That's a positive? You can't even get a price unless you create an account with them and "login". Unless whoever you're doing the research for provides you with the budget or has it someplace you can get to it (and has bought the seats so you aren't fighting everyone for your chance to use it) you're going to be shelling out some cash.
As far as working on bugs or shortcomings, your not guaranteed anything. Like any other product your bug/feature/whatever goes into a priority queue. If you're a lowly grad student you're going to be taking a back seat to their bigger customers. If it's a critical bug, then they'll probably fix it. Anything else though is up to them.
MatPlotLib is free. It's open source. If there is a bug, you can either report it or fix yourself. You're not tied down to a vendor. If you don't like something you can change it or fork it. If you want to fix a shortcoming you don't have to wait.
MATLAB is a good tool, but price is not an advantage I would tout.
Graphics: Matlab has the most feature-rich and usable graphical environment of any of its would-be competitors, none of which do 3D well.
Oh good $DIETY no it doesn't, at least not on all platforms. Perhaps the versions I've seen are old, but the thing was an enormous resource hog that was slow to render and would practically bring a dual-core notebook to it's knees. WorldWind and IDV rendered faster than MATLAB, and it was doing far more and they are written in Java.
Speed: Core Matlab operations are highly optimized in C; properly vectorized Matlab code will run much faster than what most programmers could write in C themselves.
The same can be said about any native highly optimized math library. Granted their API and language make it easy to use, but fast math operations are not unique MATLAB.
Interoperability:
I've never used MATLAB's interoperability features so can't comment on them. The big sticking point with python's interoperability is when it comes to passing objects around. Simple types are easy enough but complex objects can make things obtuse. Does MATLAB have some sort of object translation layer? If so, that is a definite plus. If you mean only calling methods with basic types, well then there really isn't much of a win there.
Documentation:
In my experience I've found commercial documentation is usually better than open source documentation. There are exceptions to this, but this is a fair point in this case. Then again, MatPlotLib is fairly "new". But point taken.
Dev Environment: the debugging tools, profiler, and lint integration are really helpful.
Eclipse+PyDev. Or if your old school you can use the command line tools for debugging and profiling. Point being, Python has a lot a lot a lot a lot a lot A LOT a lot of tools and is almost fanatically embraced by the open source community. It's cross platform and has thousands of libraries. MatPlotLib, Scipy, Numpy, and the others are just extensions to a powerful multi-purpose language. If you also apply blitz and the numerical C libs, then python ranks right up there when it comes to computation.
Point being, people can now get MATLAB like functionality without paying out the nose.
Don't get me wrong, I think MATLAB still has advantages and in some cases significant ones (especially if you're looking for specific tool-sets). But the ones you mentioned aren't the best ones to use.
Things get a little weird when your dealing with general relativity and extreme space-time distortions. Also, space is mostly empty space. Even a black hole of this magnitude isn't going to have that strong of a pull over significant distances. For example, you'd feel only Earth-like acceleration at a distance of 1/10th of a light year. Our nearest stellar neighbor is 4.7 light years away. At that distance the acceleration would be.04 m/s^2.
Unless this thing was going through the dense core of the galaxy there's a pretty good chance it wouldn't be hauling much of anything except for it's old accretion disk.
Remember what the Internet is. It's a network of privately owned computers, linked together.
Your missing the part how the "network" itself was paid for by the public. We ALLOW private companies to manage it.
Each individual has the say as to what happens with their computers and their network, each individual has every right to say how to route their data.
Individual yes. But I'm not routing packets through YOUR network. My packets are going through the PUBLIC network managed by PRIVATE companies, and since it is the public network I don't expect for packets to get fucked with.
Engineering and internal self-regulation has always solved more problems than outside regulation done by force.
No, problems have been solved by telecos whining to congress that they need more funds to build out the network while simultaneously throttling connections, throwing on hidden caps, etc. . Companies want money and the easier the better.
This is how the Internet has always operated, why are we now criminalizing this idea of Internet freedom?
It use to be free before Telecos started testing new "strategies" to screw people over. Now it's only a matter of time before we get walled gardens. Or have you not been paying attention to all the crap telecos have been trying to pull over the last few years.
Sure, we'll just turn everything over to profit seeking companies and hope that their collective goodwill and morals will prevent them from plundering the pockets of Joe Public for a 56K connection to sites ONLY offered by said corporations, even though they running it over PUBLICLY PAID FOR LINES AND LAND.
In fact, corporations are already fucking around with the net. Trusting corporations is like trusting pedophile priests at an alter-boy convention.
Do you think that we would have seen all of this innovation on the internet if it had been regulated since day one?
It has been. However, there is no rules or regulations stipulating that a company cannot deliberately filter information it doesn't like/want over public lines. Up to this point, it's been an unspoken "rule" the companies don't fuck with the data going across the network. In search for ever greater profits companies are seriously considering going back to the walled garden again and charging you every time you want to leave it. I wouldn't have a problem with this if this were private networks with private backbones. But it isn't.
Do you think all that innovation and evolution of the internet would have happened if the telecos weren't given a metric assload of public land and dollars? Sorry, but if your taking the public dime then you're going to fucking listen to the public. You don't like it, go roll out your own internet.
Regulation tends to protect the status quo.
Bullshit. Regulations are for preventing Big Fucking Rich Co. from ass raping Joe Public. Anyone who has looked at the history of corporations in this country quickly comes to the conclusion that Big Fucking Rich Co. certainly DOES NOT have the public interest in mind. Corporations are not altruistic, nor are they moral.
I've maintained for awhile now that it would be better to remove the legal/regulatory barriers that keep new upstarts from entering the ISP market
And what regulations would those be? ISP upstarts get swallowed or crushed by the oligopoly. Big Fucking Rich Co. can always under-price Itty Bitty Upstart.
