Well, let me approach this from a slightly different angle: I think we have available pretty good historic records of atmospheric CO2 levels that go back rather a long way. Assuming you trust the veracity of these records (Wikipedia is a good start, mostly for the cites), perhaps you can point me to a period in the last twenty million years where CO2 levels were anywhere close to those of the present day?
If you have any new or competing data, I really want to see it. Screw politics, show me the science and you'll have my attention and my mind will be open to reviewing your evidence without prejudice. You'll also have my low level of tolerance for foolishness and quackery, but then that's par for the course on Slashdot.
Exactly. The solution to both the western dependence on oil and the contribution our nations make towards greenhouse emissions is nuclear power with a fuel reprocessing cycle. Perfect? Not by a long shot, but it would certainly have given us some breathing space; time enough to get our cars off oil, invest in solar, geo, tidal and wind power.
However it didn't work out like that because the no-nuke greenies stepped on the neck of nuclear power, effectively stopping it cold. We're resourceful buggers so we did the next best thing and focused our efforts on technology to yield significant energy savings and developed alternative energy sources to keep society moving along.
Oh, wait - that's not what happened at all - silly me. Instead, life went on. Growth went on. We built coal and gas-fired power stations to keep up with demand. Who could have predicted that outcome? Certainly not the no-nuke greenies anyway; likely they were off somewhere else by this time, busily chirping at people for eating McDonalds or some such.
Now we're at 400ppm atmospheric CO2 with 2-3 degrees of warming as a likely entrée to a much, much bigger problem. If the warnings are right then we should say thanks to the no-nuke NIMBYs. In the short term you've kept us all on the oil tit unnecessarily, but I really hope you all enjoy your true place in history as the motherfuckers responsible for Humanity's collapse back to the iron age and the destruction of countless species in the process.
Actually, I regret the acidity of my last post to you. I accused you of reading too much into the GP's post then went ahead and read a whole bunch of stuff into your reply. Sorry.
An awful lot of rational debate is severely constrained in my country (NZ) because there are a lot of people here ready to hit the 'racist!' button to derail the conversation. It pisses me off no end but it doesn't give me the right to assume these are also your characteristics nor attack you for same. My apologies.
Then you have poor reading comprehension skills. Read it again. Then read it a third time.
Yeah, that goes both ways pal.
You're reading into it such that you can be upset and are clutching at very feeble straws to maintain this annoyance. I've been unfortunate enough to have come across plenty of you do-gooder types before. What you all fail to realise is that your amazing ability to see racism, sexism and discrimination in every comment actually serves to make the situation worse for everyone.
Nope, I'll subscribe to your newsletter. Furthermore, my opinion is that Seven's tits were absurdly overstated and looked ridiculous. Jeri Ryan may be a D-cup girl but her breasts are clearly quite normally proportioned to her body whenever I've seen her in other roles.
My organization isn't known for beating black men to death, robbing people, raping women via searches, and harrassing people for no good reason.
He certainly seems to be including everyone in that statement - emphasis mine.
Are you sure you're not just looking for something to be upset about? I've found a lot of people who like to call others out for 'racism' seem to fit into this group.
I took that to mean that in Redmancometh's experience, police brutality seems to be applied particularly vigorously to minority groups. Seems to fit my own observations, bad cops are basically just bullies. As always your mileage may vary.
You are quite correct of course. For some reason that use of fusion fell out of favour though, so we need a family-friendly variety. Lockheed-Martin to the rescue?
[snip]..then it's a much different force, one that can't be stopped at the Solomon Islands.
Great point - that's exactly what this is all about: military war-fighting capability. The potential (positive) impact this technology might have on naval logistics is just icing on the cake for them.
Heh, don't mind my one-man fan club there, he's just ticked off for being called out on his bad behaviour. Naturally the best rebuttal is.. more of the same behaviour. I hope he's not pissing people off with all the crapflooding he's aiming at me.
Taking matters into one's own hands is never the wisest course of action but I can't say I really take issue with your actions against the principal, hell at that age I'd have done the same myself.
That's a far cry from causing trouble and damaging stuff just because one is bored and from your post it doesn't sound like you're the type. Your campfire copycat was interesting and reminds me of a time when I was seven, walking through a small bush area with a couple of mates when we came across a small but rapidly growing fire in a clearing. We stumbled into it just seconds before a pair of adults materialised out of the trees from another direction (we hadn't even a chance to try scrubbing it out, we were stunned for about a half second as we were still looking at each other in the WTF stage). Naturally, the adults immediately began demanding answers.
Sure, we got the fire out almost instantly but it took a bit of fast talking to avoid being dragged out by the ear, including voluntarily turning out our pockets so it was clear we had no matches or lighters on us. I could well imagine we'd not even get the chance to protest our innocence had we been a trio of kids in 2014.
