Yep. Ditching the steering wheel and the pedals would be really, really dumb. It would mean that if the car had a problem it would be stuck where it is.
Uh, this is the most uninteresting news ever. So, you're saying that Apple has put a lot of its spare cash into government bonds, which pay out the usual government bond interest; which are actually historically relatively low rates compared to other interest rates. This is interesting why, exactly?
Unfortunately, Poe's law. There is nothing in the way of satire any more that is outrageous enough that some fraction of the people won't believe it's true.
Ah, the garbage dumpster argument: pile enough garbage up, and tell the reader somewhere in the dumpster one argument might be real; you need to wade through all the garbage to find it.
I don't have time to wade through all the garbage. I'll go with the three strikes you're out approach: if your first three arguments aren't convincing, I'll stop there.
There are lots of reasons I am skeptical of this: 1. A primary method of convincing others is to ridicule and insult them. Notice the responses and downvotes this post will get.
Not relevant.
2. We have seen vastly higher CO2 levels in planetary history
Yep. And, you know what? All of those higher CO2 levels were associated with higher global temperatures! That's not evidence against the effect of carbon dioxide on global warming-- it's evidence for the effect of carbon dioxide on global warming
and right now we are seeing what is actually all time lows..
Nope. Current levels are higher than it's ever been for as long as we can measure the CO2 record from ice cores, well over a million years. I think you're talking about really long ago. In that you'd be correct: carbon dioxide levels were higher before the Pleistocene. These were also, however, times when the Earth didn't have an ice cap or glaciers. So, again: this isn't evidence against the effect of carbon dioxide on climate-- it's evidence for it.
We should expect CO2 increases and, in fact, hope for them as going much below 300 ppm would see the beginning of a massive plant die off - there's a reason commercial greenhouses pump CO2 into their facilities.
Slightly misleading. Carbon dioxide increases plant growth-- but only in environments in which CO2 is the limiting resource, not other nutrients, water, or sunlight. In a greenhouse, where you make sure that the temperature, nutrients, and water are all optimal, sure, it's worth adding CO2. Outside, though, it's only one effect among many.
3. The temperature change we are seeing now is far from unusual, we've seen similar changes in both rate and magnitude before. In fact, what we are seeing now does not stand out from background noise.
Doesn't stand out from the background... over tens of millions of years. Even so, actually, the current rate of warming is pretty exceptional. It does, however, stand out from the background over the period in which we have good measurements of both temperature and of all the other forcing factors, such a solar irradiance. So: no.
This reminds me of something I mentioned here on Slashdot just the other day. Though it's not looking like San Francisco will really be underwater by 2020,
Correct. San Francisco is very hilly. They may have to elevate the freeway, but most of it will be fine.
Or maybe your ISP could upgrade the lines to handle the bandwidth. No problems in my area, I've never seen less than half the advertised bandwidth during any time of the day.
Wow, it's a pretty sad state of society when people brag that the bandwidth they are getting is "only" half of what it had been advertised as.
Since you don't seem to know anything about climate science, it doesn't do much good to reread your reply. The greenhouse effect, of course, has been known for well over a century, but the modern global climate model incorporating numerical integration was Manabe and Wetherald, 1967. But, of course, since you dismiss all climate scientists, you dismiss that, I suppose, along with all the other work ever done. In fact, you can dismiss every paper! They're all done by " 'only a small subset of "climate scientists'". Thousands of them! Decades of Journal of Geophysical Research- Atmospheres: every single paper written by that 'small subset.' That "small subset" is so incredibly prolific-- they're simply amazing, that small subset; not only have they written every single paper on climate science for almost fifty years, they've taken over the whole of atmospheric science in America, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and Australia.
You don't have the slightest notion of climate science when you say you think that it's 'only a small subset of "climate scientists' that have done the works underlying the science of global warming, or that there isn't independent review and verification.
Really.
