I live in Australia, in my 31yrs of driving (or half a century as a passenger), I haven't had much experience with snow but what little experience I do have with snow tells me that statement is pure bullshit. 4X4 improves handling in all situations on all body types particularly when each wheel is controlled by a computer that can take over when (not if) you lose control of the car. In 2010 it will be mandatory for all new cars sold in Australia to have DSC as it has been repeatedly shown to drasticaly reduce the number and severity of crashes.
Although I whole heartedly agree with you that what type of car you buy is not my personal concern. The "social issues" of paying for and policing pollution, reducing the road toll, equality of access to the infrastucture, etc, are for governments to sort out through regulation (Premptive reply to free-market nuts: your kidding yourself if you think any economy is undirected and free from political/corporate agendas).
BTW: The fact that a random individual 'survived' does not automatically make said individual a good driver and if you seriously can't tell the difference in handling between a 4X4 and a normal car it means your not paying attention.
Disclaimer: I have never owned a 4x4 but I'm pretty sure my next car will be one. I currently drive a 2004 Mazda6 'sporty' manual. At the time I bought it I paid attention to fuel costs over a few months and found it had roughly the same fuel costs in dollars per week terms as my old 1991 V6 Holden (Holden == Aussie GM). However the Mazda gets premium unleaded while the old Holden ran on LPG gas (which varies from 1/2-1/3 the cost of petrol). IMHO the difference in -- saftey(6 airbags, self tighning belts, collapsable steering coloumn, etc) -- performance (blows the doors of the Holden and can negotiate bends in the road at the same time!) -- comfort (comfy leather seats, air-conditioner works without stalling the car) -- economy (as above) -- or any other measure over the last 15yrs defines a very impressive increase in 'bang for buck' no matter how you look at it.
PS: The factory fitted sound system is nothing short of witchcraft when compared to what I euphemistically called "the stereo" in the old clunker.
I agree and I can explain the motivation for the bias displayed by "crazed pro-pot fanatics". What I can't explain is the motivation for the opposite bias displayed by the far larger group of "crazed prohibitionists", particularly the sub-group of "crazed prohibitionists" who regularly (ab)use tobacco and/or alcohol.
These so called rational and drug free individuals who are the 'pillars of society' are anything but rational when it comes to the drug trade. And it's not just the US, my country's federal police have been recently accused of deliberately allowing young Aussie drug mules to fly to Indonesia and tipping off the authorities on the other side. They now face the very real possibility of execution by firing squad. The original accuser is the farther of one of the mules who tipped off the cops several days before the flight in order to stop his son leaving the country for "dada means death" land.
As for the study in question it doesn't take a genius to recognise that dope can fuck with a head of a heavy user, particularly if the head belongs to a teenager, a glutton (5 J's/day!!!), or someone who is already battling to remain 'sane'.
"In drug studies, they need to get the animals to self administer."
So what is difficult about having two piles of cookies, one with dope and one without?
I realise you have some objection to dope for some reason or other but please don't pretend science is on your side with the addiction thing or that the current laws against dope have anything to do with medical issues. The dope plant is in fact one of the most studied plants on the planet and as such we now know a great deal more about it than we did when Anslinger went on his self-serving crusade.
The main problems with using dope are scizophernia[sic] for those who are already genetically predisposed and lung/throat disease for those who smoke rather than ingest it. As for addiction, opiates, tobacco and alcohol are physically addictive in that you will suffer physical symptoms during withdrawal. Dope, chocolate, and video games are mearly habit forming.
Now even if smoking a joint was as foolish as playing russian roulette, under what moral/ethical imperitive do you have the right to stop me putting chocolate or battery acid into MY veins should choose to do so?
Prohibition did not work for booze and it is not working for other drugs. Someone once said that "If we eliminate all recreational drugs people will simply spin in circles on their front lawn until they can no longer stand up, because that is what we as humans like to do".
