The worst that happens is that we learn that our deforestation was reducing the incidence of wildfires which may well have otherwise had a larger carbon footprint than we currently do, and that by slowing that process, we accelerate global warming.
I'm not owning that as my theory, here, but I am placing it on the table as one of many "we're actually not causing it" possibilities.
If we're not causing it and, rather, are actually slowing it down, scaling back the activities that are slowing it *will* accelerate it. Ramping up those activities may very well slow it.
So fine, if you don't want to wait until we know for sure, make changes. Make small changes; see if they help or hurt. If they help, scale them up; if they hurt, admit that you were wrong and back off, change in the other direction, and repeat the process.
One extreme "fix global warming *NOW*"-level change in the wrong direction and we're all screwed. Since we don't know, conclusively, what the right direction is (by way of not knowing, with any degree of certainty, the exact causes of climate change), such actions should be avoided.
Want to scale back our carbon output, globally, by 10%? Ok, if that helps, we scale back more. If it doesn't, you were wrong, own it and fuck off. And we've been making those small changes in the right direction, globally, and... let me ask you... Has it been helping?
The situation is different. Slamming on your breaks, you are correct, might make you skid; however, there is definitely no way it could ever bring you toward the cliff faster. Unfortunately, implementing the wrong "fix" for global warming *can* accelerate it. Obviously, you slow down to a stop when you're approaching what might be a cliff and won't be able to turn in time; less obvious is what you do when doing the wrong thing can cause what you're trying to prevent and you don't have conclusive evidence of what the right thing is.
The evidence of climate change is, I will agree, conclusive.
There is no conclusive evidence pointing to a specific cause that we can address. Until there is, any "fix" we implement stands the same chance of accelerating the rate of climate change as it does of slowing it down, stopping it, or reversing it.
This isn't a science experiment, where you posit that doing A will result in B and if it fails you try C, this is our ecosystem. Positing that doing A will result in B and being wrong could very well fuck us all; treating it as though you know the outcome ahead of time is, de-facto, irresponsible and dangerous.
Indeed. Also consider that one of the strongest traits of the human personality is projection. When you (the hypothetical you, not you specifically) call me a racist (despite the number of non-white friends I have) for calling a black man a black man, what are you saying about yourself?
What do we do about it if we are? First, we must determine if we are, then we must deteimne how we are; only then can we determine what to do.
What do we do about it if we're not? First, we must determine that we are not, then we must determine what is; only then can we determine what to do.
Doing *anything* about global warming until we have difinitive answers is irresponsible and dangerous. I don't know which side is right, but I do know that even after we make that determination, we still have to pinpoint the precise cause of the problem before we can solve it.
Kind of like what the drug companies should be doing, and would be if they were doing the job the purport to be doing, rather than simply maximizing profits through any means possible.
The general consensus among my black friends is that they prefer to be referred to as black, "colored" refers to any non-white race and is too broad. As with my post above, which for some reason was modded flamebait, I'm only parroting the words of my black friends.
I don't see anything racist in that comment, aside from, maybe, "knee grows", but, then, I would ask "What term can be used to refer to a black person and not be considered, by some, to be offensive or racist? African American? Black? Colored? Negro? Afro Puff? Porch Monkey? Nigger?". All of those offend somebody, some moreso than others; and I'd say all but the first three would be considered by most to be racist terms.
It's fact that black kids trying to better themselves are ousted for "being white" and often get the shit beat out of them. The ones who survive that are often quite successful and well-accepted members of society. Hell, one of them even got my vote for President. I wonder if all the knee grows interviewed on the news saying they were gonna vote for him "because he black" realize they would have kicked his ass in high school for "being white".
And before I get jumped for being a racist, I'm only parroting the exact argument made by most of my black friends.
Enforcement doesn't seem appropriate, let along not being enough.
Let me try on a few hats, here (and make it clear that I am wearing a hat, that all that comes with that hat goes away once I remove it). Let's just suppose, for a moment, that I'm a drug addict.