20 some years ago when toyota and honda started becoming popular, a few of us in highschool would pick one end of those cars up and turn them sideways in thier psrking spots. We never caused any damage though.
I think that illustrates a problem I have with the view that things were just as crap in Socrates' time and that the older generations are always complaining about 'youth of today' issues. Please forgive the somewhat off-topic nature of this post but your comment struck me.
By and large I agree with the premise but there are certainly things going on now that never used to happen. Your example is perfect - a bit of harmless fun; property damage (or any harm) probably never entered your minds. Conversely, kids I hear about through the news now are in the spotlight because they're supplying alcohol and pot to nine-year-olds, burning down schools and dropping breeze blocks off motorway overpasses into the windscreens of passing cars.
I don't remember this stuff happening twenty years ago but the volume was clearly going up even then. My parents reckon this sort of thing simply didn't happen and is a modern phenomenon. There'll be those who talk about technology enabling bad behaviour and whilst that may be true, breeze blocks and alcohol, schools and boxes of matches have all been around a while now.
I can say this as a trained economist and historian. (armature status today, but still.)
You're an electrical engineer too?
Heh, I read that as a portmanteau of 'armchair' and 'amateur' which I guess could stand in for 'armchair expert'.. a group unlikely to ever be a minority on the 'dot.
But to put it in perspective the volcanic eruption in Europe a few years ago contributed more So2 and Co2 than man has contributed in the last century world wide.
Utter, utter bollocks. The two numbers aren't even in the same ballpark.
You remember there were a bunch of flights cancelled due to the volcanic ash cloud? They alone would have contributed more CO2 than the bloody volcano:
"The grounding of European flights avoided about 3.44×108 kg of CO2 emissions per day, while the volcano emitted about 1.5×108 kg of CO2 per day."
It costs a lot more than a new PC to upgrade thousands of PCs
Exactly. This is something I've seen small business struggle with, often taking the form of "But I could have bought a new PC for that much!" complaint after their vital not-backed-up business data has been recovered from a dead hard drive.
(there are many solutions to the above example, I'm using it illustratively)
I'm sure when you signed the legaly binding contract to get the source code that you'd have to have to modify to compile to get the binary patch, their was a clause prohibiting you from distributing any binaries from the source or derivatives of the source.
You don't need the source code to make a patch for a binary - there are a million cracked computer games out there that were patched by third parties without access to the source.
Excellent post, I'm embarrassed to admit that this never occurred to me, despite being easily demonstrable in everyday life; someone down the road shutting their car door produces the same effect.
I started noticing overdubbed sound effects after playing Return to Castle Wolfenstein. The sound effect that plays when holstering/unholstering a weapon is incredibly common, especially in TV cop shows. Similarly, the "door opens with slight-creak" noise effect is similarly overused *everywhere* and it eventually dawned on me that the only natural noises one could expect from a production are the actors voices (and only because they were typically miked with a giant boom just off-camera.) Every other noise heard seems to be added later.
I'm not so sure... While he certainly combined his answer to the parent's contentions with an insult, I'd say it's inaccurate to say "rather than", thus I have to see him as being right- It's not a synonym for "insult".
While I certainly see your point, this is exactly geekoid's modus operandi. In most cases his argument boils down to "If you don't agree with me you're a useless human being" although he isn't usually so blatant about it as he was here.
Geekoid didn't engage Jane in any rational discourse, he tossed in a dictionary definition in a vague appeal to authority (adding nothing to the discussion and clarifying nothing at all) then directly attacked her character by describing her as a "useless human being".
(Hint: It isn't just a fancy-sounding way to say "insult".)
Well, here's his argument:
If you can't grok this, well then you are a useless human being.
Given geekoid's original post it seems only fair to quote Merriam-Webster's definition of Ad Hominem; specifically, definition two:
2: marked by or being an attack on an opponent's character rather than by an answer to the contentions made
I'd say calling someone a 'useless human being' fits the definition. You'd also know this yourself if you understood the phrase. Interesting that your ignorance didn't in any way impede you from dilating your rather pungent opinion orifice anyway. Perhaps you could enlighten me by explaining what you found insightful enough in geekoid's post to leap to defend his childish behaviour?
Slashdot Mirror
I'm sorry, I don't believe you. If what you are saying is true, then this wouldn't happen.
http://www.nature.com/news/publishers-withdraw-more-than-120-gibberish-papers-1.14763
I don't understand how you can so utterly refute the scientific method as you type away at a computer that wouldn't exist without science.
Well, let me approach this from a slightly different angle: I think we have available pretty good historic records of atmospheric CO2 levels that go back rather a long way.
Assuming you trust the veracity of these records (Wikipedia is a good start, mostly for the cites), perhaps you can point me to a period in the last twenty million years where CO2 levels were anywhere close to those of the present day?
