It is flamebait because it makes blatantly false statement the Retina MBP is not in any sense "locked down." Apple does not block installation of 3rd party or open source software or operating systems on any of its desktop or laptop computers. So its merely a matter of an open source OS not yet having been tweaked to run perfectly on a new, and somewhat different, hardware design.
There were smartphones that offered a genuine alternative to Apple's design. The Palm WebOS phones offered a distinctive user experience and debuted to strong reviews, but they were destroyed by the flood of cheap, Android based iClones. Blackberry is on the edge of the same precipice. The iClone makers can undersell Palm and Blackberry because they don't have the development costs or risk of developing their own designs--they can just crib designs already market tested by Apple. Only Microsoft has the resources to pursue an independent design in the face of competition from the iClones (but unfortunately, design has never been Microsoft's strong suit).
Perhaps if Apple wins its lawsuit, there will once again be opportunities for creative companies to develop original designs, and there will once again be real choices available to consumers
It's basically just a variation the familiar technique of stitching together multiple photos to create a panoramic image. But it looks quite useful, because it allows the researcher to zoom in from a lower resolution view down to a high-resolution sub-cellular view. This is valuable, because with high-resolution electron microscopic images it can be "difficult to see the forest for the trees." An example is shown in the paper of visualizing a section of an entire zebrafish at e.m. resolution, a total of 281 gigapixels of data. Another example shows merging of lower resolution optical images of stained tissue with an e.m. resolution view.
Q: Did you do consumer research on the iMac when you were developing it? A: No. We have a lot of customers, and we have a lot of research into our installed base. We also watch industry trends pretty carefully. But in the end, for something this complicated, it's really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don't know what they want until you show it to them. That's why a lot of people at Apple get paid a lot of money, because they're supposed to be on top of these things.
So now we're seeing breathless media reports saying "Apple does research into their installed base, proving that Jobs was lying when he said that Apple did not do this!!!" Except of course that Jobs specifically said that Apple did do that. If you look at the context of Jobs' statements about Apple not doing market research, you'll see that all of them are in the context of how Apple designs new products, as opposed to how they improve existing ones.
One of the distinguishing features of self-styled "skeptics" of climate science is that their skepticism is amazingly one sided; they seem to become utterly credulous regarding any argument, no matter how blatantly lame, that seems to cast doubt on the reality of global warming. The "It's warming on Mars!" claim (accepted by many "skeptics" as unquestioned truth) is an excellent example. Of course, a genuine skeptic would immediately think, "Wait a minute. There can't be a lot of thermometers on Mars, and they can't have been there very long. I wonder how you measure a multi-decadal temperature trend on Mars? Just how good is the evidence for a warming trend on Mars, anyway?" Not very good, as it turns out.
Similarly, any genuine skeptic, hearing the claim that warming is due to the sun being a "mildly variable star" would immediately think, "Wait a minute. Thus sun is clearly visible up there in the sky. It can't be that hard to measure solar radiance. Is it really plausible that scientists haven't thought to check that?" They have. It's not the sun.
While the success of the iPhone and iPad has lent a sense of hindsight inevitability to Apple's design choices, Apple's design documents highlight that there are lots of ways of designing a device that satisfy the original vague concept of a device that "fit in the hand, were ‘square with a screen’ and had ‘corners [which] have been rounded out.’" Indeed, Apple's own prototype designs resemble the final product considerably less than Samsung's products resemble Apple's.
Is this worth it? Some developed societies separate their education systems half-way through high school into a vocational and college prep line because they want to use high school to prepare their citizens for a job. They choose specialization over breadth.
American education does this too (although perhaps less obviously) by separating students into college-prep and non-college prep tracks. Students who take the latter, no matter how good their grades are, will have a hard time getting accepted into college. Effectively, they are in the vocational track. If anything, this trend seems to have become stronger over the last few decades.
I think clinical applications may emerge relatively soon. Deep brain stimulation for Parkinson's Disease is well established, and that requires implanting a stimulating electrode in the brain. This technique would require the additional step of viral mediated gene transfection, but would probably be less damaging to the tissue than electrical stimulation. Similarly, I could imagine this being used for drug-resistant epilepsy as an alternative to surgical removal of the focus. There might also be applications for drug addiction, where there is currently no reliable therapy.
This is a very promising technology. Minimally, it is already proving invaluable for neuroscience research. What it means is that using genetic engineering (e.g. viral introduction of engineered genes into the brain) you can activate or inhibit a specific class of neurons (more precisely: neurons in which a specific genetic promoter is active) in a small brain region (using a surgically implanted optical fiber), and you can do so on the time scale of normal neuronal firing.
This is a very powerful tool for mapping out the function of genetically identifiable classes of neurons. Turn 'em off, see what functions are impaired. Make 'em fire action potentials, and see what happens.