Now, I recognize that using drugs is destroying my life, so I seek help. I go speak to a counselor and tell them I have these urges and I need help ot figure out why I have them and what I can do to essentially make them go away. They help me and I no longer feel that I need to use drugs.
Now, let me remove that hat and let's suppose, for a moment, that I'm a pedophile.
Now, I recognize that actually doing anything with or to a child would irreparably harm them, so I seek help. I go speak to a counselor and tell them I have these urges and I need help ot figure out why I have them and what I can do to essentially make them go away. Later that day, I am arrested, my home raided, all of my family photo albums and computer equipment confiscated to be searched for images of child porn. A thumbnail of a girl of unverifiable age is found in my browser cache, I'm tried and convicted on charges of posession of child pornography and face 5 years in prison.
Why? I never touched a child, the girl in the image (a thumbnail, with no accompanying full-size image found in my browser cache, indicating that I likely never even looked at it or knew it was there) may well have been over 18, and I was seeking help so that I would not harm anyone. I did nothing wrong. So, why?
Now, let me remove that hat. I rather enjoy my freedom and situations similar to the one I describe above have happened in my country.
"depicting or apparently depicting a minor" to paraphrase the current US law (I'm not going to Google it, but if you want to find yourself on that particular watchlist, you're more than welcome to look it up).
Even moreso, let's say I'm browsing porn and I come across a huge archive of CP. What would my reaction be in the current legal climate? Back up all of my documents and license keys (specifically excluding any browser caches), buy a new hard drive *IMMEDIATELY*, and, while reinstalling my OS and all of my software onto the new drive, remove the platters from the old drive and: If glass, shatter then and put them in the blender until reduced to dust; if metal, place in a bucket of thermite and ignite. From there, simply hope and pray that my IP is purged from the site's logs before they're raided (if ever, since... who's going to report that they foind such a thing in the current legal climate?).
If simply having a thumbnail in my browser cache wasn't enough to land me in prison for years and get me branded as a sex offender and pedophile for the rest of my life, my reaction would be to simply report the site to the proper authorities, clear my browser cache, and get on with my life.
That is the problem with posession laws. If you find it by accident you're just as screwed as the guy seeking it out. If you report finding it, you're admitting that you have it (in your cache at the very least) and you're just as screwed as the guy who ignored it and was simply unlucky enough to have his IP in the logs when the site got raided. You should be able to report finding it, where you foud it, and how you found it, without fear of prosecution for posession (which is a foregone conclusion if you found it on the internet). Until this becomes a reality, the FBI is going to have one hell of a time tracking the stuff down; once it becomes possible to report it without landing yourself in prison, many people who come across it will do their part to make the FBI's job easier.
The fucked up part is it's worse than you describe. If you're a pedophile, you can't even seek help; if you mention your desires to a counselor, it is immediately to be considered as though you have described a planned crime in detail and to be reported to police immediately following the session. I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader to figure out what happens after that.
So, if you have ever find yourself sexually attracted to a minor, you're kind of screwed. If you don't see anything wrong with it and you act on it, you're probably going away for that. If you do see something wrong with it and seek help, you're probably going away for that.
Prison is an eventuality for a pedophile. If you seek help, you will be reported and arrested; if you don't seek help, you will eventually act on it.
Whoever modded this as troll missed the fact that it's probably a cipher of some sort, possibly a C&C message for a botnet, and whould be modded up to get attention and be further analyzed.
I'm thinking, the more I see Microsoft adopt Linux solutions and begin accepting Linux as a competitor, that maybe they've realized this is one thing they won't be able to extend out of existence once they've embraced it. Maybe they're purposely trying to kill Windows and hoping it will die just in time for them to release their own Linux distro?
Far-fetched, yes. But, a lot of what MS has done in the pas has been.
