As Frank Herbert once had Leto II say (I'm paraphrasing, as I couldn't find the exact quote): The problem with computers is that when we have machines that think like a human we begin treating humans the same way we treat machines.
Or in the last episode of BSG: Admiral Adamma: What was his flaw as a commander? Apollo: He only understood machines. Command is about people.
Management has lost sight of this. They think of their employees as computer operators and not computers as tools that the employees use.
Apparently you understand why the Chinese support censorship, so why don't you enlighten us? Why do we have to move to China to understand their policies?
If moderate Muslims would *actively* work against the extremist mullahs (I'm not just talking about issuing press statements), then Muslims wouldn't have such an increasingly bad reputation.
What are you talking about then? Are you talking about taking up arms and killing them for being extreme? That's not very moderate is it?
Or maybe protesting against them? Then they kill you. Then other people are less likely to do anything.
A lot of the problems in the world are due to the fact that moderates can't have much of an effect on extremists. Like you suggest issuing press statements are ineffective buts its hard to do anything else against people who are willing to blow themselves up.
Well the problem is, we don't know how long it will take to get the research done on the ribbon. It will likely take 20 or 30 years to get the ribbon done. At that point the climber would be like the Saturn V is today: Great technology, but its so old that spare parts aren't available, so we'll have to build a new one one from scratch.
When we have carbon nanotubes to the point where it leaves the research phase and enters the engineering phase, then we should start work on the climber.
"No hesitation" is a double edged sword. When there is an enemy in front of you you don't want to hesitate. But what if its a civilian or a friendly? You train soldiers to shoot without thinking and they will kill civilians and friendlies.
Killing civilians gains the resistance recruits. Killing friendlies lowers moral and damages alliances.
The result is what you see in Iraq. A very quick and effective offensive in the first few weeks followed by a long, drawn out occupation, with a lot of unnecessary friendly fire and civilian deaths.
I hope they don't make any big changes in Gnome. All I want from a DE is to be able to easily access Apps and files. I look at the top of my screen and see an Applications menu and a Places menu. I can even drag my most used apps to the bar at the top so they're one click away. I can get to my apps and files quickly, what more do I need?
I'd say making incremental improvements is the way to go. Why spend a lot of time adding features I'm only going to use a couple of times because it looks cool and then ignore once the novelty wears off?
Thats not historical data thats geological data. 11,000 years ago there wasn't anyone around writing history, its not historical.
This is significant because we don't know how hard life would be at those temperatures. Because we have never experienced those temperatures in human history. Yeah some stone age people were able to scratch out a living. But were the conditions acceptable to support ~6 Billion people?
Yes the earth would survive global warming. The human race will likely survive it. But what will be the effect on our civilization? Will we be able to sustain our quality of life? Will we be able to sustain more than 6 billion people?
It is in our best interests to maintain the climate in its present state.
Look at your wikipedia link a little closer. Notice how it says that it made life tougher for people? Also notice how it isn't conclusive whether or not it was a world wide event or just local to Europe (samples in antarctica don't show as significant change as greenland). Also notice all the negative effects it had.
From your wikipedia article:
May not have been global, there is no evidence of increased glaciation in the southern hemisphere at this time.
What? Oh, sorry for trying to argue with you. I guess you didn't read your own damn links.
Volcanic activity does release CO2. But we are releasing it at 10 times the rate volcanos are. Glaciers absorbs heat by melting. more heat means less glaciers (and higher sea levels) and less heat absorption.
It is ok to present intentionally misleading statistics (like the one in this headline) to back a cause
How is it misleading to say that it is warmer now than it was in any time in the last 1200 years?
Human activity is the only thing altering the otherwise perfectly balanced Earth
No, but we are now the biggest factor in altering CO2 levels, which is pretty significant.
Any percieved change in the climate is an indication that horrible things are on the way
We don't know what's on the way. It could be horrible, or it could be fine. We Don't Know. Are you willing to gamble that things will turn out ok? I'm not.
We should all run around like chickens with our heads cut off to protect the 'fragile environment'
How is reducing reliance on greenhouse gases "running around with our heads vut off"? I would say that being dependent on oil has resulted in more irrational (and costly) behaviour than anything else.
