Slashdot Mirror

This thread is a perfect example of what's becoming of Slashdot.

So, start a subthread on the technology. Seems like a way to get people talking about technology.

Slashdot has a seriously diverse readership. In any given topic, you'll get the usual suspects

The clueless noobs who are still learning.

The trolls

The "Get off my lawn" crowd, who probably are suffering from testosterone deprivation.

People who are actually interested.

Since this tech was introduced in reference to an ancient burnt Middle Eastern scroll, and it turned out to be Leviticus, of all things, its simply going to attract a diverse audience.

Now if we wanted to deal with a less flamebaity version of the same, since the NatGeo article is pretty devoid of the technology, try this: http://www.livescience.com/560...

We can't control others, only ourselves. There in that link is the start of a technology discussion.

Just to pick the first three:

John Jacob Astor: bribed officials & politicians to ensure his monopoly, exploited natives with liquor.
Andrew Carnegie: insider trading, exploited workers, murderous strike-breaking.
William A. Clarke: inspired the Corrupt Practices Act 1912, but not in a good way.

We all agree that economic activity needs to follow basic laws, but I'm mostly referring to regulations that limit corporate exploitation of things that aren't illegal, yet can be clearly damaging to society. Pollution and dumping of waste is an obvious one (incidentally, benefits of EPA regulations outweigh costs by 10 to 1). Worker health & safety is another. Price-fixing, false advertising, leveraged monopolies, offloading of external costs onto the general public etc - all things that benefit the corporation at the cost of others, often in hard-to-quantify but very real ways.

Regulations are a burden on the economy - but kept reasonable, they prevent excesses that can be much worse.

And today you have unprecedented dieback of essential coral heads and reefs, whales washing up on shore in record numbers, seals and walrus having significant difficulties with their habitats, massive reductions in polar ice, the near complete disappearance of the glacier at glacier national park, severe population reductions of oceanic tuna, and a whole host of other things.

More fear mongering my good sir?

Headline is wrong . . . soft tissue (proteins) has been found in 68 million year old Tyrannosaurus Rex fossils.

The largest animals will be the best protected by humans. Witness the giant panda, which is no longer endangered due to conservation efforts. The same will be true of elephants, giraffe, bears, gorillas, whales, and any other animals we care about, which includes pretty much all the large ones.

I am not sure what country that image is from but, Those people are not living like rats! Notice the fishing nets and boats. They are "self-actualized". Also, they are a step up from the hunter/gatherers that most humans have been since we started walking the earth. Also note that "poverty" levels seems to be correlated with happiness : http://www.livescience.com/502... But, from a political perspective, I agree with you - we need to bring production local again.

Keep in mind that by sending earth microbes we're giving life there a 3.8 billion year head start.

No we aren't. There is chemical evidence that life existed as soon as 300 million years of planet formation (i.e. about as soon as compatible conditions existed). We have actual fossils of life that formed 950 million years after planet formation.

Congrats on the magnificent trolling.

But on the off chance you actually believe what you're saying, you should probably read this:

http://www.livescience.com/214...

Looking at the 8 most powerful to make landfall, six of them have been since 1998.

And if you go back further, you'll see we've had a swell time recently. Check out - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... for example. Could go on and on. Check out - http://www.livescience.com/143... to understand that we're really returning to where we were about 1000 years ago.

Did you look at their last graph from 1880 on? That doesn't line up with the CO2 levels worth a damn. I know, it's science. Requires thought.

You know about the scientific method, don't you? If you have one counter example to your theory, the theory is wrong. We have plenty of examples where it's wrong. Even if you throw the data prior to the 1920s out, there is the fact that the 1930s was the hottest decade of the 20th century. Even if you throw that out and consider the past 30 years. To a real scientist like myself, this is all very clear even by inspection.

Yes, we are warming, isn't due to CO2. Is it man? Could be in part, find the cause(s) first then we can consider if it's man or mother nature. Off hand, it's looking like mother nature. Can we do something about it? Maybe. Let's all agree it's not CO2 first and look for some real causes. Stop the politicizing (money making out of BS) of science. We have plenty of other BS to deal with already.

I'm a fiscally conservative, social moderate who hates Obama, has multiple openly gay friends, and generally votes libertarian when possible. Good luck categorizing that!

