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A great example of the above was the attack series launched by UAW-tied organization "Reveal". First they alleged a high injury rate (with a bunch of BS about beeping forklifts and yellow caution tape being banned) - but Tesla rebutted it by pointing out that they're using old data, that they're around the industry average now, and that the plant used to be the highest injury-rate plant in the US before they bought it. So Reveal switched gears to arguing that they were "hiding" injuries off the books. They even got CAL-OSHA to investigate, and the latter's investigation concluded just recently: the biggest problem they found was an extension cord to a fan that could pose a trip hazard, and one injury whose date was wrong. Vs. its competitors which actually have been found to be hiding injuries off the books, and fined.

Each time the Reveal reports came out, the news was picked up widely. The actual facts? Crickets. Scandal sells. "Wait, there wasn't actually a scandal" doesn't.

Holy f*ck, he's signing a memo! Shit just got real y'all!

Yes, it looks really serious this time.

Worth mentioning that climate models are not reliable at anything less than continental scale (according to IPCC), and even then, there is some doubt about their accuracy at any scale.

Um, no?
http://ep.yimg.com/ay/yhst-137...

A cat's face as intellectual property? As a trademark, I could understand. Not as a work of art.

I have some folks here who disagrees:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/w...

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-q1n2...

http://ep.yimg.com/ty/cdn/madi...

http://totallyhistory.com/wp-c...

I know there's been this contrarian myth circulating claiming that climate models predicted warming that never occurred. There's a nice, well-referenced debunking of it here [skepticalscience.com].

I see your ancient blog debunking, and raise you actual science:

Overestimating Global Warming Over the Past 20 Years
"much work remains before we can model hydroclimate variability accurately".

And here's a graph because pictures are fun!

It is one of the few connectors you can feel in the dark and get the damn plug in the right way on the first try, every time.

Could it be doable to make it a 'flat' connector like HDMI? Sure.. that would lower the 'vertical' footprint, but I am not sure if that would be worth the hassle.
It reminds me of the PCMCIA-connector to rj45 converters... *shudder*

If there is something I would like to never have to deal with again is having a bunch of these suckers hanging around waiting to break:
http://ep.yimg.com/ay/videowar...

The early images of Ceres' "bright spots," which generated a lot of excitement, had extremely high contrast.

The latest images, as expected, have much higher resolution. What's unexpected is, the contrast is not as striking.

What do Slashdotters think... was the contrast of the early images exaggerated just to generate buzz for the Dawn mission?

graph

This graph shows all the predicted models versus observations. If you look you will see not a SINGLE model is even close. Beck_Nerd tells you they have been quite accurate, he hopes you believe him and don't look for yourself. The actual reality is they are 100% wrong, every single time.

Its so completely true and unarguable, yet they can't seem to show it with facts. Funny how that is and how many times they have "manipulated data" to match their conclusions instead of modifying their theories to match actual observations. If AGW is real, it will be sad because people who look into the claims can only see the pack of lies and have to assume it is a hoax because that is the only conclusion you can make if you honestly look at what both sides present.

Yeah, I just saw the picture on a Yahoo News article. pic Exactly as described. Standard clock guts+big LED display crammed into a small suitcase. No way to tell if it was the display that came with the clock guts or not.

Pretty low-level "experiment", but he is 14, so I'll cut him some slack. At least he's tinkering with something instead sitting on his ass on Snapchat. Definitely not worthy of all the attention it's getting..

Maybe it's the indie small business dev in me but I saw this and had one question:

How much do you have to pay Amazon to be the one product in a given market segment that they do a Dash Button for?

That's where the real money is, and precisely what Wal-Mart has been up to for all these years.

If Huggies wants to kick Pampers off the Dash button so that everybody out there will randomly change products without thinking too much about it, they simply have to outbid Pampers. And whether the product has glass shards (actually crystallized sodium methylparaben, a preservative) has nothing to do with it.

That's what the Dash Button is. Other companies bid to be the one represented on it, very likely losing money in order to have a little 'brand awareness' token stuck in people's actual houses, and Amazon gets paid from both ends.

