How do you measure success in predictions? I would think if you are within the projected range then that is a success; while they did go outside of the projected range YEARS LATER it is after all a detailed simulation of a problem so complex you can never project that far in the future. So I would say their success was limited up to that point in time when the bounds were breached; guess I'm remembering something else... I was sure it was the high bound not the lower one... So next time, the projection will be for a shorter span of time (or they will just include a range so great that it is kind of useless after a few years.) They can make a projection that is almost impossible to be in error by extending the max/min projections and so then it can't be said to be a wrong prediction. Even then, they still had confidence levels so even in error one could say they were not incorrect. It's not like we can reboot the planet and see how many times out of 100 it falls outside the confidence level more than 5 times. You can do the odds for the lottery and say with high confidence nobody will win it (not absolutely but such a low number that it's nearer 0% than 1%)... but eventually somebody gets the numbers... and it's outside of your high confidence level.

As they get better at simulations they might greatly improve but this is still a vastly more complicated system they are trying to model where even 100% knowledge can't solve for all the chaotic variables being simulated - all one can do at that point is know at what point the information is useless because the projected range (due to chaos) is too vast. One one side you have simulated models-- which are extremely limited and on the other side you have broad understanding that describes long term macro level behaviors that are kind of outside the realm of simulation.

Fluid Dynamics may be something god doesn't understand (that's a reference to a physics joke,) but the macro level trends can be understood far better. Newtonian physics is macro level and works great but at the micro level it does not work anymore (lets not ruin the point by getting into other perspectives where it breaks as well.)

seismologists: good point. predictive geology. The one I knew only ever seemed to crush various kinds of rocks. But there you still have two sides-- the one trying to do immediate predictions by constructing models and the other one looking at the plate tectonics and how over 1000s of years how much grinding is going to occur, how fast it moves, etc. the long term one is probably going to be easier but less useful.

READ: psychics. not physicists. big difference.

No their predictive powers are not poor; they are better than psychics, TV pundits, most political advisers, many investors...

This is not weather forecasting, it's a long term science akin to geology. You can use geology to predict projections into the future too. It'll do about as well in the end but watching year by year to see how the century comes out is like complaining a rocket is off trajectory by meters... what matters is if it ends up within meters of the target and you are not going to know until it gets there.

In this case, we are adjusting the whole model as the projection plays out which makes it impossible - even if you are 100% correct, the answer changes as you alter the problem. CA is going into the ocean, slowly - not a hard projection to make and we can't conceive of altering that course anytime soon-- but it may happen and it doesn't make that projection wrong. This is more like some sci-fi time travel story line where small probabilities can impact the outcome greatly.

No the worst case projections were NOT reported, the average projected trend-line was. They figured we were too stupid to read a proper projection graph. The extreme disasters possible were reported... with each one trying to out shock the other, I'm surprised the Planetary Science people were not pulled into it with all the known extremes that happen on other planets... wrap those around implied connections to Earth by the "reporter" and they could have warped it even more. I remember the 80s stuff about how we only use 1% of the brain; which is still true, but they reported it inaccurately as if that was ALL the time when the science had different levels for different activities - setting up a strawman was setup against brain science.

I have a brooding lamp. Those bulbs are not banned; they are not even lights - they are heaters that give off some light... and that is their purpose; sadly light bulbs have actually been heaters sold as lights for a century. Poor selfish cheapskate, you'll have to buy special bulbs over the old incandescent ones... I just used the special bulbs in the 1st place since they are better and don't cost that much more.

Heating wire is not expensive and it lasts longer than a light bulb (plus it works better) so there may be a larger market of such devices for cheapskates who were previously using light bulbs. If you feel like MacGyver for your "creative" uses for incandescent bulbs; wake up, it was just a TV show and you are not being that clever.

Congrats at using cheap heaters as heaters but your tiny inconvenience is harming the planet and costing your ignorant neighbors a lot more money than you are saving; not to mention the reduction in construction of power stations and all the negative impacts of those.

Nice optimistic idea, but long term it won't work like you think. The entrenched powers are too powerful and the system is way too corrupt; including the incompetent citizenry.

BTW, bogus meaningless lawsuits can shutdown small players and even if you can fight them without going broke, their law firms against your cheap lawyer can make you lose even the obvious cases. I've seen it happen in my area where "cable" in the contract agreement was defined as TV only because it was signed in the 80s so internet and phone were exempted from the franchise agreement - when clearly the city agreement was over the use of public land (what all services use) to run their cables - and not about the signal on those wires. The lousy lawyer couldn't get the stupid or corrupt judge to decide a clear cut case.

Also, since when do such tit for tat agreements hold with mega corporations in the 1st place? After some years they always weasel out of their part of the grand bargain.

The Carriers are a monopoly power, they compete as little as possible because they know they are the only choice. Being all in the stock market, they have like minded institutional share holders who probably invest in the group of them - which makes them even more unlikely to truly complete; while the short term investors do push them to compete the net result is they will do nothing to lower prices but will compete with approximately the same levels of infrastructure investment (as little as possible.)

Price fixing is the NORM for telecom, so it is kind of sick that Apple is caught doing it against them - doesn't matter if it was right or wrong, it's still price fixing. The laws can be circumvented, Apple may learn how or people will be hacking around with imported devices.

I suggest you go look at politicalcompass.org.

Fascism is already widespread in the USA. I suggest you look it up (hint: it came from Italy.)

This is not Fascism. It is socialism.... although just about everything is justified with socialist arguments, including many Fascist positions... which not should come as a surprise given that socialism is a generic reasoning and Fascism is a specific societal structuring combining government with conventional business (and therefore inherently authoritarian.)

