The absolute belief in these models caused Long Term Capital Management to go under in 1998 ( see When Genius failed ).
No, LTCM went under because they used leverage to be make bets that they couldn't afford to lose, i.e. they borrowed money to make their bets much larger. If they were able to sustain the losses that they incurred, I'd imagine that most of their bets would have worked out in the long run.
..if they sell less than 10 of these things? From what I hear, these things are going to be priced at $8000. On top of that, the demos sounded dreadful.
For this amount of money you can buy a laptop, a professional quality MIDI keyboard, sequencer/host software, a whole bunch of VST instruments and effects, and some top of the line sampling libraries. You could even go the Digidesign/Creamware route pretty hard. In return, you don't have to rely on Korg for hardware / software upgrades, and you can have a some musical instruments that sound at least halfway decent.
Perhaps $8000 will buy me a day's worth of whatever Korg's marketing dept was smoking.
You're thinking of sulfur dioxide, not carbon dioxide. See the article here.
SO2 causes acid rain, CO2 ("supposedly") causes global warming. I did some reading into this awhile back, and SO2 pollution generally stays local, while the opposite is true of CO2.
The level of CO2 being output by human industry is around 100 times that of volcanoes. You also have to figure that, for a large eruption, significant amounts of dust and other matter is put into the air, which actually blocks enough sunlight that the net effect is to lower global temperatures for a couple months. From what I remember from school, the net effect of the Krakatoa eruption in 1883 was a.5 degree drop in world temperature for a year or two.
"Most URL references [stand] more than a 50 percent chance of not existing after only six months." (from a Cornell study at http://www.news.cornell.edu/chronicle/00/12.14.00/ web_citations.html [cornell.edu])
DE/WM: CLI (C stands for communism, don't know about "LI")
File Manager: csh
Desktop icons: ls --color
Web Browser: lynx
Mail Client: cat/var/spool/mail/[me]
Word Processor: echo [words]>[file]
Other Desktop apps: shutdown -h now
I used to just carry around an abacus, but it wasn't fast enough so I had to chuck that whack ass piece of garbage. Sometimes even my keyboard is too slow, in which case I got bust out the magnets and manually access the hard drive.
When there's a failure during launch and the uranium containment chamber is blown to pieces in the atmosphere, how would you explain to some kid in Africa why all of his relatives are getting cancer from fallout. Sure, chances are that the rocket will make it, but what if it doesn't?
"Well, we really wanted to go to space and we did some testing first. Apparently we were in the wrong 1% of the failure rate. Oops!"
The moral crux (for me) is that our decision to satisfy a desire to go to space has global implications. Don't get me wrong, I'd love to see more space exploration. At the same time, however, I don't see how it's legitimate for a small group of people to make the decision to risk every one else's lives, no matter how small the risk.
5 points for each mention of "Einstien", "Hawkins" or "Feynmann".
Good thing that you don't lose points for mentioning Einstein, Hawking, or Feynman. I just wrote a paper on QED and Black Holes at relativistic speeds, and I can't afford to lose anymore cred, given all the stormtroopers in the scientific establishment trying to play all Inquisition on my revolutionary theory.
One of the biggest sources of natural atmospheric CO2 is plant matter. At the end of the 19th century, human CO2 emissions were comparable to global plant matter emissions (~150 MMt). By the end of the 20th century, human emissions were 40 times greater than the plant CO2 emissions.
This statement should read something more like:
One of the biggest sinks for natural atmospheric CO2 is plant matter. At the end of the 19th century, human CO2 emissions were comparable to global plant CO2 intake (~150 MMt). By the end of the 20th century, human emissions were 40 times greater than the plant CO2 intake.
2. Furthermore, land covers only 1/3 of the earth's surface. The other 2/3 is the ocean. Funnily enough, scientists haven't measured the temperature of the ocean over the past 100 years - there are generally only temperature stations located on the land.
Uhhh...they have buoys in the ocean (as well as blimps, satellites, etc).
