leot

64 ms·

601.
by leot 15y ago
Come on, a public debate (lost by a pretty slim margin!) does not a trial make (especially not one that asks if global warming is a "crisis", rather than whether there is GW, whether humans are responsible, and what could happen if nothing
602.
by leot 15y ago
Just went through my email logs of Amazon purchases. One thing I bought from Amazon looks like it started in "City of Commerce", but this was a few days after I purchased it -- perhaps they fulfilled elsewhere and flew it over to be picked
603.
by leot 15y ago
Nice text of the actual law with revisions marked-up: http://leginfo.ca.gov/pub/11-12/bill/asm/ab_0001-0050/abx1_2... [edited to note that revisions are highlighted]
604.
by leot 15y ago
Every time I order from Amazon the delivery starts in CA almost the same day. Perhaps there's some legal entity funny-business going on to make all of its CA fulfillment not count as such, but what else would you call the place that ships
605.
by leot 15y ago
The bill is admittedly stupid in its targeting of the affiliates. But Amazon would qualify as a CA retailer irrespective of the affiliates, according to the actual bill: http://www.aroundthecapitol.com/billtrack/text.html?bvid=201... ""Re
606.
by leot 15y ago
Why does this need to have anything to do with affiliate marketers? "Associates" need not count as "subsidiaries" or "distribution centers" whatsoever. According to http://www.amazon.com/Locations-Careers/b?ie=UTF8&node=2... Amazon ha
607.
by leot 15y ago
The rule seems to apply to Amazon principally because it has distribution centers in CA.
608.
by leot 15y ago
They're clearly doing this because they know the affiliate marketers will complain a lot , and not because there's much of a direct relationship financially.
609.
by leot 15y ago
I think powerful plaintiffs frivolously suing indigent ones is far more common than the other way around, and a much bigger problem. Without some kind of loser-pays it's always possible for wealthier individuals to sue poorer ones and win a
610.
by leot 15y ago
I didn't say that every employee at all 150 organizations was working all day, every day to disprove claims of anthropogenic global warming (AGW). It is, however, the case that many of these organizations are in the business of getting gran
611.
by leot 15y ago
I'm not sure why you keep suggesting that the credibility of anthropogenic global warming (AGW) depends on the accuracy of Al Gore's movie. Furthermore, it's not just the IPCC that provides evidence. There are thousands of peer-reviewed art
612.
by leot 15y ago
Here's the relevant OECD article http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/2/7/45002641.pdf tl;dr: there are big differences between countries in the impact of parental education and earnings on the education and earnings of their kids. Parental succe
613.
by leot 15y ago
So, what's your response to, say: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/08/the-co... ?
614.
by leot 15y ago
For me, at least, it's a matter of volume-within-the-public-sphere. Oil and business lobby groups are undoubtedly better organized and better funded than most everyone else. I think the purpose of the quotes is not to demonstrate that the o
615.
by leot 15y ago
Are you still trying to determine what the probability is that you're wrong? Because that didn't make it into your response. I know I'm not 100% certain. The point I was making about salaries dealt with the size of the vested interests and
616.
by leot 15y ago
I'd be pretty happy if we were granted a 20 year reprieve from the consequences of climate change. Perhaps later on we'll be better able to suck CO2 out of the air, etc.
617.
by leot 15y ago
Prefacing everything with "good" makes it easy to dismiss whatever you want. Greater specificity is likely necessary here, assuming objectivity is the goal. Anyhow, I don't know why you would put a prof's compensation at $500k because you'
618.
by leot 15y ago
I was under the impression that asserts are different from run-of-the-mill error checking and handling. In particular, they don't usually let you do anything if they fail, and simply cause the program to (informatively) terminate. But tha
619.
by leot 15y ago
I never implied you had anything to do with Exxon. I'm not getting paid anything, by anybody, to talk about global warming. I have no conflicts of interest w.r.t. climate science. Are you suggesting that climate science is more remunerative
620.
by leot 15y ago
Oh for heaven's sake: http://www.exxonsecrets.org/maps.php
621.
by leot 15y ago
Not entirely -- it's better to think of "unknown unknowns" that current circumstances might well contribute to the probability of occurring. We might know of 10 events that all "only" have a 1% chance of occurring, causing us to estimate ri
622.
by leot 15y ago
Are you saying that global warming isn't real? Are you suggesting that humans aren't responsible? Because if so, you're Just Plain Wrong http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming For some reason, millions of people believe that scientis
623.
by leot 15y ago
He's not perceiving any particular weird weather events as evidence for climate change -- we won't know for some time whether the freaky weather is or isn't evidence climate change related because the data are so noisy. That said, in gener
624.
by leot 15y ago
No. The consequence of fat tails is that the risk-reward relationship becomes extremely wonky. Assuming that the actors involved were rational, both the BP disaster and the housing market crashes could be characterized as the result of a mi
625.
by leot 15y ago
Why bother having assert statements at all in a language if they're going to stick around in production code? If you're actually worried about something actually going wrong you shouldn't be looking to an assert statement (but, instead, pro
626.
by leot 15y ago
Yes. Python is not that mysterious. For generic objects, the __lt__ and __gt__ methods are simply defined the only way that's sensible, which is effectively as a pointer location comparison.
627.
by leot 15y ago
Not really. The example given is equivalent in badness to: g = Timer() assert g.startTimer() == 0 ... and then wondering why the timer doesn't start when you run your program in "optimized" mode.
628.
by leot 15y ago
Perhaps what's most galling is that, without users creating good content (users like the original @towerbridge) twitter would be nearly worthless. "You ride on their network for free" as if users were leeching off of content twitter itself
629.
by leot 15y ago
Lack of money also restricts freedom considerably, but this is apparently irrelevant.
630.
by leot 15y ago
[a separate response, since my other reply is absurdly long, and deals with only one issue ... ] > There's your mistake. You think that bad outcome implies bad intentions. It doesn't. I don't for a moment think bad outcomes imply bad in

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