The Weather Channel's most prominent man-made global warming evangelist is
advocating that broadcast meteorologists be excommunicated for heresy if
they express skepticism about the gospel of man-made catastrophic global warming.
No, she argued that said meteoroligists be stripped of their "Seal of Approval" if they don't understand the basics of their supposed field.
I like that in doctors, lawyers, engineers, so why not apply a minimal professional standard someone who purports to be a scientist and gets the attention of the average guy/girl?
She's saying that meteorologists are not bothering to understand what scientific organizations, including their own are saying about climate change, and instead are speculating based on what they hear elsewhere (and hence end up repeating assertions that are not scientifically sound). That's an issue of basic credibility - every scientist making claims about the state of scientific understanding of an issue needs to be well grounded in the literature and consensus of the community. Meteorologists are not doing this, yet they are assuming the mantle of climate scientists. That's deeply irresponsible...
I don't support the idea of censorship of diverse opinions, but I'm close to in this case for the reasons you outline. But I also suspect, on the basis of no real knowledge, that Dr. Cullen, who wants to remove the "Seal of Approval", is simply frustrated. There is a basic principle of journalism that reporters must get the views of both sides of any argument. In the case of anthropegenic global warming, that means that the small minority who do not believe it is happening get equal time with the large majority of scientists who are convinced it is. That's why, when I meet people (Americans in particular, but also a few Western Canadians) and discuss global warming, at least half don't want to believe it's happening. They here both sides equally, of what is in reality a lopsided argument, and think we just plain don't know. Since it would inconvenience them to change their habits, they choose the easier option: "We don't know, so I shouldn't worry."
It's difficult when basic premises of physical science and social norms (journalism) intersect, and the lack of certainty around global warming makes it more difficult. It's not that the science isn't sound, but that journalists are (probably rightly, IMHO) trained not to report it as a fait accompli.
...but what about Mormons and Muslims? I'm no fan of the moon-god-worshipping suicide bombers, but Mormons are pretty decent people.
Oh, I see you want to accelerate the flamewar:-(
All Mormons are pretty decent, but all Muslims are moon-god-worshipping suicide bombers? I've met several Mormons, and I agree they are pretty decent. I've met thousands of Muslims, and guess what? They're pretty decent people also. I'm surrounded by Muslims every day, and believe me they're more terrified of a terrorist attack than you are. I've seen, first-hand, the effects of terrorist bombers, but I don't hate all Muslims. I rather wish you'd grow up.
And, BTW, "moon-god-worshipping?" You've got to be kidding -- you're not that dense are you?
this wouldn't be an issue. There are ways to determine (using system logs, install logs, and the vast information available in the system registry) when content arrived and by what method. When it was determined that the system was being remote-controlled, the boy was spared a lifetime of embarrassment.
As a forensic computer examiner...
Okay, I'll ask you then. An earlier poster submitted:
The 'bots' on his PC uploaded kiddie porn to a Yahoo Group. Yahoo notified the authorities with his IP address.
Is this likely the result of a bot? I've never heard of a bot posting to a Yahoo Group, and AFAIK you have to register for any Yahoo Group, using one of those character obfuscation.jpgs, which is supposed to stop bots. So, we can assume the kid was registered to the group, and the bot knew he was a member of the group, which seems to stretch credibility -- especially as the "forensic expert" interviewed didn't mention finding the specific bot that caused this to happen.
I've got an O2 running Windows Mobile 4.2 or some such thing, and it's the worst phone I've ever had in terms of reliability. Min's just back from the shop, and after 4 days it stopped making any sounds whatsoever -- it doesn't ring, and I can't hear anyone talking. But, I'm locked in as now all my contacts are backed up to Outlook [sigh], so I ended up getting a cheap second hand old model, just to carry around while my main phone is in the shop. The cheap second-hand one hangs every day or two, refuses to put calls through, and occasionally keeps text messages in the outbox for a day or two, without letting me know that they didn't go out. POS.
I don't think it can be tied to a provider long term. Here in Asia, you buy the phone you want, you get a SIM card from the provider you want. In Indonesia, where I live, there are prolly about 150 million cell phones in use and not one of them was purchased tied to a provider. I can't understand the shit you guys in North America have to put up with. I'd guess you pay three or four times what I do, and have to select either the phone you want, or the provider you want, seldom both. It must suck.
I grew up in Canada, much earlier than you (I'm 43) and went to engineering school there. I was probably in high school when the switch occurred, but we had been learning both for a few years in school.
