I know that if I go to wikipedia, type "Euler Angles" in the search box and hit enter, then all the information I need to get me started solving whatever problem I'm working on in rigid body dynamics is right there.
If the page was wrong, I'd recognise it. I know what Euler Angles are and can recognise the z-x-z convention. If it has been weeks or months since I last used them however, I go and I look them up. It's faster than a textbook or trip to the library and more likely to pay off than a google search.
Likewise if I need a quick overview of a subject, I fire up wikipedia. It's the equivalent of asking your mate 'Dave' who did a bit of work in the topic a while back about something. Sure you might not be able to trust everything he says because his memory is a little cloudy but he knows this really good text on the subject that is authoritative and he knows you are a lay person so he mentions the bare basics that aren't always in the more advanced texts.
I'm glad we have a study now which suggests this is how students are using this resource. The reason you don't cite wikipedia or use it as a serious reference text is the same reason you don't cite Britannica. It's an encyclopaedia! A really, really, really good encyclopaedia but none-the-less an encyclopaedia. The reason it's popular isn't because it is being misused, it's because unlike most encyclopaedia it actually contains a decent amount of useful information on a broad range of topics. The only reason we haven't had this 'problem' in the past is that until wikipedia encyclopaedia were, due to technical limitations, pretty crappy.
Ignoring for a second that I would dispute many of your claims about the Democratic Party (just as I would claims that the Republicans are Nazis), at no point was I defending the shambles that is the Democratic Party. I wouldn't join them either. I certainly wouldn't self identify with their labels. You don't have to belong to either party, even if you want to help specific candidates. I see no reason for anyone to proudly sport either a (D) or and (R) after their name with the parties in their current state.
I'm very careful about the labels I attach to myself. I wouldn't join a group which has a significant racist, homophobic or anti-intellectual component to it's ideological base.
You may well not be racist. You may well not be a homophobe. You might well value intellectual pursuits. You have joined a political party which on the whole is functionally racist, ideologically homophobic and has numerous policies which are anti-intellectual to the core. People have to make snap judgements to get by most of the time. It is reasonable to make snap judgements about people when one does not have the time nor the duty to make a more in depth investigation of a person. If you don't like being considered a racist, a homophobe or an anti-intellectual when people are in a position that requires making snap judgements or inferences the solution is simple. Leave the Republican Party.
"shouldn't content producers, artists, programmers, and basically anyone producing something have a right to their work?"
No. You cant own an idea. This is why patents and copyrights are social contracts and not natural rights. The purpose of copyright is to provide precisely enough incentive to get creative types to produce works of art, no more. As a form of government intervention it is highly inefficient and we can see this in various places. For a start, sports stars. Does anyone think that without copyright sports stars would be paid the astronomical wages they are? This comes in part from sponsorship which is driven by exclusive broadcast rights which stem from copyright.
Now I have no objection to government intervention in the market, but don't dress up a social contract which causes serious inefficiency as 'protecting' artists rights. This is an area of industry in dire need of being opened up to competition. If you want to retain control over a work of art, don't publish it. Once you publish something it has entered the collective culture and isn't yours any more. No one is forcing anyone to lose control over their work. If they keep it secret they can have as much control over it as they like.
As for software, this presents a unique problem. It is of a completely different character to any other medium in that if I have a book I can replicate the book on any platform I want with minimal effort, similarly film and music. Not so with software. This gives producers of content in this realm the ability to circumvent the social contract by releasing locked up versions of their work. A similar problem exists with DRM except with DRM the violation of the spirit of the social contract is deliberate . If you release a piece of software and want it to be protected by copyright then releasing the source code after the copyright expires should be a matter of course, perhaps by means of a centrally operated repository.
Artists have no more right to control what is done with their work that plane designers have deciding what altitude the planes they design should fly at.
You simply don't understand the nature of science.
Our climate models are now unlikely to be falsified in their entirety because they are well established. There is a little debate as the magnitudes of effects but we have gone from looking for an overall model to measuring the constants of that model and tweaking it round the edges.
Could our climate models be overturned? Sure, but at this stage it isn't likely. You don't overthrow established science on a whim or on one odd result. First you check if the experiment was well controlled and sound. Then you check to see if you have interpreted the model correctly. Were there effects that got left out because their magnitude was calculated to be small, but in fact turn out to be large? Then finally you ask if there is something wrong with the established model itself.
You are asking the equivalent of "To those who believe that Maxwell's equations describe light, what would it take to convince you that they don't?". I grant you the analogy is flawed in so far as you are asking it shortly after the predictions of Maxwell's equations were confirmed and at that stage there were lots of odd ideas like the Ether around and we didn't really fully comprehend the theory, but still the question is a bit odd.
We haven't expected warming for the last 10 years. This spell of 'cool' weather is a prediction of our climate and weather models, not a refutation of them. You also make the mistake of looking at small data sets (like changes in sea ice around the poles over the past few years) and extrapolating. If in 20-25 years time there has been an unexpected recovery in ice around the north pole then as I understand it (I'm not a climatologist) that would run counter to the predictions of our climate models. However even in that case we wouldn't throw out the models right off the bat, not when they have been so successful! We would try to tweak and modify the models so they fit existing data. Then we would make new predictions based off these new improved models and so on. That is how science works!
What would make me reconsider current climate models? That is, what would make me doubt that, to within the stated errors, these models are good predictors of the global climate? Empirical evidence. If Antarctic sea ice hadn't behaved as expected. If, over a long period of time, Arctic ice increased rather than decreased. If global temperatures over the past 40 years decreased rather than increased. And so on. If enough of these things occured, and if they differed in a statistically significant way from the predictions of the models, then I'd say we need to modify the models. The models would be wrong. To a small extent that has happened, we have refined the models where there were small differences. But by and large the models have fitted our experiments.
