Metcalfe is clearly long past the visonary stage and ought to be put out of his misery.
Some clues as to how out of touch he has been in the last decade:
1) In the late 90s, he kept on predicting that a wholesale "collapse" of the internet was right around the corner. Just like the jesus-freaks proclaiming doomsday was upon us - the date of the collapse would come and go and he would just pick a new date about a year or so ou - lather, rinse repeat.
2) Lost a power struggle for control over 3com, the company he founded. Pretty much got the boot to the ass and hard, after which the company grew phenomenally. Not a good indicator for his business acumen.
3) Insists that metered by the byte internet access is the only viable business model for internet connectivity.
4) Actually thought up and uses the phrase "open sores" to refer to open source software. As in a bunch of stoned commie hippies who can't even take care of themselves well enough to prevent outbreaks of open sores on their skin.
~25 years ago, the guy's role in the techincal development of ethernet was crucial to the birthing of the internet. But he just does not have the flexibility of mind to comprehend the way the net has changed and continues to change the nature of business.
FWIW: I went to google for supporting links for each point above, starting with #4, the "open sores" bit and I found little evidence. I distinctly remember his columns in infoworld on the subject, but they must all be roadkill now (or off-limits to google). I hit the wayback machine too and got nothing, after which I figured it wasn't worth the effort to even try for other points. I kinda wonder if its a conspiracy to keep the public record from showing his true colors or just dumb luck on his part.
Does anyone know of a way to 'short' the housing market? Seems like a good thing to do - if it can be done...
The price of lumber in the store has more than doubled over the last couple of years, due almost solely to demand-side pressures. Figure out who is making a killing off of that and short them.
Torque. That guy had more low-end torque than a lamborghini. Of course it cost more than a lambo too, but since it was only available through a lease the real price didn't matter to the actual drivers.
I personally find that there's basically no technology I miss. I find that I either like the new stuff better, or I can get the new equivilant of the old stuff for a better price.
I see you never owned the model of replaytv that automagically detected and skipped commercials during playback, no manual intervention required except in the rare case where it guessed wrong. No other PVR before or since has been so nice to use.
I had a discussion with a friend who was the CEO of a networking company (before it got bought by Alcatel...) He told me that the companies build this type of backdoor into the routers, etc. for their own reasons anyway..
Since when did a CEO ever understand the technical intricacies of his own company's product? Particularly the undocumented parts?
There is a huge difference between leaving a backdoor service account -- which is pretty much all that the developers may ever do on their own -- and providing fully automated remote sniffing, tracing and logging capabilities that report to a centralized command-and-control center that is offsite and not under the control of the customer who owns and manages the router.
Unlike those dopey walking and dancying robots which I have no interest in, if Sony would just bring to market the "remote controlled goofy japanese cutey" I would buy one, heck I'd even go for two and get twin models -- they could remotely control each other when I get bored with doing it myself.
All the rest of you that are in a tizzy, slow down and think about it for just a second. How did you think they were going to prevent OS X from running on non-Apple Macs? Magic? Voodoo? Asking nicely?
By saying, "fuck you" to anyone who calls up for support and doesn't have a correspondingly registered Apple brand PC in their database.
Why should Apple care if you pay for, or even "steal" for that matter, a copy of OSX if it isn't going to generate any more costs for Apple?
The number of people who do not need support but could afford to pay whatever the premium for Macintel hardware is probably small enough that ignoring them would be cheaper than all of the tangible and intangible costs associated with DRMing OSX to the branded hardware in the first place.
IP revnues are important, because if the U.S. lost major corporations that created IP hundreds of thousands of U.S. citizens would be unemployed. Including those that made the IP, worked for the companies that distributed the IP, all the supporting companies (legal, healthcare, etc.).
You might want to read up on "runaway productions" - Hollywood is steadily offshoring as much of their work budget as they can. That means that fount of all the jobs that Hollywood creates is drying up anyway. When the locals are out of work, it cascades down through all the other industries like legal, healthcare, etc that depend on the locals as customers. It does so in a much more direct and measurable way than the effects of piracy too.
If you are like 99% of the working slashdot population, you get paid to do some thinking and maybe moving some muscles. You do not get paid for the results, only the time spent creating them and you definitely do not get paid over and over again each time those results are used.
Other than as a historical oddity, why should some kinds of creators get paid for every use of their results while the rest of us only get paid for the labor of the creation?
