It is directly related to the competition argument, which is always pulled out by people arguing against the need for neutrality regulation: "Competition will keep ISPs honest!" No it won't, because there is basically no competition. In the absence of competition, ISPs can institute any pricing scheme they want - which goes against Net Neutrality.
The *only* thing in common was a rise *year over year* of average global temperatures *without fail*.
Completely, utterly, totally wrong. Show me one paper that claims this. The best you can possibly get is that decadal averages rise without fail. And that's actually happened.
So please, if you want to argue, please do so. But don't pull crap out of your ass.
A small tip - calling someone an idiot from the comfort and security of your keyboard does little to advance your argument.
What made you think I wanted a rational debate? If I wanted that, I would have replied to someone who actually made sense.
And to save you some trouble - please don't bother me with all that peer review literature vs grey literature stuff.
How splendid. A pre-emptive strike that makes it impossible to actually debate anything. How does it feel to talk about nothing?
An issue as far reaching as AGW requires broader audience treatment.
The many eyeballs argument. And, as they found out in open source software, the many eyeballs argument only works if the eyeballs actually understand what they're looking at. An issue is not helped when willfully ignorant people start talking.
You know, you had a chance to actually demonstrate that you're taking the high road by providing some sort of evidence for your talking points. Unfortunately for you, I already know why you didn't: the IPCC reports never made the claims and data analysis that you say they did.
There's nothing wrong with points of view. There is a problem when people are actively lying to score points. And if you picked up your specific points from Monckton, well, then he was lying. And you ought to look for better sources. Or do you just blindly trust what they say?
Just because you were modded interesting, I'll respond.
Now please note that before excessive snowfall, no fucking global warming campaigners said ANYTHING about "there will be a blizzard in 2010 and it will prove global warming".
That's because no climatologist would ever make such a prediction, and none have made such prediction. For two reasons: NOTHING will ever PROVE any scientific theory. The same way that nothing will ever prove gravity - merely that datapoints keep supporting our current scientific model. Second, climatologists are as of now unable to predict something as localized as a specific snow storm in a specific area at a specific time more than a few days out. You are working with a two-body gravitational model, they are working with a trillion-body feedback loop. Give a bit of respect to the complexity here.
The predictions that are made are of the order of: over the next 50 years, ice will melt at rate x, and temperature will rise at rate y. What they're seeing is that over the last 20 years or so, data points have been consistently in the ranges of the most catastrophic models. Does it prove anything? No. See above for why. But it cause for concern when the aggressive models are consistently the ones that most accurately predict the evolution of average data points.
So please. Do us all a favor and go fuck off in the room where we keep all the creationists and come back when you have a working understanding of scientific research.
IPCC's prediction of global temperature increase in past 10 years. (Actual numbers fell substantially below even their lower bound prediction)
How does it feel to be an idiot and talk about something you know nothing about? Oh, right - ignorance is bliss. I won't bother asking you for a citation where a single model said "1999 will have an average temperature that is exactly 0.05 degrees celsius higher than 1998", because no such paper exists. I would just like to ask you how you feel about making crap up and providing a study in cognitive dissonance?
IPCC's recent claim that it is 'worse than we thought' and that climate change is accelerating which was based on change of trend from least squares line fitting using carefully selected moving end points.
Sigh. Another completely unsupported assertion that is bordering on willful lying. Really? Is it that difficult to come up with reasonable criticisms, that the only thing you have left is imagining straw men?
Cell internet access is vastly more expensive with far worse connection speeds. Cable and DSL occasionally compete, but not always. And when they do, it's in the form of a duopoly, which isn't much of a competition.
As for your argument that the lack of rising internet rates indicates successful competition - where the hell were you 10 years ago? 10 years ago, I could get a 756kbit line for about $50. Now, thanks to absolutely craptastic ATT lines, I get 756kbit lines... for $60. This, in a time, when many other countries get 10Mbit speeds for half the price.
Competition exists, it works well, but it sure as hell isn't taking place in the US.
You do realize that the vast majority of "independent" ISPs are merely leasing lines from the incumbent provider? That leads to such joy as "Sorry you have such issues with your line, but it's up to ATT to send a technician out to fix this line. I wouldn't hold my breath."
No. The duopolies are created by sweetheart deals between the carriers and the local municipalities.
