Follow Slashdot stories on Twitter

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×

Comment Source (Score 1) 278

Besides, it has been shown to be wrong.

You seen to think that by just saying that you will make it true.

As for linking to the IPCC... well that was more than useless.

Since you said you were quoting numbers from the IPCC, I would suggest that linking to the IPCC reports would be relevant. Since you now say it is "more than useless" to link to the source that you claimed to have based your post on, I'd say that your post is "more than useless."

I haven't seen anything to make me think you have actually read any of the IPCC reports-- I suspect your poorly-remembered data is something you poorly-remembered from some political blog somewhere. Have you actually read anything from the IPCC, the work you claim to be quoting?

Comment Re:i'm going with 98% of the scientific community (Score 2) 278

The numbers above are from the IPCC (albeit from memory, correct some of they are wrong).

Correct in the last part: some of them are wrong.

The actual IPCC documents are here: http://www.ipcc.ch/publication...

An interesting graphic comparing various sources of climate change is here: http://www.bloomberg.com/graph...

Comment Re:Chicken Little (Score 5, Insightful) 278

It's hard to trust anyone who's work is disseminated by the government or media today.

That's an assertion that's hard to challenge in the libertarian atmosphere of slashdot.

Research and reports are spun mercilessly for the gain of whoever needs it.

Indeed, it's always wise to track down the actual original data, and actually look at the data and see what we know, and how well we know it, rather than to trust the media interpretations.

It may not be scientist's fault but when you hear something like "the sky is falling" and then hear it refuted over and over, one starts to take things with a grain of salt.

The media does like to run doom and destruction stories-- they are more of a story than talking about things like "slow increase in temperature over a time scale of decades."

Take, for example, Global Cooling back in the 1970's.

OK, let's take it for an example. There was never a scientific consensus about global cooling in the 1970s. The American Meteorological Society did a review, trying to look for the origin of that. http://journals.ametsoc.org/do... They summarize: "There was no scientific consensus in the 1970s that the Earth was headed into an imminent ice age. Indeed, the possibility of anthropogenic warming dominated the peer-reviewed literature even then.

That was refuted with Global Warming in the 2000's

It was not really "refuted" per se, since it was never a scientific consensus in the first place.

and now it's simply Global Climate Change which seems to be a catch-all.

"Global Climate Change" was the term coined by the (first) Bush administration.

I don't deny GCC but I certainly want to see the data.

Excellent! That's the difference between deniers and skeptics: deniers will make any possible excuse to avoid looking at data. As it turns out, there are literally terabytes of data.

I will suggest starting with the Working Group 1 report, The Physical Science Basis of Climate Change, which summarizes what is known and how we know it. I'm most familiar with the 4th report (www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/contents.html), from 2007, but you might want to go directly to the more recent update, the 5th: http://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/...

From there, dive into the data from whichever source you prefer-- I'd suggest possibly the Berkeley Earth data, which does an interesting job of comparing alternative hypotheses against the temperature data: http://berkeleyearth.org/summa...

What's the old adage that Regan grabbed from the Russian's; "Trust but Verify" I think was it.

Excellent. Much better than the denier's motto: "Never trust, never verify, never look at the facts."

Comment Re:Goodbye free speech (Score 1) 210

How can you tell? Just because the plaintiff says so? Some of those reviews look legit and yes a few look fake. I notice he doesn't complain about the obviously fake good reviews (how does a company in Cali get a positive review from a teen in New Jersey.)

If the images are anything to go by, then one of them is a Hasidic Jew from Israel, another is an actress in Chicago, and another is some guy in New York.

Unless they aren't, in which case their picture icons are being used in violation of Copyright, unless they have written permission from the image owners...

Comment It's the non-engineers. (Score 5, Insightful) 125

The stories about jobs and careers are getting so tiresome. I realize Dice bought Slashdot to datamine the comments (free focus group!), but it seems like half the stories are a variation on the same these days.

It's the non-engineers.

They have this misconception that people used to dealing with the intricate semantics of programming languages are going to be unaware of the intricate semantics of English. Therefore, if they ask a question once, and do not get an answer they like, they will repeatedly ask the same question in different guises, hoping to obtain the answer they wanted to hear.

This really comes down to who is more patient than whom.

I usually attempt to buffer my answers in order to soften the blow, but you can ask the same question as many ways as you want, and the answer will likely not change, so long as it is fundamentally the same question. And I usually have the patience of Job. However, there was one incident where I was up against a deadline, and was being asked to "just cobble together something that works, and we'll (read: you'll) fix it (read: in a binary compatible way) later. Which was an impossibility (I was working on some very complex database code written in C++ which did subschema definitional enforcement on an upper level database schema, and the semantics had to be correct for the data stored in the binary backing store to be usable going forward, when we did the next update). The code had to be *right*, as opposed to *right now*, and the time difference was important.

