I think the parent was spot on, suggest pay close attention to what was written, particularly this:
Love on Wikileaks all you want, but tone down the extremism and hyperbole. Keep things in perspective. Otherwise folks won't take you seriously.
I find it a little tiresome that so many people who assume that wikileaks is the only brave journalist/investigator/researcher out there. Never heard of John Pilger, Noam Chomsky, Greg Shackleton just to name a couple off top of my head. To assume that wikileaks is the only one is an admission of ignorance and insulting to many who labour, frequently at great personal risk, towards exposing excesses of governments and others in positions of trust and authority.
Wikileaks stands out primarily because they recently gained exceptionally broad mindshare. How did they do this? via the diplomatic cable leak. Little in this leak was revelatory or new; anyone who has invested any time into understanding politics was not surprised by the leak, either it's content or its tone. But it sure made for titillating news: Batman and Robin, haw haw haw; but hardly 'hard' stuff; makes for great press and casual conversation.
Actually, I view Wikileaks more as a news outlet then a centralised whisteblower safe harbour. The latter, is a valuable and novel new institution and wikileaks should at least be credited for this valuable innovation but only if the promise of this institution clearly materialises and that it becomes self evident that wikileaks is a worthy and functional example of such an institution. Neither of these have been fully satisfied yet in my view. If it does then indeed it is probably Nobel peace prize worthy. But Nobel committee should delay a few years first in order to be confident that the promise of wikileaks materializes. Jumping the gun on peace prize, which they have done a few times now, weakens the gravitas of the prize. Jose Ramos Horta deserves the prize for all he suffered and achieved, but his win is diminished when the prize is subsequently thrown around with seemingly little thought to people like Obama and Al Gore: they haven't earned it: not yet at least.
Great comment. Everyone loves to hate 2 & 3. Thought I was alone in liking the entire series.
2 was rich, complex and nuanced. After 1 my thinking was, Neo is now a bad-ass, the Matrix is now understood and mastered, what can possibly happen in 2? Alot happens; the world turns out to be substantially more complex and nuanced, with many complex and powerful antagonists and friendlies and uncertainty as to whom are who. The matrix world in 2 I found to be far more frightening and intimidating place than in the first film.
3 is a weak film, mainly because it takes 45mins of story and plot and tries to stretch it into a feature length film. Definitely a sin which weakens the film, but the plot is still sound and interesting.
This notion of over-population is an unquantified fear. The point of view boils down to 'too much'. The obvious reply is 'how much then?'. Sometimes I hear 1bill or 3bill. I ask: why this number specifically? No thought out answer is provided. I could easily say 50bill is too much and this bench mark is no more or no less valid than any other proferred: in that all of them lack any thorough analytical underpinning. The dire predictions Ehrlich made in the 1970's never eventuated; in fact the opposite has occurred: quality of life has improved dramatically. Of course some new discovery may emerge even tomorrow that completely changes our understanding of the issue, but right now, and for some time now, this notion of over population is a vague bogeyman that grips so many of us with irrational, unjustified fear.
The only thing I have come across that even remotely resembles a rational argument against current population levels are attempts to calculate how many Earth's are required to sustain us at various levels of prosperity (i.e. 1st world consumption, emerging economy etc). Studies of this I have looked into have been soundly debunked and are little more than polemic generated by organizations with a clear mission/agenda such as the WWF. Their only value is as an exercise in poor logical reasoning and an example of poor modelling arising from confirmation bias.
Finally, a point that is regularly missed is the fact that in the 1st world fertility rates are consistently <2. There is a strong correlation between fertility and prosperity. In fact most 1st world nations only maintain +ve population via immigration programmes. So take heart, as long as you are motivated to ensure the emerging world gains the level of prosperity that the first world presently enjoys, then the population will not only plateau but it will begin to fall and this will occur well within your lifetime. But this creates other issues. Japan has a incredibly low fertility, little immigration and a rapidly ageing population. You don't want to be living in a country like that: your quality of life will surely suffer.
Empirical fact remains that all in all, from one generation to the next, our individual quality of life has been improving since as far as our capacity to understand what historical conditions where like and there is no basis of fact to suggest that imminent change is looming in the next couple of generations. In fact there are plenty of signs to the contrary: world fertility is stabilizing, our relationship with the environment is steadily improving on a number of fronts over the past 30 years; etc etc.
Yes innovations frequently provide unwanted and unintended consequences; anti-biotics has spawned us the problem of super-viruses, but we are still overall better off. You say "get us out of the mess that the intelligence and resourcefulness of mankind got us into.". So does this mean you shun all technology and innovation (including your computer and your Internet); if so that is your personal wish but it is in my view a sub-optimal position.
In additional to this, our capacity to weather calamities has improved too. Inspite of this, as far back as our history allows us to perceive, there has never ceased to be a parade of people who insist that the worst is just around the corner, or an appreciable audience for such doom-sayers.
Yes - the big one may come; an asteroid impact, a zombie virus apocalypse, or some other biblical end-time event. The closest credible threat in living memory, and what I consider to be a real threat was the threat of nuclear annihilation that pervaded from the 60s to the 90s
I minimize 'alarmists', such as what you admit to be, and with respect, because I once perceived the world as I believe you now currently perceived it. I minimize them because although the alarm bells they ring resonates deep in all of us and trigger deep seated fears, including myself, their position has no empirical support and as such their instance that their concerns require broader community mindshare without basis; and as such are deservedly minimalised. Should an issue materialize where there is no reasonable, rational doubt that it is a real and significant problem, we may indeed find ourselves in a position we cannot do anything about it, but you can be personally assured that everyone around you, including myself, all 7 billion of us, will be thinking very very hard about the problem. Of course, to this I can always count on people with your mindset to point out - too little! too late! You need to starting thinking about these things now! This is what this meme demands of us in order for the meme to continue to thrive and propagate.