Moreover, this is potentially a mechanism for introducing information directly into the brain. We don't really understand the brain well enough to do anything terribly useful with that, but taking the (very) long view, it could be a technique for direct brain-computer interfacing. Of course, activating all of the neurons of a particular type in a small region is still pretty crude compared with directly addressing individual neurons, so it is hard to know how useful this will be in practice. Even at this crude level, it will probably be medically useful for treating neurological disorders like epilepsy and Parkinson's Disease, and in the process we will identify and resolve the safety issues. You'd have to be nuts to do this sort of thing to a human being just for research purposes, but for treatment of severe disease, it will likely be worth the gamble.
Also, for a real interface you want bidirectional information flow. But it might be possible to get information out of the brain optically as well, using genetically engineered fluorescent proteins that react to things like changes in neuronal calcium levels or membrane voltage, exciting the proteins and picking up their emissions using the same kind of surgically implanted optical probes.
30 million years is a long time. Speciation is a slow process, based on what we know about evolution, but that is plenty of time for species to recover. It is clear that there have been mass extinctions in the distant past, and species have diverged subsequently. So I imagine that 30 million years from now, species diversity will have recovered from the impact of CO2 induced global warming.
I suppose the fact that the earth is now "the coldest in 30 million years" would be of comfort to us if our species were 30 million years old. But in fact, it is not. So from our admittedly limited human perspective, we tend to be more concerned about divergence of temperatures from the range that is consistent with our modern life style, with huge numbers of people living on the coast, and with much of the globe dependent upon food produced by a few highly productive regions that up until now have enjoyed a climate consistent with highly productive agriculture.
Also new studies show that temperatures in the mideivel warming period and the roman era were 1C warmer than today with no SUVs around.
I always find it amusing that people who consider themselves to be "skeptics" of global warming become utterly credulous when it comes to anything that might seem to challenge global warming. Estimates of temperatures prior to temperature measurements are very difficult, and are based upon indirect measures of things like tree ring width and density, which are subject to a number of sources of error that are not fully understood, and which provide rather poor coverage of global temperatures. So a genuine skeptic would tell you that we really don't know whether temperatures in the medieval period were as high as today (much less as high as they are projected to become if CO2 release continues unabated), and whether the warming was global or regional to northern europe. But a climate science "skeptic" will happily acclaim third party accounts of agricultural practices in northern Europe as an indisputably accurate measure of global temperature, accurate down to a single degree.
Of course, if there really were a global medieval warming period that was not due to CO2 or to any of the other known causes of climate change, such as orbital shifts or changes in level of volcanic activity, a genuine skeptic would be even more worried. The evidence that the modern warming is due to CO2 is incontrovertible, and the degree of warming is pretty much what is expected from CO2 alone. What if there actually were some other, unknown, mechanism that could produce comparable warming? Then we have to worry that that other unknown mechanism might kick in suddenly to add to (or worse, amplify) the warming predicted from CO2. Modern projections of the consequences of global warming are very disturbing, but not what most people would regard as apocalyptic. But if there is some other unknown mechanism that could add substantially warming to that, then all bets are off, and the apocalyptic scenarios are back on the table. Of course, real climate scientists don't believe that. The "skeptics" apparently do believe it--but they don't understand what it would mean.
I've observed that people who regard themselves as climate science "skeptics" generally insist that one should disregard information provided by web sites run by experienced scientists who have studied the primary literature in depth and have concluded that the scientific consensus on the nature and hazards of global warming is broadly correct. Apparently, in "skeptic speak," having studied the evidence enough to have formed an opinion constitutes being "biased" (presumably, only ignorant people can be "objective"). So sites such as RealClimate, Skeptical Science,Open Mind, the IPCC web site, and the the NASA GISS web site are all out of bounds. Of course the distinguishing feature of climate science "skeptics" is that (unlike the skepticism of successful scientists) their skepticism is quite one-sided, and they become quite credulous when it comes to anything that seems to cast doubt on climate science--so they will happily cite sites like "WUWT."
But I cite SkepticalScience not as a source of opinion (I've already stated my opinion) but because that it is a site that provides good links to published reports that contain the evidence supporting my opinion. Nevertheless, it happens that I've personally reviewed many of the summaries provided on SkepticalScience and have compared them to the primary literature, and I find that SkepticalScience tends to be reliable and accurate, and a fair reflection of the consensus opinion of working climate scientists. This is in dramatic contrast to my experience at WUWT and other "skeptic" sites, where I often find that descriptions of the published literature are highly misleading, sometimes in ways that appear to me to be intentional.
Take a look at the chart they're using vs a google search [google.ca] for the same chart. Why is their chart different than the rest? All the other charts show that real temperatures most closely match Hansen's scenario C, which involved CO2 emissions ceasing to increase past 1990.
And here we see an example of why a site like SkepticalScience is useful, particularly compared to a Google search, which often turns up frequently-repeated misinformation. If you doubt that SkepticalScience is accurately reporting the models, all you have to do is click on the link, and it will take you to the original paper by Hansen. And if you doubt that the GISS data is accurate, you can click on the link, and it will take you to actual GISS data. Moreover, it is quite obvious just from looking at the short term variation of the models that Scenarios B and C diverge only slightly up to the present day, so it is impossible that we could have temperature data that would differentiate between them. However, the question of whether there is any evidence of the warming trend "leveling off" as described in Scenario C (which was calculated for an unrealistically optimistic scenario of CO2 mitigation that does not at all correspond to reality) can be addressed statistically by mathematically subtracting known sources of short term variation, and the answer is "No."