I would much rather see a multitude of companies competing for my business than a regulated duopoly that buys off regulators to protect it's business model.
And I'd like a ton of gold bars dropped off at my house tomorrow morning. It isn't going to happen though. But that's neither here nor there.
Main point: The public paid for the internet. Like public airwaves, we grant certain companies the ability to run it and in the course of providing that service they can make a profit. However, companies now want to start treating it like it's their own private network where they can do whatever the hell they want. Sorry, but it doesn't work that way.
The same method is used in all businesses. Basically, it's "How much can we fuck up/ fuck everyone else before the penalties outweigh the benefits?"
Companies do the stupid, short-sighted, self-serving, amoral things they do because it is profitable to do so. Most transgressions result in warnings or fines. Fines and even threatening to shut down a plant or two isn't going to bother many big companies. In fact, they're likely head to China or India or some other place where restrictions aren't so tight and/or costs aren't so high.
In fact, companies can do some pretty horrendous things before they get called on it. As long as what the company is doing isn't directly affecting the majority of it's consumer market, people don't really care. Hence the hypocrisy of decrying human rights violations in China and Saudi Arabia while buying a new DVD player made in China and gasoline made from Saudi oil. As long as we get what we want cheap, we're willing to rationalize (if not outright accept) whatever corporations are doing even if it is not in our overall best interests as a nation and/or species. We're even willing to topple governments and go to war for it.
At any rate, real change doesn't happen until something really bad happens AND the consumers collectively tell the companies to kiss their asses. It doesn't happen very often. Even this spill is unlikely to do much real change.
It's related to the decline in pirates. Pirates produce methane, and that is processed by midgets to make the methane ice to feed the sharks. Thus completing the great circle of life, as dictated by his noodliness.
I also like to point out that people are orders of magnitude more likely to die from heart disease, cancer, and pretty much any other disease you can think of. Yet we don't see the billions and billions being invested into heart and cancer research like we do in "security".
You're also orders of magnitude more likely to die from stairs, bathtubs, ice, and lightning. Seriously, the amount spent for this supposed security is revolting, and has a serious negative return when compared to what that money could do in a real area where it could benefit such as disease research.
The temperature of the earth is warming over time.
It is. If you can't find a historical temperature graph (or better yet, the IPCC report) then you haven't tried.
The amount of this warming is unprecedented.
Again, this is in the IPCC assessment. However, you need to be more careful with you qualifiers. There may have been times in the past where, perhaps, the temperature has risen more quickly. But hat is important is whether or not it has happened in modern times. Rapid climate changes have never bode well for any creatures alive at the time they happened, including humans.
The warming will continue past the point where the earth's feedback mechanisms can correct it.
Irrelevant. The Earth does not "correct". The climate will stabilize at some point, and life will eventually adapt to the new norm. Typically this process takes hundreds to thousands of years. In the intervening period, a lot of bad things happen to life forms that can not adapt, and even to those that can.
The warming will cause catastrophic impacts to life on earth, particularly humans.
There is already debate whether or not we are in a mass die-off period, mainly as a result of human activities. However, life will continue anyway. We have not yet poisoned the Earth to the point where there will be catastrophic effects on all life.
There will be consequences to warmer temperatures, both beneficial an not. For example, one scenario is a change in weather patterns over the midwest of the US, making it hotter and drier. If that were to occur it would have a very large impact on our food production capabilities. Rising sea levels would affect a large number of coastal cities. So on a so forth. These have been discussed at length and can be found in the IPCC report as well as numerous research papers and articles. You can't tell me you can' find any of this with google.
If you're thinking the end of human civilization, no that is not a given result. If wars break out as a result, then perhaps but the main effects are going to be related to human enterprises the depend on a fairly known and well behaved climate.
The warming is caused by human activity, if not entirely, then mostly.
This is fairly well established. Again, google will turn up tons of sources for this.
What is the optimum temperature (or range) of the Earth?
Irrelevant. Earth has no "optimum" temperature. Nor does life in general. Life adapts to whatever changes happen (usually through adaptation or dying off). Human civilization however depends on a certain climate (not just temperature). If this deviates too strongly or to quickly than it can adversely impact civilization. Oh we'll still be around, but there would be a cost.
When has it been at that temperature in the past?
Irrelevant. Life adapted optimally to climates in the past, as they continue to adapt to climate now. The problem happens when things change to dramatically and to quickly.
Has it ever been outside that temperature in the past?
Again, irrelevant. Life adapts to whatever is the current climate.
How, specifically, do we know this?
Google paleoclimatology. There's quite a wealth of information on the subject.
In particular, how does one define the temperature of the Earth, and how does then measure that?
Ah. It seems you don't have much background in the subject material.
You can either get some books on climatology in general or you do some online research. Once you get fundamental understanding of the basic concepts you should be able to formulate some better questions. So far there is nothing you have asked that hasn't already been addressed and answered many times over.
as opposed to the "other side" who stand to lose a lot of financial backing/future profits/political power if global warming is shown to be a hoax... follow the money on BOTH sides of the argument... you might learn something
What fucking money? Seriously, what the fuck are you talking about?
I am so tired of seeing this bullshit line. Here in the grand old US, go look at the budget and see how much is allocated for climate science. Go ahead. And do you know how many groups/individuals that's spread over?
YOU DO NOT GET RICH BEING A CLIMATE SCIENTIST. The average established climate scientist in the US makes $75K. That's right, being a decent software engineer makes more than a seasoned climate scientist.
So where is this fucking money your talking about? Almost all research is done by government or universities. There's jack shit worth of funding given by private interests. We're talking grad students, civil servants, and university professors. How many of those do you know making millions a year?
So where's the fucking money?
