The article makes the assumption that AWS will be reliable "because amazon runs on AWS". This has also been put forward by Amazon as a fact in their marketing materials. However, it simply isn't true.
I worked at Amazon in the past, and knew many key people in the AWS team, as well as had my hands in the code bases behind Amazon.com, both generations.
I only wish Amazon.com ran on an AWS infrastructure. This marketing claim is only true to the point that AWS operates out of the same datacenters that amazon.com ran.... but the code behind Amazon.com is/was much too old to run on AWS, and really not designed to operate on cloud services like AWS.
I'm sure in the intervening years (I left several years ago) more and more projects have migrated to AWS. But at the time I worked there, substantially none of the systems behind Amazon.com were on AWS services. I not only wrote some of the code in them, but I also got way too deep into the deployment mechanics of Amazon.com. I can say this as a fact.
Unfortunately, this dishonest marketing claim-- upon which many startups have decided that AWS is proven-- is about typical for the lack of integrity that Amazon as a business shows. They have great customer service, but you really don't want to know how the sausage is made.
That said, this is probably a good thing, as AWS is a modern code base (by amazon standards at least) and run by a group of people who I consider to be better than the average engineers at Amazon.
I can say this publicly because the truth is a positive defense, and I'm not revealing anything that couldn't be discovered with a bit of detective work.
PS- I'm a small time customer of both services and I won't comment on their relative quality. I think both have issues and these issues are better commented on by people who have more extensive experience.
I'm just dismayed that people believe AWS was "proven" by being "the same code that runs amazon.com", which is a complete and utter falsehood perpetrated by Amazon.
How about just getting rid of downvotes? I see very little spam on HN, but I see a lot of thoughtful posts that swing widely as people upvote them an then they get power-downvoted by voting groups for being "politically incorrect".
For every off topic, or one-liner response that gets downvoted, I see several useful responses being punished by people who simply disagree and don't have the integrity to illuminate their disagreement with a response.
This is Dvorak, of course, but still it seems wrong to me to buy a company just to get employees. If they made a viable business, then maybe it is worth integrating that business as a feature on facebook, or whatever.
I can't fault the employees for getting a spectacular "signing bonus" but it really seems a shame to shut down services like this.
When magazines go out of business, they sell their subscription lists to another magazine. So you get "sorry, Popular electronics is no longer publishing, but the rest of your subscription will be filled by Popular mechanics".
You still don't seem to get it. You may have calmed down but you don't sound like you think you've done anything wrong.
It sure sounds like your employer demanded that you stop embarassing them, more than anything else.
What I think you really need to learn- and this will only come from self examination, not being told by people like me-- is why what you did was wrong. You think that because your intentions were, in your perception "noble" that the ends justifies the means.
But consider this- you were attempting to profit-- yes, profit-- from someone else's work. (Profit comes in terms of attention and reputation and awareness and popularity, not just financial renumeration.) Even though you were giving him credit, you were attempting to profit from his work without his permission. That's why this is wrong.
Sure, others release their work and give blanket permission for people to profit from it. You may like that better because you get more for free from it. But that doesn't change what you tried to do to Zed.
Zed was write to admonish you, and your defensiveness is understandable. But you're not going to profit from this unless you learn the lesson this event is trying to teach you.
How is it not ethical to use the results of your own labor for your own benefit? To presume that our labor (whether you think the quality is "crap" or not) belongs to other people or "society" is to presume that we are slaves to others and that somehow it is unethical to work for ones own benefit.
The unconstitutionality of airport searches is not in question. The constitution does not have an "administrative search" exception. I understand that you're talking about the ruling of the SCOTUS, but I want to impress upon you the fact that the vast majority of people have never read the constitution, and even among those who claim they have, the vast majority apparently have not done so close enough to overcome the misinformation that exists in popular media about what the constitution says.
For instance, the SCOTUS does not have the power, under the constitution, to deem something as constitutional. They may have ruled (incorrectly, we agree) a dozen times in the past in various cases that "Administrative searches" were legal, but that does not create precedent (another legal term that is not recognized by the constitution) and it does not mean that such searches are legal. The Supreme Court usurped this power by ruling that it had this power in Mabury vs. Madison.
A reading of the constitution finds no creation of federal policing powers in the enumerated powers clause, and the fourth ammendment makes the point very clear. Thus if anyone is to say that this is "constitutional", they must provide a citation, to the constitution, of powers authorizing it.
The constitution was written in plain language requiring essentially no interpretation. It was designed to be enforced by the people, at gunpoint. It was written by revolutionaries, not people who believed in the concept of "free speech zones" or the idea that a judge could make crimes legal because they benefit the state.
The mechanism by which the criminal actions of the US Government become to be seen as legitimate is that of the deferrence to the SCOTUS as if it were the final arbiter of whether something is constitutional or not.
It is not. The constitution is supreme over the SCOTUS (and must be, otherwise how could it have created the SCOTUS and laid out it's jurisdiction?)
