measuring the water level and there are random waves and boats passing by and swimmers splashing on the beach (the day-to-day and even year-to-year temperature has random fluctuations). To check Rising Tide Theory you need to ignore the waves and splashing noise in your water level measurements. There are long established statistical methods for averaging out that sort of random noise and looking for the actual trend in average water level.
So what happens is you're on the beach measuring the water level, and a rare freakishly big wave crashes on the shore and during that minute you get a really high reading for the water level. Some people then look at the sudden increase in measured water level during that minute and shout that it is proof of the Rising Tide Theory, the water level went up. But then a bunch of scientists say No, it was just a random big wave and it had nothing to do with Rising Tide, and they say you cannot make valid claims about Tide Theory by pointing to that particular minute's reading. Then naturally that freak wave goes away and you the usual splashing of the water going up and down. Then ten minutes after the big wave you have a random low point between waves, and someone points to it and says the water level has gone down.
By pointing to the TOP of a random high point and then pointing to the BOTTOM of a random low point several minutes later, one can cherry pick those two points to draw a completely fictional downwards graph for the water level over the last ten minutes, even when the tide is in fact slowly rising.
That's exactly what happened. The year 1998 was a freakishly hot yea
You assert that the change is unprecedented.
Jesus Jumping H. Christ. No. I. Did. Not.
In my first post I made multiple mentions of the RATE of change, and the sentence with "unprecedented" in it read "The real issue here is that we are facing a rate of climate change unprecedented in the earth's history". In my second post I again made multiple mention of the RATE of change. I again used the word "unprecedented" in the sentence "As I explained in my post the problem today is the absolutely unprecedented rate of change", where I was explicitly correcting you for missing it the first time. That distinction moots or in effect refutes most of your points.
Between that and the fact that you didn't even care that you're citing a crackpot website with bogus data based on crackpot citations, I'm not sure there's any point in continuing here.
You did not even appear to grasp the significance of the satire citation - the significance was that your website was literally citing a work of fiction as source for their "scientific data". Does that even register in your mind? Do you even grasp the staggering sub-zero credibility level of someone citing a work of fiction for (supposedly) scientific data?
In fact I started a reply to much of the rest of your post, but I decided it was worse than pointless to post it. I don't want all the other scattershot junk to distract from those two fundamental problems. They don't even have anything to do with Global Warming. I think they demonstrate a fundamental failure to engage in reasonable rational debate, and the futility of even trying to reach agreeable resolution on the most trivial point of argument.
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My earlier post, the one you were replying to, it was a joke. I'm not sure if you caught it, and I'm not sure I'm understanding your post correctly. It's possible there are multiple levels of misunderstanding here.
Say that's a nice iphone you have there. I need it, you know, for the "public good".
I'm uncertain, but it sounds like you're presenting the generic anti-tax argument, it sounds like the argument that taxes are stealing people's iPhones to pay "opublic good" police officers. I know there are Libertarian extremists that use that argument and want to eliminate all public fire departments and eliminate all public police and eliminate all public parks and eliminate all public roads and eliminate all public schools and more, but I don't follow how it connects to my last post.
As I said I could be misreading your post, and you may have misread my post, and I have no idea what is going on.
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Have you ever watched the typical person trying to use a computer?
I think computers have already been granted as much suffrage as they can handle.
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Notice how the figures are all nice round numbers. No-one making up results does that
Yep, I work as a programmer at Diebold preparing for the 2012 election.
We decided to go with a 100,000,000 vs 10,000,000 final total.
We call it the Babblefish argument, and all charges of election fraud vanish in a puff of logic.
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This was not a "coup" by the lawful government, but rather the lawful government thwarting a coup by the president
You know what this is seriously starting to sound like?
I'm picturing it taking place in hell. On one side you have Satan trying to do a coup over hell with the aid of Saddam, and Satan's demonic minions are running some sort of counter-coup to overthrow Satan. The demonic minions cast Satan into exile in South Park. The kids are running around trying to figure out which of the two coups they are supposed to be supporting. Jesus comes down to help the kids sort out hell's constitution, but heaven doesn't have any lawyers who can figure out what the hell hell's constitution says. And while the other kids are trying to figure out which side to support, Cartman (backed by his new buddy-in-hell, Hitler) round up all of hell's lawyers and runs his own double coup against both Satan and Satan's minions.
Oh yeah, and Kenny dies. You bastard.
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What is "yours" is only what is "yours" by government protection and social contract. There is nothing which says my TV is mine. It has no intrinsic ownership beyond what I can defend.
