It has been stated repeatedly on slashdot that the historical record of temperatures does not show that such a rapid change in global temperatures may occur. It has been postulated here and elsewhere that only human activity can facilitate such a rapid increase in temperature. This is real physical evidence that such a change is possible where human activity does not exist.
This is not an idealized mathematical model. Believe it or not, not all such accepted models show rapid heating to be possible in the absence of human activity. This is real world data that shows it is possible.
Probably has nothing to do with the sun, if your bullshit argument is to be believed.
I never said there weren't other factors, but without the sun both of these planets would have temperatures near 3 K, and the sun is the primary reason they are so much hotter than this. Add to that, the fact that Venus could not have a gaseous atmosphere were it not for the sun.
So yes, the sun most certainly is the primary factor.
WTF? It's practically the only thing heating up these planets in the first place. What could possibly have more of an impact on global temperatures than the sun?
That means it could also offset the cost of a funeral. Cremation is much too expensive, and you don't really get anything in return. This way, you can actually make money while dealing with your beloved family members remains. I'll bet your 250 lb mother could make more than 20 gal of bio-diesel.
These kind of numbers are pretty-much meaningless. If you don't consider all of the business' costs, you're basically just throwing things out at random in an effort to make the per-chip cost look much lower than it really is. Most companies require all of their business units to stay in business. The costs of advertising, R&D, management, and construction of infrastructure are not trivial, and the company would not survive if they did not spend money in these things. If Intel really had a 90% profit margin, their stock would be worth a lot more than it is.
I hate to sound cynical, but I don't think it's the federal governments job to provide evacuation before a catastrophe. If mayor ray is so in touch with the plight of the common man, maybe he should've actually provided a way out of the city for people who could not come by their own transportation. He could use school busses and what not.
But besides that, the super-dome was engineered to withstand a hurricane, and had food and supplies for thousands of people. What they didn't count on was that levies would breach and people would be stuck there for a long time. That means they had no plan to get people out of the super-dome once they were there.
And no, the government can't just pick them up and move them at a moment's notice. When the military deploys overseas, it is the result of months of planning and preparation. Not to mention that a large scale deployment requires access to at least a well developed airfield, and preferably the ability for ships to dock and deploy equipment and personnel. New Orleans had neither at the time of the emergency.
In the face of a lack of necessary planning and preparation we were left in a situation where thousands of people were left for days to fend for themselves while several levels of government made an uncoordinated attempt to provide aid.
To say that this disaster had something to do with how some people might vote is disgusting, offensive, and ignorant. You should try-thinking for yourself once and a while instead of just reading and regurgitating what you read on BBC.
They have to be joking. We don't need socialized software and entertainment. That's just ridiculous. I'm not going to pay some stupid nerd to sit in his mommy's basement and make CG porn. There's a reason we use the free market system to take care of this kind of thing.
Saying that violating copyright is theft is not a logic flaw, it simply depends what definition of theft you are using.
"A comparison between data copying and physical theft is always going to be wrong."
If you say that theft deprives someone of a resource to which they otherwise would've had access, then violating copyright is theft. Violating copyright may deprive the author of a resource (money) to which they otherwise would've had access (had copyright been followed), thereby fulfilling the definition of theft laid out above.
Maybe you should actually learn something about logic before you assume you are proficient at it.
The problem is not that many scientific theories are wrong, we all knew that. The problem is that a majority of published scientific papers are provably wrong at the time of publication, and the author should've known that it was wrong, but is too stupid and/or busy to publish a correct one.
Scientific papers are usually written by grad-students trying to earn a degree, and that is usually the only real purpose they will ever serve. The project I am working on now is a continuation of the work that was carried out by someone who now has a PhD. Nearest I can tell, one of the important equations he used was not appropriate for our equipment. It's just a +/- error, but it's a pretty big deal in terms of the data you get. He also made some rather inappropriate assumptions. A paper was published from his work.
People need to realize that "scientific journals" are simply catalogues of the work that has been done by various grad-students and do not necessary reflect reality. I'm not saying they're not useful, I'm just saying that they aren't often correct.
"Now, if they passed these benefits along to the public, either through paying their employees more or hiring more people, that would be a good thing."
What about charging less to their customers? That's what they do now.
