The problem is, the crackpots believe the "bounce back" from the moon to be faked via whatever instrument is indicating a signal is being received.
Ah, see, and I thought the crackpot rebuttle would be that obviously we could send unmanned probes to the moon, and one could have easily dropped a mirror there which then The Man claims was put there by a human.
I guess you're right, my attempt to imagine what a rational moon conspiracy theorist would think was doomed to failure in the first place.
It still amazes me how respondents in this forum think that there is some level on which it's acceptable to STEAL.
I don't, which is why I'm arguing that the studio needs to pay the estate the money that they are owed.
Under what bizarro universe does the public have more right to an author's work than the author (or their estate)?
In the bizarro universe where the purpose of copyrights was to promote the arts and thus enrich our culture, and its protections were for a limited time only with the express purpose of enriching the public domain. So, basically, the bizarre universe of the United States prior the year 1976.
For two hundred years, copyright served the purpose I describe and not the one you describe. This notion that an author's work is supposed to provide a life-long revenue stream for their children and their children's children is a recent invention, and contrary to the purpose of copyright, which is to encourage more works to be written. What has Christopher Tolkien done other than package up his dad's work? Maybe if he was operating under the same laws that his dad did when he wrote his books, then he'd have had to produce something of his own.
Sorry, I just don't buy that argument under any circumstance.
Okay, but the only reason author's have any right to an unnatural monopoly is because we, the people, agreed to compromise with them. The argument was the one that ruled the day from the authoring of our Constitution through to the Sonny Bono Copyright Act.
The discussion here seems centered on whether the studio should get the spoils or the public.
What a silly thing to say in a reply to my post where I argued that the "spoils" should go to the estate as contractually required. I think copyright law should be changed to match its original purpose, but that doesn't mean I think the movie studios, the very ones who lobbied for these ridiculous copyright laws, should be exempt from them! So basically it sounds like you missed my whole point. And I'm not the only one making this point. So pay more attention to the discussion, maybe?
Yup, just like every slave owner was perfectly within his rights to beat his slaves to death.
Would you have cheerfully joined the (mandatory) posse to track down a runaway slave?
No, but if there was some clause in the slavery laws that required that the slave owner be beaten in some circumstance, I'd happily join in regardless of what I thought of the law in general.
For the movie studio, this is called "Being hoisted by your own petard."
By showing articles in lower case you give a clue to the reader that the letter represents something small and structural, rather than a 'real' word. LoTR would suggest Lord of Token Rings.
Sounds pretty awesome to me! Frodo Baggins, a CS major who just wants to get a lazy job in a low-key data center and smoke pipe weed in his spare time, gets drafted on a mission to travel to the dark lair of Big Blue, in order to toss all the documentation for an evil and corrupting LAN technology into a volcano.
Side note: Not all abbreviations are acronyms. It's like rectangles and squares. All squares are rectangle, but not all rectangles are squares. An acronym is a TYPE of abbreviation SPOKEN as a word, rather than spelled. SCUBA is, CIA is not.
What, am I the only one who pronounces it "Lot-er"?;)
Some twat blithers, "but, but, the dictionary says...". Dictionaries record how words are USED (correctly or otherwise), not just what they mean. If acronym means abbreviation, why have two words? How do we communicate the lost specificity of the word acronym?
Um okay, but even in its admittedly bastardized usage, "acronym" is still different than "abbreviation". An acronym is a type of abbreviation that combines one letter (usually first) from multiple words into a single word. Whereas things like Dr., op-ed, and abbr. are also abbrs. Abbr. is still a much more general term than what the common usage of acronym implies.
Is there a word for "abbreviation-than-combines-first-letters-from-multiple-words-but-isn't-pronounced-as-a-word"?
These books should be public domain by now. God damn extended copyright might kill another production.
I agree the books should be in the public domain. But let's be honest here -- it's the usual movie production studio douchebaggery that is going to kill this production, not copyright. You know damn well they aren't thinking "Gee if only there were reasonable terms for copyright we wouldn't have to deal with the estate!" No, they are fully on board with life + infinite arithmetic progression copyright terms, they just want to twist the rules so they're the only ones who benefit. They've made their bed, and now they are trying to weasel their way out of sleeping in it.