"The end of world is neigh" : it's a meme that will never die; because when every prediction fails to realise itself you just set new goal posts 40 years out and hope few notice. 10 years ago when I was young and naive I was stupefied by the same fears that presently grip you; but take heart - in time, the demonstrative historical fact that our civilization is quite robust, that our capacity to respond to real and demonstrated risks is substantially greater than what you currently pessimistically estimate it to be will become more apparent to you.
Yes oil will eventually run out, yeah, and, so, what. People worried about tin, wood, whale oil etc in ages past; and worried about 'horse pollution'. We have plenty of fossil fuel to keep us going for a while yet. And we obviously won't be using it forever because it is indeed a limited resource. And other economically effective resources are already in play and have been for some time (nuclear fission); and other resources are well known we just haven't yet figured out how to make the energy extraction viable at sufficient scale (solar and fusion): just a question of time and effort.
As for Nature: doomsday alarmism. They predicted end-times more often than the Jehovah's Witnesses. Once upon a time it was a reputable science journal.
Your position is both irrational and not founded on empirical evidence.
World population has exceeded 3bill since 1960 : 50 years ago. We are now just shy of 7bill and expectation is that population will plateau at around 10bill. If this 3bill figure represented some sort of high water mark then I would expect that some solid empirical evidence of this high water mark would of eventuated by now. The absence of such evidence makes such claims even more extraordinary, burden of proof is on you to demonstrate this claim.
I'd assume that being a slashdot reader you'd have some sort of science/engineering background and as such some basic appreciation of the fact that we, people, are very resourceful and ingenious and that our collective intelligence and capacity to manipulate our environment to suit our needs is a very potent force, as consistently demonstrated in modern history. Until we are in a situation where we have one or more resources under significant and consistent pressure over a long period of time that eats up more and more of our collective time and energies trying to manage and maximize, then this mathusian doomsday scenario hasn't even left the drawing board - let alone the hanger.
"Panties" is current nomenclature in South East Asia; and the term is regularly used to describe underwear of both genders.
The OP comment about "social prototypes" is an interesting and relevant turn of phrase; nothing in what was written was sexist; but seemed to set you off. I thought that divining offensive comments in throw away lines, was 1970s post publication of "The Female Eunuch", which was oh.... about 40 years ago.
Because I don't really care that much about ipv6. The same way I don't really care about how cars work, and the same way my mechanic doesn't really care about computers or the various esoteric things that currently occupy my mind space.
The dialogue from lay public to ipv6 nerds is simple: if it is so important then just do it and don't bother me with the details. Explain to me what it will take for me to get my OS (Fedora in my case), my DSL Modem, my ISP, my software to work with IPv6. No straight forward answer is forthcoming. I try to hit some ip6 websites secure in the knowledge that my ISP is regarded as being quite progressive technologically (they are linux friendly for one and maintain alot of repo mirrors); but it don't work. I got other things I want to spent time on right now so I move on; and knowing a fair bit about ipv4 I figure I can continue to NAT and HTTP virtual host and other tricks to keep things moving along for the little bits of the internet I look after and in reply the ipv6 nerd pours disdain upon me because my passions are not his passions and I have decided that in the din of people yelling at me for their urgent attention on all manner of issues across a range of spectrums: politics, social, environmental, IT ; I am pushing the ipv6 nerd down the list a bit. Actually ipv6 does interest me a bit, more than it interests my mechanic, but many things interest me and there is limited number of hours in the day.
A curious key thing I fail to understand about this issue is why the ip4/ip6 issue encourages people to act so rudely towards other professionals who demonstrate at least some grasp of the underlying issue.
I think you ask a reasonable question, the question in my mind similar to yours: the transition from ip4/ip6 appears to be hard and this is a factor in it's slow adoption so what prevented the design a more gentler protocol that provided a smoother/simpler transition; particularly given our heavy reliance on this network in so many facets of our civilization?
As a programmer that does alot of network type stuff close to the metal, frequently designing my own OSI 7 protocols, I understand ip4 and higher layers very well, better than most IT professionals; but certainly not as well as a carrier network engineer. I know little about IP6 other than than regular reports about it's high barrier to entry and the inherent complexity associated with the change over. Maybe I need to make time and learn more about it now; but life is busy and other things compete for my time.
But to such questions can always be counted on being treated rudely by ip6 zealots. Just like the ruby programming language, I am keen to learn more when I get the spare time, and I dabble when I can, but in some ways disinclined given how rude and obnoxious the community advocating it can be.
A NAT indeed provides security. It is not a security neutral component therefore it impacts your security profile. As such the statement NAT != Security is simply not true
Yes a firewall is a fit-for-purpose security device : but not in itself a not a one-stop-shop if you are particularly risk adverse. When I said
NAT does provide security : it shuts down a large number of attack vectors. It is not comprehensive but there is a significant difference in security profile between a device which is globally addressable vs a device which is only addressable on a local network and/or when it initiates a network link.
A firewall is merely another means to shut down some of those attack vectors. The more unobtrusive security layers you have the better. NAT is perfect for home use and it is what I use. If I want a global IP, which I do have various needs for: I subscribe to a VPS service and forward ports across SSH where necessary. Cheap and easy and not something every Internet user needs. My fridge certainly doesn't need a globally addressable number.
"from a generation when physicists were generally quite ignorant of statistics, not a climatologist or a mathematical modeller"
Interesting given that main criticism levelled at key Climatologists is their lack of statistical competency; something I have verified for myself by pulling apart a couple of papers published by the national weather bureau in the country I live in.
