Again, where's the money? I see a claim that this group scoops in $7 million a year, That's less than the US branch of Greenpeace ($10 million a year). There are some huge climate change advocacy groups out there. There's no similarly huge anti-AGW advocacy group out there.
Contrary to these assertions, I see plenty of money for scientists and activists who shill for climate change and peanuts for their opponents.
Look under the table.
C'mon, khallow, you're smarter than this. Think it through:
1. Assuming that what you see in money terms is what's actually going on, where's this money coming from? What's to be gained monetarily by shilling for climate change? Who would want to fund this, and for what gain?
2. Assuming that what you see in money terms is not the whole picture, who's to gain by not being public about funding? What vested interests are there that might be harmed by any policy changes designed to halt or slow AGW? How much money do these vested interests have?
3. Think too about regulatory capture -- there's less need for advocacy if you've already bought yourself congressional representation. Who's more likely to hold sway in the legislature: Greenpeace, or the hydrocarbon industry?
Seriously, khallow, I think better of you than this particular line of argument -- what you see is not what you get, in many cases.
Seriously, you're being an ass. I've read through this page of threads, and you've made numerous posts including mistakes of judgment that come across as lies; and then you insult your potential audience. You may have good points, but they are lost or devalued by your tone and approach. Simply as a style of argumentation, your posts wind up more alienating than convincing. This is not the way to bring people over to your way of thinking.
For others, this video evidence that rs79 posted in the GP is a talk hosted by the Sydney Institute. The Sydney Institute itself may or may not be pushing a conservative anti-AGW agenda; at any rate, Gerard Henderson is Executive Director and his wife is the Deputy Director (staff roster), with some online commentators describing them as "neocon" in their views. Gerard Henderson was an adviser to former Australian PM John Howard, whose general political leanings were quite close to those of George W. Bush.
In short, the source is a bit suspect.
The talk itself is about an hour long. I haven't listened to the whole thing yet, but the speaker is Murry Salby, professor of environmental science at Macquarie University in Australia and the university's Climate Chair (university staff page). His basic argument is that global temperature controls CO2 levels, not the other way around. His views are somewhat controversial, perhaps unsurprisingly, and are discussed and refuted to some extent in numerous articles at Skeptical Science, among other places.
...
In all fairness, I could probably dissect most arguments similarly and dig up links to this or that refutation. However, my point here is not to try to claim that Salby is wrong -- I don't know that, and I don't have the educational background to make that judgment. My point, instead, is that Salby's views do not appear to be the authoritative end-all-and-be-all slam-dunk finishing end to the argument of whether humans are responsible for global warming.
MS has an intel based tab due for delivery in 2 month and apps for it can be side-loaded. Businesses will probably suck on these, unless winders 8 proves to be too much of a pain in the arse.
I don't know about you, but I certainly don't want to suck on *anything* that's a pain in the arse. That's just not hygienic.
No, not even if it's been removed, washed, and properly sanitized.
You forget it is also the home of the brave. Where 'brave' means so scared of the extremely remote chance you might be the victim of terrorism that they gladly give up their freedoms.
Land of the oppressed, home of the cowards.
Fun fact:
"Brave" comes from roots meaning something more like "bravado", i.e. "bragging, boasting, showing off, posturing". Even in English usage since the 15th century, the core meanings for much of that time had to do with being "showy", and where courageousness was intended, the word meant "showing courage", rather than "being courageous" or "having courage" -- so one could be 'brave' by pretending to be a bad-ass, yet still ultimately acting like a chicken-shit.
Sadly, that seems rather apt when applied to the behavior on display in the US of late...
We are clearly starting to see the dark underside of humanity. The Internet has allowed a huge amount of anonymous and pseudo-anonymous activity and this has pretty much turned over the rock so everyone can see the squishy, many-legged stuff that is buried in the human psyche.
