Not only does that make a lot of sense, it also makes me realize that I've been capitalizing GAYDAR completely wrong since as far as I know it isn't even an acronym...
CO2 is a greenhouse gas. But compared to water vapor, you know, clouds. It's barely anything.
Yeah, but while the levels of CO2 can and have increased dramatically, the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere is limited to the saturation point and is self-regulating. You know, rain.
This will be seen by many of the homeopathy crowd as giving it more powerful juju than if you had shipped 100% pure Martian water.
Huh, I knew that homeopaths(?) think you can dilute something infinitely and it still retains the same properties. It never occurred to me that they would think it's actually better.
Okay, so we have two varieties: One is advertised as 100% fresh Martian spring water. The other is advertised as being a incredibly dilute mixture of fresh Martian spring water.
In both cases, it'll be water from my garden hose.
You are now singing a protest song about trespassing and signage. Stupid people think its "deep."
This is the only song your band will be remembered for, and it was just a cover of a song by a 70s band who is similarly remembered for nothing else. You vanish into obscurity/rehab.
I have no doubt that this effect is replaying itself yet again. It's a good sign that there are so few real scandals that we have to invent our own, but a bad sign that we are so eager to be distracted by scandal.
Yeah, there's no doubt this is the same thing as before. Because in TFA written by one of the plaintiffs itself it says that the Motion to Dismiss was filed by the government on January 21, and the National Security Archive is only just now responding to that motion.
January 21, one day after inagration and weeks before Obama's Attorney General was confirmed. Exactly like in the case of the motion to stay in the illegal wiretap lawsuit (that everyone who didn't RTFA went so ballistic over), this motion was not filed as a conscious policy decision by the Obama administration. It was a default continuation of the policies of the Bush DoJ, by Bush DoJ appointees. The paperwork had already been done before Obama took office.
That doesn't mean Obama actually disagrees with Bush on this, and won't try to have the lawsuit dismissed. It does mean that this is in and of itself not indicative of anything other than that a previous President's influence does not immediately end as soon as the next guy takes office.
I love the National Security Archive, I wish them well in their suit (and their response to the motion seems pretty strong). But I think they too should wait to judge Obama's Justice Dept. until after Obama's Justice Dept. actually weighs in on the issue.
You make some very good points. I absolutely agree that the most important thing is to move forward, and the last thing we need is an attempt to persecute the previous administration in what would certainly be termed -- at least somewhat accurately -- a "witch hunt" by the ones who would never be convinced that the previous administration did anything wrong. And a good number of these people would be Congressmen. Sounds like a bad choice for an administration who I'm counting on to get things done.
However, it would be unfortunate if this case is in fact dismissed and these emails are permanently lost. National Security Archive, one of the two plaintiffs in the suit, does a great job of providing information about the past that informs the present. For example, if you ever wondered if Reagan's government really allowed the Contras to sell cocaine in the U.S. to raise money for weapons, well, there you have it in the government's own words.
In a contemporary discussion about the War on Drugs, knowing that the government that fought this war the hardest and put so many people in jail was also the same government that was partially and intentionally responsible for the cocaine explosion in the 80s is highly useful in seeing how hypocritical the whole thing is.
In twenty years, I want to be able to point to an official email which shows them asking for skewed intelligence about WMD in Iraq, shows the discussions about invading Iraq immediately after 9/11, or whatever else we can find in these emails so that regardless of whether anyone is ever punished, there will at least be fairly rigorous historical record. If the Global War on Terror is still ongoing, and some blow-hard wants to invade Iraq again because now they're allies with Iran, we can look at the past and see how we got to where we are.
Seeing as how the Motion to Dismiss was filed on Jan 21, before Obama could have realistically weighed in on the subject himself, and weeks before his Attorney General was confirmed meaning he wasn't even practically in charge of the DoJ, I am not willing to conclude that he really is going to block this lawsuit. Even though there are more important things going on, I'll certainly be disappointed if he does.
I didn't phrase that first part well. I meant it seems she implied she would pursue action if any complaint was filed.