In fact, every year recisions take a chunk of the money allocated for climate research back for other projects. The amount spent world wide on climate science is a sad joke considering its importance.Fo fucks sake, the amount spent on national parks is 10 times more than climate research. You could remove climate research from the budget entirely and your taxes wouldn't even change.
So where's the fucking money?
It ain't there, and it never was there. If you want money you go become a member of Big Fossil Fuel Co. and become their cheerleader. If you want money you sell your soul and scientific credibility and go play in McIntyre's sandbox. Just like the "scientists" who worked for big tobacco showing smoking wasn't dangerous, the real money is in switching camps, because it certainly isn't in climate research.
No one, not a single scientist has put forward a single model that, when using known data and accepted quantities produces a flat or cooler planet with increasing CO2 levels. It has nothing to do with culture. It simply does not exist.
However, as we go back in time we quickly start losing variables in quantity and precision.
Do not confuse climatology and paleoclimatology. They are related but they use different methods to achieve results. The error on paleo modles is larger than the climate models used for present day.In addition, given what the climate models are attempting to do the errors are not that large.
We are at least aware of many radical changes in climate that had nothing to do with humans over the Earth's history.
Indeed. But a number of those climate changes happened in response to global level events. We ARE a global level event. Discounting a near doubling of of a gas known for it's trapping effects in the atmosphere as anything less is naive.
The issues are very complicated, but it's not quite correct to say that scientists are solely interested in "truth".
Scientists aren't interested in truth. That is subjective. They are interested in facts. Of course, nobody is perfect. There will be bad apples.
These biases can affect entire research programs in ways that are more nuanced than simple conspiracies.
Of course. And if it were just a handful of scientists or a particular program then most certainly this is a likely possibility. However, we're talking about the aggregate community of scientists. Hundreds of organizations with thousands of researchers. Are you implying that the entire scientific community is biased towards anything contrary to the current body of work?
No it doesn't. If you look at how much government people use, it is the poor who end up sapping the most.
Yeah. That's right. However, this statement shows the clear lack of depth in your reasoning.
The social programs that help support the 20 million or so poor in this country aren't there to help the poor. Those programs exist to help ensure the rich. How? Social order. Without those programs we would have a 20 million+ group of starving desperate citizens looking at all those haves and wondering why they have to go hungry. People who have nothing left to lose are often the most dangerous.
It only makes sense for people to pay for what they use.
Again, you're showing your lack of depth. If everyone paid for only what they used our social structure would implode. You don't just pay for what you use, you pay for what keeps society running. This also includes ways (even if illusory) of vertical mobility so that at least those that are underpriviliged have the hope of changing their prospects.
A flat tax does that in a fair way...
No it doesn't. There have been several analysis done on the subject.
because the poor still get to have taxpayer funded breaks and the rich don't have to pay for people who make stupid decisions. Why are the poor in poverty? Most of the time they made bad decisions (when the economy is relativity healthy, today a lot of the poor are victims of bad luck, but once the economy improves they will get jobs).
Ah, and now your true colors show through. Poor people are stupid. That's a big brush and your ignorant jackass with the critical thinking skills of a slug for using it.
Grow up. Poor people are poor mainly because they have few if any means of vertical mobility. When you start off poor, you're already starting out at a big disadvantage. If you're really lucky and work hard you can eventually break out of being poor, but it is not "easy" nor is it a matter of just "working harder".
I just love the shallow view of society the well off have.
This is something that most starry-eyed naive future game developers don't realize. Being a game programmer sucks. And the reason why it sucks is because there are 1000 other starry-eyed naive future game developers just like you. You work continuous unrealistic deadlines. Nights, holidays, and weekends are to be forgotten. You will get vacation time and comp days, but you'll never be able to use them. Why? Because you have another ridiculous deadline with a set of ridiculous features being driven by a ridiculous marketing department. Sure you can go on vacation, but someone needs to pick up your "slack" and, oops, now you might not be quite as important to the development team. In fact, I used to keep a sleeping bag in my office (it was used rather frequently).
Why keep you on staff for several years with meager pay raises when they can hire two newly grads for half the price? Oh so what if the work is a little less than quality. We can always patch it later.
The whole mentality of the gaming industry is burn and churn: You get fresh programmers and burn them out so you can churn out games. And they'll keep doing it, because there's nothing like a Screen Actor's Guild or Writer's Guild for game programmers.
But if you live, breath, eat, and shit games by all means sally forth. Just don't expect to have much of a life outside of your job. You may become one of the lucky few who do claw their way out of the Bit Pits, but don't hold your breath. On second thought, you may want to hold your breath. Your less than hygenic, cheetos and tacos fueled, programmer pals get a little ripe after sleeping in the office a week straight.
That's the point of the bill. To make sure that the purchase is parentally responsible.
No, this bill is meant to reinforce the pudding-brained mentality of most parents when it comes to taking an active interest in their children's welfare. Your turning over your parental responsibility to a group of anonymous board members to judge whether or not materials are suitable for your children.
Parental responsibility would be researching what it is your kids are interested in and determining whether or not YOU think it appropriate for your kids, not what some self-important, self-appointed group thinks.
This bill isn't in YOUR business unless you're in the business of selling R-rated materials to minors without parental consent.
R-Rated? By who? Do I vote for these people?
Make no mistake. This law will not do anything to curb selling these arbitrarily rated materials to those who want them and can afford them. It never has.
This hollow argument can be made against anything, and it's just as false in every single case?
Think about it. How many teenage alcoholics are there? How many teenage drug abusers are? How many kids can still get into R rated movies, access porn, buy guns, or do any particular vice you can think off?
In short, making something illegal DOES NOT MEAN you kids do not have access to it. There are always ways around prohibition of any sort, and the only thing making it illegal does it make it riskier to get it.
