That's a pretty delusional list of "successes". UMD is as much a "standard" as GBA carts? MemorySticks are the bastard child of flash memory. Mini-Disc. Oh yeah.
You can claim the CD as a success, though I attribute most of that to Phillips, but most importantly there was no competing standard for digital music.
There's a few other companies on the Blu-Ray board that have a vested interest in it succeeding - but they are pipsqueaks like Disney, Apple and Sun.
Ooh, media giant Sun! But you know there's a difference between supporting a format and being the driving force behind it. You may as well claim that the Coalition of the Willing includes the UK... so it isn't basically the U.S.'s war to win or lose? If Sony dropped out of Blu-Ray, it would die instantly.
Frankly I think both MS and Sony are delusional if they think they can get a critical mass of people to switch to one of two incompatible next-gen formats from their currently perfectly functional DVDs. "Supports half of new releases" is never going to convince anyone. If Sony doesn't stop preventing dual-format players from being made in their desperate desire to "win" and crush their enemy, then I predict you'll be able to chalk up BluRay -- and HD-DVD as well -- amongst the list of failures.
Disclaimer: I am a Nintendo Fanboy, however I tend to be the proof that not all fanboys are mindless.
If, like me, you've been a Nintendo fan since the NES days, then you have by necessity had your fanboism weathered by the harsh winds of reality. You'd have to be a true loony of a fanboy to think not having FFVII on the N64 was a good thing, just as an example.
That's why I call myself an Nintendo fan, because a fan is someone who likes something and thinks favorably of it, but isn't so out of touch with reality that they can't see or admit to its shortcomings. Whereas a fanboy is someone who's own ego is so wrapped up in whatever it is that they can't even conceive of negative things, and react with hostility to anyone who can as though it were an attack on themselves.
Case in point: I loved Wind Waker, but I was really dissapointed at the Triforce search quest that they used to pad out the game, which I found painfully boring, though I still recommend finishing it because the final battle with Ganondorf is amazing. I was called a Nintendo hater -- yse, hater -- by a fanboy for having this opinion. Since even the maker of the game admitted that this was a flaw, I can't help but roll my eyes.
Yah, I am a nintendo fanboy, but I still don't have a Wii actualy. Why? Still addicted to a number of DS games and CBA to chase down a Wii in my free time that I could spend playing DS games or (more importantly) Spending it with friends/family.
I'll be getting one when I don't have to give a shit about phoning every store in town or getting on notification lists so I can rush down to a store just as the truck arrives in hopes of beating out everyone else doing the same thing. Zelda will be just as cool next month.
For the NES, Ghosts and Goblins, and for the SNES, Super Ghouls and Ghosts. The one where your default weapon was a lance that you threw, and if you got hit your armor fell off leaving you in your underwear. In particular Ghosts and Goblins was one of the most evil games I can ever remember playing.
Seriously - how is having the fingerprints (all 10 no less) of everyone that visits the US possibly going to help? Nobody is asking this question, and it's one that needs to be asked.
It's not going to do anything, unless al Qaeda does something really stupid like send over known terrorists who've had their fingerprints in law enforcement files already, which would be a dumb idea today.
Which makes this plan stupid and ineffective. Assuming it's the Democrat's plan, that will make them look stupid at least to those who know better. As I said in my last post, that's pretty much what I expect from them. There's only two ways in which I can see the Dem congress being better than the Rep one in terms of national security: 1) they won't slavishly do whatever Bush tells them (they'll automatically resist instead) and 2) they don't seem quite as delusional when it comes to pretending that their plans are working fine despite all evidence to the contrary.
In my idealist fantasies, this results in the next election cycle people being vehemently sick of both parties (instead of just the last one in power) and actually giving 3rd parties a chance... and then peaceful aliens show up without warning and gift every human with a zero-point energy generator, replicator, and impenetrable force field generator, ushering in an era of peace and plenty unknown in song or verse. I mean, if I'm going to dream, dream big!
You're not REALLY using the Constitution as a source in an argument are you? Our government ignores the Constitution on a daily basis, what makes you think that the word 'people' would somehow be sacrosanct?
Well are we arguing about what is okay, or are we arguing about what the people in power are actually going to do?