Well, since this was a whole drinking-age ago, I don't really recall. I believe the teacher did take measurements of the placement (spacing and angles) of fins, and assisted several of the students who didn't fully understand the concepts they were working with (hey, at 9 that can't be expected). My design passed the inspection and, indeed, flew the straightest and highest (I angled my fins and added secondary fins onto those, to give it more spin and add to the stability). Nobody had a rocket take off, spiral out of control, and nose-dive; all of our rockets were recovered undamaged and several were launched multiple times, they were then placed on display for the year. There's 100% no way a group of untrained students, let alone 9 year olds, did that without supervision or guidance from someone taking measurements and vetting the designs.
Designing, building, and flying an A-size rocket from raw materials was well within the capabilities of my entire 4th grade class. Rolling the tubes from sheets of paper and glue, shaping the nose cones and fins from sheets and blocks of balsa, the whole damn process with no premade parts aside from the engines and launch gear. If a group of 9 year olds with no formal training in the art can do it, with a 100% launch and flight success rate and no injuries, there's no reason we shouldn't be doing this in middle school or high school.
An OC-24 is a bundle of 24 optical cables. To get the speeds offered by an OC-24 using optical cables, you need 24 of them. Therefore, what is being offered to the schools in your state is, in fact, OC-24.
But, you've still missed the point. An OC-3 can be had for $4k/mo, retail, in most places where fiber is available. Following the math, that would put an OC-3 in the $1k/year range for schools in your state. The $40k infrastructure buildout still needs to happen and, if done correctly, won't need to be upgraded for 5-10 years. In that time, the difference between $1k/yr and $10k/yr per 1000 students is $45-90k per 1000 students. In my example of the school with 5000 students. That's $225-450k the school district won't have to spend on that school during the lifetime of the installed infrastructure. To put it in terms of a single school year, consider a school district with 10 such schools; that's $450k per year wasted in the name of not caching.
But no, let's not cache content. It's not like our schools are facing a budget crisis or anything.
And you buy that equipment once and stop paying for it. Internet connectivity is an ongoing expense. Internet connectivity at the rate of 1gbps per 1000 students means an OC-24 for every 1200 students. So you're saying it doens't matter whether you need to spend $40k once or $40k monthly? Also, keep in mind that this is *per 1200 students* so a school with 5000 students would need 4 OC-24 connections to *ALMOST* neet that requirement, at a cost of $160,000 per month.
You need to spend the $40k initially in either case; but if everything is cached locally, an OC-3 should more than suffice for even the largest schools.
Go ahead, polish off that meal at that 5-star restaurant. Fuck 'em, you didn't like the color of the imported macadamia nuts in the salad, so you're not paying.
First of all, as most 5-star restaurants aim to please, they would not only comp the meal for you, they would offer you a discount on your next meal. Second, if I return a DVD, they have the DVD; if I don't pay for my meal, they don't get the food back. At least, not in a resellable format. Your analogies all break down the same way.
If I buy a table saw and don't like the way it cuts, I return it for a full refund. If I buy a DVD and don't like what's on it, why the fuck can't I do the same thing?
I take it to make sure it's actually the product I want before I buy it. If it turns out to, in fact, be the product I want, I go buy it; if not, I delete it. It's just like buying it and returning it if I don't like it, only actually physically possible.
Were I unable to pirate content to make sure it was worth my $15-60 (that's anywhere from 37 minutes to 2.5 hours of my working time), the only content I would consider buying is stuff I watch at a friends house, which they already own, which I can just borrow. No ability to return tripe that isn't worth the DVD it's stamped on + no piracy as a method to replace the ability to return shit I really don't want = no sale.
If returns were possible, I'd have zero incentive to pirate. Period.
Slashdot Mirror
There is no reasonable possibility that reducing CO2 emissions will make the warming worse.
Right. Because there's no chance that we'll replace it with something worse.
The worst that happens is that we learn that our deforestation was reducing the incidence of wildfires which may well have otherwise had a larger carbon footprint than we currently do, and that by slowing that process, we accelerate global warming.
I'm not owning that as my theory, here, but I am placing it on the table as one of many "we're actually not causing it" possibilities.