Build some nuke plants. Use ethanol based fuel for cars. Encourage mass transit. Are these things crazier than being in a constant state of war in the middle east to get the last drops of oil?
It would be interesting if it was found that these parasites were more frequently in members of one party more than the other. What happens if they find a way to kill the parasites, and a bunch of people reconsider their political views? What happens if those infected refuse treatment? What happens if people in power make treatments illegal?
It's a pretty interesting scenario. Should the non-infected force the infected to take their medicine? What if the infected outnumber the non-infected and refuse to believe they are infected?
A) We don't know shit about "global warming", or climate change in general.
Scientists say "our best data supports the global warming theory" A hundred years from now scientist will (probably) say "our best data supports the global warming theory". Science never reveals the truth, it only theorises. What do you want, Jesus himself to come down and say globabl warming is true and holy? Because no scientist is going to.
B) What we're currently measuring is nothing compared to other changes that we can see historically.
which are these historical changes you speak of? The medieval warm period? guess what, the medieval warm period wasn't as warm as it is now. You got anything else? A Roman dude writing "damn its hot out" is pretty tough for anyone to quantify. We can't measure much before 1200 years ago because there aren't enough trees around older than that. We can measure temperature using ice samples, but not in any kind of resolution.
C) Politics, the media, and related funding has more to do with "global warming" than science does.
So you think we should wait for politicians and the media to shut up before we do something?
Look, tree huggers are idiots. Ignore them. Look at the research yourself. Read what the scientists have to say. Then come to your own conclusions. Don't just have an attitude that "I don't like this group of people therefore they are wrong". It makes you look like an ass.
I wish the tree huggers would shut up too. They are seriously damaging the credibility of this theory.
Well you realise that moving all of our agriculture to the north will cost a huge amount of money, right? Wouldn't it be a lot cheaper just to buy everyone hybrid cars and build nuclear power plants?
1200 years really isn't that long, especially considering half of that was during the little ice age.
It is long enough to include the medieval warm period. Remember that time period that the global warming nay sayers claim that "greenland was green and everything was good so let's not worry and buy more SUV's"? Well its warmer than that now.
How far back do they have to go to convince you? They've proven that the medieval warm period wasn't as warm as it is now, which is pretty significant.
That's a poor comparison. If they raise the price for office people will just stick with their old version of office or maybe even download openoffice or something. Word perfect is still out there too. MS still has to compete in that market.
If they are the only game in town for virus software and raise the price you can't just decide not to upgrade.
Remember back a few years ago when MS was pushing subscription based software and passport and all of that? This could be how they are going to make that happen.
Microsoft is a convicted monopolist, google is not. There are a lot of applications that require me to use windows. There aren't any applications that require me to use google.
The proper reaction is to make the price something like $20/month + $1/GB downloaded. So if you just check your email you pay $20. If you download 5 or 6 movies you pay $26. If you have your system downloading 24/7 you would end up paying something like $80 per month.
They can't have it both ways. If they advertise it as a flat rate / unlimited, people are going to use it that way. If some people are using more bandwidth than others, then have your price reflect that. Then people will be a little more frugal in their downloading.
Just keeping the flat rate and prohibiting people from using their connection for what they want just makes people angry and is just stupid.
You are exactly right. Remember how the cold war ended? Russia became democratic and became friendly (well friendlier anyway) with the US. So now Rumsfeld and friends are all thinking that they just need to knock off the leadership of their enemies and boom, instant democracy. Then they have another ally.
Imagine that I have a business and I start prank calling my competitors to tie up their phone lines. Then the phone company disconnects my phone line for this abusing it. Is the phone company passing judgement?
Actually it isn't really as bad as that, bmw's website is still up. but you get what I'm saying, right?
You can search "BMW" and bmw.com comes up as the top result. From bmw.com you can select the german site from a dropdown box and get to bmw.com.de.
So it inconveniences BMW's customers a little bit. BMW broke google's rules, BMW customers get inconvenienced a little. BMW stops breaking the rules, I'm sure google will list them again.
