It looks to me like the Harvard-Smithsonian study belies many of the pretty graphs at the IPCC that show that the climate is warmer than it has ever been.
"Besides, even if it turns out to be entirely due to nautural fluctuation, it seems that it would be in our best interests to still modify the actions of humanity as a whole to promote a global climate that is best suited to humans."
But what does promoting a certain global climate look like? One side of this argument says "Of course human CO2 prodution is causing the warming" and the other side says "it is not at all clear that human CO2 production is a significant cause of warming." IF human CO2 prodution is not a significant factor, then reducing it by 30% or 50% or 75% is not going to make a difference in the climate, but it is going to impact some economies. So if you tell me "we should reduce CO2 produciton just in case it might make a difference." I'm going to say that I a more definite link than that.
"There are studies on glaciers that must have been quite cold for millenia, but are now suddenly warming up...We have a mechanism that points to human involvement, we have evidence that it is humans and we have evidence that this hasn't happened in the past."
How do you reconcile these statements with a broad based study that concludes that the global climate was significantly warmer 1000 years ago? I reconcile them by concluding that statements like "this hasn't happened in the past" and "glaciers that must have been quite cold for millenia" are false.
Use of qualifiers like "seem" and "may be" are a requirement of good science, IMHO. One should remain open to considering other theories, which I think is the point of the previous post. Some people have embraced the theory that human CO2 production is warming the global climate with no consideration of other possible causes. That is bad science. If I were going to study global warming, I would start with the Sun, since that is the source of almost all of our warmth and the most direct link to climate. Does the Sun's general intensity flucuate over centuries? I would not move on to studying more nebulous areas like the greenhouse effect until I had reasonabley elimiated that possible cause. Besides, CO2 is a weak greenhouse gas, Methane is a far, far larger contributor to the greenhouse effect.
"Besides, the revolution, if there is one, will probably have a web site, but it will run on Apache and Perl Scripts."
The new version replaces "The revolution will put you in the driver's seat." with "The revolution will increase your Google rank." IMHO it isn't a revolution if it has a website or it blogs. The orginal version says the Revolution will be live. I think you could say that "The revolution will be face to face." keeps more with the spirit of the original.
They seem to be selling these to larger OEMs, not to the public. And they may have been in stealth mode until now to avoid reactions from IBM etc. So I'm not all that surprised that they don't have much of a public website. They must also be privately held, so none of the financial stuff you might usually find is going to be visible. Unless you are really a potential customer who whats to audit them and make sure they will still be here in 6 months, they shouldn't tell you squat.
Cringely did not say anything about porn. He said: such a device hidden away from sight would be ideal for storing data you wouldn't want confiscated by the police."
If you have the kind of porn that has to be hidden from police, you belong in jail. But I wouldnt' want anyone to find the plans to the death star...
The above guy is correct. You should also know that they round down. So 12.99 seconds is said to be running twelves or "in the twelves." 14s are good for a stock car. 12s are exceptional for a stock car. The new blown Cobra Mustange can barely dip into the 11s, but think there were using drag radials and icing the intake.
If, God forbid, something were to happen to easystreet, in your area you could try Aracnet. I have been with them for 6 years now, and they only had one spot of trouble a few years ago, but have been very reliable other than that. Their terms of service are pretty liberal: No IRC bots, no spam, no bots, don't do anything illegal, no bots, don't be an asshat, and no bots. I guess they REALLY don't like bots. From what I hear, Easystreet is as good or better, but at least there are alternatives to Comcast.
Its pretty sad that this post is up at +5. This was a criminal trial. Corporations had no involvement in the trial. They bought the law, and perhaps they suggest who should be prosecuted, but they are not running the court case. Taxpayers foot the bill for prosecutors don't use Strategic Lawsuits, they put people in jail.
The guy probably pled because he would lose the case in court. He DID break the law, the bad, bad law.
The question is: Are some guys in SF running a sword forum trying to extort a sword maker? Or is a guy in Texas who sells $11,000 swords sueing some hobbyists from SF in a Texas court to get them to shut up because he doesn't think they can afford the defense.