Please, think about maybe learning something from a real science source. I don't know where you're getting your lack of information from, but it's certainly not from real science sources.
Actually, it does. This is something non-scientists really really don't understand, because they're all familiar with all the hero scientist stories and not so much with the actual process of science. I love the hero scientist stories, too, but the final, and the most important part of science is that you have to explain your results to other scientists, and get them to understand it and understand and credit the evidence.
Wrong.
The only thing that matters is being able to reproduce the proof independently. If the results proving a theory are unable to be duplicated independently it's nothing more than an unproven hypothesis.
Exactly. That is how you get scientific consensus, when other scientists can duplicate your reasoning and follow your results, and compare your results to results from others (often, from others in different fields).
...but there was never a scientific consensus on that like there is on this.
You keep talking about this 'consensus' like it means anything scientifically. It. Does. Not.
Actually, it does. This is something non-scientists really really don't understand, because they're all familiar with all the hero scientist stories and not so much with the actual process of science. I love the hero scientist stories, too, but the final, and the most important part of science is that you have to explain your results to other scientists, and get them to understand it and understand and credit the evidence.
Science is not a one person endeavor. Science is, in essence, a series of protocols to ensure that you are observing the world, and not fooling yourself, and an essential part of this is that you have to get other people's eyes looking at what you do. If you cannot explain it to other scientists and have them look at your data and agree that you're seeing what you say you're seeing: it's not science.
In the popular culture, this is called "scientific consensus."
When your electricity rate goes from 0.07 to 0.18kWh in less then 10 years, and people have problems keeping the lights on? \
The cost of energy in constant dollars has been going down, not up. Here's a graph of energy costs. Electrical costs have dropped from about $0.026/kWh (equal to $0.21/kWh in today's dollars) in 1960 to $12.67/kWh today. http://www.eia.gov/outlooks/st...
It's all well and good to reduce dependence on coal, but I think the populace will think different and force their government's hand when 1. they see how damned expensive renewables are
Right now, coal is expensive-- natural gas is much cheaper.
There was zero evidence provided of hacking or tampering. Just a sketchy report.
We seem to be talking about different things. The post I was replying to said that the Pennsylvania machines "couldn't possibly be hacked." You say that there is "zero evidence" that they actually were hacked.
I agree with that. The statement I was disagreeing with was that "the machines can't possibly be hacked."
Pennsylviania -- evoting machines so old they aren't on any network and couldn't possibility be hacked
Just because they claim to not be on the network doesn't mean that they "can't possibly be hacked"!!
First, it turns out that some machines that the vendors say aren't on the network have, in the past, ooops turned out they actually did have undocumented wifi ports.
Second, machines have to be accessed to put the candidates into the machine. This requires access, and any time there's access, they can be hacked.
Third, the machines have to be accessed to get results out of the machine. This is another point at which that the results could be tampered with. Doesn't matter if the machine is reporting 1000 votes for Candidate X and 200 votes for candidate Y if the man in the middle alters that to 500 and 700 as it's transmitted.
Forth, just because a machine is "old" doesn't mean it's hack-proof.
we proved many times before the election that many elections machines could be hacked. the election officials said no, dont worry, it's not going to happen. now that people are not getting their way they are finding any dumb excuse.
Huh. I would have said exactly the opposite. Before the election many people, including people in government, were saying that we need to worry about hacking, that there were many organizations targeting this election (see here and here and here), but now that the election is over, people are saying don't worry, no problem.
I'd like to see someone investigate the idea of using blockchain technology to create a read-only database of the election results. The entire point of a blockchain is to create a cryptographically signed set of transactions which can't be altered without compromising the database. Banks are investing in this technology, where trillions of dollars are at stake, and in which every penny must be accounted for. Why not voting data as well?
I'm baffled. What do you believe blockchain technology would do for voting? How would it make the system better?
