I agree that it's not likely today that someone is going to smack you around. However, it is very likely (and it has happened in the recent past) that a job would be dependant on your vote.
"You're resume looks excellent, can I please see your most recent ballot verification card."
"The election is Tuesday. Please bring your ballot receipts Wednesday. Performance review will be completed Thursday."
"You wanna work, you gotta join the union. You wanna join the union, you gotta vote for the pro-union guy."
It's not just a possiblilty. It will happen if the votes can be verified. The negatives HEAVILY outweigh the small positives of being able to verify a specific vote after the election.
You didn't solve the broken kneecap problem. You're counting on having a bunch of extra reciepts just sitting around that anyone can take. If I'm going to damand your vote, I'll just be at the polling place and make sure you never get one out of the trash.
If you can verify your vote after the election, I can verify your vote. If I can verify your vote, I can exert improper influence on your vote.
Hey, what do you think you're doing here!?! You're stating facts, and giving real explainations. If I wanted that, I'd go read a book.
I come here for uninformed and incomplete comments from college freshmen who think that they know everything about cell phones because they know how to operate the features on a phone. I don't want someone who understands telecommunications. I would prefer someone who know how to program. Because being able to program a PC is basically the same thing as telecommunications. So why don't you just take your "facts" and "knowledge" and just go home.
Did anyone else notice that there was no mention of key management? Who cares what algorithm it uses if there isn't secure key management. AES is a good choice for the encryption algorithm, but it might as well be plaintext if the key managment isn't handled properly.
Is they key negotiated as part of the protocol? How is that exchange authenticated? How is access control done? Can anyone enter the network?
Does it use a pre-placed key? How do you make sure the AP has every clients key? Can you access the AP without encryption? Do users have to type keys in?
And Office 97 is about as good as Office ever got.
Spoken like a person who has never used Word for anything except writing a college paper. I prefer Open Office to MS Office, and I think that there are plent of problems for MS Office. But saying Office 97 is better than the more recent versions is delusional at best.
btw, i don't even understand why there are religious parties in a democracy.
Why would people who share common beliefs and ideas want to form a political party to promote their beliefs?
Don't these fruitcakes know that in a democracy the only allowable religion is atheism? Don't they know that because the state doesn't force a religion on people, they can't gather around their beleifs?
$4 per gallon would be about right, a little under cost per gallon in most other countries (Britain, Europe, etc) for gasoline (around $5 per gallon globally).
Yes, the price at the pump is higher in Europe than in America and is probably close to the numbers you give. However European prices for gas are so much higher because of the huge taxes that are placed on petrol. If you exclude taxes, prices in America and Europe are quite comparable.
Well, we know that whichever of those is likely, the initial trigger will be greater atmospheric temperatures due to the greenhouse effect. So, how about a ratifying the global environmental protocol concerned with the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions?
I don't think you understand. Our knowledge isn't good enough to understand what triggers what. It's plausible (but not proven) that increased carbon dioxide emissions could be the the "trigger" for huge changes in the climate. However, out knowledge of prediction is so poor that we cannot be sure that reducing emission will not be a "trigger".
The correct course of action is to do nothing. Action or in-action could cause the same effects. We don't have enough knowledge to say for certain. However, we can say for certain that adopting treaties like Kyoto would seriously happer our economy. (Which was the true intention of the treaty and why the the US senate unanimously passed a resolution against it.)
So we can choose from the following 1) Unknown chances of global climate change 2) Uknownn chances of global climate change and large, negative impacts on the economy.
If you are actually using an 8 year old computer, with stolen internet access and stolen power, I have a suggestions for you.
I would encourage you to reconsider how you spend your time. Posting comments to slashdot and blaming others for your plight, is probably not the best use of your time.
Rather than posting comments to slashdot and blaming others for your plight, there are probably more productive ways to use your time.
In addition, the president is not responsible for you. You are responsible for you.
Most importantly, you are not as bad off as most people in the third world. I would guess that there no less than 1 billion people in the world who would be happy to take a job doing menial labor, cleaning, flipping burgers, or some other "bad" job.
The only question remaining is will we keep oscilating around this ideal forever or will things stable out after a while and reach a point of stability where everyboddy is happy?