"Starting to see"? No offense, cdrguru, but you sound like someone who has never read any history. All of that squishy, many-legged stuff has been happily striding across the breadth and scope of human experience for some time now. Arguably, since we've been human. (And by some accounts, much longer than that even -- pretty much all of humanity's ugly behaviours have clear predecessors / analogs in other primate species.)
I wish more things in life had side effects like that. Of course, that would necessitate certain changes to one's wardrobe, but I think the minor additional hassle would be well worth it...
Yeah, I learned it as a pondian difference -- UK uses the plural noun form for organization names and usually for collective nouns (though suddenly I'm thinking maybe I misunderstood about collective nouns? Organizations are definitely treated as plurals, as is easily confirmed in media headlines...), US uses the singular forms for organization names and usually for collective nouns. Part of it too might be where the semantic emphasis lies -- whether one is talking about a collective as a whole, or as a bunch of individual constituent members.
As a quick PS, I think the British use of plurals for organizations comes from the idea (logical enough, I suppose) that an organization comprises a plurality of people. Personally, I think it sounds about as off as saying "the group have done something", rather than treating the collective noun "group" (or rather the organization name itself) as a singular noun in its own right, where "the group has done something" would be more correct.
(written on a MS keyboard. their hw has been pretty good - but not a good business for them.)
I mostly agree with your post, except for that bit at the end there -- the only hardware that MS seems to be good at is commodity hardware that's hard to get wrong. Anything really new that they have to invent and develop seems to be a colossal screw-up -- c.f. the RROD, "squirting", or that Kin thing that vanished after months of hype.
Keyboards, sure, but new stuff? They can't seem to handle it.
Not everything they choose to do is successful so suddenly they're not a successful company? What kind of logic is that?
My reading of this thread suggests that the GP's logic is more that Ballmer has zeroed in on an area where Microsoft has made considerably less money, and has lost considerably more money, than in the company's core business of software.
From the things I've read as a casual follower of MS's progress, the Zune lost a ton of money, Windows Phone hasn't done all that well (the Kin vanished after months of hype, for instance), and I don't think the XBox has broken even when viewed over the whole history of the console rather than just in any one fiscal year.
Meanwhile, the Windows OS and Microsoft Office software businesses have been moneymakers for decades now.
So the logic appears to be not that "some of Microsoft's operations aren't successful, ergo the company as a whole is unsuccessful" -- instead, it's that "Microsoft is focusing more and more on its lossmaking operations, ergo the company as a whole will be increasingly unsuccessful."
Considering that this move directly threatens partners such as HP and Dell, we could wind up seeing more support from such companies for Linux as they seek to hedge their bets against Microsoft's incursion into the hardware market. I think the software and computer industry could be on the verge of becoming much more interesting.
Being in NZ/OZ regularly, I'll attest to the fact that it isn't much better (if any) in terms of proper usage of whom. Though I haven't seen the use of "they" to refer to a single person of unknown gender as much outside the US.
Interesting, thank you. I wonder if that particular usage of "they" has to do with the feminism and political correctness movements in the US, and the resulting social focus on gender in language. Given the lack of any neuter third-person singular pronoun in English other than the overly impersonal "it", "they" seems to have been pressed into service instead.
I thought the whole point of this sub-thread was pedantry?:) If so, linguistic conservativism is more the rule than vernacular use.
As a simple rule of thumb for who / whom, consider he / him or they / them. This may sound a bit tortured in question syntax such as in the corrected example in my previous post, but it still provides a useful and quick-and-easy guide to when to put the "m" on the end of "whom".
Pedantry aside, yes, in the daily vernacular, many (most?) Americans that I've spoken with don't consistently use "whom" correctly, suggesting that this usage is indeed deprecated and on the way out. I have no idea if this is a pondian phenomenon, where perhaps UK or Australian or NZ English speakers might use "whom" more often; I am likewise ignorant of the frequency of usage by Canadian or Indian speakers of English. Such a difference, if present, might indicate laxer grammar education in the US.