I am an old fart, since my parents bought our first record player in the 60's I have seen a handfull of great albums appear each year (same with films). IMHO the output of good music/films/TV has stayed relatively stable even though the volume and variety of all these different mediums has exploded.
There is nothing 'wrong' with string theory, it is simply a model of 'reality' that can describe a great deal of what we see around us. However there are other models that can do this and as numerous people have pointed out ST makes no novel predictions that can be tested.
Mathematical models like this are worth pursuing for their own sake. History has shown that solving seemingly esoteric mathematical problems has lead to a huge number discoveries about 'reality' since Newton's time. Some examples of the mind-boggling acurate mathematical predictions from the last half century include the CMBR, Black Holes, and BE condensates.
If think of the humand mind as a complex mathematical model of 'reality' that emerges from the computations of the brain and nervous system then it makes sense that maths is capable of describing what we perceive as 'reality' to such a degree that it leads to new discoveries about 'reality'.
At this point all I can say about political and judicial corruption is that the good old days weren't, and I should know because I was there. In the grand scheme of things the MAFIAA is way down my list of evil-doers but I generally agree that copyrights and kiddie porn can be used as a 'wedge issue' for politicians or individuals to gain greater control over content. I wish you and your friend the best of luck in spreading your message over this wonderfull intertube thing that I and millions of others have built over the last 20yrs and more.
"I'll go with waiting for science to get all the facts right and remove political/personal agendas."
Assuming you are serious, what is your definition for "facts" and how will you know when you have ALL of them?
I mean there are 11,000+ google scholar hits for papers using or citing the SEAWIFS data set. I don't even see the paper referenced in either link let alone a credible understanding of the biosphere. This is not to say the paper is wrong, it's just that the spin in the article is making me dizzy and I want to vomit.
As you can see from all the amount of research using the SEAWIFS data set there is no need for you to wait. And that's just one data set, our collective knowledge of climate (and the biosphere in general) has exploded since the 80's and the only political/personal agendas you need remove are the ones that are stopping you from being a true skeptic and practicing the scientific method.
BTW: Whoever modded you insightfull also does not understand the scientific method. Science will never "get all the facts", waiting for that oxymoronic event to occur implies either ignorance or some sort of political/personal agenda.
I have no idea what the EU will do but the fact that you can tell me all those details is a splendid demonstartion of the point I was trying to make. When I was a kid the apollo missions were in full swing, however astronomy books at the library were still talking about cannals on mars and jungles on venus.
"Proper anonymization means that you cannot derive correlations between the behavior of the individuals"
Census data is disseminated using the same techniques so I hardly think it's a good reason to question the results (as opposed to the ethics). Perhaps you were thinking about double-blind experiments?
Sorry I must have been unclear since you and the other posters have taken my post to mean that I want to ban cartoon kiddie porn (and presumably terroist videos). That is not the case, I am also 'scared' by the same people you are. Howerer in my mind real pictures are evidence of a crime and should be treated as such. Questioning someone for producing/distributing life-like pictures is as acceptable as questioning someone who walks into an airport with a fake bomb, people who do this type of thing should not be surprised when others react by excersing their own free speech rights in a negative manner.
Porn itself is in the groin of the beholder, most parents (including me) have nude pictures of their kids but there aren't that many of us who are so naive as to post them on the internet.
"It wasn't too many years ago that companies felt some sort of obligation to the betterment of society."
Sorry but I have been paying attention for the best part of half a century, the only thing that has changed regarding corporate behaviour toward society is that Joe Sixpack now has vastly improved access to information about corporations and "rich man" tools to invest in them(stockmarket, bank loans, ect).
IMHO (and ignoring the Bush blip) "we the people" is more inclusive than ever. Some examples: here in Australia aborigines gained voting rights when I was in primary school, conscription ended when I was in high school, UHC statred when I started work, the Berlin wall came down when my kids were in primary school,...