The answer is: WE CAN NEVER MAKE EVERYONE HAPPY! Never. Ever. Not possible. Never will be. Never. Never. Never.
Why? Because people are never satisfied with what they have. Just look at the forms here. We have people that have enough disposable income and enough time to use a computer to post a comment about how terrible their life is. "But I'm unemplyed." "I'm underemployed." "My job isn't what I want to do."
Seriously, those are good problems to have. If you can use a computer, you're not too bad off. A real problem would be something like not knowing if the well will have water today or if the water in the well will make you sick."
People ALWAYS find something new to bitch about. No one will ever be happy. Utopia doesn't exist. Every time someone tries to build it it, something much, much worse appears. Free Trade and Democracy are the best ways we have to make the problems that people have be of the "what shall we have for lunch" type.
It's happening much faster than most natural climate variations.
Really? I will concede that this is possible, there is nothing that proves this. What is the real rate of change? Does it matter what causes the change or is the temperature the only thing that matters? Can we do anything about it? Will doing something make it better, or will we make it worse by trying?
We don't have a model that can answer any of those questions. They models are very sensitive to initial conditions and small variations in the input. The best models can give possible outcomes, but they are so inaccurate they can't even give probablities for which is more likely.
We may be causing the extinction of many species, including tha partial extinction of the human species.
Really... a "partial extinction"? What is a partial extinction? We'll no longer exist as a species except for the ones that still exist.
What you mean is that there will be lots of people who die. These will probably be from the thrid world. But tell me which is more likely, that a globabl distaster may cause chaos 100 years in the future, or drastic environmental regulations cripple the world economy an cause massive problems in the third world.
(Here's a hint, abject poverty always causes hardship.)
Well, you're displaying your ignorance by suggesting that skeptism is justified because Greenpeace publicizes the research results of a very large body of scientists.
Actually, I was making fun of their "research". Since you didn't catch the sarcasm. Here's a more obvious explaination of what I was trying to say.
Greenpeace has decided on a conclusion (the Earth is doomed unless we stop all industrial activity), writes papers, fliers and articles based on this conclusion. What little research is done is manipulated by selecting only the parts that agree with the pre-described conclusion.
Re:Aren't we still in an Ice Age?
on
A New Ice Age?
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
I think that you and I agree more than you think. I am fully in favor of conservation of resources. It's not good to waste what we have. (However, I think that defining "waste" is quite hard.)
However, the arguements you made for conservation were almost all economic. (Which is why I agree with them.) If there is a economic incentive to take the action that agrees with what the model says we should do, then it's most likely a good idea. However, we do it because of the economic impact, not the environmental.
You mentioned European support for CO2 standards. You even mentioned that the reason that Europe has embraced fuel efficiency standards is that European nations could be economically impacted by a loss of fuel. However, this is a completely economic and strategic calculation. The fact that the fuel efficiency standards might reduce C02 is a nice side benefit because it agrees with our current models. However, because we know our models are flawed, it is possible (a small, but non-negligable probability) that putting huge amounts of C02 is in our long best interest.
Re:Aren't we still in an Ice Age?
on
A New Ice Age?
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
However, if such events have even an above negligible probability of occuring I think we must take steps in order to avoid them.
I will generally agree with this, however the conclusion you draw from it is incorrect.
1. There is a small chance that if we do nothing catastrophic damage will be done. Therefore, we must take action.
2. Doing "X" will probably fix the problem predicted by the model. However, we do not have a good model to evaluate all of the outcomes from taking action "X", so we must evaluate the probablities. Because the model isn't good enough, the probablity that "X" will cause different but equally catastrophic damage, is the same as the original problem. Therefore we cannot take action "X". We must take other action.
3. Repeat step two until you've exhausted all possiblities and realize that, without a good model, taking drastic action is not a good idea.
The lack of a valid climate model is the reason that it's irresponsible to take drastic action that will harm people today. Because the model is bad, taking action doesn't remove the chance of catastrophic damage and it creates certain short and medium term damage.
It is not on the naysayers to prove that nothing needs to be done. The burden is on those pushing for change to make a valid case for change and show that the immediate downside is out-weighed by the potential gain. Current climate models do not do this.
Re:It occurs to me...
on
A New Ice Age?
