I want the cops to have as easy a job as possible. It saves me money in taxes if we don't have to hire as many
Here's another idea... if we didn't have the ludicrous War On Drugs, you'd pay even less in taxes, or have your taxes better spent.
I will co-operate with the police on the War On Drugs to the absolute bare minimum required by the law. If I can print the data and provide it in a hard-to-read font, I will.
It's a pity that Blizzard have shown which side of the war they are on.
"i think the real problem is that so today's critics are the ones that says episodes 4, 5, 6 when they were kids, and when they had a less critical mind to all of the same problems that exist in 1, 2, 3."
That's a poor excuse for some poor films.
I can critically dismantle films as an adult, and while there's a couple of glaring plot holes in Star Wars, it works as a heroic myth. The Phantom Menace just doesn't have that. It has no main protagonist. It has poorly written characters. It has a convoluted, inexplicably complex plot.
Here's the thing: It's actually a higher piece of art than The Phantom Menace. Sit and watch the 1st ten minutes and then see if you want to watch more. I literally watched the whole thing straight from 1 to another.
The guy made me laugh and when I was tired laughing, delivered some really interesting points about things like script, character, that sort of thing.
I don't think they're "determined to screw the blind". They're just greedy bastards.
Now, personally, I don't actually have that much problem with "honest" greed. Google make a ton of money out of making the best search engine. I don't want to stop that.
But these guys are bastards. They constantly lobby to extend copyright beyond what's sensible (it should be about 30 years). They release products which they know are faulty (like movies which are crash marketed because they know that the word-of-mouth will kill it). They'll release compilation albums with new 1 track on it, forcing fans to buy a whole album for 1 track. They introduce some nasty rootkit technologies.
I just never mind seeing these guys getting fucked over. They deserve it.
One thing about climate science is how much all the UK government publicity about it just says "scientists agree". There is nothing anywhere which tries to actually provide analogies or some simple diagrams to give a layman's explanation of why it's happening. Or else they just talk about rising CO2 levels (which don't account for all the supposed rise as I know there's feedback mechanisms in the model).
A lot of geeks and liberals have defended the scientists on the basis of credentials or that multiple groups agree that someone is guilty. Yet I can point to trials where a whole police station worked on a case and all thought a man was the suspect. On that basis, should we send a man to jail? No. Of course not. We expect evidence to be presented and for a judge and jury to prosecute.
The CRU wouldn't even reveal who they obtained the data from.
This is when I started getting skeptical. They could have just listed the organisations and allowed those enquiring to find out. Instead, they forced hundreds of emails, each asking if they had arrangements for every country in the world.
I want to know what motivates them to want to be so obstructive. I'm not saying they haven't followed the letter of the law, but they hardly seem to want to be very open about what they do.
Is it arrogance that their research is so correct or that they have something to hide?
But suffice it to say, when the risk is "the planet" there is a very good reason to follow what TFA is calling "a precautionary approach" even when the likelihood of science being correct is quite low.
Firstly, "the planet" isn't at risk. The planet will spit us out first and then over a period of millienia will restore itself as the sun grows more trees that take the CO2 out of the atmosphere.
Secondly, we can't just determine things based on precaution. Raising carbon taxes or spending billions on windmills or solar factories has an econoimic impact. Computers, the internet and inventions like the container ship have taken something like a billion people out of abject poverty in countries like China and India. Raising carbon taxes has an impact on that growth.
So, what we need to do is get the balance right. We want, through our carbon policies to do the most good for mankind. We neither want to pollute to the point where we destroy things we want, nor do we want to stop things to the point where we also destroy things we want.
"but sometimes you've got to recognize that someone who studied climatology for X years might actually know a thing or two that you can't pick up from reading a blog"
But openness wouldn't hurt. This is science. It should be testable by a mechanism. Someone might decide (as a hobby) to test it (and find it's wrong). It would also silence the sceptics (if it's right).
