Since climate science really is a science, it's going to have to make predictions. It's good to put consensus predictions on record and then see how good they are. I have enough faith in climate science to think that they will be quite good. Of course they will have big error bars, but that's unavoidable. Also, it's not uninformative. I think it will be important in 5 years to say: We've got a climate model that's made correct predictions for the last five years, so you should trust that model as a good guide to the future. It's not a perfect argument, but I think it will be more persuasive than what we can say now.
Your optimism is no doubt fueled by all the most recent publicity the rigor of their scientific method has garnered.
Fantastic! We need to encourage more legislation like this. If we can just keep them busy with this trivial nonsense, maybe they'll have less time to devote to actually destroying civilization as we know it.
How many REAL trees could you plant for the cost of one of these stupid artificial trees? Real trees absorb carbon dioxide using NO electricity, there's no carbon storage problem they produce oxygen and beautify the surroundings to boot!
This whole "artificial tree" solution sounds more like some business with a politician in their pocket.
so what happens when you send it to someone else in a "hey check out this song" kind of way, then that person is stupid and sticks it in their lime wire folder?
That sounds like file sharing to me. Why wouldn't you just send them a link to the song on lala.com where they can listen once for free?
I work in health care, so maybe it's different in your industry, but every hospital I've worked for has had a compliance officer with an anonymous 800-number for compliance questions. This is DEFINITELY the kind of stuff they want to know about.
Why would any rational person want to know what ECONOMISTS think? Read any news story that mentions "economists" and you'll also notice an unusually high occurence of the word "unexpected":
--Retail falls after August sales' unexpected decline
--Economists React: An Unexpected Rise in the PPI
--Economists Say UK Inflation to Peak Soon Despite Larger-than-Expected CPI
--US Service Sector Sees Unexpected Rise In August
--Chicago: Unexpected bump for area economy
--New-home sales post unexpected gain in July
--US shares soar as unexpected figures paint better picture
--German investor confidence posts second surprise rise
Economists, it seems, have supplanted weather casters as the only profession where you can be wrong most of the time and still keep your job.
I can already see the November headline: McCain Wins Unexpected Landslide Victory
@scorp1us: In the end, you get a really expensive system thwarted by 5 minutes of planning.
Not exactly. Given a situation where the same crime is committed right in front of an actual, physical Bobby -- guess what? The crime was still committed. Given the Bobby's skill, there's a pretty good chance the perp will be apprehended.
Consider the same crime, committed a block further away, but still within the Bobby's sight. The difficulty apprehending the perp escalates because the Bobby must first close the distance between him/herself and the perp. Still, the Bobby witnessed the crime in progress and is able to initiate pursuit. But there's always the chance the perp ducks around a corner, loses the disguise and manages to thwart apprehension.
Consider the same crime once again, this time no Bobby, no witnesses. Perp gets away free. Law enforcement is left nothing but invetigative tactics to attempt to track down the perp. Since we can assume that the goal of most perps is to commit their crime unobserved by law enforcement, the first step would be to scout out a nice spot, far away from the local Bobby, so I would think that this scenario would be the highest percentage of the three proposed thus far.
Now, consider that a bunch of CCTV cameras are set up all around the area. You have already dramatically increased the area of the city that is now under surveillance. While you may not have a Bobby on every corner, you at least have Bobbies eyes on many more corners than you have physical Bobbies on corners. Perp dons his Nixon mask and hooded sweat shirt and proceeds to snatch a victims pocket book, which just happens to be observed on CCTV (after all, if you're scanning cameras and see someone walking around in a Nixon mask and hooded sweatshirt, wouldn't you keep the camera on him?) Yes, the crime is still committed. No, there are no Bobbies immediately available to initiate pursuit. But law enforcement is aware of the crime the instant it is committed (advantage #1). While the perp makes his escape, the officer monitoring the video can switch instantly between different cameras, expending very little energy in pursuit (advantage #2), all the while all the visual detail is being recorded so testimony is not reliant on witness recollection (advantage #3). Perp must occupy himself now with not only finding a place out of site of a Bobby to lose his mask and sweatshirt, he must also be aware of camera placement (advatange #4).
Does all of that help if noone was monitoring the exact camera while the crime was committed? Maybe not. But is there a much greater probability of witnessing the crime being committed WITH cameras on every corner? Absolutely (and we've all seen the video proof.)
Of course, the true effectiveness (if any) has to be measured by a metric that simply can't be quantified: How many street robberies didn't happen at all because of the CCTVs? Oh sure, you could try to compare numbers of street robberies before CCTVs and after, and infer that CCTVs either contributed to the difference, or made no difference, but of course, one would also have to assume that CCTVs were the ONLY difference. If that were true, then you wouldn't see any difference in crime rates for the same period in areas where CCTVs were never installed -- something I think would be very unlikely.
