whether those "approval ratings" are truly 80% or more like (1/80)%[...]
I would strongly suggest you to reconsider this statement. Just because you are an autocrat and govern for the benefit of a restricted circle of oligarchs, it does not mean the people will not like you. The bulk of the people can be made incredibly stupid when you control enough of the media.
The classical instrument to make the people love you even when you are actually screwing them is finding a scapegoat: Hitler had Jews, but he certainly did not invent the tactic, nor anti-semitism itself (he was instead special in that he actually believed that crap). It runs all the way back to the Romans (who blamed, say, Christians) and beyond. It has to be a small minority without an actual capability to politically fight back, yet recognizable enough. Putin has Chechen rebels, Ahmadinejad has Americans and Israel, Bush has terrorists, Berlusconi has Communists, Le Pen has immigrants.
Thank god there's never been an ass bomber, think what we'd have to go through!
Frankly I am surprised it has not happened yet, because jokes aside that's a place where no one in security will dare to perform a check. A terrorist would also have a perfectly normal excuse to seclude himself from the view of anyone else in the toilet that would raise no suspicion whatsoever. I wonder what is the explosive potential of the volume of a turd in plastic explosive, but it's likely more than enough to bring any plane down.
I am not that scared this might actually happen as much as the countermeasures that will be enacted afterwards...
Let's make it in olive green and sell it for ten times as much!
Now that would be silly... The thing is supposed to be well visible so it detects booby traps. Making it camouflage-colored is hardly going to improve its performance. Again, it would be so fitting... "Silly String in stupid format for an idiotic war!"
Only in ancient Rome does censorship mean evaluation.
You are actually wrong. Even if the word in Italian ("censura") means now the same as in English, in some languages it retained the original meaning. In Norwegian, for example, exams are actually "sensurert" ("censored"), and the word "sensur" is used for both meanings. I am not sure of the status in Swedish and Danish, but it's probably just the same like everything else.
"Censorship" means literally "evaluation"; Roman Censors used to watch over the Republic's morals and had a few other duties (including the census). Of course we usually we refer to the case when speech, art or other forms of expression are evaluated and denied publication. This is bad as everybody has a right to speak, and evaluating cases in which this should not apply leads rapidly to those in charge abusing their power and silencing those who contest them.
However, in science there are serious evaluation guidelines. If claims are cooked up or not backed by data, they are just that. Can't take the heat, don't play the game.
Burning coal releases more radioisotopes into the atmosphere than the equivalent energy production by a decently-run (i.e. no serious accidents) nuke power station.
This misconception keeps appearing again and again and again. Even if burning coal releases radioactive isotopes, this is irrelevant as these are well spread in the atmosphere. Radiation is one of those problems that, if spread well enough, is no problem anymore, as there is a threshold under which humans do not suffer any significant effects from radiation.
The problem with nuke waste is that it is concentrated and therefore harmful.
Don't forget that atheism is a religion too. [Atheists] believe that God does not exist, despite having no direct evidence to support that belief.
Bullshit. Just because I do not believe there is a purple unicorn on my head does not mean I belong to the Church of purple-unicorn-on-the-head-less, it's just applying Occam's razor.
With global-warming-caused-by-man, there are innumerable potential theories, and right at the top of the list is "it's merely coincidental."
It has been said over and over in this page: "extraordinary claims call for extraordinary proof". There is a scientific consensus that global warming is real and anthropogenic. Gore made a movie and no one filed a suit for scientific dishonesty. Scientists made sample searches and found no scientific papers that disputed global warming, and a vast majority considered it anthropogenic. So, who are you, and what are your sources and arguments, to suddenly post here on Slashdot that every scientist is wrong?
And frankly, even that's mostly because the data has been fudged. [...] Also, your claim that things are going to get worse has *no* serious grounding in available data. Even the fudged data. It's make-believe.
Well, says who? What data, in which studies? To what extent? Did you check the data yourself, or do you rely on someone else, and if so who?
For all we know, even if "global warming" was caused by man, it could end up being a net benefit to mankind.
Sure, a boulder falling on your head is indeed going to provide shelter from rain. But that's not the main concern you have when you see a boulder falling on you.
I just can't agree with the notion that the debate is over, [...]
That's your problem, you are in denial. Get over it, global warming is real, it is happening, and anthropogenic CO2 is responsible. You simply won't admit that you have a problem and you have to do something about it. You are approaching a problem you do not understand with an answer you already made up. That's the approach of religious fundamentalism, science works the other way around.
The crime of lèse majesté is likely aimed at anyone who could possibly criticise the Thai king Bhumibol Adulyadej. This guy has built a heck of a cult of personality around him that Stalin would be envious of. He managed to install and uninstall dictators and (a sort of) democracy at a whim, and it would appear no one dares to confront him. In fact, no government seems to be able to claim legitimacy if not from the king.
