Maybe every time these people issue a terrifying pronouncement
Except "these people" haven't issued a terrifying pronouncement. They're simply making an effort to identify those untouched areas where conservation efforts can get the most gain for the buck.
You can't even except all National Parks and Monuments in the US. Many are still grazed, though typically under grandfather clauses that disappear upon the death of the person who held the BLM permit before the Park/Monument was created.
While the article referenced above points out a "problem", it does nothing to suggest a solution either.
Uhh... the paper, at least, is simply an effort to quantitize the percentage of a (clearly defined) subset of the earth's surface in terms of human impact.
The point of the exercise is simple: try to figure out those areas which are least impacted in order to more economically and efficiently practice species conservation.
So you imagine that ranchers spend the time and money to build fence just to leave the enclosed land unused? Try working with barbed wire sometime and then come back and tell us you want to build miles upon miles of fences using it "just for fun".
These fenced areas are grazed. You won't see stock in the summer because they've generally been moved up to the mountains to take advantage of the seasonal growth of forage that takes place after the snow melts or after spring rains (some mountains in our semi-arid West get snow, some don't, probably many more do than you imagine).
You won't see these low-level areas being used every year because frequently they won't support annual grazing. Even if they're being used you may not see cows from the road because it takes a huge area to support a relatively small number of cows, and cows tend to form herds. They'll meander eventually to where you can see them but you may have to wait a few weeks.
Ever hear the phrase "cattle drive"? Ever wonder where they're drivin' the cattle to and from? Today they don't make cows walk hundreds of miles along the Chisolm trail to a railhead in Abiline.
But they still make 'em walk from their low-level wintering range to their higher altitude summer range... at least in much of the West they still do.
Actually the Club of Rome used entirely different methods and the folks being quoted aren't making any predictions whatsoever.
Since it appears that you didn't RTFA, here's what they say:
"As such they [the relatively unimpacted areas they've identified] provide a promising opportunity to conserve wildlife and wild places while minimizing conflicts with existing human structures and demands."
All they're doing is trying to identify areas in which conservation efforts might have the biggest bang for the bucks. No doomsday, sky-is-falling scenarios. No political manifesto.
As for the Economist, I read it regularly and I'd have to say that "slipshod" applies to a bunch of their efforts to shoehorn the world into their narrowly conservative world view.
Well, this may come as a surprise to you, but I do know my basic physics.
Have you patented your invention that will enable us to tap into that vast amount of energy contained by the rest of the universe? I'm sure you can make a few bucks once you figure out how to do it.
Theoretical amounts of energy aren't the issue. The amount of energy that is available to us within the framework of today's economy augumented by a realistic figure for its future growth is all that's of interest.
Pipe it down from the Columbia (which I presume you mean when you say "Washington") and you change the ocean ecology in a fairly large chunk of extremely productive ocean. You change sand deposition patterns along a hundred or so miles of the Washington coastline.
Fishermen can hardly make a living in the Pacific Northwest as it is. And of course fish are something we eat, so messing with that ecology trades off one source of food for another.
Would it be a net gain? You have blind faith that it would, but I rather doubt you've run the numbers.
As far as desalinization plants go... they too have problems. Among other things they produce a lot of salt and on the kind of gigantic scale you envision this could be a tremendous problem. Yes, it only makes things more expensive but handwaving technological solutions without recognizing the fact that money is not an unlimited resource is every bit as foolish as your other naive statements.
Claiming that technology can fix anything is handwaving nonsense. You're being childishly naive.
And, no, I'm not claiming that the sky is falling. Don't fucking put words in my mouth. My guess is my knowledge of technology is as much greater than yours as is my knowledge of software engineering or desert ecology...
Nowhere is the claim made that humans are evil and that Ma Earth would be better off with us.
In fact, the purpose of the exercise is to identify those areas in which *human* conservation efforts can be most effectively applied.
Frequently the cheapest and most effective means of wildlife conservation is to minimize human interference in those areas which are currently least disturbed by human activity.
RTFA rather than rant and rave. If you actually care about conservation. It seems pretty clear that you don't.