The whole point of voting is that you need to make the votes anonymous: a particular vote can't be traced to a particular voter. Blockchain could give you a verified receipt for your vote... but what is the usefulness of that?
It seems to me to be a technology with no evident usefulness to the application.
Everything was rigged to make Hillary look better than reality,
That makes no sense, sorry. Why would they do that? If anything, they'd want to do the opposite, to get their vote out.
But bhe best pre-election analysis showed that Hillary's estimated lead was roughly equal to the statistical error in the polling, and the post-election analysis pretty much confirms this. No need for a wacky conspiracy theory. http://fivethirtyeight.com/fea... http://fivethirtyeight.com/fea...
I just don't understand why the Democrats insist on blaming things like the electoral system, hacks, counting errors, or in this case the physical ballot mechanism,
Pay attention. The Democrats are not claiming hacks, counting errors, or the physical ballot mechanism are the cause of Trump winning. Not. The Democratic party accepted the election result. The discussion in question is other people saying that the Democrats should audit the election, not Democrats contesting the election.
Slashdot Mirror
First...what exactly does the "Department of Energy" do for us in the US?
They design and build nuclear weapons, and maintain the nuclear stockpile, for one.
If the camera in your Prius doesn't work the Prius won't drive?
Really?
You should take it back.
Yep. Ditching the steering wheel and the pedals would be really, really dumb. It would mean that if the car had a problem it would be stuck where it is.
Steering wheels are useful.
Uh, this is the most uninteresting news ever. So, you're saying that Apple has put a lot of its spare cash into government bonds, which pay out the usual government bond interest; which are actually historically relatively low rates compared to other interest rates. This is interesting why, exactly?
Unfortunately, Poe's law.
There is nothing in the way of satire any more that is outrageous enough that some fraction of the people won't believe it's true.
Ah, the garbage dumpster argument: pile enough garbage up, and tell the reader somewhere in the dumpster one argument might be real; you need to wade through all the garbage to find it.
I don't have time to wade through all the garbage. I'll go with the three strikes you're out approach: if your first three arguments aren't convincing, I'll stop there.
There are lots of reasons I am skeptical of this: 1. A primary method of convincing others is to ridicule and insult them. Notice the responses and downvotes this post will get.
Not relevant.
2. We have seen vastly higher CO2 levels in planetary history
Yep. And, you know what? All of those higher CO2 levels were associated with higher global temperatures! That's not evidence against the effect of carbon dioxide on global warming-- it's evidence for the effect of carbon dioxide on global warming
and right now we are seeing what is actually all time lows..
Nope. Current levels are higher than it's ever been for as long as we can measure the CO2 record from ice cores, well over a million years. I think you're talking about really long ago. In that you'd be correct: carbon dioxide levels were higher before the Pleistocene. These were also, however, times when the Earth didn't have an ice cap or glaciers. So, again: this isn't evidence against the effect of carbon dioxide on climate-- it's evidence for it.
We should expect CO2 increases and, in fact, hope for them as going much below 300 ppm would see the beginning of a massive plant die off - there's a reason commercial greenhouses pump CO2 into their facilities.
Slightly misleading. Carbon dioxide increases plant growth-- but only in environments in which CO2 is the limiting resource, not other nutrients, water, or sunlight. In a greenhouse, where you make sure that the temperature, nutrients, and water are all optimal, sure, it's worth adding CO2. Outside, though, it's only one effect among many.
3. The temperature change we are seeing now is far from unusual, we've seen similar changes in both rate and magnitude before. In fact, what we are seeing now does not stand out from background noise.
Doesn't stand out from the background... over tens of millions of years. Even so, actually, the current rate of warming is pretty exceptional. It does, however, stand out from the background over the period in which we have good measurements of both temperature and of all the other forcing factors, such a solar irradiance. So: no.
This reminds me of something I mentioned here on Slashdot just the other day. Though it's not looking like San Francisco will really be underwater by 2020,
Correct. San Francisco is very hilly. They may have to elevate the freeway, but most of it will be fine.
http://www.floodmap.net/Elevat...