I see you complaining about comments, so I'll guess you're mostly reading the main SlashDot articles and wasting a lot of your time reading the comments. CmdrTaco was talking about the *firehose* containing the best of all the other websites. Only a small percentage of the stuff that comes through the firehose makes it to SlashDot proper, and unfortunately, since the community consists of folks for all backgrounds, you pretty much have to select the articles that appeal to everyone.
If you want the hardcore, esoteric stuff, try the firehose.
Lesson learned: Before writing a review on 21st century gaming technology, be sure to check your slang. You don't want to risk offending someone who may or may not be aware that your phrase could have been offensive to some particularly vague group of people, because there might be a.00001% chance that someone read about someone who was once related to a guy who though he heard his great grandfather call somebody something that made them think that it might have been derogatory. But even then, it might just be some BS that someone conjured in some Ecstasy-induced fit of creative imagination, and by golly you certainly don't want to offend THEM!
Anyone know of a service that will send out a gunman to rob me of my laptop so my insurance company will buy me a new one? Can I sign up for the every-six-months plan?
Sounds to me like NASA has created the "perfect" problem -- something that can explain the need to abandon the ISS and letting it burn up in the atmosphere so it will stop sucking NASA's dwindling funds and let them concentrate on their moon and Mars missions.
And how do we know this guy's not a poser, and this video was meant to give terrorists/smugglers/pirates a false sense of security so when they attempt some type of assault, they get their asterisks blown out of the sea?
Tech crime is the new frontier, so take the old frontier approach -- hire a bounty hunter. Post the IP address to a hacker newsgroup and a bounty amount you're willing to pay for the perp's ID and address (upon conviction, of course). Ask your insurance company if they'd be willing to add to the bounty. Heck, they may even be willing to give up the retrieved laptop, for the positive press alone.
Go Web 2.0. If someone can sell a million pixels or trade up a paperclip, surely you can generate some kind of cult interest.
Ohmaar
Slashdot Mirror
Since climate science really is a science, it's going to have to make predictions. It's good to put consensus predictions on record and then see how good they are. I have enough faith in climate science to think that they will be quite good. Of course they will have big error bars, but that's unavoidable. Also, it's not uninformative. I think it will be important in 5 years to say: We've got a climate model that's made correct predictions for the last five years, so you should trust that model as a good guide to the future. It's not a perfect argument, but I think it will be more persuasive than what we can say now.
Your optimism is no doubt fueled by all the most recent publicity the rigor of their scientific method has garnered.
Because we've all seen what a dismal failure the iPod/iPhone/Touch devices and the App store have been.
I'm sure the success of Space Ship One had absolutely nothing to do with this decision.
Fantastic! We need to encourage more legislation like this. If we can just keep them busy with this trivial nonsense, maybe they'll have less time to devote to actually destroying civilization as we know it.
How many REAL trees could you plant for the cost of one of these stupid artificial trees? Real trees absorb carbon dioxide using NO electricity, there's no carbon storage problem they produce oxygen and beautify the surroundings to boot! This whole "artificial tree" solution sounds more like some business with a politician in their pocket.
Good God, people, can we stop wasting time and money on these useless studies and get to the more IMPORTANT science? WHERE ARE OUR FLYING CARS!?!!
Call me crazy, but shouldn't they be learning Chemistry, Physics and Engineering?
so what happens when you send it to someone else in a "hey check out this song" kind of way, then that person is stupid and sticks it in their lime wire folder?
That sounds like file sharing to me. Why wouldn't you just send them a link to the song on lala.com where they can listen once for free?
I work in health care, so maybe it's different in your industry, but every hospital I've worked for has had a compliance officer with an anonymous 800-number for compliance questions. This is DEFINITELY the kind of stuff they want to know about.
The judge had to suppress the information. Same reason the government suppresses UFO information: the American public just isn't ready for The Truth.
They were PCs. $6/ea seems about right.
--Retail falls after August sales' unexpected decline
--Economists React: An Unexpected Rise in the PPI
--Economists Say UK Inflation to Peak Soon Despite Larger-than-Expected CPI
--US Service Sector Sees Unexpected Rise In August
--Chicago: Unexpected bump for area economy
--New-home sales post unexpected gain in July
--US shares soar as unexpected figures paint better picture
--German investor confidence posts second surprise rise
Economists, it seems, have supplanted weather casters as the only profession where you can be wrong most of the time and still keep your job.
I can already see the November headline: McCain Wins Unexpected Landslide Victory
@scorp1us: In the end, you get a really expensive system thwarted by 5 minutes of planning.
Not exactly. Given a situation where the same crime is committed right in front of an actual, physical Bobby -- guess what? The crime was still committed. Given the Bobby's skill, there's a pretty good chance the perp will be apprehended.