When I went to engineering school, we had two years of metric system exclusively, but the last two years were mostly imperial units, as that is what was still in use in industry. The first two years were simply found to be much easier to teach using metric (as kg is a mass, not a weight, unit in addition to simplicity and fewer conversions).
Car tires are sized with three numbers. One is the width, in millimeters. The second is the aspect ratio (height over width) and the third is the rim diameter, in inches. It's been that way for decades. BTW, motorcycle tires are all metric, IIRC.
Suppose by asking certain questions, and doing some initial research and calibration, I can determine your age within two years with 97% certainty. Or marital status, or race, or any of the other protected categories.
Why bother? I'm an HR consultant (not in US) and I can't imagine why you would want to. If you have a set of legal questions which have positively correlated with on-the-job success in the past, why flirt with illegal questions?
Data like this is like the holy grail for HR departments, but few have the resources or knowledge to do it well. For most companies, hiring people who will do what you want them to do is the most important HR thing they do, but the hardest to get right. Why bother with a manager's unsupported belief that younger, or white, or whatever, people will do better when you already know, statistically, who will do better?
This is just simply excellent HR management, and there's no need to screw around with questions designed to trick you into disclosing information about gender, race, age, etc. As to lying, I imagine in the US lying on your application is a firable offence, so you protect against it as far as possible, but there's not that much to be done.
Stories like this are why I don't worry about running out of oil or about global warming. Anytime the system begins to get unbalanced it forces a correction through the free market, and it works even faster and better when the government stays the hell out of things and allows nature to take its course.
Well, that might be true in the US (actually it isn't, but anyway) but it's patently incorrect to allow US market forces to determine GLOBAL warming levels. Anthropogenic Global Warming does exist, and the worst effects will not be felt in developed countries, but in the third world. I would hope that would bother you at least a little.
I find Thunderbird does a good job at all the spam I get -- prolly get 2 or three through out of a hundred or so, which is acceptable for me. I did have to lower the spam detection threshold to 75, and after that everything works fine for me.
What the study actually says is that it appears that the sensory nervous system is playing a role in the development and progression of diabetes. That is the "blockbuster", since it was thought to be an autoimmune disease.
I read this with interest, as I'm a few months away from 20 years with Type I diabetes. This news looks, to me, to be full enough of blockbusters to be Nobel-prize worthy, if confirmed. That's not hyperbole.
These guys may have discovered that (1) the nervouse system is behind the death of beta cells in the pancreas, (2) the nervous system plays a role in Type II diabetes, (3) the two may be related, which was not considered previously, and (4) the death of insuling-producing beta cells is reversible.
That last one, for me, is a biggy, albeit they've only come back to life for 2-8 weeks so far (from the Cell paper).
Diabetes is one of the biggest public health issues in developed countries, and I believe it is the condition which costs health insurers the most money, of everything we suffer from.
I agree with your position completely, of being objective. But, your specific example is not supported by the judge's understanding. He says
Plaintiffs assert that defendant's Internet Service
Provider, America Online, Inc. ("America Online"), has confirmed
that defendant "was the owner of the internet access account
through which hundred of [p]laintiffs' sound recordings were
downloaded and distributed to the public without [p]laintiffs'
consent."
So, it seems that the judge, at least, understood the letter to say that this account was definitely the one downloading.
Yet most people on/. appear to espouse the view that everyone before the middle-ages thought the earth was flat.
I certainly hope not. The idea that Columbus was the one who persuaded others that the earth was not flat is probabgly the oldest chestnut in our society. The earth is curved, as anyone who has watched a sailing ship sail away can verify: The waterline disappears first, then the hull, then the mast and sails slowly disappear from the bottom up. Everyone knew that, and consequently that the earth was not flat.
The radius of curvature was uncertain, but most people had a pretty good idea, but Columbus thought it was much smaller. Had he been right, it would have been possible with the technologies of the day to sail to modern-day Indonesia. He was wrong, however, and only the lucky event of an unknown continent or two where he thought Indonesia was saved him and his crew.
These students learned calculus while I was drawing triangles. With a more advanced math background you can go much more in depth with physics, and understand how formulas were created rather than be given a function to plug numbers into. You can understand why taking the derivative equal to zero of a function can yield the maximum of a trajectory, instead of being given a formula to find the apex.
