I thought that one of the things that made something a "science" was that it could be falsifiable. However, when so-called researchers refuse to try to find alternative explanations for a prevailing theory, it seems to me that they are more intent on building a cathedral than on discovering the truth. If the researchers are self-funded, then what they do is their business, but if they are dependent on the public purse, then they cannot thumb their noses at their paymasters and still expected to be paid.

I might be over-pessimistic, but I predict that the IT will fail disastrously.

I read somewhere that there are 3 million lines of code holding this together. If that's true, then it will take months for the new guys just to understand it. Then, bug-fixing is going to introduce more bugs. Ultimately, everything will be scrapped in order to start over. (Of course by then a private company would have gone out of business, but we are talking about the limitless resources of the federal government.)

Purportedly, one of the reason that legacy systems persist is that it is literally impossible to replace them. Some googling will show a number of expensive failed government IT projects. This one may be one of the most visible, however.

The great thing about this explanation, if it is accepted, is that henceforth the data will no longer matter! Any and all deviations from whatever new climate models are made will be waved away by saying that the warm stuff went down into the layers somewhere. Nevermind that no one has explained why the temperature rise before 2000 did not go there also. Science is wonderful when you don't have to prove anything.

Nice rant. We have all heard of cases where someone was caught "making stuff up" to support some research paper, but in the cases I know of it was only one person acting alone. I wonder if there are proven cases of groups of scientists who knowingly manipulate, or outright invent, data to suit their purposes. While some might be saying that the AGW crowd are doing this, it seems to me that at worst they can only be accused of misapplying statistics, or making unwarranted extrapolations, rather than outright, intentional, fraud.

Can we agree in future not to post news items having to do with climate "science" unless we are at the same time including links to debunkers of said news?

It's obvious to everyone that the wheels have come off this particular scam. Obvious to everyone, that is, except to those whose livelihood depends on them continuing to find new ways of makinjg hockey sticks.

If documentation were free, then implementing all the suggestions would not be an issue. In the real world, however, time and resources are always constrained, so documentation is a balancing act between utility and achievability. Moreover, for a company whose revenue depends on service contracts, it might not be in the company's best interests to eliminate client confusion with better documentation. I vaguely recall some story about Bill Gates who objected to having (I think) docx structured in a way that would allow a person to modify it by hand because it would loosen Word's grip. In other words, complexity and opacity can align with corporate interests.

There is another problem with spending a lot of resources to produce great documentation, however, and that is that as the software being documented evolves, the original documentation becomes less and less valuable. Although the original documentation might win awards for clarity and usefulness, it might be close to useless in only a few years, and nothing but another herculean effort will suffice to update it. This might be worthwhile where millions of customers are involved, but for a user base of only thousands or tens of thousands, great documentation that is also current can eat up profits.

I agree that anonymity, including anonymity when meeting with journalists, is by far the most prudent course of action. What Manning and Snowden have both done by revealing themselves is shift the news away from the excesses of the American government and on to the leakers.

For my part, I think that both of them did a great service to Americans, and innocent citizens of other countries who had been unaware of the extent of government overreach. Their motives, as far as I am concerned, are irrelevant.

This is another example of how the criminalization of vice does more harm than the vice itself. When prostitutes can conduct their business in safe environments, with the same legal protections that apply to any business, this kind of atrocity cannot occur.

Reading between the lines, my guess is that many students thought an online course "inferior" to regular classes, and therefore okay to slack off when doing. Time, however, or time management, may be more the enemy than actual course matter.

I know a high school student who takes online school courses, and one of the ongoing problems for the parents is getting the student to understand that there are X modules to do and only Y days to do them in. Dividing X by Y means that every two or three days something must be completed and sent in for marking. If this requirement is difficult for a high school student to follow without parental hectoring, then it is entirely understandable that kids only a couple years older, who no longer have their parents to help keep them on track, are going to run into problems.

That's as may be, but it seems to me that the border, on both sides, is a kind of "no man's land", where the usual civil liberties don't apply. When US border agents have the authority to arbitrarily deny you admission to the US for years, it seems to me that refusing a "request" can be a high-risk game for the uninformed.

Canada is a fine place, but Americans should be warned that it lacks many wonderful products of "Murican" excess (like bacon-flavoured bacon bits, wrapped in bacon -- if that's a thing). And although most Canadians are proud of Canada and happy to be Canadian, flags do not wave on every building and in every front yard.

As I recall, steganography might not make you uninteresting to the authorities, because although the bits that get loaded with data might not be understood, there is a detectible difference between a picture, for example, that has hidden data and one that does not. If there is a reasonable suspicion that you're hiding something, presumably you can be compelled to give up the means of revealing it. That said, information can come in many guises. For example, in a MMORPG there might be significance in a character's location or equipment at any given time.

The other notable advantage of trade jobs is that it is not so easy to offshore them. Replacing a hot water tank and adding a new electrical circuit still requires a guy in a truck who does house calls.

This is exactly the problem that sceptics have with proponents.

Ever since climate raw data was denied to people who had the effrontery to look for mistakes, the AGW movement has taken on the classic characteristics of a cult . Advocates who would deny critical response by saying "you can't say whatever you want" simply reveal one more facet.