We had a UI person who was in a management position, and they brought her over to argue their case that immediate was better than correct (correct would fit under the deadline, but only if everyone left me alone to finish the code). The UI person was constantly revising the UI in each release, and each release was practically a full rewrite. And she did not understand why I could not write my code the same way she wrote hers. Finally having had enough, I explained "It's OK if your code is crap; you are going to rewrite it in the next release anyway. My code has to work now, and it has to continue to work going forward, and therefore it needs to be correct. I understand that you are feeling the approaching deadline. So am I. However, while your code can be crap, mine can't be because I have to maintain it going forward. Now if you will get the hell out of my office, I will be able to finish the code by the deadline."

Needless to say, there were some ruffled feathers. The director of engineering sided with me. I completed the (correct, rather than expedient) code by the deadline, and the product didn't turn into unmaintainable crap vis-a-vis the update process going forward.

What's the moral to this story?

Well, with specific regard to DICE:

(1) Repeatedly asking the same question in different ways is not going to get them a different answer, if the first answer was correct. Any other answer than that answer would be incorrect, for the question asked.

With specific regard to the current topic:

(2) Engineers who actually reliably, repeatedly, and consistently deliver what they are asked to deliver, within the timeframe that was agreed upon, can, and often do, wield more authority than the managers nominally set above them in the food chain, so it's not like going into management is going to give you any more real authority than you already have by way of your relationship with the team, and their trust of your judgement.

A management path can be a good idea if:

(A) You want more perks (stock options, etc.), although in a good company, if you are a great engineer, you will get those anyway

(B) You are tired of doing engineering for a living (which probably means you didn't qualify as "great engineer" under option 'A' anyway)

(C) You feel you would be more useful and/or happier in such a position (but if your happiness is based on power, don't expect it will necessarily follow)

(D) You are an OK (but not great) engineer at a company which engages in age discrimination, and you are happy to continue working for such a company going forward, and it's your only way to do so (at which point, I pretty much need to question your personal ethics)

Other than that... DICE: Asked and Answered. Please go on to the next survey question.

Comment Re:It has this. (Score 1) 191

Do you defend every company which charges premium prices for a product where they limit your ability to do something every computer has been able to do for the last 50 years

Of course.

I will happily defend IKEA for selling me a chair that is limited from being able to do *anything* "every computer has been able to do for the last 50 years".

Except, you know, being sat on. If I can't sit on the chair, I'd be pretty unhappy. On the other hand, not every computer in the last 50 years has been large enough or flat enough to sit on. You gotta draw that line somewhere!

Comment A near miss is defined as 500 feet (Score 1) 268

A near miss is defined as 500 feet:

http://flighttraining.aopa.org...

According to the American Helicopter Services & Aerial Firefighting Association, airtankers fly between 150 and 200 feet:

http://www.ahsafa.org/?page_id...

The article reports a drone altitude of 800-900 feet. Let's take the most pessimal separation from these numbers: 800 - 200 = 600. That gives them a buffer of 100 feet in which this was *NOT* even classifiable as a near miss; there was no danger of a drone to aircraft collision, unless you are claiming that the drone pilot intended to fly the drone into the DC-10 airtanker.

You will find elsewhere on the AHSAFA site that the aircraft do not "dive-bomb" the fires; a fully loaded airtanker had a heck of a lot of inertia, and it's not really an option; they are long, low runs. I refer you to the site however, because I doubt you'd trust my (anecdotal) personal experience with U.S. Forest Service airtankers.

Comment Re:It has this. (Score 2) 191

How about we turn this around: Other than pirating commercial software or installing spyware, what do you lose by an inability to side-load without a jailbreak?

Really? That is a question? Is that how far we've fallen down the dumb consumer hole?
How about being able to create and share programs on phones without the blessing of some magical corporate entity, or without someone having to fork over money for a developers license?

Perfectly doable, if you have source code to what's being shared, or if what's being shared is being distributed as linkable object files. Have you really not looked into current iPhone software development tools? It doesn't require paying the $99 fee to install whatever crap you want on your own device. The fee is for the ability to list on the App Store.

Comment Re:It has this. (Score 1) 191

As opposed to downloading a remote access program from the store?

These programs have to be explicitly launched by the user themselves after each boot. In other words, they are about as dangerous as a tethered jailbreak, shich is to say: Not very.

This is about as FUD as it gets. The ability to side load is not a physical security exposure. If you have a lock screen then access is blocked in any case. If you don't have a lock screen, then the mythical walled garden won't protect you. Blocking side load only makes sense when it comes to protection from user error, and even then on Android you can side load single apps without enabling universal installation of apks so the only thing you're left with is user stupidity.

How about we turn this around: Other than pirating commercial software or installing spyware, what do you lose by an inability to side-load without a jailbreak?

Slashdot Top Deals

"Protozoa are small, and bacteria are small, but viruses are smaller than the both put together."

Working...