No, you can't know 100% of the time 100% of what you are doing, but your being really fucking naive if you think adding yet another idiotic prohibition law to the books is going to really change anything. Instead of banning everything under the sun in the name of "protecting the children", how about being a parent for once. Have some frank discussions. Teach your kids about responsibilities and consequences.
If a parent tells their kid they are not allowed to purchase or play a certain game, can that parent ensure that their 15-year-old kid won't still buy that game when said parent tells their kid "yes, you may go to the mall with your friends"?
No they can't. But if you can't trust your kid, his friends, or the other parents that far THEN YOU SHOULDN'T LET YOUR KID GO TO THE FUCKING MALL WITH THEM. If you can't trust your kid that far, what makes you think you know what else your kid might be doing?
Thus, you have the reasoning for rampant genocide.
The reasoning is flawed. It would take tremendous resources to wage an interstellar campaign so it is far more likely that space faring races would not bother with war as it is simply not worth it. Just like why we don't engage in nuclear war here, or use nuclear weapons. The cost is simply to high.
Now, if the race you're dealing with is significantly inferior technologically to your own, that's another story. Any race capable of interstellar travel would be able to sufficiently annihilate us for just a couple of space bucks. Slingshot a few space rocks at us and that's it. We wouldn't even know it was an alien race doing it.
As for killing Hitler when he was baby, only someone who didn't think it through would think that was a good idea. We lack the technological capability to calculate what would happen if that even could be done. Someone else could have come to power somewhere else (like China) and gone on rampage that would make Hitler look like a tavern brawl.
Simply put: why is it that we assume an "advanced" civilization means that it is militarily advanced and not ethically advanced?
The may very well be, but ethics is in the mind of the beholder.
Do you spray chemicals to control infestations in your house? What about mold? Go hunting? How do you feel about other races?
An advanced civilizations may view us as nothing more than primitive ants scurrying across the face of a resource rich planet. Even if they don't, I'm sure they can justify wiping us out to ensure the future of their own race. Especially if we are tasty. Ethics are are just as subjective as morality, and can easily be swayed by the circumstances of the moment, regardless of how advanced a civilization is. It could easily be the case that they view what they are doing as "good" while we view it as "evil".
How can you assert it's a reliable proxy when it "suddenly" becomes unreliable? More to the point, explain to me how you would differentiate between a "good proxy gone bad" and a "bad proxy gone bad" - given that correlation earlier might either be a fluke or an indication that other matching proxies are also bad.
As I said, if out of a set of say 10 proxy data sets you have high correlation, and suddenly one starts deviating it is far more likely that the deviating data set is the culprit, not the other 9 data sets. Especially if the correlations hold over the period of thousands of years.
If you wish to discuss the merits of using particular data sets for particular research, you're going to have to do your own research, get it peer reviewed, and published. But you're going to need more than "gut-feel" to make a convincing argument. If you think that the proxy data sets are ALL worthless, you better have a VERY solid case to demonstrate that hypothesis.
Note that I'm not saying that it isn't possible. It could very well be so. However there is a fairly substantial amount of research out there that seems to indicate otherwise.
That's called cherry picking. Throwing out data that does not agree with your hypothesis, and saving data that does agree with your hypothesis is not science.
Again, yes, that would be cherry picking. And again, that is not that was done. There was a measurable inaccuracy in ONE data set by comparing the proxy to THE ACTUAL TEMPERATURE RECORD. So instead of using KNOWN INCORRECT DATA, they used THE ACTUAL TEMPERATURE RECORD.
That's not cherry picking. Cherry picking would be using the incorrect data set (and only that data set) to show that the globe has been cooling since the beginning of the 20th century. They were correcting a KNOWN FLAW in the data by using ACTUAL TEMPERATURE MEASUREMENTS.
Your point from before was somewhat valid. If the dataset indicated recent issues, why use it at all? People are actually researching why the tree ring proxy ONLY RECENTLY started exhibiting this behavior compared to it's behavior related to the other proxies over the past thousands of years. It could very well turn out that it was just luck and that tree rings will be removed as a legitimate proxy. But that is something the scientists have to research and answer.
Science isn't done by thousands of confirming experiments -> it's done by designing just one experiment that shows a problem.
What? You're joking right? You did not seriously write this? Did you perhaps mean to write something else instead? If not, then what you wrote about science shows that you clearly do not understand how science is conducted.
If you truly believe that then it is no wonder why you're having a hard time. Science is coming up with a hypothesis, gathering data, testing the hypothesis, AND REPEATING IT. You don't "find problems". You come up with an idea and you test it for validity. Then you make sure OTHERS can test your hypothesis, independently, to further verify your hypothesis. If this is done enough times and validated each time, you have a theory.
That's what peer review is about in scientific journals. Scientist post their hypotheses and research backing that hypothesis (or contradicting that hypothesis depending on their standpoint) and give it to other experts in their fields to verify using their own means and methods. If it passes muster, then the paper is published. If not, it is sent back to the author with (sometimes harsh) criticism.
Or maybe it will turn out that all the variation we've seen is simply natural, and ascribing man made origins to it was simply wishful thinking combined with a confirmation bias. No conspiracy needs to exist for AGW to be wrong.
What? Why on Earth would wanting man to be the cause of climate change be "wishful thinking"? Given all the other spectacularly idiotic problems we've created for ours
Slashdot Mirror
Price:
That's a positive? You can't even get a price unless you create an account with them and "login". Unless whoever you're doing the research for provides you with the budget or has it someplace you can get to it (and has bought the seats so you aren't fighting everyone for your chance to use it) you're going to be shelling out some cash.
As far as working on bugs or shortcomings, your not guaranteed anything. Like any other product your bug/feature/whatever goes into a priority queue. If you're a lowly grad student you're going to be taking a back seat to their bigger customers. If it's a critical bug, then they'll probably fix it. Anything else though is up to them.
