I wasn't arguing that government should be the only financing research. However, there are some people who bring up the same arguments you did initially to argue that government funding research is either corrupting science, or killing commercially supported science. Both of which are demonstrably wrong.
I'm glad we agree though that government, as well as commercial research has its place.
And you saw the part where it was commented out? Do you know why it was applied? And show me some evidence for why you think what you think.... you're making some very serious accusations, I'd like more evidence than just some snippets.
Would people stop trying to pretend like each and every email must indicate fraud for there to be any fraud?
Considering that what is being claimed is a global conspiracy by almost all climatologists to stifle dissent and push a fraudulent theory of AGCC, then yes, I would expect that the vast majority of emails deal with how to silence critics, distort hundreds of data sets, bribe politicians, newspapers and other shenanigans.
Instead, what I find is a few emails that are politically stupid, and some statistical verbiage that means nothing without context.
As someone else said: it's like accusing someone of genocide, then only finding a nerf gun during a home search. It's a bit of a letdown.
I really do not understand why this has blown up into such a conflagration.
It's pretty simple, and pretty evident even from the posts: because frequently, scientists have been presented as precisely being above petty squabbles. Now that the emails present evidence that scientists are just as petty as everyone else, it means that their opinions on any subject is the same as that of Joe Schmoe in the bar.
It means that science currently has a PR problem. Merely arguing that the science is sound and must be heeded is not enough anymore.... scientists will have to engage in damage control and two-way communication. If it sounds like I'm talking about a call-center problem with a pissed-off customer, it's because I am: the public is the customer of publicly funded science, and the customer is pissed off. Merely saying "everything's ok" is just going to end with the customer walking away, which is precisely what is happening right now.
Even assuming that your numbers are right, what's your alternative? There are two options: corporate funded research, or personal funding. If a corporation funds research, it's a) directly targeted at the corporate bottom line, and b) still political, by virtue of scientists fighting for corporate funding. If you're arguing for self-funded research, you just restricted science to a hobby on the scale of RC copters.
The problem is not that government funds science. The problem is that scientists are people, and the public has a responsibility to not regard them as mere oracles. But that's much harder than posting a blithe big-government-is-bad diatribe.
Once you've tagged an entire class of people as untrustworthy because of the basic fact of them being employed, you are incapable of engaging in any relevant discussion about the topic without redoing everything yourself.
Since I'm pretty sure you don't have an LHC in your backyard or your own temperature satellite in orbit, it means that you have two options when talking about science: shut up, or make crap up. And again, judging from the fact you're posting in this story, I'm pretty sure you are not prone to silence.
Others already pointed out that you're being a bit optimistic here, but I'll point out where you yourself indicated that: open source software can be modified by anyone - but it is successfully modified only by those who are intimately familiar with it. The rest of us just use it and trust that the coders who worked on it did the right thing. And that trust in open-source science and scientists just evaporated for a lot of people.
Indeed. Personally, I would like to see a bit more skepticism when it comes to science. As in "Hey, show me some data and explain to me why what you say should work before I take your word for it." Or at least go out and do some of your own research before accepting something from some random scientist. Too often news organizations quote someone with some professorial or scientific title and pretend that the quote has value. Unless I know that person and have been able to assess their credibility in some way beforehand, they could have just as well quoted my barber. This presentation issue is a failing of news organizations though. Any person can still do their own filtering.
What we're getting now though is that ad hominem attacks on scientists (of the sort of "You work for institution XYZ, you're automatically disqualified from contributing.") is seen as valid approach in any discussion on any topic. This is complete idiocy, and a mark of the intellectually lazy. To some extent, the public press and scientists themselves contributed to the problem. The press has elevated scientists to the status of oracles, and the public was happy to believe the oracles. Many scientists thrived on that elevated status, and did little to dispel it. Now that the oracles have been shown to be as human as everybody, the public is engaging in a massive back-lash. To some extent, it's to be expected.
But no matter how explainable the situation, there is a fundamental problem if science is being put on the same level as high-school English Lit (see posters above for ready examples) - and that's going to cause more problems down the line. Sadly , I find this attitude is mostly prevalent in the US - and various voodoo-practicing countries.
If the author gives them the distribution rights, it's still not their content. I understand that there's a difference between owning a book and owning content, but I find that a somewhat disturbing difference. No one ever creates anything in a vacuum. If ownership of ideas would actually be enforced, nothing new could be created. Hence I prefer to murky the waters in that area.