"To whom does the license plate belong?" (more correct) or "Who does that license plate belong to?" (less correct)
Two 'to's is one to too many.
Your second example is incorrect -- since "who" is the indirect object of the preposition "to", even if that "to" comes at the end of the sentence, it would again have to be "whom" to be correct:
Is it any wonder this gets confusing? Every drug has a minimum of three different names: The unpronounceable chemical name, the generic name, and the brand name.
The names for that erectile dysfunction drug aren't all that bad:
Chemical name: 1-[4-ethoxy-3-(6,7-dihydro-1-methyl-
7-oxo-3-propyl-1H-pyrazolo[4,3-d]pyrimidin-5-yl)
phenylsulfonyl]-4-methylpiperazine
I formatted my post above using generic <ol> and <li> tags, but it appears that Slashdot's code is so broken that these don't format correctly -- using Chrome on Win 7, I see no numbers; the two blocks of text are slightly indented and separated as if by a <br/> tag.
There's a subtle difference between sitting in Fergal O'Fuckery's with a Guinness or eight reciting your latest anecdote about what a bunch of filthy idle wankers the Belgians are and crashing an airliner into the Atomium.
I was responding to the previous poster's complaint that Muslims are "trying to convert their new country to be run the same way" as the country they emigrated from, which is ultimately something that all immigrants do to a certain extent.
I don't know what the Atomium is, but assuming that this is a reference to 9/11, your argument here is unrelated to my previous post about immigrants, as the 9/11 attackers explicitly did not have the goal of making the US similar to their originating country of Saudi Arabia.
Dude...its FUD, not only is it FUD, its FUD by Intel, who went with the PowerVR chip on their new Atom and thus has ZERO Linux support possible!
All AMD said is they haven't got ANDROID support out of the gate...WTF does ANDROID have to do with Linux support?
Last I knew, Android runs on a version of the Linux kernel. So saying that Android can't run on a given chip does at least imply that other versions of the Linux kernel might not run either.
Muslims are fleeing muslim controlled countries, then trying to convert their new country to be run the same way.
you've never met a Muslim who's actually fled their home country have you? hell i'd bet 50/50 you've never had a real conversation with one of Islamic faith. everyone i know certainly does not want to turn this country into something like where they came from (hint: there's a reason they fled.) generally those with enough power who's anti-west statements you hear did not need to flee their home country, and those on the streets inciting violence are just lapping up what they say (and like do not know what their hometowns are like)
It is interesting to note, however, that complaining about how one's new country is not like one's old country is a common staple in *any* immigrant community. I spent years living in Japan, and one sliver of the gaijin community there loved to complain that Japan wasn't the UK/US/Australia etc, and go on and on about how XYZ thing about Japan should be just like it is in the UK/US/Australia etc, and then everything would be so much better.
So there's a certain amount of what the GP says here that rings true. But with their blinders so firmly in place, they probably haven't noticed that this is something that all humans do, to some extent, when transplanted to a new country and culture.
It is is good to see this kind of basic research is still being done. Even as Hewlett Packard has gutted its research capabilities and looks set to suit to its corporate grave, blue-chip IBM shows that it still understands the need for discovery. Though it is perhaps indicative that this team is decidedly not American...
Slashdot Mirror
Again, where's the money? I see a claim that this group scoops in $7 million a year, That's less than the US branch of Greenpeace ($10 million a year). There are some huge climate change advocacy groups out there. There's no similarly huge anti-AGW advocacy group out there. Contrary to these assertions, I see plenty of money for scientists and activists who shill for climate change and peanuts for their opponents.
Look under the table.
C'mon, khallow, you're smarter than this. Think it through:
1. Assuming that what you see in money terms is what's actually going on, where's this money coming from? What's to be gained monetarily by shilling for climate change? Who would want to fund this, and for what gain?
2. Assuming that what you see in money terms is not the whole picture, who's to gain by not being public about funding? What vested interests are there that might be harmed by any policy changes designed to halt or slow AGW? How much money do these vested interests have?