Are you saying they should hire more employees and then give them meaningless, unproductive jobs. That's stupid. If you're saying they should expand their operations (like by offering a wider array of services) that would make sense, they're also doing that. How about if they pay their employees more per hour, but then work them for fewer hours?
"If they used it to eliminate workers and pay their shareholders and executives more, that would be a bad thing, since it benefits the fewest number of people."
That is not true, it depends how many shareholders and how many employees there are. I think I wal-mart's case, many of the employees are shareholders, but they also have a lot of shareholders who are not employees. By the way, executives are workers and their positions are made irrelevant and eliminated by technology just the same as any other employee.
Yours is a typical anti-industrialist argument. Change is bad because it eliminates work. But that assumes that people want to work in the first place. If people wanted to operate a check-out line, you wouldn't have to pay them to do it. So, no it's not bad to get rid of these kind of shitty, meaningless jobs that no one wants.
It is also possible to transmit power wirelessly, maybe that's part of the answer. You could power the tables at the coffee shop, and all you'd have to do to "plug in" your laptop is set it on the table.
"A better approach is to ground the high moral consideration we give humans on their developed traits, such as self-consiousness, a capacity to suffer and enjoy, and a desire to live"
The particular traits listed here are all hard to define and not necessarily relevant. They are traits that are used to describe why people are more worthy of life than other life-forms.
Self-consciousness supposedly refers to an intelligence that is aware of itself and the effects of it's actions. It is a trait that could easily be ascribed to, say, a software control system that can predict the results of changes made by said system. Many people do not see this kind of behavior as "self-conscious" simply because it seems rudimentary. In my opinion, people will not accept this interpretation of self-consciousness simply because it does not allow people to be "better" than everything else.
Suffer and enjoy could simply mean responding to positive and negative feedback, there's nothing magical there, any thing generally considered to be living does that.
A desire to live, again could be ascribed to almost any living organism (also, some humans do not have this trait).
I think that the only rational way to prescribe morality is in the context of society. After-all, the purpose of morality is to promote society. Biology really doesn't have much to do with it.
So to say that "less than 1% of its DNA is different from all other organisms save other humans" is not relevant. What is relevant is that many human embryos have the potential to become members of society.
This also removes ambiguities like whether or not other life-forms have rights. As long as it is good for society, the destruction of plant or animal life is good, whether or not we ascribe some transcendental property such as self-consciousness to such life.
It is because we haven't had time to adequately address the moral concerns such activity raises.
It was largely agreed at the end of the second world war that the human experimentation that went on in NAZI germany was wrong. This is despite the numerous real medical advancements that were made as a result of such experimentation. Most reasonable individuals agreed that the societal cost performing compulsory experiments on essentially random members of society was greater than the benefit of the resulting medical knowledge.
It has since been agreed that, to some extent, animal experiment is okay as long as certain moral guidelines are followed. This is because cruelty toward animals has a dehumanizing effect on the human participant (as evidenced by the fact that most serial killers got their start with animals).
This puts us in a tricky situation when it comes to embryos and cloning. On the one hand, it is well established that an embryo is not the same as a person, on the other hand, an embryo has the potential the become a living, breathing member of society. So where do you draw the line? If experimentation on embryos is not human experimentation, is is certainly the cousin of human experimentation.
I'm not saying that the cost is not worth the benefit, I am only saying that there is a cost, and that we need to decide how far down the path toward human experimentation we can go before the costs outweigh the benefits.
I sympathize with flames more every day. This comment is so much simpler and more elegant that what I probably would've written, and it gets the point across much better. There's no reasoning with the self-absorbed eurotrash on this website, so why even bother? When it comes to assholes like them, it's better to take the tough love approach, except without the love.
Except that all British Citizens have paid for this music whether they chose to or not. That would be the same as if the government charged everyone $15,000 and then gave everyone a "free" car. It's not exactly fair to the competition.
What, you mean like literally any other food item? Yeah, and who would pay for software when you can write your own, or buy a desk when it's so easy to build your own out of plywood. Who would pay for beer when it's so cheep to make it yourself?
Think about it, if pot were commercially produced, and sold at a price similar to tobacco, who would go through the hassle of growing it them-self.
You should buy from people who offer goods or services which seem like a fair exchange to you. If you do not like the terms that big record labels attach to their music, you don't have to accept them. What's that? But you still want their music? Well, they don't have to sell it to you on your terms if they don't want to, the same way you didn't have to buy it on theirs.