The Royal Society (a group of scientists) took umbrage against John Harrison's method of determining longitude by using clocks. The Royal Society favoured using stars for navigation. John Harrison wasn't a man with any scientific qualification, yet worked out the best solution to the problem.
I am not an anti-scientific person. I have worked in drug testing and seen what goes on there and mostly trust those drugs precisely because it is open and regulated. The CRU seemed to have nothing like the procedures that the drug companies have.
It is. The unprocessed data was on tape and punchcards, and then the climate unit moved to a building with less storage space, and the unprocessed data got chucked in the landfill. Of course, all this was in the mid-1980s, a fact the conspiracy nuts have a tendency to omit.
The adjusted data set is 33mb. Which presumably means the original is something similar. Which will fit on one tape.
But really, if you're doing scientific research with raw data and can't keep that data, then what the hell are you doing researching in the first place?
Indeed. Personally, I would like to see a bit more skepticism when it comes to science. As in "Hey, show me some data and explain to me why what you say should work before I take your word for it." Or at least go out and do some of your own research before accepting something from some random scientist. Too often news organizations quote someone with some professorial or scientific title and pretend that the quote has value. Unless I know that person and have been able to assess their credibility in some way beforehand, they could have just as well quoted my barber. This presentation issue is a failing of news organizations though. Any person can still do their own filtering.
The whole problem with the Climategate emails is precisely that the public have been nothing but presented to in the UK about global warming. Every government approved websites say "the scientists agree". None of them try to explain (in any way) how the climate models work to show all of this, why it's not just the sun or volcanoes or anything else.
So, a lot of people have until now given the scientists some respect and trust that they are doing good. Along comes Climategate. Along comes revelations that the CRU are being less than fully accomodating with Freedom of Information Requests (I'm sorry but you could have just told people where to get it rather than saying "we don't have it"). Along comes the fact that they don't have the raw records that went in (so can't reproduce).
And what's the response from the government and the scientists? "Don't worry, the scientists all agree". You can keep repeating this, but a lot of people are now very skeptical about the behaviour of the CRU and repeating that they should trust the scientists and hoping that gets their trust back just isn't going to work.
"It's like going to the restaurant of an hotel where guests have to pay less and telling them that you are a guess to get a discount, when in fact you aren't. How do you call that?"
Well, that's deliberately dishonest. Unless Apple explicitly ask someone if they already own a Mac, it's not dishonest. I could be buying that software to bury in a time capsule or use it to prop up a table that's wonky.
Whether it's printer ink or software licenses, manufacturers can go jump in a lake if they think I'm going to just play along with their business models. If Apple don't want me to buy a Mac OSX license for £25 they can refuse to sell it to me at that price.
It's not so much about art but that people who own a company or created a company can take risks that people dropped in to raise the share price for pension companies can't.
One of the most noticeable things in the past few years is just how many successful independent movies there are now.
Cameron would still be loaded. I'm sure he got a cut of Titanic.
I just respect the guy because a lot of people with plenty of money will just do shit to make even more. I don't think Cameron does that. Even if you don't like Titanic, it was an awesome undertaking.
I remember reading something where he said he passed on T3 because he couldn't see a good story. The guy might be one of the biggest assholes in Hollywood, but I'm grateful that he didn't just do it for the cash.
There's some truth in it. Consider that a decade or so ago, a lot of people I know who were on the road had copies of Autoroute for their PCs. Now, everyone uses Google Maps. No-one buys Encarta, they have Wikipedia. And there are flash-based photo editing apps now.
However, the one thing that none of these "thin client" people like to face is that in a lot of places, the internet just doesn't work that well. I go and see a client on the train, and for 40 miles of that journey, I get no signal on my 3G card. So no, I'm not going to have all my email stored in Gmail. I want it on my desktop so I can read it when I want it.
I run Vista 64 and love it. It's rock solid and very good. I don't intend to upgrade my Vista machine, but might upgrade my XP machine to Win 7.
There aren't many "Windows fanboys" for your information. Most people who use Windows do so because it's either good value or because they need it for their work. No-one sits in a Starbucks wearing a beret and trying to look hip by having a Dell.