MatPlotLib is free. It's open source. If there is a bug, you can either report it or fix yourself. You're not tied down to a vendor. If you don't like something you can change it or fork it. If you want to fix a shortcoming you don't have to wait.
MATLAB is a good tool, but price is not an advantage I would tout.
Graphics: Matlab has the most feature-rich and usable graphical environment of any of its would-be competitors, none of which do 3D well.
Oh good $DIETY no it doesn't, at least not on all platforms. Perhaps the versions I've seen are old, but the thing was an enormous resource hog that was slow to render and would practically bring a dual-core notebook to it's knees. WorldWind and IDV rendered faster than MATLAB, and it was doing far more and they are written in Java.
Speed: Core Matlab operations are highly optimized in C; properly vectorized Matlab code will run much faster than what most programmers could write in C themselves.
The same can be said about any native highly optimized math library. Granted their API and language make it easy to use, but fast math operations are not unique MATLAB.
Interoperability:
I've never used MATLAB's interoperability features so can't comment on them. The big sticking point with python's interoperability is when it comes to passing objects around. Simple types are easy enough but complex objects can make things obtuse. Does MATLAB have some sort of object translation layer? If so, that is a definite plus. If you mean only calling methods with basic types, well then there really isn't much of a win there.
Documentation:
In my experience I've found commercial documentation is usually better than open source documentation. There are exceptions to this, but this is a fair point in this case. Then again, MatPlotLib is fairly "new". But point taken.
Dev Environment: the debugging tools, profiler, and lint integration are really helpful.
Eclipse+PyDev. Or if your old school you can use the command line tools for debugging and profiling. Point being, Python has a lot a lot a lot a lot a lot A LOT a lot of tools and is almost fanatically embraced by the open source community. It's cross platform and has thousands of libraries. MatPlotLib, Scipy, Numpy, and the others are just extensions to a powerful multi-purpose language. If you also apply blitz and the numerical C libs, then python ranks right up there when it comes to computation.
Point being, people can now get MATLAB like functionality without paying out the nose.
Don't get me wrong, I think MATLAB still has advantages and in some cases significant ones (especially if you're looking for specific tool-sets). But the ones you mentioned aren't the best ones to use.
Things get a little weird when your dealing with general relativity and extreme space-time distortions. Also, space is mostly empty space. Even a black hole of this magnitude isn't going to have that strong of a pull over significant distances. For example, you'd feel only Earth-like acceleration at a distance of 1/10th of a light year. Our nearest stellar neighbor is 4.7 light years away. At that distance the acceleration would be .04 m/s^2.
Unless this thing was going through the dense core of the galaxy there's a pretty good chance it wouldn't be hauling much of anything except for it's old accretion disk.
Obligatory Idiocracy:
"I like money".
"Ow my BAWLS!"
Since when were ISPs bad?
Since they started fucking around with the net.
They provide a great service to many people.
Maybe where you live.
Remember what the Internet is. It's a network of privately owned computers, linked together.
Your missing the part how the "network" itself was paid for by the public. We ALLOW private companies to manage it.
Each individual has the say as to what happens with their computers and their network, each individual has every right to say how to route their data.
Individual yes. But I'm not routing packets through YOUR network. My packets are going through the PUBLIC network managed by PRIVATE companies, and since it is the public network I don't expect for packets to get fucked with.
Engineering and internal self-regulation has always solved more problems than outside regulation done by force.
No, problems have been solved by telecos whining to congress that they need more funds to build out the network while simultaneously throttling connections, throwing on hidden caps, etc. . Companies want money and the easier the better.
This is how the Internet has always operated, why are we now criminalizing this idea of Internet freedom?
It use to be free before Telecos started testing new "strategies" to screw people over. Now it's only a matter of time before we get walled gardens. Or have you not been paying attention to all the crap telecos have been trying to pull over the last few years.
~X~
Sure, we'll just turn everything over to profit seeking companies and hope that their collective goodwill and morals will prevent them from plundering the pockets of Joe Public for a 56K connection to sites ONLY offered by said corporations, even though they running it over PUBLICLY PAID FOR LINES AND LAND.
In fact, corporations are already fucking around with the net. Trusting corporations is like trusting pedophile priests at an alter-boy convention.
~X~
Do you think that we would have seen all of this innovation on the internet if it had been regulated since day one?
It has been. However, there is no rules or regulations stipulating that a company cannot deliberately filter information it doesn't like/want over public lines. Up to this point, it's been an unspoken "rule" the companies don't fuck with the data going across the network. In search for ever greater profits companies are seriously considering going back to the walled garden again and charging you every time you want to leave it. I wouldn't have a problem with this if this were private networks with private backbones. But it isn't.
Do you think all that innovation and evolution of the internet would have happened if the telecos weren't given a metric assload of public land and dollars? Sorry, but if your taking the public dime then you're going to fucking listen to the public. You don't like it, go roll out your own internet.
Regulation tends to protect the status quo.
Bullshit. Regulations are for preventing Big Fucking Rich Co. from ass raping Joe Public. Anyone who has looked at the history of corporations in this country quickly comes to the conclusion that Big Fucking Rich Co. certainly DOES NOT have the public interest in mind. Corporations are not altruistic, nor are they moral.
I've maintained for awhile now that it would be better to remove the legal/regulatory barriers that keep new upstarts from entering the ISP market
And what regulations would those be? ISP upstarts get swallowed or crushed by the oligopoly. Big Fucking Rich Co. can always under-price Itty Bitty Upstart.
I would much rather see a multitude of companies competing for my business than a regulated duopoly that buys off regulators to protect it's business model.
And I'd like a ton of gold bars dropped off at my house tomorrow morning. It isn't going to happen though. But that's neither here nor there.