If the former, then the Constitution is a wonderful source as it defines what the government is supposed to have the power to do and what it isn't. Since the person I replied to used the terms "I'm against", and "I couldn't give a shit", I think it is very likely that this is what we are talking about.
If the latter, then what we the people think is okay is even more important because it is only due to our acceptance or rejection of the government's actions that our rights have any hope of being respected. The Consitution does nothing to protect us as long as it is merely a document, as we all know the documentation and reality can be wildly different things. As far as the Constitution is seen as a list of demands by the people, with the Democratic process being the first and the 2nd Ammendment being the last indication of how we intend to enforce those demands, then it actually works. If we accept the loss of our rights, then they are taken, yet if we refuse to accept them then that is our only chance to have them respected.
To put it in more practical terms: The last U.S. president to be caught spying on people without a warrant was impeached. What has changed since then, if not acceptance of that kind of behavior?
Similarly, it is the acceptance by people of the destruction of rights of non-citizens that allows it to continue. Therefore, an argument based on the Constitution about how that should not be allowed can change someone's mind, and thus change the environment in which the destruction of rights occurs.
While I am 100% against fingerprinting CITIZENS of this country, I couldn't give a shit less if someone from outside of the US is fingerprinted.
Well that's nice. What is your basis for being against fingerprinting citizens? Perhaps the Constitution and Bill of Rights, 4th Ammendment in particular, motivate your belief?
Well guess what. You won't find the word "citizen" anywhere in the 4th Ammendment or anywhere else in the Bill of Rights. They all say "people", and that isn't a synonym for "citizens". When the Constitution means citizens it says citizens.
A lot of people take for granted that our rights don't apply to non-citizens. This is simply non-factual; there are very few of our rights that only apply to citizens. The rest are for everyone.
Anyway my point is not to be argumentative about the definition of 'zero' but rather to highlight that even with the most promising renewable sources we are still stuck relying on a supply chain and distrubution network that relies on fossil fuels. So the idea of a transistion to a complete reweable structure is a bit of a pipe dream at the moment and it is unclear weather with exisitng technology it can be carried out at mass scale with a positive EROEI.
Well, yes, our distribution infrastructure (and many other aspects of infrastructure) rely on fossil fuels rely on and will continue to rely on fossil fuels for quite a while.
However any time we take a truck that used to be shipping a heating/generation component that was created using non-renewables and once installed is fueled by non-renewables, and replace that same shipment with a component created using renewables and which operates on renewables, then we have a net reduction in the amount of non-renewable energy used.
Which has the happy side effect of making our non-renewables last longer, so that our distribution infrastructure can run for longer before we have to make the painful and at this point purely hypothetical switch to a replacement. It is exactly because we are stuck relying on fossile fuels for our supply chain that we should avoid using fossil fuels everywhere possible.
My point is that you are absolutely correct, yet this should not be used in any circumstance as an argument against using alternative energy sources. Rather the opposite -- that we will need fossil fuels for the forseeable future means that it is all the more urgent that we don't unneccessarily stress our supply. You weren't arguing the point, I realize, but it is typical for anti-conservationists to seize upon examples like this to claim that things like solar panels made from rapeseed oil are no better, so I'm heading them off at the pass.
If it's the Dems, I'm thoroughly disappointed - I thought the idea was to *reverse* the damage done by the Republican party, not add to it.
Well, yes, but they aren't simply going to undo everything, as National Security is still a major issue that the Dems cannot afford to appear weak on. They won largely because the Reps were doing such a bad job of actually executing on Security. The degree to which the objections both of the Dems and the voters were based on the Reps leading us towards a police state is debateable but I'd say limited, especially among the elected officials. The "damage" is stupid, failed policies, not evil anti-Democratic policies. So the Dems still want to have an effective and most likely invasive National Security policy, and the question is: Are they in fact any smarter than the Reps in terms of making an actual effective working policy?
If you shut this guy down for talking outside his area of expertise using ideology to make his judgments, then you'd better get cracking on shutting Slashdot down.
Obviously you don't shut down Slashdot, but you tell individual posters to shut the hell up. Which I'm all for if they make statements that are based on idealogy without logic to back them up. Lots of people make arguments that are rooted in their ideology, but also have sound reasoning behind them. When you say something that is completely illogical simply because it ties in with your view of the world, then you should get shouted down, modded down, or in the case of this guy, called an idiot.