It is possible to predict political preferences beyond looking at what you say about some of the defining issues. Your biology has been shown to be linked to your affiliations: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... Also this study http://www.smithsonianmag.com/...

And then there is what you eat. http://www.livescience.com/143...

Or how smart you are. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sci...

Having said that, in the end, they are probably just counting how many Trump photos have been posted by the account.

This blog entry by a senior scientist at Fermi Lab has interesting comments on previous experimental results from the Hungarian group the UCI theoretical work is based on:

http://www.livescience.com/552...

What about the Hungarian group? I know none of them personally, but the article was published in Physical Review Letters — a chalk mark in the win column. However, the group has also published two previous papers in which comparable anomalies were observed, including a possible particle with a mass of 12 million electron volts and a second publication claiming the discovery of a particle with a mass of about 14 million electron volts. Both of these claims were subsequently falsified by other experiments.

Further, the Hungarian group has never satisfactorily disclosed what error was made that resulted in these erroneous claims. Another possible red flag is that the group rarely publishes data that doesn't claim anomalies. That is improbable. In my own research career, most publications were confirmation of existing theories. Anomalies that persist are very, very, rare.

no, it is NOT over for human life. Heck, we have seen other super volcanos blow and life does just fine.
The last time that Yellowstone went it was at the high end of a VE7, and is expected this time to be at low-end of VE7 or highend of VE6.

And here you go: But a Yellowstone megablast would not wipe out life on Earth. There were no extinctions after its last three enormous eruptions, nor have other supereruptions triggered extinctions in the last few million years. [Wipeout: History's 7 Most Mysterious Extinctions]
However, it WOULD be criminal for our politicians to NOT plan for needing electricity since we are about to become very dependent on it. This is why I go after the far left. They continue to ignore facts, logic and science just like the far right and China are doing. Basically, the far left has become complicit in causing as much of the world destruction as the far right and China are doing.

I'm not sure what you reacted to in the parent post, but Sahara indeed used to be a Savannah just a few thousand years ago: http://www.livescience.com/418...

Unprecedented stuff happens all the time.

Where's the scare when they do a computer attack?

In the American psyche, apparently, and rightfully so.

This study shows it as the #2 fear, behind government:

http://www.livescience.com/52535-american-fear-survey-2015.html

And another study shows it as the #2 fear, behind ISIS:

http://www.dailydot.com/layer8/cyberattacks-isis-global-threats-america-survey/

While iridology is bunk , it would be interesting to see what disease markers could be found with eye exams. We already know about a few. Ankylosing spondylitis is often associated with eye inflammation and abnormalities in the retina can be associated with diabetes, hypertension, cardiac disease, and stroke, as well as a lot of systemic diseases.

Eye exams are generally non-invasive and the scans could be set up almost anywhere.

This may come as a shock to you, but over the last century IQ tests have been revised because each generation has been scoring higher than the preceding generation. According to this, the IQs rise with an average of 3 each decade. So, we are getting smarter people. It doesn't matter if they aren't the smartest in the bunch, if they are smart enough to do the job.

Compare Detroit's scenario to Chicago's: Chicago has the strictest gun laws in the U.S. and the highest gun homicide rate!

Chicago has a much lower homicide and gun homicide rate than Detroit. In fact, Chicago doesn't even rank in the top 10 US cities by gun homicide rate OR by homicide rate. By homicide alone, Chicago doesn't even rank in the top THIRTY US cities. (note: a relatively uniform 68% of all homicides are committed with guns).

http://www.neighborhoodscout.c...

http://chicago.cbslocal.com/20...

https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/c...

In Detroit the Police Chief with massive government cutbacks advised local citizens to arm themselves!

And Detroit still ranks 25 spots AHEAD of Chicago in the number of homicides. Detroit still leads the country as the big city with the most homicides (and the most gun homicides).

The notion that more guns = less crime has been proven to be a myth, over and over and over. This is why the NRA really doesn't want the CDC to be able to collect data and do research on gun violence. In fact, they've successfully pushed legislation through a Republican congress that forbids them from doing so.

http://www.livescience.com/514...