And the constitution is absolutely clear on this matter.
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
No probable cause, no warrants "particularly describing the place to be search and the things to be siezed"-- makes every search a crime under USC 18-242.
You're probably right that they will get shellacked, but this is not because these searches are constitutional, but because the government is a corrupt criminal enterprise, with a monopoly over the concept of "justice" and thus will rule in its own favor, time and again.
It is time for americans to recognize that these gestapo tactics (strip searches and molesting children) are the actions of an illegitimate and out of control criminal conspiracy.... not a legitimate, let alone, constitutional, government.
You're being snide, but you're actually correct. Governments have spent billions upon billions to rationalize this political movement. Energy companies are not the only ones under attack, but they are some of the few with enough money to actually do research. Of course most of their money goes into exploration... but they have done science on this topic.
Have you noticed how, when they do so, AGW proponents reject the results out of hand? It is as if you believe politicians would never lie or cheat in order to gain power.
Yes, when you model the past, that makes sense. What AGW proponents use are models to project the future. But they are inconsistent with the data of the past. They don't fit it.
They are simply fantasies to try and lend "scientific" justification to a political movement.
So, you refuse to respond to arguments, you admit it, and you demand that people make arguments to someone else, and then you lie about me to accuse me of being evasive, and then you link to an argument you made where you confused me with someone else (after ignoring my previous arguments) to support the claim that I'm ignoring your arguments?
In short, you have attacked me, lied about me, ignored my argumments, not provided any arguments of your own, and instead linked to someone else's blog and demanded that your opponents debate them.
I think I'm done. You can continue to be evasive or make personal attacks. I can't stop you. But there is no point in wasting any more time on you.
You have, by the way, proven my point, by once again being a supporter of AGW who:
1. Is not familiar with the science.
2. Is unwilling or unable to make arguments.
3. Is unequipped to respond to scientific arguments.
4. Who rests their advocacy on the claims of others that tehy assert are "Scientists"
5. Engages in personal attack.
6. Engages in dishonest statements.
7. Rejects the scientific method.
You have demonstrated all of these, and this forces me to remain convinced in my belief that advocates of AGW are anti-science religious zealots.
First off, you've confused me with codefisher. Codefisher made his point by providing a link to support his argument, which you said couldn't be done because you said there was no science supporting his argument. Now you're changing the subject, and attacking me, including engaging in name calling, and dishonesty, trying to force me to defend a position that I have never taken.
And even so, you are easily defeated because you have provided no evidence supporting your position. You're taking some date, and asserting that it says something without considering the nature of that data and what it is actually measuring.
The thing that has tripped you up is that you think you're referring to science when you're actually referring to propaganda. People have massaged the numbers to support a hypothesis, and you link to it, thinking it is factual. It isn't. (otherwise there is no way the rural and urban areas would show the same warming, unless there was no such thing as a heat island effect, a position I presume you are not taking.)
Thus you have jumped the gun, insulted me, and made erronous arguments while ignoring, multiple times, it being pointed out that you're doing so, because you won't pay close enough attention to notice that you're attacking a person who didn't make the claim you erronously assumed.
The projections are based completely on the temperature record, and changing the temperature record would produce different projections. The projections are essentially fudged to get the result that is desired for political reasons.
I'm guessing you haven't been exposed to many arguments against AGW, or maybe not many good ones. But since you have an open mind, I'd suggest you look into the absorbtion of IR By CO2, the actual proportion of CO2 in the atmosphere, the lack of tropophere warming (where it should show up) and the historical correlation of CO2 and temperasture-- CO2 has been a lagging indicator and has, in the past, been much higher than it is now from natural events without causing a runaway greenhouse effect. These are basic facts that don't take much analysis and greatly undermine the AGW theory. Also, the planet is getting colder in recent years (past decade) while CO2 has been rising.
This is another form of insult. You lie about what I have said in order to characterize me in a negative way. Ad hominem. Reality is, I have responded to your "Arguments" such that they are, and you have simply ignored my responses.
If science is really on your side, why so evasive? Why are you arguing to the person rather than to the point?
I sure wish you would actually respond to the arguments, maybe make salient points. Instead of simply snidely characterizing everyone who doesn't agree with your ideology.
Also: It reflects on the nature of hacker news that the snotty response has upvotes.
You're saying that the only way to debate you is to go to some blog, do a bunch of research, construct arguments against that blog post, and then post them here?
Must be nice to not have to do any thinking at all- you just link to some propagandist and have your opponents (anyone foolish enough anyway) debate them.
I fell for that once, and the person's response? "Well, I never said that!"
Meanwhile, you completely ignore the arguments that I have put forth, ignore the science and facts I have referenced, and continue to demand that I answer questions that presuppose facts you have not presented.
Maybe you're just incapable of debate. Or you don't care- because this is a religion and the science really means nothing to you.
The ball is in your court. You can respond, or you can continue to equivocate. I really don't care.
Aw, gee, a snotty insult with no actual substantive response. Stay classy, hacker news!