By the way, one way in which real scientific skepticism differs from climate science "skepticism" is that real scientists are skeptical of even their own work, and often acknowledge errors and revise their conclusions in the light of new evidence and better analysis. So, for example, based on subsequent work, it is now generally thought that
He's come out with some pretty apocalyptic predictions, such as his 1988 chart showing 3 different scenarios, all of which are looking to be way off the mark.
Professor Peter Wadhams of Cambridge University predicted an ice free arctic by 2015.
Funny how a speculation of one scientist somehow mutates into an absolute prediction. Here's what Wadham was actually saying in 2007: "It might not be as early as 2013 but it will be soon, much earlier than 2040." So a rough estimate of no ice at the height of summer, sometime between 2013 and 2040, and probably toward the low end (estimates of other climate scientists range as high as 2100), probably toward the low end, somehow becomes an absolute assertion that there will be no ice at all in 2015. And how is that apocalyptic? Arctic ice is floating, so it's not as if it will contribute to rising sea level. It will certainly be convenient for navigation. It is important mostly because it is yet another indicator of the warming trend.
And here's [sciencedaily.com] another prediction for some catastrophic sea level rise.
And once again, this turns out to be not a definite prediction, but a warning that there is considerable uncertainty on the high end regarding the speed and magnitude of the sea level rise, and that while the IPCC estimate is about a third of a meter in 100 years, it could plausibly turn out to be three times as large, particularly since the melting seems to be occurring faster than projected. This is, in fact, an honest account of current scientific knowledge. Is this apocalyptic? It will certainly be very expensive to deal with, even if reality turns out to be toward the low end of estimates--expensive enough to more than justify the comparatively modest costs of CO2 mitigation. A lot of people will need to move inland, producing huge numbers of refugees. But do you really consider it to be an apocalypse?
This is what we saw with Fukushima. That reactor was well designed - and the others in the region held up decently. If the plant had been kept up even close to spec - there wouldn't have been a disaster. Hell, even if after the initial issue, if they had just dumped the core, it would of been a passing mention in the newspaper. Instead, somebody who valued money over other peoples lives, decided to make a profitable decision instead of a safe one.
If anything, the Fukushima experience has me more optimistic about nuclear power. After all, we had an earthquake and tsunami that killed tens of thousands of people--and, some reactors were damaged and despite clear errors in design and management (which could be avoided in future reactors), the total long-term mortality is maybe a few hundred--barely a footnote to the overall mortality of the disaster. This is the kind of natural disaster complicated by human error than many have feared, and the consequences were remarkably modest.
Hey, and I'm sick of people who are sick of things without even using sick Google! Here's one example of what an alarmist said [nytimes.com]
Twenty to 50 percent of the planet’s species would be driven to extinction. Civilization would be at risk.....If this sounds apocalyptic, it is.
And these concerns are eminently reasonable. There is evidence of species loss, and loss of many species would be a bad thing to be sure, and I can see how a taxonomist would consider that apocalyptic. But seriously, do you regard that as "the end [being] nigh?" And if reasonable concerns about massive displacement of populations due to rising seas and famine due to disruption of food production in currently highly productive turn out to be true, I think that it is reasonable to expect that civilization would be at risk in many countries. After all, there are some countries where civilization already seems to have fallen apart do to political conflicts--severe weather, large numbers of refugees, and interruption of food supplies might tend to aggravate those problems, wouldn't you think? Bad things to be sure...but do you really think that if those predictions come true over the next century or so, then "the end is nigh"
If you look at his predictions, a lot of them are wild and not backed up by science. "Over the next several decades,....California’s Central Valley could no longer be irrigated." There is absolutely not scientific consensus on these ideas, and climate models are known to be inaccurate at such small scales.
The words "could be" acknowledge that there is uncertainty. But once again, they are very reasonable concerns. This is, after all, an area where water supplies are already stressed, and the models, however imperfect, predict greater weather extremes. Besides, these are local problems. Would you say that inability to irrigate part of one state constitutes "the end is nigh?"
Hockey-stick graph ring a bell? Have you read any of the reports they have produced? Some of them are apparently bordering on Dr. Strangelove, based on the reports I've read.
Bzzzzt! Yes, I've read the "hockey stick" papers. I've read the IPCC reports. But it sounds like you haven't, because there's of that crazy hyperbole there (if you claim otherwise, quote it)
I have no doubt that global warming is happening, and am willing to accept that the cause is, at least in part, caused by man pumping shit-tons of crap into the atmosphere. But I've grown more than a little sick of Chicken Little, crazy-eyed alarmists preaching apocalyptic sermons with utterly ridiculous language that makes it sound like the fucking end is nigh if mankind doesn't abolish all industry NOW NOW NOW RIGHT NOW!!!!!!!! And spouting off laughably ridiculous "facts" like "the 13 warmest years for the entire planet have all occurred since 1998" only makes them sound even more like a bunch of religious zealots than they already do.