Well, fuck them I say. I'd rather everyone who was contractually owed money for those movies gets it even if in my ideal universe they wouldn't be owed anything, rather than let the fuckers responsible for the current situation get away with this shit.
assuming the Japanese don't kill the giant lizard who always saves them, God(zilla) knows why the hell they always try to kill the lizard who always saves their ass.
Cus every time he wakes up and there's no three-headed monster from outer space or whatnot to fight, he throws a tiff and destroys Tokyo. And most of the time when there is a monster to fight he ends up destroying Tokyo anyway.
He's essentially a giant, radioactive and even more antisocial Demolition Man. Can you blame the Japanese for not wanting him around?
When a celebrity appears in a paid commercial advertisement, it is obvious that they were paid to be in it. When a non-celebrity appears in a paid commercial advertisement, it is similarly obvious that they were paid to be in it. Neither is illegal, because any reasonable person would assume that they were paid to be in the advertisement unless the advertisement specifically claims otherwise. And if the ad does make that claim, and the claim were to be false, then it would be illegal.
Which is essentially the case here, specifically because the advertisement in question was not clearly a paid commercial advertisement, it appeared to be, and was presented as, an unsponsored fan site. Because that claim was false, it was illegal.
Lemme break it down for you:
Kobe Bryant appears in a Sprite advertisement: legal. Joe Schmoe appears in a Sprite advertisement: legal.
Kobe Bryant starts a blog about how much he loves Sprite of his own accord: legal. Joe Schmoe starts a blog about how much he loves Sprite of his own accord: legal.
Kobe Bryant starts a blog about how much he loves Sprite, claims it was of his own accord, but is actually being paid by Sprite: illegal. Joe Schmoe starts a blog about how much he loves Sprite, claims it was of his own accord, but is actually being paid by Sprite: illegal.
Notice how celebrity has nothing to do with it?
Oh, and prosecutors fry the fish they can catch. Frying big fish gets them fame, prestige, and promotion opportunities. Who knows what investigations they have going on? These guys were dumb and left email evidence. So they got caught.
thus establishing the standard of not using a year zero (i.e. ordinal, not cardinal numbers), even though his work did show that he did grasp the concept of zero.
Well damnit, man! You have to help me out here. I'm trying to save an ego!
My theory is I have a really good friend who goes through a whole lot of effort just to make me smile. Either that, or it's an insult on my manhood designed to make me feel inadequate.
Sounds to me like they hate you and are trying to trick you into sticking your "love sword" into a fire and then smashing it with a hammer!
Well, the game developers did actually: "How historically accurate will 0 A.D. be? As much as we can make it. Our dedicated historians oversee all of our content to ensure it's historically accurate. Ancient history is a rich resource to exploit, and we hope to promote greater interest in it. However, there are various factors we have to take into account that won't allow us pure realism and authenticity:"(insert obvious things related to this being a game).
Which still makes "0 A.D." a silly thing to find requiring an ego-destroying suspension of disbelief. I think it works perfectly to both establish the game's period in history, and to designate that it is still outside of that history and somewhat fantastical as a game requires. The name works by assuming you are aware that the date does not exist, rather than assuming ignorance.
It's a cool story. Probably would have been cooler if you hadn't read this...
I dunno. I like Asimov, and I may read this story at some point, and I have to admit I'll be a little disappointed if the denouement doesn't include the phrase "but the mission controllers forgot or were asleep or something."
Fine. They magically created the concept of "0 A.D." to illustrate that while attempting to be historically accurate, it is still essentially fiction and fantasy ultimately designed to be fun. How's that? Good enough for the ol' ego? Okay, wait, I've got a better one...
The only reason there wasn't a year "0 A.D." is because the people who created the calendars back then weren't as smart as you are and didn't fully understand the concept of zero-offsets, and this game gives you the chance to see what an ancient civilization -- including its calendar -- would have been like if they had been ruled by someone so amazingly intelligent that mentioning "0 A.D." in the context of the real history that was not ruled by their stunning intellect is, to them, insultingly dumb.
There ya go. That has to be at least as good as invisible entryways to magic universes, which I should point out is implicitly implying that you, a stupid muggle, are too dumb to see even when crowds of rambunctious children vanish into them.
OK, they are lying. Everybody lies. All advertising is lying in one form or another.