If they wanted to skew the numbers, they wouldn't tell you that they left out Antartica and portions of the Artic.
And if you would RTFA a little more carefully, the purpose of the study was to identify areas to prioritize for conservation - in other words the 17% not impacted by humans. Now, the article may've been written in a somewhat sensationalistic manner, but the conservation organization involved makes it clear they're trying to figure out how to best spend their money.
Drive through Nevada some time. Mile after mile of empty space, but according to this report, humans have "appropriated" it.
Most of that empty space is BLM land which either is currently or has been historically grazed by cattle and (to a lesser degree nowadays) sheep.
Have you ever wondered why towns like Winnemucca have annual Basque festivals? Basque sheepherders were imported into the northwest corner of the Great Basin to herd vast numbers of sheep.
As I said above, nowadays it's mostly cattle. It requires a large number of acres to support a single cow in the Great Basin. Many of the valleys that are too dry to graze cattle support large herds of feral horses. "feral" means "escaped from captivity". The modern horse is not native to North America and their presence is indeed a human impact.
Does the fact that I know far, far more about the historical and modern use of the land in Nevada make me a whacko? Or does your willingness to spew nonsense make you an ideologue?
You can't irrigate deserts without water, BTW. The Imperial Valley is the largest desert irrigation project in the world. Because of it and various other water demands in many years the mouth of the Colorado is dried up. In other words, the river is overallocated. Where will all the extra water to irrigate those parts of the Mojave desert that aren't currently irrigated come from? Not from the only major river system in that desert... ain't none left. Conservation can help. Putting an end to green lawns in San Diego can help. But to state "there are no limits" is to state nonsense.
I honestly don't understand one thing, too. Like why you don't understand that DDT is not banned in Africa and other places where malaria is a problem.
DDT is banned for use in the US, but its manufacture is not banned and DDT is m anufactured here and exported for use overseas.
DDT is still used on a spot basis in Africa and other areas.
If this were an accurate description of how climatologists and other scientists interested in global climate change work, sure.
But of course it's not at all how scientists work. If you mistrust the press, dig into the scientists. Read up on what the National Academy of Science has to say about it, for instance.
The ALOHANET went into operation in 1970. ALOHANET was the first ever packet radio network, operating at 9600 bits per second throughout the state of Hawaii. Aloha is a protocol for satellite and terrestrial radio transmissions. It allows a user to transmit at any time, but risks collisions with other user's messages. "Slotted Aloha" reduces the chance of collisions by dividing the channel into time slots and requiring that the user send only at the beginning of a time slot. Aloha was the basis for Ethernet (a local area network protocol). ALOHAnet was connected to ARPANET in 1972. (Aloha to the Web), (Aloha, pcwebopedia)
Yep, the name of the Ethernet (as in "transmitting over the aether") protocol is a subtle salute to the pioneering work that went into building the original ALOHANET.
As they already do for.info. This is cool because the bid was head-to-head against contractors spec'ing Oracle and came despite Oracle submitting comments during the review process that claimed that no Open Source RDBMS would be up to the task.
Re:Open source projects tend to have a lower bug-r
on
Open Source Studies
·
· Score: 5, Informative
The metric they used was bug density, not the absolute number of bugs. In other words, number of reported defects per N lines of code.
Mozilla is a far larger project than the Apache core, so given an equivalent number of bugs per N lines of code you will see a far larger number of bugs.
They did report that to some extent the measurement of bug density wasn't necessarily directly comparable due to the different state of the projects at the time the report was written (Apache == stable, Mozilla == pre-release). If you're interested in more details read the paper yourself...
So apparently, it's ok for Americans to break Russian law if they're in the U.S., but not ok for Russians to break U.S. law, even while in Russia
This isn't really accurate. They were busted when on US soil after coming here after falling for an FBI ruse. If they'd remained on Russian soil, they would've never been arrested by us. If asked politely, I suppose there's some chance the Russians would've detained and later extradited them, but once in our hands there was no reason to test that theory.
Likewise, if the FBI agents who broke the Russian law visit Russia, they may be busted for having broken Russian law. In theory Russia could ask the US to arrest and later extradite the FBI agents so they can be tried. In practice it doesn't appear as though the Russians care enough to raise a big stink about it. The Russians who were busted were, after all, common criminals.
