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Comment: Re:Modern Day Anti-Evolutionists (Score 1) 368

by Nemyst (#47415809) Attached to: Climate Change Skeptic Group Must Pay Damages To UVA, Michael Mann
That's a load of horseshit that only a quick perusal would let you figure out. There was no "scientific consensus" that the Earth was flat; back in Ancient Greece it was already well known that the Earth was a globe and its radius was estimated with remarkable accuracy. That's before the term "science" was even coined, those were natural philosophers. The idea that the Sun orbited the Earth was much more religious than it was scientific; people went to great lengths to make up incredibly complex systems so that they could match their religious sensibilities that the Earth was the center of the universe. Science as it is now known has only really existed since the dawn of the Scientific Method, which appeared much later than either of those discoveries.

As for the plum pudding model, it was, key word, a model. Of course people knew it wasn't actually anywhere near a plum pudding! It was just the best representation they could give at the time and which fit the data they had at the time. The important element to note is that all subsequent models were more and more precise, but none invalidated previous data and conclusions. They refined the model, they allowed us to make more predictions and to be more accurate, but they didn't outright rebuke previous results.

Comment: Re:What happened to Scheme? (Score 1) 395

by Nemyst (#47412819) Attached to: Python Bumps Off Java As Top Learning Language
Nobody said never to show Scheme, but there's a difference between doing a "Computer Languages" course with Scheme or even a "Functional Languages" course and putting Scheme as the sole language for the introductory course. The latter is completely insane, unless you like a 90+% drop-out ratio.

Comment: Re:Not surprising. (Score 4, Insightful) 688

by Nemyst (#47393313) Attached to: When Beliefs and Facts Collide
I'm sorry but that is extremely wrong. Science isn't math: it doesn't prove. The best you can do as a scientist is gather data and construct a model which fits this data. You then attempt to predict things and confirm those predictions with more data. The longer the model holds up, the more likely it is to be "right", but it's always just a model and it always could be shown wrong tomorrow.

When a claim such as "97 percent of climate scientists believe human activities are causing global warming." is given, what it means is that 97% of climate scientists currently accept the model that humans are causing global warming. It means that, according to the data they have available and the models they have analyzed and/or constructed, the notion that humans drive global warming is prevalent in just about every model that accurately fits the data.

The only reason this whole thing is political (or a debate in the first place) is because there are people who stand to lose significantly from environmentally friendly measures and a move away from hydrocarbons.

Comment: Re:HTML5 & JS should just crawl away and die (Score 1) 104

by Nemyst (#47386827) Attached to: Famo.us: Do We Really Need Another JavaScript Framework?
Are you out of your mind, or just completely out of touch? Did you miss the dozens of times the Java plugin was disabled by most web browsers due to vulnerabilities? And you want to have web development be made with THAT?

But then you go on about C++... Like having arbitrary machine code be run by your browser is a good idea. You're well on your way towards designing the most security-averse system thinkable, and that's quite the achievement considering how bad the current system is. In web development, you want simple, relatively fast languages that can be JIT'ed efficiently while always running in a sandbox on a virtual machine. Javascript is far from perfect, but it fits that description much better than Java or C++.

Also, interpreted Javascript stopped being a thing something like a decade ago by now. I'd recommend you catch up on the tech a bit before badmouthing it.

Comment: Re:Profit before subsidy? (Score 1) 245

by Nemyst (#47383585) Attached to: Tesla Aims For $30,000 Price, 2017 Launch For Model E
The same question can be asked about gas vehicles if you were to remove all the subsidies that come into their operation. The oil industry gets a fair amount of it, many manufacturers got sweet deals for building their factories where they did, etc. You can't selectively remove one subsidy from one end but not do the same to its competitors.

Comment: Re:for christ sake stop comparing things to NASA (Score 1) 225

by Nemyst (#47376247) Attached to: Senate Budgetmakers Move To End US Participation In ITER
Indeed, it means that the 75M/year isn't even permanent, whereas NASA will always need money (for different projects, sure, but we're comparing the two for whatever reason). Are you forgetting the sort of project ITER is? It makes the shuttle look like child's play. 75M/year for even a century would be chump change in the grand scheme of things.

Comment: Re:Perl still works, and PHP is fine (Score 1) 532

It's an interesting list of issues, but all it does is whine. If you actually look around for web languages that are widely supported and easy enough to get running, even on cheap shared hosting, you'll find that your choices are extremely limited. PHP, sometimes Ruby on Rails, that's about it. Before you dismiss shared hosting off hand, remember that not everyone has a lot of money to spend on a website, and that a language's widespread adoption DOES factor in the decision to use it.