If this was a large factor, expect an attack on Iran soon. Iran is changing over to the euro.
It was much more practical to invade Iraq than Iran. Even Bush & Co. realize that invading Iran would be a nightmare, which is why all the back-and-forth sabre ratling has so far amounted to nothing even though Iran presents a real threat of WMDs and terrorism. They may be happy -- or have to be happy -- with having claimed Iraq. On the other hand, Bush has clearly stated that he has left all options open.
If it had been you, that was raped at a very young age, I am sure you would have appreciated adults making sure you were safe from predators.
Yes, I would have, if they had done so by trying to address the real problem, which is children abused by family, friends, and authorities instead of something useless like banning MySpace in libraries (which won't stop kids from using it). Where is your empathy for those children, the much larger group of children?
Think of the children is not an empty phrase just because it's a tag.
No, it's an empty phrase because it is always used as a replacement for thinking.
Look, those people who went to the Antarctic to get ice core samples didn't go there to prove anything. They went there because they wanted ice core samples. They showed the data. It showed trends. It showed that CO2 hasn't been as high as it is today for the past 300,000 years. If it had shown that CO2 was higher in the past than today, then they would have published that data, and it would have formed a solid basis for refuting the claim that humans are contributing unnatural levels of CO2 to the atmosphere. However that was not the case.
And that's regardless of whether the people who did that study believed in anthropogenic global warming or not! Science doesn't work that way. A scientist may have a belief, but their science demands evidence.
Famous example: Michelson and Morely set out to prove the existence of the luminiferous aether. They conducted their experiment and got... nothing. They tried it again and got... nothing. They tried it at high altitudes. They tried it at low altitudes. They tried it in the southern hemisphere and the north. They hypothesized aether-dragging effects and tried to account for them and got... nothing. No matter what they did they got nothing, and that's the result they reported, and no matter whether they still believed in it or not they could not draw a scientific conclusion that it existed. They didn't have to go LOOKING for the conclusion opposite of their own, it came to them through normal scientific rigor.
By the way, in doing so, they turned scientific belief on its head, guaranteed their own position in the history books, and opened the doors for other explanations, the one that passed scientific muster being Einsteins's.
You don't fund scepticism. You fund science. You conduct experiments. The result of that experiment is your scientific evidence, whether it supports your theory or refutes it. That's the way science works.
hard-line peace activists and hard-line environmentalist. All the standard left-wing stuff.
Sorry, but LOL. "Hard-line peace activists"? I'm wondering what a pacifist hard-liner is suppsed to be. "Peace or die!" LOL.
When I think of "hard-line left-wing" I think of Pol Pot or Che Guerva, the kind of leftists for whom peace activism was far from standard. Where do you get your impression of what left-wing means? Certainly not from, say, 20th century history.
Laughter aside, I'm no pacifist, but I find it sad that people would try to smear the idea of pacifism by using left-wing as a pejorative. So pacifism == communism now? Sorry, I must have missed the memo.
To deny that the scientific community discourages dissent, especially involving sacred cow topics is being very naive.
Actually the scientific community strongly encourages dissent, only so long as that dissent is able to hold up to rigorous scientific scrutiny. Turning existing scientific concensus on its head is a fantastic way to make a name for oneself and get a tenured faculty position at a prestigious university, a guaranteed spot on the lecture circuit for the rest of your life, and sometimes even a Nobel Prize. Acting like the scientific community does not reward successfull dissent is simple non-factual; any scientist that felt they could turn the concensus on its head would attempt to do so.
What's the catch? Well, the catch is that many feel they can contradict the concensus and try to, but are in fact unable to do so because the concensus is correct, or at least their re-envisioning of the facts is wrong. The more well-established the theory they are attempting to brush aside, the more difficult the task will be simply because there is more scientific work supporting that theory that they must account for. String theorists have to account for all the work done in Relativity and QM before anyone will accept their answer as better. It isn't discouragement, it's scientific rigor. The most arrogant yet least skilled scientists are the ones who take their inability to dislodge the concensus as a sign of a conspiracy of scientists to protect their "sacred cow", when in fact it is just that the rogue scientist's idea sucked and did not hold up to scrutiny. Rogue scientists whose ideas hold up become heroes. Those whose don't become rejects.