But even if over the 25 years we get a string of results like that I probably wouldn't be in the position you want me to be in. Just like quantum effects overturned Maxwell's equations, a paradigm shift in climate modelling probably wouldn't change the large scale picture. CO2 emissions would still cause increases in mean global temperature. From here on it's politics, not science so you want to debate me here you are welcome to. I think that significant increases in global temperature (a few degrees) would be bad. I believe we would still need to do something about the amount of CO2 we emit. Why? The science behind that particular result is about as established as the science behind the combustion engine and almost as old. Paradigm shifts have to encompass previous results, they don't discard them. Special relativity radically changed our view of thermodynamics, but your car still works the same way.
Your post is full of basic errors and misunderstandings of climate science. If you really care about this stuff please go get yourself a PhD. and research it. If you cant or don't want to do that, read the peer reviewed back catalogue of some real respected sceptics such as Friss-Christensen or Svens
Having worked in academia I can attest to the very poor code quality, at least in my area. The reason is very simple, the modern research scientists is often a jack-of-all-trades. A combination IT professional, programmer, teacher, manager, recruiter, bureaucrat, hardware technician, engineer, statistician, author and mathematician as well as being an expert in the science of their own field. Any one of these disciplines would take years of experience to develop professional skills at. Most scientists simply don't have time to do that, so they wing it. I think publishing code would be a good idea as scrutiny would help quality, but a big chunk of this code is never going to be of professional quality because it isn't written by professional programmers.
What I find interesting is that you claim to have developed social skills, yet you are still an arrogant ass who is trying to tell others how to behave. I find it amusing that you lecture others in a tirade which is best describe as outlining your 'L337 $0(14L $|1LL$' one worthy of any arrogant conceited nerd. I suspect at best you have learnt to conform to the demands of others. It is manifest you haven't learnt any real social skills since your lack of empathy is apparent in every paragraph.
I'm not sure if you read the article but their idea of 'teaching social skills' is the typical weak and pathetic 'think about others and empathise with them' approach. It certainly isn't a 'get in others heads and manipulate them to your own ends' type of 'social skills'. Many victims of bullies already have an over abundance of empathy. That's why they are in the position they are in. They refuse to defy adult authority and take the steps necessary to fit in because the are aware of the feelings of others including adults. In the adult world that might be useful In the jungle that is our school system that is a weakness that will only be amplified by the articles idea of 'teaching social skills'.
Actually the reverse is true. No punishment at all is better than punishing both parties. The bully expects to be punished and often doesn't care. At least when they are male. The victim is often a 'good kid' who is trying to conform to the social expectations of adults. Punishing a bully isn't punishment, it is social capital because it demonstrates how far he is willing to go to establish dominance. By punishing both parties you are effectively rewarding the bully and punishing the victim. I don't buy that it isn't obvious who the victim is when there is bullying. I can always spot the nerd. At least with no punishment you are saying to the nerds defend yourself and there wont be consequences.
You appear to be under the misapprehension I was supporting you. I thought your comment was ignorant and was making light of the fact that your defender was happy to stand up for you when you were a 'victim' of negative moderation in regard to a comment which positively oozes a "blame the victim" mentality. I'm one of the people who responded to your post by pointing out the absurdity of your argument, I am very much not on your side. I don't have many nice things to say about your ridiculous Christian ethics either.
No the problem is right there in your statement. The notion that good kids shouldn't do cost benefit analysis and instead should follow silly rules or worse indulge themselves with the selfishness of avoiding guilt. I hope you don't have kids and specifically I hope you don't have a little boy because he wont have any idea how the world really works or how he ought to behave. Boys need to be taught to ignore their conscience and act in their own best interest and the best interest of others, and in the situation you describe the moral and proper thing to do is beat the aggressor to a bloody pulp with the baseball bat, regardless of if it meets some absurd set of rules or makes him feel bad.
The problem is it is asymmetrical. It is all well and good to say punishment doesn't work, but that is because there isn't any punishment. You defend yourself from bullying in a reasonable manner and you will be punished, but if you report bullying nothing is done because you are 'tattling' or because the bully denies it. Or just as bad, too little is done. On the flip side if you leave a bully suitably damaged so as to dissuade him from future attacks, you will be punished even if you deny having anything to do with it because 'reciprocation of violence cant be tolerated'.
We cant have it both ways, either we have a free for all and we let the nerds do whatever they want (if you are all for that, fine, just be prepared to take a few of the jocks home in body bags) or we actually punish the bullies. Personally I think the latter is a better option.
As for teaching people who are bullied social skills, talk about the social sciences at their worst. Game theory would be useful. It would be better to teach nerds to disregards the meaningless 'moral' nonsense we try to instil in them and replace it with a dash of Machiavellian social manipulation and disregard for the welfare of the subhuman scum who engage in these antisocial practices. Teach nerds body language. Teach them how to mock other children and provoke them, and when to do it to maximise the pay off. How to use humour. How to work out what dark secrets drive the bully and use them against him. Is he doing it because his father beats him? Can you use that against him. Does the bullies mother have a drinking problem? What weaknesses can you spot in your opposition and how can you use it to drive them to despair? Teach them how to manipulate other children and get them to do your dirty work for you. Teach them how to build a social circle with their talents which is dependent on them.
A nerds analytical mind is a weapon. A weapon that should be honed towards proactive defence. Not stifled as it is now with ridiculous notions about 'turning the other cheek' or 'trust in authority'.
I think we largely agree, but I also think you've missed my point, probably because I haven't made it clear.
It is not simply a matter of throwing ones hands up in the air and say "it's culture". At the moment I strongly believe that many groups pushing for equality for women are doing a very bad job of it because they are focused not on genuine egalitarian principles but instead on correcting imbalances directed primarily against women.
You might well say that it is not in these groups remit to address these issues. I'd agree, but I would argue it is in the best interest of women to do so. Increasing resistance to feminist ideology doesn't just stem from the absurd scaremongering certain elements of the right so enjoy engaging in. I know many guys who have expressed the opinion that more than a few of the women they know are only interested in equality as far as it gets them something and have no interest in a genuinely egalitarian society. They see that attitude perpetuated by cynical politicians and leaders of women's groups as well as individual women and it makes them disinclined to take women's issues seriously.