Yet even when talking about the future she never said anything about anti-trust action actually being taken. You're saying that sentence implies that she would not actually weigh the merits of the complaints, and would not investigate or anything before prosecuting. I think that's pure invention.
Most/.ers, btw, obviously didn't even read the article.
The closest complaint I can spin up is a third party uses SDK/API which abuse cloud network or processing in violation of TOS.
Huh? No, like I was saying, the complaint would be that a third party is using the SDK and becoming successful, and Google makes a change to the internals of their SDK such that it breaks the third party app, people assume it's the apps fault and use Google's native apps instead of the 3rd party's, and Google's market share is thus protected via abuse of monopoly power. See DRDOS/Win3.1 for example.
I meant both but mostly going after Microsoft again. I think there are enough violations in other areas(like those hidden API's you mentioned) to avoid any double jeopardy conflict. And yes, there would limited support for this effort.
Sad but true. I actually quite disagree with her that Microsoft is a problem of the past, but on the other hand I do see their power as waning.
Don't EVER ask why they assume that CO2, a gas that is soluble in water to a great extent, cannot diffuse out of air bubbles in ice that have been trapped for millenia. It is the measurement of CO2 in those bubbles that global warming scientists use to tell us what the level of CO2 was ten thousand years ago -- even though there is no recorded measurement from then, and only the proxy of "trapped bubbles" to rely on.
Yeah, cus asking how a gas could be soluble in a liquid but not a solid is probably going to get you either some embarrassed chuckling or a condescending Mr. Wizard-style explanation. Both could be damaging to the egos of an unprepared GC denier.
Disregarding that, if you propose this effect as being large enough to discredit ice core sample data, then one would expect that the data would show that CO2 levels in ice cores are by and large inversely proportional with age. Except, once you go past the last hundred and fifty years, they aren't at all. CO2 levels remain stable for tens of thousands of years, with those stable levels going both up and down as you go back in time, with plenty of peaks and troughs.
But yeah, leave it to the "skeptics" to question scientific work by inventing a principle they can't be arsed to even examine themselves, to discredit data that they also haven't been arsed to see if their invented principle would even explain.
I'm sure it's just those super-rich climatologists just trying to keep a lid on your truth!
Hold on, I was actually looking at the article just before I wrote that...
Ah, found it. This was linked from the slashdot summary and discusses it briefly, and links to this press release.
"The forecast by researchers at CU-Boulder's Colorado Center for Astrodynamics Research is based on satellite data and temperature records and indicates there is a 59 percent chance the annual minimum sea ice record will be broken this fall for the third time in five years."
(the quote seems so imply it's inevitable so it's more fair to interpret it as a promise of action)
No, it implies she thinks it will happen, and that she didn't feel a need to throw a dozen qualifiers in to satisfy/. pedants. It certainly does not imply that she will pursue anti-trust action against Google regardless of whether there are any allegations of discrimination or not. That makes no sense regardless of how you read her sentence.
Can you provide a hypothetical?
It's The Future(tm). Cloud computing has become the dominant paradigm, and due to its popularity Google Apps is the MS Office of its day. Over time, Google introduces subtle and undocumented changes to their formerly free and open API which break other apps, and/or begins utilizing features in their native Apps that aren't available through the api which prevents documents from being read in other environments.
Basically the same story as Windows/Office, only "on the internet".
I'd like to think that by the time net apps are popular enough for this to even be possible that people will have mostly wised up to the problems of lock-in. I'd also like to think that Google really is less evil than Microsoft and they'll decide that openness is ultimately better for them than trying to abuse their monopoly. Hell, maybe knowing the top anti-trust regulator is paying attention will be all it takes to ensure this doesn't happen.
I'd rather have one that finishes the job.
Yeah, well, just like in U.S. vs Microsoft, that would mean getting to the remedy phase of the trial before a new administration who is against anti-trust law on principle takes over. Again, having the regulators pay attention to threats will help.
Unless you meant going back to finish the job on Microsoft. I think that'd be hard; they were tried and convicted. It would take new allegations. I'm not sure how much traction there'd be for that even in the Obama administration.