The fact that people still buy it despite the restrictions means that the pleasure of listening to the music must be worth the headache of dealing with the DRM. If it weren't true, the record companies wouldn't be making money.
The problem is that, thanks to liberal arts degrees, a typical 4-year degree won't really make you any more than a typical 2-year degree. If you add to that the fact that a 2-year degree is cheeper and more accessible, you have to wonder why so many people don't even consider a 2-year program to be a option. People have this crazy notion that if you can't get a college degree, you must be some kind of fuck up.
You'll definitely make more money if you get a 2-year degree than if you go to college for 2-3 years, get disillusioned and drop out.
The problem with this kind of elitist rhetoric it that it is completely contrary to reality.
College is not so hard that only smart people can get through. College coursework is comprised primarily of mindless busywork and meaningless bullshit. Only a small portion of what is taught is relevant to most students. Moreover 4-year curriculums try to teach theory to many students who only want practical job skills.
In the end, many decide that the degree is not worth their time, since they either already know everything they need, or can learn it better at a 2-year technical college where they will actually have a job waiting for them when they get out of college. And that way they won't end up tens of thousands of dollars in debt.
Teachers in primary education really need stop pushing college to students. College is the right choice for some students, not most. Moreover, colleges need to stop selling their program to parents, and start selling them to students. Most of the college drop-outs I know were pressured into college by their parents who would not accept anything less. Attending college is a decision that should be made by the student.
Jesus, did anyone posting on this thread even read the article summary? It very clearly says that they can challenge the patent for 6 months after any litigation has begun. RTFA next time before you post.
The moderation of this post clearly points to the biggest flaw in the moderation system, retarded moderators.
You also forgot to call the grandparent a jackass for not even reading the entire slashdot post (much less the article) before judging the legislation. I'd imagine he had is mind made up before he even saw the post.
Most of the idiots here on slashdot believe the only good way to reform patents is to do away with them entirely, and they won't even consider anything else.
Slashdot Mirror
It has been stated repeatedly on slashdot that the historical record of temperatures does not show that such a rapid change in global temperatures may occur. It has been postulated here and elsewhere that only human activity can facilitate such a rapid increase in temperature. This is real physical evidence that such a change is possible where human activity does not exist.
This is not an idealized mathematical model. Believe it or not, not all such accepted models show rapid heating to be possible in the absence of human activity. This is real world data that shows it is possible.
Probably has nothing to do with the sun, if your bullshit argument is to be believed.
I never said there weren't other factors, but without the sun both of these planets would have temperatures near 3 K, and the sun is the primary reason they are so much hotter than this. Add to that, the fact that Venus could not have a gaseous atmosphere were it not for the sun.
So yes, the sun most certainly is the primary factor.
It does show that climate can change rapidly on a global scale without the help of man.
"I doubt the sun has THAT much influence"
WTF? It's practically the only thing heating up these planets in the first place. What could possibly have more of an impact on global temperatures than the sun?
That means it could also offset the cost of a funeral. Cremation is much too expensive, and you don't really get anything in return. This way, you can actually make money while dealing with your beloved family members remains. I'll bet your 250 lb mother could make more than 20 gal of bio-diesel.
These kind of numbers are pretty-much meaningless. If you don't consider all of the business' costs, you're basically just throwing things out at random in an effort to make the per-chip cost look much lower than it really is. Most companies require all of their business units to stay in business. The costs of advertising, R&D, management, and construction of infrastructure are not trivial, and the company would not survive if they did not spend money in these things. If Intel really had a 90% profit margin, their stock would be worth a lot more than it is.
I hate to sound cynical, but I don't think it's the federal governments job to provide evacuation before a catastrophe. If mayor ray is so in touch with the plight of the common man, maybe he should've actually provided a way out of the city for people who could not come by their own transportation. He could use school busses and what not.
But besides that, the super-dome was engineered to withstand a hurricane, and had food and supplies for thousands of people. What they didn't count on was that levies would breach and people would be stuck there for a long time. That means they had no plan to get people out of the super-dome once they were there.
And no, the government can't just pick them up and move them at a moment's notice. When the military deploys overseas, it is the result of months of planning and preparation. Not to mention that a large scale deployment requires access to at least a well developed airfield, and preferably the ability for ships to dock and deploy equipment and personnel. New Orleans had neither at the time of the emergency.