It's a nice idea, but I don't see how it actually could be implemented. Who would pay for the new idea?
Anyone or perhaps everyone, who has an interest in that idea.
Why would they pay for it, when someone else may pay for it and then they could use it for free?
Because if no one pays for it, no one gets it at all - free or not.
Would you pay for all ideas regardless of their value?
Of course not, only the ideas that are valuable to me. Just like 99% of the slashdot population are only paid to work on ideas that are valuable to their employer.
How would you determine value?
A 100% free market.
If a creator wants to sell an idea, he offers it up for an asking price. Potential buyers each offer up what they are willing to pay. If the total from all buyers meets or exceeds the asking price, the seller releases the idea to the public domain and collects his payment. If the total does not meet the asking price, the seller has the option of reducing his asking price, waiting for more buyers or withdrawing from the market.
In High School, I knew people who stocked up on supplies to prepare for Revelations, which they thought would start in 1996.
Ok, those guys were dumb. I've seen my share of born-again movies about the end times. They all start off with the rapture where Scotty beams up all the good christians and leaves behind the bad christians and the unbelievers. After that, the shit hits the fan for those who were "left behind."
So, if these people were born-again enough to believe in all that, why bother stocking up? Just pray and do whatever born-agains do to get right with their god so that they get beamed up to heaven during the rapture and get to skip all the bad stuff. I mean, if you are going to believe in a religion, you'd be pretty freaking stupid to pick one and then decide you are going to ignore its rules of the righteous...
I've figured you out. You want to be a politician. That's why you thought you had to actually rebut my use of hyperbole when I said, "Politicians, by definition work by demagoguery and hot air and thus bogus claims will often go unchallenged and even supported by specious argument and distraction." You took it personally.
But, in one of the best examples of ironic self-fullfilment, you've taken the thread and tried to drag it through all kinds of bogus claims that have nothing to do with the central thesis of my post -- that the verifiable results are what matter, not who paid to have them verified -- with a slick combination of smug rebuttals of ancilliary points (e.g. your ham-fisted attempt to misdirect on the definition of faith, your attempt to co-opt the irony of my Nobel prize comment, etc) meanwhile ignoring almost all attempts to refocus on the key issue (e.g. you still have not proven how the funding source can cause a variation in the results that the scientific method can not account for).
So finally we get down to what is left of your ridiculous justification:
Could it prove a pattern of groups funding research studies that have favorable results for their group? Absolutely.
To which, I expect anyone following along has expressed a big, "no-fucking-DUH!" We already knew that from the begining - that's been the nature of almost all directly-funded research since time immemorial and the value to actual science of knowing that inherent bias exists is nada because proper application of the scientific method accounts for bias. It is the primary purpose behind the design and use of the scientific method in the first place.
Sure, a politician would like to mis-apply the science of polling and come up with something like, "Well, 4 out of 10 studies were biased for outcome A and the other 6 out of 10 were biased for the outcome B, but contrary to the expected biases the actual results of the studies were 2 for A and 8 for B, so B is probably true." But that attitude is just another kind of misdirected faith and is absolutely no justification for requiring the disclosure of all of a researcher's financial transactions since they were an undergraduate because since all research is baised, then any justification that applies to this one case applies to all scientists everywhere and I'll tell you right now - proving what we already know to be true is clearly no reason for such a massive invasion of privacy.
Still, you seem to have created for yourself a worldview in which God could not exist.
Nope, "God" covers everything for which there is no known, or at least knowable, explanation. As soon as something becomes explainable, it moves out of the realm of God and into the realm of, well, the explained.
My point is that choosing to ignore validatable proof in favor of the unprovable is insanity.
You seem to be saying that religious people are closed-minded or something?
I'm saying that the only people who insist on faith as the primary explanation for any physical phenomena are those who are so wrapped up in their own faith that they have given up on logic. I consider that kind of absolute devoution to the unsupportable as a kind of insanity, thus "religious nut case."
The claim that "scientists, by definition, work via the scientific method and thus bogus conclusions will be challenged and repudiated" is one used by so-called "scientists" themselves whenever they make wild absolute claims that are without merit.
As I have already stated in this thread:
Simply calling yourself a scientist is not sufficient, just like calling yourself an astronaut is not sufficient to be an astronaut.
You want to argue that people misrepresent themselves as being scientists? That researchers who do not follow the scientific method are not scientists? Fine, take it up with someone who disagrees with you on that point.
