The US needs drones at this point. We can't sign it. And if we don't sign it then no one else is going to sign it.

There is no way that this ban is going to get ratified by congress. Zero chance. Nil. Nada.

Let me just lay out a few reasonable uses of such weapons.

1. An active area denial weapon. Rather then laying mines, you deploy some kill bots with very precise area of engagement information. Anything that enters that zone without squawking an IFF signal gets slagged. Lets say you have a mobile command base in contested territory. You deploy 20 or 100 of these things and tell them dig in and defend a territory roughly a mile or five outside your base. Anything gets that close without squawking an IFF and it gets pasted. This could be used in the air as well as the ground. Deploy some autonomous fighters that engage anything that rises above a certain elevation not squawking an IFF. Instant air superiority so long as your drones can out fight whatever the enemy sends up there.

2. You could use them as anti submarine drones. You seed your own waters with them and give them very specific engagement parameters. Have them attach themselves to any non-allied sub and then have them broadcast an ultimatum. Surface and wait for your military to show up and disarm the warhead... or it will detonate destroying the sub. They would work like leeches... passively waiting... and then when all the parameters line up they activate and speed to the enemy hull... magnetically or chemically bond to the hull... maybe even weld themselves to it. Then they can use an on board speaker to broadcast directly into the enemy sub... something along the lines of "surrender or die".

3. Another fun one is smart grenades. You throw a high speed camera robot with perhaps hundreds of tiny barrels sort of like that IronStorm system only smaller. The unit in mid air detects body heat and fires its payload specifically at warm bodies. Advantage? It doesn't shoot at things that aren't warm. Or if the sensors are good enough it can avoid firing on anything that isn't human or possibly if its really good it can avoid firing at allies. Imagine a grenade that can explode a crowded room full of a mix of enemies and allies... and it only kills the enemies. The unit might even be reloadable.

There are a lot of ideas. The worry about the fully autonomous killing robot is a bit overwrought. We don't need fully autonomous killers. What we need are force multipliers. One person overseeing 20 attack drones makes those drones not fully autonomous. They are updating mission parameters, identifying priorities, and they maintain the ability to kill the operation and recall the drones. They're not fully autonomous when that happens and there's no reason for them to ever become fully autonomous unless there are communication issues. I can't think of any issue on earth where we wouldn't be able to maintain contact with the drones on a fairly regular basis. And absent that they don't need to be fully autonomous.

You're only seeing it from one side which is really a fatal problem.

You have to see it from the other side. Why should Pandora pay out more money for small unknown artists that aren't that popular?

Is pandora making a lot of money? Not from what I've seen. Their stock price is WAAAAY down. So where is this money coming from?

You get a similar discussion when you talk to union people unhappy about factory wages not being great. That ignores that the factory owners are competing with China and they just can't afford to pay you that much unless they either do something that the chinese factories can't or they automated heavily so that means most of the workers lose their jobs anyway, or they work the people like dogs. You can be angry at the factory owners all you like... the money doesn't come from nowhere. They have to compete.

Back on the subject of pandora, they are in a market where music piracy is very common. So those are people that are taking the album and not paying anything for it. Then you have Youtube etc where most artists just put their music up on youtube for nothing and anyone can listen to it or download it off youtube. And then there are a million different streaming services so you can't charge more for your music then the other services or you'll lose customers. And then the ad revenue on the internet is actually not that great unless you're fucking google.

So no... you sign the contract and you get paid what you're owed as per that contract. Bitching about the contract you just signed is the act of a child. If you don't like the contract you're being offered, then don't sign it or keep negotiating until you get a contract you like.

Once the contract is signed... Shut up and sing. You signed the contract. Do your job.

END OF STORY. END OF ARGUMENT. END OF ISSUE.

Over. Done. Finished.

Translating the top 10 most common languages between each other is the most useful. Anything beyond that is window dressing.

http://help.pandora.com/custom...

You can see they have a submission form to their system and everything that does independent authorization of every submission. And as you can see they say they say they choose to "buy" content when submitted. That means prices PER artist and PER release are individually negotiable. ... I demand a mia culpa.

Riddle me this... if rates are not negociated on a service by service basis between that service and the publisher then why does Pandora pay a different rate then Spotify?

Answer... they are negociated on a service to service basis between service and publisher.

Which means either your publisher signed the contract with those rates on it, or your agent signed them, or you as the artist signed them... or some combination.

And if you signed them then you agreed. If you did not sign them then you didn't give Pandora authorization to play your music and they would be breaking the law.