"One form or another" is where the difference between legal and illegal lies. The majority of lies in advertising, the ones that are legal, are the ones that appear to be saying something when really they are saying nothing that could really be called a lie. When Ford describes their trucks as "tough", or Miller Brewing says you can drink their "great tasting" product to live the "High Life", they're trying to give you a certain emotional impression about their product that is largely bullshit, but ultimately to the extent that it means anything at all it's all just subjective opinion. Because actual lies, about facts, are illegal.
When Ford says that the F150 has the most HP of any truck in its class, they make sure that claim is true, even throwing up some fine print describing exactly what 'class' means or what trucks they are specifically comparing to. Does that extra HP make Ford trucks "tough"? They sure hope you think so, but since that adjective's very meaning is subjective, you couldn't ever prove it false.
When Miller says Miller Light uses Triple Hops Brewing, that is almost certainly true. The implication that this gives Miller Light great taste is definitely what they want you to take away from the ad, and while it's bullshit it's subjective bullshit. Which is the whole point.
False advertising? I doubt it. Certainly no more false than Wilford Brimley talking about Liberty Medical products as if he was at all familiar with the company before they started paying him.
Yes, he talks "as if" he just loves Liberty Mutual in his heart, but he is never presented as anything but a paid endorsement. The second they claimed that Wilford Brimley was not paid by Liberty Mutual and that he just had to help get the word out, that's when they'd fall afoul of the law. Because that would, in fact, be much more false, and an actionable lie.
So when some shill says "I haven't been paid by Damn Girl U So Ugly Let Us Cut You Up, Inc, but I just love their facelifts!", and they have been paid, that's a specific factual lie and illegal.
No, this isn't a good start. This is not "making the Internet safer." If you believe testimonials on the Internet you are a fool, because all of them are designed to elicit behavior - yours. Every single review someone takes the time to write is either telling you how great something is or how bad. Either way, someone was so motivated as to write the review to "help" others to make the "right" decision.
Yes but people naturally react differently when the reviewer's motivation was "I was paid to write a positive/negative review" versus "I sincerely like/dislike this product". Nearly all communication is designed to "elicit behavior", treating that as inherently bad or untrustworthy is foolish. Yes assuming most reviews on the internet are of the sincere kind is also foolish due to anonymity, that doesn't mean you can't get anything useful out of reviews on the internet. But I guess you never have?
No it isn't "making the Internet safer" because paid astroturfing is so widespread that fining one company making false claims isn't even going to come close to discouraging the behavior.
Yes it's a good start. More of this, please. Lots more.
I just heard the exact same argument about carbon dioxide.
Yeah, in the 1800s, and it was a pretty good point then. Fossil fuels were a great way to bootstrap an industrial society with abundant already-stored energy, and at least initially the cost was manageable (though far worse than any wind mill). Later, scientists had realized that this was a problem, and changes need to be made. The ones who are still making the exact same argument you just heard are statist ignoramuses who just fear change or corporate shills.
The difference with wind power is that scientists are already looking into the environmental effects of wind power, far more than ever did for the first century of fossil-fuel-based industry. And the conclusion is that there is an effect, but negligible for the foreseeable future. If you think about what I was saying, the energy passing through the cross section of a windmill versus through that same cross section extended to the top of the atmosphere, then consider that unlike coal burning windmills in operation create no accumulating pollutants, then at a layman's level you should be able to intuitively understand the scientific result.
Yes when we're blanketing continents with wind farms the effects will be bigger, and we may have to change what we're doing. So what? Oh noes, wind power may not be the final solution forever and ever! Therefore we shouldn't use it, even though its orders of magnitude better than what we're using now? "It may impact our environment!" arguments against wind power are complete non-starters when the default is to continue burning coal. It's a statist argument, not an environmental one. I'm not a statist. When I say "Is it a reason to worry? No." that is regarding the choice we make today and with full recognition that the situation may change in the future.
All this talk about solar and wind energy being "free" and building these giant wind farms and turbines has had me wondering about something that I never see addressed.
Yeah it's only brought up in every single/. discussion about wind power.