Please locate and cite precisely where I stated that the scientific method could not be used to verify the research.
Right here:
you do have a belief in something you cannot see, the unimportance of the financial records
As expected, you blew smoke instead of backing up your claim.
The "scientific method" which you refer to varies between disciplines.
No it does not. What varies is whether or not you follow the scientific method. You follow it - you are practicing science, you don't follow it, you are not practicing science. Black and white, no ifs ands or buts.
As at least one other person has pointed out in this thread, political science, as the term is commonly used, is not science. Any study without a basis in verifiability through repeatability is not a science.
If you can't accept the hard science approach to defining science, here's a nice touchy-feeling poli-sci definition - there is no category for political science as a Nobel prize.
you do have a belief in something you cannot see, the unimportance of the financial records
Bullshit.
If you disagree - the support your disagreement with proof -- prove how the funding source can cause a variation in the results that the scientific method can not account for. This will require you to actually demonstrate knowledge of how the scientific method works.
You can't, and that's why you will either not respond or will continue to blow smoke to avoid answering.
You are right, because most forms of RAID decrease latency.
The more platters you have, the higher the chance that one of the heads is close to the needed data. Thus, for a constant size array, the more disks in your array, the lower your average latency. In other words, four 250GB drives in a RAID will have produce a better average latency than two 500GB drives in a RAID would.
This is why RAIDs of 2.5" disks are the hot new thing in the storage market. You get a lot more platters in the same physical space, so your throughput goes up and your average latency goes down.
He didn't say that you were talking about that book, he was using that book as an example to point out the absurdity of your point.
Yes he did, since you can't read either, here it is verbatim:
him quoting me> So, you point to a study that repudiates previous studies. him quoting me> Sounds like the scientific method in action to me. him> him> A couple of points: him> him> 1. Bjørn Lomborg's "The Skeptical Environmentalist" isn't a scientific study per se.
Belief in the scientific method is a religion. It doesn't exist.
That's kind of silliness I hear on Rush Limbaugh's show. Give me a break. Just because humans are naturally biased, and some researchers -- being human, after all -- are biased toward orthodoxy doesn't mean that science is some sort of sham religion. Just as some lakes and rivers being polluted doesn't mean that all bodies of water are polluted.
Faith 1. Confident belief in the truth, value, or trustworthiness of a person, idea, or thing. Faith 2. Belief that does not rest on logical proof or material evidence.
I do not think it means what you think it means.
Which defintion where you using when you said, "blind faith?" What kind of stupid trick did you think you were pulling by linking to the entire definition and then only quoting the part that didn't clearly refute your point - which by the way if you continued to follow the trail and checked the definition of 'confident' and 'belief' you'd see that definition #1 is primarily the same as definition #2, except it leaves open the possibility of faith based on historical accuracy.
but it is a fair question to ask if their research or personal life was funded by the "Screw Capitalism and Switch to Solar Power Now!" NGO, as that could certainly bring the report into question.
Think through the implications of what you are saying. If all researchers had to open up their entire financial history to prove that their "personal life" was not "funded" by some organization with a bias, then few would do so.
Furthermore, as I have said repeatedly in this thread, EVERYONE is biased. Money is just one such bias. Faith, blind or otherwise, is another source that you won't find in anyone's finances. The scientific method is designed to deal with all forms of bias. You got a methodology that is better? Then lets hear it. Put up or shut up.
Essentially, your argument is that the scientists' research is infaliable and unquestionable becaue, after all, they used the scientific method to reach a result.
And that is a strawman because I have never once said that. You want to argue about that point, take it up with someone else who belives it.
If the scientists received funding from groups that could have significantly influenced the results, I believe it's fair to call into question the research.
Regardless of where the funding came from, it is fair to call their research into question. That's how the scientific method works.
You continue to write as if you have no idea how the scientific method works. Please read up on it before posting more of your own redefinitions.
Looking at London, i see a label with a massive expance of blank map around it. No London boroughs, areas, regions, anything. If i tried to find my house it wouldn't go very far. You can't even zoom in very far.
Fear not citizen! MS is fully engaged with all national security authorities. In light of recent events, detailed maps of London have been declared a threat to national security. MS is simply following local government safety precautions and preventing the release of security-relevant data to potential terrorists.
Why undertake the risk of a major overhaul, especially when we know Microsoft products don't like to play nice with non-MS products? We have the money to stay with MS.