GPL'ing a product has NEVER been successful for the company or person owning it.
Surely, you may want to talk to the CEOs of MySQL and Qt developers Trolltech, who release their projects under the GPL and do turn a profit. In the case of Sun, as others already have mentioned, they make money on the hardware, and commoditising software is only good for them.
Of course, these are corporations. Speaking of private persons, what about a certain Linus Torvalds, who is now fairly well-off?
1) Galileo invented the thermometer in 1593.
I don't trust any temperature data for dates prior to 1593.
You are being stupid. First, the first thermometers were neither accurate nor ubiquitous. You would only get approximate measurements in Italy for a long time, and systematic ones only for the last century or less. Second, there are other ways to measure temperatures than a direct thermometer, just like there are indirect ways to tell that the magnetic north-south pole swap relatively often place without us ever measuring it.
2) Isn't global warming better than another ice age?
You are presenting false alternatives. What about not screwing everything up instead?
3) You know Al Gore's movie, where they show the glacier photos, before and after?
Are the before and after both from the same season?
Because the glaciers change size seasonally.
Did Al Gore show winter 1980 vs. summer 2005?
You never saw a glacier. They are not snow, they are thick ice and do not melt that quickly. I remember always seeing glaciers on the top of the Orobian Alps from my grandma's house every summer we went there. They disappeared last year, now only moraines are left.
Conservative journalist Christopher Monckton, former advisor to Thatcher, says global warming is bollocks. Ahh, the smell of bullshit in the evening.
Dear Mr. Monckton, if you really are convinced you are right, submit your research to a scientific journal about climatology. Then we'll see what comes out of the discussion.
Real Science(tm) is made in research papers and conferences, not in opinionated columns in conservative newspapers (well, to be fair "not in newspapers" is enough said).
From his PDF that should detail his points, I take the first one:
Is there a scientific consensus about global warming? [...]Leading climate scientists who strongly disagree with the view that additional carbon dioxide in the air will have the large effect on the climate suggested by the UN include Professor Richard Lindzen of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who recently received a £10,000 prize for courage in opposing conventional thinking. Some 41 scientists recently wrote to the Telegraph to say they were not part of, and were not convinced by, the "global warming" consensus.
A quack financed by oil companies and OPEC (guess where those ten grands came from, and why it is not mentioned: it is a think-tank built purposedly for this one prize to Lindzen) and 41 generic "scientists" (not climatologists I suppose, otherwise it would have been mentioned; I could not find the actual letter, it would have been interesting to have a link and check their credentials) are against the flow. So what? There are people who believe you can die on a bomb and be given 72 virgins in paradise, or that the Holocaust never happened. What about what appears in actual research papers? Where is the debunking of the consensus? "Consensus" does not mean 100%, it means more like "much more than 50%". Otherwise, there is no consensus the world is round.
I would certainly argue that point. If you are referring to "cheap labor", then we would probably be BETTER OFF without China, and instead put resources into Mexico, at least in the mid to long term.
Well, there are many reasons Mexico is not China in the first place. The ruling class is not as disciplined as the Chinese, the country is not as stable, work ethics are Latin (I'm Latin myself so I can say it without being a hate criminal).
[T]he US would surely survive.
Oh, that's another reason why Mexico is not China—Mexico does not have an impressive amount of US foreign debt in its pockets (rather the other way around). If the US decide to play tough on China, the Chinese simply have to say "fine, no need to be friends. Please make 7% of your GDP payable to us by next morning. After that we will convert all the dollars in our pockets in euros and trash your economy by 18:00."
The US will never play that game with China, because China is stronger and getting stronger yet. The 21st century is China's as much as the 19th was of the UK and the 20 of the US. Don't worry too much about democracy, when the US became a world leader it still had slavery. China will mature with time.
We import from the poorest country in Europe, Moldova [...]
Frankly, Moldova is a tiny country with a limited supply of labor. Furthermore the state is so weak that it cannot even hold itself in one piece. It's not really poised to attract much investment. I could not find anything specific on the human-rights situation in Moldova, but I doubt it is any better than many ex-Soviet republics (except the Baltic states, that came out well). Anyway, material found in the West may be prone to bias as Moldova has been a staunch supporter of the war on terrorism.
In the world of debate, the above would be classified an ad hominem argument.
I do not see why ad hominem arguments are seen as pariah arguments. Of course it's no proof he is wrong, but if it is known he is a nut then his opinions will weigh less than a professional climatologist's. I mean, a novelist's opinion against the whole scientific community?
Ad hominem arguments like this one evaluate the speaker's rethorical ethos, which is a fully legitimate argument. It does not directly demonstrate he is wrong, it points out that the probability he is right are very small.
