Well, if understood literally, it is provocative: it may provoke the US to start an agression against China before they get stronger and less vulnerable; not necessarily with nuclear arms or with something like that, but with economic embargo and some dirty tricks we shouldn't be discussing here. OTOH, it can be misinformation in the best kind of the Sun Tzu style.
Disclaimer: I am not a "there's no problem with global warming" type. My comment concerns only a specific stupid article, which, due to the ignorance of the journalist that wrote it, could happen to be on any side of the argument.
I can tell you what fuels the skeptical attitude of many people to the whole global warming issue. It's stupid newspaper articles that say something like this: "If all the ice in the Arctics melts, then we'll surely drown". Perhaps I misunderstand something, but due to the effect mentioned in the subject, nothing at all would happen: the Northern polar cap is situated in ocean. OTOH, if the Arctical cap melts, then we're in a very big trouble already, due to other disasters.
As an Australian, you wouldn't want [I think] your country to comply with Kyoto right now. IIRC, despite your huge production of uranium ore, it all goes to export, and your energetics are solely based on coal which is plentiful in Australia and very cheap to extract. So until you take down your old power plants, build a nuclear one, and expect [even though insignificant] loss of income due to its consumption of uranium, it would be unwise to sign the treaty. Do it first, or at least start doing it, and sign next.:)
You see, he's not trying to patent DRM as a concept, he's trying to patent the technology of DRM system state saving. While this patent may have little value itself, it might be a show-stopper for Apple, Microsoft and the like. IANAL, but I suppose that Red Hat lawyers have studied the piles of MS et al DRM patents and Vista license agreement, and have found a hole in it [i.e. something that they use in the license or in their technology but haven't patented]. And now that Vista is getting ready for launch, Microsoft gets this blow. Let's keep our fingers crossed and see what follows.
Why do we suppose that all ball lightnings are generated the same way? This is a pretty strong statement as far as I can tell, without the appropriate grounds to make it. However, this particular theory definitely has a reason to live in my eyes, since it would explain generation of lightning balls at large altitude [Caucasus mountains, where they pose a threat to mountain climbers; at least one group has perished to a ball lightning-like object with only one injured survivor remaining], since silicates [particularly olivine] are abundant in Caucasian rock.
The problem is indeed deeper than just a headache for a webmaster or two. Let's face it: just as the desktop software market depends on MS Windows, and a lot of software companies will vanish overnight in case Microsoft introduced a new trick [like, signed - for a price - executables only, or backwards-incompatible API, etc], so the web now depends on Google. Should all the Google system administration team take a week off - and voila, you get no new customers, because they don't know where to go, and you're lucky if somebody from your old clients returns using his browser's history. Of course, there's Yahoo, MSN, Nigma, and a hundred of startups, but all of them combined hardly have the same significance that Google enjoys alone. So let's either keep our fingers crossed and hope that Google will not do anything more evil than it does now, or... heh, I don't really know even what else could we do.
As far as I understand, the main trouble for mom'n'pop shops will be the green colored bar [which they will have a hard time obtaining, as opposed to larger companies]. What is the problem of marking connections established with old certificates green too, at least on non-Microsoft browsers? Another point: is the green bar alone enough of customer value so people go buying in 'those green internet shops'? Would things like comfortable product search, navigation and price suddently stop mattering?
I know where they've been getting money to keep themselves afloat all this time: 3D Realms has been sharing the funds for Duke Nukem Forever 50/50 with SCO.
Oh really? You know, in the 15th century there was a 'near universal consensus among scientists, laymen and politicians' that the world is heocentric, and the Earth is flat. It's so good that Galilei, Copernicus, Bruno, Brahe, etc [and later - Planck, Dirac, Heisenberg, Landau... the list can be long] do not share you social and scientific attitude.
We should at least try to stave off what may be inevitable Who is that 'we'? Software developers, engineers, bus drivers - who? Any project of such scale should be started and supported at corporate or governmental level. As long as powers have a reason/possibility not to give a damn about the problem, nothing will change. And since Australia isn't by far the most major air pollution producer, it only can appeal to the U.S., China, Europe. There is a price to pay for everything, clean environment included. When a government reports that it has created a zillion new jobs, when a country advertises itself as having a high life standard - all of these things roll down to pollution. So it's either new production technologies [I think they won't last long: people will 'vote with their money' and buy cheaper products], or a significant population cut in China AND life comfort level in Europe/US. Besides, there are countries that would benefit from warming, such as Russia. This winter is a blessing - it's mid January, and the temperature is over zero Celsius! Unbelievably warm, especially considering the previous winter, when we had two weeks of -40 Celsius. So combating the climate change, even if it's anthropogenic and it's in our grasp to affect it, will not be easy - there's just too many of us, and we all have our interests...