Since I doubt the sword forum is a real money maker for the guys that run it, I think they do it because they like swords, and my gut tells me that they probably aren't trying to squeeze the guy for advertising money.
I hate the fact that the courts can be used as a bludgeon. It is more expensive for the defendants than the prosecution in this case, and the prosecution has more to gain. So the defendants have to choose between settling and paying a large amount of money to defend themselves while risking more money on the off chance that they would lose. If it actually gets to trial, and the suer doesn't have a case, he can just drop it then, after the defendents have shelled out the bucks. What the SF guys need is an attack-lawer who can go after the sword maker with a counter-suit so that he as something to lose and a reason to drop it. But the lawer has to be cheaper than settling with the suer, or you've got a pyrrhic victory.
Well the logic levels may be a couple of volts (1.8v) but aren't the Input/Output signals still 3.3v? Either way I agree with you that sockets are bad. IANAEE, but as I understand it the fast edge rates of the memory interfaces would get reflections at each impedance change, so going through the processor package, an adapter, and then the socket would be significant discontinuity. I'm amazed the high-speed signals work through pins and sockets at all. An adapter would also be relatively expensive and unreliable.
Hmm...that is interesting. However, I doubt any of those apply. I don't think Hamidi has any legal authority to use Intel property (without their permission) to encourage others to assert their rights. If Intel were retaliating for legal actions that Hamidi took, some sort of whistleblower laws might apply. But if Hamidi is not acting within the law, he probably can't get protection from it. I am still not a lawyer, so I guess I'm just imagining how laws SHOULD work.
"Does this guy expect to be allowed into Intel's buildings to deliver his messages? If he does not, then why does he feel he has the right to enter their mail server?"
IMHO, the question is "what is open to public access?" If the lobby or the cafeteria of Intel was open to the public, then I would expect to be able to enter freely to deliver a message to an employee. And since there are Brink's guards there in the lobby restricting access to the rest of the plant, I would expect to NOT be allowed to go further than the lobby. And if the guards said that I was no longer welcome in the lobby and requested that I leave Intel propery, I would expect the law to force me to leave. When something is open to the public, I think it implies that I have permission to use it, until permission is explicitly revoked. So I would expect to be allowed to send email to employees through the company email system that receives email from the public, unless otherwise notified.
So in my mind the issue is when and how Intel notified Mr. Hamidi that I didn't have permission to send through their servers. I'm speculating here but I bet he continued to send emails after they asked him nicely until they got a court order to stop him. In my mind, that is like not leaving the lobby after they ask you to leave: tresspassing. So I think we agree, but for different reasons.
I don't think a finding for Intel will hurt our ability to use the Internet, but I do think it could be used against Spammers. But what the hell do I know about it, IANAL.
Its that third one that interests me the most. Solid state lasers just need electricity, not "fuel" like chemical lasers, so if you can dissipate the heat and have a source of electricity (like a jet engine perhaps) you can shoot them over and over. The accuracy would be a lot higher than current "precision munitions" so we could have less collateral damage.
It won't surprise me too much if it turns out we are already using high-power lasers in a few special ops. I also won't be surprised when it is revealed that some super-secret spy plane(s) replaced the Blackbird. I don't really believe that the U2 and the F-117 are all we have.
Darn, I must have left my mod points in my other pants today. That is a good link. Of course "the rich" are still underrepresented and IIRC only one member of Congress has a son in Kuwait/Iraq, but that is a slightly different issue.
If you really want controlled impedance, then you probably don't want a double-sided board with no soldermask anyways. So lets put some realistic expectations on it: its sounds like it doesn't take much longer than wire-wrapping a "breadboard" like what you see in the linked article first attept at controlling the stepper motors, but is of higher quality. If you are doing 10 of them, it is surely faster too. Compare the white plastic wire wrap to the board he put in the junction box. Its for hacking low-speed circuits up without relying on an outside vendor, and it looks pretty good for that.
I'm designing a 16 layer board with.0035 traces and.0045 spaces for 100-ohm controlled differential impedance right now (well its in the window behind my browser anyways), and it has lasered.004 blind vias on the outer layers and some.8mm pitch BGAs, etc. so obviously a mill cut PCB is out of the question, but that doesn't mean it doesn't have its place.