Since no one can know all about everything in the world, at some point everyone has to trust some expert's opinion. If you do not know a certain field, ad hominem arguments are pretty much the only thing you are left (who is credible and who is not?), except spending a few decades becoming an expert yourself.
A GOP risking to lose an election, a less popular than ever PotUS, a largely announced electoral defeat: so let's try to blame the machines, and while we're at it Chávez too. It only surprises me they did not mention the company's CEO is an alias used by Osama Bin Laden or some other scarecrow.
The article also mentions (in the second page) the controversy about Chávez' re-election's, but fail to mention that election's result was UN-certified (unlike someone else's) and the guy in charge of UN controls was Jimmy Carter, not Fidel Castro.
Assigning a grade of "poor" to politicians' grasp of technology implies they have grasp, most don't. They (IMO) seemingly react to political winds, political windbags, and moneybags. I can't recall ever seeing a politician on TV, or elsewhere and thinking, "Gee, that politician really gets it!".
First, I totally agree with your post. But look at it from another angle: we don't "get it" when it is about political questions. Politicians and we slashdotters think in a different mindset: we mostly think "IT security is important, privacy is important, censorship is always bad" and we have a background that will make us look like idiots if we say we don't know what MD5 sums or GTK are. Politicians think first "what will get me re-elected?" or "what will get me to another position?" if they are in their last term. They talk to the general population, and you only detect the bullshit that shows on your radar, but there is likely much more, like talking of hydrogen as an energy source (it's a carrier), saying that English is the most spoken language on earth (it's Chinese), talking about protecting children from pedophiles outside the family and so on (most abuses happen inside the family), and I have not even mentioned terrorism.
Politicians behave like this because this is the correct way to behave. The correct one in their system of reference, that is, where they are supposed to have a career: in order to do so, they must impress the voters, and it's much easier when talking about something people do not know about. Really, it's like evolution: if a politician sticks to what he knows, he will have to say "I do not know" too often, and this will put him at a disadvantage.
The only solution to get better politicians is a smarter and more informed voter population. Demagogues flourish in countries with low literacy, with few people reading newspapers and more people relying on only a few aligned information sources. So, rather than complaining about politicians, it would be probably more productive to tell the next guy (or better yet write to a newspaper, if there are any chances to be published) about why that politician is a kook. And, in the Grand Scheme of Things, increase education level and independent press.
You're just spewing around the typical Italian self-loathing, constantly fostered by the left wing in this country.
What was I saying about people blaming the communists all the time...?
Your allegations could be countered point for point,
... which you do not. Strong arguments, Anonymous Coward.
Your incredibly ignorant comment about catholicism speaks volumes about your credibility.
Forgive me, father. From now on I will listen more carefully to the pious voice of Pope Germanus I.
[...] spoiled youths who take everything for granted and see any obstacle in their path as an evil plot to rob them of the golden future that they feel they deserve by birthright.
Oh yeah, today's brats, no respects for the elders...
You took all you could from this country, you received an education, paid for by taxpayer money, that allowed you to go on and be successful in another country, and then you left, never giving anything back, [...]
At what point exactly did I sign a contract with the Italian state? Don't get me started on the education I received, no well you have already:
First thing, at age three I was regularly beaten by nuns at the kindergarten. I kept having nightmares and falling from the bed for months, until my parents got the cue and relocated me to an institution not run by nuns. I still hate nuns.
In elementary school, I had to endure five years of a blatantly fascist teacher, an old bitch of the old school. She was so obnoxious that, when WW2 broke out, her husband immediately volunteered for the African front if only to get away from her, one of her sons shot himself, the other is kinda weird, and her niece will not let her anywhere near her grandson. That's the sort of people that used to take care of children in school. I used to be beaten regularly by other children, and when I asked her to do something she would say "Give'em a good kick in the legs!"; never mind I was 1 against 20. She also praised regularly Fascism for bringing bananas from Somalia and order and many other nice things.
At age 9 my father slams in a truck with his car. That's not something I blame on the state of course, I blame it on my father, who drove (and still drives) like an idiot and without seatbelts. However, he got hospitalised with three broken ribs and an insane pain in the right foot. The medics say the foot is no problem. After a few weeks, he relocates to a new hospital and, Voilà, here is the problem with the foot: the Cuboid bone is, well, missing. It was not really difficult to notice as the shrapnel after its explosion fracture was all over the foot's tissue and an X-ray looked like ground zero. Thanks to the incompetence of the first doctor, my father is still walking weird almost 20 years afterwards.