Right, except copyright. Copyright is intellectual property, it has the word 'property' right there in the name because it is property. You intellected it and you own it. Anyone who infringes it is still a thief because they stole your property from you.
Caution: This post produced in a facility that also processes nuts, and like, other stuff.
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Why is it suddenly news when I finally get wet?
Because you're posting on Slashdot, and one does not actually get wet when it rains unless one goes outside.
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But eventually it becomes simpler to go to the moon for real
Remember Kennedy's famous speech about the moon program?
We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy - but because they are hard
A clear Freudian slip, they planned right from the beginning to fake the moon landings.
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The moon-hoax thing and flat-earthism are indeed repeatedly raised in endless gag posts, but only because it is such desperately needed comic relief from the fact of the all-too-common all-too-relevant creationists, holocaust deniers, global warming deniers.
While holocaust denialism is almost as irrelevant as moon-hoaxists here within the US, I would hardly call the President of Iran insignificant.
As far as global warming denialists, I would hardly consider a sizable minority of the population and a fair chunk of congress to be insignificant.
As far as creationism, I would hardly consider nearly half the population and a chunk of congress and many state board of education officials and countless principals and teachers and three of the candidates for the Republican nomination to president in the last election, to be insignificant.
So yes, people will continue to make flat earth and moon landing comments, if only for desperately needed comic relief from sick sad reality.
So in conclusion, on this story and the photos, I have to say it's good we can now put all the speculation to rest. We now no longer have to wonder if some Nixon plot faked moon landings or if NASA is part of some huge ongoing conspiracy to manufacture evidence. With these photos we finally have proof it's the latter.
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You're being deliberately facetious, because it's not a third party country
No, I'm not.
While I'm not aware of China trying to use copyright in relation to Tiananmen Square, there's no reason they couldn't. China could certainly pass a law asserting government ownership of the copyright in any and all photo of Tiananmen Square, just as the UK law (might) assert copyright in photos of public domain images and lacking meaningful novel creative expression, just as the US did retroactively extend copyright to some works.
In each and every case the images can be either public domain, or fair use, or copyrightholder-authorized in one country and infringement in another country.
Seriously, if some Chinese refugee came to you in your country with photos of Tiananmen Square, and under the laws of your country he is the copyrightholder and he authorities you to post the, and you put those pictures on a website, are you SERIOUSLY going to tell me that you would consider it legitimate if someone in China accused you of copyright infringement?
And let me adjust that with a second example. Lets say it's the same situation and your friend is the copyright holder on those images, and those images are on some official Chinese website for whatever reason, and you browse to that website, and they willingly transmit/distribute that webpage to you along with that image, and that image gets automatically saved in your browser cache, all completely legal both under Chinese law and under your local copyright law, and you take that absolutely legal copy of the image you have, and with the permission of the copyright holder you then post that image on Wikipedia.
Are you SERIOUSLY going to tell me that you would then defend infringement claims against you from China as being legitimate?
Sure you can taunt and mock some eastern nation and it is unlikely to ever impact your life even if judgment does go against you... If that's your reasoned legal advice, I'm glad I'm not your lawyer.
If I were your lawyer, I was say as I said before that it seriously sucks for you that you are being threatened by anyone, regardless of the legitimacy of those threats. I would tell you that these claims against you are questionable even within the foreign country, I would tell you that the charges against you are completely fraudulent in your home country. I would tell you that the demands the museum is making against you are not only unreasonable, not only completely absurd, but that it is legally and physically impossible for you to comply with the demands being made by this intimidation letter. It's not even a question of whether or not you want to submit to their fraudulent claims and intimidation tactics, you are literally incapable of complying with their legally-fraudulent demands. I would tell you that it is impossible for you to comply, you can quite possible screw you if you travel to the foreign country, and they might even be able to abusively attempt to fuck with you in your home country. And I would advise you to ass for big-guns legal support from the EFF, that they love defending INNOCENT people like you from legally fraudulent claims and intimidation letters like this. And as it turned out, the EFF did jump in offering free support to defend this guy from this abusive letter and the threat of any abusive action against him.
As I said, being threatened by some bigger-bully is always a bad thing for you, no matter how legally groundless or abusive such threats or legal action may be. As your lawyer I would tell you that their claims are a crock of shit, but that you need to be damn careful anyway because ANYONE with a large legal staff can cause problems for you, even though you did absolutely nothing wrong. The risks against you are mostly financial costs if you are forced to defend your innocence, the chance of you facing any legal judgment against you at home are remote so long as you can actually afford to defend yourself, or some knight in shining armor jumps
Those people will not buy anything when you lock them up or sue their pants off. Either way they can't buy anything from you.