That's the way it's supposed to work. Just because the science in your "sacred cow" issue isn't turning up the way you want doesn't mean it's because the scientists are repressing dissent, it's because the facts are saying you're wrong and you won't admit it.
I'm a little puzzled by the anti-net-neutrality stance on slashdot. So many of you are libertarian
I'd expect a libertarian to be anti-net-neutrality, so what is surprising to you? Did you mean pro-net-neutrality?
Anyway, I'm for it because first as others have pointed out the 'net is not these companies' own infrastructure. It was paid for in large part by the government, and it was the government who granted them the land access as well. They are using public resources, and they should be expected to treat it as such.
Also, the usefullness of the net -- and services like Akamai -- depends on it being neutral. It is the fundamental peer-to-peer nature of the net that has made it what it is. Or let me bring it home to you more directly: Slashdot -- which remember was not a for-profit venture for much of its existence -- would have died a long time ago as soon as it got large enough for, say, Sprint to say "you have to pay us for your packets that cross our network or we'll severely degrade them", and we wouldn't be having this discussion. I'll leave it to you to decide whether that's an argument for or against net neutrality.
Yeah, did he consider what would happen to Akamai if it were not operating on a neutral internet?
Service that efficiently utilizes a neutral internet, allowing other similar services to exist: Good. Changing the internet to give favor certain services at the expense of all others: Bad.
Almost everybody associates the problem with Dell, not with Sony. Quite honestly, they are right to. Dell sold the batteries, and they should have tested them to see if they were faulty. They also should have designed their chargers to prevent the problem.
Good point on who the perceived source of the problem is, though I don't fully agree that it is right to blame Dell. Sure they should have done better testing, but Sony produced the faulty components and distributed them to many others than just Dell.
In a way though this reminds me of the old Firestone tire fiasco. According to an ME friend of mine who worked for a different tire company this was definitely Ford's fault, as it was Ford who created the specifications for the tires. My friend's company looked into it after the initial problems with Firestones and found that their own tires made to Ford's spec had the same problem. Ford of course did a great job of making it look like it wasn't their fault, and this other smaller tire company certainly wasn't going to step forward to set the record straight.
Just goes to show that the actual source of the problem isn't as important as who gets blamed.
Companies have recalls all the time. Consumers are used to it. If they gave recalls too much weight, no one would ever by a car again.
Well yeah, that was my point. It's not that consumers didn't hear about the battery problems, it's that in the end they don't really care that much. I don't really care other than it can be added to the heaping pile of other things I don't like about Sony, but it's a minor part of that pile.
Just more data that shows that this and just about every similar measure whether in cyberspace or meatspace is ignoring the fundamental problem:
Children are vastly more likely to be victimized by someone they know than by a random stranger online or otherwise. Your typical sexual predator does not search for victims online, they look for victims down the hall.
All of this hand-wringing and legislating is just a way to avoid recoginizing this admittedly sad and disturbing fact.
Ah yes, the Everyone Has Some Degree of Bias Therefore All Biases Are Equal gambit. It's a close relative of the We Must Do Something And This is Something So We Must Do It gambit, in that it relies on believing that there are no quantitative differences between things. I wish my grocery clerk worked that way so I could give them "an amount of money" to pay for the groceries which cost "an amount of money".
Of course there would still be controversy and debate about global warming without the oil companies' efforts. It's nature, however, would be quite different. Sort of like how the tobacco companies kept the controversy centered around "cigarettes are/are not addictive and are/are not cancer causing" when otherwise it would have been "what are the specific risks of cigarettes and how best to deal with addiction".
Rootkit maybe -- Sony is right in that most people don't know what it is, and don't understand the explanation -- but not the battery. People know what "battery" and "fire" are. It was on the news a lot (for something like a product recall), and plenty of my completely non-techie-no-computer-much-less-laptop friends had heard about and even cracked jokes about Sony's batteries.
It really is that people will forgive anything, at least if there's no personal memory of pain involved. I'd be willing to bet that those whose batteries caught fire aren't going to think so fondly of the Sony brand from now on. Everyone else will just think "oh, they must have fixed it by now" and move on.
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That's a pretty delusional list of "successes". UMD is as much a "standard" as GBA carts? MemorySticks are the bastard child of flash memory. Mini-Disc. Oh yeah.
You can claim the CD as a success, though I attribute most of that to Phillips, but most importantly there was no competing standard for digital music.