You start taking a significant chunk of that energy out of the atmosphere, couldn't you end up with climate changes
Yes but what makes you think wind power could ever take a 'significant' chunk of energy out of the atmosphere? A windmill only takes a tiny fraction of the energy out of the wind that moves through the area described by its rotation. The wind passing through that area is a tiny, tiny fraction of the atmosphere energy that passes over the windmill. You could cover the earth with wind farms, and you'd be taking a tiny, tiny fraction of the atmosphere's energy. And up to a certain, very large, point it isn't even clear we'd be removing more energy than the trees that existed before industrial logging and agriculture cut them down.
Could it affect the climate? Yes. Is it a reason to worry? No.
No energy is truly "free," after all. But environmentalists keep talking about wind and solar as if there's NO downside whatsoever.
Seriously, compared to what it is replacing, it is so close to zero impact as to be indistinguishable. When every fossil fuel plant has been shut down, and when we're contemplating blanketing whole continents with wind/solar farms, that's when the impact of these technologies will be significant. Then maybe we'll have to find a better solution, but hey thanks to getting rid of all the coal plants we should have plenty of time to do so.
I don't think any environmentalist would claim that they have literally NO impact, outside of this relative comparison where it is only hyperbole of the smallest order. Yes, wind isn't "truly free". No, that's not a reason to stop building wind farms as fast as possible, because "not free" isn't within orders of magnitude of "as costly as current power sources". This concern is so far out there that it just reeks of grasping at straws. The fact is that for today and the foreseeable future, the environmental benefit of wind farms is unequivocal and enormous.
[analyst type="Freudian"]I see zat you have ze severe anal fixation. Zis is a result of stunted development, leaving you schtuck in ze anal phase, most likely when a parent made you feel ze shame at ze natural excretions of ze bowels. Ve must get to ze bottom of zis to enable you to become ze adult functional person! Zo... tell me about your mother?"[/analyst]
Slashdot Mirror
I should have said "The Knights Who Until Recently Said 'Ni'". :)
The problem is, the crackpots believe the "bounce back" from the moon to be faked via whatever instrument is indicating a signal is being received.
Ah, see, and I thought the crackpot rebuttle would be that obviously we could send unmanned probes to the moon, and one could have easily dropped a mirror there which then The Man claims was put there by a human.
I guess you're right, my attempt to imagine what a rational moon conspiracy theorist would think was doomed to failure in the first place.
No, but if the copyright wasn't so onerous the studios could make the movie, and so could I,oor you, or anyone.
Sure, but in the meantime, I'm not going to let the studios off the hook for the stupid law they themselves are responsible for.
And they got what the contract said.
Are you sure? That's what the studio says, but they said the same thing about Peter Jackson and Stan Lee and it wasn't true.
It still amazes me how respondents in this forum think that there is some level on which it's acceptable to STEAL.
I don't, which is why I'm arguing that the studio needs to pay the estate the money that they are owed.
Under what bizarro universe does the public have more right to an author's work than the author (or their estate)?
In the bizarro universe where the purpose of copyrights was to promote the arts and thus enrich our culture, and its protections were for a limited time only with the express purpose of enriching the public domain. So, basically, the bizarre universe of the United States prior the year 1976.
For two hundred years, copyright served the purpose I describe and not the one you describe. This notion that an author's work is supposed to provide a life-long revenue stream for their children and their children's children is a recent invention, and contrary to the purpose of copyright, which is to encourage more works to be written. What has Christopher Tolkien done other than package up his dad's work? Maybe if he was operating under the same laws that his dad did when he wrote his books, then he'd have had to produce something of his own.
Sorry, I just don't buy that argument under any circumstance.
Okay, but the only reason author's have any right to an unnatural monopoly is because we, the people, agreed to compromise with them. The argument was the one that ruled the day from the authoring of our Constitution through to the Sonny Bono Copyright Act.
The discussion here seems centered on whether the studio should get the spoils or the public.
What a silly thing to say in a reply to my post where I argued that the "spoils" should go to the estate as contractually required. I think copyright law should be changed to match its original purpose, but that doesn't mean I think the movie studios, the very ones who lobbied for these ridiculous copyright laws, should be exempt from them! So basically it sounds like you missed my whole point. And I'm not the only one making this point. So pay more attention to the discussion, maybe?
Yup, just like every slave owner was perfectly within his rights to beat his slaves to death.
Would you have cheerfully joined the (mandatory) posse to track down a runaway slave?
No, but if there was some clause in the slavery laws that required that the slave owner be beaten in some circumstance, I'd happily join in regardless of what I thought of the law in general.