Personally, I'm a lot sicker of people talking about "crazy-eyed alarmists" preaching that "the fucking end is nigh." Who, specifically, are these "crazy-eyed alarmists" and where are they making such predictions? I know who it isn't. It isn't climate scientists. It isn't the IPCC. It isn't even prominent non-scientists like Al Gore who have popularized the concerns of climate scientists. So who are they? Where are they preaching that I've never heard them?
And while we are at it, who is insisting that we need to "abolish all industry NOW NOW NOW RIGHT NOW!"? Again, I know who it isn't. It isn't climate scientists. It isn't the IPCC. It isn't even prominent non-scientists like Al Gore who have popularized the concerns of climate scientists. So who are they?
I've gotten hundreds of disks from Netflix. I think I've received only two that did not play properly. I use both services, but I use disks-by-mail more frequently because they have a much deeper library.
Why phase out a profitable business? And why would you imagine that customers would have responded more favorably to paying the same amount for less than they responded to a choice between paying the same amount for less or paying more for the same service that they had been receiving?
If these results are such a bad sign, shouldn't the "beginning of the end" have been when Netflix's guidance in its previous quarterly report projected this performance? Or even a quarter before that when they predicted multiple quarters of losses due to the expense of expanding their streaming business to other countries?
Often, Apple's estimates incorporate considerable uncertainty about the reception of a new product, and Apple tends to be very conservative about this. But this is a quarter with no major product introductions (the new MacBooks came out too late to have much impact) so Apple should be able to project sales pretty accurately from past data. And sure enough, they did.
But often with Apple, there are analysts who imagine in the absence of evidence that there will be some huge spike in income. So you see a mini-bubble in the price. Then when the actual numbers turn out to be about what Apple projected, the news reports say, "Apple fails to meet expectations!" and inevitably there are going to be some investors who panic and sell, thinking Apple's products have finally fallen out of favor with the public. Then, usually, cooler heads prevail, realizing of the "weak" sales are actually deferred purchases by people who are waiting for the next product introduction, and that this is just normal seasonal variation. So the stock price will creep up during the next couple of months, probably surpassing the price just before the earnings report. Then Apple will announce the new iPhone, and there will be news reports trumpeting, "New iPhone not as amazing as expected!" and the stock will drop again. Then it will start creeping up again toward the next earnings report...
WebOS didn't have "some technical problems", it used entirely the wrong paradigm. And by the time it came out, Palm was already dead.
Your revisionist history does not agree with the facts. The Palm Pre, running WebOS was released June 2009 for Sprint to strong favorable reviews. Bugs in the initial release were promptly dealt with by updates. A second model, the Pre Plus, also running WebOS, in January 2010 for Verizon and AT&T. During this period of time, the company continued to attract investments, so it was solvent and perceived as promising by investors. Verizon placed a huge order. Version 2.0 of the OS was ready to go. Every account agrees on one thing: what killed Palm was the invasion of the Droid i-clones. Cheap, rushed to market with little development time (because manufacturers simply layered an imitation of the already market-tested Apple user interface on top of the existing Android code base), the droids "sucked the air out of the room." Verizon backed out of the deal, and as a result, Palm ran out of money.
So I think that it is pretty clear that Palm's death (and probably the impending death of Blackberry) was due to Apple's inability to protect its design from imitation. And the net result of the failure of the law to protect Apple's distinctive product design is that consumers are left with a much more limited range of choices, which basically boil down to iPhones and i-clones.
And if WebOS had been a success, Apple would have sued Palm into oblivion.
Yeah, right. Apple hasn't sued anyone into oblivion. They've managed to slow down the introduction of a few of the most blatant imitators, and they've managed to push a few competitors into working around a few distinctive features, but there is no evidence that Apple's legal action have had more than a modest effect on sales of competitors--most of which still look and act very much like an iPhone. The diversity in the smartphone market that existed before the droid i-clones arrived, with both Blackberry and Palm actively pursuing distinctively different approaches, has vanished, with Microsoft now offering the only surviving alternative to Apple's vision of portable computing.
I'd say that overall, the story of Apple and and its competitors in the phone market provides powerful evidence that stronger protection of overall look-and-feel, as opposed to individual features, would provide great benefits, forcing manufacturers to develop their own individual styles, and increasing diversity and choices available to consumers.
Every operating system (including iOS) has some technical problems in its initial release, but there is no evidence that WebOS had any serious ones. Not only did WebOS reach the market, but the Palm Pre was a strong seller for Sprint, and it (and its successor, the Pre Plus) received generally favorable reviews, winning the CNET "Best in Show, Best in Category: Cell Phones & Smartphones" and the "People's Voice" award for CES 2009. So the OS clearly did the job.
It was only after the deluge of low-cost Android i-clones that the bottom dropped out for Palm, so I think that it is pretty clear that Apple's inability to protect its design killed Palm. It is also likely that Blackberry would be in much better financial shape if it were only competing with the iPhones, and not the i-clones as well. But like Palm, Blackberry is a company that invests in original product development, and so finds it hard to compete with companies offering cheap products based on a free OS and an imitation of somebody else's user interface.
