It is a very US centric joke. Think 'congress' ie: the house of representatives and the senate. It plays on American's beliefs that progress cannot be legislated.
Here's a news flash: TV Guide will eventually stop giving you free screen-scraped guide data. The map sites will stop giving you screen-scraped maps. And so on, and so forth.
If you want to do this on your own, nobody will stop you, but if you make it simple for thousands of people to use a company's resources while providing no benefit to that organization, you should expect that they'll ask you to stop.
I don't get it. Do you mean to say that it's ok for Microsoft and Mozilla to make it easy for thousands of people to go to eurotv.com and streetmap.co.uk and use the company's resources while providing no benefit to those organizations, but you cannot write and release a perl module that does the same thing?
Finally, the Zaurus' handwriting recognition stinks. I learned Graffiti in 15 minutes, I still haven't mastered the Zaurus input method for handwritten letters.
I own a Zaurus, and it does real handwriting recognition - not the pseudo one that is graffiti.
Why don't you take the time to teach it your writing style? If you love graffiti all that much, teaching the Zaurus to do graffiti is not at all difficult.
I don't have time to give a lengthy rebuttal and offer this instead.
In brief:
Forests: The FAO data series is the only long run series available.
Fisheries
Lomborg's deceptive "doubling" is based on the fact that fishing operations now rely heavily on landing species that were considered "trash" in the 1970s, and on landing juveniles because the full-sized fish are now increasingly scarce.
So you admit that Lomborg is right and fishery catches have actually doubled? Does it matter that fish eating habbits have changed or been forced to change? As for landing juvenilles, that's just evolution in action.
Biodiversity: The largest tropical study of the correlation between rainforest and the extinction of species was carried out in Puerto Rico by Ariel Lugo of the United States Department of Agriculture. He found that the primary forest had been reduced by 99 percent over a period of 400 years. 'Only' seven out of 60 species of birds had become extinct although the island today is home to 97 species of birds.
Global Warming: Are you sure Lomborg's position is a straw man? He never says that the Kyoto accord is a 100 year treaty but merely quotes the IPCC numbers and says that if the Kyoto accord is implemented in full, the IPCC projections will only be delayed by 6 years.
Water: Quite right that the plant has not yet been built -- there's no pressing need for it! Throughout history, humans have demonstrated a lot of intelligence and ingenuity. I have absolutely no doubts that when a large scale desalination plant is required, my guess is that the prices will be close to what Lomborg predicts (higher than what Lomborg predicts, but much, much lower than current rates).
Two points before I end this:
1. Lomborg does not claim to be a scientist. He has merely placed an alternative interpretation on existing data.
2. This quote from one of his critics Stephen Schneider:
"On the one hand, as scientists we are ethically bound to the scientific method, in effect promising to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but - which means that we must include all the doubts, the caveats, the ifs, ands, and buts. On the other hand, we are not just scientists but human beings as well. And like most people we'd like to see the world a better place, which in this context translates into our working to reduce the risk of potentially disastrous climatic change. To do that we need to get some broadbased support, to capture the public's imagination. That, of course, entails getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have. This 'double ethical bind' we frequently find ourselves in cannot be solved by any formula. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest. I hope that means being both." (Quoted in Discover, pp. 45-48, Oct. 1989, see also American Physical Society, APS News August/September 1996, http://cyclotron.aps.org/apsnews/0896/11592.html).
Another possible effect of having two X-chromosomes is that a woman who is a carrier for colour-blindness might have one X-chromosome with red and green and one with green and a different green. Her son, who has only the two green pigments, is colour blind. But the woman herself may have cone cells for blue, red, green and the extra green. Instead of having the usual three dimensions of colour she might have four. She would be a tetrachromat.
This is good! In fact, I think this is great news.
Anyone remember researchers using inkjets to fabricate small components?
As I recall, research in this area was hindered because people were forced to use the older, lower resolution printers since the newer printers had chipped cartridges making it hard to refill them.
Yes 64 bit CPU's for desktops will soon be the next new thing, but who really needs them? Grandma and grampa checking their email won't need something that fast and even the normal computer user will never experience such CPU intensive work to need a larger word size.
You're forgetting something: What if Grandpa and Grandma want to view that shiny video email of their grandkids? And what if they want to play movie director in their copious free time and compose a video email themselves?
After all, today's crop of digital cameras already record mpg clips (about six seconds worth before the CF card fills up), but it won't be long before flash ram gets even cheaper and we start seeing 4/8 GB cards.
Once the processors are available, applications will be written to take advantage of the larger word sizes. There's no way to tell what will happen.