In that same vein, I find it telling that they call it "our content". No, it isn't. It's either the creator's, or mine. They are just middle-men distributing data. This new venture, though, would perpetuate their hold on the distribution channel. At the same time, I find it also telling that they're focusing on display and prettyness, rather than battery-life and ease-of-use. It's probably going to suffer the same fate as DivX.... at least, I hope.
What other ISPs? Technically, I have ATT and Comcast in my area. That's it. There are a few more ISPs, but they all lease lines from ATT. Whatever business model ATT comes up with, the other ISPs will have to accept. And I don't trust Comcast to actually compete with ATT.
Agreed. However, there are a LOT of people who would consider that treason. International diplomacy is as much about working with your enemies as it is about doing what's necessary even if everyone at home is yelling to do what's wrong.
Depends on your server. I run on an RP-PvP server, and there are several guilds who actually run large-scale RP-PvP events: i.e., a coordinated King of the Hill or such battle where Horde and Alliance guilds agree on a basic set of rules (kill these people in this time frame, hold that area at time x, etc). Events are generally open to any who wants to join, so it's pretty easy to get 40-50 people on each side. Great fun in general.
Furthermore, random PvP in the open can quickly trigger a large-scale battle when people call in reinforcements.
To me, that's the real fun of WoW. I hate the gear grind with a passion (the RNG is broken for me), and MoBs are too stupid to be a challenge. Well, that, and running old-world raids. Gives me a chance to experience some awesome content that a lot of people haven't seen in ages.
Depends at what time. If the accounting system goes down during end-of-year billing, they could indeed lose hundreds of thousands of dollars. As an example, the accounting system of one of the largest companies in the world experienced hiccups (not even a full meltdown) during end-of-year billing cycle. The end-result was that a huge contract could not be entered in time, and revenue could not be booked for that particular quarter and year. The tax and revenue implication was immediate - and the company essentially lost hundreds of thousands of dollars because of a slowdown, not even a downtime.
Where's a rampaging band of rioting Parisians when you need one?
They're busy clogging the street over French labor laws, bossnapping their bosses to protest firings and threatening to blow up plants over plans to close said plant. Sorry, we're going to have to do our rioting.
Sorry, but international politics is no different from national politics,
Not really. Generally, Texans Senators re not worried that Californians are spying on them to steal trade secrets or are trying to use Austin as a beachhead for a full-blown invasion. This means that negotiations between national entities are far more complex: you know you can't be seen talking to the enemy, but at the same, you have to find a way to talk anyway. Why do you think that the Swiss Embassy is a popular stop-over for Iranian, Venezuelan and US officers?
Granted, your full quote makes sense - but unfortunately, there are a lot of forces at work in foreign relations that make secrecy a sine-qua-non condition for any talking happening at all. And I'd rather people talk than be forced out in the open and be silent.
I'm pretty sure that the F-35 is overpriced, but it is not a boondoggle. Our next fight will at some point involve an adversary who has the ability to knock out our satellite links to UAVs. At that point, you need planes with a pilot inside - and that will have to be advanced fighters of the F-35/F-22 type. We don't want to have to develop a brand new fighter at the beginning of a classical war.
That government, which is rightfully called a "puppet government" (after all, it's being set up by an invading foreign power), is the exact same thing that Nazi Germany did to France when it invaded and conquered France.
And it's completely different from the puppet governments set up by the US in Germany and Japan, after those armies were crushed, right? Oh wait - it isn't.
I'm not even sure where else to go with your points, because pretty much every last one is wrong - including your statements that we're fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan, that they're Afghan and that their methods aren't designed to terrorize the local population in Afghanistan.
Wait - we were talking about Switzerland, not about Iraq. Did you change the subject because you figured out that the argument didn't hold water?
If you want to talk about Afghanistan, no one is interested in conquering Afghanistan. It's a pile of dirt whose only significance is that there used to be some bad guys there. It's a strict counter-terrorism operation, with the hope that at some point, the place won't turn into another failed state and haven for terrorists. No one is talking about conquering anything.
If you want to talk about Vietnam, you realize that North Vietnam had tanks, an airforce, AA guns, artillery - all kinds of heavy equipment that goes way beyond a few rifles?
If you think that your hunting rifle is what stands between Freedom Fries and a Gulag, you're delusional.
No. Skiff eliminates Amazon, to be replaced with itself. This is just Hearst wanting a piece of Amazon's pie, and they think that appealing to the content distributors is going to be the way to produce a better product... yeah, I'm not following either.
Slashdot Mirror
I wasn't arguing that government should be the only financing research. However, there are some people who bring up the same arguments you did initially to argue that government funding research is either corrupting science, or killing commercially supported science. Both of which are demonstrably wrong.