Don't worry, hedge funds are probably going to implode in the next year or two and then, if you still have a job, they will be seriously interested in what you have to say about getting the MS vampire off their neck.
Try reading the fucking article before posting next time ok? He wants their personal financial records. Their raw experimental data is already available for review.
Bjørn Lomborg's "The Skeptical Environmentalist" isn't a scientific study per se.
Why are you making up irrelevant crap? The gp posted a link to a story that had zero, zilch, nada to do with Lomborg's book. Here's the link again since you obviously didn't follow it the first time. This time, follow it. You'll see that it talks about a real, honest to god study. Next time, please follow along.
Your naivety is touching in the way you seem to think that scientists are somehow raised above general human behaviour.
Your illiteracy is touching in the way you seem to read all kinds of nonsense into what I wrote. I made no such claim that scientists were perfect, I do claim that the scientific method accounts for bias and imperfection and that it is the best tool we have to deal with it.
The only thing I had to say about the GP's reference to Lomborg was that GP's point was not articulated enough to be discerned.
Your claim that Lomborg's book has only meet with ridicule and without scientificly valid rebuttal is specious. Since his work was primarily an analysis of other studies and did not include any new data, then any criticism of his use of the results of other studies is valid scientific review. What I see from perusing the rebuttals and the rebuttals to the rebuttals and the rebuttals to the rebuttals to the rebuttals is primarily complaints about Lomborg cherry-picking the data to support his theories and ignoring data that contradicts his theories. Since this contradicting data is there for all to see, such criticism is far from being ad hominem.
So, you would put all of your faith in a method,.... Or should we simply place all blind faith in scientists
You keep framing the issue in terms of faith. In doing that, you give away your true nature as a religious nut case because those are the kind of people who are so wrapped in faith that they can't conceive of any other way to view of the world.
The scientific method is the opposite of faith, its about provability.
Where's the crime in confirming the research?
Confirming the research is EXACTLY what the scientific method is about.
But digging into a researcher's financial records is not confirmation of jack shit, digging into his research records and repeating his results is.
Tell me, do you even know what the scientific method is? You write like you don't have the foggiest clue about it.
Slashdot Mirror
Metcalfe is clearly long past the visonary stage and ought to be put out of his misery.
Some clues as to how out of touch he has been in the last decade:
1) In the late 90s, he kept on predicting that a wholesale "collapse" of the internet was right around the corner. Just like the jesus-freaks proclaiming doomsday was upon us - the date of the collapse would come and go and he would just pick a new date about a year or so ou - lather, rinse repeat.
2) Lost a power struggle for control over 3com, the company he founded. Pretty much got the boot to the ass and hard, after which the company grew phenomenally. Not a good indicator for his business acumen.
3) Insists that metered by the byte internet access is the only viable business model for internet connectivity.
4) Actually thought up and uses the phrase "open sores" to refer to open source software. As in a bunch of stoned commie hippies who can't even take care of themselves well enough to prevent outbreaks of open sores on their skin.
~25 years ago, the guy's role in the techincal development of ethernet was crucial to the birthing of the internet. But he just does not have the flexibility of mind to comprehend the way the net has changed and continues to change the nature of business.
FWIW:
I went to google for supporting links for each point above, starting with #4, the "open sores" bit and I found little evidence. I distinctly remember his columns in infoworld on the subject, but they must all be roadkill now (or off-limits to google). I hit the wayback machine too and got nothing, after which I figured it wasn't worth the effort to even try for other points. I kinda wonder if its a conspiracy to keep the public record from showing his true colors or just dumb luck on his part.
Does anyone know of a way to 'short' the housing market? Seems like a good thing to do - if it can be done...
The price of lumber in the store has more than doubled over the last couple of years, due almost solely to demand-side pressures. Figure out who is making a killing off of that and short them.
The EV1. WTF? Why the hell would you miss this.
Torque. That guy had more low-end torque than a lamborghini. Of course it cost more than a lambo too, but since it was only available through a lease the real price didn't matter to the actual drivers.
I personally find that there's basically no technology I miss. I find that I either like the new stuff better, or I can get the new equivilant of the old stuff for a better price.
I see you never owned the model of replaytv that automagically detected and skipped commercials during playback, no manual intervention required except in the rare case where it guessed wrong. No other PVR before or since has been so nice to use.
I had a discussion with a friend who was the CEO of a networking company (before it got bought by Alcatel...) He told me that the companies build this type of backdoor into the routers, etc. for their own reasons anyway. .