Vista's problems stem from the name. Early on, it wasn't that good. SP1 was a very big improvement, but the 3 biggest initial problems were a) drivers b) underpowered machines and c) applications that didn't play nice with UAC. All of those are pretty much solved.
The problem is that banning swastikas is just the wrong way around. People only supported the Nazis because of a disastrous economy and a sense that Germany had been badly treated after WW1.
The most important way of keeping the nazis (or someone like them) from rising again is to keep the economy working well.
As for neo-nazis, they're mostly just loonies. They're as useless as UFO fanatics or 9/11 conspiracy guys. They'll never be savvy enough to gain power anywhere.
The next fascists won't use Nazi symbolism, they'll do something completely different.
I'm running an Android phone, and it really tickled me when the 3GS came out and I had about 95% of the new features.
I already think that the HTC Magic is a great phone. I literally can't think of an app that I need that isn't already on Android. There's source code on Google Code as well as the app store. I've got a choice of tethering apps, depending upon if I want wi-fi or USB.
I once considered an open source PDF library (for.net) and contacted the developer about having a support contract for it.
Generally, I don't mind supporting FOSS software myself, but the format of pdf is a subject in its own right. I didn't even get a reply, so went with the paid software.
The time they spent is tiny and gets their names in the papers, makes them look like they're not in bed with "the man".
Bono likes to rail against governments not spending money on Africa. Then what do U2 do with their tax affairs? Move them to the Netherlands where they get better tax breaks.
All those rock stars who played at Live 8? How do you think they got there? By ship, or by private jet?
I'm not saying there aren't people who don't practise what they preach. There are the likes of Billy Bragg who played benefit gig after benefit gig to support striking miners, who went and taught at a local college to help people, who chose less lucrative album deals in order to set lower prices to fans.
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I want the cops to have as easy a job as possible. It saves me money in taxes if we don't have to hire as many
Here's another idea... if we didn't have the ludicrous War On Drugs, you'd pay even less in taxes, or have your taxes better spent.
I will co-operate with the police on the War On Drugs to the absolute bare minimum required by the law. If I can print the data and provide it in a hard-to-read font, I will.
It's a pity that Blizzard have shown which side of the war they are on.
That's a poor excuse for some poor films.
I can critically dismantle films as an adult, and while there's a couple of glaring plot holes in Star Wars, it works as a heroic myth. The Phantom Menace just doesn't have that. It has no main protagonist. It has poorly written characters. It has a convoluted, inexplicably complex plot.
Here's the thing: It's actually a higher piece of art than The Phantom Menace. Sit and watch the 1st ten minutes and then see if you want to watch more. I literally watched the whole thing straight from 1 to another.
The guy made me laugh and when I was tired laughing, delivered some really interesting points about things like script, character, that sort of thing.
I don't think they're "determined to screw the blind". They're just greedy bastards.
Now, personally, I don't actually have that much problem with "honest" greed. Google make a ton of money out of making the best search engine. I don't want to stop that.
But these guys are bastards. They constantly lobby to extend copyright beyond what's sensible (it should be about 30 years). They release products which they know are faulty (like movies which are crash marketed because they know that the word-of-mouth will kill it). They'll release compilation albums with new 1 track on it, forcing fans to buy a whole album for 1 track. They introduce some nasty rootkit technologies.
I just never mind seeing these guys getting fucked over. They deserve it.
Interesting post.
One thing about climate science is how much all the UK government publicity about it just says "scientists agree". There is nothing anywhere which tries to actually provide analogies or some simple diagrams to give a layman's explanation of why it's happening. Or else they just talk about rising CO2 levels (which don't account for all the supposed rise as I know there's feedback mechanisms in the model).
A lot of geeks and liberals have defended the scientists on the basis of credentials or that multiple groups agree that someone is guilty. Yet I can point to trials where a whole police station worked on a case and all thought a man was the suspect. On that basis, should we send a man to jail? No. Of course not. We expect evidence to be presented and for a judge and jury to prosecute.