If we're not causing it and, rather, are actually slowing it down, scaling back the activities that are slowing it *will* accelerate it. Ramping up those activities may very well slow it.
So fine, if you don't want to wait until we know for sure, make changes. Make small changes; see if they help or hurt. If they help, scale them up; if they hurt, admit that you were wrong and back off, change in the other direction, and repeat the process.
One extreme "fix global warming *NOW*"-level change in the wrong direction and we're all screwed. Since we don't know, conclusively, what the right direction is (by way of not knowing, with any degree of certainty, the exact causes of climate change), such actions should be avoided.
Want to scale back our carbon output, globally, by 10%? Ok, if that helps, we scale back more. If it doesn't, you were wrong, own it and fuck off. And we've been making those small changes in the right direction, globally, and... let me ask you... Has it been helping?
The situation is different. Slamming on your breaks, you are correct, might make you skid; however, there is definitely no way it could ever bring you toward the cliff faster. Unfortunately, implementing the wrong "fix" for global warming *can* accelerate it. Obviously, you slow down to a stop when you're approaching what might be a cliff and won't be able to turn in time; less obvious is what you do when doing the wrong thing can cause what you're trying to prevent and you don't have conclusive evidence of what the right thing is.
The evidence of climate change is, I will agree, conclusive.
There is no conclusive evidence pointing to a specific cause that we can address. Until there is, any "fix" we implement stands the same chance of accelerating the rate of climate change as it does of slowing it down, stopping it, or reversing it.
This isn't a science experiment, where you posit that doing A will result in B and if it fails you try C, this is our ecosystem. Positing that doing A will result in B and being wrong could very well fuck us all; treating it as though you know the outcome ahead of time is, de-facto, irresponsible and dangerous.
Indeed. Also consider that one of the strongest traits of the human personality is projection. When you (the hypothetical you, not you specifically) call me a racist (despite the number of non-white friends I have) for calling a black man a black man, what are you saying about yourself?
Are we causing global warming? Maybe.
What do we do about it if we are? First, we must determine if we are, then we must deteimne how we are; only then can we determine what to do.
What do we do about it if we're not? First, we must determine that we are not, then we must determine what is; only then can we determine what to do.
Doing *anything* about global warming until we have difinitive answers is irresponsible and dangerous. I don't know which side is right, but I do know that even after we make that determination, we still have to pinpoint the precise cause of the problem before we can solve it.
Kind of like what the drug companies should be doing, and would be if they were doing the job the purport to be doing, rather than simply maximizing profits through any means possible.
Why not just refer to people as "human" and be done with it?
For the same reason my black friends don't like being refered to as "colored": Because not everybody wants to be refered to that broadly.
The general consensus among my black friends is that they prefer to be referred to as black, "colored" refers to any non-white race and is too broad. As with my post above, which for some reason was modded flamebait, I'm only parroting the words of my black friends.
I don't see anything racist in that comment, aside from, maybe, "knee grows", but, then, I would ask "What term can be used to refer to a black person and not be considered, by some, to be offensive or racist? African American? Black? Colored? Negro? Afro Puff? Porch Monkey? Nigger?". All of those offend somebody, some moreso than others; and I'd say all but the first three would be considered by most to be racist terms.
It's fact that black kids trying to better themselves are ousted for "being white" and often get the shit beat out of them. The ones who survive that are often quite successful and well-accepted members of society. Hell, one of them even got my vote for President. I wonder if all the knee grows interviewed on the news saying they were gonna vote for him "because he black" realize they would have kicked his ass in high school for "being white".
And before I get jumped for being a racist, I'm only parroting the exact argument made by most of my black friends.
Enforcement doesn't seem appropriate, let along not being enough.
Let me try on a few hats, here (and make it clear that I am wearing a hat, that all that comes with that hat goes away once I remove it). Let's just suppose, for a moment, that I'm a drug addict.