Some insist that it is acidic (which is also true...it has a ph of 5.5 to 6,

Pure water has a pH of 7. You cannot have the excess of hydrogen ions necessary to have a pH below 7 in pure water without having the requisite hydroxide to balance it. It's amazing how it works that way; H2O splits into one H+ and one OH- every time. And if you have something driving the equilibrium of that reaction towards excess H+, then the water isn't pure. I'd guess you've got dissolved CO2, but who knows?

Nearly 10,000 times less acidic than soda pop

10,000 times is 4 pH units. "10,000 times more acidic than pure water" would be a pH of 3. But 10,000 times more acidic than your "pure water" at pH 5.5 would be a pH of 1.5. From here:

AGD spokesman Kenton Ross said that RC Cola was found to be the most acidic soft drink studied, with a pH of 2.387

That's almost an order of magnitude less acidic.

Not that you shouldn't filter or process your tap water, but if you're getting a pH of 5.5 from your distillation, it's not working as well as you think it is.

here

First, learn the definition of lying. Second, learn that that isn't the sort of accusation a civilized person tosses around ligghjtly.

Then, read this and this.

As for your links, the first uses a common dodge when you want to put your thumb on the scale. It measures involvement rather than attribution. Sor example, a sober trucker's brakes fail and he runs over a motorcyclist stopped at a traffic light. If the motorcyclist had any amount of THC in his system, it is counted as involving a driver with THC in his system. Such stats are more revealing of how much of the population is using marijuana.. The key phrase you want to look for is "caused by"

Do you think it's possible that groups of people separated by a thousand generations facing different evolutionary pressures could have developed traits genes to help them survive in their particular environmental niche better? Many animals and plants have been very significantly altered from their original breeding stock in far fewer than a thousand generations (15,000 people years). Some breeds of dogs can can outrun others by 60km/h inherently. Some breeds dogs are much smarter than others, they are all the same species. Foxes have been tamed in fifty generations. Gene research into tameness and aggression

http://www.livescience.com/357...

According to that, the total cost of all the upgrades came in at $10 billion.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

The original estimate was $400 million, final cost after the overruns was $2.5 billion. We could have launched 4 of them for the costs of the 5 servicing missions.

It is up to you if you think it was worth it, personally, I think it was, though perhaps lifting two would have made for even better pictures.

Here's my original submission with correct URL's and "on Earth" in title.

Engineers Plan the Most Expensive Object Ever Built on Earth

Ed Davey has an interesting story at BBC about the proposed nuclear plant at Hinkley Point in Somerset , UK which at $35 billion will be the most expensive object ever put together on Earth. For that sum you could build a small forest of Burj Khalifas - the world's tallest building, in Dubai, which each cost $1.5bn, you could build almost six Large Hadron Colliders, built under the border between France and Switzerland to unlock the secrets of the universe, and at a cost a mere $5.8bn, or you could build five Oakland Bay Bridges in San Francisco, designed to withstand the strongest earthquake seismologists would expect within the next 1,500 years at a cost of $6.5bn. "Nuclear power plants are the most complicated piece of equipment we make," says Steve Thomas. "Cost of nuclear power plants has tended to go up throughout history as accidents happen and we design measures to deal with the risk."

But what about historical buildings like the the pyramids. Although working out the cost of something built more than 4,500 years ago presents numerous challenges, in 2012 the Turner Construction Company estimated it could build the Great Pyramid of Giza for $5.0bn. That includes about $730m for stone and $58m for 12 cranes. Labor is a minor cost as it is projected that a mere 600 staff would be necessary. In contrast, it took 20,000 people to build the original pyramid with a total of 77.6 million days' labor. Using the current Egyptian minimum wage of $5.73 a day, that gives a labor cost of $445m. But whatever the most expensive object on Earth is, up in the sky is something that eclipses all of these things. The International Space Station. Price tag: $110bn.

Your first and fourth links are both really derived from the same 2008 computer simulation. A fuller discussion is here:
https://zbigniewmazurak.wordpr...
I think the fifth link falls into this bucket as well.

You second link ALSO refers to the same 2008 RAND corporation one, and it also simply waves away stealth by assuming that the F -35 would be detected by ground based radar, or that the infrared signature on it would automatically betray it.

The third article has a sensational headline, and doubles down with this quote:
"The F-35 isn't even close to fully operational - it can fly only on sunny days. It can't fly at night. And it can't fly in clouds or near lightning. We know this because the Pentagon tells us so, in a report written for the Secretary of Defense by the Director of Operational Test and Evaluation, J. Michael Gilmore, dated February 15, 2013."