There seems to be a certain symmetry to the picture, no?
No, it's not just due to incompetent beaurocrats. This is Boston, after all, and there's been the traditional overhead of corruption, too. In fact, the dude who was project manager until one or two years ago has been blackballed by the Feds, i.e. will never be allowed to manage a federally-funded project again.
Not only did the project go over budget by a big chunk, but a big chunk has been unaccounted for (or was during the days when I was spending about three weeks out of every eight in Boston, days which came to an end 15 months ago).
No one knows for sure where all the money has gone, though anyone familiar with Boston is not surprised nor unable to make a few guesses.
Exactly. Infringement of an unregistered copyright only gets you actual damages if you sue and win. If the copyright is registered, there's the possibility of 3x punitive damanages and the recovery of legal expenses, though this is by no means guaranteed, course.
And a nobel prize-winning chemist discovered cold fusion...
This is why science moves forward based on reproducible results, peer review, and other processes that weed out the thinking of random degreed fruitcakes like your biology professor.
Actually the worst thing he did was not to re-use a dataset in the way you mention (as bad as that is), but the fact that some of his supposed data was generated mathematically to fit his desired results. In other words he was reporting data from experiments that were never run. According to the NYT this AM, at least, he has admitted this to Bell Labs management.
It's not just Nat'l Geo, but rather much of the nature/wildlife market, one I'm personally familiar with. Probably true of most non-time-critical markets, too (like the climbing magazine market you mention).
PJs switched to digital because time is of the essence in news photography. On the other hand specialty, hobbiest, and other non-news magazines tend to work on long lead times (article queries tend to be accepted several months before publication with the photo/words submission deadline typically three months ahead of the publication date on the magazine).
In the last three years or so I've seen acceptance of high-quality scans from chromes rise to about a half of my submissions/sales. That still leaves about a half of my potential customers wanting chromes. Why? I suspect it's largely because photo editors still find chromes laid on top of a large light table easier to work with than scans and a monitor.
I'll probably end up buying one of the new 1Ds bodies. I've been waiting for a full-frame sensor before making the plunge because I haven't wanted to deal with the perspective shift vs 35mm film that comes with the smaller sensor. But I'll still be shooting a lot of chrome for the forseeable future.
Slashdot Mirror
Except "these people" haven't issued a terrifying pronouncement. They're simply making an effort to identify those untouched areas where conservation efforts can get the most gain for the buck.
Oh, you didn't RTFA? Gee, big surprise.
You can't even except all National Parks and Monuments in the US. Many are still grazed, though typically under grandfather clauses that disappear upon the death of the person who held the BLM permit before the Park/Monument was created.
Uhh
The point of the exercise is simple: try to figure out those areas which are least impacted in order to more economically and efficiently practice species conservation.
What exactly is your problem with this?
So you imagine that ranchers spend the time and money to build fence just to leave the enclosed land unused? Try working with barbed wire sometime and then come back and tell us you want to build miles upon miles of fences using it "just for fun".
... at least in much of the West they still do.
These fenced areas are grazed. You won't see stock in the summer because they've generally been moved up to the mountains to take advantage of the seasonal growth of forage that takes place after the snow melts or after spring rains (some mountains in our semi-arid West get snow, some don't, probably many more do than you imagine).
You won't see these low-level areas being used every year because frequently they won't support annual grazing. Even if they're being used you may not see cows from the road because it takes a huge area to support a relatively small number of cows, and cows tend to form herds. They'll meander eventually to where you can see them but you may have to wait a few weeks.
Ever hear the phrase "cattle drive"? Ever wonder where they're drivin' the cattle to and from? Today they don't make cows walk hundreds of miles along the Chisolm trail to a railhead in Abiline.
But they still make 'em walk from their low-level wintering range to their higher altitude summer range
So there's something wrong with stating that humans have affected the lake when they've affected it by polluting it?
...
I'm missing your logic here
Actually the Club of Rome used entirely different methods and the folks being quoted aren't making any predictions whatsoever.