Not campaigning for a more equal society and championing men's issues is a strategic blunder by people looking to further women's interests. Campaigning against equality for men as some prominent so called feminists have done goes beyond counter productive.
Take for example the issue suicide rates. This problem disproportionately affects men. This is an issue women's groups could seize on as an example of how unfair our society still is. I believe they could use it to argue how inefficient and undesirable our bullshit macho culture is. Yet this opportunity is largely ignored.
I believe there is a vast untapped resource of men who are just as sick of our patriarchal society as most women are. Being viewed as essentially expendable. Judged on material worth. Repeatedly accused of being sexual deviants and having their parenting skills brought into question. They aren't going to rally to our banner as long as our leaders wear a big shiny badge of hypocrisy and revel at every misfortune that happens to befall males because it in some way constitutes 'revenge' for years of oppression.
While I think you are on my side your very attitude reveals that your mode of thought is not congruent with your stated aim. You apply men's own macho standard to them as though they are in some way to blame for them. You essentially blame the victim.
A child who doesn't report abuse is not a fault because he happens to be a boy and has been brainwashed with a boys don't cry mentality. A husband whose wife threatens him with a knife is not at fault because the police wont listen to him. It doesn't matter what gender the police officer is or what gender the person who did the brainwashing is, the victims are victim. Men don't do this to themselves. A culture, perpetuated by both men and women, has done this to them.
If she is qualified to study the subject why does she require so much tutoring?
While I was at college we regularly did problem sheets in ad hoc groups together of 3-6 (and gender was never an issue), but no one required 'tutoring' on a one on one basis regularly.
In four years I think there were at most three or four occasions where peopled paired up to do specific problems because one person knew how to do it and the other didn't. At least two of those were because the guy receiving the tutoring was undeniably lazy.
He makes the point that society is sexist and that the feminist movement has done virtually nothing to protest or correct imbalances against men and you argue that society is sexist as some kind of counter point? I don't understand.
Women contribute to the glass ceiling. They do things like taking degrees that are perceived as easier and this has an impact later in life. No one would dare say that the glass ceiling is women's fault because they collectively reinforce a sexist culture Nor should they. Culture is at fault. Yet you are quite happy to collectively punish men.
The problem is culture. And you aren't going to fix culture by piece meal addressing only the parts of society and social order that discriminate against women.
I tell my female friends, most of whom would describe themselves as feminists, that I think things like the draft and parental rights should be applied equally and I get accused of being an arsehole for it.
We have to fix culture collectively. The egalitarian movement can no longer confine itself to just fixing the glaring inequality against women. We have to work to overhaul our entire culture to one which starts with equality for all as it's basis and not simply correcting the injustices perpetrated against the female gender.
It looks like an fun game. But it isn't splinter cell. It is an all out assault where alerting your enemies doesn't seem to matter. I'm certain it will be a much better game than Double Agent was (which was a real turd), but Sam Fischer doesn't kill everything in sight. He knocks out the guards he has to and leaves the rest unaware he was ever there. Here he just seems to be leaving a trail of violence, death and destruction that makes Vietnam look like grandma's picnic.
I have a hard time getting angry at Microsoft over this (plenty more things they do annoy / anger me though). They were in violation of the GPL, when they realised it they had a few options. Among those options were come into compliance, contact the copyright owner and try to make a deal or try to cover it up. Of those three options they chose the more ethical in my opinion. They almost certainly chose that option because it also made the most business sense but that is what they always do. It is what every other business does. Sun, Red Hat and IBM aren't releasing open source code for anyone else's benefit other than their own.
I think the reason most nerds are strong advocates of nuclear power is that the opposition to nuclear power comes from the same kind of idiocy that pisses them off in their daily lives. I think it is largely driven by anger that from their perspective a perfectly good (or at least a superior) technical solution to a major problem exists and the usual objections raised to it come from either crass stupidity, utterly disingenuous reasoning and most of all fear. The analogy I would use is when Firefox was becoming popular and IE6 was a massive security risk. Nerds repeatedly told people that IE was insecure and they should switch. And we heard FUD filled crap after FUD filled crap from people refusing to switch. These people still insisted we fix all of the problems their choices resulted in, but still acted like they knew best. For all the "slashdot thinks climate change is a conspiracy" claims I see I think most people on here agree with the scientific consensus. They ask themselves questions like: "Even if the worst case scenario occurs and there is a containment failure with nuclear waste storage how does that compare to the North American deserts extending over the great plains?" I for one am sick and tired of people using emotions and "Ahhh nuclear==Hiroshima" reasoning instead of cold hard logic when it comes to policy decisions. I'm equally tired of the work of nuclear scientists who have made great strides in making the technology safer being ignored through arguments like "modern reactors==RBMK design". Most of all I'm tired of the politics of fear, be it fear of technology or fear of different races or fear of homosexuals. I'm tired of idiots using their gut reaction instead of their brain to decide things, then screaming about how their ill informed gut reaction is just as valid an opinion as the research of my colleagues in the sciences. That isn't to say I haven't heard good arguments against nuclear reactors from smart people whose priorities are different to mine. There is a debate to be had. But the debate most advocates of nuclear power have are not with informed, intelligent people. They are with fear-mongering morons.
Don't need a amendment for a federal CO2 tax. First of all there is a clear externalities that is not paid when fossil fuels are burnt. That externality goes across state lines so the commerce clause applies, and the necessary and proper clause as well (in fact this is the actual reason for having the commerce clause, and not the usual crap it is used for). Congress really doesn't need either of the above, but they would justify CO2 regulation. If you can justify regulation to deal with a problem then you can certainly justify a tax. One could even make an argument under general welfare, although I hate doing that since you can justify almost anything if you squint enough at that one. All congress really needs to enact this tax is Article one, it grants congress the power to levy a tax on CO2 emission since this tax is clearly not direct (it is linked to the emission of CO2, an event, not property or income derived there from) there is no need for something like the sixteenth. The tax doesn't discriminate against a constitutionally protected class or anything like that so I cant see a constitutional argument against it. If you can think of one I would be interested to hear it. Either way the real bottom line is large national scale problems like CO2 externalities is what congress is supposed to deal with anyway. I agree that the federal government is running roughshod over the constitution but this simply isn't a case of that. It isn't like the health care debate where general welfare is being stretched beyond all recognition, or the use of highway funding to force states to adjust drinking ages by abusing the commerce clause.