Or maybe your ISP could upgrade the lines to handle the bandwidth. No problems in my area, I've never seen less than half the advertised bandwidth during any time of the day.
Wow, it's a pretty sad state of society when people brag that the bandwidth they are getting is "only" half of what it had been advertised as.
on use case: using the time going to work or coming back to home to watch shows/movies (with headphones, obviously:
Sounds like a plan. But all those puclic-service ads tell me not to use my smartphone while driving.
Good, that answers my question.
I wrote:
I don't know where you're getting your lack of information from, but it's certainly not from real science sources.
and the answer is, you get your information about science from youtube videos.
OK, got it.
I'm not sure what you're talking about.
Apparently you don't. Because in Canada, 1CAD=0.72USD, and 1CAD=0.69EUR, 1CAD=0.59GBP You figure out that 30% depression works in yet?
Up and down. The Canadian dollar was $(US) 0.69 in 2000, it's $(US) 0.744 now-- no long term difference.
30% down if you pick the right points.
Since you don't seem to know anything about climate science, it doesn't do much good to reread your reply.
The greenhouse effect, of course, has been known for well over a century, but the modern global climate model incorporating numerical integration was Manabe and Wetherald, 1967. But, of course, since you dismiss all climate scientists, you dismiss that, I suppose, along with all the other work ever done. In fact, you can dismiss every paper! They're all done by " 'only a small subset of "climate scientists'". Thousands of them! Decades of Journal of Geophysical Research- Atmospheres: every single paper written by that 'small subset.' That "small subset" is so incredibly prolific-- they're simply amazing, that small subset; not only have they written every single paper on climate science for almost fifty years, they've taken over the whole of atmospheric science in America, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and Australia.
You don't have the slightest notion of climate science when you say you think that it's 'only a small subset of "climate scientists' that have done the works underlying the science of global warming, or that there isn't independent review and verification.
Really.
Please, think about maybe learning something from a real science source. I don't know where you're getting your lack of information from, but it's certainly not from real science sources.
Actually, it does. This is something non-scientists really really don't understand, because they're all familiar with all the hero scientist stories and not so much with the actual process of science. I love the hero scientist stories, too, but the final, and the most important part of science is that you have to explain your results to other scientists, and get them to understand it and understand and credit the evidence.
Wrong.
The only thing that matters is being able to reproduce the proof independently. If the results proving a theory are unable to be duplicated independently it's nothing more than an unproven hypothesis.
Exactly. That is how you get scientific consensus, when other scientists can duplicate your reasoning and follow your results, and compare your results to results from others (often, from others in different fields).
This is what we call scientific consensus.
...but there was never a scientific consensus on that like there is on this.
You keep talking about this 'consensus' like it means anything scientifically. It. Does. Not.
Actually, it does. This is something non-scientists really really don't understand, because they're all familiar with all the hero scientist stories and not so much with the actual process of science. I love the hero scientist stories, too, but the final, and the most important part of science is that you have to explain your results to other scientists, and get them to understand it and understand and credit the evidence.
Science is not a one person endeavor . Science is, in essence, a series of protocols to ensure that you are observing the world, and not fooling yourself, and an essential part of this is that you have to get other people's eyes looking at what you do. If you cannot explain it to other scientists and have them look at your data and agree that you're seeing what you say you're seeing: it's not science.
In the popular culture, this is called "scientific consensus."
Now let's subtract 30% of that due to the dollar being depressed against every other western country.
I'm not sure what you're talking about. The dollar was 1 Euro in 2000; it's 0.94 Euro today. https://www.google.com/finance... The dollar was106 Japanese yen in 2000; it's 113 yen today. https://www.google.com/finance... And the dollar has actually risen against the pound: https://www.google.com/finance...
I don't see how that can be described as as being "depressed".