3. NASA satellites (which have been measuring the temperature of one of the atmospheres of the planet - I forget it's name, but it's about 1km above the surface of the planet) shows that the planet has actually been cooling down since the records have recorded. How is it that the planet has been warming up yet the atmosphere cooling down? And remember, these statistics are taken for the entire planet, not just the area over which is land.
Apparently NASA is not aware of this. Funny thing is, their researchers believe the opposite.
After seeing loads of pseudo-science (on both sides), I took the time several months ago to look at the scientific literature and try to learn about the validity of claims that many laypeople made about global warming. The parent touched on a few of these, and I couldn't resist digging in...
1) Global temperature is decreasing.
No. Even the most cursory look into the subject should show this to be false. For an example, check out the graph on this page. Almost all of the literature I have read agrees on this. The debate comes in when you start talking about how much/why/is this natural?
2) The atmosphere already contains carbon dioxide and needs it in order to keep the Earth warm. Thus, more carbon dioxide is not bad.
While the atmosphere does contain significant amounts of CO2, the thing to remember is that it needs to maintain a balance. As an analogy, think of your body. If you don't have enough iron, you get sick (e.g. anemia). If you have too much iron, you also get sick.
One of the biggest sources of natural atmospheric CO2 is plant matter. At the end of the 19th century, human CO2 emissions were comparable to global plant matter emissions (~150 MMt). By the end of the 20th century, human emissions were 40 times greater than the plant CO2 emissions. You can check this up at the CDIAC site.
3) Global temperature increases can be explained by volcanic emissions.
Also not the case. In fact, one of the landmark papers (Mass, Portman 1989) actually showed that the net effect of each of the several largest 20th century volcanic eruptions was a decrease in global temperature. The reason for this is that, while volcanos do put significant amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere, they also release substantial quantities of particulate matter (e.g. ash). The effect of the latter is to decrease the net amount of sunlight reaching the Earth's surface.
4) Global warming can be explained via sun spots, orbit variations (Earth and/or lunar), etc.
I was unable to find very much evidence of this in the literature. I was, however, able to find a significant amount of "pop sci" articles supporting these theories.
The general consensus is that scientists do not know enough to fully evaluate the problem, but that humans do have a measurable effect on the atmosphere. The scientific side of the debate centers around the size of this effect, and whether or not it is significant. The atmosphere is incredibly complex, and we may never be able to fully describe it. To me, this appears to be as good an argument in favor of reducing emissions as any other.
On a side note, I found the following to be generally true of articles/papers about global warming: The "seriousness" and scientific legitimacy of such an article are inversely proportional to the concreteness of the claims.
Papers claiming that "global warming is just a myth", that "global warming can be explained by some never-before-heard theory", or that "global warming is already upon us and will put most of the Earth's land underwater in the next few years" almost never appear in peer-reviewed scientific journals, while papers claiming that "we really don't know enough yet to make firm conclusions" almost never appear in pop sci magazines.
Originally, some thought that most people would have computers as a service, a la television or electricity. The idea would be that you have centralized servers that provide access for everybody (possibly via dumb terminals). The problem with this is that it ignores the fact that it doesn't really fit well with our current economic system. Think of the benefits to a computer company for selling full fledges PCs as compared to selling general computer services.
My guess is that you're think of the Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific RR case from 1886. It's actually quite interesting. The Supreme Court decided that the 14th Amendment applies to corporations.
"The court does not wish to hear argument on the question whether the provision in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which forbids a State to deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws, applies to these corporations. We are all of opinion that it does."
Slashdot Mirror
The absolute belief in these models caused Long Term Capital Management to go under in 1998 ( see When Genius failed ).
No, LTCM went under because they used leverage to be make bets that they couldn't afford to lose, i.e. they borrowed money to make their bets much larger. If they were able to sustain the losses that they incurred, I'd imagine that most of their bets would have worked out in the long run.
Yes, the White Chicks at NASA always plan things out like this.
While today, vim starts pretty much instantaneously. My choice of fonts is fairly small, but, hey, I don't even own a printer, so who will notice?