"Every time it's tossed it comes up heads, and you keep asking for one more toss in the hope it comes up tails"
So there is clear and unambiguous empirical evidence that warming observed to date (0.7 land surface, 0.3 sea surface) is entirely man made (global not local) and most certainly catastrophic? Fantastic, please share. Because you know what: being a "denier" sucks: because broader community aligns with views such as your own thinks that people such as myself are somehow mentally deficient and/or morally bankrupt.
Given the sheer amount of money and man-hours spent on researching this issue: you would think that you were at a point where you could easily post a URL or 4 that all but closes the loop and provides absolutely compelling evidence and a reasoned line of argument for this to which any intelligent and reasonable person from a engineering/technical background will surely accept. The basic narrative sounds reasonable enough: more co2 = more warming and it has been warming and co2 has been increasing so QED: but when you approach the issue with some rigour things are not so nice and simple.
Once upon a time I was a believer: but the more I've looked for actual evidence the more I found it to be wanting. And now I find myself in an awkward position of being a maligned minority and have to suffer poorly conceived stereotypes such as the one you paint above.
I agree with your sentiment. I have few complaints with modern day Japan, and no more than the complaints I have with my own home nation, I have been to Japan many times and I enjoy the opportunity to spend time there as much as I can.
The purpose of my comment was to challenge notions I hear from time to time trying to downplay the events of the Asia/Pacific war and attempt to reposition Japan as a beleaguered nation under suffrage from the west.
I agree that many have much to answer for of which some have as yet not been held to full account and scrutiny for their actions, no less Western powers past (Spain) and present (US) for example.
I also share your view of the need to move on and forgive, and to anyone who has lived through such pain and suffering but has learned to forgive has my upmost respect. Yet at the same time if people choose to carry bitterness of such events for the rest of their lives, that is their choice and I will not judge them on it : as I would not know how I would react if I suffered similar circumstances. But must never forget these things: the opposite: we must scrutinise them as much as possible, as many examples as possible, in order to deepen our individual understanding and come to terms with our inherent natures and how to manage our natural tribal and adversarial dispositions, which will never go away because it is a fundamental part of human behaviour.
I am aware that the Japanese suffered during the war and attacks on Tokyo and usage of the Bomb represent highly controversial issues which will probably never be satisfactorily resolved and I think it is good and important that the controversy of using weapons of mass destruction is aired and looked at from every possible angle even 60+ years later: which conflicts your claim that history is written by the victors because if it was then such dialog would not be occurring.
But make no mistake, the Japanese were the aggressors here and they engaged in a programme of Total War underpinned with fundamentalist self righteous fervor. They could of brokered truce at any time. They could of chosen not to treat civilian populations and POWs with utter contempt. They, unlike the Germans, cannot claim that they were pushed into a corner in denied opportunity of economic prosperity or national self determination by Allied nations; they were completely in the wrong. Millions of people suffered terribly as a consequence of their actions, including themselves.
The "co prosperity sphere" angle sounded fair enough; pity it wasn't the reality. I understand that general mood of the Filipino is not nearly as embittered as the Chinese, particularly around the major cities. What I find interesting is that younger generation Filipinos are as ignorant of WW2 as the younger generation Japanese. My experience is different to yours though, in Leyte for example amongst older generations is that bitterness and animosity is still there.
I am unsure of the aspersions you cast towards the Koreans, yet Japanese appalling behaviour towards civilian population and POWs during the war is well documented. It isn't mere propaganda as you imply.
If you want to make a fair measure of Japan's attitude towards its neighbours, compare Japan's attitude towards OFW workforce and migrant immigration compared to other first world nations. Japan would sooner engage in absurd pursuits like building $300k per unit nursing robots then allow its society be 'watered-down' by Filipino caregivers.
I am no lover of American activity in Philippines. I never comprehended complete and total openness that Philippine society embraced US, given US colonial aspirations and the ugliness of Subic and Angeles (never been to Angeles but its reputation precedes itself). But this is off topic: what is being discussed is the morality of Japan's actions upto and during WW2.
I've tried to parse your post multiple times and it appears to me that you are playing apologist for Japan's actions during WW2 and implying that moral responsibility in part extends beyond Japan and to the west.
Novel, yet dubious position to take. I think your theory will enjoy minimal support from the Chinese, Filipinos and Indonesians who lived through the Asia/Pacific war and its immediate aftermath.
The trigger for Japan's declaration of war on the US was the oil embargo, which US put in place many, many, years after initial Manchuria invasion presumably in response to the escalating brutality of the invasion or at least so say the Americans. You say Japan did not care for westerners. Actually, Japan doesn't care much for anyone, as evidence by their behaviour in occupied territories during WW2.
My impression is that money flows quite freely when it comes to climate science and that linking your research to climate science smooths the way to grant approval. Right climate for big bucks
Of course I could be mistaken because I am not looking at hard data, only anecdotes, yet my impression is that everything, from Kyoto, to Bali and Copenhagen and Mexico is that the money flows freely. On a personal note, I know people I used to work with who recently secured millions of dollars from national meteorology department in my country to do climate modelling work : fill a room with shiny computers and put many people on permanent payroll. Our government has a climate change ministry, which sucks 80 million dollars out of our economy and delivers nothing at all (no legislation to support or execute at this present time and unlikely that any will come into law in a few years at least). I'm sure with that sort of budget they can entice the right people to join up.