In the face of a lack of necessary planning and preparation we were left in a situation where thousands of people were left for days to fend for themselves while several levels of government made an uncoordinated attempt to provide aid.
To say that this disaster had something to do with how some people might vote is disgusting, offensive, and ignorant. You should try-thinking for yourself once and a while instead of just reading and regurgitating what you read on BBC.
They have to be joking. We don't need socialized software and entertainment. That's just ridiculous. I'm not going to pay some stupid nerd to sit in his mommy's basement and make CG porn. There's a reason we use the free market system to take care of this kind of thing.
It's strange that you seem to show such distain for a well tested strategy that has worked well for us longer than anyone could've expected.
Well, as long as they can keep your blood flowing(assuming you still have blood) you should be okay.
Saying that violating copyright is theft is not a logic flaw, it simply depends what definition of theft you are using.
"A comparison between data copying and physical theft is always going to be wrong."
If you say that theft deprives someone of a resource to which they otherwise would've had access, then violating copyright is theft. Violating copyright may deprive the author of a resource (money) to which they otherwise would've had access (had copyright been followed), thereby fulfilling the definition of theft laid out above.
Maybe you should actually learn something about logic before you assume you are proficient at it.
The problem is not that many scientific theories are wrong, we all knew that. The problem is that a majority of published scientific papers are provably wrong at the time of publication, and the author should've known that it was wrong, but is too stupid and/or busy to publish a correct one.
Scientific papers are usually written by grad-students trying to earn a degree, and that is usually the only real purpose they will ever serve. The project I am working on now is a continuation of the work that was carried out by someone who now has a PhD. Nearest I can tell, one of the important equations he used was not appropriate for our equipment. It's just a +/- error, but it's a pretty big deal in terms of the data you get. He also made some rather inappropriate assumptions. A paper was published from his work.
People need to realize that "scientific journals" are simply catalogues of the work that has been done by various grad-students and do not necessary reflect reality. I'm not saying they're not useful, I'm just saying that they aren't often correct.
"Now, if they passed these benefits along to the public, either through paying their employees more or hiring more people, that would be a good thing."
What about charging less to their customers? That's what they do now.
Are you saying they should hire more employees and then give them meaningless, unproductive jobs. That's stupid. If you're saying they should expand their operations (like by offering a wider array of services) that would make sense, they're also doing that. How about if they pay their employees more per hour, but then work them for fewer hours?
"If they used it to eliminate workers and pay their shareholders and executives more, that would be a bad thing, since it benefits the fewest number of people."
That is not true, it depends how many shareholders and how many employees there are. I think I wal-mart's case, many of the employees are shareholders, but they also have a lot of shareholders who are not employees. By the way, executives are workers and their positions are made irrelevant and eliminated by technology just the same as any other employee.
Yours is a typical anti-industrialist argument. Change is bad because it eliminates work. But that assumes that people want to work in the first place. If people wanted to operate a check-out line, you wouldn't have to pay them to do it. So, no it's not bad to get rid of these kind of shitty, meaningless jobs that no one wants.
Perhaps intel plans to leave the server/imbedded market to IBM, and focus of personal computers (which will pretty-much all be laptops).
It is also possible to transmit power wirelessly, maybe that's part of the answer. You could power the tables at the coffee shop, and all you'd have to do to "plug in" your laptop is set it on the table.
"A better approach is to ground the high moral consideration we give humans on their developed traits, such as self-consiousness, a capacity to suffer and enjoy, and a desire to live"
The particular traits listed here are all hard to define and not necessarily relevant. They are traits that are used to describe why people are more worthy of life than other life-forms.
Self-consciousness supposedly refers to an intelligence that is aware of itself and the effects of it's actions. It is a trait that could easily be ascribed to, say, a software control system that can predict the results of changes made by said system. Many people do not see this kind of behavior as "self-conscious" simply because it seems rudimentary. In my opinion, people will not accept this interpretation of self-consciousness simply because it does not allow people to be "better" than everything else.
Suffer and enjoy could simply mean responding to positive and negative feedback, there's nothing magical there, any thing generally considered to be living does that.
A desire to live, again could be ascribed to almost any living organism (also, some humans do not have this trait).
I think that the only rational way to prescribe morality is in the context of society. After-all, the purpose of morality is to promote society. Biology really doesn't have much to do with it.