Forgive me, but I completely fail to see how Google could be considered a monopoly. They offer services that are supported by their advertising revenue.
Actually, their biggest service is advertising (i.e. Google-based ads on websites which are not Google) and since their purchase of Doubleclick (remember them, the guys whose entire business was advertising-as-service?) they have 70% of the market and could probably be called a monopoly.
But anti-competitive?
She did not say they are anti-competitive... yet. She fears they may be in the future, and seriously we here at/. have been worried about that with things like Google Apps (which seems like what concerns her too) for quite some time.
Unless my understanding is completely off-base, it almost sounds like you can become a monopoly to this person simply by being better at what you do.
All of us here at/. who cut our teeth with anti-trust law on the Microsoft case are well aware that a monopoly is not in and of itself illegal, but rather that abuses of monopoly power are illegal.
Why is it so hard to conceive that a nominee for anti-trust chief would also understand this, and use her terminology appropriately?
Does she not know what a monopoly is? And I've yet to hear how Google is using its leverage to stifle competition and/or gouge its customers.
Yes she knows what a damn monopoly is. She knows that a monopoly is not in and of itself illegal. She said she thinks Google has a monopoly in online advertising, and that they acquired it legally. She said nothing that indicates she thinks Google is abusing that monopoly today.
What she is concerned about is cloud computing -- i.e. net apps like Google Docs -- and that Google could make interoperating with their software difficult just like Microsoft has/is. That is in fact a legitimate concern. If it happens, I'd like for a regulator to step in sooner than the government did with Microsoft, and if it doesn't, I don't see anything that says she'll pursue anti-trust against Google just because.
I'm really not getting what everyone is getting their panties in a twist over.
However, thinking that they need antitrust actions seems just foolish to me. Sure, they may be a monopoly, but they have yet to actually abuse this monopoly.
Um yeah, but I don't see where she actually said that anti-trust is required now.
She says she thinks Google acquired their monopoly legally, but is concerned about what happens when cloud computing takes off. Okay, she uses an unqualified future tense when she says "there will be companies that will begin to allege that Google is discriminating", but that still sounds more like a prediction to me than a promise of action. If that happens, anti-trust investigation may in fact be warranted, and I see no indication that she's saying she would pursue anti-trust against Google anyway if it doesn't.
Seriously, what's the issue with having an anti-trust chief who is aware of and intends to keep an eye on potential future problems? If regulators had been keeping a closer eye on Microsoft, then maybe U.S. vs Microsoft would have happened early enough to actually make a difference.
How is saying that she's more concerned with Google than with Microsoft in terms of future potential for abuse of monopoly power a sign of "bias"? Having an opinion is bias now, I guess?
or really, detroit, judging by the way this administration is driving the country into the ground.
At least one nice thing about the Metallica wing is that it features their old, good songs like "The Four Horsemen". You know, back when they encouraged bootlegging.;)
The RIAA Wing is all Britney Spears and the MPAA wing is all John Williams scores. The FedGov Wing just plays the XFiles theme song over and over, which is cool at first but gets kinda old.
'Climate Change' is a politically hot topic, and plenty of governments give grants into this kind of research.
"The overwhelming majority* of the world's climate scientists" know what side their bread is buttered on. It's on the side of giving governments more excuses to tax and define their citizens activities ever more closely.
Oh yeah. I can totally see why all those scientists would fraudulently claim that climate change is real to get those fat, wonderful, Bush administration pro-climate-change dollars. Why, I remember when it came out that scientists in the government were forced to change their reports to make stronger claims that anthropogenic climate change was a serious problem. Quite the scandal that was, I don't see how anyone can take global warming seriously anymore. *eyeroll*
But to say The Polar caps will be gone in 2008 or by 2012 NYC will be flooded, is grossly misunderstanding the complexity of the earths environment.
Yeah, but climatologists don't suffer from that misunderstanding. They're the ones who have to actually slog through that complexity.