He refused to give his former spouse power of attorney so she could reasonably attempt to recover the money. I'm certain if he had given her that power he would be riding the next bus out of jail.
I suspect it runs a little something like this. Microsoft knows if they ship Windows 7 with just IE the EU is going to tear them a new one. They know what the EU wants them to do. The EU wants them to let the OEMs put anything they like on the machines they ship, or even insist on alternatives being included. This is a worse scenario for Mircosoft than just not having a web browser because it not only makes people more aware there are alternatives, but it places those alternatives right in front of them. And OEMs marketing teams are going to start competing on who has the best browser bundled with their computers. Microsoft might well find themselves in a position where their monopoly in the browser market gets smashed. They would much rather stick a "get IE 8" message in the welcome screen in windows that every grandma and her dog will use than have some OEM piece of crapware present new users with a choice and risk grandma clicking one at random. Not to mention if I'm running a website in a European language other than English (fewer American visitors) and I know a very large fraction of my customers now have access to other browsers without too much trouble I might start contemplating offering a degraded experience to IE customers (rather than tweaking my code) and suggesting they use something more standards compliant. This forces Microsoft to improve their standard compliance which again weakens their monopoly.
As for the upgrade issue. Microsoft has probably weighed the cost of making it possible to remove IE from Vista and leave a functional operating system against making the EU look unpopular for 'forcing' them to make this decision (the EU has done no such thing, but that is how it will be marketed). Priorities at Microsoft go maintain monopolies first, revenue second. Upgrades don't really help the mircosoft monopoly anyway, since the original computer is already running windows, so there are really only offered as a convenience to their customers and some petty cash. Plus upgrades often go wrong and probably don't really help the Microsoft brand. It was probably already pretty marginal and Microsoft just decided their legal strategy pushed the value of offering upgrades past the tipping point.
The best thing the EU can do is just make Microsoft do what they don't want to and force them to include some alternatives. Then the Microsoft decision looks stupid and their browser monopoly will be under greater threat than ever.
Do searches and seizures at airport security require warrants? Because if they did then there would be paperwork and if groups like the TSA wanted the benefit of the doubt they could say warrant or GTFO. But oh no wait travellers don't have any rights. Once you set up a rights free zone don't be surprised when everyone assumes you are abusing it. Until our freedoms are restored in an airport I'm inclined to believe every horror story I hear and assume that the jack booted morons are doing what ever they please. Because they have the power to do so.
The notion that no advances have been made in the safety of nuclear reactors is manifestly false. Forth generation designs like pebble bed reactors have numerous safety improvements over the previous generation. They are certainly considerably more safe than the Chernobyl, Three Mile Island or Windscale designs. Are they safe enough? Well everything has risks. The amount of radioactive material released from burning coal for a week dwarfs that of all of the nuclear accidents in history with the exception of one, and it isn't like scientists in the West weren't concerned about Soviet nuclear safety.
You do not need to contain nuclear waste for millions of years. If we reprocess the material then we can mix it with a suitable medium and put it back in the mine from wench it came at a comparable level of radioactivity We would be at a comparable level of risk to if we had just left the Uranium in the ground (this isn't even the best option for dealing with the waste, just a means of putting the 'risk' in context). The point is if it is radioactive enough to be dangerous then it isn't waste, it is fuel!
The real problem with nuclear is cost. Without subsidies it cant compete with coal. Neither can other clean energy sources. Of course coal has huge externalities which if they were included in the price would make coal too expensive to consider. Your example of 'clean' coal is a good one. I agree that 'clean' coal isn't (although the technologies proposed would make coal cleaner, just not very clean). You end up with a difficult storage problem with clean coal just like you do with nuclear. Where are we going to store all the carbon? Granted it is cheaper per tonne but there is a lot more carbon to store than nuclear waste.
Here is my take on this. Solar and Wind are rapidly catching up with nuclear on a cost per megawatt basis. Solar also offers a unique bonus in that it scales very well (downward). You can have a considerable amount of local power generation with solar. Wind doesn't scale as well, but there are plenty of places where when you take into account externalities it is highly viable compared with coal and nuclear. The problem is base load. Even with decentralised power generation and a good grid (better than we have now is a must if we are going the solar and wind route) we will still need a large fraction of current base load to be produced by something cast iron reliable. We can probably do a little of this by smoothing the other generators output using storage methods. Some of it is probably going to have to come from either coal, gas or nuclear. Hydro will work as well, but Hydro hasn't turned out to be the panacea we thought (nothing turned out to be the panacea with thought to be honest, and hydro also probably has a role to play). Given the choice of those three I would prefer nuclear play a prominent role The health risks from coal are just too high, even with suitable processing of the waste. We can probably generate a little bit of power from coal and gas without too much trouble, but eventually the cost of that next tonne of carbon is going to be too high.
Finally there is fusion. While it has always been '50 years away' away according to the press, each of the reactors we have built have pretty much achieved what we said they would achieve when we built them. If ITER does what it claims it can do and DEMO is a success then we will have Fusion power. I hear envirowackjobs bang on about how fusion power is just as dangerous as fission (when modern fission plants are far safer than Chernobyl, Windscale or TMI anyway). This is very simply a lie. Fusion power *might* end up being too expensive, but that doesn't seem very likely. The problem is the same problem we always have, cost. Do too much of any one thing and eventually the marginal cost goes up too much. A solar plant in a high yield spot will rapidly recoup the investment cost. Build build too many and nuclear will be cheaper. A wind turbine in a high yield spot will rapidly cover the investment cost. But if we build them everywhere then the eventually we are going to start building them when nuclear would be cheaper. This is especially true if you take into account the support needed to enable solar and wind to manage base load generation.
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I know that if I go to wikipedia, type "Euler Angles" in the search box and hit enter, then all the information I need to get me started solving whatever problem I'm working on in rigid body dynamics is right there.