Actually I was using GIMP before I came here. Yeah the interface sucks. I have to have an entire virtual desktop reserved for it alone, and even then there are dialogs that pop up behind the window. I have to spend more time resizing windows than actually working. And if you have a lot of images open the taskbar groups them so that it takes two clicks to get to anything.
Why not have a nice tabbed interface?
Also the name sucks. At best its confusing, at worst its offensive.
Its pretty sad when its obvious to everyone what the problem is, yet its still the same thing after what, six years?
I remember someone once asked me why some countries are poor and some are rich. The short answer is, our ancesters were better at the application of violence than everyone else. Yes other countries were violent. Yes other countries did horrible things. But our ancesters were more violent and more horrible than everyone else. And we inherited their wealth.
And that is why were are rich and other people are poor.
Does that mean we should feel guilty over it? No. We can't go back in time and prevent our ancesters from doing horrible things. But we should ask ourselves "do deserve to have have all this wealth?" Think long and hard about that. Do we deserve to be rich because our ancesters were more violent than other peoples' ancesters?
No one is asking you to feel guilty. But maybe you should consider sharing your wealth with the poor, considering its original source.
And what do you suppose the costs will be to move all farming to more northern parts of the world? The "screw the environment" attitude seems like it will be very expensive.
Problem with that theory is that we're cutting down a lot of forest and paving over everything. Deserts are expanding. Exactly how do deserts and asphalt balance out greenhouse gases?
I think people just have to except the fact that there are costs beyond what you pay at the pump for this stuff. Why is that so difficult?
Slashdot Mirror
Or in the last episode of BSG: Admiral Adamma: What was his flaw as a commander? Apollo: He only understood machines. Command is about people.
Management has lost sight of this. They think of their employees as computer operators and not computers as tools that the employees use.
Apparently you understand why the Chinese support censorship, so why don't you enlighten us? Why do we have to move to China to understand their policies?
What about the spanish inquisition? And all the wars of the reformation? The colonisation of of the Americas?
European history is filled with violence, and much of it was done in the name of religion.
What are you talking about then? Are you talking about taking up arms and killing them for being extreme? That's not very moderate is it?
Or maybe protesting against them? Then they kill you. Then other people are less likely to do anything.
A lot of the problems in the world are due to the fact that moderates can't have much of an effect on extremists. Like you suggest issuing press statements are ineffective buts its hard to do anything else against people who are willing to blow themselves up.
When we have carbon nanotubes to the point where it leaves the research phase and enters the engineering phase, then we should start work on the climber.
Killing civilians gains the resistance recruits. Killing friendlies lowers moral and damages alliances.
The result is what you see in Iraq. A very quick and effective offensive in the first few weeks followed by a long, drawn out occupation, with a lot of unnecessary friendly fire and civilian deaths.
I'd say making incremental improvements is the way to go. Why spend a lot of time adding features I'm only going to use a couple of times because it looks cool and then ignore once the novelty wears off?
Yes the earth would survive global warming. The human race will likely survive it. But what will be the effect on our civilization? Will we be able to sustain our quality of life? Will we be able to sustain more than 6 billion people?
It is in our best interests to maintain the climate in its present state.
Look at your wikipedia link a little closer. Notice how it says that it made life tougher for people? Also notice how it isn't conclusive whether or not it was a world wide event or just local to Europe (samples in antarctica don't show as significant change as greenland). Also notice all the negative effects it had.
From your wikipedia article:
May not have been global, there is no evidence of increased glaciation in the southern hemisphere at this time.
What? Oh, sorry for trying to argue with you. I guess you didn't read your own damn links.
It is ok to present intentionally misleading statistics (like the one in this headline) to back a cause
How is it misleading to say that it is warmer now than it was in any time in the last 1200 years?
Human activity is the only thing altering the otherwise perfectly balanced Earth
No, but we are now the biggest factor in altering CO2 levels, which is pretty significant.
Any percieved change in the climate is an indication that horrible things are on the way
We don't know what's on the way. It could be horrible, or it could be fine. We Don't Know. Are you willing to gamble that things will turn out ok? I'm not.
