Fair enough. NOAA 2008 actually chose 15 years. Are you willing to listen to those scientists, and accept that their hypothesis was falsified?
Did they specifically define that term as their falsifiability criteria?
And here's where you're wrong - you *don't* need an alternate explanation for someone to be wrong. You can simply assert "we don't know", and leave it at that, much like you don't need to explain an alternate God in order to falsify the Christian God.
The pragmatic goal is not to falsify the theory exactly as it stands, but to develop a theory that has predictive value, so that decisions can be made on it.
Now, if you're willing to learn more, I'd suggest reading Karl Popper on falsifiability
Are you aware that many actual scientists (and I don't mean climate science here, but hard science like physics etc) are not particularly fond of Popper's take on it?
The cherry picking argument applies in reverse, too. Why should we be looking just at those datasets that don't show warming? Why not try to account for errors by, say, averaging them, and what does that produce?
FWIW, the "20 years" number I just pulled out of my ass. As I'm not a climate scientist, I have no idea as to what the reasonable time period to observe the climate trend (as opposed to localized variations and weather) is. Really, you should be asking them - and if they move the goalposts later, it would be another story.
Of course, there's also the part where any such experiment has to account for other external variables. If I'm testing gravity, and I present a falsifiable theory that, if I release a weight off a high tower, and 10 seconds later it hits the ground, and it doesn't actually hit it in the experiment, it could be that gravity is false; or it could be that a bird knocked it off the course. Normally, you handle that by conducting highly controlled experiments in an environment where the number of such variables is minimized, and those that remain can be accounted for in advance. It's kinda tricky to do it with climate, however.
On the other hand, you can conduct a controlled laboratory experiment showing greenhouse effect from CO2 quite easily, so that validates the basic premise of the theory. In other words, at that point, it's really up to those who deny AGW to explain how CO2 does not result in warming, despite the simple physical model clearly showing otherwise (and run their own experiments showcasing that). But at some point the system becomes complex enough that it cannot really be accurately tested in the lab, and so it has to boil down to observations of the real thing.
Falsifying that is still possible, just less straightforward, just as it is with the gravity experiment - you either observe the temperature increase, or you don't, but then you need to come up with a reasonable explanation for it that can itself be tested. If the explanation exists and is confirmed, then the original theory was wrong, but theory amended with the newly discovered factor still holds. If there is no explanation, or if explanation has been falsified, then the theory is just wrong.
Yes, that was an omission. Let's amend that with "given current level of emissions".
The falsifiability criteria is fairly simple and obviously follows from the definition that I gave: if in, say, 20 years, with the current emission level being maintained, the average temperature is not higher than it is currently, then the theory is wrong.
Indeed. And you don't need to go anywhere for that. Just take a look at this video - the queue to the first McDonald's open in Moscow, back in 1990 (so still USSR):
The falsifiable hypothesis of AGW is fairly simple and straightforward: the overall, averaged temperature of Earth atmosphere and oceans will keep going up.
So far, all observations that we have support this hypothesis.
Only if you actually have it charged, so that it can do updates. All my Kindles are reserved for special occasions (like vacations) at this point, and all day-to-day reading is done on smartphone. Consequently, I had to actually round them all up and charge them to get the update; and I would have appreciated a warning a bit earlier than 2 days before cutoff...
If so, you have to understand that it's not about having white people play black people. It's because the play itself is all about highlighting negative racial stereotypes, from appearance to speech and behaviors. It's basically like a man "playing" a woman by applying copious tasteless makeup, speaking in falsetto voice, pretending to be physically weak, being scared of everything and constantly fainting, and asking male character around for help in dealing with every problem they encounter.
If you believe that there's money to be made by pandering to the "put the women back into the kitchen" crowd in video gaming industry, you're welcome to do so. Meanwhile, Microsoft and other companies seem to have decided where and how they're planning to make a profit - and guess what, they actually are attracting more paying female customers.
It's not even overtly sexist games like that. It's stuff like, say, chainmail bikinis.
And games themselves - even mainstream games - have been getting a lot better in that regard. Have a look at Skyrim, for example. It's not in-your-face about it, but if you start consciously looking around, you'll see plenty of female NPCs in different roles - warriors, assassins, rulers, thieves, gang leaders, wizards, werewolves etc - and it doesn't strain the make-believe. If you play a female character, it fits quite naturally in that world, too.