The graph, which is similar to Mann's scientific work is disputed by skeptics. The graph you linked commits a key criticism of graphs of this nature: it intermixes instrumental data with proxy data. If you disregard the black line, the current temp is same as medieval warming period (at this graph shows the MWP) and there is no obvious support of the notion that rate of increase is different when you look at proxy alone (i.e. if you want to interpret data correctly you need to compare apples to apples not apples to oranges). A recent study done by professional statisticians concluded that detection of rapid changes is not possible with proxy datasets and that proxy's filter out high frequency variation on temp series, as such there is no evidence that rate of climb observed in temperature series (in three separate sets, pre 1900s, 1920->1940 and 1970->2000) is in any way extraordinary compared to temperature reconstructions for past 2000 years.
As a side note : that climatologists never wondered over to the local maths department and engage professional statisticians to assist with data analysis will always amaze me. You want to rewrite the rules of the world economy, I would think you would want to put forward the strongest possible case : the best thermodynamics guys, the best statisticians to understand the "problem" then the best engineers and economists to define workable solutions. Not so with climate change apparently.
Here is another image for your consideration: Vostok Ice Core. Although the datasets closely correlate, careful statistical analysis shows co2 actually lags temperature not leads it. This in itself is not proof because you can have weak positive feedback processes but it certain disputes this notion that co2 is very potent. Also although temperature increases (up to what it is present day at multiple occasions) it always falls off again. Which begs the question : why is now so different? To which typical reply is : industrial activity. But that in itself is not evidence of a tipping point catastrophe : it is just a manifestation of special pleading logical fallacy.
I am a skeptic. I accept everything you said - if only things were so simple and the climate system could be modelled on a kitchen table then I would be a believer.
Here is a counter point that also makes extraordinary claim for your consideration:
Geological climate record shows co2 varying dramatically, reaching concentrations much much higher than today. Yet inspite of this no catastrophic tipping point occurred.
The extraordinary claim is this : for very long geological periods the climate system has flown under the radar of a asserted catastrophic tipping point. But inspite of this, and inspite of the fact that climate changing variables (including but not limited to c02) have changed wildly during these periods, it is only now, with the advent of human industrial civilization that the Earth is now in serious trouble and only radical and immediate restructuring of our society is going to fix it.
My expectation is that on the balance of evidence is that the climate system has bounded stability and powerful self regulating systems in play (such as cloud feedback). Fact is climate system is not really well understood but we certainly know this from empirical evidence: climate system is reasonably stable within boundaries and that there is no historical evidence that things that are occurring in the atmosphere right now are deleterious.
Having said all that, I am actually in favour of de-caronbizing our civilization and I desire to see us move away from fossil fuels as an energy source hopefully in my lifetime. But I refuse to buy into all this doomsday hysteria, passion and panic : because it is just a doomsday archetype : a mass-irrationality that feeds upon our deepest fears, and it will result in sub-optimal decision making in terms of further advancing our interests and the extraordinary quality of life we enjoy as members of a industrialized civilization.
In emerging economies SMS is dirt cheap. In Philippines: $0.50, 24 hour all you can eat (on-net only) deals are common.
This is a bad idea for a large number of technical reasons : very inefficient use of the GSM channel because of all of the excessive handshaking and control just to transmit a 140 byte data packet for one (sms is 7bit per character. 160 chars = 140bytes) and rubbish throughput & latency. But economically it makes sense. Also accessibility of 2G mobile phones is very high in such environments, 3G wireless or twisted pair copper not so much. Depends where you deploy it, for what eventual purpose and actual real bandwidth requirements.
Rudd's unpopularity is in part a reflection of his ineffectiveness as a leader and a politician. The electorate selected him because they expected significant change. The electorate also voted the previous PM out. Yet Rudd's tenure is marked by a parade of wasteful ineffective policies. He was all talk and no delivery. Disaffection has been brewing for some time now, for years for some people who voted for him only to be quickly disappointed (myself included). We by our politics may disagree on these points, but from my point of view and my political leanings his ousting is a good and rational outcome. Gillard's own policy execution record is flawed but to give her benefit of the doubt she was to some extent executing Rudd's vision. Lets wait and see what new vision she can bring forward as a leader.
The Leader, the PM is actually important. Yes party is important, but so too is the leader. Especially if the leader is a bit of a control freak with a narcissistic streak who genuinely believes (s)he is the smartest person in the room. The PM has significant influence in steering party policy. Just look at opposition party and how its policy focus has dramatically shifted from its parade of leaders in the past 18 months from Howard to Nelson, Turnball and now Abbott - all very different people who all set different policy tones for the opposition party.
Do you even understand your portfolio? Do your staff understand it?
As a respected ICT professional let me provide you some feedback. Nothing you have done in your tenure as has materially improved our nation. In fact you are making Australia the laughing stock of of the ICT profession world wide.
I understand that in this instance that the opposition ministers are also acting naively for cheap political gain, yet as the portfolio holder, I would expect you to provide some leadership and common sense.
As another poster pointed out - there is indeed potential problems with the survey result I quoted, so I'll take back that key point and accept that it is quite possibly flawed.
In meantime, suggest you do some googling of your own:
"Distracted drivers"
"drivers on cell phones as bad as drunks"
Sure there may be people out there who can successfully treat their dashboard as an entertainment console and safely manage and minimize the inherent distraction risk. And quite possibly you may be such a driver who is able to do this and 99% of the time and get the risk assessment right : but as someone who shares the road network resource with you : I'd prefer it if you simply did not engage in such behaviour and engage in risk calculations where I am an unrepresented stakeholder in your decision (should you get it wrong and harm me or harm someone I care about). It is also my understanding is that there are plenty of people out there on the road who are unable to do this : to get the risk calculation right. It appears to the considered opinion of road safely experts and researchers too.