As for TFA, people with buckets of money who band together (corporations) can do marvelous things for mankind (re: Magna Carta), however (part) owning a corporation is a bit like owning a pet elephant that shits gold bricks and likes to sleep on the couch. The proposed treaty is simply the wet dream of a handfull of US corporations who are struggling to stay relevant on a global scale. The best plan of action is to keep the authours of the imaginary treaty busy patting each other on the back. If they can be confined to their reality vacum long enough, eventually they will go broke. The representatives themselves are answerable to the people. Information such as in TFA helps "we the people" connect the dots between machevelian politicians and vested intrests.
"How does producing images that look like child porn without actually abusing children encourage crimes against children?"
I don't know the answer to that but I think the 'target demographic' for life-like cartoon kiddie porn should not be provided with masturbation material that 'normalizes' their behaviour. I would also argue GC assists in obfuscating the real thing, if by no other means than volume.
OTOH I agree "CG child porn doesn't harm children in its production....given the fact that you can produce it without running afoul of the law, you'd get more CG than real child porn produced".
Yes, but what good is all that if it fails to raise (or at least maintain) my standard of living? Tax cuts, government spending, wage hikes, in fact any major injection of funds into "the economy" will fuel inflation and before you know it you are back to where you started.
If you want to "taste a problem" then try converting a corporation to Linux desktops (as opposed to say running a corporate web server). There is a reason it's called "vendor lock-in". Not only do you have to retrain thousands of people you also need to manage user access as good as windows for large numbers of people quickly with fine granuality. This is before you even think of rewriting tens (if not hundreds) of millions of lines of windows style glue.
"Linux can and does work well in a corporate environment."
Agreed (or at least it does where I work), however it's still along way from breaking the MS 'lock' on the corporate desktop and there doesn't seem to be any 'killer app' to drive the corporates toward a Linux desktop (unless your counting Vista).
.
Yes I remeber the Viking graffiti, Maes Howe was fascinating as were the standing stones nearby, I just thought the tinted glass over Skara Brae was a bit much since I couldn't see inside the main building.
"I am amazed. This has to be a joke, right? China is currently a largely agricultural society where a majority of citizens still live in the mountains. The money spent on bugging the population could be better spent on feeding the poor. I am surprised at how short-sighted the Communists are, and I already hold them in pretty low esteem."
China has dragged more people out of poverty in the last 30yrs than the rest of the planet combined and it has done so on a fraction of the resources available to the west.
Sure, Mao's 'cultural revolution' was a state managed famine that killed millions at the stroke of an ideological pen, however the 'gang of four' and their genocidal ideology were kicked out of power a long time ago.
I went to Orkney about two years ago and there are standing stones all over the place. I was a bit dissapointed by Skara-Brae (WTF is the deal with the tinnted glass over the top). However after visiting Orkney the guy who owned the B&B we were staying at near Joh-o-Groats told us about an old archeological dig on some mounds near the cliff that the B&B was overlooking. So when we were leaving we thought we would have a look, sure enough there was a maze of ruined huts just like the ones at Skara-Brae, only there were lots more rooms and passages. The whole site was overgrown by weeds but you could walk over them and reveal the flintstonesque shelves and the 'bait boxes' in the floors. We spent the whole morning doing the "Indiana jones" thing and didn't see another soul.
We travelled all over the UK for about 5 weeks, Orkney, Stonehenge and a stone circle somewhere high up in the Yorkshire dales were the most awe inspiring, but the little huts on the cliff overgrown and forgotten for 5000yrs were my favotite.
Slashdot Mirror
"4x4 does not make driving in the snow safer"
I live in Australia, in my 31yrs of driving (or half a century as a passenger), I haven't had much experience with snow but what little experience I do have with snow tells me that statement is pure bullshit. 4X4 improves handling in all situations on all body types particularly when each wheel is controlled by a computer that can take over when (not if) you lose control of the car. In 2010 it will be mandatory for all new cars sold in Australia to have DSC as it has been repeatedly shown to drasticaly reduce the number and severity of crashes.