General preparation of teachers in high school... well, one example: the IT-course teacher could not format a floppy disk at the first lecture we had. She knew the command was format a:, she only missed the "Enter" key. Another example, the impressive inverse correlation between skirt length and marks in physics for girls. Too bad I'm not a Scot, I would have given it a shot. In the last year, we arrived at about Italy's unification a few weeks before the end of the year. We had WW1, fascism and WW2 in one hour of lecture, the very last one, when it was already known history would not have been an examination subject. Not a word on post-WW2 history, which I know only because I was interested. To top it off, our teacher for history and philosophy was actually the best one in the whole district.
University: not from Milan? Need a place to stay? Tough luck. At least teacher preparation was a bit better than in high school, on the other hand sup
Pick the Norwegian coast. Because of the gulf stream it's much warmer than the same latitude in Finland or Sweden. The lowest temperature in a normal year for as north as Tromsø is just -4 C. Bergen rarely falls below zero.
Hi there! I am an Italian who never worked in Italy and moved out as soon as I finished education. Almost thirty and not a day unemployed yet:-)
Then I found out they pay almost 50% income tax. On top of that, there is a 20% VAT on most items. On top of that, gasoline was almost $5 per gallon (a few years ago...almost certainly more now).
Though you will hear Giovanni Birramedia ("Joe Sixpack") and populist politicians complain about high taxes, those are quite standard rates in Europe. Except for the 50% which is simply untrue (though it is a popular stereotype, you might have heard it said). Gas is currently at about 1.2 euros/litre. Anyway, I will take high taxes over social inequality any day: a bit because of I have a sense of justice, a bit because I do not like getting mugged.
The high taxes were there to support their social services.
Well, it's no news there is a high and endemic level of corruption in Italian politics. Again, every country has the politicians it deserves, and the current Zeitgeist is such that a former minister can be sentenced to six years in jail for heavy corruption charges (Cesare Previti was sentenced for having basically bought the whole courthouse in Rome) and half the population will still believe that it is a persecution of communist judges. Tolerance for corruption is so high that we have boss and vice-boss of the military secret service under investigation for kidnapping and torture, and no one seems to care. I mean, no one has actually asked them to resign.
Virtually no concept of sexual harassment or workplace misconduct.
That surprises me. Either you got a wrong impression, or the situation in the US must be similar to the jus primæ noctis. The lower layers of society (illegal aliens and such) are regularly mistreated at the level of downright slavery. I suppose it depends a lot on the branch you work in.
Want a painkiller for your broken leg? Tough.
That has something to do with catholicism—you have to achieve sanctity through pain. That's not really what the doc is thinking, but just because it is unusual to give painkillers doctors are not used to that. This has been subject of debate in recent years, so maybe it has improved.
Europe sucks if you actually want to make something of yourself through hard work.
Italy sucks for that. If you want to be successful in Italy you must play much more politics at work and in the larger sense than in other countries, and you must be "blackmailable": the system rejects noncorrupted, as the system is built on a gigantic Mexican standoff where everybody must be able to trash anybody else in a sort of mutual-assured-destruction way. That's what comes out of endemic corruption. Of course there are bunches of honest people, but they are far away from power and kept there.
Now, I live in Norway. The main disadvantage I have found is that locals always talk their dialect rather than standard Norwegian, which is kind of irritating. Of course, you get that if this is the main problem I could find, there aren't really that many. The Norwegian tax level is sometimes indicated as the highest in the world, but I never paid more than 25% of direct tax (income tax, social security, fortune tax and so on). VAT is high (25%) and so are food prices because of protectionism (for some reason Norwegian think of themselves as a people historically of farmers, instead of pirates (Vikings) in the past and oil exporters (North Sea) now. Wages are fairly high (especially for Italian standards: a PhD student turns in over 2,300 euros/month. That's
As an open-source developer for 8 years building web and desktop apps, I am disgusted with GPLv3.
If you had the upgrade clause (supposing you actually wrote some apps and this is not trolling), you can still stay GPLv2 as long as you like. And Microsoft, Sauron or Darth Vader cannot do that, as the clause reads:
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
To those who modded this up: what about modding up stuff that actually contributes to the debate, instead of rabid rants? This AC simply babbles "Meh, I do not like it, will not use it" with no substantiation he has ever programmed anything.
Just like if you go to a barber and don't pay him, it's not his time you've stolen, it's the expectation that he'll be paid for his time that isn't being met.
In this case, you would have stolen a service, not a ware, and it is still stealing because the barber had to do work for that instance of the service. However, if you could somehow download a good shave and haircut every morning, and a barber sued you because of that, then you would have a similarity to IP infringement. And I can imagine the world laughing at a barber trying to prevent people from shaving themselves and requiring them to come to his shop.