If you have any new or competing data, I really want to see it. Screw politics, show me the science and you'll have my attention and my mind will be open to reviewing your evidence without prejudice. You'll also have my low level of tolerance for foolishness and quackery, but then that's par for the course on Slashdot.
Exactly. The solution to both the western dependence on oil and the contribution our nations make towards greenhouse emissions is nuclear power with a fuel reprocessing cycle. Perfect? Not by a long shot, but it would certainly have given us some breathing space; time enough to get our cars off oil, invest in solar, geo, tidal and wind power.
However it didn't work out like that because the no-nuke greenies stepped on the neck of nuclear power, effectively stopping it cold. We're resourceful buggers so we did the next best thing and focused our efforts on technology to yield significant energy savings and developed alternative energy sources to keep society moving along.
Oh, wait - that's not what happened at all - silly me. Instead, life went on. Growth went on. We built coal and gas-fired power stations to keep up with demand. Who could have predicted that outcome? Certainly not the no-nuke greenies anyway; likely they were off somewhere else by this time, busily chirping at people for eating McDonalds or some such.
Now we're at 400ppm atmospheric CO2 with 2-3 degrees of warming as a likely entrée to a much, much bigger problem. If the warnings are right then we should say thanks to the no-nuke NIMBYs. In the short term you've kept us all on the oil tit unnecessarily, but I really hope you all enjoy your true place in history as the motherfuckers responsible for Humanity's collapse back to the iron age and the destruction of countless species in the process.
Well dang, best post I seen for a while and I just gone and used up my mod points, M-O-O-N, that spells mod points.
Actually, I regret the acidity of my last post to you. I accused you of reading too much into the GP's post then went ahead and read a whole bunch of stuff into your reply. Sorry.
An awful lot of rational debate is severely constrained in my country (NZ) because there are a lot of people here ready to hit the 'racist!' button to derail the conversation. It pisses me off no end but it doesn't give me the right to assume these are also your characteristics nor attack you for same. My apologies.
Then you have poor reading comprehension skills. Read it again. Then read it a third time.
Yeah, that goes both ways pal.
You're reading into it such that you can be upset and are clutching at very feeble straws to maintain this annoyance. I've been unfortunate enough to have come across plenty of you do-gooder types before. What you all fail to realise is that your amazing ability to see racism, sexism and discrimination in every comment actually serves to make the situation worse for everyone.
your IT is staffed with idiots and whiny bitches like the above poster
WTF? You read a line such as "Why? Because fuck end users, that's why." and took it at face value?!
You really must be new here. Although I swear I've seen you around before..
Nope, I'll subscribe to your newsletter. Furthermore, my opinion is that Seven's tits were absurdly overstated and looked ridiculous. Jeri Ryan may be a D-cup girl but her breasts are clearly quite normally proportioned to her body whenever I've seen her in other roles.
Huh? His words were:
My organization isn't known for beating black men to death, robbing people, raping women via searches, and harrassing people for no good reason.
He certainly seems to be including everyone in that statement - emphasis mine.
Are you sure you're not just looking for something to be upset about? I've found a lot of people who like to call others out for 'racism' seem to fit into this group.
I took that to mean that in Redmancometh's experience, police brutality seems to be applied particularly vigorously to minority groups. Seems to fit my own observations, bad cops are basically just bullies. As always your mileage may vary.
You are quite correct of course. For some reason that use of fusion fell out of favour though, so we need a family-friendly variety. Lockheed-Martin to the rescue?
[snip] ..then it's a much different force, one that can't be stopped at the Solomon Islands.
Great point - that's exactly what this is all about: military war-fighting capability. The potential (positive) impact this technology might have on naval logistics is just icing on the cake for them.
Heh, don't mind my one-man fan club there, he's just ticked off for being called out on his bad behaviour. Naturally the best rebuttal is.. more of the same behaviour. I hope he's not pissing people off with all the crapflooding he's aiming at me.
Taking matters into one's own hands is never the wisest course of action but I can't say I really take issue with your actions against the principal, hell at that age I'd have done the same myself.
That's a far cry from causing trouble and damaging stuff just because one is bored and from your post it doesn't sound like you're the type. Your campfire copycat was interesting and reminds me of a time when I was seven, walking through a small bush area with a couple of mates when we came across a small but rapidly growing fire in a clearing. We stumbled into it just seconds before a pair of adults materialised out of the trees from another direction (we hadn't even a chance to try scrubbing it out, we were stunned for about a half second as we were still looking at each other in the WTF stage). Naturally, the adults immediately began demanding answers.
Sure, we got the fire out almost instantly but it took a bit of fast talking to avoid being dragged out by the ear, including voluntarily turning out our pockets so it was clear we had no matches or lighters on us. I could well imagine we'd not even get the chance to protest our innocence had we been a trio of kids in 2014.
Never did figure out how that fire started..