Since it appears that you didn't RTFA, here's what they say:
"As such they [the relatively unimpacted areas they've identified] provide a promising opportunity to conserve wildlife and wild places while minimizing conflicts with existing human structures and demands."
All they're doing is trying to identify areas in which conservation efforts might have the biggest bang for the bucks. No doomsday, sky-is-falling scenarios. No political manifesto.
As for the Economist, I read it regularly and I'd have to say that "slipshod" applies to a bunch of their efforts to shoehorn the world into their narrowly conservative world view.
Well, this may come as a surprise to you, but I do know my basic physics.
Have you patented your invention that will enable us to tap into that vast amount of energy contained by the rest of the universe? I'm sure you can make a few bucks once you figure out how to do it.
Theoretical amounts of energy aren't the issue. The amount of energy that is available to us within the framework of today's economy augumented by a realistic figure for its future growth is all that's of interest.
And there's no evidence that this is unlimited.
It's another slashdot idiot who didn't read the part of the article where they stated they didn't include Antartica
Pipe it down from the Columbia (which I presume you mean when you say "Washington") and you change the ocean ecology in a fairly large chunk of extremely productive ocean. You change sand deposition patterns along a hundred or so miles of the Washington coastline.
... they too have problems. Among other things they produce a lot of salt and on the kind of gigantic scale you envision this could be a tremendous problem. Yes, it only makes things more expensive but handwaving technological solutions without recognizing the fact that money is not an unlimited resource is every bit as foolish as your other naive statements.
...
Fishermen can hardly make a living in the Pacific Northwest as it is. And of course fish are something we eat, so messing with that ecology trades off one source of food for another.
Would it be a net gain? You have blind faith that it would, but I rather doubt you've run the numbers.
As far as desalinization plants go
Claiming that technology can fix anything is handwaving nonsense. You're being childishly naive.
And, no, I'm not claiming that the sky is falling. Don't fucking put words in my mouth. My guess is my knowledge of technology is as much greater than yours as is my knowledge of software engineering or desert ecology
Nowhere is the claim made that humans are evil and that Ma Earth would be better off with us.
In fact, the purpose of the exercise is to identify those areas in which *human* conservation efforts can be most effectively applied.
Frequently the cheapest and most effective means of wildlife conservation is to minimize human interference in those areas which are currently least disturbed by human activity.
RTFA rather than rant and rave. If you actually care about conservation. It seems pretty clear that you don't.
Nor did you read the part where they mention they left out Antartica, apparently.
Arid areas are frequently grazed, BTW. Ever hear of the BLM?
If they wanted to skew the numbers, they wouldn't tell you that they left out Antartica and portions of the Artic.
And if you would RTFA a little more carefully, the purpose of the study was to identify areas to prioritize for conservation - in other words the 17% not impacted by humans. Now, the article may've been written in a somewhat sensationalistic manner, but the conservation organization involved makes it clear they're trying to figure out how to best spend their money.
Most of that empty space is BLM land which either is currently or has been historically grazed by cattle and (to a lesser degree nowadays) sheep.
Have you ever wondered why towns like Winnemucca have annual Basque festivals? Basque sheepherders were imported into the northwest corner of the Great Basin to herd vast numbers of sheep.
As I said above, nowadays it's mostly cattle. It requires a large number of acres to support a single cow in the Great Basin. Many of the valleys that are too dry to graze cattle support large herds of feral horses. "feral" means "escaped from captivity". The modern horse is not native to North America and their presence is indeed a human impact.
Does the fact that I know far, far more about the historical and modern use of the land in Nevada make me a whacko? Or does your willingness to spew nonsense make you an ideologue?
You can't irrigate deserts without water, BTW. The Imperial Valley is the largest desert irrigation project in the world. Because of it and various other water demands in many years the mouth of the Colorado is dried up. In other words, the river is overallocated. Where will all the extra water to irrigate those parts of the Mojave desert that aren't currently irrigated come from? Not from the only major river system in that desert
I honestly don't understand one thing, too. Like why you don't understand that DDT is not banned in Africa and other places where malaria is a problem.
DDT is banned for use in the US, but its manufacture is not banned and DDT is m anufactured here and exported for use overseas.