I'd agree with this in particular. I'm appalled that calculus isn't mandatory in high school. It's not that hard at the basic level, but it's the key to understanding pretty everything that happens around us. When I was doing my MBA we took a macroeconmic course for which calculus was not a pre-requisite. Those of us who knew calculus suffered along with the professor as he jumped through hoops explaining something fairly simple, but dependent on derivatives, which he wasn't allowed to mention. The result was that we took 45 minutes taking notes on something that he could have explained in 5 if he could say "dy/dx". It was agony.
Everyone should know calculus. It's much easier than all but the most basic algebra, and it's incredibly, incredibly useful in every day life.
If you're truly paranoid you can always print them on archival quality paper using pigment based inks
IIRC, Cibachrome on mylar was supposed to last 500 years, so my grand^25children will be able to enjoy my snap of a budha on the top of Borobudur. Original has to be a slide, unless they have updated the technology in the ten years since I gave up my darkroom.
All we need now is a set of 8 X 10 glossies, some turkey stuffing and a gang of father-rapers.
Face it - if a pair of handcuffs have your name on them, you're going downtown and the charges only have to stick for as long as it takes to throw you in the back of the paddy wagon. Once they find out how this all works, they'll put this guy, or someone like him, on their payroll with those otherwise shady tactics working for their own purposes.
Where I live, Indonesia, was very much like this until 1998, when the President was forced to step down. Now, the press is much more free, which is A Good Thing in pretty much everyone's opinion. Except, perhaps, the minor celebrities who routinely get trampled in gossip pages. Hmm.. maybe not so different from $YourBeautifulCountry.
'd guess that it's probably because our policy is aimed at speeding, which is easy to enforce, but not necessarily dangerous, rather than bad driving.
Well, actually, speed excessive for the conditions was the most common factor in traffic accidents in Canada when I worked as a motor vehicle accident researcher.
Mate, I don't have any mod points, and I can't find out how to send a message to you. So, using the inappropriate public forum:
Well done. As a former engineer, and one who's interested in public policy, I appreciate your post. That may be because I was predisposed to agree with your position, but you make the arguments forcefully.
Dean
i agreed with what you wrote before, but disagree strongly with this. Of course it's wrong to say "Don't do business with $EthnicGroup becasue they always cheat you." Besides being subject to a civil suit in most jurisdictions, it is clearly unfair to affect the business of all members of $EthincGroup just because you might have had a bad experience with one.
You are clearly liable, at least under civil law in most jurisdictions, for libel, and this is A Good Thing (tm). Inciting hatred, not just inciting violence, is a crime in most places. Rightfully so.
Everybody has a cause for which they believe it is worth the loss of 'smaller' liberties. But for whatever liberties we have (that do not infringe on the liberties of others), they are NEVER worth giving up.
Well, as a libertarian, I think you've missed the boat completely.
Of course freedom from government involvement where it's not warranted is important. But you dismiss as irrelevant the problems caused by overt racism. They exist, they are prevalent and they do deprive many individuals of their individual rights. It's simply wrong to dismiss them as not worth worrying about.
In short, it's not only about your civil rights. It's about others' also.
what we need is simplicity when it comes to voting, not complexity. i believe we should never go to electronic voting, and even get rid of mechanical voting booths, which has a sordid history of tampering
[me too]I couldn't agree more. [/me too]In Canada, they manage to count about 20 million ballots, at the stations, before the polls have closed in the later time zones. Where I live now, in Indonesia, with a short history of democracy, they open the ballot boxes and count the votes in front of anyone who cares to watch, and compare the total to the possible electors who showed up. Who needs a machine? It looks like a solution looking for a problem to me.
On-site counting, with subsequent publication, seems to guarantee 100% accountability, fast acces to results and no downside.
Slashdot Mirror
If only there was a -1 Straw Man mod...
I like that in doctors, lawyers, engineers, so why not apply a minimal professional standard someone who purports to be a scientist and gets the attention of the average guy/girl?
It's difficult when basic premises of physical science and social norms (journalism) intersect, and the lack of certainty around global warming makes it more difficult. It's not that the science isn't sound, but that journalists are (probably rightly, IMHO) trained not to report it as a fait accompli.
All Mormons are pretty decent, but all Muslims are moon-god-worshipping suicide bombers? I've met several Mormons, and I agree they are pretty decent. I've met thousands of Muslims, and guess what? They're pretty decent people also. I'm surrounded by Muslims every day, and believe me they're more terrified of a terrorist attack than you are. I've seen, first-hand, the effects of terrorist bombers, but I don't hate all Muslims. I rather wish you'd grow up.