Since when did a CEO ever understand the technical intricacies of his own company's product? Particularly the undocumented parts?
There is a huge difference between leaving a backdoor service account -- which is pretty much all that the developers may ever do on their own -- and providing fully automated remote sniffing, tracing and logging capabilities that report to a centralized command-and-control center that is offsite and not under the control of the customer who owns and manages the router.
I just watched the video and it is way cool.
Unlike those dopey walking and dancying robots which I have no interest in, if Sony would just bring to market the "remote controlled goofy japanese cutey" I would buy one, heck I'd even go for two and get twin models -- they could remotely control each other when I get bored with doing it myself.
All the rest of you that are in a tizzy, slow down and think about it for just a second. How did you think they were going to prevent OS X from running on non-Apple Macs? Magic? Voodoo? Asking nicely?
By saying, "fuck you" to anyone who calls up for support and doesn't have a correspondingly registered Apple brand PC in their database.
Why should Apple care if you pay for, or even "steal" for that matter, a copy of OSX if it isn't going to generate any more costs for Apple?
The number of people who do not need support but could afford to pay whatever the premium for Macintel hardware is probably small enough that ignoring them would be cheaper than all of the tangible and intangible costs associated with DRMing OSX to the branded hardware in the first place.
IP revnues are important, because if the U.S. lost major corporations that created IP hundreds of thousands of U.S. citizens would be unemployed. Including those that made the IP, worked for the companies that distributed the IP, all the supporting companies (legal, healthcare, etc.).
You might want to read up on "runaway productions" - Hollywood is steadily offshoring as much of their work budget as they can. That means that fount of all the jobs that Hollywood creates is drying up anyway. When the locals are out of work, it cascades down through all the other industries like legal, healthcare, etc that depend on the locals as customers. It does so in a much more direct and measurable way than the effects of piracy too.
How do YOU get paid?
If you are like 99% of the working slashdot population, you get paid to do some thinking and maybe moving some muscles. You do not get paid for the results, only the time spent creating them and you definitely do not get paid over and over again each time those results are used.
Other than as a historical oddity, why should some kinds of creators get paid for every use of their results while the rest of us only get paid for the labor of the creation?
It's a nice idea, but I don't see how it actually could be implemented. Who would pay for the new idea?
Anyone or perhaps everyone, who has an interest in that idea.
Why would they pay for it, when someone else may pay for it and then they could use it for free?
Because if no one pays for it, no one gets it at all - free or not.
Would you pay for all ideas regardless of their value?
Of course not, only the ideas that are valuable to me. Just like 99% of the slashdot population are only paid to work on ideas that are valuable to their employer.
How would you determine value?
A 100% free market.
If a creator wants to sell an idea, he offers it up for an asking price. Potential buyers each offer up what they are willing to pay. If the total from all buyers meets or exceeds the asking price, the seller releases the idea to the public domain and collects his payment. If the total does not meet the asking price, the seller has the option of reducing his asking price, waiting for more buyers or withdrawing from the market.
In High School, I knew people who stocked up on supplies to prepare for Revelations, which they thought would start in 1996.
Ok, those guys were dumb. I've seen my share of born-again movies about the end times. They all start off with the rapture where Scotty beams up all the good christians and leaves behind the bad christians and the unbelievers. After that, the shit hits the fan for those who were "left behind."
So, if these people were born-again enough to believe in all that, why bother stocking up? Just pray and do whatever born-agains do to get right with their god so that they get beamed up to heaven during the rapture and get to skip all the bad stuff. I mean, if you are going to believe in a religion, you'd be pretty freaking stupid to pick one and then decide you are going to ignore its rules of the righteous...
But 0.42 != 42. Either the developers are missing 41.58 of something or they're saying that the program is 1/100th of what it should be.
If "everything" is the same as infinity then 1/100th of infinity is still infinity.
I've figured you out. You want to be a politician. That's why you thought you had to actually rebut my use of hyperbole when I said, "Politicians, by definition work by demagoguery and hot air and thus bogus claims will often go unchallenged and even supported by specious argument and distraction." You took it personally.
But, in one of the best examples of ironic self-fullfilment, you've taken the thread and tried to drag it through all kinds of bogus claims that have nothing to do with the central thesis of my post -- that the verifiable results are what matter, not who paid to have them verified -- with a slick combination of smug rebuttals of ancilliary points (e.g. your ham-fisted attempt to misdirect on the definition of faith, your attempt to co-opt the irony of my Nobel prize comment, etc) meanwhile ignoring almost all attempts to refocus on the key issue (e.g. you still have not proven how the funding source can cause a variation in the results that the scientific method can not account for).