I don't really have anything solid to object your claims [which apparently look true to me]. However, a couple of things are still unclear to me:
Most air pollution, CFCs included, is produced in the Northern hemisphere as far as I understand. Which atmospheric currents are responsible for collecting all of that stuff over Antarctics? Why not the arctic area?
One of the replies to my original post says that the amount of CFCs produced correlates with the ozone hole size in the discussed time frame. But have there been any chemical or spectroscopic measurements of the amount of CFCs in that area?
Regardless, my initial post seems to be way overrated. Thanks for the info.
I don't see any data from the period before 1979, so I have nothing to compare with. Have there been any measurements before this period? If yes, why aren't the results included into this graph? Once again, I'm not saying that the ozone hole isn't growing [nor that it is], etc, but the practice of only taking a suitable data sample and saying 'oh there it is!' is a little annoying.
we have ALOT more CO2 in the atmosphere than in the last 800000 years
What does this mean: that 800kyears ago there was more CO2 in the atmosphere than now [in this case, do we know the source of it?], or that we do not have more or less firm estimates for older ages?
There aren't any other known sources that are pumping as much CO2 into the atmosphere
Just the fact that they aren't known doesn't mean that they aren't there. Are there any researches trying to find any? Besides, CO2 is heavily used by plant life, plancton included. It would be logical to expect that once its availability increases, we should see a boost in oceanic life. Do we observe it? If not, then why?
as according to the "normal cycle" we would be entering a cooling period by now
Sources please? The predictions of the reports concerning this question I have read vary from "now" in terms of a human life to "now" in geological terms; that is at least four orders of magnitude.
Just one reply up, I've been accused of using 'straw man' tactics. Now I see it being used against me. I do not say that CFCs can't destroy ozone - I say that other reasons that usually draw much less public attention are known to have very significant effects.
About changing my mind: fear not, for I am open to new information, and while I review it critically, so I do to my older data. I have nothing to gain from gripping a certain point of view, but I will gain a lot if I manage to mantain and be able to defend the most objective attitude I am capable of understanding.
It would be somewhat unfair to say that many people [slashdotters included] are biased; rather I'd say that they doesn't fully examine all the major candidates for the cause of the [now evident] warming. Remember, there was a planet and a climate and [most important] wide-scale climate changes before the U.S., industry or humanity ever existed; what's the reason for them to go away and never occur again? Just because they're scaring us? C'mon...
All of this is not to say that we do not harming the environment - we certainly do, and sometimes in irreversible [in the terms of our lifetimes] proportions. However we should fully understand the difference between chemical spills that damage our own food chain and other stuff, and green eco-activists' fantasies like the one about the Antarctic ozone hole. Some details on the last statement: a lot of eco-activists say that
Ozon is good for environment and should be praised [partially true - stratospheric ozone absorbs solar ultraviolet radiation, but high concentrations of ozone irritate human respiratory system]
There are huge ozon holes near the Earth's poles [true]
Ozon is known to decay in reactions with CFCs [true]
Thus, CFCs are responsible for the antartic ozone hole [not true]
The main reason that there always was and will be an ozone hole over the Antarctics is that ozone decays in the lack of sunlight, and it's pretty dark half of the year out there.
P.S. This post has been made with my current understanding of the problem; if a more informed person can correct me wherever I am wrong, I'd be grateful.
Wasn't MIT among the universities that started distributing [for a price] DRM'ed electronic books/lectures with a license [= ability to legally use] that would only last a semester or so?
I wouldn't be so sure and calm about what you say now that we've seen its effect on Debian. If a few thousand dollars can greatly harm one of the leading distributions, then what damage can cause a certain evil corporation with mountains of cash?
Qt isn't a GUI toolkit, either. GUI is but one library of the Qt platform, along with networking classes [TCP, UDP and classes direct application - HTTP and FTP]; XML support [in the face of DOM,SAX and SVG], SQL facade; powerful testing, benchmarking and debugging utilities, OpenGL library, etc. And if we count Qtopia as well, there's a load of telephony and other specialty classes there. Way beyond just a GUI toolkit IMO, perhaps it really deserves the name 'platform'...