Considering the XKCD link gained a +5 insigthfull, maybe it was The Grim Reefer posting as AC?
Nobody with a handle like that can be all bad though. :P
20 some years ago when toyota and honda started becoming popular, a few of us in highschool would pick one end of those cars up and turn them sideways in thier psrking spots. We never caused any damage though.
I think that illustrates a problem I have with the view that things were just as crap in Socrates' time and that the older generations are always complaining about 'youth of today' issues. Please forgive the somewhat off-topic nature of this post but your comment struck me.
By and large I agree with the premise but there are certainly things going on now that never used to happen. Your example is perfect - a bit of harmless fun; property damage (or any harm) probably never entered your minds. Conversely, kids I hear about through the news now are in the spotlight because they're supplying alcohol and pot to nine-year-olds, burning down schools and dropping breeze blocks off motorway overpasses into the windscreens of passing cars.
I don't remember this stuff happening twenty years ago but the volume was clearly going up even then. My parents reckon this sort of thing simply didn't happen and is a modern phenomenon. There'll be those who talk about technology enabling bad behaviour and whilst that may be true, breeze blocks and alcohol, schools and boxes of matches have all been around a while now.
You're an electrical engineer too?
Heh, I read that as a portmanteau of 'armchair' and 'amateur' which I guess could stand in for 'armchair expert'.. a group unlikely to ever be a minority on the 'dot.
But to put it in perspective the volcanic eruption in Europe a few years ago contributed more So2 and Co2 than man has contributed in the last century world wide.
Utter, utter bollocks. The two numbers aren't even in the same ballpark.
You remember there were a bunch of flights cancelled due to the volcanic ash cloud? They alone would have contributed more CO2 than the bloody volcano:
"The grounding of European flights avoided about 3.44×108 kg of CO2 emissions per day, while the volcano emitted about 1.5×108 kg of CO2 per day."
Wiki before inserting boot into chops next time.
It costs a lot more than a new PC to upgrade thousands of PCs
Exactly. This is something I've seen small business struggle with, often taking the form of "But I could have bought a new PC for that much!" complaint after their vital not-backed-up business data has been recovered from a dead hard drive.
(there are many solutions to the above example, I'm using it illustratively)
I'm sure when you signed the legaly binding contract to get the source code that you'd have to have to modify to compile to get the binary patch, their was a clause prohibiting you from distributing any binaries from the source or derivatives of the source.
You don't need the source code to make a patch for a binary - there are a million cracked computer games out there that were patched by third parties without access to the source.
Excellent post, I'm embarrassed to admit that this never occurred to me, despite being easily demonstrable in everyday life; someone down the road shutting their car door produces the same effect.
I started noticing overdubbed sound effects after playing Return to Castle Wolfenstein. The sound effect that plays when holstering/unholstering a weapon is incredibly common, especially in TV cop shows. Similarly, the "door opens with slight-creak" noise effect is similarly overused *everywhere* and it eventually dawned on me that the only natural noises one could expect from a production are the actors voices (and only because they were typically miked with a giant boom just off-camera.) Every other noise heard seems to be added later.
I'm not so sure... While he certainly combined his answer to the parent's contentions with an insult, I'd say it's inaccurate to say "rather than", thus I have to see him as being right- It's not a synonym for "insult".
While I certainly see your point, this is exactly geekoid's modus operandi. In most cases his argument boils down to "If you don't agree with me you're a useless human being" although he isn't usually so blatant about it as he was here.
Geekoid didn't engage Jane in any rational discourse, he tossed in a dictionary definition in a vague appeal to authority (adding nothing to the discussion and clarifying nothing at all) then directly attacked her character by describing her as a "useless human being".
If the shoe fits..
How's that an ad-hominem?
(Hint: It isn't just a fancy-sounding way to say "insult".)
Well, here's his argument:
If you can't grok this, well then you are a useless human being.
Given geekoid's original post it seems only fair to quote Merriam-Webster's definition of Ad Hominem; specifically, definition two:
2: marked by or being an attack on an opponent's character rather than by an answer to the contentions made
I'd say calling someone a 'useless human being' fits the definition. You'd also know this yourself if you understood the phrase. Interesting that your ignorance didn't in any way impede you from dilating your rather pungent opinion orifice anyway. Perhaps you could enlighten me by explaining what you found insightful enough in geekoid's post to leap to defend his childish behaviour?
Merriam-Webster? Given the quality of your posts I'm surprised you are aware of its existence. Top marks for your hypocrisy anyway.
That is the context of the discussion. If you can't grok this, well then you are a useless human being.
Why argue intelligently when you can ad-hom your way to 'victory'?
My, what a compelling argument you have there sir.
nuclear winter in north Korea may also happen
Unless I'm mistaken, (anyone?) nuclear winter isn't a localised phenomenon.