Slashdot Mirror
I think the parent was spot on, suggest pay close attention to what was written, particularly this:
Love on Wikileaks all you want, but tone down the extremism and hyperbole. Keep things in perspective. Otherwise folks won't take you seriously.
I find it a little tiresome that so many people who assume that wikileaks is the only brave journalist/investigator/researcher out there. Never heard of John Pilger, Noam Chomsky, Greg Shackleton just to name a couple off top of my head. To assume that wikileaks is the only one is an admission of ignorance and insulting to many who labour, frequently at great personal risk, towards exposing excesses of governments and others in positions of trust and authority.
Wikileaks stands out primarily because they recently gained exceptionally broad mindshare. How did they do this? via the diplomatic cable leak. Little in this leak was revelatory or new; anyone who has invested any time into understanding politics was not surprised by the leak, either it's content or its tone. But it sure made for titillating news: Batman and Robin, haw haw haw; but hardly 'hard' stuff; makes for great press and casual conversation.
Actually, I view Wikileaks more as a news outlet then a centralised whisteblower safe harbour. The latter, is a valuable and novel new institution and wikileaks should at least be credited for this valuable innovation but only if the promise of this institution clearly materialises and that it becomes self evident that wikileaks is a worthy and functional example of such an institution. Neither of these have been fully satisfied yet in my view. If it does then indeed it is probably Nobel peace prize worthy. But Nobel committee should delay a few years first in order to be confident that the promise of wikileaks materializes. Jumping the gun on peace prize, which they have done a few times now, weakens the gravitas of the prize. Jose Ramos Horta deserves the prize for all he suffered and achieved, but his win is diminished when the prize is subsequently thrown around with seemingly little thought to people like Obama and Al Gore: they haven't earned it: not yet at least.
Great comment. Everyone loves to hate 2 & 3. Thought I was alone in liking the entire series.
2 was rich, complex and nuanced. After 1 my thinking was, Neo is now a bad-ass, the Matrix is now understood and mastered, what can possibly happen in 2? Alot happens; the world turns out to be substantially more complex and nuanced, with many complex and powerful antagonists and friendlies and uncertainty as to whom are who. The matrix world in 2 I found to be far more frightening and intimidating place than in the first film.
3 is a weak film, mainly because it takes 45mins of story and plot and tries to stretch it into a feature length film. Definitely a sin which weakens the film, but the plot is still sound and interesting.
This notion of over-population is an unquantified fear. The point of view boils down to 'too much'. The obvious reply is 'how much then?'. Sometimes I hear 1bill or 3bill. I ask: why this number specifically? No thought out answer is provided. I could easily say 50bill is too much and this bench mark is no more or no less valid than any other proferred: in that all of them lack any thorough analytical underpinning. The dire predictions Ehrlich made in the 1970's never eventuated; in fact the opposite has occurred: quality of life has improved dramatically. Of course some new discovery may emerge even tomorrow that completely changes our understanding of the issue, but right now, and for some time now, this notion of over population is a vague bogeyman that grips so many of us with irrational, unjustified fear.
The only thing I have come across that even remotely resembles a rational argument against current population levels are attempts to calculate how many Earth's are required to sustain us at various levels of prosperity (i.e. 1st world consumption, emerging economy etc). Studies of this I have looked into have been soundly debunked and are little more than polemic generated by organizations with a clear mission/agenda such as the WWF. Their only value is as an exercise in poor logical reasoning and an example of poor modelling arising from confirmation bias.
Finally, a point that is regularly missed is the fact that in the 1st world fertility rates are consistently <2. There is a strong correlation between fertility and prosperity. In fact most 1st world nations only maintain +ve population via immigration programmes. So take heart, as long as you are motivated to ensure the emerging world gains the level of prosperity that the first world presently enjoys, then the population will not only plateau but it will begin to fall and this will occur well within your lifetime. But this creates other issues. Japan has a incredibly low fertility, little immigration and a rapidly ageing population. You don't want to be living in a country like that: your quality of life will surely suffer.
Empirical fact remains that all in all, from one generation to the next, our individual quality of life has been improving since as far as our capacity to understand what historical conditions where like and there is no basis of fact to suggest that imminent change is looming in the next couple of generations. In fact there are plenty of signs to the contrary: world fertility is stabilizing, our relationship with the environment is steadily improving on a number of fronts over the past 30 years; etc etc.
Yes innovations frequently provide unwanted and unintended consequences; anti-biotics has spawned us the problem of super-viruses, but we are still overall better off. You say "get us out of the mess that the intelligence and resourcefulness of mankind got us into.". So does this mean you shun all technology and innovation (including your computer and your Internet); if so that is your personal wish but it is in my view a sub-optimal position.
In additional to this, our capacity to weather calamities has improved too. Inspite of this, as far back as our history allows us to perceive, there has never ceased to be a parade of people who insist that the worst is just around the corner, or an appreciable audience for such doom-sayers.
Yes - the big one may come; an asteroid impact, a zombie virus apocalypse, or some other biblical end-time event. The closest credible threat in living memory, and what I consider to be a real threat was the threat of nuclear annihilation that pervaded from the 60s to the 90s
I minimize 'alarmists', such as what you admit to be, and with respect, because I once perceived the world as I believe you now currently perceived it. I minimize them because although the alarm bells they ring resonates deep in all of us and trigger deep seated fears, including myself, their position has no empirical support and as such their instance that their concerns require broader community mindshare without basis; and as such are deservedly minimalised. Should an issue materialize where there is no reasonable, rational doubt that it is a real and significant problem, we may indeed find ourselves in a position we cannot do anything about it, but you can be personally assured that everyone around you, including myself, all 7 billion of us, will be thinking very very hard about the problem. Of course, to this I can always count on people with your mindset to point out - too little! too late! You need to starting thinking about these things now! This is what this meme demands of us in order for the meme to continue to thrive and propagate.