Main point: The public paid for the internet. Like public airwaves, we grant certain companies the ability to run it and in the course of providing that service they can make a profit. However, companies now want to start treating it like it's their own private network where they can do whatever the hell they want. Sorry, but it doesn't work that way.
~X~
The same method is used in all businesses. Basically, it's "How much can we fuck up/ fuck everyone else before the penalties outweigh the benefits?"
Companies do the stupid, short-sighted, self-serving, amoral things they do because it is profitable to do so. Most transgressions result in warnings or fines. Fines and even threatening to shut down a plant or two isn't going to bother many big companies. In fact, they're likely head to China or India or some other place where restrictions aren't so tight and/or costs aren't so high.
In fact, companies can do some pretty horrendous things before they get called on it. As long as what the company is doing isn't directly affecting the majority of it's consumer market, people don't really care. Hence the hypocrisy of decrying human rights violations in China and Saudi Arabia while buying a new DVD player made in China and gasoline made from Saudi oil. As long as we get what we want cheap, we're willing to rationalize (if not outright accept) whatever corporations are doing even if it is not in our overall best interests as a nation and/or species. We're even willing to topple governments and go to war for it.
At any rate, real change doesn't happen until something really bad happens AND the consumers collectively tell the companies to kiss their asses. It doesn't happen very often. Even this spill is unlikely to do much real change.
~X~
It's related to the decline in pirates. Pirates produce methane, and that is processed by midgets to make the methane ice to feed the sharks. Thus completing the great circle of life, as dictated by his noodliness.
Ramen
Can you please keep your hentai fueled Japanese tentacle fantasies to yourself?
Thanks,
The Managerment
Just work, and fuck everything else. Seriously.
Don't listen to him. Fucking everything else will get you arrested, and a mighty sore cock.
~X~
Well that's not hard. You can beat most software developers just by going up a flight of stairs without breathing hard.
~X~
Be yourself, otherwise you'll come off as fake and no one will like you.
And if your an asshole, no one will like you anyway. But you'll get promoted.
Assholes FTW!
~X~
I also like to point out that people are orders of magnitude more likely to die from heart disease, cancer, and pretty much any other disease you can think of. Yet we don't see the billions and billions being invested into heart and cancer research like we do in "security".
You're also orders of magnitude more likely to die from stairs, bathtubs, ice, and lightning. Seriously, the amount spent for this supposed security is revolting, and has a serious negative return when compared to what that money could do in a real area where it could benefit such as disease research.
~X~
The temperature of the earth is warming over time.
It is. If you can't find a historical temperature graph (or better yet, the IPCC report) then you haven't tried.
The amount of this warming is unprecedented.
Again, this is in the IPCC assessment. However, you need to be more careful with you qualifiers. There may have been times in the past where, perhaps, the temperature has risen more quickly. But hat is important is whether or not it has happened in modern times. Rapid climate changes have never bode well for any creatures alive at the time they happened, including humans.
The warming will continue past the point where the earth's feedback mechanisms can correct it.
Irrelevant. The Earth does not "correct". The climate will stabilize at some point, and life will eventually adapt to the new norm. Typically this process takes hundreds to thousands of years. In the intervening period, a lot of bad things happen to life forms that can not adapt, and even to those that can.
The warming will cause catastrophic impacts to life on earth, particularly humans.
There is already debate whether or not we are in a mass die-off period, mainly as a result of human activities. However, life will continue anyway. We have not yet poisoned the Earth to the point where there will be catastrophic effects on all life.
There will be consequences to warmer temperatures, both beneficial an not. For example, one scenario is a change in weather patterns over the midwest of the US, making it hotter and drier. If that were to occur it would have a very large impact on our food production capabilities. Rising sea levels would affect a large number of coastal cities. So on a so forth. These have been discussed at length and can be found in the IPCC report as well as numerous research papers and articles. You can't tell me you can' find any of this with google.
If you're thinking the end of human civilization, no that is not a given result. If wars break out as a result, then perhaps but the main effects are going to be related to human enterprises the depend on a fairly known and well behaved climate.
The warming is caused by human activity, if not entirely, then mostly.
This is fairly well established. Again, google will turn up tons of sources for this.
What is the optimum temperature (or range) of the Earth?
Irrelevant. Earth has no "optimum" temperature. Nor does life in general. Life adapts to whatever changes happen (usually through adaptation or dying off). Human civilization however depends on a certain climate (not just temperature). If this deviates too strongly or to quickly than it can adversely impact civilization. Oh we'll still be around, but there would be a cost.
When has it been at that temperature in the past?
Irrelevant. Life adapted optimally to climates in the past, as they continue to adapt to climate now. The problem happens when things change to dramatically and to quickly.
Has it ever been outside that temperature in the past?
Again, irrelevant. Life adapts to whatever is the current climate.
How, specifically, do we know this?
Google paleoclimatology. There's quite a wealth of information on the subject.
In particular, how does one define the temperature of the Earth, and how does then measure that?
Ah. It seems you don't have much background in the subject material.
You can either get some books on climatology in general or you do some online research. Once you get fundamental understanding of the basic concepts you should be able to formulate some better questions. So far there is nothing you have asked that hasn't already been addressed and answered many times over.
~X~
as opposed to the "other side" who stand to lose a lot of financial backing/future profits/political power if global warming is shown to be a hoax... follow the money on BOTH sides of the argument... you might learn something
What fucking money? Seriously, what the fuck are you talking about?
I am so tired of seeing this bullshit line. Here in the grand old US, go look at the budget and see how much is allocated for climate science. Go ahead. And do you know how many groups/individuals that's spread over?
YOU DO NOT GET RICH BEING A CLIMATE SCIENTIST. The average established climate scientist in the US makes $75K. That's right, being a decent software engineer makes more than a seasoned climate scientist.