A quick glance around Google will find a completely different set of cherry picked "before iPad/iPhone" and "after iPad/iPhone" images that show that, hey, their design isn't actually all that original
Cue the usual search for earlier unsuccessful attempts at touch devices--unsuccessful precisely because they did not come close to implementing the full set of features that made Apple's products a hit (and that Google is now arguing is essential for a usable touch-based tablet or phone)--which may happen to resemble Apple's products in one or two superficial respects, but do not even come close to reproducing the combination of many physical, interface, and even packaging details that are covered by Apple's design patent.
And then you have things like the LG Prada that you conveniently forget.
Similarly, did you know that Android has always been designed to run on a full touchscreen? Here's a bit of history [osnews.com] to cure your ignorance. Added bonus is the bit about Google voluntarily withholding the pinch-zoom gesture at Apple's behest.
Slashdot Mirror
It is flamebait because it makes blatantly false statement the Retina MBP is not in any sense "locked down." Apple does not block installation of 3rd party or open source software or operating systems on any of its desktop or laptop computers. So its merely a matter of an open source OS not yet having been tweaked to run perfectly on a new, and somewhat different, hardware design.
There were smartphones that offered a genuine alternative to Apple's design. The Palm WebOS phones offered a distinctive user experience and debuted to strong reviews, but they were destroyed by the flood of cheap, Android based iClones. Blackberry is on the edge of the same precipice. The iClone makers can undersell Palm and Blackberry because they don't have the development costs or risk of developing their own designs--they can just crib designs already market tested by Apple. Only Microsoft has the resources to pursue an independent design in the face of competition from the iClones (but unfortunately, design has never been Microsoft's strong suit).
Perhaps if Apple wins its lawsuit, there will once again be opportunities for creative companies to develop original designs, and there will once again be real choices available to consumers
It's basically just a variation the familiar technique of stitching together multiple photos to create a panoramic image. But it looks quite useful, because it allows the researcher to zoom in from a lower resolution view down to a high-resolution sub-cellular view. This is valuable, because with high-resolution electron microscopic images it can be "difficult to see the forest for the trees." An example is shown in the paper of visualizing a section of an entire zebrafish at e.m. resolution, a total of 281 gigapixels of data. Another example shows merging of lower resolution optical images of stained tissue with an e.m. resolution view.
By having the sense to look up what he actually said, instead of relying on media soundbites. Here's what he told Business Week in 1988:
Q: Did you do consumer research on the iMac when you were developing it?
A: No. We have a lot of customers, and we have a lot of research into our installed base. We also watch industry trends pretty carefully. But in the end, for something this complicated, it's really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don't know what they want until you show it to them. That's why a lot of people at Apple get paid a lot of money, because they're supposed to be on top of these things.
So now we're seeing breathless media reports saying "Apple does research into their installed base, proving that Jobs was lying when he said that Apple did not do this!!!" Except of course that Jobs specifically said that Apple did do that. If you look at the context of Jobs' statements about Apple not doing market research, you'll see that all of them are in the context of how Apple designs new products, as opposed to how they improve existing ones.
One of the distinguishing features of self-styled "skeptics" of climate science is that their skepticism is amazingly one sided; they seem to become utterly credulous regarding any argument, no matter how blatantly lame, that seems to cast doubt on the reality of global warming. The "It's warming on Mars!" claim (accepted by many "skeptics" as unquestioned truth) is an excellent example. Of course, a genuine skeptic would immediately think, "Wait a minute. There can't be a lot of thermometers on Mars, and they can't have been there very long. I wonder how you measure a multi-decadal temperature trend on Mars? Just how good is the evidence for a warming trend on Mars, anyway?" Not very good, as it turns out.
Similarly, any genuine skeptic, hearing the claim that warming is due to the sun being a "mildly variable star" would immediately think, "Wait a minute. Thus sun is clearly visible up there in the sky. It can't be that hard to measure solar radiance. Is it really plausible that scientists haven't thought to check that?" They have. It's not the sun.
While the success of the iPhone and iPad has lent a sense of hindsight inevitability to Apple's design choices, Apple's design documents highlight that there are lots of ways of designing a device that satisfy the original vague concept of a device that "fit in the hand, were ‘square with a screen’ and had ‘corners [which] have been rounded out.’" Indeed, Apple's own prototype designs resemble the final product considerably less than Samsung's products resemble Apple's.
American education does this too (although perhaps less obviously) by separating students into college-prep and non-college prep tracks. Students who take the latter, no matter how good their grades are, will have a hard time getting accepted into college. Effectively, they are in the vocational track. If anything, this trend seems to have become stronger over the last few decades.
I think clinical applications may emerge relatively soon. Deep brain stimulation for Parkinson's Disease is well established, and that requires implanting a stimulating electrode in the brain. This technique would require the additional step of viral mediated gene transfection, but would probably be less damaging to the tissue than electrical stimulation. Similarly, I could imagine this being used for drug-resistant epilepsy as an alternative to surgical removal of the focus. There might also be applications for drug addiction, where there is currently no reliable therapy.