"The end of world is neigh" : it's a meme that will never die; because when every prediction fails to realise itself you just set new goal posts 40 years out and hope few notice. 10 years ago when I was young and naive I was stupefied by the same fears that presently grip you; but take heart - in time, the demonstrative historical fact that our civilization is quite robust, that our capacity to respond to real and demonstrated risks is substantially greater than what you currently pessimistically estimate it to be will become more apparent to you.
Yes oil will eventually run out, yeah, and, so, what. People worried about tin, wood, whale oil etc in ages past; and worried about 'horse pollution'. We have plenty of fossil fuel to keep us going for a while yet. And we obviously won't be using it forever because it is indeed a limited resource. And other economically effective resources are already in play and have been for some time (nuclear fission); and other resources are well known we just haven't yet figured out how to make the energy extraction viable at sufficient scale (solar and fusion): just a question of time and effort.
As for Nature: doomsday alarmism. They predicted end-times more often than the Jehovah's Witnesses. Once upon a time it was a reputable science journal.
Your position is both irrational and not founded on empirical evidence.
World population has exceeded 3bill since 1960 : 50 years ago. We are now just shy of 7bill and expectation is that population will plateau at around 10bill. If this 3bill figure represented some sort of high water mark then I would expect that some solid empirical evidence of this high water mark would of eventuated by now. The absence of such evidence makes such claims even more extraordinary, burden of proof is on you to demonstrate this claim.
I'd assume that being a slashdot reader you'd have some sort of science/engineering background and as such some basic appreciation of the fact that we, people, are very resourceful and ingenious and that our collective intelligence and capacity to manipulate our environment to suit our needs is a very potent force, as consistently demonstrated in modern history. Until we are in a situation where we have one or more resources under significant and consistent pressure over a long period of time that eats up more and more of our collective time and energies trying to manage and maximize, then this mathusian doomsday scenario hasn't even left the drawing board - let alone the hanger.
Read: Simon Ehrlich Wager
"Panties" is current nomenclature in South East Asia; and the term is regularly used to describe underwear of both genders.
The OP comment about "social prototypes" is an interesting and relevant turn of phrase; nothing in what was written was sexist; but seemed to set you off. I thought that divining offensive comments in throw away lines, was 1970s post publication of "The Female Eunuch", which was oh.... about 40 years ago.
Because I don't really care that much about ipv6. The same way I don't really care about how cars work, and the same way my mechanic doesn't really care about computers or the various esoteric things that currently occupy my mind space.
The dialogue from lay public to ipv6 nerds is simple: if it is so important then just do it and don't bother me with the details. Explain to me what it will take for me to get my OS (Fedora in my case), my DSL Modem, my ISP, my software to work with IPv6. No straight forward answer is forthcoming. I try to hit some ip6 websites secure in the knowledge that my ISP is regarded as being quite progressive technologically (they are linux friendly for one and maintain alot of repo mirrors); but it don't work. I got other things I want to spent time on right now so I move on; and knowing a fair bit about ipv4 I figure I can continue to NAT and HTTP virtual host and other tricks to keep things moving along for the little bits of the internet I look after and in reply the ipv6 nerd pours disdain upon me because my passions are not his passions and I have decided that in the din of people yelling at me for their urgent attention on all manner of issues across a range of spectrums: politics, social, environmental, IT ; I am pushing the ipv6 nerd down the list a bit. Actually ipv6 does interest me a bit, more than it interests my mechanic, but many things interest me and there is limited number of hours in the day.
A curious key thing I fail to understand about this issue is why the ip4/ip6 issue encourages people to act so rudely towards other professionals who demonstrate at least some grasp of the underlying issue.
I think you ask a reasonable question, the question in my mind similar to yours: the transition from ip4/ip6 appears to be hard and this is a factor in it's slow adoption so what prevented the design a more gentler protocol that provided a smoother/simpler transition; particularly given our heavy reliance on this network in so many facets of our civilization?
As a programmer that does alot of network type stuff close to the metal, frequently designing my own OSI 7 protocols, I understand ip4 and higher layers very well, better than most IT professionals; but certainly not as well as a carrier network engineer. I know little about IP6 other than than regular reports about it's high barrier to entry and the inherent complexity associated with the change over. Maybe I need to make time and learn more about it now; but life is busy and other things compete for my time.
But to such questions can always be counted on being treated rudely by ip6 zealots. Just like the ruby programming language, I am keen to learn more when I get the spare time, and I dabble when I can, but in some ways disinclined given how rude and obnoxious the community advocating it can be.
A NAT indeed provides security. It is not a security neutral component therefore it impacts your security profile. As such the statement NAT != Security is simply not true
Yes a firewall is a fit-for-purpose security device : but not in itself a not a one-stop-shop if you are particularly risk adverse. When I said
It is not comprehensive...
what part of that did you not understand?
Never said my solution is invulnerable. Only said the the attack vector profile of NAT vs IP is different.
Firewalls are fine. I manage my own. Most computer users do not know how to do what you describe.
NAT does provide security : it shuts down a large number of attack vectors. It is not comprehensive but there is a significant difference in security profile between a device which is globally addressable vs a device which is only addressable on a local network and/or when it initiates a network link.
A firewall is merely another means to shut down some of those attack vectors. The more unobtrusive security layers you have the better. NAT is perfect for home use and it is what I use. If I want a global IP, which I do have various needs for: I subscribe to a VPS service and forward ports across SSH where necessary. Cheap and easy and not something every Internet user needs. My fridge certainly doesn't need a globally addressable number.