3. Think too about regulatory capture -- there's less need for advocacy if you've already bought yourself congressional representation. Who's more likely to hold sway in the legislature: Greenpeace, or the hydrocarbon industry?
Seriously, khallow, I think better of you than this particular line of argument -- what you see is not what you get, in many cases.
Cheers,
Seriously, you're being an ass. I've read through this page of threads, and you've made numerous posts including mistakes of judgment that come across as lies; and then you insult your potential audience. You may have good points, but they are lost or devalued by your tone and approach. Simply as a style of argumentation, your posts wind up more alienating than convincing. This is not the way to bring people over to your way of thinking.
For others, this video evidence that rs79 posted in the GP is a talk hosted by the Sydney Institute. The Sydney Institute itself may or may not be pushing a conservative anti-AGW agenda; at any rate, Gerard Henderson is Executive Director and his wife is the Deputy Director (staff roster), with some online commentators describing them as "neocon" in their views. Gerard Henderson was an adviser to former Australian PM John Howard, whose general political leanings were quite close to those of George W. Bush.
In short, the source is a bit suspect.
The talk itself is about an hour long. I haven't listened to the whole thing yet, but the speaker is Murry Salby, professor of environmental science at Macquarie University in Australia and the university's Climate Chair (university staff page). His basic argument is that global temperature controls CO2 levels, not the other way around. His views are somewhat controversial, perhaps unsurprisingly, and are discussed and refuted to some extent in numerous articles at Skeptical Science, among other places.
...
In all fairness, I could probably dissect most arguments similarly and dig up links to this or that refutation. However, my point here is not to try to claim that Salby is wrong -- I don't know that, and I don't have the educational background to make that judgment. My point, instead, is that Salby's views do not appear to be the authoritative end-all-and-be-all slam-dunk finishing end to the argument of whether humans are responsible for global warming.
Cheers,
MS has an intel based tab due for delivery in 2 month and apps for it can be side-loaded. Businesses will probably suck on these, unless winders 8 proves to be too much of a pain in the arse.
I don't know about you, but I certainly don't want to suck on *anything* that's a pain in the arse. That's just not hygienic.
No, not even if it's been removed, washed, and properly sanitized.
:-P
You forget it is also the home of the brave. Where 'brave' means so scared of the extremely remote chance you might be the victim of terrorism that they gladly give up their freedoms.
Land of the oppressed, home of the cowards.
Fun fact:
"Brave" comes from roots meaning something more like "bravado", i.e. "bragging, boasting, showing off, posturing". Even in English usage since the 15th century, the core meanings for much of that time had to do with being "showy", and where courageousness was intended, the word meant "showing courage", rather than "being courageous" or "having courage" -- so one could be 'brave' by pretending to be a bad-ass, yet still ultimately acting like a chicken-shit.
Sadly, that seems rather apt when applied to the behavior on display in the US of late...
please use correct grammar when calling someone a moron or else its less credible - its "you're" a moron
Please use correct grammar, including correct apostrophe placement, when correcting someone else's grammar.
I guess this is evidence of karma of a sort.
Muphry's Law. (No, that's not a typo. :)
Cheers,
We are clearly starting to see the dark underside of humanity. The Internet has allowed a huge amount of anonymous and pseudo-anonymous activity and this has pretty much turned over the rock so everyone can see the squishy, many-legged stuff that is buried in the human psyche.
"Starting to see"? No offense, cdrguru, but you sound like someone who has never read any history. All of that squishy, many-legged stuff has been happily striding across the breadth and scope of human experience for some time now. Arguably, since we've been human. (And by some accounts, much longer than that even -- pretty much all of humanity's ugly behaviours have clear predecessors / analogs in other primate species.)
Cheers,
No, seriously, it sounds like he isn't getting any, in which case he might want to try clomipramine / Anafranil.