If the page was wrong, I'd recognise it. I know what Euler Angles are and can recognise the z-x-z convention. If it has been weeks or months since I last used them however, I go and I look them up. It's faster than a textbook or trip to the library and more likely to pay off than a google search.
Likewise if I need a quick overview of a subject, I fire up wikipedia. It's the equivalent of asking your mate 'Dave' who did a bit of work in the topic a while back about something. Sure you might not be able to trust everything he says because his memory is a little cloudy but he knows this really good text on the subject that is authoritative and he knows you are a lay person so he mentions the bare basics that aren't always in the more advanced texts.
I'm glad we have a study now which suggests this is how students are using this resource. The reason you don't cite wikipedia or use it as a serious reference text is the same reason you don't cite Britannica. It's an encyclopaedia! A really, really, really good encyclopaedia but none-the-less an encyclopaedia. The reason it's popular isn't because it is being misused, it's because unlike most encyclopaedia it actually contains a decent amount of useful information on a broad range of topics. The only reason we haven't had this 'problem' in the past is that until wikipedia encyclopaedia were, due to technical limitations, pretty crappy.
Ignoring for a second that I would dispute many of your claims about the Democratic Party (just as I would claims that the Republicans are Nazis), at no point was I defending the shambles that is the Democratic Party. I wouldn't join them either. I certainly wouldn't self identify with their labels. You don't have to belong to either party, even if you want to help specific candidates. I see no reason for anyone to proudly sport either a (D) or and (R) after their name with the parties in their current state.
I'm very careful about the labels I attach to myself. I wouldn't join a group which has a significant racist, homophobic or anti-intellectual component to it's ideological base.
You may well not be racist. You may well not be a homophobe. You might well value intellectual pursuits. You have joined a political party which on the whole is functionally racist, ideologically homophobic and has numerous policies which are anti-intellectual to the core. People have to make snap judgements to get by most of the time. It is reasonable to make snap judgements about people when one does not have the time nor the duty to make a more in depth investigation of a person. If you don't like being considered a racist, a homophobe or an anti-intellectual when people are in a position that requires making snap judgements or inferences the solution is simple. Leave the Republican Party.
"shouldn't content producers, artists, programmers, and basically anyone producing something have a right to their work?"
No. You cant own an idea. This is why patents and copyrights are social contracts and not natural rights. The purpose of copyright is to provide precisely enough incentive to get creative types to produce works of art, no more. As a form of government intervention it is highly inefficient and we can see this in various places. For a start, sports stars. Does anyone think that without copyright sports stars would be paid the astronomical wages they are? This comes in part from sponsorship which is driven by exclusive broadcast rights which stem from copyright.
Now I have no objection to government intervention in the market, but don't dress up a social contract which causes serious inefficiency as 'protecting' artists rights. This is an area of industry in dire need of being opened up to competition. If you want to retain control over a work of art, don't publish it. Once you publish something it has entered the collective culture and isn't yours any more. No one is forcing anyone to lose control over their work. If they keep it secret they can have as much control over it as they like.
As for software, this presents a unique problem. It is of a completely different character to any other medium in that if I have a book I can replicate the book on any platform I want with minimal effort, similarly film and music. Not so with software. This gives producers of content in this realm the ability to circumvent the social contract by releasing locked up versions of their work. A similar problem exists with DRM except with DRM the violation of the spirit of the social contract is deliberate . If you release a piece of software and want it to be protected by copyright then releasing the source code after the copyright expires should be a matter of course, perhaps by means of a centrally operated repository.
Artists have no more right to control what is done with their work that plane designers have deciding what altitude the planes they design should fly at.
You simply don't understand the nature of science.
Our climate models are now unlikely to be falsified in their entirety because they are well established. There is a little debate as the magnitudes of effects but we have gone from looking for an overall model to measuring the constants of that model and tweaking it round the edges.
Could our climate models be overturned? Sure, but at this stage it isn't likely. You don't overthrow established science on a whim or on one odd result. First you check if the experiment was well controlled and sound. Then you check to see if you have interpreted the model correctly. Were there effects that got left out because their magnitude was calculated to be small, but in fact turn out to be large? Then finally you ask if there is something wrong with the established model itself.
You are asking the equivalent of "To those who believe that Maxwell's equations describe light, what would it take to convince you that they don't?". I grant you the analogy is flawed in so far as you are asking it shortly after the predictions of Maxwell's equations were confirmed and at that stage there were lots of odd ideas like the Ether around and we didn't really fully comprehend the theory, but still the question is a bit odd.
We haven't expected warming for the last 10 years. This spell of 'cool' weather is a prediction of our climate and weather models, not a refutation of them. You also make the mistake of looking at small data sets (like changes in sea ice around the poles over the past few years) and extrapolating. If in 20-25 years time there has been an unexpected recovery in ice around the north pole then as I understand it (I'm not a climatologist) that would run counter to the predictions of our climate models. However even in that case we wouldn't throw out the models right off the bat, not when they have been so successful! We would try to tweak and modify the models so they fit existing data. Then we would make new predictions based off these new improved models and so on. That is how science works!
What would make me reconsider current climate models? That is, what would make me doubt that, to within the stated errors, these models are good predictors of the global climate? Empirical evidence. If Antarctic sea ice hadn't behaved as expected. If, over a long period of time, Arctic ice increased rather than decreased. If global temperatures over the past 40 years decreased rather than increased. And so on. If enough of these things occured, and if they differed in a statistically significant way from the predictions of the models, then I'd say we need to modify the models. The models would be wrong. To a small extent that has happened, we have refined the models where there were small differences. But by and large the models have fitted our experiments.
But even if over the 25 years we get a string of results like that I probably wouldn't be in the position you want me to be in. Just like quantum effects overturned Maxwell's equations, a paradigm shift in climate modelling probably wouldn't change the large scale picture. CO2 emissions would still cause increases in mean global temperature. From here on it's politics, not science so you want to debate me here you are welcome to. I think that significant increases in global temperature (a few degrees) would be bad. I believe we would still need to do something about the amount of CO2 we emit. Why? The science behind that particular result is about as established as the science behind the combustion engine and almost as old. Paradigm shifts have to encompass previous results, they don't discard them. Special relativity radically changed our view of thermodynamics, but your car still works the same way.