So finally we get down to what is left of your ridiculous justification:
Could it prove a pattern of groups funding research studies that have favorable results for their group? Absolutely.
To which, I expect anyone following along has expressed a big, "no-fucking-DUH!" We already knew that from the begining - that's been the nature of almost all directly-funded research since time immemorial and the value to actual science of knowing that inherent bias exists is nada because proper application of the scientific method accounts for bias. It is the primary purpose behind the design and use of the scientific method in the first place.
Sure, a politician would like to mis-apply the science of polling and come up with something like, "Well, 4 out of 10 studies were biased for outcome A and the other 6 out of 10 were biased for the outcome B, but contrary to the expected biases the actual results of the studies were 2 for A and 8 for B, so B is probably true." But that attitude is just another kind of misdirected faith and is absolutely no justification for requiring the disclosure of all of a researcher's financial transactions since they were an undergraduate because since all research is baised, then any justification that applies to this one case applies to all scientists everywhere and I'll tell you right now - proving what we already know to be true is clearly no reason for such a massive invasion of privacy.
Still, you seem to have created for yourself a worldview in which God could not exist.
Nope, "God" covers everything for which there is no known, or at least knowable, explanation. As soon as something becomes explainable, it moves out of the realm of God and into the realm of, well, the explained.
My point is that choosing to ignore validatable proof in favor of the unprovable is insanity.
You seem to be saying that religious people are closed-minded or something?
I'm saying that the only people who insist on faith as the primary explanation for any physical phenomena are those who are so wrapped up in their own faith that they have given up on logic. I consider that kind of absolute devoution to the unsupportable as a kind of insanity, thus "religious nut case."
As I have already stated in this thread:
You want to argue that people misrepresent themselves as being scientists? That researchers who do not follow the scientific method are not scientists? Fine, take it up with someone who disagrees with you on that point.Please locate and cite precisely where I stated that the scientific method could not be used to verify the research.
Right here:
you do have a belief in something you cannot see, the unimportance of the financial records
As expected, you blew smoke instead of backing up your claim.
The "scientific method" which you refer to varies between disciplines.
No it does not. What varies is whether or not you follow the scientific method. You follow it - you are practicing science, you don't follow it, you are not practicing science. Black and white, no ifs ands or buts.
As at least one other person has pointed out in this thread, political science, as the term is commonly used, is not science. Any study without a basis in verifiability through repeatability is not a science.
If you can't accept the hard science approach to defining science, here's a nice touchy-feeling poli-sci definition - there is no category for political science as a Nobel prize.
you do have a belief in something you cannot see, the unimportance of the financial records
Bullshit.
If you disagree - the support your disagreement with proof -- prove how the funding source can cause a variation in the results that the scientific method can not account for. This will require you to actually demonstrate knowledge of how the scientific method works.
You can't, and that's why you will either not respond or will continue to blow smoke to avoid answering.
RAID will not increase LATENCY
You are right, because most forms of RAID decrease latency.
The more platters you have, the higher the chance that one of the heads is close to the needed data. Thus, for a constant size array, the more disks in your array, the lower your average latency. In other words, four 250GB drives in a RAID will have produce a better average latency than two 500GB drives in a RAID would.
This is why RAIDs of 2.5" disks are the hot new thing in the storage market. You get a lot more platters in the same physical space, so your throughput goes up and your average latency goes down.
He didn't say that you were talking about that book, he was using that book as an example to point out the absurdity of your point.
Yes he did, since you can't read either, here it is verbatim:
him quoting me> So, you point to a study that repudiates previous studies.
him quoting me> Sounds like the scientific method in action to me.
him>
him> A couple of points:
him>
him> 1. Bjørn Lomborg's "The Skeptical Environmentalist" isn't a scientific study per se.
Belief in the scientific method is a religion. It doesn't exist.
That's kind of silliness I hear on Rush Limbaugh's show. Give me a break. Just because humans are naturally biased, and some researchers -- being human, after all -- are biased toward orthodoxy doesn't mean that science is some sort of sham religion. Just as some lakes and rivers being polluted doesn't mean that all bodies of water are polluted.