DDT is still used on a spot basis in Africa and other areas.
Does this make sense to anyone else?
If this were an accurate description of how climatologists and other scientists interested in global climate change work, sure.
But of course it's not at all how scientists work. If you mistrust the press, dig into the scientists. Read up on what the National Academy of Science has to say about it, for instance.
Yep, the name of the Ethernet (as in "transmitting over the aether") protocol is a subtle salute to the pioneering work that went into building the original ALOHANET.
As they already do for .info. This is cool because the bid was head-to-head against contractors spec'ing Oracle and came despite Oracle submitting comments during the review process that claimed that no Open Source RDBMS would be up to the task.
The metric they used was bug density, not the absolute number of bugs. In other words, number of reported defects per N lines of code.
...
Mozilla is a far larger project than the Apache core, so given an equivalent number of bugs per N lines of code you will see a far larger number of bugs.
They did report that to some extent the measurement of bug density wasn't necessarily directly comparable due to the different state of the projects at the time the report was written (Apache == stable, Mozilla == pre-release). If you're interested in more details read the paper yourself
This isn't really accurate. They were busted when on US soil after coming here after falling for an FBI ruse. If they'd remained on Russian soil, they would've never been arrested by us. If asked politely, I suppose there's some chance the Russians would've detained and later extradited them, but once in our hands there was no reason to test that theory.
Likewise, if the FBI agents who broke the Russian law visit Russia, they may be busted for having broken Russian law. In theory Russia could ask the US to arrest and later extradite the FBI agents so they can be tried. In practice it doesn't appear as though the Russians care enough to raise a big stink about it. The Russians who were busted were, after all, common criminals.
There seems to be a certain symmetry to the picture, no?
Yeah, there were similar programs for the PDP-8 that generated music by RF on a transistor radio placed on console desk.
Did the IBM 1130 only play the [big] blues?
No, it's not just due to incompetent beaurocrats. This is Boston, after all, and there's been the traditional overhead of corruption, too. In fact, the dude who was project manager until one or two years ago has been blackballed by the Feds, i.e. will never be allowed to manage a federally-funded project again.
Not only did the project go over budget by a big chunk, but a big chunk has been unaccounted for (or was during the days when I was spending about three weeks out of every eight in Boston, days which came to an end 15 months ago).
No one knows for sure where all the money has gone, though anyone familiar with Boston is not surprised nor unable to make a few guesses.
Exactly. Infringement of an unregistered copyright only gets you actual damages if you sue and win. If the copyright is registered, there's the possibility of 3x punitive damanages and the recovery of legal expenses, though this is by no means guaranteed, course.
And a nobel prize-winning chemist discovered cold fusion ...
This is why science moves forward based on reproducible results, peer review, and other processes that weed out the thinking of random degreed fruitcakes like your biology professor.
Actually the worst thing he did was not to re-use a dataset in the way you mention (as bad as that is), but the fact that some of his supposed data was generated mathematically to fit his desired results. In other words he was reporting data from experiments that were never run. According to the NYT this AM, at least, he has admitted this to Bell Labs management.
Ugh. This is scientific fraud of the worst sort.
It's not just Nat'l Geo, but rather much of the nature/wildlife market, one I'm personally familiar with. Probably true of most non-time-critical markets, too (like the climbing magazine market you mention).
PJs switched to digital because time is of the essence in news photography. On the other hand specialty, hobbiest, and other non-news magazines tend to work on long lead times (article queries tend to be accepted several months before publication with the photo/words submission deadline typically three months ahead of the publication date on the magazine).
In the last three years or so I've seen acceptance of high-quality scans from chromes rise to about a half of my submissions/sales. That still leaves about a half of my potential customers wanting chromes. Why? I suspect it's largely because photo editors still find chromes laid on top of a large light table easier to work with than scans and a monitor.
I'll probably end up buying one of the new 1Ds bodies. I've been waiting for a full-frame sensor before making the plunge because I haven't wanted to deal with the perspective shift vs 35mm film that comes with the smaller sensor. But I'll still be shooting a lot of chrome for the forseeable future.