Just like when someone takes out a line of credit in your name, it's not your identity being stolen,
This is even simpler than the previous example, this is outright theft out of my pocket because I receive a direct damage. Violating IP is not directly damaging anyone, though one may argue about the indirect effects.
IP is different from material property in that it can be endlessly multiplied. It's like bakers and fishermen suing Jesus Christ for stealing their bread and fish.
I think that more research should go into seeing if the bacteria could break down nuclear waste.
Of course they cannot. Bacteria (and life in general) work only in the domain of electromagnetic and gravitational forces. They cannot influence the rate of decay of any nucleus in any way.
Why would running a web browser in 32bit mode have any negative effect on uptake of 64bit OSes?
Why, because all the other damn plugins and libraries are 64 bits? If I compile Firefox 32 bit, the Java plugins do not work with it. Then I need java down at 32 bits, which will require to get down to 32 bits everything else that depends on Java. The same way goes mplayerplugin (therefore mplayer and all related apps), and pretty much everything that a browser uses. All this goes down in a chain reaction of 32-bit ripples, and ends up with breaking some functionality at some point, just because some lazy ass at Adobe did not want to recompile a damn binary one more time with different flags. I mean, it's not a different OS, it's just a different processor.
A gallon of liquid hydrogen, the highest attainable compression of hydrogen, has about 33% less energy than a gallon of gasoline. Granted, I don't have the energy efficiencies of each engine on-hand to compare.
Why, I do remember a few numbers (and yes, IAAFCR—I am a fuel-cell researcher): current car engines range from about 30% in lab conditions to something above or around 10% in less than ideal conditions (traffic jams, stop-and-go's, and so on), performing better on highways. Fuel cells (though most studies are about FCs in labs, not in cars) have about 50% efficiency, and the nice thing is they do not have a maximum efficiency at high torque, but at minimum power output (you are most of the time closer to the latter than the former when driving).
I am not saying that ammonia, methanol, ethanol or other chemical carriers are doomed, but I do not see them in (small) cars: the reason is that it takes a chemical plant to convert them back to hydrogen, and that is added weight, control, and power consumption; it also increases complexity and reduces reliability and dynamic performance. I see these more in trucks and small ships rather than motorcycles. Hydrides have the problem that hydrogen adsorption is easy, but desorption usually requires temperatures beyond 100C, and most fuel cells cannot deliver them; they are still looking for a mixture that will work well with lower temperatures. As for heating the cars, don't worry—fuel cells do produce quite some usable heat for that.
Nevertheless, lower energy density, combined with the dangers of manipulating pure hydrogen (which can be mitigated in the derivatives), not to mention overhauling the entire distribution network to handle it, keep pure hydrogen from ever being in large-scale use.
I do not believe that hydrogen is more dangerous than gasoline, as I stated before (mostly because people are so used to gasoline they do not realise how dangerous that actually is), but you are right that the distribution network is a major challenge. However, given the complexity of the current oil network, this has been done before and can be done again, so I would not say never.
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I would strongly suggest you to reconsider this statement. Just because you are an autocrat and govern for the benefit of a restricted circle of oligarchs, it does not mean the people will not like you. The bulk of the people can be made incredibly stupid when you control enough of the media.
The classical instrument to make the people love you even when you are actually screwing them is finding a scapegoat: Hitler had Jews, but he certainly did not invent the tactic, nor anti-semitism itself (he was instead special in that he actually believed that crap). It runs all the way back to the Romans (who blamed, say, Christians) and beyond. It has to be a small minority without an actual capability to politically fight back, yet recognizable enough. Putin has Chechen rebels, Ahmadinejad has Americans and Israel, Bush has terrorists, Berlusconi has Communists, Le Pen has immigrants.
Frankly I am surprised it has not happened yet, because jokes aside that's a place where no one in security will dare to perform a check. A terrorist would also have a perfectly normal excuse to seclude himself from the view of anyone else in the toilet that would raise no suspicion whatsoever. I wonder what is the explosive potential of the volume of a turd in plastic explosive, but it's likely more than enough to bring any plane down.
I am not that scared this might actually happen as much as the countermeasures that will be enacted afterwards...
Now that would be silly... The thing is supposed to be well visible so it detects booby traps. Making it camouflage-colored is hardly going to improve its performance. Again, it would be so fitting... "Silly String in stupid format for an idiotic war!"
You are actually wrong. Even if the word in Italian ("censura") means now the same as in English, in some languages it retained the original meaning. In Norwegian, for example, exams are actually "sensurert" ("censored"), and the word "sensur" is used for both meanings. I am not sure of the status in Swedish and Danish, but it's probably just the same like everything else.