There's a few other companies on the Blu-Ray board that have a vested interest in it succeeding - but they are pipsqueaks like Disney, Apple and Sun.
Ooh, media giant Sun! But you know there's a difference between supporting a format and being the driving force behind it. You may as well claim that the Coalition of the Willing includes the UK... so it isn't basically the U.S.'s war to win or lose? If Sony dropped out of Blu-Ray, it would die instantly.
Frankly I think both MS and Sony are delusional if they think they can get a critical mass of people to switch to one of two incompatible next-gen formats from their currently perfectly functional DVDs. "Supports half of new releases" is never going to convince anyone. If Sony doesn't stop preventing dual-format players from being made in their desperate desire to "win" and crush their enemy, then I predict you'll be able to chalk up BluRay -- and HD-DVD as well -- amongst the list of failures.
Disclaimer: I am a Nintendo Fanboy, however I tend to be the proof that not all fanboys are mindless.
If, like me, you've been a Nintendo fan since the NES days, then you have by necessity had your fanboism weathered by the harsh winds of reality. You'd have to be a true loony of a fanboy to think not having FFVII on the N64 was a good thing, just as an example.
That's why I call myself an Nintendo fan, because a fan is someone who likes something and thinks favorably of it, but isn't so out of touch with reality that they can't see or admit to its shortcomings. Whereas a fanboy is someone who's own ego is so wrapped up in whatever it is that they can't even conceive of negative things, and react with hostility to anyone who can as though it were an attack on themselves.
Case in point: I loved Wind Waker, but I was really dissapointed at the Triforce search quest that they used to pad out the game, which I found painfully boring, though I still recommend finishing it because the final battle with Ganondorf is amazing. I was called a Nintendo hater -- yse, hater -- by a fanboy for having this opinion. Since even the maker of the game admitted that this was a flaw, I can't help but roll my eyes.
Yah, I am a nintendo fanboy, but I still don't have a Wii actualy. Why? Still addicted to a number of DS games and CBA to chase down a Wii in my free time that I could spend playing DS games or (more importantly) Spending it with friends/family.
I'll be getting one when I don't have to give a shit about phoning every store in town or getting on notification lists so I can rush down to a store just as the truck arrives in hopes of beating out everyone else doing the same thing. Zelda will be just as cool next month.
I think the true question for anyone willing to buy the castle is, does it contain a miserable little pile of secrets?
The rumors are that the pile of secrets is large, and quite jovial. This only makes it more distrubing, though.
For the NES, Ghosts and Goblins, and for the SNES, Super Ghouls and Ghosts. The one where your default weapon was a lance that you threw, and if you got hit your armor fell off leaving you in your underwear. In particular Ghosts and Goblins was one of the most evil games I can ever remember playing.
Seriously - how is having the fingerprints (all 10 no less) of everyone that visits the US possibly going to help? Nobody is asking this question, and it's one that needs to be asked.
It's not going to do anything, unless al Qaeda does something really stupid like send over known terrorists who've had their fingerprints in law enforcement files already, which would be a dumb idea today.
Which makes this plan stupid and ineffective. Assuming it's the Democrat's plan, that will make them look stupid at least to those who know better. As I said in my last post, that's pretty much what I expect from them. There's only two ways in which I can see the Dem congress being better than the Rep one in terms of national security: 1) they won't slavishly do whatever Bush tells them (they'll automatically resist instead) and 2) they don't seem quite as delusional when it comes to pretending that their plans are working fine despite all evidence to the contrary.
In my idealist fantasies, this results in the next election cycle people being vehemently sick of both parties (instead of just the last one in power) and actually giving 3rd parties a chance... and then peaceful aliens show up without warning and gift every human with a zero-point energy generator, replicator, and impenetrable force field generator, ushering in an era of peace and plenty unknown in song or verse. I mean, if I'm going to dream, dream big!
You're not REALLY using the Constitution as a source in an argument are you? Our government ignores the Constitution on a daily basis, what makes you think that the word 'people' would somehow be sacrosanct?
Well are we arguing about what is okay, or are we arguing about what the people in power are actually going to do?
If the former, then the Constitution is a wonderful source as it defines what the government is supposed to have the power to do and what it isn't. Since the person I replied to used the terms "I'm against", and "I couldn't give a shit", I think it is very likely that this is what we are talking about.