By the way, do you understand the concept of natural monopolies? Whereby markets that require heavy upfront investment favor the incumbent to the point of making it impossible to compete with them after they've establish themselves? Please do not invoke free market incantations when you have no idea what defines a free market.
And if you would have paid attention, almost no "green-lords" (not sure who falls under that definition, but I'm going to assume the usual suspects of WWF, Sierra Club and other environmental organizations of the same ilk) ever endorsed the use of corn kernels as a source for biofuel. Almost everyone saw that coming. The only ones who uniformly didn't see it coming (or at least didn't care) were the corn producers and their lobbies.
If you even think for one second that the environmental lobbies somehow have more pull than the agricultural lobbies, you've just not been paying attention.
Here is the biggest issue with the competition argument: in the vast majority of markets, there is at best a duopoly (cable and dsl). If you're completely out of luck, you only have one high-speed provider; generally ATT. The idea that free markets will magically keep the ISPs honest is ludicrous to the point of being a flat-out lie. At this point, I have to believe that anyone claiming that competition will do anything in the high-speed ISP market is just lying.
The only competition that exists is in the cellular high-speed internet access, and even that is incredibly limited competition: the high costs of terminating a contract prematurely make sure of that.
Also most of the scientists I've meant in three separate colleges believed in a Creator of some kind.
Irrelevant argument from authority. Scientists have no special insight into the status of a creator, because science cannot deal with supernatural explanations. By definition.
Finally,intelligent design is not science. It's not that they're not incompatible, they're not even the same thing. Intelligent design is a supernatural explanation for a natural state. It's like arguing that purple and tigers are not incompatible, therefore the belief in purple tigers is perfectly normal.
Maybe we should have a story feature that adds an automatic link to the appropriate xkcd comic. I think it would be more useful than the current twitter or facebook links.
Not to mention that the accuracy is on occasion pin-point - true, you don't know when a location is within a few meters of the actual location, but even a limited time series can demonstrate where someone was accurately, and how they were moving.
That's ludicrous - only the Police, the National Guard and Federal employees can be trusted with that kind of access. Every other person in the US is just not trustworthy enough to handle this kind of responsibility.
What we need to do is to call a Constitutional Convention and rewrite the thing with a clearer and MUCH expanded Bill of Rights.
Oh HELL no. I can tell you what that leads to: the abomination that is the EU constitution. About 200 pages in small print.
No, No, and No.
I love the US Constitution because it is short and specific. Everyone can read it over a lunch break. It covers broad areas and puts lower (or upper) limits on what can be implemented, but doesn't spell out the legalistic details. Please don't touch it. There are a few issues with it, but nothing that requires a wholesale rewrite. And for the record - the issues I refer to are not the second amendment, but much more so the Bill of Rights, because suddenly people think that those are all the rights there are.
I'd go one further: every law on the books needs to be recertified and brought back for a vote every 10 years. Can't handle the volume? Then focus on the laws that actually matter.
Take your incorrect post like a man. Accept you made a mistake, acknowledge it, and move on. And make sure your research is sound before posting again.
Tell that to the literal constitutionalists, or those bitching about activist judges. Face it, all legal systems are designed to provide justice. Whether you agree with the definition of justice behind the legal system or not goes a long way in whether you think it is being just.
Or, in other words, make sure you play with friends. Then you don't have to worry about gear checks, loot whores, anonymous assholes and other douchebaggery. And look - the social networking tools make that easy! Whodathunkit.
Because there is value in forcing the Chinese to make all of our mistakes as well. If they have exact specs on what works, they don't need to run through the host of mistakes it took us to get to this technology. Outdated or not, it's still a valuable stepping stone.
Here's where it stops to be just "any" job: when the decisions of a single CEO can mean worldwide financial collapse, they don't get to just do whatever the hell they want. Especially not if they ask the rest of the taxpayers to bail them out.
Not only that, but board members are frequently "hired" by the CEO because they know each other. Either that, or the board members are on 20 other boards, and can't find enough time to do anything but rubber stamp anything the CEO does.
Gah. I'm all for capitalism, but it's stuff like this that makes me question whether we've progressed beyond the robber baron status.
You just learned the difference between throwing out an insult and presenting a well-formulated argument. Being convincing and polite is all about format. tone and attitude.