Your post is full of basic errors and misunderstandings of climate science. If you really care about this stuff please go get yourself a PhD. and research it. If you cant or don't want to do that, read the peer reviewed back catalogue of some real respected sceptics such as Friss-Christensen or Svens
Having worked in academia I can attest to the very poor code quality, at least in my area. The reason is very simple, the modern research scientists is often a jack-of-all-trades. A combination IT professional, programmer, teacher, manager, recruiter, bureaucrat, hardware technician, engineer, statistician, author and mathematician as well as being an expert in the science of their own field. Any one of these disciplines would take years of experience to develop professional skills at. Most scientists simply don't have time to do that, so they wing it. I think publishing code would be a good idea as scrutiny would help quality, but a big chunk of this code is never going to be of professional quality because it isn't written by professional programmers.
What I find interesting is that you claim to have developed social skills, yet you are still an arrogant ass who is trying to tell others how to behave. I find it amusing that you lecture others in a tirade which is best describe as outlining your 'L337 $0(14L $|1LL$' one worthy of any arrogant conceited nerd. I suspect at best you have learnt to conform to the demands of others. It is manifest you haven't learnt any real social skills since your lack of empathy is apparent in every paragraph.
I'm not sure if you read the article but their idea of 'teaching social skills' is the typical weak and pathetic 'think about others and empathise with them' approach. It certainly isn't a 'get in others heads and manipulate them to your own ends' type of 'social skills'. Many victims of bullies already have an over abundance of empathy. That's why they are in the position they are in. They refuse to defy adult authority and take the steps necessary to fit in because the are aware of the feelings of others including adults. In the adult world that might be useful In the jungle that is our school system that is a weakness that will only be amplified by the articles idea of 'teaching social skills'.
Actually the reverse is true. No punishment at all is better than punishing both parties. The bully expects to be punished and often doesn't care. At least when they are male. The victim is often a 'good kid' who is trying to conform to the social expectations of adults. Punishing a bully isn't punishment, it is social capital because it demonstrates how far he is willing to go to establish dominance. By punishing both parties you are effectively rewarding the bully and punishing the victim.
I don't buy that it isn't obvious who the victim is when there is bullying. I can always spot the nerd. At least with no punishment you are saying to the nerds defend yourself and there wont be consequences.
The bullied kids failure to plant pot (or better something harder) in the gits locker shows a lack of imagination.
You appear to be under the misapprehension I was supporting you. I thought your comment was ignorant and was making light of the fact that your defender was happy to stand up for you when you were a 'victim' of negative moderation in regard to a comment which positively oozes a "blame the victim" mentality. I'm one of the people who responded to your post by pointing out the absurdity of your argument, I am very much not on your side. I don't have many nice things to say about your ridiculous Christian ethics either.
No the problem is right there in your statement. The notion that good kids shouldn't do cost benefit analysis and instead should follow silly rules or worse indulge themselves with the selfishness of avoiding guilt. I hope you don't have kids and specifically I hope you don't have a little boy because he wont have any idea how the world really works or how he ought to behave. Boys need to be taught to ignore their conscience and act in their own best interest and the best interest of others, and in the situation you describe the moral and proper thing to do is beat the aggressor to a bloody pulp with the baseball bat, regardless of if it meets some absurd set of rules or makes him feel bad.
GP obviously needed a class in social skills to recognise the signs that he would be unfairly modded down and react accordingly.
The problem is it is asymmetrical. It is all well and good to say punishment doesn't work, but that is because there isn't any punishment. You defend yourself from bullying in a reasonable manner and you will be punished, but if you report bullying nothing is done because you are 'tattling' or because the bully denies it. Or just as bad, too little is done. On the flip side if you leave a bully suitably damaged so as to dissuade him from future attacks, you will be punished even if you deny having anything to do with it because 'reciprocation of violence cant be tolerated'.
We cant have it both ways, either we have a free for all and we let the nerds do whatever they want (if you are all for that, fine, just be prepared to take a few of the jocks home in body bags) or we actually punish the bullies. Personally I think the latter is a better option.
As for teaching people who are bullied social skills, talk about the social sciences at their worst. Game theory would be useful. It would be better to teach nerds to disregards the meaningless 'moral' nonsense we try to instil in them and replace it with a dash of Machiavellian social manipulation and disregard for the welfare of the subhuman scum who engage in these antisocial practices. Teach nerds body language. Teach them how to mock other children and provoke them, and when to do it to maximise the pay off. How to use humour. How to work out what dark secrets drive the bully and use them against him. Is he doing it because his father beats him? Can you use that against him. Does the bullies mother have a drinking problem? What weaknesses can you spot in your opposition and how can you use it to drive them to despair? Teach them how to manipulate other children and get them to do your dirty work for you. Teach them how to build a social circle with their talents which is dependent on them.
A nerds analytical mind is a weapon. A weapon that should be honed towards proactive defence. Not stifled as it is now with ridiculous notions about 'turning the other cheek' or 'trust in authority'.
I think we largely agree, but I also think you've missed my point, probably because I haven't made it clear.
It is not simply a matter of throwing ones hands up in the air and say "it's culture". At the moment I strongly believe that many groups pushing for equality for women are doing a very bad job of it because they are focused not on genuine egalitarian principles but instead on correcting imbalances directed primarily against women.
You might well say that it is not in these groups remit to address these issues. I'd agree, but I would argue it is in the best interest of women to do so. Increasing resistance to feminist ideology doesn't just stem from the absurd scaremongering certain elements of the right so enjoy engaging in. I know many guys who have expressed the opinion that more than a few of the women they know are only interested in equality as far as it gets them something and have no interest in a genuinely egalitarian society. They see that attitude perpetuated by cynical politicians and leaders of women's groups as well as individual women and it makes them disinclined to take women's issues seriously.