Consider the same crime, committed a block further away, but still within the Bobby's sight. The difficulty apprehending the perp escalates because the Bobby must first close the distance between him/herself and the perp. Still, the Bobby witnessed the crime in progress and is able to initiate pursuit. But there's always the chance the perp ducks around a corner, loses the disguise and manages to thwart apprehension.
Consider the same crime once again, this time no Bobby, no witnesses. Perp gets away free. Law enforcement is left nothing but invetigative tactics to attempt to track down the perp. Since we can assume that the goal of most perps is to commit their crime unobserved by law enforcement, the first step would be to scout out a nice spot, far away from the local Bobby, so I would think that this scenario would be the highest percentage of the three proposed thus far.
Now, consider that a bunch of CCTV cameras are set up all around the area. You have already dramatically increased the area of the city that is now under surveillance. While you may not have a Bobby on every corner, you at least have Bobbies eyes on many more corners than you have physical Bobbies on corners. Perp dons his Nixon mask and hooded sweat shirt and proceeds to snatch a victims pocket book, which just happens to be observed on CCTV (after all, if you're scanning cameras and see someone walking around in a Nixon mask and hooded sweatshirt, wouldn't you keep the camera on him?) Yes, the crime is still committed. No, there are no Bobbies immediately available to initiate pursuit. But law enforcement is aware of the crime the instant it is committed (advantage #1). While the perp makes his escape, the officer monitoring the video can switch instantly between different cameras, expending very little energy in pursuit (advantage #2), all the while all the visual detail is being recorded so testimony is not reliant on witness recollection (advantage #3). Perp must occupy himself now with not only finding a place out of site of a Bobby to lose his mask and sweatshirt, he must also be aware of camera placement (advatange #4).
Does all of that help if noone was monitoring the exact camera while the crime was committed? Maybe not. But is there a much greater probability of witnessing the crime being committed WITH cameras on every corner? Absolutely (and we've all seen the video proof.)
Of course, the true effectiveness (if any) has to be measured by a metric that simply can't be quantified: How many street robberies didn't happen at all because of the CCTVs? Oh sure, you could try to compare numbers of street robberies before CCTVs and after, and infer that CCTVs either contributed to the difference, or made no difference, but of course, one would also have to assume that CCTVs were the ONLY difference. If that were true, then you wouldn't see any difference in crime rates for the same period in areas where CCTVs were never installed -- something I think would be very unlikely.
I, for one, welcome our new Hydrogen cloud overlords!
I see you complaining about comments, so I'll guess you're mostly reading the main SlashDot articles and wasting a lot of your time reading the comments. CmdrTaco was talking about the *firehose* containing the best of all the other websites. Only a small percentage of the stuff that comes through the firehose makes it to SlashDot proper, and unfortunately, since the community consists of folks for all backgrounds, you pretty much have to select the articles that appeal to everyone. If you want the hardcore, esoteric stuff, try the firehose.
Lesson learned: Before writing a review on 21st century gaming technology, be sure to check your slang. You don't want to risk offending someone who may or may not be aware that your phrase could have been offensive to some particularly vague group of people, because there might be a .00001% chance that someone read about someone who was once related to a guy who though he heard his great grandfather call somebody something that made them think that it might have been derogatory. But even then, it might just be some BS that someone conjured in some Ecstasy-induced fit of creative imagination, and by golly you certainly don't want to offend THEM!
Anyone know of a service that will send out a gunman to rob me of my laptop so my insurance company will buy me a new one? Can I sign up for the every-six-months plan?
Sounds to me like NASA has created the "perfect" problem -- something that can explain the need to abandon the ISS and letting it burn up in the atmosphere so it will stop sucking NASA's dwindling funds and let them concentrate on their moon and Mars missions.
Yes, but there's that whole "1 day is as a thousand years" stuff that makes it all work out.
Einstein got it.
Headline seen this morning: 'Lawmakers Cancel Global Warming Hearing as Mammoth Snowstorm Heads East' Glad I just put new tires on my SUV. ;-)
Ummm...Hi! I'm special agent Smith from the Department of Homeland Security. Got a minute?
And how do we know this guy's not a poser, and this video was meant to give terrorists/smugglers/pirates a false sense of security so when they attempt some type of assault, they get their asterisks blown out of the sea?
Tech crime is the new frontier, so take the old frontier approach -- hire a bounty hunter. Post the IP address to a hacker newsgroup and a bounty amount you're willing to pay for the perp's ID and address (upon conviction, of course). Ask your insurance company if they'd be willing to add to the bounty. Heck, they may even be willing to give up the retrieved laptop, for the positive press alone. Go Web 2.0. If someone can sell a million pixels or trade up a paperclip, surely you can generate some kind of cult interest. Ohmaar