"innocent until proven guilty" only ever applied to criminal law. This is civil law at best. But more probably not even that. Visa and the other credit companies don't have to do business with any particular merchant. They are free to chose who to do business with and who not to.
The danger here, and not a legal one but a moral one, is that it may be that Visa and the other credit companies trust Google to tell them who not to do business with. I don't think Google have proven themselves to be trustworthy enough to make such decisions. And the scale of their operation suggests they might automate it. Not good.
So these Oxford researchers are not doing something new, they are just doing less.
Doing less is a new approach. A sensible one, particularly in robotics. For example see the Roomba, vs the Electolux Trilobyte. The Trilobite mapped the whole room before designing an efficient cleaning route. The Roomba just wanders randomly, with some simple heuristics for occasionally following walls and occasionally changing direction. Result: The cheap Roomba approach is successful in the market, and the expensive Trilobite is a failure.
Here for example you mention GPS. That's of limited use, as the accuracy is in terms of meters. Far too course for self driving. And it can disappear completely in cities. And all it would do is narrow down the initial search space to identify the current location.
One way to make their system more useful would be to upload learned routes to a server, so they can be auto-downloaded to other vehicles. Then your car could self-drive even on roads you haven't driven on before, as long as someone else has driven them.
I suggest you RTFA, then you won't spend time describing something they already have slated for the future.
I can't vouch for San Francisco, but in the UK, the supermarkets have always fought against plastic bag bans. Which suggests to me you are inventing a conspiracy where there isn't one.
This is why I asked you up front for what definition of freedom you're using. By implication, your answer included "a benevolent government of the people, by the people, for the people."
You're now changing that, to say that it doesn't matter if the government is being benevolent, and governed by and for its people. If it restricts American corporate imperialism, it's not free. And you're surprised I pegged you as right wing?
As I say, define what you mean by freedom, and we can discuss. At the moment, all you are doing is making the "no true scotsman" logical fallacy.
I'd be incredibly impressed if they managed to get the driving system is on the iPad.* But I'm sure the iPad just provides the display. There will be another box somewhere that does the driving.
* Impressed by the technical achievement, not the safety.
I'm not aware of anyone suggesting going back to hunter gathering. So be careful about creating strawmen when you're not yet on the ropes.
Most poor countries are poor because they have horrible, evil, incompetent government.
You say most. But clearly most of the third world countries with functioning democracies are poor too. So that's not it.
It is certainly true that there are more likely to be horrible, evil, incompetent governments in the third world than the first world. But there's a correlation/causation question there. Are they poor because they have bad government. Or do they have bad government because they are poor? Is the first world rich because they have good government, or do they have good government because they are rich.
Indeed does the first world have good government at all. Do good governments start resource wars with third world countries?
The poor will be more affected than the rich by global warming because they lack the resources to do anything about it.
Absolutely. That must be particularly galling when the resources often come from those third world countries. They SHOULD have them. But those "good" governments you mentioned take them away from them.
Free is free - there are no "interpretations" to free.
What!? LOL! Try telling that the the OSS movement. They've been fighting away for years trying to point out the difference between "free as in beer" and "free as in libre". Now clearly we're talking about "libre" here. But there are still many, many ways to use the word freedom. And not only is it not clear which one you mean, it's now become obvious that you don't even know yourself.
People can do what they like there, mainly stealing from others. Somalians have no freedom, except the "freedom" to oppress their countrymen.
So there, you yourself manage to create two different definitions of "free". Free to do what you like, and free to oppress others. And you reject both of them as not being the kind of freedom you mean.
Please note that freedom usually requires some effective mechanism for its protection (police, army), most commonly a benevolent government of the people, by the people, for the people.
OK, so here's the clue that the freedom you mean is the one meant by American libertarians.
Great. We know what definition you mean. So any country with a police force, an army and real democracy qualifies.
That's a LOT of countries. Many of them poor. India as the most populous example. That's over a billion people right there, most of them poor.
The causation of tumours by chemicals in tobacco smoke is well understood. Not just by the correlation in surveys. Not just by the timing of the commencement of smoking and the decades later appearance of tumours. But by laboratory experimentation with animals. The animals of course don't get to choose whether to smoke or not, so the causation cannot be the other way around.
What particular interpretation of the word free do you mean here? Because if you mean they don't have people telling them what they can and can't do, most of the third world is more free than the US.
At the most extreme you have places like somalia. No effective government means people can do what they like. And yet they are unspeakably poor.
Then you have vast amounts of the third world without any proper roads. They don't see any officials who can tell them what to do. But they are subsistence farmers.
You have nomads, that wander freely. You don't get more free than that. But they have no money.