Although I whole heartedly agree with you that what type of car you buy is not my personal concern. The "social issues" of paying for and policing pollution, reducing the road toll, equality of access to the infrastucture, etc, are for governments to sort out through regulation (Premptive reply to free-market nuts: your kidding yourself if you think any economy is undirected and free from political/corporate agendas).
BTW: The fact that a random individual 'survived' does not automatically make said individual a good driver and if you seriously can't tell the difference in handling between a 4X4 and a normal car it means your not paying attention.
Disclaimer: I have never owned a 4x4 but I'm pretty sure my next car will be one. I currently drive a 2004 Mazda6 'sporty' manual. At the time I bought it I paid attention to fuel costs over a few months and found it had roughly the same fuel costs in dollars per week terms as my old 1991 V6 Holden (Holden == Aussie GM). However the Mazda gets premium unleaded while the old Holden ran on LPG gas (which varies from 1/2-1/3 the cost of petrol). IMHO the difference in -- saftey(6 airbags, self tighning belts, collapsable steering coloumn, etc) -- performance (blows the doors of the Holden and can negotiate bends in the road at the same time!) -- comfort (comfy leather seats, air-conditioner works without stalling the car) -- economy (as above) -- or any other measure over the last 15yrs defines a very impressive increase in 'bang for buck' no matter how you look at it.
PS: The factory fitted sound system is nothing short of witchcraft when compared to what I euphemistically called "the stereo" in the old clunker.
I agree and I can explain the motivation for the bias displayed by "crazed pro-pot fanatics". What I can't explain is the motivation for the opposite bias displayed by the far larger group of "crazed prohibitionists", particularly the sub-group of "crazed prohibitionists" who regularly (ab)use tobacco and/or alcohol.
These so called rational and drug free individuals who are the 'pillars of society' are anything but rational when it comes to the drug trade. And it's not just the US, my country's federal police have been recently accused of deliberately allowing young Aussie drug mules to fly to Indonesia and tipping off the authorities on the other side. They now face the very real possibility of execution by firing squad. The original accuser is the farther of one of the mules who tipped off the cops several days before the flight in order to stop his son leaving the country for "dada means death" land.
As for the study in question it doesn't take a genius to recognise that dope can fuck with a head of a heavy user, particularly if the head belongs to a teenager, a glutton (5 J's/day!!!), or someone who is already battling to remain 'sane'.
"In drug studies, they need to get the animals to self administer."
So what is difficult about having two piles of cookies, one with dope and one without?
I realise you have some objection to dope for some reason or other but please don't pretend science is on your side with the addiction thing or that the current laws against dope have anything to do with medical issues. The dope plant is in fact one of the most studied plants on the planet and as such we now know a great deal more about it than we did when Anslinger went on his self-serving crusade.
The main problems with using dope are scizophernia[sic] for those who are already genetically predisposed and lung/throat disease for those who smoke rather than ingest it. As for addiction, opiates, tobacco and alcohol are physically addictive in that you will suffer physical symptoms during withdrawal. Dope, chocolate, and video games are mearly habit forming.
Now even if smoking a joint was as foolish as playing russian roulette, under what moral/ethical imperitive do you have the right to stop me putting chocolate or battery acid into MY veins should choose to do so?
Prohibition did not work for booze and it is not working for other drugs. Someone once said that "If we eliminate all recreational drugs people will simply spin in circles on their front lawn until they can no longer stand up, because that is what we as humans like to do".
Maybe, but I prefer something more absolute, like...(forgive the syntax)...
.....
TheUniverse::TheUniverse(Content everything, Scale infinite)...
{
static bool already_born = false;
ASSERT( !already_born );
already_born = true;
I am an old fart, since my parents bought our first record player in the 60's I have seen a handfull of great albums appear each year (same with films). IMHO the output of good music/films/TV has stayed relatively stable even though the volume and variety of all these different mediums has exploded.
There is nothing 'wrong' with string theory, it is simply a model of 'reality' that can describe a great deal of what we see around us. However there are other models that can do this and as numerous people have pointed out ST makes no novel predictions that can be tested.