Perhaps it's not surprising, then, when so many women that I know have found the game enjoyable and easy to get into.
And there will be more of it. Here's why:
- 42 percent of players are women - 48 percent of game purchasers are women - 37 percent of the entire gaming population is made up of women 18 years or older
I've heard about this. But this seems to be largely an experimental project. I would have expected something big, like say Ubuntu, to take it, polish it, and start offering it out of the box, fully supported. I'm sure there's plenty of work to do there wrt proper integration with the rest of the system and such.
I'm actually wondering, why doesn't Linux run Android apps like native yet? It shouldn't be all that hard to do, just port the Java layer, and shim the low-level APIs where needed. I mean, if BSD can run Linux apps...
And then Linux would have Word, too. A trimmed-down version of it, but one that is sufficient for 90% of the users out there, and it wouldn't screw your formatting etc for people who use full-fledged Word.
Microsoft is hoping to attract more people in general. The fact that the present audience is so predominantly male is part of the problem that they're trying to solve.
Let me try to make an analogy here.
Suppose you're an owner of a pub somewhere in Mississippi in 1950s. And every day, your pub runs a blackface show. Your patrons - who are all white - love it.
Now someone comes and tells you that this show is offensive to blacks.
What you're saying here is basically equivalent to the owner of said pub saying, "whatever, blacks don't like beer anyway - I'm catering to my customers, and they're all white, see?". Which is flawed for many obvious reasons.
The logical thing to do is to look at the potential customer base, and realize that those 40% of black residents who "don't drink beer" would actually drink it if you ditched the show, or replaced it with something acceptable to both audiences. And then you would attract them all as your customers.
If, furthermore, you care not only about your bottom line, but also about abstract things such as fairness and equality, then you might say, "okay, if I drop this, I might lose some white customers who really just want to be racist, but I'm okay with that".
In fact, you might do that even because you really only care about the bottom line, because having a public image of being non-racist will produce more customers long-term, even if it might drive some existing customers away.
They know all that. But they also know that anyone who indicates any degree of cooperation with Obama will be treated as "RINO traitor" by the party base, to which they owe the votes that got them there - and which they want to have come re-election time. Compared to that, who seats on SCOTUS is a minor issue in their eyes.
Given the existence of things like <ecode>, what do you mean by "keep it a standards based markup"?
And Markdown is not the "flavor of the month". Some dialects are, but basic stuff - which includes code snippets (a must for a tech geek site!) - has been stable and popular for many years now. Between StackOverflow and GitHub, it is the standard.
The big problem with/. existing markup, regardless of how standard or non-standard it is, is that inserting code is a pain in the ass. At best you get <ecode>, but that always formats code as a block. If you need code references inline, you have to use <tt> and manually escape everything that needs to be escaped - like < and >. Typing this very comment required me to escape things 8 times (and it took 2 previews to get it all right).
In comparison, in Markdown, you just use `foo` for inline code, and ``` for code blocks - and no escaping is necessary, sans backticks, which are much rarer, and are escaped in a much more obvious way (with a backslash).
Because it's a website for geeks, and that includes geeky language stuff.
At the very minimum, Greek should be enabled to facilitate math.
Ideally, I'd want full Unicode. You never know when someone might need to post something interesting in Tibetan script, say (even if they still have to provide the translation, as well).
There are better ways of handling "injection" attacks than blacklisting most non-Latin alphabets.
The point is to put the servers under the control of the government which is deemed more trustworthy by the customers. And it doesn't even have to be all or most customers - just a subset. Say, those in EU.
Hopefully, there will be more similar centers opening in other countries in the future, so that customers can actually shop around, and pick the country with surveillance laws and/or track record that they're most comfortable with.
Slashdot Mirror
It's American political geography 101.
Middle East is where Arabs (and Jews, but they're special) live.
Arabs are Muslims who live where it's hot and there's a lot of sand.
Muslims live in Sahara.
It's hot in Sahara, and there's a lot of sand.
Therefore, Sahara is Middle East.
If you don't believe me, just ask any Trump voter.
This place used to be for college-age computer geeks and STEM majors, now its for middle-aged Trump voters.
What makes you believe there's no significant intersection between the two?
There's lot of immigrant hate among the IT crowd because of outsourcing. I would imagine that what Trump is saying sounds good to quite a few.
Fair enough. NOAA 2008 actually chose 15 years. Are you willing to listen to those scientists, and accept that their hypothesis was falsified?
