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Comment: Games are a team effort (Score 1) 58

by Kohath (#47435167) Attached to: What Happens When Gaming Auteurs Try To Go It Alone?

If these guys go it alone, we will learn that the rest of the people in the teams they left behind can make good games without them. I think the main benefit of having a big name in charge is that you need a creative authority figure to keep the corporate types from messing up the end product.

Comment: Re:Please learn to communicate (Score 1) 349

by Kohath (#47410651) Attached to: Here Comes the Panopticon: Insurance Companies

It's a cliche in context -- like posting the Ben Franklin security quote and thinking you're clever or insightful.

Just imagine a Letterman style 'Man in the Street' interview...

Is that Slashdot's target audience?

Aahh, a Swiftian proposal - that's certainly a cliche if panopticon is

Yes, but it's less annoying because you seem to be able to communicate an idea without it.

Or is this about reassuring the hoi-polloi that you move in such elite intillectual circles that you do, in fact, hear such referrences near daily? I'm not sure whether to envy or pity you if that's true.

About every third article on the internet that features the loss of privacy contains the word "panopticon". And whenever the article doesn't, someone will use it in the comments, thinking they're clever. If you don't see it an annoying number of times (it's especially annoying because it's a silly exaggeration when applied to any non-fictional place or situation), then you don't read many internet articles on privacy.

If you use the word "panopticon", the message you've succeeded in communicating is "I learned a new word!". It not a very compelling message.

Comment: Re:quelle surprise (Score 1) 701

by Kohath (#47408535) Attached to: When Beliefs and Facts Collide

That's speculation, not evidence. I said evidence.

There's no such thing as evidence regarding the future. When the future becomes the present, we can measure it. Until then, we can only predict. Absolutely everyone knows this.

So in fact, the feedback could be greater than the models predict, since (you baselessly allege) the model predictions are uncertain.

Thanks for validating the need for urgent action.

If the models underestimate the feedback, then, short of a holocaust (which I presume you aren't openly advocating) there's no significant action anyone could take. We could do insignificant things for the sake of "doing something", but the benefits would be tiny, even if the costs were huge.

If the models are right, for example, Germany's pioneering $110 Billion energy program will delay the expected temperature increase in the year 2100 by 37 hours.

The relative stability of the climate, despite numerous past disruptions, argues against strong positive feedback.

Relatively stability compared to what? Other versions of the earth?

Compared to a climate that gets disrupted a little by some warming event or some additional carbon in the atmosphere, then the strong positive feedback makes it warmer and warmer and warmer until it's too hot to live. If this had happened, we wouldn't be here to talk about it. The Earth's climate is more stable, relatively, than this.

If the feedback were mildly negative instead of strongly positive, the climate would tend toward temperatures within a range -- like the climate we have here on Earth. Disruptions would raise or lower the temperature sometimes, but temperatures would stabilize.

If there were strong positive feedback, past disruptions would have caused the climate to get apocalyptically hot

No it wouldn't.

Where's your evidence?

Comment: Re:Problem with proprietary 'free' offerings (Score 2) 174

Actually last I looked my mothers job used it. it integrated into the rest of their software package so that addresses and route planning could be done easy.

Not sure if they currently can use it but since bing maps like google maps requires internet connections probably not. Not every where they travel have 2G service let alone 3G.

What gets me is why doesn't google or bing maps have an offline mode?Cache a couple of states or even just counties.

they do... https://support.google.com/gmm...

Comment: Re:quelle surprise (Score 1) 701

by Kohath (#47403681) Attached to: When Beliefs and Facts Collide

Average temperatures will probably rise a very small amount. CO2 causes a small increase. The computer models presume this small amount will be multiplied several times over by strong positive feedback. But the feedback amount and direction has yet to be empirically proven.

The relative stability of the climate, despite numerous past disruptions, argues against strong positive feedback. If there were strong positive feedback, past disruptions would have caused the climate to get apocalyptically hot, like the alarmists claim the current disruption will do. Warm-climate-doomsday didn't happen then, why will it happen now?

Comment: Re:quelle surprise (Score 1) 701

by Kohath (#47395221) Attached to: When Beliefs and Facts Collide

So the debate should be over what we do about AGW, not whether it is happening.

It's not whether it's happening, it's whether it's beneficial, neutral, a small problem, or a large problem. If it's not a large problem, why should we do anything?

Right now, in the US, we can do basically nothing about it because one whole party has chosen to bury their head in the sand from the word, "go."

And even if they had not, we still couldn't do anything very significant because we're only one country out of more than 200, with less than 5% of the world's population. And the US per capita carbon emissions have been dropping while per capita carbon emissions in India and China, countries which together have about 8x our population, have been rising fast.

We could definitely have a real discussion if it weren't always "We hate oil companies. We're all going to die!!!" vs. "It's 100% phony.". But that still wouldn't lead to any significant action, because all significant actions are extremely severe, and any action that is even remotely affordable is insignificant.

Comment: Re:You think? (Score 0) 374

You'll get nowhere with the average slashdotter, felrom, but thanks for trying. Few, if any of them, have even taken a course in economics. All they're capable of is spewing what they've been told by equally ignorant people.

They have no idea how business actually works. Hell, my guess is that none of them can even tell you the difference between "profit" and "profit margin"!

All they know is that corporation = evil, and that the most evil corporations are oil companies.

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