Now that plus PATRIOT is a nice formula for abuse. "Mr. Smith, we see that you have recently converted some of your holdings to cash and our database gives us reason to believe that you are going to give it to terrorists, so we have seized it. We don't have any evidence with which to charge you, but we will be watching you. No, of course you can't have the money back."
I wanna second this sentiment. I used to play counter-strike, and luck, circumstances, and exceptional performance occasionally conspired to give me marvelous streaks where I would go from slightly above average (a few more kills than deaths) to having kills>(deaths*4) It was like they just walked right into my crosshairs.
I remember one incident in particular. I was using the P90, which has the highest rate of fire and therefore sprays pretty wildly. It isn't used much because its hard to hit anything out past 15 feet. But the wild spray pattern is predictable; the muzzle rises up and then waves side to side in a T pattern. If you encounter someone 5 to 12 feet away from you and aim around their bellybutton, you can be off right or left but one of the 3rd-6th bullets will hit them in the head. It is a legal "trick" of limited use. So, back to the incident, I was using the P90 and kept encountering the same 1-3 guys in the same hallway at the same "sweet-spot" range, with the same results. After the 3rd time I head-shot the same guy, he just came unglued. He was absolutely furious and swore on his life that I was using an aim-bot, and kept asking everyone to kick me saying he had "proof" I was cheating. They stopping trying to come through that hallway, which meant I would run into people who were not in the "sweet spot" so I stopped getting head-shots, which our man said further proved I had been using an aim-bot and had now turned it off.
To any sort of statistical analysis, it would look like cheating whenever an "average" player goes off on a tear.
I think the only real way to stop cheating is to control the computers, physically. Punkbuster like systems do help, but they don't stop it completely. There is no way I would ever wager money against strangers over the internet on video games.
One small counter-example.
on
Strike on Iraq
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· Score: 1
The Philappines:Just one small case of how we did things right. We shielded them from outside colonialism and fostered a democracy. It hasn't been 100% successfull, but it really underscores how very badly the US performed in all of the other valid BAD examples you have cited. If only we had done Indochina the way we did the Philappines, instead of backing the French re-colonialization, we probably could have avoided the entire Vietnam war. Ho Chi Mihn was a communist because we didn't give him another choice.
Perhaps if we had fostered real democracy in South and Central America, we would have some good strong allies and trading partners as neighbors. Alas.
Gosh darn it, now they're going to have to deal with that pesky "due process" stuff again. Only the guilty worry about stuff like that. Bah, presumption of innocence crap.
This is such an ugly generalization that I really debated whether to answer or not. Perhaps you do work with old people, but it might be a poor sample of them, like the sick ones or something. Or are you in a "conservative" industry/community? I work in a smallish company, about 100 people, on the "bleeding edge" of technology, where the test equipment can't reliably evaluate our products. There are a bunch of smart guys, the CEO in particular, but the one guy that I think is irreplacable is The Chief Engineer. He doesn't manage anyone, he just solves problems and invents things. He started building crystal radios when he was a kid. IIRC, he turns 67 this year, and he looks like Santa Claus, but with a grey pony tail. Think about that: vacuum tubes, transistors, ICs, core memory, CRTs, lasers...and always pushing the leading edge. I'm not sure how many patents he has, but he got at least one more in 2000 that I know of. Everyone loves to work with him because he is like a fountain of knowledge and a year around him is like 7 years of experience in a regular company. Ingenuity is infectious.
Now I realize this guy is a one-of-a-kind gem, but there are lots of people who would like to stay strong, healthy, sharp, and productive. There are lots of people who yearn for progress, and love to do valuable work.
Wow, they really jump to some strange conclusions. For example the report states that longer lives will delay new generations rising to leadership, and therefore delay new ideas and will slow innovation. As if old people can't have new ideas...
Slashdot Mirror
It looks to me like the Harvard-Smithsonian study belies many of the pretty graphs at the IPCC that show that the climate is warmer than it has ever been.