From dictionary.com:
Faith 1. Confident belief in the truth, value, or trustworthiness of a person, idea, or thing.
Faith 2. Belief that does not rest on logical proof or material evidence.
I do not think it means what you think it means.
Which defintion where you using when you said, "blind faith?" What kind of stupid trick did you think you were pulling by linking to the entire definition and then only quoting the part that didn't clearly refute your point - which by the way if you continued to follow the trail and checked the definition of 'confident' and 'belief' you'd see that definition #1 is primarily the same as definition #2, except it leaves open the possibility of faith based on historical accuracy.
but it is a fair question to ask if their research or personal life was funded by the "Screw Capitalism and Switch to Solar Power Now!" NGO, as that could certainly bring the report into question.
Think through the implications of what you are saying. If all researchers had to open up their entire financial history to prove that their "personal life" was not "funded" by some organization with a bias, then few would do so.
Furthermore, as I have said repeatedly in this thread, EVERYONE is biased. Money is just one such bias. Faith, blind or otherwise, is another source that you won't find in anyone's finances. The scientific method is designed to deal with all forms of bias. You got a methodology that is better? Then lets hear it. Put up or shut up.
Essentially, your argument is that the scientists' research is infaliable and unquestionable becaue, after all, they used the scientific method to reach a result.
And that is a strawman because I have never once said that. You want to argue about that point, take it up with someone else who belives it.
If the scientists received funding from groups that could have significantly influenced the results, I believe it's fair to call into question the research.
Regardless of where the funding came from, it is fair to call their research into question. That's how the scientific method works.
You continue to write as if you have no idea how the scientific method works. Please read up on it before posting more of your own redefinitions.
Looking at London, i see a label with a massive expance of blank map around it. No London boroughs, areas, regions, anything. If i tried to find my house it wouldn't go very far. You can't even zoom in very far.
Fear not citizen! MS is fully engaged with all national security authorities. In light of recent events, detailed maps of London have been declared a threat to national security. MS is simply following local government safety precautions and preventing the release of security-relevant data to potential terrorists.
Alright, so I'll lose 500GB of crap when the deathstar craps out
If find your lack of faith is disturbing...
Why undertake the risk of a major overhaul, especially when we know Microsoft products don't like to play nice with non-MS products? We have the money to stay with MS.
Don't worry, hedge funds are probably going to implode in the next year or two and then, if you still have a job, they will be seriously interested in what you have to say about getting the MS vampire off their neck.
That's why he's asking for their data
Try reading the fucking article before posting next time ok?
He wants their personal financial records. Their raw experimental data is already available for review.
Bjørn Lomborg's "The Skeptical Environmentalist" isn't a scientific study per se.
Why are you making up irrelevant crap? The gp posted a link to a story that had zero, zilch, nada to do with Lomborg's book. Here's the link again since you obviously didn't follow it the first time. This time, follow it. You'll see that it talks about a real, honest to god study. Next time, please follow along.
Your naivety is touching in the way you seem to think that scientists are somehow raised above general human behaviour.
Your illiteracy is touching in the way you seem to read all kinds of nonsense into what I wrote. I made no such claim that scientists were perfect, I do claim that the scientific method accounts for bias and imperfection and that it is the best tool we have to deal with it.
The only thing I had to say about the GP's reference to Lomborg was that GP's point was not articulated enough to be discerned.
Your claim that Lomborg's book has only meet with ridicule and without scientificly valid rebuttal is specious. Since his work was primarily an analysis of other studies and did not include any new data, then any criticism of his use of the results of other studies is valid scientific review. What I see from perusing the rebuttals and the rebuttals to the rebuttals and the rebuttals to the rebuttals to the rebuttals is primarily complaints about Lomborg cherry-picking the data to support his theories and ignoring data that contradicts his theories. Since this contradicting data is there for all to see, such criticism is far from being ad hominem.
So, you would put all of your faith in a method, ....
Or should we simply place all blind faith in scientists
You keep framing the issue in terms of faith. In doing that, you give away your true nature
as a religious nut case because those are the kind of people who are so wrapped in faith
that they can't conceive of any other way to view of the world.
The scientific method is the opposite of faith, its about provability.
Where's the crime in confirming the research?
Confirming the research is EXACTLY what the scientific method is about.
But digging into a researcher's financial records is not confirmation of jack shit,
digging into his research records and repeating his results is.
Tell me, do you even know what the scientific method is?
You write like you don't have the foggiest clue about it.