For the movie studio, this is called "Being hoisted by your own petard."
For me, this is called "Schadenfreude".
By showing articles in lower case you give a clue to the reader that the letter represents something small and structural, rather than a 'real' word. LoTR would suggest Lord of Token Rings.
Sounds pretty awesome to me! Frodo Baggins, a CS major who just wants to get a lazy job in a low-key data center and smoke pipe weed in his spare time, gets drafted on a mission to travel to the dark lair of Big Blue, in order to toss all the documentation for an evil and corrupting LAN technology into a volcano.
Side note: Not all abbreviations are acronyms. It's like rectangles and squares. All squares are rectangle, but not all rectangles are squares. An acronym is a TYPE of abbreviation SPOKEN as a word, rather than spelled. SCUBA is, CIA is not.
What, am I the only one who pronounces it "Lot-er"? ;)
Some twat blithers, "but, but, the dictionary says...". Dictionaries record how words are USED (correctly or otherwise), not just what they mean. If acronym means abbreviation, why have two words? How do we communicate the lost specificity of the word acronym?
Um okay, but even in its admittedly bastardized usage, "acronym" is still different than "abbreviation". An acronym is a type of abbreviation that combines one letter (usually first) from multiple words into a single word. Whereas things like Dr., op-ed, and abbr. are also abbrs. Abbr. is still a much more general term than what the common usage of acronym implies.
Is there a word for "abbreviation-than-combines-first-letters-from-multiple-words-but-isn't-pronounced-as-a-word"?
These books should be public domain by now.
God damn extended copyright might kill another production.
I agree the books should be in the public domain. But let's be honest here -- it's the usual movie production studio douchebaggery that is going to kill this production, not copyright. You know damn well they aren't thinking "Gee if only there were reasonable terms for copyright we wouldn't have to deal with the estate!" No, they are fully on board with life + infinite arithmetic progression copyright terms, they just want to twist the rules so they're the only ones who benefit. They've made their bed, and now they are trying to weasel their way out of sleeping in it.
Well, fuck them I say. I'd rather everyone who was contractually owed money for those movies gets it even if in my ideal universe they wouldn't be owed anything, rather than let the fuckers responsible for the current situation get away with this shit.
assuming the Japanese don't kill the giant lizard who always saves them, God(zilla) knows why the hell they always try to kill the lizard who always saves their ass.
Cus every time he wakes up and there's no three-headed monster from outer space or whatnot to fight, he throws a tiff and destroys Tokyo. And most of the time when there is a monster to fight he ends up destroying Tokyo anyway.
He's essentially a giant, radioactive and even more antisocial Demolition Man. Can you blame the Japanese for not wanting him around?
And in a case of the punishment fitting the crime, this seaman was given a dishonorable discharge.
*runs up, panting*
Guys, check it out, I got a great topical Ron Paul joke!
What, we're done with the political jokes? Aw man, late to the party again...
Ia Ia Cthulhu nal fatang!!!!!
Sounds like what the Knights of Ni would say if they became Mythos fans.
Right, that's the obvious interpretation of the difference in numbers in the article, and thus the slashdot summary is wrong.
No, you're way off.
When a celebrity appears in a paid commercial advertisement, it is obvious that they were paid to be in it. When a non-celebrity appears in a paid commercial advertisement, it is similarly obvious that they were paid to be in it. Neither is illegal, because any reasonable person would assume that they were paid to be in the advertisement unless the advertisement specifically claims otherwise. And if the ad does make that claim, and the claim were to be false, then it would be illegal.
Which is essentially the case here, specifically because the advertisement in question was not clearly a paid commercial advertisement, it appeared to be, and was presented as, an unsponsored fan site. Because that claim was false, it was illegal.
Lemme break it down for you:
Kobe Bryant appears in a Sprite advertisement: legal.
Joe Schmoe appears in a Sprite advertisement: legal.
Kobe Bryant starts a blog about how much he loves Sprite of his own accord: legal.
Joe Schmoe starts a blog about how much he loves Sprite of his own accord: legal.
Kobe Bryant starts a blog about how much he loves Sprite, claims it was of his own accord, but is actually being paid by Sprite: illegal.