If the latter, then what we the people think is okay is even more important because it is only due to our acceptance or rejection of the government's actions that our rights have any hope of being respected. The Consitution does nothing to protect us as long as it is merely a document, as we all know the documentation and reality can be wildly different things. As far as the Constitution is seen as a list of demands by the people, with the Democratic process being the first and the 2nd Ammendment being the last indication of how we intend to enforce those demands, then it actually works. If we accept the loss of our rights, then they are taken, yet if we refuse to accept them then that is our only chance to have them respected.
To put it in more practical terms: The last U.S. president to be caught spying on people without a warrant was impeached. What has changed since then, if not acceptance of that kind of behavior?
Similarly, it is the acceptance by people of the destruction of rights of non-citizens that allows it to continue. Therefore, an argument based on the Constitution about how that should not be allowed can change someone's mind, and thus change the environment in which the destruction of rights occurs.
While I am 100% against fingerprinting CITIZENS of this country, I couldn't give a shit less if someone from outside of the US is fingerprinted.
Well that's nice. What is your basis for being against fingerprinting citizens? Perhaps the Constitution and Bill of Rights, 4th Ammendment in particular, motivate your belief?
Well guess what. You won't find the word "citizen" anywhere in the 4th Ammendment or anywhere else in the Bill of Rights. They all say "people", and that isn't a synonym for "citizens". When the Constitution means citizens it says citizens.
A lot of people take for granted that our rights don't apply to non-citizens. This is simply non-factual; there are very few of our rights that only apply to citizens. The rest are for everyone.
Anyway my point is not to be argumentative about the definition of 'zero' but rather to highlight that even with the most promising renewable sources we are still stuck relying on a supply chain and distrubution network that relies on fossil fuels. So the idea of a transistion to a complete reweable structure is a bit of a pipe dream at the moment and it is unclear weather with exisitng technology it can be carried out at mass scale with a positive EROEI.
Well, yes, our distribution infrastructure (and many other aspects of infrastructure) rely on fossil fuels rely on and will continue to rely on fossil fuels for quite a while.
However any time we take a truck that used to be shipping a heating/generation component that was created using non-renewables and once installed is fueled by non-renewables, and replace that same shipment with a component created using renewables and which operates on renewables, then we have a net reduction in the amount of non-renewable energy used.
Which has the happy side effect of making our non-renewables last longer, so that our distribution infrastructure can run for longer before we have to make the painful and at this point purely hypothetical switch to a replacement. It is exactly because we are stuck relying on fossile fuels for our supply chain that we should avoid using fossil fuels everywhere possible.
My point is that you are absolutely correct, yet this should not be used in any circumstance as an argument against using alternative energy sources. Rather the opposite -- that we will need fossil fuels for the forseeable future means that it is all the more urgent that we don't unneccessarily stress our supply. You weren't arguing the point, I realize, but it is typical for anti-conservationists to seize upon examples like this to claim that things like solar panels made from rapeseed oil are no better, so I'm heading them off at the pass.
If it's the Dems, I'm thoroughly disappointed - I thought the idea was to *reverse* the damage done by the Republican party, not add to it.
Well, yes, but they aren't simply going to undo everything, as National Security is still a major issue that the Dems cannot afford to appear weak on. They won largely because the Reps were doing such a bad job of actually executing on Security. The degree to which the objections both of the Dems and the voters were based on the Reps leading us towards a police state is debateable but I'd say limited, especially among the elected officials. The "damage" is stupid, failed policies, not evil anti-Democratic policies. So the Dems still want to have an effective and most likely invasive National Security policy, and the question is: Are they in fact any smarter than the Reps in terms of making an actual effective working policy?
My educated guess: No.
If you shut this guy down for talking outside his area of expertise using ideology to make his judgments, then you'd better get cracking on shutting Slashdot down.
Obviously you don't shut down Slashdot, but you tell individual posters to shut the hell up. Which I'm all for if they make statements that are based on idealogy without logic to back them up. Lots of people make arguments that are rooted in their ideology, but also have sound reasoning behind them. When you say something that is completely illogical simply because it ties in with your view of the world, then you should get shouted down, modded down, or in the case of this guy, called an idiot.
If this was a large factor, expect an attack on Iran soon. Iran is changing over to the euro.