This is a very promising technology. Minimally, it is already proving invaluable for neuroscience research. What it means is that using genetic engineering (e.g. viral introduction of engineered genes into the brain) you can activate or inhibit a specific class of neurons (more precisely: neurons in which a specific genetic promoter is active) in a small brain region (using a surgically implanted optical fiber), and you can do so on the time scale of normal neuronal firing.
This is a very powerful tool for mapping out the function of genetically identifiable classes of neurons. Turn 'em off, see what functions are impaired. Make 'em fire action potentials, and see what happens.
Moreover, this is potentially a mechanism for introducing information directly into the brain. We don't really understand the brain well enough to do anything terribly useful with that, but taking the (very) long view, it could be a technique for direct brain-computer interfacing. Of course, activating all of the neurons of a particular type in a small region is still pretty crude compared with directly addressing individual neurons, so it is hard to know how useful this will be in practice. Even at this crude level, it will probably be medically useful for treating neurological disorders like epilepsy and Parkinson's Disease, and in the process we will identify and resolve the safety issues. You'd have to be nuts to do this sort of thing to a human being just for research purposes, but for treatment of severe disease, it will likely be worth the gamble.
Also, for a real interface you want bidirectional information flow. But it might be possible to get information out of the brain optically as well, using genetically engineered fluorescent proteins that react to things like changes in neuronal calcium levels or membrane voltage, exciting the proteins and picking up their emissions using the same kind of surgically implanted optical probes.
Yes, there have always been occasional extreme weather events. But modern statistical analysis supports the general impression that weather extremes are becoming more frequent, consistent with the predictions of climate science.
30 million years is a long time. Speciation is a slow process, based on what we know about evolution, but that is plenty of time for species to recover. It is clear that there have been mass extinctions in the distant past, and species have diverged subsequently. So I imagine that 30 million years from now, species diversity will have recovered from the impact of CO2 induced global warming.
I suppose the fact that the earth is now "the coldest in 30 million years" would be of comfort to us if our species were 30 million years old. But in fact, it is not. So from our admittedly limited human perspective, we tend to be more concerned about divergence of temperatures from the range that is consistent with our modern life style, with huge numbers of people living on the coast, and with much of the globe dependent upon food produced by a few highly productive regions that up until now have enjoyed a climate consistent with highly productive agriculture.
I always find it amusing that people who consider themselves to be "skeptics" of global warming become utterly credulous when it comes to anything that might seem to challenge global warming. Estimates of temperatures prior to temperature measurements are very difficult, and are based upon indirect measures of things like tree ring width and density, which are subject to a number of sources of error that are not fully understood, and which provide rather poor coverage of global temperatures. So a genuine skeptic would tell you that we really don't know whether temperatures in the medieval period were as high as today (much less as high as they are projected to become if CO2 release continues unabated), and whether the warming was global or regional to northern europe. But a climate science "skeptic" will happily acclaim third party accounts of agricultural practices in northern Europe as an indisputably accurate measure of global temperature, accurate down to a single degree.
Of course, if there really were a global medieval warming period that was not due to CO2 or to any of the other known causes of climate change, such as orbital shifts or changes in level of volcanic activity, a genuine skeptic would be even more worried. The evidence that the modern warming is due to CO2 is incontrovertible, and the degree of warming is pretty much what is expected from CO2 alone. What if there actually were some other, unknown, mechanism that could produce comparable warming? Then we have to worry that that other unknown mechanism might kick in suddenly to add to (or worse, amplify) the warming predicted from CO2. Modern projections of the consequences of global warming are very disturbing, but not what most people would regard as apocalyptic. But if there is some other unknown mechanism that could add substantially warming to that, then all bets are off, and the apocalyptic scenarios are back on the table. Of course, real climate scientists don't believe that. The "skeptics" apparently do believe it--but they don't understand what it would mean.
I've observed that people who regard themselves as climate science "skeptics" generally insist that one should disregard information provided by web sites run by experienced scientists who have studied the primary literature in depth and have concluded that the scientific consensus on the nature and hazards of global warming is broadly correct. Apparently, in "skeptic speak," having studied the evidence enough to have formed an opinion constitutes being "biased" (presumably, only ignorant people can be "objective"). So sites such as RealClimate, Skeptical Science, Open Mind, the IPCC web site, and the the NASA GISS web site are all out of bounds. Of course the distinguishing feature of climate science "skeptics" is that (unlike the skepticism of successful scientists) their skepticism is quite one-sided, and they become quite credulous when it comes to anything that seems to cast doubt on climate science--so they will happily cite sites like "WUWT."
But I cite SkepticalScience not as a source of opinion (I've already stated my opinion) but because that it is a site that provides good links to published reports that contain the evidence supporting my opinion. Nevertheless, it happens that I've personally reviewed many of the summaries provided on SkepticalScience and have compared them to the primary literature, and I find that SkepticalScience tends to be reliable and accurate, and a fair reflection of the consensus opinion of working climate scientists. This is in dramatic contrast to my experience at WUWT and other "skeptic" sites, where I often find that descriptions of the published literature are highly misleading, sometimes in ways that appear to me to be intentional.