..if they sell less than 10 of these things? From what I hear, these things are going to be priced at $8000. On top of that, the demos sounded dreadful.
For this amount of money you can buy a laptop, a professional quality MIDI keyboard, sequencer/host software, a whole bunch of VST instruments and effects, and some top of the line sampling libraries. You could even go the Digidesign/Creamware route pretty hard. In return, you don't have to rely on Korg for hardware / software upgrades, and you can have a some musical instruments that sound at least halfway decent.
Perhaps $8000 will buy me a day's worth of whatever Korg's marketing dept was smoking.
You're thinking of sulfur dioxide, not carbon dioxide. See the article here.
.5 degree drop in world temperature for a year or two.
SO2 causes acid rain, CO2 ("supposedly") causes global warming. I did some reading into this awhile back, and SO2 pollution generally stays local, while the opposite is true of CO2.
The level of CO2 being output by human industry is around 100 times that of volcanoes. You also have to figure that, for a large eruption, significant amounts of dust and other matter is put into the air, which actually blocks enough sunlight that the net effect is to lower global temperatures for a couple months. From what I remember from school, the net effect of the Krakatoa eruption in 1883 was a
"Most URL references [stand] more than a 50 percent chance of not existing after only six months." (from a Cornell study at http://www.news.cornell.edu/chronicle/00/12.14.00/ web_citations.html [cornell.edu])
;)
Oh! The irony just doesn't stop!
If Macromedia pulls their software, I may never be able to realize my dreams.
If only I had more time to do this, I could take beautiful images just like this guy did. This picture, for example, somes it all up for me.
What should be the most popular bug is this one, as it is preventing the moz team from cleaning up this other one.
I don't know how you can even work!
/var/spool/mail/[me]
I run the following:
DE/WM: CLI (C stands for communism, don't know about "LI")
File Manager: csh
Desktop icons: ls --color
Web Browser: lynx
Mail Client: cat
Word Processor: echo [words]>[file]
Other Desktop apps: shutdown -h now
I used to just carry around an abacus, but it wasn't fast enough so I had to chuck that whack ass piece of garbage. Sometimes even my keyboard is too slow, in which case I got bust out the magnets and manually access the hard drive.
The insight here is just amazing. First question:
IBM - "What is 18 - 4?"
Tosatti - "14"
I tried to read this file with the newest version of Word and it wouldn't load right. Perhaps Bill Gates will send me money if I tell him?
Given that outfit, I don't think I could have refrained from asking him about the Dark Side of the Force.
When there's a failure during launch and the uranium containment chamber is blown to pieces in the atmosphere, how would you explain to some kid in Africa why all of his relatives are getting cancer from fallout. Sure, chances are that the rocket will make it, but what if it doesn't?
"Well, we really wanted to go to space and we did some testing first. Apparently we were in the wrong 1% of the failure rate. Oops!"
The moral crux (for me) is that our decision to satisfy a desire to go to space has global implications. Don't get me wrong, I'd love to see more space exploration. At the same time, however, I don't see how it's legitimate for a small group of people to make the decision to risk every one else's lives, no matter how small the risk.
5 points for each mention of "Einstien", "Hawkins" or "Feynmann".
Good thing that you don't lose points for mentioning Einstein, Hawking, or Feynman. I just wrote a paper on QED and Black Holes at relativistic speeds, and I can't afford to lose anymore cred, given all the stormtroopers in the scientific establishment trying to play all Inquisition on my revolutionary theory.
Doh..
One of the biggest sources of natural atmospheric CO2 is plant matter. At the end of the 19th century, human CO2 emissions were comparable to global plant matter emissions (~150 MMt). By the end of the 20th century, human emissions were 40 times greater than the plant CO2 emissions.
This statement should read something more like:
One of the biggest sinks for natural atmospheric CO2 is plant matter. At the end of the 19th century, human CO2 emissions were comparable to global plant CO2 intake (~150 MMt). By the end of the 20th century, human emissions were 40 times greater than the plant CO2 intake.