"Censorship" means literally "evaluation"; Roman Censors used to watch over the Republic's morals and had a few other duties (including the census). Of course we usually we refer to the case when speech, art or other forms of expression are evaluated and denied publication. This is bad as everybody has a right to speak, and evaluating cases in which this should not apply leads rapidly to those in charge abusing their power and silencing those who contest them.
However, in science there are serious evaluation guidelines. If claims are cooked up or not backed by data, they are just that. Can't take the heat, don't play the game.
As a side note, Lomborg is a cook.
This misconception keeps appearing again and again and again. Even if burning coal releases radioactive isotopes, this is irrelevant as these are well spread in the atmosphere. Radiation is one of those problems that, if spread well enough, is no problem anymore, as there is a threshold under which humans do not suffer any significant effects from radiation.
The problem with nuke waste is that it is concentrated and therefore harmful.
Bullshit. Just because I do not believe there is a purple unicorn on my head does not mean I belong to the Church of purple-unicorn-on-the-head-less, it's just applying Occam's razor.
It has been said over and over in this page: "extraordinary claims call for extraordinary proof". There is a scientific consensus that global warming is real and anthropogenic. Gore made a movie and no one filed a suit for scientific dishonesty. Scientists made sample searches and found no scientific papers that disputed global warming, and a vast majority considered it anthropogenic. So, who are you, and what are your sources and arguments, to suddenly post here on Slashdot that every scientist is wrong?
Well, says who? What data, in which studies? To what extent? Did you check the data yourself, or do you rely on someone else, and if so who?
Sure, a boulder falling on your head is indeed going to provide shelter from rain. But that's not the main concern you have when you see a boulder falling on you.
That's your problem, you are in denial. Get over it, global warming is real, it is happening, and anthropogenic CO2 is responsible. You simply won't admit that you have a problem and you have to do something about it. You are approaching a problem you do not understand with an answer you already made up. That's the approach of religious fundamentalism, science works the other way around.
The crime of lèse majesté is likely aimed at anyone who could possibly criticise the Thai king Bhumibol Adulyadej. This guy has built a heck of a cult of personality around him that Stalin would be envious of. He managed to install and uninstall dictators and (a sort of) democracy at a whim, and it would appear no one dares to confront him. In fact, no government seems to be able to claim legitimacy if not from the king.
Surely, you may want to talk to the CEOs of MySQL and Qt developers Trolltech, who release their projects under the GPL and do turn a profit. In the case of Sun, as others already have mentioned, they make money on the hardware, and commoditising software is only good for them.
Of course, these are corporations. Speaking of private persons, what about a certain Linus Torvalds, who is now fairly well-off?
You are being stupid. First, the first thermometers were neither accurate nor ubiquitous. You would only get approximate measurements in Italy for a long time, and systematic ones only for the last century or less. Second, there are other ways to measure temperatures than a direct thermometer, just like there are indirect ways to tell that the magnetic north-south pole swap relatively often place without us ever measuring it.
You are presenting false alternatives. What about not screwing everything up instead?
You never saw a glacier. They are not snow, they are thick ice and do not melt that quickly. I remember always seeing glaciers on the top of the Orobian Alps from my grandma's house every summer we went there. They disappeared last year, now only moraines are left.
Conservative journalist Christopher Monckton, former advisor to Thatcher, says global warming is bollocks. Ahh, the smell of bullshit in the evening.
Dear Mr. Monckton, if you really are convinced you are right, submit your research to a scientific journal about climatology. Then we'll see what comes out of the discussion.
Real Science(tm) is made in research papers and conferences, not in opinionated columns in conservative newspapers (well, to be fair "not in newspapers" is enough said).
From his PDF that should detail his points, I take the first one:
A quack financed by oil companies and OPEC (guess where those ten grands came from, and why it is not mentioned: it is a think-tank built purposedly for this one prize to Lindzen) and 41 generic "scientists" (not climatologists I suppose, otherwise it would have been mentioned; I could not find the actual letter, it would have been interesting to have a link and check their credentials) are against the flow. So what? There are people who believe you can die on a bomb and be given 72 virgins in paradise, or that the Holocaust never happened. What about what appears in actual research papers? Where is the debunking of the consensus? "Consensus" does not mean 100%, it means more like "much more than 50%". Otherwise, there is no consensus the world is round.
Well, there are many reasons Mexico is not China in the first place. The ruling class is not as disciplined as the Chinese, the country is not as stable, work ethics are Latin (I'm Latin myself so I can say it without being a hate criminal).
Oh, that's another reason why Mexico is not China—Mexico does not have an impressive amount of US foreign debt in its pockets (rather the other way around). If the US decide to play tough on China, the Chinese simply have to say "fine, no need to be friends. Please make 7% of your GDP payable to us by next morning. After that we will convert all the dollars in our pockets in euros and trash your economy by 18:00."