So to say that "less than 1% of its DNA is different from all other organisms save other humans" is not relevant. What is relevant is that many human embryos have the potential to become members of society.
This also removes ambiguities like whether or not other life-forms have rights. As long as it is good for society, the destruction of plant or animal life is good, whether or not we ascribe some transcendental property such as self-consciousness to such life.
It is because we haven't had time to adequately address the moral concerns such activity raises.
It was largely agreed at the end of the second world war that the human experimentation that went on in NAZI germany was wrong. This is despite the numerous real medical advancements that were made as a result of such experimentation. Most reasonable individuals agreed that the societal cost performing compulsory experiments on essentially random members of society was greater than the benefit of the resulting medical knowledge.
It has since been agreed that, to some extent, animal experiment is okay as long as certain moral guidelines are followed. This is because cruelty toward animals has a dehumanizing effect on the human participant (as evidenced by the fact that most serial killers got their start with animals).
This puts us in a tricky situation when it comes to embryos and cloning. On the one hand, it is well established that an embryo is not the same as a person, on the other hand, an embryo has the potential the become a living, breathing member of society. So where do you draw the line? If experimentation on embryos is not human experimentation, is is certainly the cousin of human experimentation.
I'm not saying that the cost is not worth the benefit, I am only saying that there is a cost, and that we need to decide how far down the path toward human experimentation we can go before the costs outweigh the benefits.
I sympathize with flames more every day. This comment is so much simpler and more elegant that what I probably would've written, and it gets the point across much better. There's no reasoning with the self-absorbed eurotrash on this website, so why even bother? When it comes to assholes like them, it's better to take the tough love approach, except without the love.
Except that all British Citizens have paid for this music whether they chose to or not. That would be the same as if the government charged everyone $15,000 and then gave everyone a "free" car. It's not exactly fair to the competition.
What, you mean like literally any other food item? Yeah, and who would pay for software when you can write your own, or buy a desk when it's so easy to build your own out of plywood. Who would pay for beer when it's so cheep to make it yourself? Think about it, if pot were commercially produced, and sold at a price similar to tobacco, who would go through the hassle of growing it them-self.
This is your lesson in capitalism for the day.
You should buy from people who offer goods or services which seem like a fair exchange to you. If you do not like the terms that big record labels attach to their music, you don't have to accept them. What's that? But you still want their music? Well, they don't have to sell it to you on your terms if they don't want to, the same way you didn't have to buy it on theirs.
The fact that people still buy it despite the restrictions means that the pleasure of listening to the music must be worth the headache of dealing with the DRM. If it weren't true, the record companies wouldn't be making money.
The problem is that, thanks to liberal arts degrees, a typical 4-year degree won't really make you any more than a typical 2-year degree. If you add to that the fact that a 2-year degree is cheeper and more accessible, you have to wonder why so many people don't even consider a 2-year program to be a option. People have this crazy notion that if you can't get a college degree, you must be some kind of fuck up.
You'll definitely make more money if you get a 2-year degree than if you go to college for 2-3 years, get disillusioned and drop out.
The problem with this kind of elitist rhetoric it that it is completely contrary to reality.
College is not so hard that only smart people can get through. College coursework is comprised primarily of mindless busywork and meaningless bullshit. Only a small portion of what is taught is relevant to most students. Moreover 4-year curriculums try to teach theory to many students who only want practical job skills.
In the end, many decide that the degree is not worth their time, since they either already know everything they need, or can learn it better at a 2-year technical college where they will actually have a job waiting for them when they get out of college. And that way they won't end up tens of thousands of dollars in debt.
Teachers in primary education really need stop pushing college to students. College is the right choice for some students, not most. Moreover, colleges need to stop selling their program to parents, and start selling them to students. Most of the college drop-outs I know were pressured into college by their parents who would not accept anything less. Attending college is a decision that should be made by the student.
Jesus, did anyone posting on this thread even read the article summary? It very clearly says that they can challenge the patent for 6 months after any litigation has begun. RTFA next time before you post.
The moderation of this post clearly points to the biggest flaw in the moderation system, retarded moderators.
You also forgot to call the grandparent a jackass for not even reading the entire slashdot post (much less the article) before judging the legislation. I'd imagine he had is mind made up before he even saw the post.
Most of the idiots here on slashdot believe the only good way to reform patents is to do away with them entirely, and they won't even consider anything else.