So what precisely did you mean by freedom? Did you mean anything real at all, or is it just a right wing slogan you're repeating?
They are not "diametrically opposed". You and he are talking about things which are orthogonal. He's talking about the natural environment and you are talking about economics.
What each of you said is fine so far as it goes. My question is for you though. Why is it only a minority that have got out of poverty? It's certainly not about working hard. Those poor people in the third world typically work a lot harder than those in the first world. Is it that there's only a limited number of resources? Or is it that the wealth in the first world requires poverty in the third world?
And why will it be those who are still in poverty that are the worst effected by the damage being done to the environment?
We can do things a lot better, both environmentally and economically.
suspect that their motivation is not so much from science, but rather is simply a convenient article of faith that supports their ideological objectives.
Well in this case Colbert's quote "Reality has a well-known liberal bias" is true. They're allowed to be strident when the science is on their side. Clearly it's frustrating and annoying when people are arguing things that are objectively not true. And that's what the skeptics/deniers are doing. So they do tend to get the smack-down.
For a long time, it was easier to attack the science (a flanking maneuver).
Then don't be surprised that those people are still viewed as being dishonest deniers.
Increasingly, you will see a change to battling it out over policy - which was the proper place for this debate the entire time.
I created the following some years ago. I've been amused as the mass of the denialist rhetoric has followed through it step by step. They don't get any more respect for having done so.
The Republican 9 Step Global Warming Denial Plan 1) There's no such thing as global warming. 2) There's global warming, but the scientists are exaggerating. It's not significant. 3) There's significant global warming, but man doesn't cause it. 4) Man does cause it, but it's not a net negative. 5) It is a net negative, but it's not economically possible to tackle it. 6) We need to tackle global warming, so make the poor pay for it. 7) Global warming is bad for business. Why did the Democrats not tackle it earlier? 8) ???? 9) Profit.
Your source is one of the very right-wing lobbyist organisations dedicated to denying climate science that TFA refers to. They are receiving the billionaires money to spew put stuff like this for useful idiots to repeat. The hypocrisy of them putting out a paper accusing the other side of being funded is hilarious.
Hint: Their own about page: "Only through science and factual information, separating reality from rhetoric, can legislators develop beneficial policies without unintended consequences that might threaten the life, liberty, and prosperity of the citizenry."
Crop yields over the last century tells you nothing about CO2 levels. Because other things like applying increasing amounts of nitrates and creation of new varieties of crop have had a huge influence on crop yields.
Not that the basic premise that higher CO2 levels encourage growth is wrong. And in fact increased heat helps too. Take a look at an actual greenhouse to see the effect of the greenhouse effect on plants.
On the other hand crops don't grow in deserts, and increasing desertification is also an effect of AGW.
Everyone, on both sides, knows that "denier" is the chosen term specifically because it parallels "holocaust denier".
The term denier was used in both instances because that's the word that fits best. It's the same word because it's the same action. Denying the facts.
You'd prefer to be called a skeptic. But again that's a perfect parallel because holocaust deniers would also rather be called skeptics.
In neither case is it skepticism. The Nazi Holocaust is a fact, and AGW is a fact. In each case, the people who say it's not do so because their politics are more important to them than the facts are.
"The greenhouse effect is simple physics. The amount of CO2 released to the atmosphere by man is a matter of record, as is the increased concentration in the atmosphere. That predicts warming. And the warming trend has been measured, over and over again in many ways. It's beyond question that AGW exists. Only it's extent and the local effects are debatable."
The fact of AGW doesn't rely on models. That AGW is a fact only relies only on physics and measurement of the real world. AGW is observable as it's already happening.
Models are concerned with prediction. That's the "extent and local effects" bit.
And it's not calling people names. Denial is what they do, so they are deniers. Every bit as much as a person who drives is a driver. It's a straight forward, accurate description. They'd like to be called skeptics. But that's impossible, because what they are doing is not skepticism, it's denial.
For the first time? You think that the rich industrialists have never before paid to oppose science? Well, you might want to think about the link between cancer and smoking.
Now, why is it you're so keen to play the part of a useful idiot?
Slashdot Mirror
I have corrected your post for you.
No you haven't. The fact that the welsh parliament has created a 5p levy does not mean that the supermarkets didn't fight against it.
And not only are you logically wrong, you're wrong in actuality:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/8265754.stm
Try reading the fucking title, rather then stopping at the URL.
"Tobacco use, cancer causation and public health impact"
"innocent until proven guilty" only ever applied to criminal law. This is civil law at best. But more probably not even that. Visa and the other credit companies don't have to do business with any particular merchant. They are free to chose who to do business with and who not to.