The US will never play that game with China, because China is stronger and getting stronger yet. The 21st century is China's as much as the 19th was of the UK and the 20 of the US. Don't worry too much about democracy, when the US became a world leader it still had slavery. China will mature with time.
Frankly, Moldova is a tiny country with a limited supply of labor. Furthermore the state is so weak that it cannot even hold itself in one piece. It's not really poised to attract much investment. I could not find anything specific on the human-rights situation in Moldova, but I doubt it is any better than many ex-Soviet republics (except the Baltic states, that came out well). Anyway, material found in the West may be prone to bias as Moldova has been a staunch supporter of the war on terrorism.
I do not see why ad hominem arguments are seen as pariah arguments. Of course it's no proof he is wrong, but if it is known he is a nut then his opinions will weigh less than a professional climatologist's. I mean, a novelist's opinion against the whole scientific community?
Ad hominem arguments like this one evaluate the speaker's rethorical ethos, which is a fully legitimate argument. It does not directly demonstrate he is wrong, it points out that the probability he is right are very small.
Since no one can know all about everything in the world, at some point everyone has to trust some expert's opinion. If you do not know a certain field, ad hominem arguments are pretty much the only thing you are left (who is credible and who is not?), except spending a few decades becoming an expert yourself.
A GOP risking to lose an election, a less popular than ever PotUS, a largely announced electoral defeat: so let's try to blame the machines, and while we're at it Chávez too. It only surprises me they did not mention the company's CEO is an alias used by Osama Bin Laden or some other scarecrow.
The article also mentions (in the second page) the controversy about Chávez' re-election's, but fail to mention that election's result was UN-certified (unlike someone else's) and the guy in charge of UN controls was Jimmy Carter, not Fidel Castro.
First, I totally agree with your post. But look at it from another angle: we don't "get it" when it is about political questions. Politicians and we slashdotters think in a different mindset: we mostly think "IT security is important, privacy is important, censorship is always bad" and we have a background that will make us look like idiots if we say we don't know what MD5 sums or GTK are. Politicians think first "what will get me re-elected?" or "what will get me to another position?" if they are in their last term. They talk to the general population, and you only detect the bullshit that shows on your radar, but there is likely much more, like talking of hydrogen as an energy source (it's a carrier), saying that English is the most spoken language on earth (it's Chinese), talking about protecting children from pedophiles outside the family and so on (most abuses happen inside the family), and I have not even mentioned terrorism.
Politicians behave like this because this is the correct way to behave. The correct one in their system of reference, that is, where they are supposed to have a career: in order to do so, they must impress the voters, and it's much easier when talking about something people do not know about. Really, it's like evolution: if a politician sticks to what he knows, he will have to say "I do not know" too often, and this will put him at a disadvantage.
The only solution to get better politicians is a smarter and more informed voter population. Demagogues flourish in countries with low literacy, with few people reading newspapers and more people relying on only a few aligned information sources. So, rather than complaining about politicians, it would be probably more productive to tell the next guy (or better yet write to a newspaper, if there are any chances to be published) about why that politician is a kook. And, in the Grand Scheme of Things, increase education level and independent press.
It would actually be interesting to know which 14 these were, in which one you lived three years, and what you disliked about this.
Though it does sound you were stationed in France, there should be no foreign troops stationed there, so I wonder...
What was I saying about people blaming the communists all the time...?
... which you do not. Strong arguments, Anonymous Coward.
Forgive me, father. From now on I will listen more carefully to the pious voice of Pope Germanus I.
Oh yeah, today's brats, no respects for the elders...
At what point exactly did I sign a contract with the Italian state? Don't get me started on the education I received, no well you have already:
Pick the Norwegian coast. Because of the gulf stream it's much warmer than the same latitude in Finland or Sweden. The lowest temperature in a normal year for as north as Tromsø is just -4 C. Bergen rarely falls below zero.
Hi there! I am an Italian who never worked in Italy and moved out as soon as I finished education. Almost thirty and not a day unemployed yet :-)
Though you will hear Giovanni Birramedia ("Joe Sixpack") and populist politicians complain about high taxes, those are quite standard rates in Europe. Except for the 50% which is simply untrue (though it is a popular stereotype, you might have heard it said). Gas is currently at about 1.2 euros/litre. Anyway, I will take high taxes over social inequality any day: a bit because of I have a sense of justice, a bit because I do not like getting mugged.
Well, it's no news there is a high and endemic level of corruption in Italian politics. Again, every country has the politicians it deserves, and the current Zeitgeist is such that a former minister can be sentenced to six years in jail for heavy corruption charges (Cesare Previti was sentenced for having basically bought the whole courthouse in Rome) and half the population will still believe that it is a persecution of communist judges. Tolerance for corruption is so high that we have boss and vice-boss of the military secret service under investigation for kidnapping and torture, and no one seems to care. I mean, no one has actually asked them to resign.