"Besides, even if it turns out to be entirely due to nautural fluctuation, it seems that it would be in our best interests to still modify the actions of humanity as a whole to promote a global climate that is best suited to humans."
But what does promoting a certain global climate look like? One side of this argument says "Of course human CO2 prodution is causing the warming" and the other side says "it is not at all clear that human CO2 production is a significant cause of warming." IF human CO2 prodution is not a significant factor, then reducing it by 30% or 50% or 75% is not going to make a difference in the climate, but it is going to impact some economies. So if you tell me "we should reduce CO2 produciton just in case it might make a difference." I'm going to say that I a more definite link than that.
"There are studies on glaciers that must have been quite cold for millenia, but are now suddenly warming up...We have a mechanism that points to human involvement, we have evidence that it is humans and we have evidence that this hasn't happened in the past."
How do you reconcile these statements with a broad based study that concludes that the global climate was significantly warmer 1000 years ago? I reconcile them by concluding that statements like "this hasn't happened in the past" and "glaciers that must have been quite cold for millenia" are false.
Use of qualifiers like "seem" and "may be" are a requirement of good science, IMHO. One should remain open to considering other theories, which I think is the point of the previous post. Some people have embraced the theory that human CO2 production is warming the global climate with no consideration of other possible causes. That is bad science. If I were going to study global warming, I would start with the Sun, since that is the source of almost all of our warmth and the most direct link to climate. Does the Sun's general intensity flucuate over centuries? I would not move on to studying more nebulous areas like the greenhouse effect until I had reasonabley elimiated that possible cause. Besides, CO2 is a weak greenhouse gas, Methane is a far, far larger contributor to the greenhouse effect.
"Besides, the revolution, if there is one, will probably have a web site, but it will run on Apache and Perl Scripts."
The new version replaces "The revolution will put you in the driver's seat." with "The revolution will increase your Google rank." IMHO it isn't a revolution if it has a website or it blogs. The orginal version says the Revolution will be live. I think you could say that "The revolution will be face to face." keeps more with the spirit of the original.
They seem to be selling these to larger OEMs, not to the public. And they may have been in stealth mode until now to avoid reactions from IBM etc. So I'm not all that surprised that they don't have much of a public website. They must also be privately held, so none of the financial stuff you might usually find is going to be visible. Unless you are really a potential customer who whats to audit them and make sure they will still be here in 6 months, they shouldn't tell you squat.
Cringely did not say anything about porn. He said: such a device hidden away from sight would be ideal for storing data you wouldn't want confiscated by the police."
If you have the kind of porn that has to be hidden from police, you belong in jail. But I wouldnt' want anyone to find the plans to the death star...
The above guy is correct. You should also know that they round down. So 12.99 seconds is said to be running twelves or "in the twelves." 14s are good for a stock car. 12s are exceptional for a stock car. The new blown Cobra Mustange can barely dip into the 11s, but think there were using drag radials and icing the intake.
If, God forbid, something were to happen to easystreet, in your area you could try Aracnet. I have been with them for 6 years now, and they only had one spot of trouble a few years ago, but have been very reliable other than that. Their terms of service are pretty liberal: No IRC bots, no spam, no bots, don't do anything illegal, no bots, don't be an asshat, and no bots. I guess they REALLY don't like bots. From what I hear, Easystreet is as good or better, but at least there are alternatives to Comcast.
Its pretty sad that this post is up at +5. This was a criminal trial. Corporations had no involvement in the trial. They bought the law, and perhaps they suggest who should be prosecuted, but they are not running the court case. Taxpayers foot the bill for prosecutors don't use Strategic Lawsuits, they put people in jail.
The guy probably pled because he would lose the case in court. He DID break the law, the bad, bad law.
The question is: Are some guys in SF running a sword forum trying to extort a sword maker? Or is a guy in Texas who sells $11,000 swords sueing some hobbyists from SF in a Texas court to get them to shut up because he doesn't think they can afford the defense.
Since I doubt the sword forum is a real money maker for the guys that run it, I think they do it because they like swords, and my gut tells me that they probably aren't trying to squeeze the guy for advertising money.