Now, I recognize that using drugs is destroying my life, so I seek help. I go speak to a counselor and tell them I have these urges and I need help ot figure out why I have them and what I can do to essentially make them go away. They help me and I no longer feel that I need to use drugs.
Now, let me remove that hat and let's suppose, for a moment, that I'm a pedophile.
Now, I recognize that actually doing anything with or to a child would irreparably harm them, so I seek help. I go speak to a counselor and tell them I have these urges and I need help ot figure out why I have them and what I can do to essentially make them go away. Later that day, I am arrested, my home raided, all of my family photo albums and computer equipment confiscated to be searched for images of child porn. A thumbnail of a girl of unverifiable age is found in my browser cache, I'm tried and convicted on charges of posession of child pornography and face 5 years in prison.
Why? I never touched a child, the girl in the image (a thumbnail, with no accompanying full-size image found in my browser cache, indicating that I likely never even looked at it or knew it was there) may well have been over 18, and I was seeking help so that I would not harm anyone. I did nothing wrong. So, why?
Now, let me remove that hat. I rather enjoy my freedom and situations similar to the one I describe above have happened in my country.
"depicting or apparently depicting a minor" to paraphrase the current US law (I'm not going to Google it, but if you want to find yourself on that particular watchlist, you're more than welcome to look it up).
Even moreso, let's say I'm browsing porn and I come across a huge archive of CP. What would my reaction be in the current legal climate? Back up all of my documents and license keys (specifically excluding any browser caches), buy a new hard drive *IMMEDIATELY*, and, while reinstalling my OS and all of my software onto the new drive, remove the platters from the old drive and: If glass, shatter then and put them in the blender until reduced to dust; if metal, place in a bucket of thermite and ignite. From there, simply hope and pray that my IP is purged from the site's logs before they're raided (if ever, since... who's going to report that they foind such a thing in the current legal climate?).
If simply having a thumbnail in my browser cache wasn't enough to land me in prison for years and get me branded as a sex offender and pedophile for the rest of my life, my reaction would be to simply report the site to the proper authorities, clear my browser cache, and get on with my life.
That is the problem with posession laws. If you find it by accident you're just as screwed as the guy seeking it out. If you report finding it, you're admitting that you have it (in your cache at the very least) and you're just as screwed as the guy who ignored it and was simply unlucky enough to have his IP in the logs when the site got raided. You should be able to report finding it, where you foud it, and how you found it, without fear of prosecution for posession (which is a foregone conclusion if you found it on the internet). Until this becomes a reality, the FBI is going to have one hell of a time tracking the stuff down; once it becomes possible to report it without landing yourself in prison, many people who come across it will do their part to make the FBI's job easier.
The fucked up part is it's worse than you describe. If you're a pedophile, you can't even seek help; if you mention your desires to a counselor, it is immediately to be considered as though you have described a planned crime in detail and to be reported to police immediately following the session. I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader to figure out what happens after that.
So, if you have ever find yourself sexually attracted to a minor, you're kind of screwed. If you don't see anything wrong with it and you act on it, you're probably going away for that. If you do see something wrong with it and seek help, you're probably going away for that.
Prison is an eventuality for a pedophile. If you seek help, you will be reported and arrested; if you don't seek help, you will eventually act on it.
Whoever modded this as troll missed the fact that it's probably a cipher of some sort, possibly a C&C message for a botnet, and whould be modded up to get attention and be further analyzed.
I'm thinking, the more I see Microsoft adopt Linux solutions and begin accepting Linux as a competitor, that maybe they've realized this is one thing they won't be able to extend out of existence once they've embraced it. Maybe they're purposely trying to kill Windows and hoping it will die just in time for them to release their own Linux distro?
Far-fetched, yes. But, a lot of what MS has done in the pas has been.