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Yeah, your right. Everyone who doubts the human impact on global warming must be ignorant. How can they believe a Shell study when there is so much other literature from Greenpeace out there. The results are so obvious that Greenpeace doesn't even need to do research!
We should force all these ignorant people to submit to our will. From this point forward no one is allowed to drive cars or use electricity. We will go back to a "natural" state.
As you die of starvation, disease and animal attacks, remember that your life and the hundreds of millions of other lives are serving a great purpose of making the climate "right".
Don't be bothered by the fact we don't have a model that has ever accurately predicted climate change.
Don't worry that there were periods of warming and cooling in the past that had nothing to do with humans. The people who think that this might be related to our observations of climate change today are completely ignorant. Your suffering is worth the price.
Re:And it occurs to me...
on
A New Ice Age?
·
· Score: 1
I'm glad you feel safe, however concluding that you're safe because prior research has been wrong is not a great recipe for the long term.
There may be some people that feel safe because prior research was wrong. But its more likely a feeling of uncertainly, not safety. Because there has never been a good model that accurately predicts climate change, it is silly to make huge changes based on it.
Doing things like increasing fuel efficiency are a good idea because they have additional benefits. However it's irresponsible to take drastic steps that may or may not actually impact the climate, but certainly will have significant and negative short and medium term impacts.
It's not a feeling of safety, its rational evaluation of risks and rewards.
Re:Wait... so you're telling me...
on
A New Ice Age?
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
I'd say the enormous increase in rates of cancer over the past century was the result in large part of industrial waste, but that would be arrogant of me.
This is a bogus argument. Of course the number of reported cancer cases has increased over the last century. There are two strikingly obvious reasons.
First, people have a much longer life expectancy today than people did a century ago. We've eliminated a lot of the things that used to kill people (simple infections, food poisoning, etc). Many of the people that would have gotten cancer, died from something simple that is non-fatal today.
Second, we know so much more about cancer today. We know how to diagnose it. If you go back 100 years, I would guess that there were thousands of farmers who died of a "cold" but really had skin cancer. And skin cancer is easy to see compared to pancreatic cancer, bone cancer, and other internal cancers.
A century ago people might have died of cancer (if they lived long enough to get cancer), but it's unlikely that it would be reported as a death from cancer. The rise in cancer rates may be related to industrial waste, but that claim cannot be reliably made because there is no way to find valid cancer statistics from 100 years ago.
It's not realistic?!? What?!? I thought these guys had found a completely new way to replace our aging telecomm infrustructure. How can you possibly say these guys are funny? They don't include anything on their web page to indicate that this is anything other than cutting-edge research.
(Note to parent: This post is a joke. Just like the original story.)
Slashdot Mirror
No. You're assumption is wrong. 128-keys use the full 128 bits.
It's really quite simple.
Government involvement is good when it does things that I want. It's bad when it does things I don't want.
Government should protect my rights. Government should protect my right to infringe on your rights.
Government should take your money to implement my agenda. Government shouldn't take my money to implement your agenda.
Just follow these simple rules and "the slashdot position on government" is easy to understand.
I agree that it's not likely today that someone is going to smack you around. However, it is very likely (and it has happened in the recent past) that a job would be dependant on your vote.
"You're resume looks excellent, can I please see your most recent ballot verification card."
"The election is Tuesday. Please bring your ballot receipts Wednesday. Performance review will be completed Thursday."
"You wanna work, you gotta join the union. You wanna join the union, you gotta vote for the pro-union guy."
It's not just a possiblilty. It will happen if the votes can be verified. The negatives HEAVILY outweigh the small positives of being able to verify a specific vote after the election.
You didn't solve the broken kneecap problem. You're counting on having a bunch of extra reciepts just sitting around that anyone can take. If I'm going to damand your vote, I'll just be at the polling place and make sure you never get one out of the trash.
If you can verify your vote after the election, I can verify your vote. If I can verify your vote, I can exert improper influence on your vote.
Don't forget the massive inferiority complex you would need to develop. :-)
Hey, what do you think you're doing here!?! You're stating facts, and giving real explainations. If I wanted that, I'd go read a book.