It was much more practical to invade Iraq than Iran. Even Bush & Co. realize that invading Iran would be a nightmare, which is why all the back-and-forth sabre ratling has so far amounted to nothing even though Iran presents a real threat of WMDs and terrorism. They may be happy -- or have to be happy -- with having claimed Iraq. On the other hand, Bush has clearly stated that he has left all options open.
Considering the women I know who have picked up DSes, I'm guessing a DS and Nintendogs or Animal Crossing is sufficient coaxing.
If it had been you, that was raped at a very young age, I am sure you would have appreciated adults making sure you were safe from predators.
Yes, I would have, if they had done so by trying to address the real problem, which is children abused by family, friends, and authorities instead of something useless like banning MySpace in libraries (which won't stop kids from using it). Where is your empathy for those children, the much larger group of children?
Think of the children is not an empty phrase just because it's a tag.
No, it's an empty phrase because it is always used as a replacement for thinking.
Would this department perhaps be in some towers?
Look, those people who went to the Antarctic to get ice core samples didn't go there to prove anything. They went there because they wanted ice core samples. They showed the data. It showed trends. It showed that CO2 hasn't been as high as it is today for the past 300,000 years. If it had shown that CO2 was higher in the past than today, then they would have published that data, and it would have formed a solid basis for refuting the claim that humans are contributing unnatural levels of CO2 to the atmosphere. However that was not the case.
And that's regardless of whether the people who did that study believed in anthropogenic global warming or not! Science doesn't work that way. A scientist may have a belief, but their science demands evidence.
Famous example: Michelson and Morely set out to prove the existence of the luminiferous aether. They conducted their experiment and got... nothing. They tried it again and got... nothing. They tried it at high altitudes. They tried it at low altitudes. They tried it in the southern hemisphere and the north. They hypothesized aether-dragging effects and tried to account for them and got... nothing. No matter what they did they got nothing, and that's the result they reported, and no matter whether they still believed in it or not they could not draw a scientific conclusion that it existed. They didn't have to go LOOKING for the conclusion opposite of their own, it came to them through normal scientific rigor.
By the way, in doing so, they turned scientific belief on its head, guaranteed their own position in the history books, and opened the doors for other explanations, the one that passed scientific muster being Einsteins's.
You don't fund scepticism. You fund science. You conduct experiments. The result of that experiment is your scientific evidence, whether it supports your theory or refutes it. That's the way science works.
hard-line peace activists and hard-line environmentalist. All the standard left-wing stuff.
Sorry, but LOL. "Hard-line peace activists"? I'm wondering what a pacifist hard-liner is suppsed to be. "Peace or die!" LOL.
When I think of "hard-line left-wing" I think of Pol Pot or Che Guerva, the kind of leftists for whom peace activism was far from standard. Where do you get your impression of what left-wing means? Certainly not from, say, 20th century history.
Laughter aside, I'm no pacifist, but I find it sad that people would try to smear the idea of pacifism by using left-wing as a pejorative. So pacifism == communism now? Sorry, I must have missed the memo.
To deny that the scientific community discourages dissent, especially involving sacred cow topics is being very naive.
Actually the scientific community strongly encourages dissent, only so long as that dissent is able to hold up to rigorous scientific scrutiny. Turning existing scientific concensus on its head is a fantastic way to make a name for oneself and get a tenured faculty position at a prestigious university, a guaranteed spot on the lecture circuit for the rest of your life, and sometimes even a Nobel Prize. Acting like the scientific community does not reward successfull dissent is simple non-factual; any scientist that felt they could turn the concensus on its head would attempt to do so.
What's the catch? Well, the catch is that many feel they can contradict the concensus and try to, but are in fact unable to do so because the concensus is correct, or at least their re-envisioning of the facts is wrong. The more well-established the theory they are attempting to brush aside, the more difficult the task will be simply because there is more scientific work supporting that theory that they must account for. String theorists have to account for all the work done in Relativity and QM before anyone will accept their answer as better. It isn't discouragement, it's scientific rigor. The most arrogant yet least skilled scientists are the ones who take their inability to dislodge the concensus as a sign of a conspiracy of scientists to protect their "sacred cow", when in fact it is just that the rogue scientist's idea sucked and did not hold up to scrutiny. Rogue scientists whose ideas hold up become heroes. Those whose don't become rejects.