You don't get it. You just want to steal our stuff.
These people are thieves, they're stealing our stuff and we're losing money. You have to put thieves in prison where they can't steal any more stuff and so they can't keep stealing our money from us.
You're just another thief, and you're funding bin Laden and Hamas and other terrorists when you steal our music.
Not only that, but P2P is filled with kiddyporn. You're a pedophile. By the way Britteny Spears is getting a bit old now, so we're re-releasing her debut album in a combo pack with Miley Cyrus.
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More agreement than quibble, but generic meat-brains or other custom hardware would be a patentable-object invention, while particular people would be software process patents and running the process of "thinking" to activate a generic mind to "run" a general minds would be a software process patent.
I think :)
P.S. :)
Therefore I am?
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I'm not sure whether or not there's anything to argue there.
The Supreme Court has ruled that algorithms cannot be patented, that any possible algorithm must be treated as familiar prior art for patent purposes. Some people argue that software is not algorithm, or not just algorithm, and is patentable.
If you agree that all software is nothing but algorithm, that software is merely a fancy way of writing a math calculation or math algorithm, that software is not a patentable invention and running software on a plain computer is not a patentable invention under that Supreme Court criteria, then I don't think there's really any quibble or significance in math-theory. Math does not cease to be math just because it's long or complex or difficult.
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The pure math argument against all software patents is intillectually dishonest
You are right, they are wrong, what they are saying makes no sense to you and you don't understand it, therefore they are lying.
little more than "information longs to be free" nonsense.
Ah yes, you're a pinko commie atheist.
There! Not only have I proved you're wrong and stupid, but I've proved you're evil too!
it certainly takes effort to produce.
A novel takes effort to produce.
If you think a novel is patentable, you are wrong. Period.
If you think a novel is patentable, then you clearly don't know anything about the law.
ANY patent is nothing more than a design or an idea put on paper.
Not all designs are patentable.
Not all ideas are ideas for patentable inventions.
It is not the physical device you patent, but the design of the device.
blah blah blah
blah blah blahblah
Pointless yammering about devices.
There's no argument here about device patents.
You apparently have never read the patent law, you apparently haven't read any of the Supreme Court rulings (or any other rulings) on patent law, and you appear to have no grasp of the actual issue that some people are attempting to have a reasoned informed debate over. Here's a hint: it's not about device patents.
I'll give you another small hint: it's about process patents.
Software should not be exempt from this
The US Supreme Court has explicitly ruled that algorithms are exempt, and MUST be exempt under the US constitution.
If you disagree with the US Constitution, then I guess you should be arguing to change the Constitution.
If you disagree with the Supreme Court's interpretation and reasoning, well you can certainly argue that. I happen to agree with what they said on that point, but I might be interested in listening to your counter argument to the Supreme Court if you have a informed and well reasoned argument against the Supreme Court ruling.
The argument some people are engaging in is whether or not software is algorithm. All (or effectively all) mathematicians with any involvement in software state that software is algorithm, and that software is a field of math. Most programmer in general, and nearly all programmers who have studied the theory behind software or have studied software in relation to math, agree that software is algorithm and that it is a field of math.
The people who are relatively well informed about patent law and arguing that software is patentable, arguing that software is not a field of math, arguing that software is not algorithm, they are generally not "lying". They are generally sincere in their position and argument. The lower courts and patent lawyers who have taken that position are generally well informed about the law but the generally have little or no grasp of software, they generally little or no grasp of higher math theory and its relationship to software. And because of that misunderstanding they at times come to incorrect conclusions when attempting to apply patent law to software.
We need incentives to produce good software
Are you suggesting that copyright does not, or should not, exist?
Or suggesting that copyright does not, or should not, apply to software?
If you are denying the existence or legitimacy of copyright, or denying the existence or legitimacy of copyright on software, that would be a pretty radical position.
However, because software is essentially just math for a specific purpose, the only thing really patentable is the method or structure of the math.
Ah good.
You are confirming the legal statement that software is not patentable under current law. You are confirming that software is not patentable short of overturning standing Supreme Court law or amending the Constitution.
There definitely is a challenging gray area between what is legitimately a patentable invention, and what is not. It is definitely possible to zoom in on the boundary of any definition and find challenging cases. However I'd say that difficult line and those difficult cases are no where near where the US patent office has been trying to put it.