The danger here, and not a legal one but a moral one, is that it may be that Visa and the other credit companies trust Google to tell them who not to do business with. I don't think Google have proven themselves to be trustworthy enough to make such decisions. And the scale of their operation suggests they might automate it. Not good.
So these Oxford researchers are not doing something new, they are just doing less.
Doing less is a new approach. A sensible one, particularly in robotics. For example see the Roomba, vs the Electolux Trilobyte. The Trilobite mapped the whole room before designing an efficient cleaning route. The Roomba just wanders randomly, with some simple heuristics for occasionally following walls and occasionally changing direction. Result: The cheap Roomba approach is successful in the market, and the expensive Trilobite is a failure.
Here for example you mention GPS. That's of limited use, as the accuracy is in terms of meters. Far too course for self driving. And it can disappear completely in cities. And all it would do is narrow down the initial search space to identify the current location.
One way to make their system more useful would be to upload learned routes to a server, so they can be auto-downloaded to other vehicles. Then your car could self-drive even on roads you haven't driven on before, as long as someone else has driven them.
I suggest you RTFA, then you won't spend time describing something they already have slated for the future.
I can't vouch for San Francisco, but in the UK, the supermarkets have always fought against plastic bag bans. Which suggests to me you are inventing a conspiracy where there isn't one.
This is why I asked you up front for what definition of freedom you're using. By implication, your answer included "a benevolent government of the people, by the people, for the people."
You're now changing that, to say that it doesn't matter if the government is being benevolent, and governed by and for its people. If it restricts American corporate imperialism, it's not free. And you're surprised I pegged you as right wing?
As I say, define what you mean by freedom, and we can discuss. At the moment, all you are doing is making the "no true scotsman" logical fallacy.
It's news because it's a different approach.
I'd be incredibly impressed if they managed to get the driving system is on the iPad.* But I'm sure the iPad just provides the display. There will be another box somewhere that does the driving.
* Impressed by the technical achievement, not the safety.
Quite so. And it's good to see that the UK experience absolutely bears out what you say.
I'm not aware of anyone suggesting going back to hunter gathering. So be careful about creating strawmen when you're not yet on the ropes.
Most poor countries are poor because they have horrible, evil, incompetent government.
You say most. But clearly most of the third world countries with functioning democracies are poor too. So that's not it.
It is certainly true that there are more likely to be horrible, evil, incompetent governments in the third world than the first world. But there's a correlation/causation question there. Are they poor because they have bad government. Or do they have bad government because they are poor? Is the first world rich because they have good government, or do they have good government because they are rich.
Indeed does the first world have good government at all. Do good governments start resource wars with third world countries?
The poor will be more affected than the rich by global warming because they lack the resources to do anything about it.
Absolutely. That must be particularly galling when the resources often come from those third world countries. They SHOULD have them. But those "good" governments you mentioned take them away from them.
Free is free - there are no "interpretations" to free.
What!? LOL! Try telling that the the OSS movement. They've been fighting away for years trying to point out the difference between "free as in beer" and "free as in libre". Now clearly we're talking about "libre" here. But there are still many, many ways to use the word freedom. And not only is it not clear which one you mean, it's now become obvious that you don't even know yourself.
People can do what they like there, mainly stealing from others. Somalians have no freedom, except the "freedom" to oppress their countrymen.
So there, you yourself manage to create two different definitions of "free". Free to do what you like, and free to oppress others. And you reject both of them as not being the kind of freedom you mean.
Please note that freedom usually requires some effective mechanism for its protection (police, army), most commonly a benevolent government of the people, by the people, for the people.
OK, so here's the clue that the freedom you mean is the one meant by American libertarians.
Great. We know what definition you mean. So any country with a police force, an army and real democracy qualifies.
That's a LOT of countries. Many of them poor. India as the most populous example. That's over a billion people right there, most of them poor.
Typical denier.
There have been plenty. As a random example:
http://www.encognitive.com/files/Cancer%20rate%20of%20tobacco%20users.pdf
The causation of tumours by chemicals in tobacco smoke is well understood. Not just by the correlation in surveys. Not just by the timing of the commencement of smoking and the decades later appearance of tumours. But by laboratory experimentation with animals. The animals of course don't get to choose whether to smoke or not, so the causation cannot be the other way around.
What particular interpretation of the word free do you mean here? Because if you mean they don't have people telling them what they can and can't do, most of the third world is more free than the US.
At the most extreme you have places like somalia. No effective government means people can do what they like. And yet they are unspeakably poor.
Then you have vast amounts of the third world without any proper roads. They don't see any officials who can tell them what to do. But they are subsistence farmers.
You have nomads, that wander freely. You don't get more free than that. But they have no money.