I'm glad we agree though that government, as well as commercial research has its place.
And you saw the part where it was commented out? Do you know why it was applied? And show me some evidence for why you think what you think.... you're making some very serious accusations, I'd like more evidence than just some snippets.
Correct. You do realize that a) IBM dramatically downsized its R&D department and narrowed its focus, and b) Microsoft doesn't have an LHC, right?
And yet, he still managed to get funding and publish his paper. Seems to me like everything's working.
With the global warming 'scandal', you have a few scientists who are the only ones with access to the raw temperature data.
Hogwash
Would people stop trying to pretend like each and every email must indicate fraud for there to be any fraud?
Considering that what is being claimed is a global conspiracy by almost all climatologists to stifle dissent and push a fraudulent theory of AGCC, then yes, I would expect that the vast majority of emails deal with how to silence critics, distort hundreds of data sets, bribe politicians, newspapers and other shenanigans.
Instead, what I find is a few emails that are politically stupid, and some statistical verbiage that means nothing without context.
As someone else said: it's like accusing someone of genocide, then only finding a nerf gun during a home search. It's a bit of a letdown.
I really do not understand why this has blown up into such a conflagration.
It's pretty simple, and pretty evident even from the posts: because frequently, scientists have been presented as precisely being above petty squabbles. Now that the emails present evidence that scientists are just as petty as everyone else, it means that their opinions on any subject is the same as that of Joe Schmoe in the bar.
It means that science currently has a PR problem. Merely arguing that the science is sound and must be heeded is not enough anymore.... scientists will have to engage in damage control and two-way communication. If it sounds like I'm talking about a call-center problem with a pissed-off customer, it's because I am: the public is the customer of publicly funded science, and the customer is pissed off. Merely saying "everything's ok" is just going to end with the customer walking away, which is precisely what is happening right now.
Even assuming that your numbers are right, what's your alternative? There are two options: corporate funded research, or personal funding. If a corporation funds research, it's a) directly targeted at the corporate bottom line, and b) still political, by virtue of scientists fighting for corporate funding. If you're arguing for self-funded research, you just restricted science to a hobby on the scale of RC copters.
The problem is not that government funds science. The problem is that scientists are people, and the public has a responsibility to not regard them as mere oracles. But that's much harder than posting a blithe big-government-is-bad diatribe.
Once you've tagged an entire class of people as untrustworthy because of the basic fact of them being employed, you are incapable of engaging in any relevant discussion about the topic without redoing everything yourself.
Since I'm pretty sure you don't have an LHC in your backyard or your own temperature satellite in orbit, it means that you have two options when talking about science: shut up, or make crap up. And again, judging from the fact you're posting in this story, I'm pretty sure you are not prone to silence.
It's people like you that are ruining the US.
Others already pointed out that you're being a bit optimistic here, but I'll point out where you yourself indicated that: open source software can be modified by anyone - but it is successfully modified only by those who are intimately familiar with it. The rest of us just use it and trust that the coders who worked on it did the right thing. And that trust in open-source science and scientists just evaporated for a lot of people.
Indeed. Personally, I would like to see a bit more skepticism when it comes to science. As in "Hey, show me some data and explain to me why what you say should work before I take your word for it." Or at least go out and do some of your own research before accepting something from some random scientist. Too often news organizations quote someone with some professorial or scientific title and pretend that the quote has value. Unless I know that person and have been able to assess their credibility in some way beforehand, they could have just as well quoted my barber. This presentation issue is a failing of news organizations though. Any person can still do their own filtering.
What we're getting now though is that ad hominem attacks on scientists (of the sort of "You work for institution XYZ, you're automatically disqualified from contributing.") is seen as valid approach in any discussion on any topic. This is complete idiocy, and a mark of the intellectually lazy. To some extent, the public press and scientists themselves contributed to the problem. The press has elevated scientists to the status of oracles, and the public was happy to believe the oracles. Many scientists thrived on that elevated status, and did little to dispel it. Now that the oracles have been shown to be as human as everybody, the public is engaging in a massive back-lash. To some extent, it's to be expected.
But no matter how explainable the situation, there is a fundamental problem if science is being put on the same level as high-school English Lit (see posters above for ready examples) - and that's going to cause more problems down the line. Sadly , I find this attitude is mostly prevalent in the US - and various voodoo-practicing countries.
.... to the Panopticon. Where everything you do, can and will be tracked.
If the author gives them the distribution rights, it's still not their content. I understand that there's a difference between owning a book and owning content, but I find that a somewhat disturbing difference. No one ever creates anything in a vacuum. If ownership of ideas would actually be enforced, nothing new could be created. Hence I prefer to murky the waters in that area.