Did they specifically define that term as their falsifiability criteria?
And here's where you're wrong - you *don't* need an alternate explanation for someone to be wrong. You can simply assert "we don't know", and leave it at that, much like you don't need to explain an alternate God in order to falsify the Christian God.
The pragmatic goal is not to falsify the theory exactly as it stands, but to develop a theory that has predictive value, so that decisions can be made on it.
Now, if you're willing to learn more, I'd suggest reading Karl Popper on falsifiability
Are you aware that many actual scientists (and I don't mean climate science here, but hard science like physics etc) are not particularly fond of Popper's take on it?
The cherry picking argument applies in reverse, too. Why should we be looking just at those datasets that don't show warming? Why not try to account for errors by, say, averaging them, and what does that produce?
FWIW, the "20 years" number I just pulled out of my ass. As I'm not a climate scientist, I have no idea as to what the reasonable time period to observe the climate trend (as opposed to localized variations and weather) is. Really, you should be asking them - and if they move the goalposts later, it would be another story.
Of course, there's also the part where any such experiment has to account for other external variables. If I'm testing gravity, and I present a falsifiable theory that, if I release a weight off a high tower, and 10 seconds later it hits the ground, and it doesn't actually hit it in the experiment, it could be that gravity is false; or it could be that a bird knocked it off the course. Normally, you handle that by conducting highly controlled experiments in an environment where the number of such variables is minimized, and those that remain can be accounted for in advance. It's kinda tricky to do it with climate, however.
On the other hand, you can conduct a controlled laboratory experiment showing greenhouse effect from CO2 quite easily, so that validates the basic premise of the theory. In other words, at that point, it's really up to those who deny AGW to explain how CO2 does not result in warming, despite the simple physical model clearly showing otherwise (and run their own experiments showcasing that). But at some point the system becomes complex enough that it cannot really be accurately tested in the lab, and so it has to boil down to observations of the real thing.
Falsifying that is still possible, just less straightforward, just as it is with the gravity experiment - you either observe the temperature increase, or you don't, but then you need to come up with a reasonable explanation for it that can itself be tested. If the explanation exists and is confirmed, then the original theory was wrong, but theory amended with the newly discovered factor still holds. If there is no explanation, or if explanation has been falsified, then the theory is just wrong.
Yes, that was an omission. Let's amend that with "given current level of emissions".
The falsifiability criteria is fairly simple and obviously follows from the definition that I gave: if in, say, 20 years, with the current emission level being maintained, the average temperature is not higher than it is currently, then the theory is wrong.
Indeed. And you don't need to go anywhere for that. Just take a look at this video - the queue to the first McDonald's open in Moscow, back in 1990 (so still USSR):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
They didn't make any concessions for decades; why would they suddenly do so now?
The only thing that the embargo accomplishes is the negative effect on Cuban economy, which affects the general populace, not the rulers.
It was an absurd measure to begin with, and by now it's lost all semblance of rationality.
The falsifiable hypothesis of AGW is fairly simple and straightforward: the overall, averaged temperature of Earth atmosphere and oceans will keep going up.
So far, all observations that we have support this hypothesis.
In case you haven't noticed, actual Office runs on iOS and Android already.
Not to me, apparently. Not even in spam.
Only if you actually have it charged, so that it can do updates. All my Kindles are reserved for special occasions (like vacations) at this point, and all day-to-day reading is done on smartphone. Consequently, I had to actually round them all up and charge them to get the update; and I would have appreciated a warning a bit earlier than 2 days before cutoff...
Because you'd have to lose most of your existing customers for it to be otherwise.
Is it in reference to blackface specifically?
If so, you have to understand that it's not about having white people play black people. It's because the play itself is all about highlighting negative racial stereotypes, from appearance to speech and behaviors. It's basically like a man "playing" a woman by applying copious tasteless makeup, speaking in falsetto voice, pretending to be physically weak, being scared of everything and constantly fainting, and asking male character around for help in dealing with every problem they encounter.
If you believe that there's money to be made by pandering to the "put the women back into the kitchen" crowd in video gaming industry, you're welcome to do so. Meanwhile, Microsoft and other companies seem to have decided where and how they're planning to make a profit - and guess what, they actually are attracting more paying female customers.
It's not even overtly sexist games like that. It's stuff like, say, chainmail bikinis.