What is more, not all songs or artists have the same rates in many venues. Sometimes they do but only because publishers decided to sign general contracts for all their licenses with that service. However, if they chose not to do that then you'd either need to pay a different rate or you'd be forbidden to play it at all.

It all boils down to the contracts.

If you don't like the contract then don't sign. People are getting pissing with iTunes, pissy with Amazon, and pissy with Pandora.... then don't sign. If they provide your content sans a contract then it is copyright infringement.

No nerd rage at all. Business rage. Economic rage. Possibly contract law rage.

But no nerd rage.

I've seen some of his presentations. They're a bit more high brow then anything Bill Nye ever put together.

The people that claim that solar radiation isn't the cause of AGW are not saying that it can't be the cause but that when they did the math that answer didn't make sense.

I am in no position to judge one way or the other. I find statements from both sides frequently to be dubious.

I'd say I am an AGW agnostic. I don't believe for or against it. I know what I don't know and I don't know what is going on. Neither side makes a compelling argument and I find the notion that I should just believe one side or the other without a compelling argument to be laughable.

In any case, the issue is complex.

I thought for example I could simplify the whole thing by looking into the expansion of the earth's atmosphere as a whole. Gases expand when they heat. So my logic was that if we had records of the volume of the earth's atmosphere over time that would give a global change in temperature simply by showing a change in total volume.

That would simplify the thousands of temperature stations into a single variable taking everything into consideration.

In any case, apparently my logic was wrong for some reason. I don't fully understand it. According to the records, the earth's atmosphere has been contracting for years and that is something that is expected by AGW climate models. The models say that the heat will get trapped in the lower atmosphere which will cause the upper atmosphere to cool while the lower atmosphere heats. The upper atmosphere has a great volume due to lower gravity so over all the atmosphere is shrinking despite the warming.

The whole issue is annoying. We need a better way of measuring the system in a way that is so simple and direct that there's no chance for controversy. Possibly if we could measure the volume of the lower atmosphere... I don't know if that is possible. But perhaps that would. If the lower atmosphere isn't expanding then I'm just confused again.

On the topic, I am generally in favor of geo engineering options because I think they're a good compromise between the factions. They're cheap, can be effective on a global scale regardless of whether China cooperates, and they should be more then able to counteract whatever warming we're looking at here.

People keep complaining about stuff like this without realizing that no one is forcing artists to list themselves on Pandora at all.

You don't have to put your music on their service. At all.

If you did put your music on their service then you agreed to whatever their rate was at that time.

END OF STORY SHUT THE FUCK UP.

If you don't like the rate now, then tell that to pandora and if they don't give you more money then either suck it up or leave.

Again... End of fucking story.

Let me put the prices in some perspective. I can go to Youtube, search any song by just about anyone, and find that song often listed by the publisher of that artist... and I can listen to that song over and over again for free.

So... Where is the money coming from that pays these artists? The ad revenue from non paying users? On a per ad basis you're talking about a tiny amount of money. And then you have to keep in mind that a user could listen to several songs between each ad. Which means that ad revenue has to be split between all those artists and that is only after Pandora has gotten enough to meet their bottom line. All things considered, the price is not unreasonable.

Does it suck that artists aren't making the record company money they used to make? Perhaps... but that's over and done with. The day of the rock god is over. Accept it.

If you want to be a professional musician these days then you have to crowd fund yourself. Set up a website, distribute exclusive content through it, do fan requests, interact with your users, and try to sustain yourself with a subscription model if you can. That... or try to sustain yourself with live performances. The record deals are gone. You're not going to buy yourself islands with your guitar unless you're very lucky.

The amount of light that you'd have to reflect to counter even the most extreme climate change models is so minor that it is unlikely to be noticeable with the human eye in anything but the most extreme circumstances. Picking it out of a sunset for example might be possible but otherwise... no. Maybe if you had some scientific equipment... but with the naked human eye with the sun high above? Unlikely.

You're painting a one sided story here. Don't forget the IPCC was caught citing a climbing magazine for evidence that the Himalayas were melting. And yet you expect people to take them seriously.

What is more, this sort of discussion is not productive if what you want is a scientific discussion. Your position here and this argument is inherently political. And that means you are pulling the discussion in a political direction. If you do that... the science doesn't matter.

Let me repeat this.

If you make a political argument - THE SCIENCE DOES NOT MATTER.

It just becomes politics.

If you want to have a scientific discussion, then have a scientific discussion. Science doesn't have anything to do with who is making the argument. A hobo on the street could say something more scientifically valid then anyone you could name. The arguments stand and fall on their own merits. You say this guy pushes garbage science that gets torn apart by his peers? Okay... but that is a political argument. The scientific argument is to simply continue to tear apart his arguments SCIENTIFICALLY.