Granted that most of the fear mongering worst case scenarios stuff isn't from the people doing the real science but from activists groups who pick and choose data to make people afraid so they do what they want.
An astute point, and really it was both the activists and the -- well, whatever the opposite of an activist is, someone who wants to do nothing is called -- who with the help of the media took the scientists claims of a chance for a minimum and an ice free north pole (just the pole, btw, not all arctic ice gone entirely) and run with it as if the scientists are saying it's a sure thing. The activists to cry doom and gloom, and the inactivists to pounce on as proof the whole thing is bunk if the results come out on the "wrong" side of the scientist's claimed 60:40 odds.
But still the Scientists don't like saying to people Hey I could be wrong, but thats OK because with the scientific process being wrong takes us the next step closer to the real answer. They want to in general portrait themselves like the Sci-Fi scientist who know what is going on and is always right.
They didn't just say "Hey I could be wrong", they attempted to quantify the chances of them being wrong. Then they voluntarily report on censor errors that briefly screwed up their data, while I'm sure knowing that this would be blown way out of proportion and used to "prove" that they never know what they're talking about at all. In other words, the opposite of trying to appear like they can't be wrong. So I'm not buying it at all.
Just because news headlines omit the qualifiers does not mean they do not exist.
Slashdot Mirror
Not only does that make a lot of sense, it also makes me realize that I've been capitalizing GAYDAR completely wrong since as far as I know it isn't even an acronym...
CO2 is a greenhouse gas. But compared to water vapor, you know, clouds. It's barely anything.
Yeah, but while the levels of CO2 can and have increased dramatically, the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere is limited to the saturation point and is self-regulating. You know, rain.
This will be seen by many of the homeopathy crowd as giving it more powerful juju than if you had shipped 100% pure Martian water.
Huh, I knew that homeopaths(?) think you can dilute something infinitely and it still retains the same properties. It never occurred to me that they would think it's actually better.
Okay, so we have two varieties: One is advertised as 100% fresh Martian spring water. The other is advertised as being a incredibly dilute mixture of fresh Martian spring water.
In both cases, it'll be water from my garden hose.
Jeebus, what is that, Newspeak?
"And your mom bellyfeel my penis doubleplusgood!"
You are now singing a protest song about trespassing and signage. Stupid people think its "deep."
This is the only song your band will be remembered for, and it was just a cover of a song by a 70s band who is similarly remembered for nothing else. You vanish into obscurity/rehab.
The End.
I have no doubt that this effect is replaying itself yet again. It's a good sign that there are so few real scandals that we have to invent our own, but a bad sign that we are so eager to be distracted by scandal.
Yeah, there's no doubt this is the same thing as before. Because in TFA written by one of the plaintiffs itself it says that the Motion to Dismiss was filed by the government on January 21, and the National Security Archive is only just now responding to that motion.
January 21, one day after inagration and weeks before Obama's Attorney General was confirmed. Exactly like in the case of the motion to stay in the illegal wiretap lawsuit (that everyone who didn't RTFA went so ballistic over), this motion was not filed as a conscious policy decision by the Obama administration. It was a default continuation of the policies of the Bush DoJ, by Bush DoJ appointees. The paperwork had already been done before Obama took office.
That doesn't mean Obama actually disagrees with Bush on this, and won't try to have the lawsuit dismissed. It does mean that this is in and of itself not indicative of anything other than that a previous President's influence does not immediately end as soon as the next guy takes office.
I love the National Security Archive, I wish them well in their suit (and their response to the motion seems pretty strong). But I think they too should wait to judge Obama's Justice Dept. until after Obama's Justice Dept. actually weighs in on the issue.
You make some very good points. I absolutely agree that the most important thing is to move forward, and the last thing we need is an attempt to persecute the previous administration in what would certainly be termed -- at least somewhat accurately -- a "witch hunt" by the ones who would never be convinced that the previous administration did anything wrong. And a good number of these people would be Congressmen. Sounds like a bad choice for an administration who I'm counting on to get things done.