Apparently around 5% of users report spontaneous orgasm when yawning.
I wish more things in life had side effects like that. Of course, that would necessitate certain changes to one's wardrobe, but I think the minor additional hassle would be well worth it...
:-P
Holy fucking Christ. What else is out there waiting to be compromised and exploited?
Your sanity?
Sheesh, I thought that's what the presidential debates were for ...
:-P
You can program pacemakers to shoot lawyers in the face?!!!
Ooo, now there's an idea!
Beaker, get in here, I have something I want to show you...
Yeah, I learned it as a pondian difference -- UK uses the plural noun form for organization names and usually for collective nouns (though suddenly I'm thinking maybe I misunderstood about collective nouns? Organizations are definitely treated as plurals, as is easily confirmed in media headlines...), US uses the singular forms for organization names and usually for collective nouns. Part of it too might be where the semantic emphasis lies -- whether one is talking about a collective as a whole, or as a bunch of individual constituent members.
As a quick PS, I think the British use of plurals for organizations comes from the idea (logical enough, I suppose) that an organization comprises a plurality of people. Personally, I think it sounds about as off as saying "the group have done something", rather than treating the collective noun "group" (or rather the organization name itself) as a singular noun in its own right, where "the group has done something" would be more correct.
Cheers,
(written on a MS keyboard. their hw has been pretty good - but not a good business for them.)
I mostly agree with your post, except for that bit at the end there -- the only hardware that MS seems to be good at is commodity hardware that's hard to get wrong. Anything really new that they have to invent and develop seems to be a colossal screw-up -- c.f. the RROD, "squirting", or that Kin thing that vanished after months of hype.
Keyboards, sure, but new stuff? They can't seem to handle it.
Cheers,
Not everything they choose to do is successful so suddenly they're not a successful company? What kind of logic is that?
My reading of this thread suggests that the GP's logic is more that Ballmer has zeroed in on an area where Microsoft has made considerably less money, and has lost considerably more money, than in the company's core business of software.
From the things I've read as a casual follower of MS's progress, the Zune lost a ton of money, Windows Phone hasn't done all that well (the Kin vanished after months of hype, for instance), and I don't think the XBox has broken even when viewed over the whole history of the console rather than just in any one fiscal year.
Meanwhile, the Windows OS and Microsoft Office software businesses have been moneymakers for decades now.
So the logic appears to be not that "some of Microsoft's operations aren't successful, ergo the company as a whole is unsuccessful" -- instead, it's that "Microsoft is focusing more and more on its lossmaking operations, ergo the company as a whole will be increasingly unsuccessful."
Considering that this move directly threatens partners such as HP and Dell, we could wind up seeing more support from such companies for Linux as they seek to hedge their bets against Microsoft's incursion into the hardware market. I think the software and computer industry could be on the verge of becoming much more interesting.
Cheers,
Being in NZ/OZ regularly, I'll attest to the fact that it isn't much better (if any) in terms of proper usage of whom. Though I haven't seen the use of "they" to refer to a single person of unknown gender as much outside the US.
Interesting, thank you. I wonder if that particular usage of "they" has to do with the feminism and political correctness movements in the US, and the resulting social focus on gender in language. Given the lack of any neuter third-person singular pronoun in English other than the overly impersonal "it", "they" seems to have been pressed into service instead.
Cheers,
...But no, there is no grammar police that will whack you in the knee caps with a baseball bat if you use a word wrong.
... Unless you go to Catholic school, in which case the nuns may well whack you in the knuckles with a ruler if you use a word wrong^Wincorrectly.
:-P
Cheers,
I thought the whole point of this sub-thread was pedantry? :) If so, linguistic conservativism is more the rule than vernacular use.
As a simple rule of thumb for who / whom, consider he / him or they / them. This may sound a bit tortured in question syntax such as in the corrected example in my previous post, but it still provides a useful and quick-and-easy guide to when to put the "m" on the end of "whom".