Not campaigning for a more equal society and championing men's issues is a strategic blunder by people looking to further women's interests. Campaigning against equality for men as some prominent so called feminists have done goes beyond counter productive.
Take for example the issue suicide rates. This problem disproportionately affects men. This is an issue women's groups could seize on as an example of how unfair our society still is. I believe they could use it to argue how inefficient and undesirable our bullshit macho culture is. Yet this opportunity is largely ignored.
I believe there is a vast untapped resource of men who are just as sick of our patriarchal society as most women are. Being viewed as essentially expendable. Judged on material worth. Repeatedly accused of being sexual deviants and having their parenting skills brought into question. They aren't going to rally to our banner as long as our leaders wear a big shiny badge of hypocrisy and revel at every misfortune that happens to befall males because it in some way constitutes 'revenge' for years of oppression.
While I think you are on my side your very attitude reveals that your mode of thought is not congruent with your stated aim. You apply men's own macho standard to them as though they are in some way to blame for them. You essentially blame the victim.
A child who doesn't report abuse is not a fault because he happens to be a boy and has been brainwashed with a boys don't cry mentality. A husband whose wife threatens him with a knife is not at fault because the police wont listen to him. It doesn't matter what gender the police officer is or what gender the person who did the brainwashing is, the victims are victim. Men don't do this to themselves. A culture, perpetuated by both men and women, has done this to them.
If she is qualified to study the subject why does she require so much tutoring?
While I was at college we regularly did problem sheets in ad hoc groups together of 3-6 (and gender was never an issue), but no one required 'tutoring' on a one on one basis regularly.
In four years I think there were at most three or four occasions where peopled paired up to do specific problems because one person knew how to do it and the other didn't. At least two of those were because the guy receiving the tutoring was undeniably lazy.
He makes the point that society is sexist and that the feminist movement has done virtually nothing to protest or correct imbalances against men and you argue that society is sexist as some kind of counter point? I don't understand.
Women contribute to the glass ceiling. They do things like taking degrees that are perceived as easier and this has an impact later in life. No one would dare say that the glass ceiling is women's fault because they collectively reinforce a sexist culture Nor should they. Culture is at fault. Yet you are quite happy to collectively punish men.
The problem is culture. And you aren't going to fix culture by piece meal addressing only the parts of society and social order that discriminate against women.
I tell my female friends, most of whom would describe themselves as feminists, that I think things like the draft and parental rights should be applied equally and I get accused of being an arsehole for it.
We have to fix culture collectively. The egalitarian movement can no longer confine itself to just fixing the glaring inequality against women. We have to work to overhaul our entire culture to one which starts with equality for all as it's basis and not simply correcting the injustices perpetrated against the female gender.
It looks like an fun game. But it isn't splinter cell. It is an all out assault where alerting your enemies doesn't seem to matter. I'm certain it will be a much better game than Double Agent was (which was a real turd), but Sam Fischer doesn't kill everything in sight. He knocks out the guards he has to and leaves the rest unaware he was ever there. Here he just seems to be leaving a trail of violence, death and destruction that makes Vietnam look like grandma's picnic.
I have a hard time getting angry at Microsoft over this (plenty more things they do annoy / anger me though). They were in violation of the GPL, when they realised it they had a few options. Among those options were come into compliance, contact the copyright owner and try to make a deal or try to cover it up. Of those three options they chose the more ethical in my opinion. They almost certainly chose that option because it also made the most business sense but that is what they always do. It is what every other business does. Sun, Red Hat and IBM aren't releasing open source code for anyone else's benefit other than their own.
I think the reason most nerds are strong advocates of nuclear power is that the opposition to nuclear power comes from the same kind of idiocy that pisses them off in their daily lives.
I think it is largely driven by anger that from their perspective a perfectly good (or at least a superior) technical solution to a major problem exists and the usual objections raised to it come from either crass stupidity, utterly disingenuous reasoning and most of all fear.
The analogy I would use is when Firefox was becoming popular and IE6 was a massive security risk. Nerds repeatedly told people that IE was insecure and they should switch. And we heard FUD filled crap after FUD filled crap from people refusing to switch. These people still insisted we fix all of the problems their choices resulted in, but still acted like they knew best.
For all the "slashdot thinks climate change is a conspiracy" claims I see I think most people on here agree with the scientific consensus. They ask themselves questions like:
"Even if the worst case scenario occurs and there is a containment failure with nuclear waste storage how does that compare to the North American deserts extending over the great plains?"
I for one am sick and tired of people using emotions and "Ahhh nuclear==Hiroshima" reasoning instead of cold hard logic when it comes to policy decisions. I'm equally tired of the work of nuclear scientists who have made great strides in making the technology safer being ignored through arguments like "modern reactors==RBMK design".
Most of all I'm tired of the politics of fear, be it fear of technology or fear of different races or fear of homosexuals. I'm tired of idiots using their gut reaction instead of their brain to decide things, then screaming about how their ill informed gut reaction is just as valid an opinion as the research of my colleagues in the sciences.
That isn't to say I haven't heard good arguments against nuclear reactors from smart people whose priorities are different to mine. There is a debate to be had. But the debate most advocates of nuclear power have are not with informed, intelligent people. They are with fear-mongering morons.
Don't need a amendment for a federal CO2 tax. First of all there is a clear externalities that is not paid when fossil fuels are burnt. That externality goes across state lines so the commerce clause applies, and the necessary and proper clause as well (in fact this is the actual reason for having the commerce clause, and not the usual crap it is used for). Congress really doesn't need either of the above, but they would justify CO2 regulation. If you can justify regulation to deal with a problem then you can certainly justify a tax. One could even make an argument under general welfare, although I hate doing that since you can justify almost anything if you squint enough at that one. All congress really needs to enact this tax is Article one, it grants congress the power to levy a tax on CO2 emission since this tax is clearly not direct (it is linked to the emission of CO2, an event, not property or income derived there from) there is no need for something like the sixteenth. The tax doesn't discriminate against a constitutionally protected class or anything like that so I cant see a constitutional argument against it.