Joe Schmoe starts a blog about how much he loves Sprite, claims it was of his own accord, but is actually being paid by Sprite: illegal.
Notice how celebrity has nothing to do with it?
Oh, and prosecutors fry the fish they can catch. Frying big fish gets them fame, prestige, and promotion opportunities. Who knows what investigations they have going on? These guys were dumb and left email evidence. So they got caught.
thus establishing the standard of not using a year zero (i.e. ordinal, not cardinal numbers), even though his work did show that he did grasp the concept of zero.
Well damnit, man! You have to help me out here. I'm trying to save an ego!
That's not irony, that's exactly what the study says
Well it's kinda ironic that they thought it was ironic, but it wasn't, right?
Just like I hope that this post is ironically unironic.
My theory is I have a really good friend who goes through a whole lot of effort just to make me smile. Either that, or it's an insult on my manhood designed to make me feel inadequate.
Sounds to me like they hate you and are trying to trick you into sticking your "love sword" into a fire and then smashing it with a hammer!
Well, the game developers did actually:
"How historically accurate will 0 A.D. be?
As much as we can make it. Our dedicated historians oversee all of our content to ensure it's historically accurate. Ancient history is a rich resource to exploit, and we hope to promote greater interest in it. However, there are various factors we have to take into account that won't allow us pure realism and authenticity:"(insert obvious things related to this being a game).
Which still makes "0 A.D." a silly thing to find requiring an ego-destroying suspension of disbelief. I think it works perfectly to both establish the game's period in history, and to designate that it is still outside of that history and somewhat fantastical as a game requires. The name works by assuming you are aware that the date does not exist, rather than assuming ignorance.
to: Commander Tom
fr: Commander Bob
subj: Re: Your leg
That's not my leg! =D
Bob
It's a cool story. Probably would have been cooler if you hadn't read this...
I dunno. I like Asimov, and I may read this story at some point, and I have to admit I'll be a little disappointed if the denouement doesn't include the phrase "but the mission controllers forgot or were asleep or something."
Fine. They magically created the concept of "0 A.D." to illustrate that while attempting to be historically accurate, it is still essentially fiction and fantasy ultimately designed to be fun. How's that? Good enough for the ol' ego? Okay, wait, I've got a better one...
The only reason there wasn't a year "0 A.D." is because the people who created the calendars back then weren't as smart as you are and didn't fully understand the concept of zero-offsets, and this game gives you the chance to see what an ancient civilization -- including its calendar -- would have been like if they had been ruled by someone so amazingly intelligent that mentioning "0 A.D." in the context of the real history that was not ruled by their stunning intellect is, to them, insultingly dumb.
There ya go. That has to be at least as good as invisible entryways to magic universes, which I should point out is implicitly implying that you, a stupid muggle, are too dumb to see even when crowds of rambunctious children vanish into them.
OK, they are lying. Everybody lies. All advertising is lying in one form or another.
"One form or another" is where the difference between legal and illegal lies. The majority of lies in advertising, the ones that are legal, are the ones that appear to be saying something when really they are saying nothing that could really be called a lie. When Ford describes their trucks as "tough", or Miller Brewing says you can drink their "great tasting" product to live the "High Life", they're trying to give you a certain emotional impression about their product that is largely bullshit, but ultimately to the extent that it means anything at all it's all just subjective opinion. Because actual lies, about facts, are illegal.
When Ford says that the F150 has the most HP of any truck in its class, they make sure that claim is true, even throwing up some fine print describing exactly what 'class' means or what trucks they are specifically comparing to. Does that extra HP make Ford trucks "tough"? They sure hope you think so, but since that adjective's very meaning is subjective, you couldn't ever prove it false.
When Miller says Miller Light uses Triple Hops Brewing, that is almost certainly true. The implication that this gives Miller Light great taste is definitely what they want you to take away from the ad, and while it's bullshit it's subjective bullshit. Which is the whole point.
False advertising? I doubt it. Certainly no more false than Wilford Brimley talking about Liberty Medical products as if he was at all familiar with the company before they started paying him.
Yes, he talks "as if" he just loves Liberty Mutual in his heart, but he is never presented as anything but a paid endorsement. The second they claimed that Wilford Brimley was not paid by Liberty Mutual and that he just had to help get the word out, that's when they'd fall afoul of the law. Because that would, in fact, be much more false, and an actionable lie.