And games themselves - even mainstream games - have been getting a lot better in that regard. Have a look at Skyrim, for example. It's not in-your-face about it, but if you start consciously looking around, you'll see plenty of female NPCs in different roles - warriors, assassins, rulers, thieves, gang leaders, wizards, werewolves etc - and it doesn't strain the make-believe. If you play a female character, it fits quite naturally in that world, too.
Perhaps it's not surprising, then, when so many women that I know have found the game enjoyable and easy to get into.
And there will be more of it. Here's why:
- 42 percent of players are women
- 48 percent of game purchasers are women
- 37 percent of the entire gaming population is made up of women 18 years or older
I've heard about this. But this seems to be largely an experimental project. I would have expected something big, like say Ubuntu, to take it, polish it, and start offering it out of the box, fully supported. I'm sure there's plenty of work to do there wrt proper integration with the rest of the system and such.
I'm actually wondering, why doesn't Linux run Android apps like native yet? It shouldn't be all that hard to do, just port the Java layer, and shim the low-level APIs where needed. I mean, if BSD can run Linux apps...
And then Linux would have Word, too. A trimmed-down version of it, but one that is sufficient for 90% of the users out there, and it wouldn't screw your formatting etc for people who use full-fledged Word.
Microsoft is hoping to attract more people in general. The fact that the present audience is so predominantly male is part of the problem that they're trying to solve.
Let me try to make an analogy here.
Suppose you're an owner of a pub somewhere in Mississippi in 1950s. And every day, your pub runs a blackface show. Your patrons - who are all white - love it.
Now someone comes and tells you that this show is offensive to blacks.
What you're saying here is basically equivalent to the owner of said pub saying, "whatever, blacks don't like beer anyway - I'm catering to my customers, and they're all white, see?". Which is flawed for many obvious reasons.
The logical thing to do is to look at the potential customer base, and realize that those 40% of black residents who "don't drink beer" would actually drink it if you ditched the show, or replaced it with something acceptable to both audiences. And then you would attract them all as your customers.
If, furthermore, you care not only about your bottom line, but also about abstract things such as fairness and equality, then you might say, "okay, if I drop this, I might lose some white customers who really just want to be racist, but I'm okay with that".
In fact, you might do that even because you really only care about the bottom line, because having a public image of being non-racist will produce more customers long-term, even if it might drive some existing customers away.
Microsoft does know who the majority of the present audience is. The whole point is that they're trying to change that.
They know all that. But they also know that anyone who indicates any degree of cooperation with Obama will be treated as "RINO traitor" by the party base, to which they owe the votes that got them there - and which they want to have come re-election time. Compared to that, who seats on SCOTUS is a minor issue in their eyes.
Given the existence of things like <ecode>, what do you mean by "keep it a standards based markup"?
And Markdown is not the "flavor of the month". Some dialects are, but basic stuff - which includes code snippets (a must for a tech geek site!) - has been stable and popular for many years now. Between StackOverflow and GitHub, it is the standard.
The big problem with /. existing markup, regardless of how standard or non-standard it is, is that inserting code is a pain in the ass. At best you get <ecode>, but that always formats code as a block. If you need code references inline, you have to use <tt> and manually escape everything that needs to be escaped - like < and >. Typing this very comment required me to escape things 8 times (and it took 2 previews to get it all right).
In comparison, in Markdown, you just use `foo` for inline code, and ``` for code blocks - and no escaping is necessary, sans backticks, which are much rarer, and are escaped in a much more obvious way (with a backslash).
Because it's a website for geeks, and that includes geeky language stuff.
At the very minimum, Greek should be enabled to facilitate math.
Ideally, I'd want full Unicode. You never know when someone might need to post something interesting in Tibetan script, say (even if they still have to provide the translation, as well).
There are better ways of handling "injection" attacks than blacklisting most non-Latin alphabets.
They could simply allow editing so long as there are no replies/mods on the comment, as LJ does.
Or, better yet, do editing history, like Facebook (of all things) does.
The point is to put the servers under the control of the government which is deemed more trustworthy by the customers. And it doesn't even have to be all or most customers - just a subset. Say, those in EU.
Hopefully, there will be more similar centers opening in other countries in the future, so that customers can actually shop around, and pick the country with surveillance laws and/or track record that they're most comfortable with.
Why not just upgrade to Win10? I understand the qualms if you were starting with Win7, but from 8.1 to 10 it should be a no-brainer.