What's wrong with rebooting 4 or 5 times a week?
I reboot at least twice a day:
Turn on pc in morning, read/reply email, shutdown & go to work.
Turn on pc in evening, do stuff, shutdown go to sleep.
I don't see any reason to keep the PC running all the time, and the benefit is that windows gets rebooted regularly and does not freeze/crash the way it does if you leave it running.
Of course, I live in California and this sort of behaviour was forced on me during the rolling blackouts.:)
Slashdot Mirror
It is a very US centric joke. Think 'congress' ie: the house of representatives and the senate. It plays on American's beliefs that progress cannot be legislated.
I don't get it. Do you mean to say that it's ok for Microsoft and Mozilla to make it easy for thousands of people to go to eurotv.com and streetmap.co.uk and use the company's resources while providing no benefit to those organizations, but you cannot write and release a perl module that does the same thing?
Or make sure your MP3s are encoded at 320 and not 128.
does it go up to 11 ?
I own a Zaurus, and it does real handwriting recognition - not the pseudo one that is graffiti.
Why don't you take the time to teach it your writing style? If you love graffiti all that much, teaching the Zaurus to do graffiti is not at all difficult.
Here's one opinion from Spider Robinson: Melancholy Elephants.
In brief:
Forests: The FAO data series is the only long run series available.
Fisheries
So you admit that Lomborg is right and fishery catches have actually doubled? Does it matter that fish eating habbits have changed or been forced to change? As for landing juvenilles, that's just evolution in action.
Biodiversity: The largest tropical study of the correlation between rainforest and the extinction of species was carried out in Puerto Rico by Ariel Lugo of the United States Department of Agriculture. He found that the primary forest had been reduced by 99 percent over a period of 400 years. 'Only' seven out of 60 species of birds had become extinct although the island today is home to 97 species of birds.
Global Warming: Are you sure Lomborg's position is a straw man? He never says that the Kyoto accord is a 100 year treaty but merely quotes the IPCC numbers and says that if the Kyoto accord is implemented in full, the IPCC projections will only be delayed by 6 years.
Water: Quite right that the plant has not yet been built -- there's no pressing need for it! Throughout history, humans have demonstrated a lot of intelligence and ingenuity. I have absolutely no doubts that when a large scale desalination plant is required, my guess is that the prices will be close to what Lomborg predicts (higher than what Lomborg predicts, but much, much lower than current rates).
Two points before I end this:
1. Lomborg does not claim to be a scientist. He has merely placed an alternative interpretation on existing data.
2. This quote from one of his critics Stephen Schneider:
Oh really?
Perhaps you would be kind enough to give us some examples of these 'bogus' things that he says in the book?
What's that? You haven't read it yet?
<sarcasm>What a surprise.</sarcasm>
Not any more. The latest Tivos (series II) do not work without a subscription.
It all becomes clear now :).
ni. ni. ni. ni. ni.
Anyone remember researchers using inkjets to fabricate small components?
As I recall, research in this area was hindered because people were forced to use the older, lower resolution printers since the newer printers had chipped cartridges making it hard to refill them.
See this report of the Material Research Society for the kind of research that will explode once high res printers can be used.
Is that what happens when you cut down a BTree?
You're forgetting something: What if Grandpa and Grandma want to view that shiny video email of their grandkids? And what if they want to play movie director in their copious free time and compose a video email themselves?
After all, today's crop of digital cameras already record mpg clips (about six seconds worth before the CF card fills up), but it won't be long before flash ram gets even cheaper and we start seeing 4/8 GB cards.
Once the processors are available, applications will be written to take advantage of the larger word sizes. There's no way to tell what will happen.
The Liaden Universe by Steve Miller & Sharon Lee and
The Vorkosigan Series by Lois McMaster Bujold.
Wake me up when the XXX-Windows version is released along with hot grits and pictures of Natal@#$%*~!)! %!
NO CARRIER.
Not really, if you know where to look.
Gimme, gimme, gimme :)
oh .. er .. never mind. I think I need more coffee.
Turn on pc in morning, read/reply email, shutdown & go to work. Turn on pc in evening, do stuff, shutdown go to sleep.
I don't see any reason to keep the PC running all the time, and the benefit is that windows gets rebooted regularly and does not freeze/crash the way it does if you leave it running.
Of course, I live in California and this sort of behaviour was forced on me during the rolling blackouts. :)
Nobody expects the Spanish inquisition... :)
It has a nasty bug when using Outlook with an IMAP server, but since you're using it with Exchange, that should not be a problem.
See, I knew Russ would be good for something :).
Check this out.