So when some shill says "I haven't been paid by Damn Girl U So Ugly Let Us Cut You Up, Inc, but I just love their facelifts!", and they have been paid, that's a specific factual lie and illegal.
No, this isn't a good start. This is not "making the Internet safer." If you believe testimonials on the Internet you are a fool, because all of them are designed to elicit behavior - yours. Every single review someone takes the time to write is either telling you how great something is or how bad. Either way, someone was so motivated as to write the review to "help" others to make the "right" decision.
Yes but people naturally react differently when the reviewer's motivation was "I was paid to write a positive/negative review" versus "I sincerely like/dislike this product". Nearly all communication is designed to "elicit behavior", treating that as inherently bad or untrustworthy is foolish. Yes assuming most reviews on the internet are of the sincere kind is also foolish due to anonymity, that doesn't mean you can't get anything useful out of reviews on the internet. But I guess you never have?
No it isn't "making the Internet safer" because paid astroturfing is so widespread that fining one company making false claims isn't even going to come close to discouraging the behavior.
Yes it's a good start. More of this, please. Lots more.
And I feel like I've written the same response to the same issue a hundred times. *shrug*
I just heard the exact same argument about carbon dioxide.
Yeah, in the 1800s, and it was a pretty good point then. Fossil fuels were a great way to bootstrap an industrial society with abundant already-stored energy, and at least initially the cost was manageable (though far worse than any wind mill). Later, scientists had realized that this was a problem, and changes need to be made. The ones who are still making the exact same argument you just heard are statist ignoramuses who just fear change or corporate shills.
The difference with wind power is that scientists are already looking into the environmental effects of wind power, far more than ever did for the first century of fossil-fuel-based industry. And the conclusion is that there is an effect, but negligible for the foreseeable future. If you think about what I was saying, the energy passing through the cross section of a windmill versus through that same cross section extended to the top of the atmosphere, then consider that unlike coal burning windmills in operation create no accumulating pollutants, then at a layman's level you should be able to intuitively understand the scientific result.
Yes when we're blanketing continents with wind farms the effects will be bigger, and we may have to change what we're doing. So what? Oh noes, wind power may not be the final solution forever and ever! Therefore we shouldn't use it, even though its orders of magnitude better than what we're using now? "It may impact our environment!" arguments against wind power are complete non-starters when the default is to continue burning coal. It's a statist argument, not an environmental one. I'm not a statist. When I say "Is it a reason to worry? No." that is regarding the choice we make today and with full recognition that the situation may change in the future.
All this talk about solar and wind energy being "free" and building these giant wind farms and turbines has had me wondering about something that I never see addressed.
Yeah it's only brought up in every single /. discussion about wind power.
You start taking a significant chunk of that energy out of the atmosphere, couldn't you end up with climate changes
Yes but what makes you think wind power could ever take a 'significant' chunk of energy out of the atmosphere? A windmill only takes a tiny fraction of the energy out of the wind that moves through the area described by its rotation. The wind passing through that area is a tiny, tiny fraction of the atmosphere energy that passes over the windmill. You could cover the earth with wind farms, and you'd be taking a tiny, tiny fraction of the atmosphere's energy. And up to a certain, very large, point it isn't even clear we'd be removing more energy than the trees that existed before industrial logging and agriculture cut them down.
Could it affect the climate? Yes. Is it a reason to worry? No.
No energy is truly "free," after all. But environmentalists keep talking about wind and solar as if there's NO downside whatsoever.
Seriously, compared to what it is replacing, it is so close to zero impact as to be indistinguishable. When every fossil fuel plant has been shut down, and when we're contemplating blanketing whole continents with wind/solar farms, that's when the impact of these technologies will be significant. Then maybe we'll have to find a better solution, but hey thanks to getting rid of all the coal plants we should have plenty of time to do so.
I don't think any environmentalist would claim that they have literally NO impact, outside of this relative comparison where it is only hyperbole of the smallest order. Yes, wind isn't "truly free". No, that's not a reason to stop building wind farms as fast as possible, because "not free" isn't within orders of magnitude of "as costly as current power sources". This concern is so far out there that it just reeks of grasping at straws. The fact is that for today and the foreseeable future, the environmental benefit of wind farms is unequivocal and enormous.
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