However, it would be unfortunate if this case is in fact dismissed and these emails are permanently lost. National Security Archive, one of the two plaintiffs in the suit, does a great job of providing information about the past that informs the present. For example, if you ever wondered if Reagan's government really allowed the Contras to sell cocaine in the U.S. to raise money for weapons, well, there you have it in the government's own words.
In a contemporary discussion about the War on Drugs, knowing that the government that fought this war the hardest and put so many people in jail was also the same government that was partially and intentionally responsible for the cocaine explosion in the 80s is highly useful in seeing how hypocritical the whole thing is.
In twenty years, I want to be able to point to an official email which shows them asking for skewed intelligence about WMD in Iraq, shows the discussions about invading Iraq immediately after 9/11, or whatever else we can find in these emails so that regardless of whether anyone is ever punished, there will at least be fairly rigorous historical record. If the Global War on Terror is still ongoing, and some blow-hard wants to invade Iraq again because now they're allies with Iran, we can look at the past and see how we got to where we are.
Seeing as how the Motion to Dismiss was filed on Jan 21, before Obama could have realistically weighed in on the subject himself, and weeks before his Attorney General was confirmed meaning he wasn't even practically in charge of the DoJ, I am not willing to conclude that he really is going to block this lawsuit. Even though there are more important things going on, I'll certainly be disappointed if he does.
Sorry, to clarify (with an even!): MIPS is not an "ISA," whatever that is.
To be fair to the confused AC, MIPS is also the name of a line of RISC microprocessors and the corresponding Instruction Set Architecture.
Sorry - we do have bound states of strange and charm though which are rather boringly called D_s mesons.
I dunno, "bound D/S mesons" sounds kinda kinky to me.
Also, Obama promised me a pony.
Okay, so he didn't promise me a pony. But I still want one!
I didn't phrase that first part well. I meant it seems she implied she would pursue action if any complaint was filed.
Yet even when talking about the future she never said anything about anti-trust action actually being taken. You're saying that sentence implies that she would not actually weigh the merits of the complaints, and would not investigate or anything before prosecuting. I think that's pure invention.
Most /.ers, btw, obviously didn't even read the article.
The closest complaint I can spin up is a third party uses SDK/API which abuse cloud network or processing in violation of TOS.
Huh? No, like I was saying, the complaint would be that a third party is using the SDK and becoming successful, and Google makes a change to the internals of their SDK such that it breaks the third party app, people assume it's the apps fault and use Google's native apps instead of the 3rd party's, and Google's market share is thus protected via abuse of monopoly power. See DRDOS/Win3.1 for example.
I meant both but mostly going after Microsoft again. I think there are enough violations in other areas(like those hidden API's you mentioned) to avoid any double jeopardy conflict. And yes, there would limited support for this effort.
Sad but true. I actually quite disagree with her that Microsoft is a problem of the past, but on the other hand I do see their power as waning.
Don't EVER ask why they assume that CO2, a gas that is soluble in water to a great extent, cannot diffuse out of air bubbles in ice that have been trapped for millenia. It is the measurement of CO2 in those bubbles that global warming scientists use to tell us what the level of CO2 was ten thousand years ago -- even though there is no recorded measurement from then, and only the proxy of "trapped bubbles" to rely on.
Yeah, cus asking how a gas could be soluble in a liquid but not a solid is probably going to get you either some embarrassed chuckling or a condescending Mr. Wizard-style explanation. Both could be damaging to the egos of an unprepared GC denier.
Disregarding that, if you propose this effect as being large enough to discredit ice core sample data, then one would expect that the data would show that CO2 levels in ice cores are by and large inversely proportional with age. Except, once you go past the last hundred and fifty years, they aren't at all. CO2 levels remain stable for tens of thousands of years, with those stable levels going both up and down as you go back in time, with plenty of peaks and troughs.
But yeah, leave it to the "skeptics" to question scientific work by inventing a principle they can't be arsed to even examine themselves, to discredit data that they also haven't been arsed to see if their invented principle would even explain.
I'm sure it's just those super-rich climatologists just trying to keep a lid on your truth!