The CRU wouldn't even reveal who they obtained the data from.
This is when I started getting skeptical. They could have just listed the organisations and allowed those enquiring to find out. Instead, they forced hundreds of emails, each asking if they had arrangements for every country in the world.
I want to know what motivates them to want to be so obstructive. I'm not saying they haven't followed the letter of the law, but they hardly seem to want to be very open about what they do.
Is it arrogance that their research is so correct or that they have something to hide?
But suffice it to say, when the risk is "the planet" there is a very good reason to follow what TFA is calling "a precautionary approach" even when the likelihood of science being correct is quite low.
Firstly, "the planet" isn't at risk. The planet will spit us out first and then over a period of millienia will restore itself as the sun grows more trees that take the CO2 out of the atmosphere.
Secondly, we can't just determine things based on precaution. Raising carbon taxes or spending billions on windmills or solar factories has an econoimic impact. Computers, the internet and inventions like the container ship have taken something like a billion people out of abject poverty in countries like China and India. Raising carbon taxes has an impact on that growth.
So, what we need to do is get the balance right. We want, through our carbon policies to do the most good for mankind. We neither want to pollute to the point where we destroy things we want, nor do we want to stop things to the point where we also destroy things we want.
"but sometimes you've got to recognize that someone who studied climatology for X years might actually know a thing or two that you can't pick up from reading a blog"
But openness wouldn't hurt. This is science. It should be testable by a mechanism. Someone might decide (as a hobby) to test it (and find it's wrong). It would also silence the sceptics (if it's right).
The Royal Society (a group of scientists) took umbrage against John Harrison's method of determining longitude by using clocks. The Royal Society favoured using stars for navigation. John Harrison wasn't a man with any scientific qualification, yet worked out the best solution to the problem.
I am not an anti-scientific person. I have worked in drug testing and seen what goes on there and mostly trust those drugs precisely because it is open and regulated. The CRU seemed to have nothing like the procedures that the drug companies have.
It is. The unprocessed data was on tape and punchcards, and then the climate unit moved to a building with less storage space, and the unprocessed data got chucked in the landfill. Of course, all this was in the mid-1980s, a fact the conspiracy nuts have a tendency to omit.
The adjusted data set is 33mb. Which presumably means the original is something similar. Which will fit on one tape.
But really, if you're doing scientific research with raw data and can't keep that data, then what the hell are you doing researching in the first place?
Indeed. Personally, I would like to see a bit more skepticism when it comes to science. As in "Hey, show me some data and explain to me why what you say should work before I take your word for it." Or at least go out and do some of your own research before accepting something from some random scientist. Too often news organizations quote someone with some professorial or scientific title and pretend that the quote has value. Unless I know that person and have been able to assess their credibility in some way beforehand, they could have just as well quoted my barber. This presentation issue is a failing of news organizations though. Any person can still do their own filtering.
The whole problem with the Climategate emails is precisely that the public have been nothing but presented to in the UK about global warming. Every government approved websites say "the scientists agree". None of them try to explain (in any way) how the climate models work to show all of this, why it's not just the sun or volcanoes or anything else.
So, a lot of people have until now given the scientists some respect and trust that they are doing good. Along comes Climategate. Along comes revelations that the CRU are being less than fully accomodating with Freedom of Information Requests (I'm sorry but you could have just told people where to get it rather than saying "we don't have it"). Along comes the fact that they don't have the raw records that went in (so can't reproduce).
And what's the response from the government and the scientists? "Don't worry, the scientists all agree". You can keep repeating this, but a lot of people are now very skeptical about the behaviour of the CRU and repeating that they should trust the scientists and hoping that gets their trust back just isn't going to work.
"It's like going to the restaurant of an hotel where guests have to pay less and telling them that you are a guess to get a discount, when in fact you aren't. How do you call that?"
