Meh. Technical literacy does not correlate with technical understanding. Lots of people know how to push buttons. Few understand what happens when the buttons are pushed or why they are pushing them in the first place.

Likewise, people who might otherwise seem smart on one subject aren't guaranteed to know squat about the other. Similarly, the issue of specialists versus generalists often has an effect on people's ability to understand things outside their narrow field of expertise.

So, it's not really all that surprising, especially given that the majority of the /. readerbase aren't even technical experts in the first place. Maybe that was true a decade ago, but it has long since changed.

THIS is why I give my business to companies like NewEgg, and have and will NEVER buy a single damn thing from ones like Amazon.

Amazon settled because it is also a patent troll. Blood runs thicker than water, especially between patent trolls.

When the native Alaudans were asked "what does the name of your planet mean in your tongue?"

"Dirt", they replied.

There could be a million "maybes" which describe a highly-intelligent being's wants and desires, but this one is far more definite.

I don't know if it follows that highly intelligent beings are automatically driven by curiosity, but if not, I would call into serious question how they become highly intelligent in the first place.

Yeah, I wasn't so much defining a membership group as delineating the ones who do from the ones who talk.

Anyone who thinks that this represents or is backed by the core activists who are part of the collective is, well.. a fool parted with their money.

It would paint a massive bulls-eye target on anyone associated with it, pretty much saying "here I am, come get me!".

....the peasants crieth about a shortage of bread.

Quoth Her Royal Majesty "Let them eat cake!".

..was yesterday.

Just like Microsoft.. a day late and an API short. :P

Apparently, thinking and writing aren't your strong points. Try reading your own words a few times; maybe their ambiguity will sink in. Probably not, though.

Except that I didn't propose ANY particular scheme, hare-brained or otherwise. That wasn't the point of the argument. So go prop up your strawman and sodomize it somewhere else.

You are correct that reason and critical thinking are taking over and dominating the discussion now, and they should be. Go figure. Too bad you failed to participate in any meaningful capacity, but thanks for outing yourself as someone who isn't interested in such in the first place; it is most appreciated. :)

A lot more than a few people disagree with that, including a significant number of people who have the authority and responsibility to actually DO something about it.

No, we KNOW what it means; we have known for decades what it means to have global temperatures get "a bit warmer". Just like we have known for decades what it means to have global temperatures get "a bit colder". The only serious debate left is what we need to do about it. Not when, because the when is NOW, but what.

Yes. The science is VERY solid on this point.

Yes, of course. There are many things we can do about it, but realize that even if we did everything we could, right now, the warming trend will continue for some time due to the enormous inertia of the climate system. What we would be doing right now is reducing the future peak and extent of the warming that will occur for the next few hundred to few thousand years.

Simply put -- we need to STOP putting more excess CO2 in the atmosphere (I use the term "excess" as a pre-emptive anti-stupid-response for those who would counter with trollish strawmen like "ok, let's all stop breathing, then!"). It isn't going to happen in one day, but we need to make a sincere and concerted effort to make it happen as quickly as possible. We need to start looking towards CO2 sequestration technologies to remove the excess CO2 that we've already put into the atmosphere. We need to make plans for the changes that are going to happen anyway from all the past emissions excesses. Is it a big challenge? Yes, enormous; as enormous as the problem itself. Can we do it? I think we are capable; we have mobilized ourselves as a nation for other important tasks in our history.

Should we wash our hands after handling fecal matter and before handling our food? Should we purify drinking water? Should we rotate crops? That's the kind of common-sense question that really doesn't need to be asked, does it?

Indeed. What are the costs of NOT doing something about it, and now? Are they far greater than the costs of doing something about it? Well, see, there are some really smart people who have been working on this particular question -- insurance actuaries -- and we already know their answer. People who are experts in risk management are well aware that the costs of doing nothing on climate change are catastrophic, far more so than most practical abatement and mitigation plans combined, and they are already adjusting insurance plans and premiums to take it into account. I think we should take a cue from them as to what the costs are very likely to be and make decisions to do something NOW.