That's the way it's supposed to work. Just because the science in your "sacred cow" issue isn't turning up the way you want doesn't mean it's because the scientists are repressing dissent, it's because the facts are saying you're wrong and you won't admit it.
I'm a little puzzled by the anti-net-neutrality stance on slashdot. So many of you are libertarian
I'd expect a libertarian to be anti-net-neutrality, so what is surprising to you? Did you mean pro-net-neutrality?
Anyway, I'm for it because first as others have pointed out the 'net is not these companies' own infrastructure. It was paid for in large part by the government, and it was the government who granted them the land access as well. They are using public resources, and they should be expected to treat it as such.
Also, the usefullness of the net -- and services like Akamai -- depends on it being neutral. It is the fundamental peer-to-peer nature of the net that has made it what it is. Or let me bring it home to you more directly: Slashdot -- which remember was not a for-profit venture for much of its existence -- would have died a long time ago as soon as it got large enough for, say, Sprint to say "you have to pay us for your packets that cross our network or we'll severely degrade them", and we wouldn't be having this discussion. I'll leave it to you to decide whether that's an argument for or against net neutrality.
Yeah, did he consider what would happen to Akamai if it were not operating on a neutral internet?
Service that efficiently utilizes a neutral internet, allowing other similar services to exist: Good.
Changing the internet to give favor certain services at the expense of all others: Bad.
"Hello sir, I am knocking on your door to tell you that I am a registered sex offender, and I now live at 5th and Main two blocks from here."
No such thing as bad publicity my ass.
Almost everybody associates the problem with Dell, not with Sony. Quite honestly, they are right to. Dell sold the batteries, and they should have tested them to see if they were faulty. They also should have designed their chargers to prevent the problem.
Good point on who the perceived source of the problem is, though I don't fully agree that it is right to blame Dell. Sure they should have done better testing, but Sony produced the faulty components and distributed them to many others than just Dell.
In a way though this reminds me of the old Firestone tire fiasco. According to an ME friend of mine who worked for a different tire company this was definitely Ford's fault, as it was Ford who created the specifications for the tires. My friend's company looked into it after the initial problems with Firestones and found that their own tires made to Ford's spec had the same problem. Ford of course did a great job of making it look like it wasn't their fault, and this other smaller tire company certainly wasn't going to step forward to set the record straight.
Just goes to show that the actual source of the problem isn't as important as who gets blamed.
Companies have recalls all the time. Consumers are used to it. If they gave recalls too much weight, no one would ever by a car again.
Well yeah, that was my point. It's not that consumers didn't hear about the battery problems, it's that in the end they don't really care that much. I don't really care other than it can be added to the heaping pile of other things I don't like about Sony, but it's a minor part of that pile.
Just more data that shows that this and just about every similar measure whether in cyberspace or meatspace is ignoring the fundamental problem:
Children are vastly more likely to be victimized by someone they know than by a random stranger online or otherwise. Your typical sexual predator does not search for victims online, they look for victims down the hall.
All of this hand-wringing and legislating is just a way to avoid recoginizing this admittedly sad and disturbing fact.
Ah yes, the Everyone Has Some Degree of Bias Therefore All Biases Are Equal gambit. It's a close relative of the We Must Do Something And This is Something So We Must Do It gambit, in that it relies on believing that there are no quantitative differences between things. I wish my grocery clerk worked that way so I could give them "an amount of money" to pay for the groceries which cost "an amount of money".
Of course there would still be controversy and debate about global warming without the oil companies' efforts. It's nature, however, would be quite different. Sort of like how the tobacco companies kept the controversy centered around "cigarettes are/are not addictive and are/are not cancer causing" when otherwise it would have been "what are the specific risks of cigarettes and how best to deal with addiction".
Rootkit maybe -- Sony is right in that most people don't know what it is, and don't understand the explanation -- but not the battery. People know what "battery" and "fire" are. It was on the news a lot (for something like a product recall), and plenty of my completely non-techie-no-computer-much-less-laptop friends had heard about and even cracked jokes about Sony's batteries.
It really is that people will forgive anything, at least if there's no personal memory of pain involved. I'd be willing to bet that those whose batteries caught fire aren't going to think so fondly of the Sony brand from now on. Everyone else will just think "oh, they must have fixed it by now" and move on.