Well, that's deliberately dishonest. Unless Apple explicitly ask someone if they already own a Mac, it's not dishonest. I could be buying that software to bury in a time capsule or use it to prop up a table that's wonky.
Whether it's printer ink or software licenses, manufacturers can go jump in a lake if they think I'm going to just play along with their business models. If Apple don't want me to buy a Mac OSX license for £25 they can refuse to sell it to me at that price.
It's not so much about art but that people who own a company or created a company can take risks that people dropped in to raise the share price for pension companies can't.
One of the most noticeable things in the past few years is just how many successful independent movies there are now.
Cameron would still be loaded. I'm sure he got a cut of Titanic.
I just respect the guy because a lot of people with plenty of money will just do shit to make even more. I don't think Cameron does that. Even if you don't like Titanic, it was an awesome undertaking.
I remember reading something where he said he passed on T3 because he couldn't see a good story. The guy might be one of the biggest assholes in Hollywood, but I'm grateful that he didn't just do it for the cash.
There's some truth in it. Consider that a decade or so ago, a lot of people I know who were on the road had copies of Autoroute for their PCs. Now, everyone uses Google Maps. No-one buys Encarta, they have Wikipedia. And there are flash-based photo editing apps now.
However, the one thing that none of these "thin client" people like to face is that in a lot of places, the internet just doesn't work that well. I go and see a client on the train, and for 40 miles of that journey, I get no signal on my 3G card. So no, I'm not going to have all my email stored in Gmail. I want it on my desktop so I can read it when I want it.
I run Vista 64 and love it. It's rock solid and very good. I don't intend to upgrade my Vista machine, but might upgrade my XP machine to Win 7.
There aren't many "Windows fanboys" for your information. Most people who use Windows do so because it's either good value or because they need it for their work. No-one sits in a Starbucks wearing a beret and trying to look hip by having a Dell.
Vista's problems stem from the name. Early on, it wasn't that good. SP1 was a very big improvement, but the 3 biggest initial problems were a) drivers b) underpowered machines and c) applications that didn't play nice with UAC. All of those are pretty much solved.
There isn't much that runs on a Mac that doesn't run on a PC, and there are always equivalent apps that are very close.
Do you really think that the next fascists will march behind the swastika? You think that a future Joseph Goebbles would use that iconography again?
The next fascists will look nothing like the Nazis at all.
The problem is that banning swastikas is just the wrong way around. People only supported the Nazis because of a disastrous economy and a sense that Germany had been badly treated after WW1.
The most important way of keeping the nazis (or someone like them) from rising again is to keep the economy working well.
As for neo-nazis, they're mostly just loonies. They're as useless as UFO fanatics or 9/11 conspiracy guys. They'll never be savvy enough to gain power anywhere.
The next fascists won't use Nazi symbolism, they'll do something completely different.
I'm running an Android phone, and it really tickled me when the 3GS came out and I had about 95% of the new features.
I already think that the HTC Magic is a great phone. I literally can't think of an app that I need that isn't already on Android. There's source code on Google Code as well as the app store. I've got a choice of tethering apps, depending upon if I want wi-fi or USB.
I once considered an open source PDF library (for .net) and contacted the developer about having a support contract for it.
Generally, I don't mind supporting FOSS software myself, but the format of pdf is a subject in its own right. I didn't even get a reply, so went with the paid software.
Universities have the sort of supercomputers capable of running Far Cry.
http://sourceforge.net/project/shownotes.php?group_id=171310&release_id=598227
I guess it's nice having such cutting edge technology...
The time they spent is tiny and gets their names in the papers, makes them look like they're not in bed with "the man".
Bono likes to rail against governments not spending money on Africa. Then what do U2 do with their tax affairs? Move them to the Netherlands where they get better tax breaks.
All those rock stars who played at Live 8? How do you think they got there? By ship, or by private jet?
I'm not saying there aren't people who don't practise what they preach. There are the likes of Billy Bragg who played benefit gig after benefit gig to support striking miners, who went and taught at a local college to help people, who chose less lucrative album deals in order to set lower prices to fans.