Pedantry aside, yes, in the daily vernacular, many (most?) Americans that I've spoken with don't consistently use "whom" correctly, suggesting that this usage is indeed deprecated and on the way out. I have no idea if this is a pondian phenomenon, where perhaps UK or Australian or NZ English speakers might use "whom" more often; I am likewise ignorant of the frequency of usage by Canadian or Indian speakers of English. Such a difference, if present, might indicate laxer grammar education in the US.
Cheers,
"To whom does the license plate belong?" (more correct) or "Who does that license plate belong to?" (less correct)
Two 'to's is one to too many.
Your second example is incorrect -- since "who" is the indirect object of the preposition "to", even if that "to" comes at the end of the sentence, it would again have to be "whom" to be correct:
"Whom does that license plate belong to?"
Cheers,
Is it any wonder this gets confusing? Every drug has a minimum of three different names: The unpronounceable chemical name, the generic name, and the brand name.
The names for that erectile dysfunction drug aren't all that bad:
1-[4-ethoxy-3-(6,7-dihydro-1-methyl- 7-oxo-3-propyl-1H-pyrazolo[4,3-d]pyrimidin-5-yl) phenylsulfonyl]-4-methylpiperazine
Viagra
Mycoxaphlopin
...
I'm here all week. Try the veal!
I formatted my post above using generic <ol> and <li> tags, but it appears that Slashdot's code is so broken that these don't format correctly -- using Chrome on Win 7, I see no numbers; the two blocks of text are slightly indented and separated as if by a <br/> tag.
C'mon, guys. CSS shouldn't be that difficult.
There's a subtle difference between sitting in Fergal O'Fuckery's with a Guinness or eight reciting your latest anecdote about what a bunch of filthy idle wankers the Belgians are and crashing an airliner into the Atomium.
Cheers,
Dude...its FUD, not only is it FUD, its FUD by Intel, who went with the PowerVR chip on their new Atom and thus has ZERO Linux support possible!
All AMD said is they haven't got ANDROID support out of the gate...WTF does ANDROID have to do with Linux support?
Last I knew, Android runs on a version of the Linux kernel. So saying that Android can't run on a given chip does at least imply that other versions of the Linux kernel might not run either.
Cheers,
Muslims are fleeing muslim controlled countries, then trying to convert their new country to be run the same way.
you've never met a Muslim who's actually fled their home country have you? hell i'd bet 50/50 you've never had a real conversation with one of Islamic faith. everyone i know certainly does not want to turn this country into something like where they came from (hint: there's a reason they fled.) generally those with enough power who's anti-west statements you hear did not need to flee their home country, and those on the streets inciting violence are just lapping up what they say (and like do not know what their hometowns are like)
It is interesting to note, however, that complaining about how one's new country is not like one's old country is a common staple in *any* immigrant community. I spent years living in Japan, and one sliver of the gaijin community there loved to complain that Japan wasn't the UK/US/Australia etc, and go on and on about how XYZ thing about Japan should be just like it is in the UK/US/Australia etc, and then everything would be so much better.
So there's a certain amount of what the GP says here that rings true. But with their blinders so firmly in place, they probably haven't noticed that this is something that all humans do, to some extent, when transplanted to a new country and culture.
Cheers,
It is is good to see this kind of basic research is still being done. Even as Hewlett Packard has gutted its research capabilities and looks set to suit to its corporate grave, blue-chip IBM shows that it still understands the need for discovery. Though it is perhaps indicative that this team is decidedly not American...
Two years of freeze dried foods and Meals Ready to Eat and your colon will be rioting even with a full stomach.
Just stay away from open flame and you should be all right.
:-P
Thus, "Here's another old scam for your examination". There's a million old scams... merely running them online is not very interesting.
Maybe not interesting, but it *does* make them patentable!
"Quick, running-mate Robin, to the Patent Office!"
Duh nuh nuh nuh nuh nuh, naaaaahh!