Slashdot Mirror
It is directly related to the competition argument, which is always pulled out by people arguing against the need for neutrality regulation: "Competition will keep ISPs honest!" No it won't, because there is basically no competition. In the absence of competition, ISPs can institute any pricing scheme they want - which goes against Net Neutrality.
I leave the sensible reasoning to others. Some people just deserve a smackdown. I'm happy to provide that.
The *only* thing in common was a rise *year over year* of average global temperatures *without fail*.
Completely, utterly, totally wrong. Show me one paper that claims this. The best you can possibly get is that decadal averages rise without fail. And that's actually happened.
So please, if you want to argue, please do so. But don't pull crap out of your ass.
A small tip - calling someone an idiot from the comfort and security of your keyboard does little to advance your argument.
What made you think I wanted a rational debate? If I wanted that, I would have replied to someone who actually made sense.
And to save you some trouble - please don't bother me with all that peer review literature vs grey literature stuff.
How splendid. A pre-emptive strike that makes it impossible to actually debate anything. How does it feel to talk about nothing?
An issue as far reaching as AGW requires broader audience treatment.
The many eyeballs argument. And, as they found out in open source software, the many eyeballs argument only works if the eyeballs actually understand what they're looking at. An issue is not helped when willfully ignorant people start talking.
You know, you had a chance to actually demonstrate that you're taking the high road by providing some sort of evidence for your talking points. Unfortunately for you, I already know why you didn't: the IPCC reports never made the claims and data analysis that you say they did.
There's nothing wrong with points of view. There is a problem when people are actively lying to score points. And if you picked up your specific points from Monckton, well, then he was lying. And you ought to look for better sources. Or do you just blindly trust what they say?
Just because you were modded interesting, I'll respond.
Now please note that before excessive snowfall, no fucking global warming campaigners said ANYTHING about "there will be a blizzard in 2010 and it will prove global warming".
That's because no climatologist would ever make such a prediction, and none have made such prediction. For two reasons: NOTHING will ever PROVE any scientific theory. The same way that nothing will ever prove gravity - merely that datapoints keep supporting our current scientific model. Second, climatologists are as of now unable to predict something as localized as a specific snow storm in a specific area at a specific time more than a few days out. You are working with a two-body gravitational model, they are working with a trillion-body feedback loop. Give a bit of respect to the complexity here.
The predictions that are made are of the order of: over the next 50 years, ice will melt at rate x, and temperature will rise at rate y. What they're seeing is that over the last 20 years or so, data points have been consistently in the ranges of the most catastrophic models. Does it prove anything? No. See above for why. But it cause for concern when the aggressive models are consistently the ones that most accurately predict the evolution of average data points.
So please. Do us all a favor and go fuck off in the room where we keep all the creationists and come back when you have a working understanding of scientific research.
IPCC's prediction of global temperature increase in past 10 years. (Actual numbers fell substantially below even their lower bound prediction)
How does it feel to be an idiot and talk about something you know nothing about? Oh, right - ignorance is bliss. I won't bother asking you for a citation where a single model said "1999 will have an average temperature that is exactly 0.05 degrees celsius higher than 1998", because no such paper exists. I would just like to ask you how you feel about making crap up and providing a study in cognitive dissonance?
IPCC's recent claim that it is 'worse than we thought' and that climate change is accelerating which was based on change of trend from least squares line fitting using carefully selected moving end points.
Sigh. Another completely unsupported assertion that is bordering on willful lying. Really? Is it that difficult to come up with reasonable criticisms, that the only thing you have left is imagining straw men?
Cell internet access is vastly more expensive with far worse connection speeds. Cable and DSL occasionally compete, but not always. And when they do, it's in the form of a duopoly, which isn't much of a competition.
As for your argument that the lack of rising internet rates indicates successful competition - where the hell were you 10 years ago? 10 years ago, I could get a 756kbit line for about $50. Now, thanks to absolutely craptastic ATT lines, I get 756kbit lines... for $60. This, in a time, when many other countries get 10Mbit speeds for half the price.
Competition exists, it works well, but it sure as hell isn't taking place in the US.
You do realize that the vast majority of "independent" ISPs are merely leasing lines from the incumbent provider? That leads to such joy as "Sorry you have such issues with your line, but it's up to ATT to send a technician out to fix this line. I wouldn't hold my breath."
No. The duopolies are created by sweetheart deals between the carriers and the local municipalities.