And here we see an example of why a site like SkepticalScience is useful, particularly compared to a Google search, which often turns up frequently-repeated misinformation. If you doubt that SkepticalScience is accurately reporting the models, all you have to do is click on the link, and it will take you to the original paper by Hansen. And if you doubt that the GISS data is accurate, you can click on the link, and it will take you to actual GISS data. Moreover, it is quite obvious just from looking at the short term variation of the models that Scenarios B and C diverge only slightly up to the present day, so it is impossible that we could have temperature data that would differentiate between them. However, the question of whether there is any evidence of the warming trend "leveling off" as described in Scenario C (which was calculated for an unrealistically optimistic scenario of CO2 mitigation that does not at all correspond to reality) can be addressed statistically by mathematically subtracting known sources of short term variation, and the answer is "No."
By the way, one way in which real scientific skepticism differs from climate science "skepticism" is that real scientists are skeptical of even their own work, and often acknowledge errors and revise their conclusions in the light of new evidence and better analysis. So, for example, based on subsequent work, it is now generally thought that
You're kidding, right. Hansen's 1988 projection for the CO2 release scenario that best matches what actually happened is way off (indeed, it is almost surely within the range of error of the temperature data, particularly after properly adjusting for unpredictable short-term effects such as volcanic eruptions. So if his projection is "apocalyptic," I guess reality is as well.
Funny how a speculation of one scientist somehow mutates into an absolute prediction. Here's what Wadham was actually saying in 2007: "It might not be as early as 2013 but it will be soon, much earlier than 2040." So a rough estimate of no ice at the height of summer, sometime between 2013 and 2040, and probably toward the low end (estimates of other climate scientists range as high as 2100), probably toward the low end, somehow becomes an absolute assertion that there will be no ice at all in 2015. And how is that apocalyptic? Arctic ice is floating, so it's not as if it will contribute to rising sea level. It will certainly be convenient for navigation. It is important mostly because it is yet another indicator of the warming trend.
And once again, this turns out to be not a definite prediction, but a warning that there is considerable uncertainty on the high end regarding the speed and magnitude of the sea level rise, and that while the IPCC estimate is about a third of a meter in 100 years, it could plausibly turn out to be three times as large, particularly since the melting seems to be occurring faster than projected. This is, in fact, an honest account of current scientific knowledge. Is this apocalyptic? It will certainly be very expensive to deal with, even if reality turns out to be toward the low end of estimates--expensive enough to more than justify the comparatively modest costs of CO2 mitigation. A lot of people will need to move inland, producing huge numbers of refugees. But do you really consider it to be an apocalypse?
If anything, the Fukushima experience has me more optimistic about nuclear power. After all, we had an earthquake and tsunami that killed tens of thousands of people--and, some reactors were damaged and despite clear errors in design and management (which could be avoided in future reactors), the total long-term mortality is maybe a few hundred--barely a footnote to the overall mortality of the disaster. This is the kind of natural disaster complicated by human error than many have feared, and the consequences were remarkably modest.
And these concerns are eminently reasonable. There is evidence of species loss, and loss of many species would be a bad thing to be sure, and I can see how a taxonomist would consider that apocalyptic. But seriously, do you regard that as "the end [being] nigh?" And if reasonable concerns about massive displacement of populations due to rising seas and famine due to disruption of food production in currently highly productive turn out to be true, I think that it is reasonable to expect that civilization would be at risk in many countries. After all, there are some countries where civilization already seems to have fallen apart do to political conflicts--severe weather, large numbers of refugees, and interruption of food supplies might tend to aggravate those problems, wouldn't you think? Bad things to be sure...but do you really think that if those predictions come true over the next century or so, then "the end is nigh"
The words "could be" acknowledge that there is uncertainty. But once again, they are very reasonable concerns. This is, after all, an area where water supplies are already stressed, and the models, however imperfect, predict greater weather extremes. Besides, these are local problems. Would you say that inability to irrigate part of one state constitutes "the end is nigh?"
Bzzzzt! Yes, I've read the "hockey stick" papers. I've read the IPCC reports. But it sounds like you haven't, because there's of that crazy hyperbole there (if you claim otherwise, quote it)
Thanks for playing. Care to try again?
Personally, I'm a lot sicker of people talking about "crazy-eyed alarmists" preaching that "the fucking end is nigh." Who, specifically, are these "crazy-eyed alarmists" and where are they making such predictions? I know who it isn't. It isn't climate scientists. It isn't the IPCC. It isn't even prominent non-scientists like Al Gore who have popularized the concerns of climate scientists. So who are they? Where are they preaching that I've never heard them?
And while we are at it, who is insisting that we need to "abolish all industry NOW NOW NOW RIGHT NOW!"? Again, I know who it isn't. It isn't climate scientists. It isn't the IPCC. It isn't even prominent non-scientists like Al Gore who have popularized the concerns of climate scientists. So who are they?