And, BTW, "moon-god-worshipping?" You've got to be kidding -- you're not that dense are you?
I've got an O2 running Windows Mobile 4.2 or some such thing, and it's the worst phone I've ever had in terms of reliability. Min's just back from the shop, and after 4 days it stopped making any sounds whatsoever -- it doesn't ring, and I can't hear anyone talking. But, I'm locked in as now all my contacts are backed up to Outlook [sigh], so I ended up getting a cheap second hand old model, just to carry around while my main phone is in the shop. The cheap second-hand one hangs every day or two, refuses to put calls through, and occasionally keeps text messages in the outbox for a day or two, without letting me know that they didn't go out. POS.
I don't think it can be tied to a provider long term. Here in Asia, you buy the phone you want, you get a SIM card from the provider you want. In Indonesia, where I live, there are prolly about 150 million cell phones in use and not one of them was purchased tied to a provider. I can't understand the shit you guys in North America have to put up with. I'd guess you pay three or four times what I do, and have to select either the phone you want, or the provider you want, seldom both. It must suck.
When I went to engineering school, we had two years of metric system exclusively, but the last two years were mostly imperial units, as that is what was still in use in industry. The first two years were simply found to be much easier to teach using metric (as kg is a mass, not a weight, unit in addition to simplicity and fewer conversions).
Car tires are sized with three numbers. One is the width, in millimeters. The second is the aspect ratio (height over width) and the third is the rim diameter, in inches. It's been that way for decades. BTW, motorcycle tires are all metric, IIRC.
Data like this is like the holy grail for HR departments, but few have the resources or knowledge to do it well. For most companies, hiring people who will do what you want them to do is the most important HR thing they do, but the hardest to get right. Why bother with a manager's unsupported belief that younger, or white, or whatever, people will do better when you already know, statistically, who will do better?
This is just simply excellent HR management, and there's no need to screw around with questions designed to trick you into disclosing information about gender, race, age, etc. As to lying, I imagine in the US lying on your application is a firable offence, so you protect against it as far as possible, but there's not that much to be done.
I find Thunderbird does a good job at all the spam I get -- prolly get 2 or three through out of a hundred or so, which is acceptable for me. I did have to lower the spam detection threshold to 75, and after that everything works fine for me.
These guys may have discovered that (1) the nervouse system is behind the death of beta cells in the pancreas, (2) the nervous system plays a role in Type II diabetes, (3) the two may be related, which was not considered previously, and (4) the death of insuling-producing beta cells is reversible.
That last one, for me, is a biggy, albeit they've only come back to life for 2-8 weeks so far (from the Cell paper).
Diabetes is one of the biggest public health issues in developed countries, and I believe it is the condition which costs health insurers the most money, of everything we suffer from.
This is big.
The radius of curvature was uncertain, but most people had a pretty good idea, but Columbus thought it was much smaller. Had he been right, it would have been possible with the technologies of the day to sail to modern-day Indonesia. He was wrong, however, and only the lucky event of an unknown continent or two where he thought Indonesia was saved him and his crew.
Everyone should know calculus. It's much easier than all but the most basic algebra, and it's incredibly, incredibly useful in every day life.
Of course, we don't have a Group W bench :-)
Mate, I don't have any mod points, and I can't find out how to send a message to you. So, using the inappropriate public forum: Well done. As a former engineer, and one who's interested in public policy, I appreciate your post. That may be because I was predisposed to agree with your position, but you make the arguments forcefully. Dean
You are clearly liable, at least under civil law in most jurisdictions, for libel, and this is A Good Thing (tm). Inciting hatred, not just inciting violence, is a crime in most places. Rightfully so.
Of course freedom from government involvement where it's not warranted is important. But you dismiss as irrelevant the problems caused by overt racism. They exist, they are prevalent and they do deprive many individuals of their individual rights. It's simply wrong to dismiss them as not worth worrying about.
In short, it's not only about your civil rights. It's about others' also.
Put up or shut up, don't post a bunch of apparent facts, without backing any of them up. Didn't you learn anything in school?
Just to mention a few: Who is the "majority"? Which UN stats? Which national stats? Which study in Sweden? Which newspapers, in Wales or elsewhere?
You can decide what you want, but if in posting on Slashdot you hope to convince others to join you, you underestimate your peers. By a large margin.
Dean
On-site counting, with subsequent publication, seems to guarantee 100% accountability, fast acces to results and no downside.