Well, since this was a whole drinking-age ago, I don't really recall. I believe the teacher did take measurements of the placement (spacing and angles) of fins, and assisted several of the students who didn't fully understand the concepts they were working with (hey, at 9 that can't be expected). My design passed the inspection and, indeed, flew the straightest and highest (I angled my fins and added secondary fins onto those, to give it more spin and add to the stability). Nobody had a rocket take off, spiral out of control, and nose-dive; all of our rockets were recovered undamaged and several were launched multiple times, they were then placed on display for the year. There's 100% no way a group of untrained students, let alone 9 year olds, did that without supervision or guidance from someone taking measurements and vetting the designs.
The question then becomes: By higher quality, do you mean more idiotic, or less?
Designing, building, and flying an A-size rocket from raw materials was well within the capabilities of my entire 4th grade class. Rolling the tubes from sheets of paper and glue, shaping the nose cones and fins from sheets and blocks of balsa, the whole damn process with no premade parts aside from the engines and launch gear. If a group of 9 year olds with no formal training in the art can do it, with a 100% launch and flight success rate and no injuries, there's no reason we shouldn't be doing this in middle school or high school.
My bank balance is both positive and negative until I observe it. I simply never observe it. The positive side usually wins.
An OC-24 is a bundle of 24 optical cables. To get the speeds offered by an OC-24 using optical cables, you need 24 of them. Therefore, what is being offered to the schools in your state is, in fact, OC-24.
But, you've still missed the point. An OC-3 can be had for $4k/mo, retail, in most places where fiber is available. Following the math, that would put an OC-3 in the $1k/year range for schools in your state. The $40k infrastructure buildout still needs to happen and, if done correctly, won't need to be upgraded for 5-10 years. In that time, the difference between $1k/yr and $10k/yr per 1000 students is $45-90k per 1000 students. In my example of the school with 5000 students. That's $225-450k the school district won't have to spend on that school during the lifetime of the installed infrastructure. To put it in terms of a single school year, consider a school district with 10 such schools; that's $450k per year wasted in the name of not caching.
But no, let's not cache content. It's not like our schools are facing a budget crisis or anything.
And you buy that equipment once and stop paying for it. Internet connectivity is an ongoing expense. Internet connectivity at the rate of 1gbps per 1000 students means an OC-24 for every 1200 students. So you're saying it doens't matter whether you need to spend $40k once or $40k monthly? Also, keep in mind that this is *per 1200 students* so a school with 5000 students would need 4 OC-24 connections to *ALMOST* neet that requirement, at a cost of $160,000 per month.
You need to spend the $40k initially in either case; but if everything is cached locally, an OC-3 should more than suffice for even the largest schools.
Go ahead, polish off that meal at that 5-star restaurant. Fuck 'em, you didn't like the color of the imported macadamia nuts in the salad, so you're not paying.
First of all, as most 5-star restaurants aim to please, they would not only comp the meal for you, they would offer you a discount on your next meal. Second, if I return a DVD, they have the DVD; if I don't pay for my meal, they don't get the food back. At least, not in a resellable format. Your analogies all break down the same way.
If I buy a table saw and don't like the way it cuts, I return it for a full refund. If I buy a DVD and don't like what's on it, why the fuck can't I do the same thing?
I take it to make sure it's actually the product I want before I buy it. If it turns out to, in fact, be the product I want, I go buy it; if not, I delete it. It's just like buying it and returning it if I don't like it, only actually physically possible.
Were I unable to pirate content to make sure it was worth my $15-60 (that's anywhere from 37 minutes to 2.5 hours of my working time), the only content I would consider buying is stuff I watch at a friends house, which they already own, which I can just borrow. No ability to return tripe that isn't worth the DVD it's stamped on + no piracy as a method to replace the ability to return shit I really don't want = no sale.
If returns were possible, I'd have zero incentive to pirate. Period.
dancing is forbidden
Looks like ATHF saw this coming?
Right, I'll get my checkbook, you set up the sound system, and we'll have Soulskill bring his CD collection over.
this means Java goes into a slow eclipse.
Considering that Eclipse is the most widely used IDE for Android programming and Dalvik is a Java derivative, I think this happened long ago.