Mathematical models like this are worth pursuing for their own sake. History has shown that solving seemingly esoteric mathematical problems has lead to a huge number discoveries about 'reality' since Newton's time. Some examples of the mind-boggling acurate mathematical predictions from the last half century include the CMBR, Black Holes, and BE condensates.
If think of the humand mind as a complex mathematical model of 'reality' that emerges from the computations of the brain and nervous system then it makes sense that maths is capable of describing what we perceive as 'reality' to such a degree that it leads to new discoveries about 'reality'.
No, because that would include the old universe.
Irony: Using a sock-puppet account to complain about other people's dishonesty.
"Either you believe that people who create original works are entitled to profit from them or you do not."
So, how's that other "with us or against us" meme going?
"...if we really wanted to halt it, we could just dump iron scrap into the ocean...."
I now agree with the OP's diagnosis, you are indeed delusional.
At this point all I can say about political and judicial corruption is that the good old days weren't, and I should know because I was there. In the grand scheme of things the MAFIAA is way down my list of evil-doers but I generally agree that copyrights and kiddie porn can be used as a 'wedge issue' for politicians or individuals to gain greater control over content. I wish you and your friend the best of luck in spreading your message over this wonderfull intertube thing that I and millions of others have built over the last 20yrs and more.
"I'll go with waiting for science to get all the facts right and remove political/personal agendas."
Assuming you are serious, what is your definition for "facts" and how will you know when you have ALL of them?
I mean there are 11,000+ google scholar hits for papers using or citing the SEAWIFS data set. I don't even see the paper referenced in either link let alone a credible understanding of the biosphere. This is not to say the paper is wrong, it's just that the spin in the article is making me dizzy and I want to vomit.
As you can see from all the amount of research using the SEAWIFS data set there is no need for you to wait. And that's just one data set, our collective knowledge of climate (and the biosphere in general) has exploded since the 80's and the only political/personal agendas you need remove are the ones that are stopping you from being a true skeptic and practicing the scientific method.
Unfortunately this means getting a basic grasp of the existing body of knowledge and evidence, if that's too much then you may find reputable blogs worth a try, especially for mythbusting.
BTW: Whoever modded you insightfull also does not understand the scientific method. Science will never "get all the facts", waiting for that oxymoronic event to occur implies either ignorance or some sort of political/personal agenda.
I have no idea what the EU will do but the fact that you can tell me all those details is a splendid demonstartion of the point I was trying to make. When I was a kid the apollo missions were in full swing, however astronomy books at the library were still talking about cannals on mars and jungles on venus.
"Proper anonymization means that you cannot derive correlations between the behavior of the individuals"
Census data is disseminated using the same techniques so I hardly think it's a good reason to question the results (as opposed to the ethics). Perhaps you were thinking about double-blind experiments?
Sorry I must have been unclear since you and the other posters have taken my post to mean that I want to ban cartoon kiddie porn (and presumably terroist videos). That is not the case, I am also 'scared' by the same people you are. Howerer in my mind real pictures are evidence of a crime and should be treated as such. Questioning someone for producing/distributing life-like pictures is as acceptable as questioning someone who walks into an airport with a fake bomb, people who do this type of thing should not be surprised when others react by excersing their own free speech rights in a negative manner.
Porn itself is in the groin of the beholder, most parents (including me) have nude pictures of their kids but there aren't that many of us who are so naive as to post them on the internet.
"It wasn't too many years ago that companies felt some sort of obligation to the betterment of society."
Sorry but I have been paying attention for the best part of half a century, the only thing that has changed regarding corporate behaviour toward society is that Joe Sixpack now has vastly improved access to information about corporations and "rich man" tools to invest in them(stockmarket, bank loans, ect).
IMHO (and ignoring the Bush blip) "we the people" is more inclusive than ever. Some examples: here in Australia aborigines gained voting rights when I was in primary school, conscription ended when I was in high school, UHC statred when I started work, the Berlin wall came down when my kids were in primary school,...