So where is this fucking money your talking about? Almost all research is done by government or universities. There's jack shit worth of funding given by private interests. We're talking grad students, civil servants, and university professors. How many of those do you know making millions a year?
So where's the fucking money?
In fact, every year recisions take a chunk of the money allocated for climate research back for other projects. The amount spent world wide on climate science is a sad joke considering its importance.Fo fucks sake, the amount spent on national parks is 10 times more than climate research. You could remove climate research from the budget entirely and your taxes wouldn't even change.
So where's the fucking money?
It ain't there, and it never was there. If you want money you go become a member of Big Fossil Fuel Co. and become their cheerleader. If you want money you sell your soul and scientific credibility and go play in McIntyre's sandbox. Just like the "scientists" who worked for big tobacco showing smoking wasn't dangerous, the real money is in switching camps, because it certainly isn't in climate research.
~X~
No one, not a single scientist has put forward a single model that, when using known data and accepted quantities produces a flat or cooler planet with increasing CO2 levels. It has nothing to do with culture. It simply does not exist.
However, as we go back in time we quickly start losing variables in quantity and precision.
Do not confuse climatology and paleoclimatology. They are related but they use different methods to achieve results. The error on paleo modles is larger than the climate models used for present day.In addition, given what the climate models are attempting to do the errors are not that large.
We are at least aware of many radical changes in climate that had nothing to do with humans over the Earth's history.
Indeed. But a number of those climate changes happened in response to global level events. We ARE a global level event. Discounting a near doubling of of a gas known for it's trapping effects in the atmosphere as anything less is naive.
The issues are very complicated, but it's not quite correct to say that scientists are solely interested in "truth".
Scientists aren't interested in truth. That is subjective. They are interested in facts. Of course, nobody is perfect. There will be bad apples.
These biases can affect entire research programs in ways that are more nuanced than simple conspiracies.
Of course. And if it were just a handful of scientists or a particular program then most certainly this is a likely possibility. However, we're talking about the aggregate community of scientists. Hundreds of organizations with thousands of researchers. Are you implying that the entire scientific community is biased towards anything contrary to the current body of work?
That IS a conspiracy.
~X~
No it doesn't. If you look at how much government people use, it is the poor who end up sapping the most.
Yeah. That's right. However, this statement shows the clear lack of depth in your reasoning.
The social programs that help support the 20 million or so poor in this country aren't there to help the poor. Those programs exist to help ensure the rich. How? Social order. Without those programs we would have a 20 million+ group of starving desperate citizens looking at all those haves and wondering why they have to go hungry. People who have nothing left to lose are often the most dangerous.
It only makes sense for people to pay for what they use.
Again, you're showing your lack of depth. If everyone paid for only what they used our social structure would implode. You don't just pay for what you use, you pay for what keeps society running. This also includes ways (even if illusory) of vertical mobility so that at least those that are underpriviliged have the hope of changing their prospects.
A flat tax does that in a fair way...
No it doesn't. There have been several analysis done on the subject.
because the poor still get to have taxpayer funded breaks and the rich don't have to pay for people who make stupid decisions. Why are the poor in poverty? Most of the time they made bad decisions (when the economy is relativity healthy, today a lot of the poor are victims of bad luck, but once the economy improves they will get jobs).
Ah, and now your true colors show through. Poor people are stupid. That's a big brush and your ignorant jackass with the critical thinking skills of a slug for using it.
Grow up. Poor people are poor mainly because they have few if any means of vertical mobility. When you start off poor, you're already starting out at a big disadvantage. If you're really lucky and work hard you can eventually break out of being poor, but it is not "easy" nor is it a matter of just "working harder".
I just love the shallow view of society the well off have.
~X~
This is something that most starry-eyed naive future game developers don't realize. Being a game programmer sucks. And the reason why it sucks is because there are 1000 other starry-eyed naive future game developers just like you. You work continuous unrealistic deadlines. Nights, holidays, and weekends are to be forgotten. You will get vacation time and comp days, but you'll never be able to use them. Why? Because you have another ridiculous deadline with a set of ridiculous features being driven by a ridiculous marketing department. Sure you can go on vacation, but someone needs to pick up your "slack" and, oops, now you might not be quite as important to the development team. In fact, I used to keep a sleeping bag in my office (it was used rather frequently).
Why keep you on staff for several years with meager pay raises when they can hire two newly grads for half the price? Oh so what if the work is a little less than quality. We can always patch it later.
The whole mentality of the gaming industry is burn and churn: You get fresh programmers and burn them out so you can churn out games. And they'll keep doing it, because there's nothing like a Screen Actor's Guild or Writer's Guild for game programmers.
But if you live, breath, eat, and shit games by all means sally forth. Just don't expect to have much of a life outside of your job. You may become one of the lucky few who do claw their way out of the Bit Pits, but don't hold your breath. On second thought, you may want to hold your breath. Your less than hygenic, cheetos and tacos fueled, programmer pals get a little ripe after sleeping in the office a week straight.
~X~
That's the point of the bill. To make sure that the purchase is parentally responsible.
No, this bill is meant to reinforce the pudding-brained mentality of most parents when it comes to taking an active interest in their children's welfare. Your turning over your parental responsibility to a group of anonymous board members to judge whether or not materials are suitable for your children.
Parental responsibility would be researching what it is your kids are interested in and determining whether or not YOU think it appropriate for your kids, not what some self-important, self-appointed group thinks.
This bill isn't in YOUR business unless you're in the business of selling R-rated materials to minors without parental consent.
R-Rated? By who? Do I vote for these people?
Make no mistake. This law will not do anything to curb selling these arbitrarily rated materials to those who want them and can afford them. It never has.
~X~
This hollow argument can be made against anything, and it's just as false in every single case?