I've gotten hundreds of disks from Netflix. I think I've received only two that did not play properly. I use both services, but I use disks-by-mail more frequently because they have a much deeper library.
Why phase out a profitable business? And why would you imagine that customers would have responded more favorably to paying the same amount for less than they responded to a choice between paying the same amount for less or paying more for the same service that they had been receiving?
If these results are such a bad sign, shouldn't the "beginning of the end" have been when Netflix's guidance in its previous quarterly report projected this performance? Or even a quarter before that when they predicted multiple quarters of losses due to the expense of expanding their streaming business to other countries?
Often, Apple's estimates incorporate considerable uncertainty about the reception of a new product, and Apple tends to be very conservative about this. But this is a quarter with no major product introductions (the new MacBooks came out too late to have much impact) so Apple should be able to project sales pretty accurately from past data. And sure enough, they did.
But often with Apple, there are analysts who imagine in the absence of evidence that there will be some huge spike in income. So you see a mini-bubble in the price. Then when the actual numbers turn out to be about what Apple projected, the news reports say, "Apple fails to meet expectations!" and inevitably there are going to be some investors who panic and sell, thinking Apple's products have finally fallen out of favor with the public. Then, usually, cooler heads prevail, realizing of the "weak" sales are actually deferred purchases by people who are waiting for the next product introduction, and that this is just normal seasonal variation. So the stock price will creep up during the next couple of months, probably surpassing the price just before the earnings report. Then Apple will announce the new iPhone, and there will be news reports trumpeting, "New iPhone not as amazing as expected!" and the stock will drop again. Then it will start creeping up again toward the next earnings report...
I'd definitely get in line for a "Girl Genius" movie.
There was a pretty good Flash TV show.
Your revisionist history does not agree with the facts. The Palm Pre, running WebOS was released June 2009 for Sprint to strong favorable reviews. Bugs in the initial release were promptly dealt with by updates. A second model, the Pre Plus, also running WebOS, in January 2010 for Verizon and AT&T. During this period of time, the company continued to attract investments, so it was solvent and perceived as promising by investors. Verizon placed a huge order. Version 2.0 of the OS was ready to go. Every account agrees on one thing: what killed Palm was the invasion of the Droid i-clones. Cheap, rushed to market with little development time (because manufacturers simply layered an imitation of the already market-tested Apple user interface on top of the existing Android code base), the droids "sucked the air out of the room." Verizon backed out of the deal, and as a result, Palm ran out of money.
So I think that it is pretty clear that Palm's death (and probably the impending death of Blackberry) was due to Apple's inability to protect its design from imitation. And the net result of the failure of the law to protect Apple's distinctive product design is that consumers are left with a much more limited range of choices, which basically boil down to iPhones and i-clones.
Yeah, right. Apple hasn't sued anyone into oblivion. They've managed to slow down the introduction of a few of the most blatant imitators, and they've managed to push a few competitors into working around a few distinctive features, but there is no evidence that Apple's legal action have had more than a modest effect on sales of competitors--most of which still look and act very much like an iPhone. The diversity in the smartphone market that existed before the droid i-clones arrived, with both Blackberry and Palm actively pursuing distinctively different approaches, has vanished, with Microsoft now offering the only surviving alternative to Apple's vision of portable computing.
I'd say that overall, the story of Apple and and its competitors in the phone market provides powerful evidence that stronger protection of overall look-and-feel, as opposed to individual features, would provide great benefits, forcing manufacturers to develop their own individual styles, and increasing diversity and choices available to consumers.
Every operating system (including iOS) has some technical problems in its initial release, but there is no evidence that WebOS had any serious ones. Not only did WebOS reach the market, but the Palm Pre was a strong seller for Sprint, and it (and its successor, the Pre Plus) received generally favorable reviews, winning the CNET "Best in Show, Best in Category: Cell Phones & Smartphones" and the "People's Voice" award for CES 2009. So the OS clearly did the job.
It was only after the deluge of low-cost Android i-clones that the bottom dropped out for Palm, so I think that it is pretty clear that Apple's inability to protect its design killed Palm. It is also likely that Blackberry would be in much better financial shape if it were only competing with the iPhones, and not the i-clones as well. But like Palm, Blackberry is a company that invests in original product development, and so finds it hard to compete with companies offering cheap products based on a free OS and an imitation of somebody else's user interface.
Cue the usual search for earlier unsuccessful attempts at touch devices--unsuccessful precisely because they did not come close to implementing the full set of features that made Apple's products a hit (and that Google is now arguing is essential for a usable touch-based tablet or phone)--which may happen to resemble Apple's products in one or two superficial respects, but do not even come close to reproducing the combination of many physical, interface, and even packaging details that are covered by Apple's design patent.
Actually, I think the LG Prada is a good example of my point, that there is a lot more to an iPhone (and Samsung and other makers of iPhone knockoffs have copied a lot more) than just the shape and the concept of a touch phone.
I notice you don't cite the same author's follow-up article in which he admits that the article you cite was inaccurate, and that the pre-iPhone Android did in fact resemble the Blackberry