The Supreme Court rulings give some pretty good guidance. You have to look at the claimed invention, you have to look at what "new discovery" is being claimed, you have to look at what is actually being disclosed in that claim.
If the "new invention" is being disclosed is a some "new" number or "new" calculation or a "new" math algorithm, then that is not a patentable invention. The number or calculation or algorithm is treated as old familiar prior art.
Let me illustrate what I think it means and how I think it should work. Consider a transistor. If you try to consider the electricity coming in as "information" or "a number", the the "math" that a transistor is amplification, it basically preforms a multiplication. So now someone submits a patent application on the transistor. If you attempt to read it as a prohibited math patent, then what the patent would be disclosing is multiplication, period. Well, we already know multiplication, and if the patent were "merely disclosing multiplication", that would not actually enable you to build a transistor. The patent *does* disclose something more than math, it disclosed a useful physical device. The fact that the disclosed device was useful for preforming math does not prevent it from being an invention. You can invent and patent calculators and computers. And you can invent and patent the general device FPGA.
On the other hand lets say you have some interesting "new" equation, some "new" math algorithm, some "new" software, and you simply load that into an FPGA. Well the "new" think is just math. If you disclose the math, then anyone can trivially load that math into an FPGA, or they can trivially do an automated conversion into a transistor-circuit to do that calculation and burn it into a microchip. The only creative "invention" disclosed is that you came up with some cool new math, and we have already invented devices like FPGAs who's exact purpose and value as an invention is that they can and do carry out any and all possible math you throw at them.
And based on that, I would say that taking that non-patentable algorithm and permanently burning it into an FPGA does not constitute a patentable invention. Or taking that algorithm and systematically translating it into transistor array or other circuit layout would not constitute an invention.
I will certainly agree that reasoning can be pushed to challenging cases where it is challenging to draw the line. I will even grant that it leads to a result that in some cases an identical patent application might be patentable in the 1950's and not patentable today, even if the thing being disclosed was just as novel today. The reason for that being that in the 1950's the state of the art was different, and we were discovering new ways to arrange transistors as physical objects to a achieve physical effects like creating the electrical oscillations to sweep the electron beam in a television. Today the state of the art is entirely different. Finding some way to connect transistors to crate a novel unexpected effect would still be patentable. However that is rarely the case today, today we generally use transistors as information processing elements and calculating elements. The state of the art is that we typically treat electrical signals as information. The state of the art is that we know how to translate essentially any equation/calculation/math_algorithm into a sequence of transistors preforming that calculation. The state of the art is such that there is absolutely nothing novel or unexpected in that. All numbers, all equations, all algorithms are considered to be a familiar part of prior art, and you cannot obtain a patent fo
This temperature change has actually happened cyclically and we have data.
No, *this* change has not happened cyclically. As I explained in my post the problem today is the absolutely unprecedented rate of change.
This smashes the concept that humans were responsible for this cycle or the ones before.
That is two entirely separate claims.
No one claims humans caused the previous climate shifts.
Nor does it refute the fact that humans are causing an unprecedented shift today.
The graph does not smash either of the things you claim it "smashes".
Look at the timescale on the graph you posted. Note that it is numbered in fifty-thousand-year increments. The rate of change in this shift is multiple degrees within a fraction of a single pixel on that graph. By my math, todays rate of change would be somewhere between 7 and 15 degrees-per-pixel rate on that graph.
Don't mix up cause with correlation.
And don't mix up correlation with cause.
Especially when the "correlation" isn't even close.
If someone claims there is a tsunami and you measure the sea level rising on the beach at a rate of many feet per minute, it would be absolutely insane to point to a graph of tide-history showing a cycle of water rise and fall of a few feet per twelve hours. You can't point to an orders-of-magnitude-mismatch "correlation" between a many-feet-per-minute increase in sea level and a few-feet-per-12-hours tide, and then conclude the CAUSE of the current sea level change is natural tides. You are mixing up a (false) correlation with a cause.
And it becomes even more absurd to point to historical tides when you do in fact know the current cause, if you recorded an earthquake at sea with a rise or drop in the seafloor and basic physics says it will cause a tsunami. When you dump global-scale quantities of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere then basic physics states that it will trap infrared radiation - it will trap heat. You know for a fact that the cause exists.
As a percentage of the total contribution human contribution is about 3.8%. We are only important to us. http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/greenhouse_data.html
I have a question. Do you care if a source is reliable? Or are you happy to grab any old source so long as it supports the side you want?