I come here for uninformed and incomplete comments from college freshmen who think that they know everything about cell phones because they know how to operate the features on a phone. I don't want someone who understands telecommunications. I would prefer someone who know how to program. Because being able to program a PC is basically the same thing as telecommunications. So why don't you just take your "facts" and "knowledge" and just go home.
Did anyone else notice that there was no mention of key management? Who cares what algorithm it uses if there isn't secure key management. AES is a good choice for the encryption algorithm, but it might as well be plaintext if the key managment isn't handled properly.
Is they key negotiated as part of the protocol? How is that exchange authenticated? How is access control done? Can anyone enter the network?
Does it use a pre-placed key? How do you make sure the AP has every clients key? Can you access the AP without encryption? Do users have to type keys in?
Spoken like a person who has never used Word for anything except writing a college paper. I prefer Open Office to MS Office, and I think that there are plent of problems for MS Office. But saying Office 97 is better than the more recent versions is delusional at best.
Why would people who share common beliefs and ideas want to form a political party to promote their beliefs?
Don't these fruitcakes know that in a democracy the only allowable religion is atheism? Don't they know that because the state doesn't force a religion on people, they can't gather around their beleifs?
Yes, the price at the pump is higher in Europe than in America and is probably close to the numbers you give. However European prices for gas are so much higher because of the huge taxes that are placed on petrol. If you exclude taxes, prices in America and Europe are quite comparable.
Hurray for infintely many "prime twins".... I mean twin primes!
I don't think you understand. Our knowledge isn't good enough to understand what triggers what. It's plausible (but not proven) that increased carbon dioxide emissions could be the the "trigger" for huge changes in the climate. However, out knowledge of prediction is so poor that we cannot be sure that reducing emission will not be a "trigger".
The correct course of action is to do nothing. Action or in-action could cause the same effects. We don't have enough knowledge to say for certain. However, we can say for certain that adopting treaties like Kyoto would seriously happer our economy. (Which was the true intention of the treaty and why the the US senate unanimously passed a resolution against it.)
So we can choose from the following
1) Unknown chances of global climate change
2) Uknownn chances of global climate change and large, negative impacts on the economy.
It's not a hard choice.
And you better get working on the massive inferiority complex.
If you are actually using an 8 year old computer, with stolen internet access and stolen power, I have a suggestions for you.
I would encourage you to reconsider how you spend your time. Posting comments to slashdot and blaming others for your plight, is probably not the best use of your time.
Rather than posting comments to slashdot and blaming others for your plight, there are probably more productive ways to use your time.
In addition, the president is not responsible for you. You are responsible for you.
Most importantly, you are not as bad off as most people in the third world. I would guess that there no less than 1 billion people in the world who would be happy to take a job doing menial labor, cleaning, flipping burgers, or some other "bad" job.
The answer is: WE CAN NEVER MAKE EVERYONE HAPPY! Never. Ever. Not possible. Never will be. Never. Never. Never.
Why? Because people are never satisfied with what they have. Just look at the forms here. We have people that have enough disposable income and enough time to use a computer to post a comment about how terrible their life is. "But I'm unemplyed." "I'm underemployed." "My job isn't what I want to do."
Seriously, those are good problems to have. If you can use a computer, you're not too bad off. A real problem would be something like not knowing if the well will have water today or if the water in the well will make you sick."
People ALWAYS find something new to bitch about. No one will ever be happy. Utopia doesn't exist. Every time someone tries to build it it, something much, much worse appears. Free Trade and Democracy are the best ways we have to make the problems that people have be of the "what shall we have for lunch" type.
Yes it does.
Use Pari/GP. It's even GLP.
I believe the phrase you're looking for is: "DOS ain't done, 'til lotus won't run."
We don't have a model that can answer any of those questions. They models are very sensitive to initial conditions and small variations in the input. The best models can give possible outcomes, but they are so inaccurate they can't even give probablities for which is more likely.
Really... a "partial extinction"? What is a partial extinction? We'll no longer exist as a species except for the ones that still exist.
What you mean is that there will be lots of people who die. These will probably be from the thrid world. But tell me which is more likely, that a globabl distaster may cause chaos 100 years in the future, or drastic environmental regulations cripple the world economy an cause massive problems in the third world.
(Here's a hint, abject poverty always causes hardship.)