"Little bit of scientific fact" You're kidding, right? There are LIBRARIES full of scientific research on this subject. If that is to be considered "a little bit", perhaps we should start questioning the confusion related to the "little bit of scientific fact" we have with things like gravity, biology, chemistry, evolution, etc.

One of the main principles of science involves extrapolation and prediction. That's what the scientific method is all about. How do you think we got to the moon? We didn't have previous attempts by ancient civilizations to guide us, we extrapolated and predicted. We did so smartly and very carefully, but that's what we did.

When the weatherman predicts a big, dangerous storm heading your way, do you think it is a good policy to ignore it and do nothing to prepare for it until it is blowing your house down?

Do you really consider that *dishonest*? Really?

https://twitter.com/rustyk5/status/286875858080256001

Gotta love revisionist historians...

The cost of long distance pre-1980s was due to the existence/enforcement of a monopoly, not due to regulation, but due to the incorrect assignment of the telephone network as a NATURAL monopoly, which it never was.

In 1982-4, the monopoly was broken over the collective knee of the People, and natural competitive market forces kicked in, just as they should have been allowed for the previous 70-odd years. Regulation wasn't done away with until the 1996 Telecommunications Act which, by that time, had seen the price decreases you allude to. SINCE 1996, very little has changed, except that the broken-up Baby Bells have now been re-merged into a few massive monopolistic players which are ripping off customers and taxpayers all over again.

Dude, I don't know what planet you live on, but I have 3Mbps ADSL, which is the fastest I can get in this area without running my own damn lines (WHICH, btw, I am prevented from doing by local ordinances which, you guessed it, protect the fuckin' monopolies again). In 2000, I had 2Mbps cable. So, I've gotten a whopping 50% increase in speed in the last TWELVE years. Before that, I had 1.5Mbps ADSL for a few years. It's been over TWENTY YEARS since I had to depend on 14.4k dialup. "A few years" my arse.

The existing "competitive system" isn't about competition at all. It is about monopolism, fraud, and greed, which is pretty much the gory, but oh-so-real history of American Capitalism itself.

Regulation is a necessary evil, as is keeping a tight rein on monopolistic practices. Sadly, our government generally is bribed into ineffective regulation and to ignore the monopolism. Thus, we get screwed until the end of the next gyre in "history repeats itself" completes. In the meantime, we have ineffective and incompetent solutions, allowing other countries to gain huge technological advances over us.

The current situation has a long history in a multi-billion-dollar ripoff of the taxpayers and customers of these companies. Cringeley wrote an amazingly prescient article on the hows and whys we have what we have today (I believe it was even featured here a few years ago when it was published):

The $200 Billion Rip-Off: Our broadband future was stolen.

This all is nothing new, it was planned in the 90s, and we have pretty much the implementation of that plan today.

Does it piss you off? It pisses me off for sure. How do we go about fixing it?

1) Stop supporting the companies that screw us and found/support companies which do it right.
2) Get your friends/family/neighbors/community to vote out the bribed politicians that either enabled it, or turned a blind eye to it, and vote in politicians who are not bribed and will actually fix it.
3) Be willing to suffer for a while for a better future. The companies who perpetrate these scams set it up such that people will accept the suboptimal crap they are peddling because they won't take the inconvenience of being without said crap for a short enough time to send the message that the situation will change, or else.

But no, human nature (and American culture itself) dictates that nothing will change; the telcos have already won.

Hate to break it to you, but vBulletin gets hacked about as often as anything else out there. In the past 10 years, I've cleaned up about as many hacked vB forums for people as several of the other popular forum packages combined.

Sure, the primary issue is that people don't keep their software updated, but that is true no matter what software you use. I've setup and ran dozens of phpBB forums, and I have yet to have one hacked, but then I keep them (and the servers they run on) up-to-date.