One example: raise the temperature, and you get more water vapor. More water vapor yields more clouds, which have a *massive* cooling effect.
Bzzzzt. Completely and utterly wrong. More water vapor does not yield more clouds. Higher relative humidity (not the same thing) yields more clouds. What is going to happen with relative humidity isn't entirely clear -- the processes are not well understood. Even then, whether more cloudiness leads to warming or cooling depends entirely upon the altitudes the clouds form at and a myriad of other complex factors including interactions with aerosols.
You, and many others on slashdot, ought to consider whether or not scientists who have devoted their lives to studying this problem might actually know more about it than you. Trivial inspection of your arguments reveals completely flawed reasoning. The scary thing is that you probably have many of your friends and family convinced that you know better.
With a degree in physics, you need something to balance your vast uncoolness.
I wonder how that ever happened? Physics explores the mysteries of nature and the universe. It seeks to give a practical understanding of how the world works. People used to talk about and be interested in these things. The most fascinating scientists have been from Physics -- Einstein, Feynman, Hawking, etc. And yet the subject area has struggled to attract interest in recent years due to this perception of being "uncool".
FWIW, a hell of a lot of physics had to be discovered to make the iPhone a reality.
Sure, we can shoot down 80 missiles if we get lucky..
No, I don't think so. From Wikipedia: "As of February 2007, the U.S. missile defense system consists of 13 ground-based interceptors at Ft Greely in Alaska, plus two interceptors at Vandenberg AFB, California." There are a lot of doubts about the effectiveness of this existing system. See the work of MIT Professor Theodore Postolhere.
... you're not buying the information itself or the right to make even one filecopy of that information which you sell or give to someone else. (Yes, backups are fair use, no matter what anyone says.) I'm sorry, but you're just not.
"Copyright, a form of intellectual property law, protects original works of authorship including literary, dramatic, musical, and artistic works, such as poetry, novels, movies, songs, computer software, and architecture. Copyright does not protect facts, ideas, systems, or methods of operation, although it may protect the way these things are expressed."
The information itself is not protected. A good counter-example to your statement is the case of academic publishing (e.g., scientific papers), where the information is clearly meant to be re-used and no additional license is provided to say so because it is not needed.
There have been many times in the United States where our government will push something like Social Security, saying "This is to help the widows with children", which, yes, is a noble cause that many can't argue with. But look at it now, it is a system used to hook the societal leeches and give paychecks to fat-asses who are too lazy to get up and work.
Hi there! Are you from Freedom Works, or one of those "regular American" grassroots Tea Party folks? Just curious.
Thanks for your reply. My objection is to your rant about liberals, which completely diminishes your arguments and credibility. Your comment history shows that this is not a new thing for you. Perhaps you should consider where that kind of dogma leads. It is better to make sound arguments based on critical thinking rather than emotional appeals following an ideology.
I know this is INCONVENIENT to the Anti-corporate, anti-petroleum, liberal crowd.
Are you suggesting that the pro-corporate, pro-petroleum, conservative crowd has found it convenient to accept their share of the responsibility for this disaster, troll?
Put another way, all this finger-pointing at BP by the politicians is a smokescreen so that we don't hold them accountable. "Drill, baby, drill", indeed.
I think this will be a long (decades?), dirty fight to hold BP accountable.
I think that all this fuss over BP is pretty laughable. What we see here is the result of an industry-wide problem. There were apparently few preparations made for an underwater gusher by anybody. Otherwise we would have a fix already, wouldn't we? The "months" of time it will take to stop the flow is because it will take that long to manufacture the required tools. Why weren't preparations already in place, given how many oil rigs are active in the area? All this finger pointing at BP excuses the politicians (and ourselves) for the fact that there was no proper regulatory framework to mitigate a disaster of this proportion.
Go find yourself an oil-rigger, and ask them about safety on the Southern rigs. I'm told by friends in the industry that attention to safety in that region is severely lacking -- none of them would work there -- and that it was only a matter of time before this happened.
Anyone that comes up with a video codec that is as good as H.264 WILL get sued by MPEG-LA if they start using said codec in places where the use would require a payment to MPEG-LA if H.264 was used instead.
I often hear these claims repeated, but I wonder what evidence there is? Has MPEG-LA sued anyone where their patents don't apply? Is it impossible to create a video codec without infringing on MPEG-LA's patents? What are the problematic patent numbers? I ask these questions because I honestly don't know.
It was exactly these kinds of shenanigans that led to the development of PNG as a replacement for GIF in Web browsers. Hopefully the same thing happens here (broad acceptance of a new standard), whether the replacement is Theora or something better.
(Note for moderators: I don't know if I am actually being sarcastic or not. It's sort of like Parkinson's law.)