Actually, I was making fun of their "research". Since you didn't catch the sarcasm. Here's a more obvious explaination of what I was trying to say.
Greenpeace has decided on a conclusion (the Earth is doomed unless we stop all industrial activity), writes papers, fliers and articles based on this conclusion. What little research is done is manipulated by selecting only the parts that agree with the pre-described conclusion.
I think that you and I agree more than you think. I am fully in favor of conservation of resources. It's not good to waste what we have. (However, I think that defining "waste" is quite hard.)
However, the arguements you made for conservation were almost all economic. (Which is why I agree with them.) If there is a economic incentive to take the action that agrees with what the model says we should do, then it's most likely a good idea. However, we do it because of the economic impact, not the environmental.
You mentioned European support for CO2 standards. You even mentioned that the reason that Europe has embraced fuel efficiency standards is that European nations could be economically impacted by a loss of fuel. However, this is a completely economic and strategic calculation. The fact that the fuel efficiency standards might reduce C02 is a nice side benefit because it agrees with our current models. However, because we know our models are flawed, it is possible (a small, but non-negligable probability) that putting huge amounts of C02 is in our long best interest.
I will generally agree with this, however the conclusion you draw from it is incorrect.
1. There is a small chance that if we do nothing catastrophic damage will be done. Therefore, we must take action.
2. Doing "X" will probably fix the problem predicted by the model. However, we do not have a good model to evaluate all of the outcomes from taking action "X", so we must evaluate the probablities. Because the model isn't good enough, the probablity that "X" will cause different but equally catastrophic damage, is the same as the original problem. Therefore we cannot take action "X". We must take other action.
3. Repeat step two until you've exhausted all possiblities and realize that, without a good model, taking drastic action is not a good idea.
The lack of a valid climate model is the reason that it's irresponsible to take drastic action that will harm people today. Because the model is bad, taking action doesn't remove the chance of catastrophic damage and it creates certain short and medium term damage.
It is not on the naysayers to prove that nothing needs to be done. The burden is on those pushing for change to make a valid case for change and show that the immediate downside is out-weighed by the potential gain. Current climate models do not do this.
Yeah, your right. Everyone who doubts the human impact on global warming must be ignorant. How can they believe a Shell study when there is so much other literature from Greenpeace out there. The results are so obvious that Greenpeace doesn't even need to do research!
We should force all these ignorant people to submit to our will. From this point forward no one is allowed to drive cars or use electricity. We will go back to a "natural" state.
As you die of starvation, disease and animal attacks, remember that your life and the hundreds of millions of other lives are serving a great purpose of making the climate "right".
Don't be bothered by the fact we don't have a model that has ever accurately predicted climate change.
Don't worry that there were periods of warming and cooling in the past that had nothing to do with humans. The people who think that this might be related to our observations of climate change today are completely ignorant. Your suffering is worth the price.
There may be some people that feel safe because prior research was wrong. But its more likely a feeling of uncertainly, not safety. Because there has never been a good model that accurately predicts climate change, it is silly to make huge changes based on it.
Doing things like increasing fuel efficiency are a good idea because they have additional benefits. However it's irresponsible to take drastic steps that may or may not actually impact the climate, but certainly will have significant and negative short and medium term impacts.
It's not a feeling of safety, its rational evaluation of risks and rewards.
This is a bogus argument. Of course the number of reported cancer cases has increased over the last century. There are two strikingly obvious reasons.
First, people have a much longer life expectancy today than people did a century ago. We've eliminated a lot of the things that used to kill people (simple infections, food poisoning, etc). Many of the people that would have gotten cancer, died from something simple that is non-fatal today.
Second, we know so much more about cancer today. We know how to diagnose it. If you go back 100 years, I would guess that there were thousands of farmers who died of a "cold" but really had skin cancer. And skin cancer is easy to see compared to pancreatic cancer, bone cancer, and other internal cancers.
A century ago people might have died of cancer (if they lived long enough to get cancer), but it's unlikely that it would be reported as a death from cancer. The rise in cancer rates may be related to industrial waste, but that claim cannot be reliably made because there is no way to find valid cancer statistics from 100 years ago.
(Note to parent: This post is a joke. Just like the original story.)