2. Furthermore, land covers only 1/3 of the earth's surface. The other 2/3 is the ocean. Funnily enough, scientists haven't measured the temperature of the ocean over the past 100 years - there are generally only temperature stations located on the land.
Uhhh...they have buoys in the ocean (as well as blimps, satellites, etc).
3. NASA satellites (which have been measuring the temperature of one of the atmospheres of the planet - I forget it's name, but it's about 1km above the surface of the planet) shows that the planet has actually been cooling down since the records have recorded. How is it that the planet has been warming up yet the atmosphere cooling down? And remember, these statistics are taken for the entire planet, not just the area over which is land.
Apparently NASA is not aware of this. Funny thing is, their researchers believe the opposite.
After seeing loads of pseudo-science (on both sides), I took the time several months ago to look at the scientific literature and try to learn about the validity of claims that many laypeople made about global warming. The parent touched on a few of these, and I couldn't resist digging in...
1) Global temperature is decreasing.
No. Even the most cursory look into the subject should show this to be false. For an example, check out the graph on this page. Almost all of the literature I have read agrees on this. The debate comes in when you start talking about how much/why/is this natural?
2) The atmosphere already contains carbon dioxide and needs it in order to keep the Earth warm. Thus, more carbon dioxide is not bad.
While the atmosphere does contain significant amounts of CO2, the thing to remember is that it needs to maintain a balance. As an analogy, think of your body. If you don't have enough iron, you get sick (e.g. anemia). If you have too much iron, you also get sick.
One of the biggest sources of natural atmospheric CO2 is plant matter. At the end of the 19th century, human CO2 emissions were comparable to global plant matter emissions (~150 MMt). By the end of the 20th century, human emissions were 40 times greater than the plant CO2 emissions. You can check this up at the CDIAC site.
3) Global temperature increases can be explained by volcanic emissions.
Also not the case. In fact, one of the landmark papers (Mass, Portman 1989) actually showed that the net effect of each of the several largest 20th century volcanic eruptions was a decrease in global temperature. The reason for this is that, while volcanos do put significant amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere, they also release substantial quantities of particulate matter (e.g. ash). The effect of the latter is to decrease the net amount of sunlight reaching the Earth's surface.
4) Global warming can be explained via sun spots, orbit variations (Earth and/or lunar), etc.
I was unable to find very much evidence of this in the literature. I was, however, able to find a significant amount of "pop sci" articles supporting these theories.
The general consensus is that scientists do not know enough to fully evaluate the problem, but that humans do have a measurable effect on the atmosphere. The scientific side of the debate centers around the size of this effect, and whether or not it is significant. The atmosphere is incredibly complex, and we may never be able to fully describe it. To me, this appears to be as good an argument in favor of reducing emissions as any other.
On a side note, I found the following to be generally true of articles/papers about global warming: The "seriousness" and scientific legitimacy of such an article are inversely proportional to the concreteness of the claims. Papers claiming that "global warming is just a myth", that "global warming can be explained by some never-before-heard theory", or that "global warming is already upon us and will put most of the Earth's land underwater in the next few years" almost never appear in peer-reviewed scientific journals, while papers claiming that "we really don't know enough yet to make firm conclusions" almost never appear in pop sci magazines.
> ...
> --
> Kill 'em all & let God sort it out later...
I love it when people's sigs directly contradict their post.
Originally, some thought that most people would have computers as a service, a la television or electricity. The idea would be that you have centralized servers that provide access for everybody (possibly via dumb terminals). The problem with this is that it ignores the fact that it doesn't really fit well with our current economic system. Think of the benefits to a computer company for selling full fledges PCs as compared to selling general computer services.
One of my favorite ideas has been that described by Isaac Asimov in "The Last Question".
My guess is that you're think of the Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific RR case from 1886. It's actually quite interesting. The Supreme Court decided that the 14th Amendment applies to corporations.
"The court does not wish to hear argument on the question whether the provision in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which forbids a State to deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws, applies to these corporations. We are all of opinion that it does."
It was quite a landmark case. You can read the original ruling, or see one of many interpretations.