The means ARE the ends. Everything is the consequence of the process.

If you win this argument via political means then science will not have won... politics will have won. And if politics win scientific discussions then you will be setting a precedent that that in anything controversial science should be entirely ignored and both sides should just cut right to the political arguments.

I really don't understand why so many people don't grasp what they're doing when they reflexively resort to political arguments.

Stop. Back out. See the big picture here. It is precisely this reflexive political strategy that has caused the AGW issue to become such a shit show. I know you don't want to hear this and you're just going to say "but its all the other political faction's fault"... It isn't. You're every bit as much to blame as they are here. You're making political arguments... not just you but a lot of people that support AGW... and those political arguments undermine the science by making the issue political.

Here you might say "but I had to make it political because X"... then the science is irrelevant and never can be relevant. Game over for science in this issue.

Or you can back off... and just patiently be scientific about it. That will require common courtesy, open debate, the due process of investigating evidence and evaluating arguments. And most importantly an open mind.

If you can't do that... then Al Gore was almost right when he said the science settled. Rather, the science will just be irrelevant because the politics will be the only thing that matters anymore.

It will just be which ever side gets more votes. That isn't science.

Bill Nye is in no position to brow beat CS grads or even farmers. His degree is in what again? Exactly. He might be agreeing with people that have certain degrees but he doesn't have those degrees himself.

Why Bill Nye is considered relevant in this is baffling. The guy was a children's science entertainer. That's his sole distinction at anything. He dressed in silly outfits and then acted absurdly excited when he poured vinegar into baking soda.

My issue is not with whatever he's saying about AGW... the issue is that he's considered a relevant opinion on the matter. His opinion is no more noteworthy then mine... unless we're considering being on TV as a reason to listen to someone. In which case, why don't we ask Justin Bieber about the middle east peace process. Or we could ask Snoop Dog about quantitative easing from the Fed.

Enough. I don't care what Bill Nye said about anything and I don't care what the phoney scientist celebrities have to say about thing. They're neither interesting nor constructive. Enough. If the journalists are so fucking lazy that they can't contact someone that is an actual scientist on these issues then kindly out of business.

Would that be me that is hating or would that be Bill that is hating? Both of us? Your comment was vague.

Then talk about the evidence. When you make it political then the discussion becomes political. And when that happens your evidence becomes worthless unless it is politically useful.

This is something I think a lot of people have a very hard time with...

The means are the ends. Think about that.

The outcomes are the consequences of the actions taken to achieve them.

The house is built brick by brick out of the specific bricks you're laying.

Point? If you're house is built out of political bricks... if the arguments are made by politicians and pushed by lawyers and the consequences of laws and PR campaigns... then you built a house out of politics, lawyers, and PR.

Is that what you want to do or do you want to build this house out of science?

Because if you want to do that... then you're going to have to make your bricks out of science and not politics. Which means all the political bullshit gets put back into the fucking box it came out of and we can just talk about the science.

Refuse to do this... and its just politics. Nothing different from a million other political issues and science just doesn't even begin to fucking matter.

Choose.

Science or politics.

No one is going to charge you with a crime unless they know that you did it and that means you decide when it becomes relevant.

I record every call. Every single one. Then once a month I delete them all. Easy peasy. The only people I've told that I recorded were the people at Time Warner Cable, the people at AT&T Business class Fiber, and the people at Comcast. Each of these groups said one thing and then tried to do another. So... I told them that I recorded them previously and without exception every single one of them modified their behavior without even having to hear the recording. They told me I had to give them money or they weren't going to install something or that my monthly service didn't include something... and in every case they just gave me what I wanted.

And if they didn't give me what I wanted, I was going to replay the recording for them or someone else at their company to give them a last chance to give me what had been agreed. And if they didn't do that, I was going to post it on the internet hopefully creating a PR nightmare for them that would exceed the cost of just doing the right thing.

That's how I operate. And that's how everyone should operate. I don't see how I or anyone else is exposing themselves to legal liability or criminal prosecution. What are they going to say? You didn't ask our customer service rep that informed you that YOU were being recorded that you were also recording them? That should go down really well when it hits the newspapers and possibly gets a US congressman on a select committee asking them questions.

The corporations are going to avoid those risks. If they agreed to something it is usually in the records. They lie about stuff because their managers have told them that lying is a form of negotiation. If you have the calls recorded then they that closes off that avenue of negotiation which means they should just give you whatever they agreed to give you.