The authoritarian characteristics must be the root of your false comparison. It is somewhat authoritarian to have a top down ban. It's not criminalizing your use, it's just a commerce regulation aimed at a specific kind of light bulb (incandescents are not banned, just the really pathetic ones.) It is a middle ground policy. Doing nothing (letting people educate and actuate themselves) would be anarchy. Educating the public would be 1 step from anarchy, propaganda another step but the middle ground is clearly in some regulation and these are rather mild as those go. If it were Fascist, we'd have government harming LED and CFLs until they are more profitable because the century old light bulb conspiracy would not want to be undermined by technology advances... The Edison patents were used before to stop the manufacture of light bulbs that lasted decades (one of which has become famious for lasting century long, but it was designed to do so; before the industry collusion.) To them, it never will be about power savings - it's about planned obsolescence and the rest is merely the servant to marketing.

The hype is merely another fund raising vote-getting move to sucker more votes over a non issue.

Special bulbs were always exempt. Better incandescent are not banned, only the embarrassingly primitive ones that arguably are not light bulbs since you're lucky to get 10% light from them--- the rest is heat. It's frankly misleading to label them anything other than a heater or a resistor.

Firewire was not perfect; however, there were 3 reasons it didn't get bigger:

1) Intel was against it.

2) USB 1 was cheap and totally not designed to fill the gap Firewire was designed to fill. Firewire support costs extra $ and you still needed USB... complex controllers and buffering wasn't in USB 1; then USB 2 (a hack) took away the price advantage by adding complexity (by then the cost difference was gone... the difference was never great to begin with.)

3) consumers are the mass market. they are happy with "good enough" which is a really really low bar. Many didn't seem to know the difference between USB 1 and Firewire; plus they didn't care much. Most "experienced" users couldn't notice the speed gap between USB 2 and Firewire but it was significant in the real world. Some USB 2 devices sucked... and people didn't notice it was running near USB 1 speeds.

The reality is that the changes firewire made were adopted by all the other upgraded standards. What is sad is the project sat at Apple for years when it could have come out much earlier and trounced SCSI... which is what it initially was aiming at.

Final Cut Pro X changed the game significantly which upset all the entrenched pros. The changes take relearning and people do not like that unless they were really upset with their previous workflow (like everybody was before FCP, even Avid which was great but it cost way too much!) People liked their FCP 7 workflow.

The main reason pros were upset with Final Cut Pro is they removed all the hardware and high end features from the software. Your expensive camera gear was rendered useless because FCPX was file based and didn't care about film or magnetic tapes which all the pros had much more money invested in. The Mac and FCP is cheap compared to all the other gear.

Pros who make $$ think little of blowing $10k on a new workstation. Apple ALWAYS has high end configurations for people who just want the maxed out system and money is not an issue...

As for the base models, Apple has always had static pricing and rarely lowers price points during the life of the model. When they introduce something it usually has a fair market price with the PC world, on rare occasions it is better. I've spec'd out PCs with the same stuff and they can come out to be more-- usually because Apple has some unusual option that costs a bundle to replicate. I can't buy workstation cards like those for the prices apple is getting them at. I have a workstation card NOW and even though it is 6 years old it beats the stock GPUs that come with many new consumer machines.

When I was in the tv industry, we would retask or just resell the mac -- macs have crazy resale value! You don't need to upgrade anything, just buy new and ebay the old model-- it'll cost you less, if you value your time-- I've had times where it only cost $250 to upgrade to the newer mac. Also, the benefits of going from a $1500 GPU to the next $1500 every year are not usually worth it... (but selling the old card it likely going to cost you as much as if you just did the whole mac at the same time.)

Future US TV Journalists will not have to risk error or waste their time stereotyping the people in their reports! They can spend their important time investigating celebrities!

Police cameras can profile people without bias so they know who to abuse and who not to abuse! No more frivolous lawsuits over police prejudice!

Never underestimate the power of lawyers, politicians, and their propagandists. Nothing can withstand their power, even reality.

The French didn't drink cool aid.

I making computers "hip" was lame when they did it for white kids. What got me hooked was video games and the idea I could make them --- that is all one needs... It won't help girls much because they've not been so keen on gaming.

READING. I hated to read but to do anything serious on a computer you have to READ. Now I read all the time. "Minority" reading levels are at lower levels than they should be. If you dislike reading, forget about computers.

Math is not actually needed; programming only takes a certain kind of math thinking and a minimal level of math background. Math is generally taught so kids hate it so even saying MATH is not going to help. Perhaps, one could combine math and computers in a compelling way that has not been done before NOT involving those horrid TI calculators. Not likely... it'll probably cause more kids to hate computers.

Ditch the TV get the kid a computer instead. Even the poor own a TV or two now days. Investing in a computer is a lower priority than a 2nd TV. Don't know about now, but when I was a kid, most kids didn't get much time to the family computer, IF they had a computer at all. Girls were generally discouraged from even using the computer and I see that in my relatives' girls today... it's just facebook, email, and the encyclopedia / cliff notes that writes their mindless homework. For the boys it's OK but the girls were subtly discouraged and the older are more strongly discouraged (because computer == facebook in their parent's mind.)

1) CA has a larger economy than most other nations on earth.
2) CA pays more to the federal government than it gets back. (something people who bitch a lot never bother to look up.)
3) CA pays more to the federal government than any other state.

I think they should split up or change how senators are allocated because it's totally moronic that small nothing states are on a fully equal footing with much larger states. Senators have too much power too... which made far more sense when they were picked by state government and not by popular vote, as the founders intended (they also didn't intend House seats to be capped.)