Hold on, I was actually looking at the article just before I wrote that...
Ah, found it. This was linked from the slashdot summary and discusses it briefly, and links to this press release.
"The forecast by researchers at CU-Boulder's Colorado Center for Astrodynamics Research is based on satellite data and temperature records and indicates there is a 59 percent chance the annual minimum sea ice record will be broken this fall for the third time in five years."
Let me guess, you read the article didn't you? If so, I think you know the answer to your question.
LOL. Took me a minute to realize what you meant. But yes, I do think I know the answer now.
I RTFAed, and assumed others did too. I must be new here. ;)
(the quote seems so imply it's inevitable so it's more fair to interpret it as a promise of action)
No, it implies she thinks it will happen, and that she didn't feel a need to throw a dozen qualifiers in to satisfy /. pedants. It certainly does not imply that she will pursue anti-trust action against Google regardless of whether there are any allegations of discrimination or not. That makes no sense regardless of how you read her sentence.
Can you provide a hypothetical?
It's The Future(tm). Cloud computing has become the dominant paradigm, and due to its popularity Google Apps is the MS Office of its day. Over time, Google introduces subtle and undocumented changes to their formerly free and open API which break other apps, and/or begins utilizing features in their native Apps that aren't available through the api which prevents documents from being read in other environments.
Basically the same story as Windows/Office, only "on the internet".
I'd like to think that by the time net apps are popular enough for this to even be possible that people will have mostly wised up to the problems of lock-in. I'd also like to think that Google really is less evil than Microsoft and they'll decide that openness is ultimately better for them than trying to abuse their monopoly. Hell, maybe knowing the top anti-trust regulator is paying attention will be all it takes to ensure this doesn't happen.
I'd rather have one that finishes the job.
Yeah, well, just like in U.S. vs Microsoft, that would mean getting to the remedy phase of the trial before a new administration who is against anti-trust law on principle takes over. Again, having the regulators pay attention to threats will help.
Unless you meant going back to finish the job on Microsoft. I think that'd be hard; they were tried and convicted. It would take new allegations. I'm not sure how much traction there'd be for that even in the Obama administration.
Forgive me, but I completely fail to see how Google could be considered a monopoly. They offer services that are supported by their advertising revenue.
Actually, their biggest service is advertising (i.e. Google-based ads on websites which are not Google) and since their purchase of Doubleclick (remember them, the guys whose entire business was advertising-as-service?) they have 70% of the market and could probably be called a monopoly.
But anti-competitive?
She did not say they are anti-competitive... yet. She fears they may be in the future, and seriously we here at /. have been worried about that with things like Google Apps (which seems like what concerns her too) for quite some time.
Unless my understanding is completely off-base, it almost sounds like you can become a monopoly to this person simply by being better at what you do.
All of us here at /. who cut our teeth with anti-trust law on the Microsoft case are well aware that a monopoly is not in and of itself illegal, but rather that abuses of monopoly power are illegal.
Why is it so hard to conceive that a nominee for anti-trust chief would also understand this, and use her terminology appropriately?
Does she not know what a monopoly is? And I've yet to hear how Google is using its leverage to stifle competition and/or gouge its customers.
Yes she knows what a damn monopoly is. She knows that a monopoly is not in and of itself illegal. She said she thinks Google has a monopoly in online advertising, and that they acquired it legally. She said nothing that indicates she thinks Google is abusing that monopoly today.
What she is concerned about is cloud computing -- i.e. net apps like Google Docs -- and that Google could make interoperating with their software difficult just like Microsoft has/is. That is in fact a legitimate concern. If it happens, I'd like for a regulator to step in sooner than the government did with Microsoft, and if it doesn't, I don't see anything that says she'll pursue anti-trust against Google just because.
I'm really not getting what everyone is getting their panties in a twist over.
However, thinking that they need antitrust actions seems just foolish to me. Sure, they may be a monopoly, but they have yet to actually abuse this monopoly.
Um yeah, but I don't see where she actually said that anti-trust is required now.
