I wore a full beard for many years. I shaved it off several years ago, on medical advice (concern about allergens trapped in the beard possibly aggravating severe chronic bronchial asthma). It didn't help the asthma, but the informal poll of adult females of my acquaintance, who'd seen both versions, ran about 30-1 or 30-2 that I looked better without it.

I'm not completely stupid.

I initially kept the mustache, and that was OK with them. I shaved it off when the doctors cleared me to return to SCUBA diving and my mask wouldn't seal properly over it.

Consider a simple physical experiment. A ball is suspended 16 ft (4.9 m) above the ground. It is released at time t=0 s. We know from countless high school science demonstations and countless college freshman physics labs that the ball will impact the ground at about time t=1 s, and it will be moving at about 32 ft/sec (9.8 m/sec) when it hits. Using a stroboscope and a camera, we can determine its position with reasonable accuracy and precision at, say, 0.1 s intervals.

To be considered valid, a simulation model of that system must produce similar results. If it does not, the model is invalid.

That's the acid test.

I may just be uninformed, but, so far, I have not heard of a single case where someone started a climate model with known data from 1960, let it run for fifty simulated years, and arrived at the known climate of 2010.

Perhaps you'd like to improve my education and provide cites of such validation studies written up in the peer-reviewed literature?

First, what you do not seem to realize is that astronomers DO conduct experiments. They gather data, crunch it down, and see if the results compare with their hypotheses.

Second, there have in fact been a very large number of detailed physical experiments in astronomy. Apollo 8 was one such: no one knew for certain that the figure-8 "free return" trajectory family would really work, until they tried it in real life with a real spacecraft.

As for your comment about digital computers modeling the theories of the climate scientists, THAT EXPERIMENT HAS BEEN TRIED. REPEATEDLY. Every single climate model out there, when started with available historical data and allowed to run, FAILS to predict today's climate. A model which provably does not match reality is, by definition, an invalid model, no matter how cheap or how fancy a computer you ran it on.

The basis of the scientific method is:

1. Formulate hypothesis.
2. Formulate experiment to test hypothesis.
3. Perform experiment.
4. Evaluate results against hypothesis.
5. If results don't match, start over from step 1, using what you learned from the experiment to refine the hypothesis or make a new one.

How do you conduct the experiment to validate a climate hypothesis, such as the one that is the subject of this article?

Remark: The gold standard for validation of a simulation model is to run it on historical data and see how well it predicts what actually happened. To date, NONE of the "anthropogenic global warming/climate change" simulations have passed this test.

Dun & Bradstreet got their start as a collections agency. (This is where the term "dun" and "dunning letter", for debt collector and collections notice, came from. They were persistent.)

They still do that as part of their everyday business.

Corporations live and die based on their Dun & Bradstreet rating. If there is ONE collections agency a large US/multinational corporation is NOT going to ignore, it is Dun & Bradstreet.

Give them a call.

See https://creditreports.dnb.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/SmbSubCategoryDisplay?storeId=11151&catalogId=71151&categoryId=40020

You might want to consider sending a "final warning" letter, CC: to both US and EU branches, advising them that you will place the debt for collection if they don't pay up within 30 calendar days, before you actually sic the Duns on them.

The GPL does not require that the source code accompany the binary, although that is the simplest way to comply with clause 3 of the GPL.

Clause 3 gives three options. Clause 3(a) allows one to distribute the source with the binary. Clause 3(b) allows one to offer to distribute the source to ANY third party. Clause 3(c) allows one to refer requests up the food chain. (Al puts the app out there. Bob grabs a copy, and gives it to Charlie. Charlie asks Bob for the source. Bob is allowed under clause 3(c) to tell Charlie "I got it from Al, he said you could get it from HERE".) Clause 3(c) is restricted to noncommercial distribution, and only works if all you got was a clause 3(b) offer. If you got the source with the binary (clause 3(a)), you are required to give it up on request.

Your Example #2 is SPECIFICALLY wrong. If you do not distribute your GPL source WITH your GPL binary in accordance with clause 3(a), you are required by clause 3(b) of the GPL to make your source code available to ANYONE who requests it.

No, developers must release the source code to ANYONE who requests it, regardless of whether they received the binary or not.

Read clause 3(b), the part where it says "any third party". The key word is "any".

Are you certain you have read the GPL?

Your statement that it requires one to give the source to anyone who gets the binary is INCORRECT.

Clause 3(b) of the GPL requires you to give the source to ANY third party (emphasis added). "Any third party" means any third party, whether they got the binary or not.

And you explicitly do NOT need to pay the scumbag's $3.99 binary fee before you can get his source.

Most of the airplanes in airline service do not carry anywhere near 250 people, and most of the legs flown are nowhere near 4 hours duration (door close to door open).

Embraer ERJ-145 carries 50 passengers. There are a LOT of ERJ-145s flying, and they are nowhere near the smallest of the regional jets.

Boeing 737 carries anywhere from 85 to 215 passengers. It is one of the most popular transport airplanes on Earth.

For historical perspective: Boeing 707 carried 140 to 189 passengers. As of 2011, there were still 10 airplanes in airline service. (Boeing builds good airplanes.)

McDonnell-Douglas MD-80 variants seat from 130 to 172 passengers. There are a LOT of these puppies flying, despite being older and more fuel-hungry.

Also note that there are two pilots in the front office on every flight. (If it is a long over-water flight, there will be more, and they'll rotate in and out of the cockpit, so that the guy (or gal) landing the airplane after 13 hours in the air is not exhausted.)

I originally came across the Pentel Slicci 0.4 mm in the stationery department in Tokyu department store, in MBK center, in Bangkok, Thailand. I bought a few then. I have since stocked up by mail order.

The line is as fine as a Pilot Razor Point, but not scratchy, and the tip is a ball tip as opposed to the Razor Point's fiber element, which can be broken if you drop it on a hard floor.

As far as I know, the Slicci is not available retail in the United States. Mail order through the Web, or eBay, seem to be your only options. (Or fly to Bangkok...)

They also make a 0.25 mm version, but I find that the line from that one is too faint and it feels scratchy.

No, web browsing will not benefit significantly from multicore. The vast majority of the slowdown in web browsing is downloading and running gigabytes and gigabytes of Flash garbage animations and TV ads. AND YOU CAN'T STOP OR PAUSE THE ADS!

This is not hypothetical. I bought a new machine earlier this year. It browsed like a bat out of hell with its tailfeathers on fire ... until ONE SITE I thought I needed to hit that day demanded I enable Flash. The moment I turned Flash on, all web browsing on that machine slowed to a crawl.

Supposedly, it has been DONE.

The story goes that, when DC sued Marvel over Captain Marvel allegedly infringing on Superman, Marvel responded by having a villain take out either copyright or patent on the letters A-Z, and then sue anybody who tried to write or print anything without paying royalties first.

Stratfor annual subscription is US$349/year, according to their website as of a few minutes ago.

I think that's about 3.5x what I used to pay for my Av Leak subscription, which I dropped a long time ago.

Something needs to be pointed out, quite loudly.

The REASON that "We didn't learn for years..." is that the containment structure WORKED AS DESIGNED. It contained the melt.

Sorry, but this is factually incorrect.

BASIC was developed by Kemeny and Kurtz at Dartmouth to make computer programming accessible to students. It was designed to be easy to use on the machines at that time.

The original implementation was actually compiler-based, integrated with an editor. Today you'd call it an integrated development environment. Interpreter implementations came later.