"from a generation when physicists were generally quite ignorant of statistics, not a climatologist or a mathematical modeller" Interesting given that main criticism levelled at key Climatologists is their lack of statistical competency; something I have verified for myself by pulling apart a couple of papers published by the national weather bureau in the country I live in.
"Every time it's tossed it comes up heads, and you keep asking for one more toss in the hope it comes up tails" So there is clear and unambiguous empirical evidence that warming observed to date (0.7 land surface, 0.3 sea surface) is entirely man made (global not local) and most certainly catastrophic? Fantastic, please share. Because you know what: being a "denier" sucks: because broader community aligns with views such as your own thinks that people such as myself are somehow mentally deficient and/or morally bankrupt.
Given the sheer amount of money and man-hours spent on researching this issue: you would think that you were at a point where you could easily post a URL or 4 that all but closes the loop and provides absolutely compelling evidence and a reasoned line of argument for this to which any intelligent and reasonable person from a engineering/technical background will surely accept. The basic narrative sounds reasonable enough: more co2 = more warming and it has been warming and co2 has been increasing so QED: but when you approach the issue with some rigour things are not so nice and simple.
Once upon a time I was a believer: but the more I've looked for actual evidence the more I found it to be wanting. And now I find myself in an awkward position of being a maligned minority and have to suffer poorly conceived stereotypes such as the one you paint above.
I agree with your sentiment. I have few complaints with modern day Japan, and no more than the complaints I have with my own home nation, I have been to Japan many times and I enjoy the opportunity to spend time there as much as I can.
The purpose of my comment was to challenge notions I hear from time to time trying to downplay the events of the Asia/Pacific war and attempt to reposition Japan as a beleaguered nation under suffrage from the west.
I agree that many have much to answer for of which some have as yet not been held to full account and scrutiny for their actions, no less Western powers past (Spain) and present (US) for example.
I also share your view of the need to move on and forgive, and to anyone who has lived through such pain and suffering but has learned to forgive has my upmost respect. Yet at the same time if people choose to carry bitterness of such events for the rest of their lives, that is their choice and I will not judge them on it : as I would not know how I would react if I suffered similar circumstances. But must never forget these things: the opposite: we must scrutinise them as much as possible, as many examples as possible, in order to deepen our individual understanding and come to terms with our inherent natures and how to manage our natural tribal and adversarial dispositions, which will never go away because it is a fundamental part of human behaviour.
I am aware that the Japanese suffered during the war and attacks on Tokyo and usage of the Bomb represent highly controversial issues which will probably never be satisfactorily resolved and I think it is good and important that the controversy of using weapons of mass destruction is aired and looked at from every possible angle even 60+ years later: which conflicts your claim that history is written by the victors because if it was then such dialog would not be occurring.
But make no mistake, the Japanese were the aggressors here and they engaged in a programme of Total War underpinned with fundamentalist self righteous fervor. They could of brokered truce at any time. They could of chosen not to treat civilian populations and POWs with utter contempt. They, unlike the Germans, cannot claim that they were pushed into a corner in denied opportunity of economic prosperity or national self determination by Allied nations; they were completely in the wrong. Millions of people suffered terribly as a consequence of their actions, including themselves.
The "co prosperity sphere" angle sounded fair enough; pity it wasn't the reality. I understand that general mood of the Filipino is not nearly as embittered as the Chinese, particularly around the major cities. What I find interesting is that younger generation Filipinos are as ignorant of WW2 as the younger generation Japanese. My experience is different to yours though, in Leyte for example amongst older generations is that bitterness and animosity is still there.
I am unsure of the aspersions you cast towards the Koreans, yet Japanese appalling behaviour towards civilian population and POWs during the war is well documented. It isn't mere propaganda as you imply.
If you want to make a fair measure of Japan's attitude towards its neighbours, compare Japan's attitude towards OFW workforce and migrant immigration compared to other first world nations. Japan would sooner engage in absurd pursuits like building $300k per unit nursing robots then allow its society be 'watered-down' by Filipino caregivers.
I am no lover of American activity in Philippines. I never comprehended complete and total openness that Philippine society embraced US, given US colonial aspirations and the ugliness of Subic and Angeles (never been to Angeles but its reputation precedes itself). But this is off topic: what is being discussed is the morality of Japan's actions upto and during WW2.
I've tried to parse your post multiple times and it appears to me that you are playing apologist for Japan's actions during WW2 and implying that moral responsibility in part extends beyond Japan and to the west.
Novel, yet dubious position to take. I think your theory will enjoy minimal support from the Chinese, Filipinos and Indonesians who lived through the Asia/Pacific war and its immediate aftermath.
The trigger for Japan's declaration of war on the US was the oil embargo, which US put in place many, many, years after initial Manchuria invasion presumably in response to the escalating brutality of the invasion or at least so say the Americans. You say Japan did not care for westerners. Actually, Japan doesn't care much for anyone, as evidence by their behaviour in occupied territories during WW2.
My impression is that money flows quite freely when it comes to climate science and that linking your research to climate science smooths the way to grant approval. Right climate for big bucks
Of course I could be mistaken because I am not looking at hard data, only anecdotes, yet my impression is that everything, from Kyoto, to Bali and Copenhagen and Mexico is that the money flows freely. On a personal note, I know people I used to work with who recently secured millions of dollars from national meteorology department in my country to do climate modelling work : fill a room with shiny computers and put many people on permanent payroll. Our government has a climate change ministry, which sucks 80 million dollars out of our economy and delivers nothing at all (no legislation to support or execute at this present time and unlikely that any will come into law in a few years at least). I'm sure with that sort of budget they can entice the right people to join up.
