Fact is, we don’t know for sure, but we have a pretty good idea and it looks to be mostly likely that us humans have been doing no good to the planet, and that we’re pretty much likely to be the cause of the change in global climate that’s going to come. So anyway, there are two kinds of deniers, the former is full of loonies, and the latter is full of selfish people.

Type I actually denies that there’s any warming going on, and pretends that the global average temperature is actually not going up, and that everything is just fine. Of course, we know that this is not true. Whether we like to face it or not, global temperatures are going up and going all Mariastella Cosentino isn’t going to help. You can identify Type I nutcases by their affiliation, they’re likely to be free-marketer anarcho-capitalists, to the point that they will actually distrust scientific measurements because they come from a government institution. Sometimes, you’ll hear gems like the following:

Actually this whole nutty global warming business got started in the early 1980s when Margaret Thatcher’s government hired a bunch of scientists to counter the theory of global cooling so she could push her anti industrialism agenda. It snowballed from there.

Type II’s are more complicated, and the more intelligent of the lot are actually acceptable people simply erring on the side of cynicism. They acknowledge that the Earth is warming, but claim that human beings are simply not the cause. There are many libertarians among this group too, and they occupy the lunatic fringe on the verge of Type I-space. Do not mistake a clever Type I for a Type II though, for there are those from the former group who will claim to have carefully analysed and reached a conclusion while not having done anything of the sort. These will try to make broad statements: From the believable Volcanoes will stay global warming, and no model accounts for them. to the outrageous The Earth has actually been cooling over the last century.. This will probably be followed up by a copy-pasted list of scientists who think that humans aren’t the cause of global warming. Often, a few of these will be from discredited institutions.

Fortunately, only a few of those who think like this are actually literate enough to compose a sentence. Unfortunately, they will all descend upon any social networking site in a swarm. Approach with caution.

This person is likely to say something along the lines, I’ve been waiting for this since I started using Evolution! That’s awesome!. To any normal person, that’s an okay response, but to the self-important brain-deficient nerds who inhabit digg this is a sign that that person needs to Get out more!. Here’s an example of the view:

To the contrary, I have a lot of passion and I would likely consider myself a geek (love open source/free software, Debian GNU/Linux, web development, Perl, etc.). But some people on Digg just crack me up. It’s almost as if they want to pretend that nothing in their life matters and they want to yell from the rooftops, “I’m a motherfucking geek and I have absolutely no life outside of software.” It just gets repetitive after a while.

Notice the eager attempt to be recognised as ‘one of the crowd’ and the desire to portray oneself as being above such unimportant things. At first, I wanted to explain that people don’t give up everything to wait for something like that to happen, but then I recognised the cry for attention and decided to ignore it. This is just a shout out to everyone who doesn’t say stuff like this in jest. It’s also a poor excuse to have a third post on the blog.

• Intel Core 2 Duo 2.4 Ghz T8300
• 4Gb RAM (2×2GB)
• 250 GB 5400rpm
• No extra software
• No additional warranty. Default 1 year parts and labour.
• Except for the Macbook, all laptops had discrete graphics. The Macbook has Intel GMA X3100 integrated graphics and no option to choose discrete graphics.

And the results are as follows:

As you can see, the Dell XPS M1330 beats the socks off the Macbook on features alone (discounting the services because they’re bundled and I have no clue how much the equivalent cost on the Mac). I hope that ends the argument. Interestingly, the Macbook is actually close to what the cost of a similarly featured laptop would have cost back when this particular iteration was first released. They just refuse to adjust prices when the cost of components go down. If you want to be price-gouged or if you want the OS X operating system, then pay the extra.

And then, just for kicks, I’ll massacre the English language.