Had to look that one up.
Parkinson's Law is the adage first articulated by Cyril Northcote Parkinson as the first sentence of a humorous essay published in The Economist in 1955: Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion. [Emphasis mine]
Yup. And it seems these days "Software/Internet Pioneers" have three choices: retire, start a new company, or work at Google.
I wonder if working at IBM is a more likely possibility? The future of Java as a platform is in question. IBM, with a substantial Java activity, could seize the initiative here in hiring the "father of Java".
I don't think James is going to be job "hunting"... Unless it is the kind of hunting where you stay at home and accept "applications" from prospective employers.
Evidence suggests that the death penalty isn't a very effective deterrent. The murder rate in the US, which has the death penalty, is three times that of Canada, which doesn't. Source
Let me add to that. With complete transparency, climate scientists will be left utterly exposed to an army of cranks and their deliberately time-wasting requests. Who would want to be a scientist in such conditions? This is a recipe for scaring the brightest minds away from the most important of problems.
Transparency is important, but opening the hen house to the weasels isn't prudent.
It is an astoundingly bad idea to replace the radar network. GPS is not a remote-sensing technology that can be used for aircraft detection. Presumably a transponder will be used in conjunction with GPS locating. Disconnecting the transponder would allow a plane to fly unseen through US airspace. With radar this would only be possible for a stealth or very low-flying aircraft. There is a huge difference between active (radar) and passive (gps transponder) detection systems.
It's also a brilliant strategic move by Google. They are still planning to compete in the Chinese market, and their competitive advantage will be that their search results are uncensored.
The Geneva convention was set to clearly divide militaries from civilians. If there is a double-standard in there, is it that States agreed to follow these rules but not the rebels.
You can't be serious. There hasn't been a functioning government in Afghanistan for years. Who exactly did you expect to sign? The literacy rate in Afghanistan is 28%. How many of them do you think have even heard of Geneva?
You should have, therefore you should not double-standard it.
I wasn't the one who brought up the Convention, remember?
Don't you think it would be oh-so-easy for big-boy US of A to do covert operations all over the planet to kill their opponents? Not that they haven't done it. How would you like it if the Russian or the Chinese blew your neighbor's house for whatever reason of State they might have?
Let me rephrase what I said: the Geneva convention is your State playing with one arm tied behind its back so the other States play nice with your citizens. Now, they decided to be nice and apply this rule to all countries and not just for themselves (not really, but you cannot make a profit off them if another State blasts it all up). There is no double-standard here, it's the same applied everywhere. It may be unfair and evil, but it is a single standard.
A standard that we should hold ourselves to, but should hardly expect a much weaker enemy to abide by when it comes to uniforms. Welcome to the new millenium. War has become very asymmetrical, and it makes no sense to whinge about that. We need to understand what this war is about -- the hearts and minds -- and stop doing things that run counter to winning it. That includes the use of drones and identifying our foes as "unlawful combatants" (and therefore outside of Geneva).
BTW, I am not American, and I think the Bush years destroyed whatever potential of a moral victory there was. So go ahead and drink it to the last insane drop, no matter how bitter it is.
Seriously, what are you talking about? Are you even listening to what I am saying?
Slashdot Mirror
Bzzzzt. Completely and utterly wrong. More water vapor does not yield more clouds. Higher relative humidity (not the same thing) yields more clouds. What is going to happen with relative humidity isn't entirely clear -- the processes are not well understood. Even then, whether more cloudiness leads to warming or cooling depends entirely upon the altitudes the clouds form at and a myriad of other complex factors including interactions with aerosols.
You, and many others on slashdot, ought to consider whether or not scientists who have devoted their lives to studying this problem might actually know more about it than you. Trivial inspection of your arguments reveals completely flawed reasoning. The scary thing is that you probably have many of your friends and family convinced that you know better.
Dr. Fun, one of the original Web cartoons, has a cartoon for that.
To me, this shows we need a truly open distribution of Android that isn't controlled by any company. i.e., the Debian of Android. Debiandroid?
I wonder how that ever happened? Physics explores the mysteries of nature and the universe. It seeks to give a practical understanding of how the world works. People used to talk about and be interested in these things. The most fascinating scientists have been from Physics -- Einstein, Feynman, Hawking, etc. And yet the subject area has struggled to attract interest in recent years due to this perception of being "uncool".
FWIW, a hell of a lot of physics had to be discovered to make the iPhone a reality.
No, I don't think so. From Wikipedia: "As of February 2007, the U.S. missile defense system consists of 13 ground-based interceptors at Ft Greely in Alaska, plus two interceptors at Vandenberg AFB, California." There are a lot of doubts about the effectiveness of this existing system. See the work of MIT Professor Theodore Postol here.