Sure, the snotty insult gets upvoted and the response pointing out that it is not useful or adding to the conversation gets downvoted. Votes are driven by ideology, not objectivity, eh?
You are expressing your bigotry towards me. When I disagree, I actually disagree, and it is this disagreement that you are responding to. You can't downvote a response you disagree to (or at least hacker news doesn't let me) and I don't downvote anyway.
If I disagree, I disagree by writing a counter argument. You may not like it, it may not be persuasive, but I write it.
As to whether this guy is a "scientist" or not, I don't think it is relevant as your movement commonly mischaracterizes people according to their ideological purity.
EDIT: Now I understand why you accused me of blindly downvoting. Projection.
I think that you are sincere and so I suggest you re-read the first paragraph of your response for the answer to your question. On one hand, you linked to a blog that links to "plenty of papers" and you think this is more relevant than a "one hack paper, non-peer reviewed, easily rebutted".
First of all, it is a "hack" paper, only because it disagrees with your conclusion. Secondly "peer-review" is not a barometer of science, it is a barometer of political correctness. (Trust me on this, as I've had papers peer-reviewed in much more esoteric and less politically and government-funding driven areas.) In fact, by controlling the peer review process via government fundeing ,the global warming movement attempts to discredit all science that disagrees with its agenda... and the need to do this is proof positive that science is not the foremost consideration.
As for "Easily rebutted"-- if it is so easily rebutted, please do so. Provide a rebuttal. It doesn't have to be a proof, but an argument would be sufficient. It is NOT rebutted by linking to the opinions of others. A simple rebutted is not that difficult. I can rebut the entirety of the global warming movement with a simple statement: Temperatures have been getting lower over the past decade while CO2 has gone up.
This references two easily verifiable and non-controversial facts, and rebuts the entirety of the hypothesis. so if this paper is so "easily rebutted" do so. A link to a blog post of opinion of someone you claim also links to papers is not a rebuttal. (I stopped following such links when I found that all of them referred to papers that did not make the claim that the forum poster was asserting.)
As to your last question, you haven't provided any such records. IF you would like to link to them directly, then I will have a look. (sincerely.)
If the planet were actually getting warmer, as CO2 goes up, over the last decade, that would go a long way towards making your theory worth listening to.
You did not provide any evidence at all. You just linked to propaganda from an advocate of your position who made assertions, sans evidence. Yet you linking to propaganda, as far as you're concerned, allows you to claim that you provided a laundry list of evidence-- yet you never even saw the evidence you claim you presented.
This is how your position is fundamentally anti-science. You don't understand the science, you haven't seen any evidence. But a link to a propagandist, proves, in your mind, that you're on the side of "Science".
By the way, the fact is, if you actually studied that data, it doesn't actually agree. Only be selectively choosing samples can you get tree ring data, ice core data, etc to agree, and only by distorting with arbitrary factors (also known as fraud) can you get weather station data and satellite data to agree.
In fact, the claim that all this data agrees with each other is itself a bit of scientific nonsense because it presumes this data were actually measuring the same thing in the same method and were actually independant.
Zeolots spamming random paper citations that they've never read to people whose arguments they've never read is not supporting science. It is actually, attempting to stifle science by stifling critical thinking in favor of rote repetition of The Global Warming Faith.
Since you used the word "Denialists" I already know you deny the scientific method and actually know nothing about the science of this issue. You're just repeating the Global Warming Faith (one of whose tenants is that anything that disagrees with the faith is not science) and attempting to shout down someone accurately pointing out the spam your ideology is resulting in.
I worked at Amazon in the past, and knew many key people in the AWS team, as well as had my hands in the code bases behind Amazon.com, both generations.
I only wish Amazon.com ran on an AWS infrastructure. This marketing claim is only true to the point that AWS operates out of the same datacenters that amazon.com ran.... but the code behind Amazon.com is/was much too old to run on AWS, and really not designed to operate on cloud services like AWS.
I'm sure in the intervening years (I left several years ago) more and more projects have migrated to AWS. But at the time I worked there, substantially none of the systems behind Amazon.com were on AWS services. I not only wrote some of the code in them, but I also got way too deep into the deployment mechanics of Amazon.com. I can say this as a fact.
Unfortunately, this dishonest marketing claim-- upon which many startups have decided that AWS is proven-- is about typical for the lack of integrity that Amazon as a business shows. They have great customer service, but you really don't want to know how the sausage is made.
That said, this is probably a good thing, as AWS is a modern code base (by amazon standards at least) and run by a group of people who I consider to be better than the average engineers at Amazon.
I can say this publicly because the truth is a positive defense, and I'm not revealing anything that couldn't be discovered with a bit of detective work.
PS- I'm a small time customer of both services and I won't comment on their relative quality. I think both have issues and these issues are better commented on by people who have more extensive experience.
I'm just dismayed that people believe AWS was "proven" by being "the same code that runs amazon.com", which is a complete and utter falsehood perpetrated by Amazon.