Why does it bother you that Google will be able to collect all your data? Technically, Microsoft is capable of collecting data from virtually all internet-connected desktop machines in the world, and you can't be sure that there aren't killswitches or other pleasant surprises in their software. Worse, I am positively sure that there are triggers in Windows and its companion software that can be used to collect your data, revoke your access to computer, format your drive - and they're there waiting for their hour. Google only has the information that you give to it willingly, Microsoft can have ALL of your data without prior notice. Unless you're a free software user, that is.
Well, we'd rather reduce Western population to 1-2 million people, and make whole North America and Europe a large glassy radioactive surface. Given the current rate of global warming [it's mid December and there's still no snow in Moscow; unbelieable is it?], bastards like you will drown or die of overheating anyway. Then, we can use our oil and copper for our own factories.
Slashdot Mirror
Did that help?
Well, if understood literally, it is provocative: it may provoke the US to start an agression against China before they get stronger and less vulnerable; not necessarily with nuclear arms or with something like that, but with economic embargo and some dirty tricks we shouldn't be discussing here. OTOH, it can be misinformation in the best kind of the Sun Tzu style.
Disclaimer: I am not a "there's no problem with global warming" type. My comment concerns only a specific stupid article, which, due to the ignorance of the journalist that wrote it, could happen to be on any side of the argument. I can tell you what fuels the skeptical attitude of many people to the whole global warming issue. It's stupid newspaper articles that say something like this: "If all the ice in the Arctics melts, then we'll surely drown". Perhaps I misunderstand something, but due to the effect mentioned in the subject, nothing at all would happen: the Northern polar cap is situated in ocean. OTOH, if the Arctical cap melts, then we're in a very big trouble already, due to other disasters.
As an Australian, you wouldn't want [I think] your country to comply with Kyoto right now. IIRC, despite your huge production of uranium ore, it all goes to export, and your energetics are solely based on coal which is plentiful in Australia and very cheap to extract. So until you take down your old power plants, build a nuclear one, and expect [even though insignificant] loss of income due to its consumption of uranium, it would be unwise to sign the treaty. Do it first, or at least start doing it, and sign next. :)
You see, he's not trying to patent DRM as a concept, he's trying to patent the technology of DRM system state saving. While this patent may have little value itself, it might be a show-stopper for Apple, Microsoft and the like. IANAL, but I suppose that Red Hat lawyers have studied the piles of MS et al DRM patents and Vista license agreement, and have found a hole in it [i.e. something that they use in the license or in their technology but haven't patented]. And now that Vista is getting ready for launch, Microsoft gets this blow. Let's keep our fingers crossed and see what follows.
Microsoft has got its back protected: http://www.google.com/patents?vid=USPAT6330670&id= tNcIAAAAEBAJ&dq=digital+rights+management
Why do we suppose that all ball lightnings are generated the same way? This is a pretty strong statement as far as I can tell, without the appropriate grounds to make it. However, this particular theory definitely has a reason to live in my eyes, since it would explain generation of lightning balls at large altitude [Caucasus mountains, where they pose a threat to mountain climbers; at least one group has perished to a ball lightning-like object with only one injured survivor remaining], since silicates [particularly olivine] are abundant in Caucasian rock.
The problem is indeed deeper than just a headache for a webmaster or two. Let's face it: just as the desktop software market depends on MS Windows, and a lot of software companies will vanish overnight in case Microsoft introduced a new trick [like, signed - for a price - executables only, or backwards-incompatible API, etc], so the web now depends on Google. Should all the Google system administration team take a week off - and voila, you get no new customers, because they don't know where to go, and you're lucky if somebody from your old clients returns using his browser's history. Of course, there's Yahoo, MSN, Nigma, and a hundred of startups, but all of them combined hardly have the same significance that Google enjoys alone. So let's either keep our fingers crossed and hope that Google will not do anything more evil than it does now, or... heh, I don't really know even what else could we do.
Does anyone know if it works under Vista? Does anyone have think it's possible to detect this stuff by signature and block execution?
As far as I understand, the main trouble for mom'n'pop shops will be the green colored bar [which they will have a hard time obtaining, as opposed to larger companies]. What is the problem of marking connections established with old certificates green too, at least on non-Microsoft browsers? Another point: is the green bar alone enough of customer value so people go buying in 'those green internet shops'? Would things like comfortable product search, navigation and price suddently stop mattering?
I know where they've been getting money to keep themselves afloat all this time: 3D Realms has been sharing the funds for Duke Nukem Forever 50/50 with SCO.