Think about it. How many teenage alcoholics are there? How many teenage drug abusers are? How many kids can still get into R rated movies, access porn, buy guns, or do any particular vice you can think off?
In short, making something illegal DOES NOT MEAN you kids do not have access to it. There are always ways around prohibition of any sort, and the only thing making it illegal does it make it riskier to get it.
No, you can't know 100% of the time 100% of what you are doing, but your being really fucking naive if you think adding yet another idiotic prohibition law to the books is going to really change anything. Instead of banning everything under the sun in the name of "protecting the children", how about being a parent for once. Have some frank discussions. Teach your kids about responsibilities and consequences.
If a parent tells their kid they are not allowed to purchase or play a certain game, can that parent ensure that their 15-year-old kid won't still buy that game when said parent tells their kid "yes, you may go to the mall with your friends"?
No they can't. But if you can't trust your kid, his friends, or the other parents that far THEN YOU SHOULDN'T LET YOUR KID GO TO THE FUCKING MALL WITH THEM. If you can't trust your kid that far, what makes you think you know what else your kid might be doing?
~X~
I think the mafia might create a new meme with this one.
~X~
Thus, you have the reasoning for rampant genocide.
The reasoning is flawed. It would take tremendous resources to wage an interstellar campaign so it is far more likely that space faring races would not bother with war as it is simply not worth it. Just like why we don't engage in nuclear war here, or use nuclear weapons. The cost is simply to high.
Now, if the race you're dealing with is significantly inferior technologically to your own, that's another story. Any race capable of interstellar travel would be able to sufficiently annihilate us for just a couple of space bucks. Slingshot a few space rocks at us and that's it. We wouldn't even know it was an alien race doing it.
As for killing Hitler when he was baby, only someone who didn't think it through would think that was a good idea. We lack the technological capability to calculate what would happen if that even could be done. Someone else could have come to power somewhere else (like China) and gone on rampage that would make Hitler look like a tavern brawl.
~X~
I don't think those are mutually exclusive.
~X~
Simply put: why is it that we assume an "advanced" civilization means that it is militarily advanced and not ethically advanced?
The may very well be, but ethics is in the mind of the beholder.
Do you spray chemicals to control infestations in your house? What about mold? Go hunting? How do you feel about other races?
An advanced civilizations may view us as nothing more than primitive ants scurrying across the face of a resource rich planet. Even if they don't, I'm sure they can justify wiping us out to ensure the future of their own race. Especially if we are tasty. Ethics are are just as subjective as morality, and can easily be swayed by the circumstances of the moment, regardless of how advanced a civilization is. It could easily be the case that they view what they are doing as "good" while we view it as "evil".
~X~
How can you assert it's a reliable proxy when it "suddenly" becomes unreliable? More to the point, explain to me how you would differentiate between a "good proxy gone bad" and a "bad proxy gone bad" - given that correlation earlier might either be a fluke or an indication that other matching proxies are also bad.
As I said, if out of a set of say 10 proxy data sets you have high correlation, and suddenly one starts deviating it is far more likely that the deviating data set is the culprit, not the other 9 data sets. Especially if the correlations hold over the period of thousands of years.
If you wish to discuss the merits of using particular data sets for particular research, you're going to have to do your own research, get it peer reviewed, and published. But you're going to need more than "gut-feel" to make a convincing argument. If you think that the proxy data sets are ALL worthless, you better have a VERY solid case to demonstrate that hypothesis.
Note that I'm not saying that it isn't possible. It could very well be so. However there is a fairly substantial amount of research out there that seems to indicate otherwise.
That's called cherry picking. Throwing out data that does not agree with your hypothesis, and saving data that does agree with your hypothesis is not science.
Again, yes, that would be cherry picking. And again, that is not that was done. There was a measurable inaccuracy in ONE data set by comparing the proxy to THE ACTUAL TEMPERATURE RECORD. So instead of using KNOWN INCORRECT DATA, they used THE ACTUAL TEMPERATURE RECORD.
That's not cherry picking. Cherry picking would be using the incorrect data set (and only that data set) to show that the globe has been cooling since the beginning of the 20th century. They were correcting a KNOWN FLAW in the data by using ACTUAL TEMPERATURE MEASUREMENTS.
Your point from before was somewhat valid. If the dataset indicated recent issues, why use it at all? People are actually researching why the tree ring proxy ONLY RECENTLY started exhibiting this behavior compared to it's behavior related to the other proxies over the past thousands of years. It could very well turn out that it was just luck and that tree rings will be removed as a legitimate proxy. But that is something the scientists have to research and answer.
Science isn't done by thousands of confirming experiments -> it's done by designing just one experiment that shows a problem.
What? You're joking right? You did not seriously write this? Did you perhaps mean to write something else instead? If not, then what you wrote about science shows that you clearly do not understand how science is conducted.
If you truly believe that then it is no wonder why you're having a hard time. Science is coming up with a hypothesis, gathering data, testing the hypothesis, AND REPEATING IT. You don't "find problems". You come up with an idea and you test it for validity. Then you make sure OTHERS can test your hypothesis, independently, to further verify your hypothesis. If this is done enough times and validated each time, you have a theory.
That's what peer review is about in scientific journals. Scientist post their hypotheses and research backing that hypothesis (or contradicting that hypothesis depending on their standpoint) and give it to other experts in their fields to verify using their own means and methods. If it passes muster, then the paper is published. If not, it is sent back to the author with (sometimes harsh) criticism.
Or maybe it will turn out that all the variation we've seen is simply natural, and ascribing man made origins to it was simply wishful thinking combined with a confirmation bias. No conspiracy needs to exist for AGW to be wrong.
What? Why on Earth would wanting man to be the cause of climate change be "wishful thinking"? Given all the other spectacularly idiotic problems we've created for ours