I hate the fact that the courts can be used as a bludgeon. It is more expensive for the defendants than the prosecution in this case, and the prosecution has more to gain. So the defendants have to choose between settling and paying a large amount of money to defend themselves while risking more money on the off chance that they would lose. If it actually gets to trial, and the suer doesn't have a case, he can just drop it then, after the defendents have shelled out the bucks. What the SF guys need is an attack-lawer who can go after the sword maker with a counter-suit so that he as something to lose and a reason to drop it. But the lawer has to be cheaper than settling with the suer, or you've got a pyrrhic victory.
If you want to shave index cards, then an x-acto knife is much easier to handle; and a fair bit cheaper than $1500.
I understand the allure of a large blade, but why use meaningless measures of performance.
Well the logic levels may be a couple of volts (1.8v) but aren't the Input/Output signals still 3.3v? Either way I agree with you that sockets are bad. IANAEE, but as I understand it the fast edge rates of the memory interfaces would get reflections at each impedance change, so going through the processor package, an adapter, and then the socket would be significant discontinuity. I'm amazed the high-speed signals work through pins and sockets at all. An adapter would also be relatively expensive and unreliable.
Hmm...that is interesting. However, I doubt any of those apply. I don't think Hamidi has any legal authority to use Intel property (without their permission) to encourage others to assert their rights. If Intel were retaliating for legal actions that Hamidi took, some sort of whistleblower laws might apply. But if Hamidi is not acting within the law, he probably can't get protection from it. I am still not a lawyer, so I guess I'm just imagining how laws SHOULD work.
"Does this guy expect to be allowed into Intel's buildings to deliver his messages? If he does not, then why does he feel he has the right to enter their mail server?"
IMHO, the question is "what is open to public access?" If the lobby or the cafeteria of Intel was open to the public, then I would expect to be able to enter freely to deliver a message to an employee. And since there are Brink's guards there in the lobby restricting access to the rest of the plant, I would expect to NOT be allowed to go further than the lobby. And if the guards said that I was no longer welcome in the lobby and requested that I leave Intel propery, I would expect the law to force me to leave. When something is open to the public, I think it implies that I have permission to use it, until permission is explicitly revoked. So I would expect to be allowed to send email to employees through the company email system that receives email from the public, unless otherwise notified.
So in my mind the issue is when and how Intel notified Mr. Hamidi that I didn't have permission to send through their servers. I'm speculating here but I bet he continued to send emails after they asked him nicely until they got a court order to stop him. In my mind, that is like not leaving the lobby after they ask you to leave: tresspassing. So I think we agree, but for different reasons.
I don't think a finding for Intel will hurt our ability to use the Internet, but I do think it could be used against Spammers. But what the hell do I know about it, IANAL.
"What baffles me is why they're proposing this as an infantry weapon, and not a large scale version for fighter aircraft and the like..."
But they are.
Its that third one that interests me the most. Solid state lasers just need electricity, not "fuel" like chemical lasers, so if you can dissipate the heat and have a source of electricity (like a jet engine perhaps) you can shoot them over and over. The accuracy would be a lot higher than current "precision munitions" so we could have less collateral damage.
It won't surprise me too much if it turns out we are already using high-power lasers in a few special ops. I also won't be surprised when it is revealed that some super-secret spy plane(s) replaced the Blackbird. I don't really believe that the U2 and the F-117 are all we have.
Darn, I must have left my mod points in my other pants today. That is a good link. Of course "the rich" are still underrepresented and IIRC only one member of Congress has a son in Kuwait/Iraq, but that is a slightly different issue.
I does sound like something Cleese would write, but it was written by Andrew Marlatt.
If you really want controlled impedance, then you probably don't want a double-sided board with no soldermask anyways. So lets put some realistic expectations on it: its sounds like it doesn't take much longer than wire-wrapping a "breadboard" like what you see in the linked article first attept at controlling the stepper motors, but is of higher quality. If you are doing 10 of them, it is surely faster too. Compare the white plastic wire wrap to the board he put in the junction box. Its for hacking low-speed circuits up without relying on an outside vendor, and it looks pretty good for that.