...You apparently have no idea how small houses are here.
Since in an earlier post you said "Good thing I'm not American", I have no idea where "here" is.
When your electricity rate goes from 0.07 to 0.18kWh in less then 10 years, and people have problems keeping the lights on? \
The cost of energy in constant dollars has been going down, not up.
Here's a graph of energy costs. Electrical costs have dropped from about $0.026/kWh (equal to $0.21/kWh in today's dollars) in 1960 to $12.67/kWh today.
http://www.eia.gov/outlooks/st...
Some alternate sources:
Australia: http://www.news.com.au/technol...
BBC: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-...
Reuters: http://www.reuters.com/article...
It's all well and good to reduce dependence on coal, but I think the populace will think different and force their government's hand when 1. they see how damned expensive renewables are
Right now, coal is expensive-- natural gas is much cheaper.
There was zero evidence provided of hacking or tampering. Just a sketchy report.
We seem to be talking about different things.
The post I was replying to said that the Pennsylvania machines "couldn't possibly be hacked." You say that there is "zero evidence" that they actually were hacked.
I agree with that. The statement I was disagreeing with was that "the machines can't possibly be hacked."
Pennsylviania -- evoting machines so old they aren't on any network and couldn't possibility be hacked
Just because they claim to not be on the network doesn't mean that they "can't possibly be hacked"!!
First, it turns out that some machines that the vendors say aren't on the network have, in the past, ooops turned out they actually did have undocumented wifi ports.
Second, machines have to be accessed to put the candidates into the machine. This requires access, and any time there's access, they can be hacked.
Third, the machines have to be accessed to get results out of the machine. This is another point at which that the results could be tampered with. Doesn't matter if the machine is reporting 1000 votes for Candidate X and 200 votes for candidate Y if the man in the middle alters that to 500 and 700 as it's transmitted.
Forth, just because a machine is "old" doesn't mean it's hack-proof.
we proved many times before the election that many elections machines could be hacked. the election officials said no, dont worry, it's not going to happen. now that people are not getting their way they are finding any dumb excuse.
Huh. I would have said exactly the opposite. Before the election many people, including people in government, were saying that we need to worry about hacking, that there were many organizations targeting this election (see here and here and here), but now that the election is over, people are saying don't worry, no problem.
I'd like to see someone investigate the idea of using blockchain technology to create a read-only database of the election results. The entire point of a blockchain is to create a cryptographically signed set of transactions which can't be altered without compromising the database. Banks are investing in this technology, where trillions of dollars are at stake, and in which every penny must be accounted for. Why not voting data as well?
I'm baffled. What do you believe blockchain technology would do for voting? How would it make the system better?
The whole point of voting is that you need to make the votes anonymous: a particular vote can't be traced to a particular voter. Blockchain could give you a verified receipt for your vote... but what is the usefulness of that?
It seems to me to be a technology with no evident usefulness to the application.
Everything was rigged to make Hillary look better than reality,
That makes no sense, sorry. Why would they do that? If anything, they'd want to do the opposite, to get their vote out.
But bhe best pre-election analysis showed that Hillary's estimated lead was roughly equal to the statistical error in the polling, and the post-election analysis pretty much confirms this. No need for a wacky conspiracy theory.
http://fivethirtyeight.com/fea...
http://fivethirtyeight.com/fea...
I just don't understand why the Democrats insist on blaming things like the electoral system, hacks, counting errors, or in this case the physical ballot mechanism,
Pay attention. The Democrats are not claiming hacks, counting errors, or the physical ballot mechanism are the cause of Trump winning. Not. The Democratic party accepted the election result. The discussion in question is other people saying that the Democrats should audit the election, not Democrats contesting the election.
see for example many many news stories http://learningenglish.voanews...
when it's patently obvious that the Democrats would have gotten a landslide win if they had gone with anyone but Clinton.
This is not clear at all.