Curious phrasing. Since they have to cite the "written report" to have any weight, why not link directly to it? Is a hyperlink too fucking hard for the author? He certainly has no problem providing one when something lets him editorialize.

Well, here's the report:
http://pogoarchives.org/straus...
And here's the quote:

"The Block 1A training syllabus used during the OUE was limited by the current restrictions of the aircraft. Aircraft operating limitations prohibit flying the aircraft at night or in instrument meteorological conditions, hence pilots must avoid clouds or other weather. However, the student pilots are able to simulate instrument flight in visual meteorological conditions to practice basic instrument procedures. These restrictions are in place because testing has not been completed to certify the aircraft for night and instrument flight."

Note also the title of this report: "F -35A Ready for Training Operational Utility Evaluation"

This report was talking about the first stages of training pilots. It happened before the plane had been tested for all the conditions, and talked about what the workaround was at the time. Hey, did they ever get to that testing? http://www.livescience.com/496...

Your last link is discussed here:
https://fightersweep.com/2548/...
And was on slashdot initially here:
https://tech.slashdot.org/stor...
And then again here:
https://slashdot.org/story/16/...

Your links are sensational. Certainly, they are all over the internet, but most of them source the same few out-of-context facts. The fact that the authors have to really dig to find facts which they then portray sans-quote and most assuredly sans-context sorta shows that they have some kind of editorial vision that they were going to enact. Taking training reports and pretending that the restrictions in place for them are fundamental restrictions on the jet, extensive reliance on a 2008 computer simulation- these guys obviously have a bone to pick. Neutral headlines and reports don't get clicks though.

It's a hypothesis that has some actual evidence to back it up. Link.

It doesn't really contradict what ArchMi said, it just doesn't exclude other possibilities. What you've cited was at best "but there could be other reasons". Well, there could be. Possibly.
But that's exactly what people often labeled as SJWs do: claim/imply that the only explanation to gender disparity is discrimination/suppression. Yet it looks like not only "not the only", but even rather unlikely explanation.

I guess you missed the following part:

"The striking thing about the looking data shows that the attraction to these objects occurs very early in life, before it's likely to have been socialized."

This piece makes "social basis" argument look rather wrong:

Further buttressing the idea that toy preferences are caused by hormones, last year, a group of British researchers found that girls with a condition called congenital adrenal hyperplasia, who experienced abnormally high levels of the male sex hormone androgen while in the womb, prefer to play with male-typical toys.

http://www.livescience.com/226...

Unfortunately you've been bitten by the progressive non-scientific but called Gender Neutrality which views both genders as being the same in all areas, and blaming of culture for corrupting them into gender stereotypes. Here is some scientific articles that you won't read that explain why you are not correct.

http://www.livescience.com/226...

http://www.bustle.com/articles...

http://io9.gizmodo.com/5879647...

The problem is, that we tend to take the outlier as the rule, when trying to break norms. We should accept that norms are those for a reason, while not excluding those that are outside those norms. There will be girls who like trucks, and boys that like dolls. Blaming stereotypes solves nothing and doesn't actually progress understanding.

No, the problem simply lies in the mentality of 'bigger is better'.

This is hardwired into the human brain. Studies show that even babies understand bigger is better.

http://www.livescience.com/116...

What increase in hurricanes are we talking about?
Is the weather on Jupiter at issue here?

http://www.livescience.com/507...

The FBI doesn't have identical fingerprints, what they have is the number of elements of a fingerprint used to "hash" the fingerprint results in collisions. Since identical twins don't have the same fingerprints. That said, an "identical" fingerprint, however unlikely since the fingertip would have to be the same size and shape to begin with, is certainly within the realm of statistical possibility, the likelihood of a person having an identical set of fingerprints would be truly astronomical.

I agree, but trying to claim that solar or wind is more reliable is very suspect. Hydro could be called reliable, but even that has its reliability issues as Lake Mead's current state should show.

http://www.livescience.com/519...

But solar and wind, or even the two combined have nothing on nuclear for reliability.

http://www.livescience.com/360...

