By apologizing. Sorry, but that's all he can do.

But that's not my point. Last I heard of the case, the girls never pressed charges against him. They merely wanted to have him tested for VD. The prosecutor pressed charges (as they must do under Swedish law) when she (because I think it was a she?) heard their story.

The prosecutor thinks there is a rape case here. Whether a rape has actually taken place is now up to the courts (since the girls themselves have not wanted to press charges for rape we can't really say there was a rape at all until that has been established in court).

This system is in place to prevent the very thing you describe above, that in a lot of cases victims are shocked or threatened into silence so in those cases if the police (the prosecutor) thinks he/she has enough to make a case, they must press charges.

This is exactly what patents are. You can't patent a car. You can't patent a gas. You can, however, patent the process used to make the car. Or patent a part of the car that functions in a certain way. The important point here is that a patent is not the same as a copyright. If you write a software, your code is copyrighted by default and no additional action is needed for that. You just make sure your code is marked by your name and the date you wrote it and it is yours (you might find it a tiny bit difficult to make it legally binding, it's tricky with software that can be back-dated and manipulated without trace, sending yourself a copy in registered mail I've heard is no longer a good option).

But if you want to patent something, then that patent must specify not just *what* (if you're patenting something physical) but also *how* you're using it. This means, for example, that it is perfectly legal to use someone elses patent in your patent claim, if you're using it in some new way that the original patent did not specify.

For example, if I create a new kind of potato peeler and write it as "a device for peeling the skin off of potatoes" then someone else may (as far as I understand) patent using the exact same device for peeling apples. That's why it's important to think of as many applications or to be general when describing the patent (I could have written "a device for peeling the skin of any kind of round object with a skin". Then again, the more generally I describe my device, the bigger is the risk that the definition infringes on some existing patent.

Heh. Had forgot about that sig. I can't see it myself (and it took me a while even to find it in my settings). :)

I never said that there weren't philosophers arguing the merits of monarchy. I could even personally argue that, or argue that in some cases a dictatorship is a much better form of government than any other. I could argue just about anything, even stuff I don't agree with. I said that unlike Anarchy, especially the kinds that are proposed for a modern human society it is not a dream, a mental exercise that has never been put to practical use in any greater area for any extended length of time. Monarchy has existed *continuously* for those 5000 years you like to cite over and over again, whereas anarchy has only existed for very brief periods of time in very small areas.

First line of "Social Behaviour" in the Wikipedia section on bonobos state:

So apparently it is not so equal as you make light of. Also, they exhibit their peaceful side in the wild, probably in eareas where resources are abundant. In captivity they have been known to mutilate and bully eachother. This tells me that they are not so natually peaceful as you would like. If you have all the resource you need, it is easy to be peaceful. A social construct is only as strong as it is when it is put under pressure.

I would say that Anarchy as a sociatal construct is not viable because it is so vulnerable. In a world with unlimited resources humans would be capable of living in an equal society without a government to force us to be civilized. But resources are not limited and must be distributed and as such is the case, I am not convinced that humans (or bonobos for that matter) can be trusted to not be selfish when our own survival comes into the equation.

No. Go to yourself and your closest relatives. How much of their time do they spend finding out the opinions on the different political parties that exist in your (their) country? How much do they really know of the decisions that their representatives have made? This should tell you that people are far too busy to make informed decisions about more than a handful (or even just one or two) issues.

Direct democracy will never work because people don't know enough to make the right decision! Representative democracy is always better. But there are many ways to be represented and some ways are better than others. :)

No you couldn't. Monarchism (or despotism) is not a philosophical theory. It is the result of what happens when someone uses personal power to control other people. See the man with the big sword? He will kill you if you don't pay him money. Oh, your sword is bigger? Kill him then and take his place.

Anarchy will never "just happen". Anarchy is a political theory. Anarchy would require a lot of people agreeing, setting aside their personal desires for the common good. Not impossible, it's just that a single Hitler, Franco, Stalin, Lenin, Genghis Khan or Mao Tse Tung would wreak havoc in such a society as he would gain backing from people with a self-interested agenda and ultimately the single authoritarian voice would pierce the white noise of the dissenting opinions of the undecided masses.

Actually, the definition of "Anti-social" is to do by direct action or indirect action damage to society. The rich ruling the world is how society works right now, so killing them is indeed anti-social behaviour. But in the same way, if your actions cause a major upheaval of the social structure the definition of what is anti-social may change until killing the rich is no longer deemed anti-social.

The french did that in 1790.

I might be wrong, but to me those parts felt ironic. I don't think ve really feels like that, but vis commenting on how the gaming community seem to think in regards to this. Especially if you check what ve has written before.

This

The console market still exists. It might be true that this market shrinks a bit as some of those console gamers get older and find themselves
in a position where they can't just sit down and play their games anymore (I know I play only 5% as much as I did before I got a kid).

Console games do things that Facebook games simply do not. I'm guessing, but there really isn't a Skyrim clone on Facebook, right? Or Mass Effect? Or Deus Ex? Bioshock? I'm not saying these games are better than anything you can find on Facebook, Android or iOS. I'm saying it's different and speaks to a different market that likes that sort of thing. You can't just replace the one with the other. And a tiny iPad screen will never replace my console gaming TV.

The solution is to lie about everything in your Facebook profile. Wrong home town, wrong school (use ACME High School or something like that obviously not true). No one at Facebook has the time to check whether the information is correct, but if you leave it blank they can get it elsewhere.

Only if you believe that this tweaking is intentional and "evil". I believe that most of the errors produced in modern science rather stems from "groupthink" and from the subconcious need to produce the results that we are looking for. It is a growing problem that has been identified in recent times.

Also, I don't trust the "adjustments" without having read papers proving those adjustments do not affect the results. One should never trust anything without good reason.

But thanks for the link. I'll check it out.

I haven't seen this data, but I believe that the data you refers to is the already filtered data, no? The data where they removed some stations that did not "fit with their data". Without you pointing to exactly where the data is, I don't think I'll be able to find it so if you know where it is, please do tell.

The wikipedia article lists some sources and even a combined study that has looked at 31 studies made.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_hypersensitivity
They very diplomatically concludes that it is very "difficult to find any link between electromagnetic fields and symptoms". Which I find to mean that the research shows that there is none.

First, if you look at the attractor given, that is a huge area where the attractor exists. This could mean the difference between global warming and global cooling. So, your attractors won't save your model (I know that's just an example and that neither you nor I know what the input data does to the climate models we are discussing, but I'm certain that even small changes to the input values will change the outcome a lot, since they keep modifying their model each year that new data arrives).

Averages also aren't a good way, especially if you are not looking at the correct data. This is one of those things that confuse and infuriate people about the climatologists and their results, they just won't produce their data. This is not an unreasonable request. When I did my thesis I provided everything about my thesis in the report, including the software I had used and the data I based my conclusions on. This is so that someone reading it can actually check my results, which is just good science.

Except it does, if you read it (your article). And other sources have quoted the same material differently, so maybe the truth lies somewhere inbetween their reporting.

And even in the article you refer to, the author recognizes that this is interesting research and that they may be right. I find it interesting, however, that he refers to them as "some scientists at CERN" when the proposal for he experiment comes from Henrik Svensmark and that the theory they are testing is his.

But again, he is persona non grata because of what his theory would mean to global warming doctrine, so let's just keep him out of it.

Also, the most interesting point of Svensmarks theory is that he is not at all saying that human beings can't heat up the planet he is just saying that the sun has a hell of a lot to do with our climate too, a lot more than the current models take into account, which was the point I was trying to make.