Re: Vogon
"Unless your particular democracy uses FPTP"
Those are still individual elections where the majority of voters wins.
3511 publicly visible posts • joined 17 Jan 2013
"there is going to be a LOT less enthusiasm for looking the other way while they raise money and buy guns in the U.S."
Yes, all those buckets 'for the cause' every St Patrick's day disappeared rather rapidly when they found out what comes around goes around on 11/9.
"Companies never actually pay these little skims on their cost of doing business, costs are all pass-through, historically"
They are made to pay in the EU at least. And cry me a river that advertisers will have to pay more for Google's Spyware as a Service output.
"That's the ruble that Comrade Lenin specified the value of?"
He controlled the official foreign exchange rates and many prices. No one given a choice stuck to the official exchange rates. Or the Rouble for that matter.
The point was that the devaluation effect does not require consumer knowledge that additional currency has been issued.
"I prefer Google Apps to MS-Office"
If your requirements are so limited that you can use Google Apps then Microsoft do free Web Craps too: https://products.office.com/en-gb/office-online/documents-spreadsheets-presentations-office-online
"I'd greatly prefer if my kids' school switched to G-Suite"
Yes but most parents want their kids to have skills they are actually likely to use in the workplace.
"We're currently handling about 35 different companies (/O's) and 100+ mail domains aggregated into a single Domino domain. It's actually rather easy to manage all things aside in compared to what would need to be done in Microsoft world."
Not true for at least a decade. Exchange is specifically built to support multiple tenants. You can easily run it as a shared hosted service with multiple tenants that are utterly unaware of each other.
"Nope, based on assumptions wrt the potential effects of elevated CO2. Which is the crux of the ECS debate"
It's not an assumption that increasing levels of CO2 in the atmosphere will increase the temperature. It's a scientific fact that is not disputed by a single recognised scientific institution on the planet. The first paper on CO2 increases causing global warming was published in 1896.
"ie if CO2=X then how much warming?""
Like the IPCCs climate projections of CO2 level over time versus temperature you mean? That higher atmospheric CO2 will heat the planet is not in any scientific doubt whatsoever.
"Climate scientists use a 30yr interval to describe climates"
No they don't. There is no fixed interval.
Things have change in the decade since your article was published. For an accurate comparison, see:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2018/jun/25/30-years-later-deniers-are-still-lying-about-hansens-amazing-global-warming-prediction
"Predictions typically have run hot compared to reality. "
Not any more. If you look at say the IPCCs predictions versus the current rate of rise they were extremely conservative.
http://berkeleyearth.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/TimeSeries2017.png
"where he showed a simple model predicting global warming based on a set of assumptions. "
To put it a bit more precisely, he calculated and described several scenarios of what might happen if CO2 levels kept rising at different rates based on well known science - that CO2 in the atmosphere was increasing due to human activities was well known and CO2 had been known to be a greenhouse gas for over 100 years.
"Is the release or timing of the story about 'laying trans-atlantic cables' really about dangling a carrot in front of the EU? "
I can't imagine that the EU gives a crap about one fibre cable among many.
"The commission's approach... would mean less innovation from Google, less choice from Google, less competition from Google, and higher prices from Google"
TFTFY.
"Sea levels are rising -- but slowly."
Yes but the rate of rise is increasing. And the rate of the rate of rise is also increasing, and is expected to continue to do so. Expected sea level rise by 2100 is 60cm - 2m plus. Likely on the higher side of that from much of the recent analysis.
"My experience with Windows-minded colleagues is they are more inclined to memorize a list of letters and fill in a multiple guess test "
You can't easily guess or learn the Microsoft exams. They construct the scenarios and answers at random from a selection of options so no two exams are the same.