250k a year world wide. Hardly millions. How many simply because it is a black market and you have violence and poorly manufactured chemicals?
Wake the fuck up.

Different markets entirely. Virgin was never selling an entry point to space based operations. It has always been a "vomit comet" http://www.livescience.com/291... style ride for rich people. The only thing that may come out of this is commercial sub-orbital aviation, but it would probably a decade after this service operates and returns viable data points. Realistically, the more projects like this start operating, the move efficiency and sustainability of these operations will filter down to "normal" aviation.

Dreaming of the day I can go coast to coast (us) in 2 hours.

There's an app for that....

http://www.livescience.com/387...

False positives? You're saying that taxi drivers appear to have the fingerprints of convicted felons, but actually are not these people?

Fingerprint matching is inexact. If I took your prints and searched the nationwide fingerprint databases, I would get a few hundred matches. Human examination of these matches would exclude most of them, analysis of the metadata, comparing your life history against the lives of the matchees would likely exclude the rest (assuming one of them wasn't actually you). But not always. False positives definitely do happen.

That would overturn the criminal justice system as we know it....

The criminal justice system's over-reliance on fingerprint identification is a problem. http://www.livescience.com/934...

Polar Ice Caps: http://www.forbes.com/sites/ja...

Hurricane Lull: http://www.livescience.com/507...

Greening of Africa: http://news.nationalgeographic...

These are "facts", and the "speculation" from the "Global Warming" nuts is also clearly documented. Here are a few good articles on exaggerated claims that never panned out:

http://wattsupwiththat.com/201...

http://www.thenewamerican.com/...

http://dailycaller.com/2014/03...

Please go ahead and make excuses as to why nearly 97% of all Global Warming Projections are wrong : http://www.westernjournalism.c...

Or perhaps you'll simply parrot someone else who doesn't actually know anything, or continue to believe "consensus = Science"

I think the Tesla "snake" charger is a lot closer to the ideal. Even if it is a bit overwrought, it still must be cheaper than repaving road surface for every installation.

Current science indicates the Little Ice Age was driven largely by volcanic activity with a small added impetus from the Maunder minimum.

Really? for a hundred years? citation required.

The original paper:
Abrupt onset of the Little Ice Age triggered by volcanism and sustained by sea-ice/ocean feedbacks

Or:
Volcanoes May Have Sparked Little Ice Age

or it just doesn't stop

I assume you're talking about "left-brain" vs. "right-brain" dominance. That is a myth irrespective of sex. People are not "left-brained" or "right-brained" like they are left-handed or right-handed.

Tech is 90% male, for entirely social reasons, doesn't that indicate some kind of problem?

(1) Where do you get the 90% figure from? The tech company Google, for example, is approximately 70% male. See

https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2014/05/getting-to-work-on-diversity-at-google.html

(2) Please provide evidence that the sex ratio in tech is caused by "entirely social reasons". I have not seen conclusive evidence on either side of the nature-versus-nuture debate, but there is evidence that at least some of the preferences stereotypically assigned to men and women have biological origins. For example, see

http://www.livescience.com/22677-girls-dolls-boys-toy-trucks.html

(3) I think that you skipped a few steps in your logical argument when you jumped to the conclusion that there is "some kind of problem". Please describe the problem in greater detail and explain how the problem is related to claims (1) and (2).

even Salon and LiveScience (neither is right wing) agree that conservatives tend to be happier people. Of course, left wingers then have to go all bitter and mean about it and try to diagnose this happiness as some form of dysfunction... (thereby reenforcing the whole thing)

Conservatives have not made any movie about assassinating Obama while he is actually serving in the White House; Liberals DID make such a film about assassinating Bush while HE was in office. Conservatives do not insist that nobody should watch a TV channel with opposing political view (like MSNBC for example), no they WANT people to watch the insanity and see it for what it is. Liberals on the other hand are nearly paranoid about opposing points of view and are always insisting people should not watch the channel they oppose (Fox News).