In that same vein, I find it telling that they call it "our content". No, it isn't. It's either the creator's, or mine. They are just middle-men distributing data. This new venture, though, would perpetuate their hold on the distribution channel. At the same time, I find it also telling that they're focusing on display and prettyness, rather than battery-life and ease-of-use. It's probably going to suffer the same fate as DivX.... at least, I hope.
What other ISPs? Technically, I have ATT and Comcast in my area. That's it. There are a few more ISPs, but they all lease lines from ATT. Whatever business model ATT comes up with, the other ISPs will have to accept. And I don't trust Comcast to actually compete with ATT.
Agreed. However, there are a LOT of people who would consider that treason. International diplomacy is as much about working with your enemies as it is about doing what's necessary even if everyone at home is yelling to do what's wrong.
Depends on your server. I run on an RP-PvP server, and there are several guilds who actually run large-scale RP-PvP events: i.e., a coordinated King of the Hill or such battle where Horde and Alliance guilds agree on a basic set of rules (kill these people in this time frame, hold that area at time x, etc). Events are generally open to any who wants to join, so it's pretty easy to get 40-50 people on each side. Great fun in general.
Furthermore, random PvP in the open can quickly trigger a large-scale battle when people call in reinforcements.
To me, that's the real fun of WoW. I hate the gear grind with a passion (the RNG is broken for me), and MoBs are too stupid to be a challenge. Well, that, and running old-world raids. Gives me a chance to experience some awesome content that a lot of people haven't seen in ages.
Depends at what time. If the accounting system goes down during end-of-year billing, they could indeed lose hundreds of thousands of dollars. As an example, the accounting system of one of the largest companies in the world experienced hiccups (not even a full meltdown) during end-of-year billing cycle. The end-result was that a huge contract could not be entered in time, and revenue could not be booked for that particular quarter and year. The tax and revenue implication was immediate - and the company essentially lost hundreds of thousands of dollars because of a slowdown, not even a downtime.
Where's a rampaging band of rioting Parisians when you need one?
They're busy clogging the street over French labor laws, bossnapping their bosses to protest firings and threatening to blow up plants over plans to close said plant. Sorry, we're going to have to do our rioting.
Sorry, but international politics is no different from national politics,
Not really. Generally, Texans Senators re not worried that Californians are spying on them to steal trade secrets or are trying to use Austin as a beachhead for a full-blown invasion. This means that negotiations between national entities are far more complex: you know you can't be seen talking to the enemy, but at the same, you have to find a way to talk anyway. Why do you think that the Swiss Embassy is a popular stop-over for Iranian, Venezuelan and US officers?
Granted, your full quote makes sense - but unfortunately, there are a lot of forces at work in foreign relations that make secrecy a sine-qua-non condition for any talking happening at all. And I'd rather people talk than be forced out in the open and be silent.
I'm pretty sure that the F-35 is overpriced, but it is not a boondoggle. Our next fight will at some point involve an adversary who has the ability to knock out our satellite links to UAVs. At that point, you need planes with a pilot inside - and that will have to be advanced fighters of the F-35/F-22 type. We don't want to have to develop a brand new fighter at the beginning of a classical war.
That government, which is rightfully called a "puppet government" (after all, it's being set up by an invading foreign power), is the exact same thing that Nazi Germany did to France when it invaded and conquered France.
And it's completely different from the puppet governments set up by the US in Germany and Japan, after those armies were crushed, right? Oh wait - it isn't.
I'm not even sure where else to go with your points, because pretty much every last one is wrong - including your statements that we're fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan, that they're Afghan and that their methods aren't designed to terrorize the local population in Afghanistan.
Wait - we were talking about Switzerland, not about Iraq. Did you change the subject because you figured out that the argument didn't hold water?
If you want to talk about Afghanistan, no one is interested in conquering Afghanistan. It's a pile of dirt whose only significance is that there used to be some bad guys there. It's a strict counter-terrorism operation, with the hope that at some point, the place won't turn into another failed state and haven for terrorists. No one is talking about conquering anything.
If you want to talk about Vietnam, you realize that North Vietnam had tanks, an airforce, AA guns, artillery - all kinds of heavy equipment that goes way beyond a few rifles?
If you think that your hunting rifle is what stands between Freedom Fries and a Gulag, you're delusional.
No. Skiff eliminates Amazon, to be replaced with itself. This is just Hearst wanting a piece of Amazon's pie, and they think that appealing to the content distributors is going to be the way to produce a better product... yeah, I'm not following either.
Spot on.