By the way, do you understand the concept of natural monopolies? Whereby markets that require heavy upfront investment favor the incumbent to the point of making it impossible to compete with them after they've establish themselves? Please do not invoke free market incantations when you have no idea what defines a free market.
And if you would have paid attention, almost no "green-lords" (not sure who falls under that definition, but I'm going to assume the usual suspects of WWF, Sierra Club and other environmental organizations of the same ilk) ever endorsed the use of corn kernels as a source for biofuel. Almost everyone saw that coming. The only ones who uniformly didn't see it coming (or at least didn't care) were the corn producers and their lobbies.
If you even think for one second that the environmental lobbies somehow have more pull than the agricultural lobbies, you've just not been paying attention.
Here is the biggest issue with the competition argument: in the vast majority of markets, there is at best a duopoly (cable and dsl). If you're completely out of luck, you only have one high-speed provider; generally ATT. The idea that free markets will magically keep the ISPs honest is ludicrous to the point of being a flat-out lie. At this point, I have to believe that anyone claiming that competition will do anything in the high-speed ISP market is just lying.
The only competition that exists is in the cellular high-speed internet access, and even that is incredibly limited competition: the high costs of terminating a contract prematurely make sure of that.
Also most of the scientists I've meant in three separate colleges believed in a Creator of some kind.
Irrelevant argument from authority. Scientists have no special insight into the status of a creator, because science cannot deal with supernatural explanations. By definition.
Finally,intelligent design is not science. It's not that they're not incompatible, they're not even the same thing. Intelligent design is a supernatural explanation for a natural state. It's like arguing that purple and tigers are not incompatible, therefore the belief in purple tigers is perfectly normal.
Maybe we should have a story feature that adds an automatic link to the appropriate xkcd comic. I think it would be more useful than the current twitter or facebook links.
Not to mention that the accuracy is on occasion pin-point - true, you don't know when a location is within a few meters of the actual location, but even a limited time series can demonstrate where someone was accurately, and how they were moving.
That's ludicrous - only the Police, the National Guard and Federal employees can be trusted with that kind of access. Every other person in the US is just not trustworthy enough to handle this kind of responsibility.
Yes, that was sarcasm.
What we need to do is to call a Constitutional Convention and rewrite the thing with a clearer and MUCH expanded Bill of Rights.
Oh HELL no. I can tell you what that leads to: the abomination that is the EU constitution. About 200 pages in small print.
No, No, and No.
I love the US Constitution because it is short and specific. Everyone can read it over a lunch break. It covers broad areas and puts lower (or upper) limits on what can be implemented, but doesn't spell out the legalistic details. Please don't touch it. There are a few issues with it, but nothing that requires a wholesale rewrite. And for the record - the issues I refer to are not the second amendment, but much more so the Bill of Rights, because suddenly people think that those are all the rights there are.
I'd go one further: every law on the books needs to be recertified and brought back for a vote every 10 years. Can't handle the volume? Then focus on the laws that actually matter.
Take your incorrect post like a man. Accept you made a mistake, acknowledge it, and move on. And make sure your research is sound before posting again.
Tell that to the literal constitutionalists, or those bitching about activist judges. Face it, all legal systems are designed to provide justice. Whether you agree with the definition of justice behind the legal system or not goes a long way in whether you think it is being just.
Or, in other words, make sure you play with friends. Then you don't have to worry about gear checks, loot whores, anonymous assholes and other douchebaggery. And look - the social networking tools make that easy! Whodathunkit.
So you're saying we should be like China? Nice. Get the fuck out of my country.
Because there is value in forcing the Chinese to make all of our mistakes as well. If they have exact specs on what works, they don't need to run through the host of mistakes it took us to get to this technology. Outdated or not, it's still a valuable stepping stone.
Here's where it stops to be just "any" job: when the decisions of a single CEO can mean worldwide financial collapse, they don't get to just do whatever the hell they want. Especially not if they ask the rest of the taxpayers to bail them out.
Not only that, but board members are frequently "hired" by the CEO because they know each other. Either that, or the board members are on 20 other boards, and can't find enough time to do anything but rubber stamp anything the CEO does.
Gah. I'm all for capitalism, but it's stuff like this that makes me question whether we've progressed beyond the robber baron status.
How is that a troll?
You just learned the difference between throwing out an insult and presenting a well-formulated argument. Being convincing and polite is all about format. tone and attitude.