So what precisely did you mean by freedom? Did you mean anything real at all, or is it just a right wing slogan you're repeating?
I'm glad you got the pun.
They are not "diametrically opposed". You and he are talking about things which are orthogonal. He's talking about the natural environment and you are talking about economics.
What each of you said is fine so far as it goes. My question is for you though. Why is it only a minority that have got out of poverty? It's certainly not about working hard. Those poor people in the third world typically work a lot harder than those in the first world. Is it that there's only a limited number of resources? Or is it that the wealth in the first world requires poverty in the third world?
And why will it be those who are still in poverty that are the worst effected by the damage being done to the environment?
We can do things a lot better, both environmentally and economically.
To my knowledge it was first revealed in this documentary.
http://astroturfwars.com/
suspect that their motivation is not so much from science, but rather is simply a convenient article of faith that supports their ideological objectives.
Well in this case Colbert's quote "Reality has a well-known liberal bias" is true. They're allowed to be strident when the science is on their side. Clearly it's frustrating and annoying when people are arguing things that are objectively not true. And that's what the skeptics/deniers are doing. So they do tend to get the smack-down.
It's marked "informative", rather than say "insightful", because it relates a matter of fact.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/oct/13/tea-party-billionaire-koch-brothers
That you don't like the fact being pointed out is neither here nor there. That's not what moderation is about.
For a long time, it was easier to attack the science (a flanking maneuver).
Then don't be surprised that those people are still viewed as being dishonest deniers.
Increasingly, you will see a change to battling it out over policy - which was the proper place for this debate the entire time.
I created the following some years ago. I've been amused as the mass of the denialist rhetoric has followed through it step by step. They don't get any more respect for having done so.
The Republican 9 Step Global Warming Denial Plan
1) There's no such thing as global warming.
2) There's global warming, but the scientists are exaggerating. It's not significant.
3) There's significant global warming, but man doesn't cause it.
4) Man does cause it, but it's not a net negative.
5) It is a net negative, but it's not economically possible to tackle it.
6) We need to tackle global warming, so make the poor pay for it.
7) Global warming is bad for business. Why did the Democrats not tackle it earlier?
8) ????
9) Profit.
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/originals/climate_money.html
Your source is one of the very right-wing lobbyist organisations dedicated to denying climate science that TFA refers to. They are receiving the billionaires money to spew put stuff like this for useful idiots to repeat. The hypocrisy of them putting out a paper accusing the other side of being funded is hilarious.
Hint: Their own about page: "Only through science and factual information, separating reality from rhetoric, can legislators develop beneficial policies without unintended consequences that might threaten the life, liberty, and prosperity of the citizenry."
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Science_and_Public_Policy_Institute
Crop yields over the last century tells you nothing about CO2 levels. Because other things like applying increasing amounts of nitrates and creation of new varieties of crop have had a huge influence on crop yields.
Not that the basic premise that higher CO2 levels encourage growth is wrong. And in fact increased heat helps too. Take a look at an actual greenhouse to see the effect of the greenhouse effect on plants.
On the other hand crops don't grow in deserts, and increasing desertification is also an effect of AGW.
Everyone, on both sides, knows that "denier" is the chosen term specifically because it parallels "holocaust denier".
The term denier was used in both instances because that's the word that fits best. It's the same word because it's the same action. Denying the facts.
You'd prefer to be called a skeptic. But again that's a perfect parallel because holocaust deniers would also rather be called skeptics.
In neither case is it skepticism. The Nazi Holocaust is a fact, and AGW is a fact. In each case, the people who say it's not do so because their politics are more important to them than the facts are.
Read what I wrote:
"The greenhouse effect is simple physics. The amount of CO2 released to the atmosphere by man is a matter of record, as is the increased concentration in the atmosphere. That predicts warming. And the warming trend has been measured, over and over again in many ways. It's beyond question that AGW exists. Only it's extent and the local effects are debatable."
The fact of AGW doesn't rely on models. That AGW is a fact only relies only on physics and measurement of the real world. AGW is observable as it's already happening.
Models are concerned with prediction. That's the "extent and local effects" bit.
And it's not calling people names. Denial is what they do, so they are deniers. Every bit as much as a person who drives is a driver. It's a straight forward, accurate description. They'd like to be called skeptics. But that's impossible, because what they are doing is not skepticism, it's denial.
For the first time? You think that the rich industrialists have never before paid to oppose science? Well, you might want to think about the link between cancer and smoking.
Now, why is it you're so keen to play the part of a useful idiot?
So the Tea Party is just astro-turfing? Yet the Occupy Wall Street is grass roots?
That's correct. The Tea Party was a construction made with the Koch brothers money and the assistance of Fox News to publicise it.