The graph, which is similar to Mann's scientific work is disputed by skeptics. The graph you linked commits a key criticism of graphs of this nature: it intermixes instrumental data with proxy data. If you disregard the black line, the current temp is same as medieval warming period (at this graph shows the MWP) and there is no obvious support of the notion that rate of increase is different when you look at proxy alone (i.e. if you want to interpret data correctly you need to compare apples to apples not apples to oranges). A recent study done by professional statisticians concluded that detection of rapid changes is not possible with proxy datasets and that proxy's filter out high frequency variation on temp series, as such there is no evidence that rate of climb observed in temperature series (in three separate sets, pre 1900s, 1920->1940 and 1970->2000) is in any way extraordinary compared to temperature reconstructions for past 2000 years.
As a side note : that climatologists never wondered over to the local maths department and engage professional statisticians to assist with data analysis will always amaze me. You want to rewrite the rules of the world economy, I would think you would want to put forward the strongest possible case : the best thermodynamics guys, the best statisticians to understand the "problem" then the best engineers and economists to define workable solutions. Not so with climate change apparently.
Here is another image for your consideration: Vostok Ice Core. Although the datasets closely correlate, careful statistical analysis shows co2 actually lags temperature not leads it. This in itself is not proof because you can have weak positive feedback processes but it certain disputes this notion that co2 is very potent. Also although temperature increases (up to what it is present day at multiple occasions) it always falls off again. Which begs the question : why is now so different? To which typical reply is : industrial activity. But that in itself is not evidence of a tipping point catastrophe : it is just a manifestation of special pleading logical fallacy.
I am a skeptic. I accept everything you said - if only things were so simple and the climate system could be modelled on a kitchen table then I would be a believer.
Here is a counter point that also makes extraordinary claim for your consideration:
Geological climate record shows co2 varying dramatically, reaching concentrations much much higher than today. Yet inspite of this no catastrophic tipping point occurred.
The extraordinary claim is this : for very long geological periods the climate system has flown under the radar of a asserted catastrophic tipping point. But inspite of this, and inspite of the fact that climate changing variables (including but not limited to c02) have changed wildly during these periods, it is only now, with the advent of human industrial civilization that the Earth is now in serious trouble and only radical and immediate restructuring of our society is going to fix it.
My expectation is that on the balance of evidence is that the climate system has bounded stability and powerful self regulating systems in play (such as cloud feedback). Fact is climate system is not really well understood but we certainly know this from empirical evidence: climate system is reasonably stable within boundaries and that there is no historical evidence that things that are occurring in the atmosphere right now are deleterious.
Having said all that, I am actually in favour of de-caronbizing our civilization and I desire to see us move away from fossil fuels as an energy source hopefully in my lifetime. But I refuse to buy into all this doomsday hysteria, passion and panic : because it is just a doomsday archetype : a mass-irrationality that feeds upon our deepest fears, and it will result in sub-optimal decision making in terms of further advancing our interests and the extraordinary quality of life we enjoy as members of a industrialized civilization.
In emerging economies SMS is dirt cheap. In Philippines: $0.50, 24 hour all you can eat (on-net only) deals are common.
This is a bad idea for a large number of technical reasons : very inefficient use of the GSM channel because of all of the excessive handshaking and control just to transmit a 140 byte data packet for one (sms is 7bit per character. 160 chars = 140bytes) and rubbish throughput & latency. But economically it makes sense. Also accessibility of 2G mobile phones is very high in such environments, 3G wireless or twisted pair copper not so much. Depends where you deploy it, for what eventual purpose and actual real bandwidth requirements.
Rudd's unpopularity is in part a reflection of his ineffectiveness as a leader and a politician. The electorate selected him because they expected significant change. The electorate also voted the previous PM out. Yet Rudd's tenure is marked by a parade of wasteful ineffective policies. He was all talk and no delivery. Disaffection has been brewing for some time now, for years for some people who voted for him only to be quickly disappointed (myself included). We by our politics may disagree on these points, but from my point of view and my political leanings his ousting is a good and rational outcome. Gillard's own policy execution record is flawed but to give her benefit of the doubt she was to some extent executing Rudd's vision. Lets wait and see what new vision she can bring forward as a leader.
The Leader, the PM is actually important. Yes party is important, but so too is the leader. Especially if the leader is a bit of a control freak with a narcissistic streak who genuinely believes (s)he is the smartest person in the room. The PM has significant influence in steering party policy. Just look at opposition party and how its policy focus has dramatically shifted from its parade of leaders in the past 18 months from Howard to Nelson, Turnball and now Abbott - all very different people who all set different policy tones for the opposition party.
Do you even understand your portfolio? Do your staff understand it?
As a respected ICT professional let me provide you some feedback. Nothing you have done in your tenure as has materially improved our nation. In fact you are making Australia the laughing stock of of the ICT profession world wide.
I understand that in this instance that the opposition ministers are also acting naively for cheap political gain, yet as the portfolio holder, I would expect you to provide some leadership and common sense.
In meantime, suggest you do some googling of your own:
Sure there may be people out there who can successfully treat their dashboard as an entertainment console and safely manage and minimize the inherent distraction risk. And quite possibly you may be such a driver who is able to do this and 99% of the time and get the risk assessment right : but as someone who shares the road network resource with you : I'd prefer it if you simply did not engage in such behaviour and engage in risk calculations where I am an unrepresented stakeholder in your decision (should you get it wrong and harm me or harm someone I care about). It is also my understanding is that there are plenty of people out there on the road who are unable to do this : to get the risk calculation right. It appears to the considered opinion of road safely experts and researchers too.
Valid point: did not occur to me. Thanks.