.0035 traces and .0045 spaces for 100-ohm controlled differential impedance right now (well its in the window behind my browser anyways), and it has lasered .004 blind vias on the outer layers and some .8mm pitch BGAs, etc. so obviously a mill cut PCB is out of the question, but that doesn't mean it doesn't have its place.
I'm designing a 16 layer board with
Now that plus PATRIOT is a nice formula for abuse. "Mr. Smith, we see that you have recently converted some of your holdings to cash and our database gives us reason to believe that you are going to give it to terrorists, so we have seized it. We don't have any evidence with which to charge you, but we will be watching you. No, of course you can't have the money back."
"You need a way to identify a user."
What, like a credit card?
I wanna second this sentiment. I used to play counter-strike, and luck, circumstances, and exceptional performance occasionally conspired to give me marvelous streaks where I would go from slightly above average (a few more kills than deaths) to having kills>(deaths*4) It was like they just walked right into my crosshairs.
I remember one incident in particular. I was using the P90, which has the highest rate of fire and therefore sprays pretty wildly. It isn't used much because its hard to hit anything out past 15 feet. But the wild spray pattern is predictable; the muzzle rises up and then waves side to side in a T pattern. If you encounter someone 5 to 12 feet away from you and aim around their bellybutton, you can be off right or left but one of the 3rd-6th bullets will hit them in the head. It is a legal "trick" of limited use. So, back to the incident, I was using the P90 and kept encountering the same 1-3 guys in the same hallway at the same "sweet-spot" range, with the same results. After the 3rd time I head-shot the same guy, he just came unglued. He was absolutely furious and swore on his life that I was using an aim-bot, and kept asking everyone to kick me saying he had "proof" I was cheating. They stopping trying to come through that hallway, which meant I would run into people who were not in the "sweet spot" so I stopped getting head-shots, which our man said further proved I had been using an aim-bot and had now turned it off.
To any sort of statistical analysis, it would look like cheating whenever an "average" player goes off on a tear.
I think the only real way to stop cheating is to control the computers, physically. Punkbuster like systems do help, but they don't stop it completely. There is no way I would ever wager money against strangers over the internet on video games.
The Philappines:Just one small case of how we did things right. We shielded them from outside colonialism and fostered a democracy. It hasn't been 100% successfull, but it really underscores how very badly the US performed in all of the other valid BAD examples you have cited. If only we had done Indochina the way we did the Philappines, instead of backing the French re-colonialization, we probably could have avoided the entire Vietnam war. Ho Chi Mihn was a communist because we didn't give him another choice.
Perhaps if we had fostered real democracy in South and Central America, we would have some good strong allies and trading partners as neighbors. Alas.
Gosh darn it, now they're going to have to deal with that pesky "due process" stuff again. Only the guilty worry about stuff like that. Bah, presumption of innocence crap.
This is such an ugly generalization that I really debated whether to answer or not. Perhaps you do work with old people, but it might be a poor sample of them, like the sick ones or something. Or are you in a "conservative" industry/community? I work in a smallish company, about 100 people, on the "bleeding edge" of technology, where the test equipment can't reliably evaluate our products. There are a bunch of smart guys, the CEO in particular, but the one guy that I think is irreplacable is The Chief Engineer. He doesn't manage anyone, he just solves problems and invents things. He started building crystal radios when he was a kid. IIRC, he turns 67 this year, and he looks like Santa Claus, but with a grey pony tail. Think about that: vacuum tubes, transistors, ICs, core memory, CRTs, lasers...and always pushing the leading edge. I'm not sure how many patents he has, but he got at least one more in 2000 that I know of. Everyone loves to work with him because he is like a fountain of knowledge and a year around him is like 7 years of experience in a regular company. Ingenuity is infectious.
Now I realize this guy is a one-of-a-kind gem, but there are lots of people who would like to stay strong, healthy, sharp, and productive. There are lots of people who yearn for progress, and love to do valuable work.
Wow, they really jump to some strange conclusions. For example the report states that longer lives will delay new generations rising to leadership, and therefore delay new ideas and will slow innovation. As if old people can't have new ideas...