If you can think of one I would be interested to hear it.
Either way the real bottom line is large national scale problems like CO2 externalities is what congress is supposed to deal with anyway. I agree that the federal government is running roughshod over the constitution but this simply isn't a case of that. It isn't like the health care debate where general welfare is being stretched beyond all recognition, or the use of highway funding to force states to adjust drinking ages by abusing the commerce clause.
He refused to give his former spouse power of attorney so she could reasonably attempt to recover the money. I'm certain if he had given her that power he would be riding the next bus out of jail.
I suspect it runs a little something like this. Microsoft knows if they ship Windows 7 with just IE the EU is going to tear them a new one. They know what the EU wants them to do. The EU wants them to let the OEMs put anything they like on the machines they ship, or even insist on alternatives being included. This is a worse scenario for Mircosoft than just not having a web browser because it not only makes people more aware there are alternatives, but it places those alternatives right in front of them. And OEMs marketing teams are going to start competing on who has the best browser bundled with their computers. Microsoft might well find themselves in a position where their monopoly in the browser market gets smashed. They would much rather stick a "get IE 8" message in the welcome screen in windows that every grandma and her dog will use than have some OEM piece of crapware present new users with a choice and risk grandma clicking one at random. Not to mention if I'm running a website in a European language other than English (fewer American visitors) and I know a very large fraction of my customers now have access to other browsers without too much trouble I might start contemplating offering a degraded experience to IE customers (rather than tweaking my code) and suggesting they use something more standards compliant. This forces Microsoft to improve their standard compliance which again weakens their monopoly.
As for the upgrade issue. Microsoft has probably weighed the cost of making it possible to remove IE from Vista and leave a functional operating system against making the EU look unpopular for 'forcing' them to make this decision (the EU has done no such thing, but that is how it will be marketed). Priorities at Microsoft go maintain monopolies first, revenue second. Upgrades don't really help the mircosoft monopoly anyway, since the original computer is already running windows, so there are really only offered as a convenience to their customers and some petty cash. Plus upgrades often go wrong and probably don't really help the Microsoft brand. It was probably already pretty marginal and Microsoft just decided their legal strategy pushed the value of offering upgrades past the tipping point.
The best thing the EU can do is just make Microsoft do what they don't want to and force them to include some alternatives. Then the Microsoft decision looks stupid and their browser monopoly will be under greater threat than ever.
Do searches and seizures at airport security require warrants? Because if they did then there would be paperwork and if groups like the TSA wanted the benefit of the doubt they could say warrant or GTFO. But oh no wait travellers don't have any rights. Once you set up a rights free zone don't be surprised when everyone assumes you are abusing it. Until our freedoms are restored in an airport I'm inclined to believe every horror story I hear and assume that the jack booted morons are doing what ever they please. Because they have the power to do so.
The notion that no advances have been made in the safety of nuclear reactors is manifestly false. Forth generation designs like pebble bed reactors have numerous safety improvements over the previous generation. They are certainly considerably more safe than the Chernobyl, Three Mile Island or Windscale designs. Are they safe enough? Well everything has risks. The amount of radioactive material released from burning coal for a week dwarfs that of all of the nuclear accidents in history with the exception of one, and it isn't like scientists in the West weren't concerned about Soviet nuclear safety.
You do not need to contain nuclear waste for millions of years. If we reprocess the material then we can mix it with a suitable medium and put it back in the mine from wench it came at a comparable level of radioactivity We would be at a comparable level of risk to if we had just left the Uranium in the ground (this isn't even the best option for dealing with the waste, just a means of putting the 'risk' in context). The point is if it is radioactive enough to be dangerous then it isn't waste, it is fuel!
The real problem with nuclear is cost. Without subsidies it cant compete with coal. Neither can other clean energy sources. Of course coal has huge externalities which if they were included in the price would make coal too expensive to consider. Your example of 'clean' coal is a good one. I agree that 'clean' coal isn't (although the technologies proposed would make coal cleaner, just not very clean). You end up with a difficult storage problem with clean coal just like you do with nuclear. Where are we going to store all the carbon? Granted it is cheaper per tonne but there is a lot more carbon to store than nuclear waste.
Here is my take on this. Solar and Wind are rapidly catching up with nuclear on a cost per megawatt basis. Solar also offers a unique bonus in that it scales very well (downward). You can have a considerable amount of local power generation with solar. Wind doesn't scale as well, but there are plenty of places where when you take into account externalities it is highly viable compared with coal and nuclear. The problem is base load. Even with decentralised power generation and a good grid (better than we have now is a must if we are going the solar and wind route) we will still need a large fraction of current base load to be produced by something cast iron reliable. We can probably do a little of this by smoothing the other generators output using storage methods. Some of it is probably going to have to come from either coal, gas or nuclear. Hydro will work as well, but Hydro hasn't turned out to be the panacea we thought (nothing turned out to be the panacea with thought to be honest, and hydro also probably has a role to play). Given the choice of those three I would prefer nuclear play a prominent role The health risks from coal are just too high, even with suitable processing of the waste. We can probably generate a little bit of power from coal and gas without too much trouble, but eventually the cost of that next tonne of carbon is going to be too high.
Finally there is fusion. While it has always been '50 years away' away according to the press, each of the reactors we have built have pretty much achieved what we said they would achieve when we built them. If ITER does what it claims it can do and DEMO is a success then we will have Fusion power. I hear envirowackjobs bang on about how fusion power is just as dangerous as fission (when modern fission plants are far safer than Chernobyl, Windscale or TMI anyway). This is very simply a lie. Fusion power *might* end up being too expensive, but that doesn't seem very likely. The problem is the same problem we always have, cost. Do too much of any one thing and eventually the marginal cost goes up too much. A solar plant in a high yield spot will rapidly recoup the investment cost. Build build too many and nuclear will be cheaper. A wind turbine in a high yield spot will rapidly cover the investment cost. But if we build them everywhere then the eventually we are going to start building them when nuclear would be cheaper. This is especially true if you take into account the support needed to enable solar and wind to manage base load generation.