As for TFA, people with buckets of money who band together (corporations) can do marvelous things for mankind (re: Magna Carta), however (part) owning a corporation is a bit like owning a pet elephant that shits gold bricks and likes to sleep on the couch. The proposed treaty is simply the wet dream of a handfull of US corporations who are struggling to stay relevant on a global scale. The best plan of action is to keep the authours of the imaginary treaty busy patting each other on the back. If they can be confined to their reality vacum long enough, eventually they will go broke. The representatives themselves are answerable to the people. Information such as in TFA helps "we the people" connect the dots between machevelian politicians and vested intrests.
"How does producing images that look like child porn without actually abusing children encourage crimes against children?"
I don't know the answer to that but I think the 'target demographic' for life-like cartoon kiddie porn should not be provided with masturbation material that 'normalizes' their behaviour. I would also argue GC assists in obfuscating the real thing, if by no other means than volume.
OTOH I agree "CG child porn doesn't harm children in its production....given the fact that you can produce it without running afoul of the law, you'd get more CG than real child porn produced".
"You fail at logic."
No, I posed a mischevious question. You on the other hand assumed to know how I think and got it wrong.
"See how economies work?"
Yes, but what good is all that if it fails to raise (or at least maintain) my standard of living? Tax cuts, government spending, wage hikes, in fact any major injection of funds into "the economy" will fuel inflation and before you know it you are back to where you started.
"More taxes means less freedom"
So it follows that places like Afganistan and Sudan are on the top of the freedom list and the scandanavian countries are near the bottom?
If you want to "taste a problem" then try converting a corporation to Linux desktops (as opposed to say running a corporate web server). There is a reason it's called "vendor lock-in". Not only do you have to retrain thousands of people you also need to manage user access as good as windows for large numbers of people quickly with fine granuality. This is before you even think of rewriting tens (if not hundreds) of millions of lines of windows style glue.
"Linux can and does work well in a corporate environment."
Agreed (or at least it does where I work), however it's still along way from breaking the MS 'lock' on the corporate desktop and there doesn't seem to be any 'killer app' to drive the corporates toward a Linux desktop (unless your counting Vista). .
Yes I remeber the Viking graffiti, Maes Howe was fascinating as were the standing stones nearby, I just thought the tinted glass over Skara Brae was a bit much since I couldn't see inside the main building.
"I am amazed. This has to be a joke, right? China is currently a largely agricultural society where a majority of citizens still live in the mountains. The money spent on bugging the population could be better spent on feeding the poor. I am surprised at how short-sighted the Communists are, and I already hold them in pretty low esteem."
China has dragged more people out of poverty in the last 30yrs than the rest of the planet combined and it has done so on a fraction of the resources available to the west.
Sure, Mao's 'cultural revolution' was a state managed famine that killed millions at the stroke of an ideological pen, however the 'gang of four' and their genocidal ideology were kicked out of power a long time ago.
I went to Orkney about two years ago and there are standing stones all over the place. I was a bit dissapointed by Skara-Brae (WTF is the deal with the tinnted glass over the top). However after visiting Orkney the guy who owned the B&B we were staying at near Joh-o-Groats told us about an old archeological dig on some mounds near the cliff that the B&B was overlooking. So when we were leaving we thought we would have a look, sure enough there was a maze of ruined huts just like the ones at Skara-Brae, only there were lots more rooms and passages. The whole site was overgrown by weeds but you could walk over them and reveal the flintstonesque shelves and the 'bait boxes' in the floors. We spent the whole morning doing the "Indiana jones" thing and didn't see another soul.
We travelled all over the UK for about 5 weeks, Orkney, Stonehenge and a stone circle somewhere high up in the Yorkshire dales were the most awe inspiring, but the little huts on the cliff overgrown and forgotten for 5000yrs were my favotite.
WA is just jealous because Mars gets more tourists than it does.