Emphasis mine.
The US Copyright Office would seem to disagree with you:
"Copyright, a form of intellectual property law, protects original works of authorship including literary, dramatic, musical, and artistic works, such as poetry, novels, movies, songs, computer software, and architecture. Copyright does not protect facts, ideas, systems, or methods of operation, although it may protect the way these things are expressed."
The information itself is not protected. A good counter-example to your statement is the case of academic publishing (e.g., scientific papers), where the information is clearly meant to be re-used and no additional license is provided to say so because it is not needed.
Hi there! Are you from Freedom Works, or one of those "regular American" grassroots Tea Party folks? Just curious.
Thanks for your reply. My objection is to your rant about liberals, which completely diminishes your arguments and credibility. Your comment history shows that this is not a new thing for you. Perhaps you should consider where that kind of dogma leads. It is better to make sound arguments based on critical thinking rather than emotional appeals following an ideology.
Are you suggesting that the pro-corporate, pro-petroleum, conservative crowd has found it convenient to accept their share of the responsibility for this disaster, troll?
Put another way, all this finger-pointing at BP by the politicians is a smokescreen so that we don't hold them accountable. "Drill, baby, drill", indeed.
I think that all this fuss over BP is pretty laughable. What we see here is the result of an industry-wide problem. There were apparently few preparations made for an underwater gusher by anybody. Otherwise we would have a fix already, wouldn't we? The "months" of time it will take to stop the flow is because it will take that long to manufacture the required tools. Why weren't preparations already in place, given how many oil rigs are active in the area? All this finger pointing at BP excuses the politicians (and ourselves) for the fact that there was no proper regulatory framework to mitigate a disaster of this proportion.
Go find yourself an oil-rigger, and ask them about safety on the Southern rigs. I'm told by friends in the industry that attention to safety in that region is severely lacking -- none of them would work there -- and that it was only a matter of time before this happened.
I often hear these claims repeated, but I wonder what evidence there is? Has MPEG-LA sued anyone where their patents don't apply? Is it impossible to create a video codec without infringing on MPEG-LA's patents? What are the problematic patent numbers? I ask these questions because I honestly don't know.
OK, thanks.
It was exactly these kinds of shenanigans that led to the development of PNG as a replacement for GIF in Web browsers. Hopefully the same thing happens here (broad acceptance of a new standard), whether the replacement is Theora or something better.
Had to look that one up.
Parkinson's Law is the adage first articulated by Cyril Northcote Parkinson as the first sentence of a humorous essay published in The Economist in 1955: Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion. [Emphasis mine]
Sorry, what does that have to do with anything?
Not to mention that this has already been done on Mars. The SSI "Surface Stereoscopic Imager" was used by the Phoenix Mars Scout lander in 2008.
...if PowerPoint makes you stupid, but I sure feel dumber having read that article.
I wonder if working at IBM is a more likely possibility? The future of Java as a platform is in question. IBM, with a substantial Java activity, could seize the initiative here in hiring the "father of Java".
I don't think James is going to be job "hunting"... Unless it is the kind of hunting where you stay at home and accept "applications" from prospective employers.
Evidence suggests that the death penalty isn't a very effective deterrent. The murder rate in the US, which has the death penalty, is three times that of Canada, which doesn't. Source
Let me add to that. With complete transparency, climate scientists will be left utterly exposed to an army of cranks and their deliberately time-wasting requests. Who would want to be a scientist in such conditions? This is a recipe for scaring the brightest minds away from the most important of problems.
Transparency is important, but opening the hen house to the weasels isn't prudent.
It is an astoundingly bad idea to replace the radar network. GPS is not a remote-sensing technology that can be used for aircraft detection. Presumably a transponder will be used in conjunction with GPS locating. Disconnecting the transponder would allow a plane to fly unseen through US airspace. With radar this would only be possible for a stealth or very low-flying aircraft. There is a huge difference between active (radar) and passive (gps transponder) detection systems.
It's also a brilliant strategic move by Google. They are still planning to compete in the Chinese market, and their competitive advantage will be that their search results are uncensored.
Thanks for the Insightful post. I wish that my initial response had been as articulate. :o)
I wasn't the one who brought up the Convention, remember?
A standard that we should hold ourselves to, but should hardly expect a much weaker enemy to abide by when it comes to uniforms. Welcome to the new millenium. War has become very asymmetrical, and it makes no sense to whinge about that. We need to understand what this war is about -- the hearts and minds -- and stop doing things that run counter to winning it. That includes the use of drones and identifying our foes as "unlawful combatants" (and therefore outside of Geneva).
Seriously, what are you talking about? Are you even listening to what I am saying?