BTW, here's a link to the original bloomberg article that this blog entry quotes from.
She says she thinks Google acquired their monopoly legally, but is concerned about what happens when cloud computing takes off. Okay, she uses an unqualified future tense when she says "there will be companies that will begin to allege that Google is discriminating", but that still sounds more like a prediction to me than a promise of action. If that happens, anti-trust investigation may in fact be warranted, and I see no indication that she's saying she would pursue anti-trust against Google anyway if it doesn't.
Seriously, what's the issue with having an anti-trust chief who is aware of and intends to keep an eye on potential future problems? If regulators had been keeping a closer eye on Microsoft, then maybe U.S. vs Microsoft would have happened early enough to actually make a difference.
admitting a bias against another company
How is saying that she's more concerned with Google than with Microsoft in terms of future potential for abuse of monopoly power a sign of "bias"? Having an opinion is bias now, I guess?
or really, detroit, judging by the way this administration is driving the country into the ground.
Ah... I see, it's "everyone is like me" syndrome.
RIAA Wing
MPAA Wing
FedGov Wing
Metallica Wing
At least one nice thing about the Metallica wing is that it features their old, good songs like "The Four Horsemen". You know, back when they encouraged bootlegging. ;)
The RIAA Wing is all Britney Spears and the MPAA wing is all John Williams scores. The FedGov Wing just plays the XFiles theme song over and over, which is cool at first but gets kinda old.
Now who are the two main bosses?
Good question. Uh... Sonny Bono and Walt Disney?
Ah, thank you.
Also, the scientists reported sensor errors, not censor errors. :P
Actually, I find that trying Questhelper has pretty much killed all my interest in WoW.
Really??
*goes to download Questhelper*
Dear Lord, please let this work...
It's just a new version of the old adage: "All programs expand until they can read email", only now it's "browse the web".
But I'd never considered the possible recursive nature of the adage until your post.
Are there any in-browser web browsers?
'Climate Change' is a politically hot topic, and plenty of governments give grants into this kind of research.
"The overwhelming majority* of the world's climate scientists" know what side their bread is buttered on. It's on the side of giving governments more excuses to tax and define their citizens activities ever more closely.
Oh yeah. I can totally see why all those scientists would fraudulently claim that climate change is real to get those fat, wonderful, Bush administration pro-climate-change dollars. Why, I remember when it came out that scientists in the government were forced to change their reports to make stronger claims that anthropogenic climate change was a serious problem. Quite the scandal that was, I don't see how anyone can take global warming seriously anymore. *eyeroll*
But to say The Polar caps will be gone in 2008 or by 2012 NYC will be flooded, is grossly misunderstanding the complexity of the earths environment.
Yeah, but climatologists don't suffer from that misunderstanding. They're the ones who have to actually slog through that complexity.
Granted that most of the fear mongering worst case scenarios stuff isn't from the people doing the real science but from activists groups who pick and choose data to make people afraid so they do what they want.
An astute point, and really it was both the activists and the -- well, whatever the opposite of an activist is, someone who wants to do nothing is called -- who with the help of the media took the scientists claims of a chance for a minimum and an ice free north pole (just the pole, btw, not all arctic ice gone entirely) and run with it as if the scientists are saying it's a sure thing. The activists to cry doom and gloom, and the inactivists to pounce on as proof the whole thing is bunk if the results come out on the "wrong" side of the scientist's claimed 60:40 odds.
But still the Scientists don't like saying to people Hey I could be wrong, but thats OK because with the scientific process being wrong takes us the next step closer to the real answer. They want to in general portrait themselves like the Sci-Fi scientist who know what is going on and is always right.
They didn't just say "Hey I could be wrong", they attempted to quantify the chances of them being wrong. Then they voluntarily report on censor errors that briefly screwed up their data, while I'm sure knowing that this would be blown way out of proportion and used to "prove" that they never know what they're talking about at all. In other words, the opposite of trying to appear like they can't be wrong. So I'm not buying it at all.
Just because news headlines omit the qualifiers does not mean they do not exist.