We should all run around like chickens with our heads cut off to protect the 'fragile environment'
How is reducing reliance on greenhouse gases "running around with our heads vut off"? I would say that being dependent on oil has resulted in more irrational (and costly) behaviour than anything else.
Build some nuke plants. Use ethanol based fuel for cars. Encourage mass transit. Are these things crazier than being in a constant state of war in the middle east to get the last drops of oil?
It's a pretty interesting scenario. Should the non-infected force the infected to take their medicine? What if the infected outnumber the non-infected and refuse to believe they are infected?
The point is that you wouldn't need 8 years food supplies, only maybe a few months.
A) We don't know shit about "global warming", or climate change in general.
Scientists say "our best data supports the global warming theory" A hundred years from now scientist will (probably) say "our best data supports the global warming theory". Science never reveals the truth, it only theorises. What do you want, Jesus himself to come down and say globabl warming is true and holy? Because no scientist is going to.
B) What we're currently measuring is nothing compared to other changes that we can see historically.
which are these historical changes you speak of? The medieval warm period? guess what, the medieval warm period wasn't as warm as it is now. You got anything else? A Roman dude writing "damn its hot out" is pretty tough for anyone to quantify. We can't measure much before 1200 years ago because there aren't enough trees around older than that. We can measure temperature using ice samples, but not in any kind of resolution.
C) Politics, the media, and related funding has more to do with "global warming" than science does.
So you think we should wait for politicians and the media to shut up before we do something?
Look, tree huggers are idiots. Ignore them. Look at the research yourself. Read what the scientists have to say. Then come to your own conclusions. Don't just have an attitude that "I don't like this group of people therefore they are wrong". It makes you look like an ass.
I wish the tree huggers would shut up too. They are seriously damaging the credibility of this theory.
Well you realise that moving all of our agriculture to the north will cost a huge amount of money, right? Wouldn't it be a lot cheaper just to buy everyone hybrid cars and build nuclear power plants?
It is long enough to include the medieval warm period. Remember that time period that the global warming nay sayers claim that "greenland was green and everything was good so let's not worry and buy more SUV's"? Well its warmer than that now.
How far back do they have to go to convince you? They've proven that the medieval warm period wasn't as warm as it is now, which is pretty significant.
If they are the only game in town for virus software and raise the price you can't just decide not to upgrade.
Remember back a few years ago when MS was pushing subscription based software and passport and all of that? This could be how they are going to make that happen.
Microsoft is a convicted monopolist, google is not. There are a lot of applications that require me to use windows. There aren't any applications that require me to use google.
They can't have it both ways. If they advertise it as a flat rate / unlimited, people are going to use it that way. If some people are using more bandwidth than others, then have your price reflect that. Then people will be a little more frugal in their downloading.
Just keeping the flat rate and prohibiting people from using their connection for what they want just makes people angry and is just stupid.
Unfortunately its just not that simple.
Imagine that I have a business and I start prank calling my competitors to tie up their phone lines. Then the phone company disconnects my phone line for this abusing it. Is the phone company passing judgement?
Actually it isn't really as bad as that, bmw's website is still up. but you get what I'm saying, right?
So it inconveniences BMW's customers a little bit. BMW broke google's rules, BMW customers get inconvenienced a little. BMW stops breaking the rules, I'm sure google will list them again.
Why not have a nice tabbed interface?
Also the name sucks. At best its confusing, at worst its offensive.
Its pretty sad when its obvious to everyone what the problem is, yet its still the same thing after what, six years?
even then it'll only affect three computers at the UN.
And that is why were are rich and other people are poor.
Does that mean we should feel guilty over it? No. We can't go back in time and prevent our ancesters from doing horrible things. But we should ask ourselves "do deserve to have have all this wealth?" Think long and hard about that. Do we deserve to be rich because our ancesters were more violent than other peoples' ancesters?
No one is asking you to feel guilty. But maybe you should consider sharing your wealth with the poor, considering its original source.
And what do you suppose the costs will be to move all farming to more northern parts of the world? The "screw the environment" attitude seems like it will be very expensive.
I think people just have to except the fact that there are costs beyond what you pay at the pump for this stuff. Why is that so difficult?