The Left end of the political spectrum views people as only interchangeable parts of groups and wants to treat them as such in a grand social machine; this means the rights of the group trump the rights of the individual and the desires of the masses, hence the fixation on the US as a Democracy and the willingness to shut down free speech anytime a group is offended. This leads to identity-politics, socialized services, re-distributive economics, ever-growing government, and the general unhappiness of many as they realize their ideology means that, as individuals, they are insignificant and should be sacrificed for the good-of-the-many (as defined by the many, rather than by them). People on the left also tend to be more secular and therefore have a bleak view that they will live for a few decades and then plunge into oblivion, nullifying their existence and making it completely irrational to even care about what happens after they are gone, including even whether anybody cares that they were ever among the living.

The right end of the political spectrum views people as unique individuals who each have their own value; this means the rights of the individual trump the desires of the masses unless something like an national security threat is involved, hence the fixation on the US as a Republic and the reflexive repulsion towards political correctness. This leads to a desire for smaller government that generally leaves people alone (just doing the critical stuff like national defense and dealing with murderers etc), allowing them to succeed or fail as they choose. This is the freedom-to-try model over the protection-from-failure model. They also tend to believe in VOLUNTARY private charity over forced government re-distribution. Whether it's true or not, this idea of a freedom to succeed leads people to think they might "strike it rich" or succeed in some other way. People on the right also tend to be more religious, often (depending on faith) believing in some sort of after-life that is generally hoped will be better than their current life and an ongoing existence. All of this puts value (often God-given value) on each individual - an idea that can hardly make one bitter.

I'm not arguing which side is "right" in the sense of true/correct, just that the different beliefs (whether completely true or loony-tunes wrong) have a natural and rational effect upon the attitudes and behaviors of those who hold them - and that this has been exposed countless times by academic studies, so No, you cannot honestly say the same thing about conservatives

Global Warming is the reason brutal dictators exist, and religious extremists try to conquer the world

Real-life scare mongers are ahead of you here. And here.

The warming may be just as non-existent as the "damn cradle", but its effect on public health is already being discussed by people deemed — by themselves and others — to be our betters...

Didnt we just have the strongest hurricane ever to hit?

http://www.livescience.com/188...

I hear of runners running (no pun intended) into trouble when they are out practicing while wearing headphones. If she's just getting started, do you really want to prioritize on that?

Three posts in and we already have the obligatory "Why would you want to do that?" response. Some things never change.

It's a valid point - many races ban headphones and running on streets with headphones is not just a bad idea, it's outright stupid. Anything that reduces your situational awareness out on the road is a bad thing - especially when you're out on a 20 mile run and towards the end, you just want to get home.

If you look at how American society is going, you see a society that is embracing groupthink, and lessening respect for the individual.

I have seen in the last ten years or so(since the advent of "social media"...) a change in American culture that encourages a sort of "agree or die" mentality. Gone are the days of everyone having their own opinion.

We are heading in the direction of the political movements of the early twentieth century, only now we have an immensely more powerful way to control opionion, control behavior and in the not too very distant future, control thought itself.

This is the future you wanted, right?

Except if you live near oil producing areas using fracking and suddenly your well water becomes flammable:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new...

http://ecowatch.com/2013/11/07...

So while there may be some hysteria, I damned well would be hysteric if my drinking water suddenly became flammable.

In fairness, it isn't the fracking process that is directly causing the earthquake problem here -- it is disposing of the wastewater in certain deep wells that is causing the earthquake activity. I read somewhere that ninety percent of the earthquake activity is associated with less than ten percent of the wells, which tells me that if we are able to choose which wells we use for wastewater injection we can substantially solve this problem.

Ohio has had a similar, if less serious, problem:

http://www.livescience.com/493...

For all that, this whole story sounds like we are watching a classic disaster movie unfold.

Overall, I agree with you.
Also, there are counterproofs that someone can be "smarter" (in unusual ways):

When Brain Damage Unlocks The Genius Within
http://www.popsci.com/science/...
http://www.livescience.com/453...

There's also evidence that our "natural" sleep pattern is two segments per night: first a "deep" sleep, followed by a midnight wakeful period called a "watch" (or "vigil" in Latin), and then a second sleep segment in the wee hours before dawn. This pattern was interrupted by the spread of artificial lighting technology in recent centuries, which allowed people to stay up and be productive when it would otherwise have been too dark. Apparently the practice of sleeping through the night in one go is a fairly recent development.

According to:
http://www.livescience.com/448...
10 people die of drowning every day.

Therefore guns are aprox 70 times safer than pools.

Why there is no anti-pool agenda?