Thank you; your comments have been very helpful and informative.
Oh really? You know, in the 15th century there was a 'near universal consensus among scientists, laymen and politicians' that the world is heocentric, and the Earth is flat. It's so good that Galilei, Copernicus, Bruno, Brahe, etc [and later - Planck, Dirac, Heisenberg, Landau... the list can be long] do not share you social and scientific attitude.
- Most air pollution, CFCs included, is produced in the Northern hemisphere as far as I understand. Which atmospheric currents are responsible for collecting all of that stuff over Antarctics? Why not the arctic area?
- One of the replies to my original post says that the amount of CFCs produced correlates with the ozone hole size in the discussed time frame. But have there been any chemical or spectroscopic measurements of the amount of CFCs in that area?
Regardless, my initial post seems to be way overrated. Thanks for the info.I don't see any data from the period before 1979, so I have nothing to compare with. Have there been any measurements before this period? If yes, why aren't the results included into this graph? Once again, I'm not saying that the ozone hole isn't growing [nor that it is], etc, but the practice of only taking a suitable data sample and saying 'oh there it is!' is a little annoying.
Just the fact that they aren't known doesn't mean that they aren't there. Are there any researches trying to find any? Besides, CO2 is heavily used by plant life, plancton included. It would be logical to expect that once its availability increases, we should see a boost in oceanic life. Do we observe it? If not, then why?
Sources please? The predictions of the reports concerning this question I have read vary from "now" in terms of a human life to "now" in geological terms; that is at least four orders of magnitude.
It would be somewhat unfair to say that many people [slashdotters included] are biased; rather I'd say that they doesn't fully examine all the major candidates for the cause of the [now evident] warming. Remember, there was a planet and a climate and [most important] wide-scale climate changes before the U.S., industry or humanity ever existed; what's the reason for them to go away and never occur again? Just because they're scaring us? C'mon...
All of this is not to say that we do not harming the environment - we certainly do, and sometimes in irreversible [in the terms of our lifetimes] proportions. However we should fully understand the difference between chemical spills that damage our own food chain and other stuff, and green eco-activists' fantasies like the one about the Antarctic ozone hole. Some details on the last statement: a lot of eco-activists say that
- Ozon is good for environment and should be praised [partially true - stratospheric ozone absorbs solar ultraviolet radiation, but high concentrations of ozone irritate human respiratory system]
- There are huge ozon holes near the Earth's poles [true]
- Ozon is known to decay in reactions with CFCs [true]
- Thus, CFCs are responsible for the antartic ozone hole [not true]
The main reason that there always was and will be an ozone hole over the Antarctics is that ozone decays in the lack of sunlight, and it's pretty dark half of the year out there.P.S. This post has been made with my current understanding of the problem; if a more informed person can correct me wherever I am wrong, I'd be grateful.
Wasn't MIT among the universities that started distributing [for a price] DRM'ed electronic books/lectures with a license [= ability to legally use] that would only last a semester or so?
Christianity was declared as the state religion of the Armenian Kingdom in AD 301.
I wouldn't be so sure and calm about what you say now that we've seen its effect on Debian. If a few thousand dollars can greatly harm one of the leading distributions, then what damage can cause a certain evil corporation with mountains of cash?
Qt isn't a GUI toolkit, either. GUI is but one library of the Qt platform, along with networking classes [TCP, UDP and classes direct application - HTTP and FTP]; XML support [in the face of DOM,SAX and SVG], SQL facade; powerful testing, benchmarking and debugging utilities, OpenGL library, etc. And if we count Qtopia as well, there's a load of telephony and other specialty classes there. Way beyond just a GUI toolkit IMO, perhaps it really deserves the name 'platform'...
Why does it bother you that Google will be able to collect all your data? Technically, Microsoft is capable of collecting data from virtually all internet-connected desktop machines in the world, and you can't be sure that there aren't killswitches or other pleasant surprises in their software. Worse, I am positively sure that there are triggers in Windows and its companion software that can be used to collect your data, revoke your access to computer, format your drive - and they're there waiting for their hour. Google only has the information that you give to it willingly, Microsoft can have ALL of your data without prior notice. Unless you're a free software user, that is.
Well, we'd rather reduce Western population to 1-2 million people, and make whole North America and Europe a large glassy radioactive surface. Given the current rate of global warming [it's mid December and there's still no snow in Moscow; unbelieable is it?], bastards like you will drown or die of overheating anyway. Then, we can use our oil and copper for our own factories.