The figures on that site conflict with accepted science, so I decided ok lets give them the benefit of the doubt take a look at how they are backing up their numbers. I clicked on one of their references and looked it up. The very first thing I checked them on, it took me less than two minutes to discover that the source they were citing - Patrick Michaels - is an already established crackpot denialist and paid at least six-figures by a fossil-fuel based power industry association. This guy was a denialist on the chlorofluorocarbon-ozone issue up until 2001. It also appears he long ago abandoned any career as a scientist and took up writing pop denialism books.
If someone wants to argue that cigarettes don't cause lung cancer, it might help if they avoid citing people paid the tobacco industry and literally selling "cigarettes-don't-cause-cancer" as a profession.
But then I think.... ok that's just one source. So lets give them another chance. I completely randomly scroll down their source list and the second source I check is Robert Essenhigh. I try a Wikipedia search and apparently the most notable thing about his is that he came up with an alternate theory on the sinking of the Titanic.... ummmm..... ok. So I turn to Google and find, he's a mechanical engineer. I think huh? Mechanical engineer? Ok, I keep looking and he's a specialist in combustion, and then as if someone set this up as a joke with a punchline.... he's apparently a specialist in coal combustion. So the second source I looked up.... and I find his expertise and qualifications in climatology are that he's a
That is not at all what happened here.
I'm not sure exactly what it is you are objecting to.
Maybe I phrased something badly somewhere, but the basic point is that chromosomes can and do fuse with no loss of genes. This can happen and has been proven to happen. Humans can and have fusion-evolved from 46 to 44 chromosomes, just as human DNA shows the fusion evidence of our evolution from 48 chromosome apes.
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I'm not sure if the problem is at my end trying to read your post, or at your end writing an unclear post, but I'm finding it very difficult to follow what you're disagreeing with or why. I do think I can address at least one point though: even plagiarism can (at least sometimes) qualify under Fair Use. Also quoting can be infringement, for example if it is excessive.
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Thanx for the complement, and for all your efforts.
I'm "just a computer and tech geek", and I would have thought it insane if someone had come to me a couple of years ago and said to me I'd be developing anywhere near this level of amature expertise studying copyright law.
I think I may actually have gotten into an argument with you on copyright way way back when, and lets just say I had no idea what I was talking about at the time :) For what it's worth, you should consider one idiot-argument scratched off what I'm sure must be a long history of atrocious arguments you've faced on here :)
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Any case where you think Copyright Law is being unconstitutional just means it doesn't actually apply, even if its text as written says it does, because Copyright Law can't possibly be unconstitutional, so it can't apply to something that would render it thus". Is that what you're saying Fair Use is?
You get a cookie.
Yes, your definition is pretty accurate. Chuckle.
amend the constitution to jive with the desirable copyright law :)
You might not want to be so casual with that smiley face. They are already hijacking the international treaty process to massively redefine the law as they wish, the Senate automatically passes most any treaty unless it would subject the US to the international war crimes court, and the Supreme Court is not so eager to strike down laws passed to fulfill international treaty obligations.
That's how we got the DMCA. They actually failed to get the law in the US so they invented a treaty for it, then came back and demanded the law be passed in compliance of the treaty. They bypassed the legislative process completely. There are no checks or democratic accountability to the treaty process. The process gets dominated by industry and a handful of unelected government bureaucrats.
Sometimes I think the best solution would be to (quietly) get a handful of people together with a handful of agreeable government officials from a couple of countries and manufacture our own "international treaty", and put on a good show presenting it to the Senate as such, and try to get the Senate ratification process completed before Industry realizes what's going on and they lobby it off the table.
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Based on that, any DRM scheme which prevents fair use (especially if it is a simple anti-circumvention trap) would not be permissible.
The DMCA is a steaming pile of shit, but the devil's advocate answer there is that the DMCA explicitly does not alter Fair Use rights. It merely criminalizes some means of engaging in Fair use, and it merely criminalizes any product that assists in engaging in Fair Use in any reasonable manner.
For example the MPAA has repeatedly stated that teachers or anyone else wanting to engage in Fair Use in relation to encrypted DVDs should play the DVD on a standard DVD player and point a fucking video camera at the TV screen and use THAT as their Fair Use copy.
See? No one's Fair Use rights are being denied, LOL.
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I'm thinking of sending my ex-wife to Harvard Law School.
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Yeah, me neither. I had no idea Michael Jackson was a judge.
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I open a hex editor and remove the rope from from my inventory.
While I'm at it I tweak the jumpsuit's modifier to +255 AGI.
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