That surprises me. Either you got a wrong impression, or the situation in the US must be similar to the jus primæ noctis. The lower layers of society (illegal aliens and such) are regularly mistreated at the level of downright slavery. I suppose it depends a lot on the branch you work in.
That has something to do with catholicism—you have to achieve sanctity through pain. That's not really what the doc is thinking, but just because it is unusual to give painkillers doctors are not used to that. This has been subject of debate in recent years, so maybe it has improved.
Italy sucks for that. If you want to be successful in Italy you must play much more politics at work and in the larger sense than in other countries, and you must be "blackmailable": the system rejects noncorrupted, as the system is built on a gigantic Mexican standoff where everybody must be able to trash anybody else in a sort of mutual-assured-destruction way. That's what comes out of endemic corruption. Of course there are bunches of honest people, but they are far away from power and kept there.
Now, I live in Norway. The main disadvantage I have found is that locals always talk their dialect rather than standard Norwegian, which is kind of irritating. Of course, you get that if this is the main problem I could find, there aren't really that many. The Norwegian tax level is sometimes indicated as the highest in the world, but I never paid more than 25% of direct tax (income tax, social security, fortune tax and so on). VAT is high (25%) and so are food prices because of protectionism (for some reason Norwegian think of themselves as a people historically of farmers, instead of pirates (Vikings) in the past and oil exporters (North Sea) now. Wages are fairly high (especially for Italian standards: a PhD student turns in over 2,300 euros/month. That's
+5 Interesting to an unsubstantiated AC troll?
If you had the upgrade clause (supposing you actually wrote some apps and this is not trolling), you can still stay GPLv2 as long as you like. And Microsoft, Sauron or Darth Vader cannot do that, as the clause reads:
To those who modded this up: what about modding up stuff that actually contributes to the debate, instead of rabid rants? This AC simply babbles "Meh, I do not like it, will not use it" with no substantiation he has ever programmed anything.
In this case, you would have stolen a service, not a ware, and it is still stealing because the barber had to do work for that instance of the service. However, if you could somehow download a good shave and haircut every morning, and a barber sued you because of that, then you would have a similarity to IP infringement. And I can imagine the world laughing at a barber trying to prevent people from shaving themselves and requiring them to come to his shop.
This is even simpler than the previous example, this is outright theft out of my pocket because I receive a direct damage. Violating IP is not directly damaging anyone, though one may argue about the indirect effects.
IP is different from material property in that it can be endlessly multiplied. It's like bakers and fishermen suing Jesus Christ for stealing their bread and fish.
Of course they cannot. Bacteria (and life in general) work only in the domain of electromagnetic and gravitational forces. They cannot influence the rate of decay of any nucleus in any way.
Why, because all the other damn plugins and libraries are 64 bits? If I compile Firefox 32 bit, the Java plugins do not work with it. Then I need java down at 32 bits, which will require to get down to 32 bits everything else that depends on Java. The same way goes mplayerplugin (therefore mplayer and all related apps), and pretty much everything that a browser uses. All this goes down in a chain reaction of 32-bit ripples, and ends up with breaking some functionality at some point, just because some lazy ass at Adobe did not want to recompile a damn binary one more time with different flags. I mean, it's not a different OS, it's just a different processor.
Why, I do remember a few numbers (and yes, IAAFCR—I am a fuel-cell researcher): current car engines range from about 30% in lab conditions to something above or around 10% in less than ideal conditions (traffic jams, stop-and-go's, and so on), performing better on highways. Fuel cells (though most studies are about FCs in labs, not in cars) have about 50% efficiency, and the nice thing is they do not have a maximum efficiency at high torque, but at minimum power output (you are most of the time closer to the latter than the former when driving).
I am not saying that ammonia, methanol, ethanol or other chemical carriers are doomed, but I do not see them in (small) cars: the reason is that it takes a chemical plant to convert them back to hydrogen, and that is added weight, control, and power consumption; it also increases complexity and reduces reliability and dynamic performance. I see these more in trucks and small ships rather than motorcycles. Hydrides have the problem that hydrogen adsorption is easy, but desorption usually requires temperatures beyond 100C, and most fuel cells cannot deliver them; they are still looking for a mixture that will work well with lower temperatures. As for heating the cars, don't worry—fuel cells do produce quite some usable heat for that.
I do not believe that hydrogen is more dangerous than gasoline, as I stated before (mostly because people are so used to gasoline they do not realise how dangerous that actually is), but you are right that the distribution network is a major challenge. However, given the complexity of the current oil network, this has been done before and can be done again, so I would not say never.