Not MY Dash Button ;) http://ep.yimg.com/ay/stylinon...

It's simply a perspective image.

The field of view angle would have to be pretty ridiculous and introduce other distortions to hide a protrusion 15% of the thickness. The more likely explanation is that Apple's products have a high dependency on aesthetics so hiding the ugly camera bulge is in their interest. Is that going to deter me from buying one though? No.

You can see a more realistic shot here and compare that to Apple's product shots, even if they took the photo with an odd angle and lens or from a long way away and cropped the image or whatever, you'd have to be pretty naive to think it wasn't done on purpose. Does it make any difference? Probably not.

It looked like this, right?

...they can't just undo the Prequels. They're already out there, and they've already ruined Star Wars.

Oh really?

Granted, Star Wars isn't Star Trek, but I'd prefer that scenario than see 1/24 of a second of Jar Jar Binks ever again.

It shouldn't matter if you knock out the control channel.
Remote control [anything] should always be set up to fail in a "safe" manner, for various definitions of safe.

Here's a picture of the aftermath, with someone picking up the hexacopter and its pieces.
The triathlete is on the ground with blood, if you're squeamish about that kind of thing.

Lisp's eval

It'll take you a while to get it. You'll have to be asking yourself the question, "What's all the fuss about Lisp?". You'll set it aside for a while. You could easily dismiss it for glossing over some details such as the actual (read) function; but when you "get it", you'll get it.

Stumbling blocks: prefix notation. A lot of people say it's the ()s that make Lisp hard to read; but it's really the prefix notation. Another stumbling block is the lame explanations for what (quote) does. People say it says "don't evaluate me" and while technically true, it doesn't answer the question. A better answer is, "returns a syntax tree ". A more detailed answer is "returns a list which serves the same purpose as a syntax tree. This is handy because every function in Lisp takes that same kind of tree as an argument, so it's handy for writing macros".

Like many people, I've never written a line of Lisp that runs anything, let alone an actual piece of professional code in Lisp. Also like many other people, I've found value in studying it and applying the concepts elsewhere.

Another person said "Forth" and they've also got a point. In some ways, Lisp is the dual of Forth. The postfix notation of Forth can cause just as much confusion as the prefix in Lisp; but that doesn't mean they aren't elegant in their own ways.

Gaussian distributions are not natural phenomenon. Numbers are not a natural phenomenon.

Gaussian distributions are an arithmetical description of a very common natural phenomenon. Sure, they are a man-made construct, but they are 'natural' in the sense that they describe a quality that's inherent in collections of things (although you can also argue that the notion of 'collections' or 'groups' may arguably also not be a natural phenomenon). Talking about a Gaussian distribution is about as natural as saying '1/3 of them have quality x' or talking about the circumference of a circle.

If humans want to use a Gaussian distribution to get rid of noise in some signal from a WIMP detector, fine....that's not really what we're talking about here.

You categorically said that the Gaussian distribution should be banished. Although your post focused on science, it wasn't implied in your quote that you were only talking about science.

Using a Gaussian distribution to determine how far from random your Likert scale test of whether video games make people feel more aggression...well that's ruining science.

The Likert scale thing is an example in which, in principle, the Gaussian distribution is not appropriate, and thus, should not be used. However, in practice, it typically works just fine. You can find plenty of literature for or against doing so. Here's an example in which the author argues that it's permissible.

But even if you don't want to apply parametric methods to Likert scales, what's wrong with, let's say, using Gaussian distributions to analyze participants' response times on some perceptual test? How is that, from a statistical perspective, qualitatively different from "getting rid of noise in some signal from a WIMP detector"?

What really would screw up science is the inability to utilize useful statistical tools to perform analyses - this would be the effect of "banishing the Gaussian distribution" from analyses used in scientific research.

You mean this: 888 553 2743?

Kleargear

Elop? Nokia was already in a nosedive when he started. If anything, he just guided them to a softer crash into a fluffy Microsoft pillow.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words so here. They had ten stable quarters with >6 billion in revenue and >500 million euro profit, the Windows Phone deal is announced and boom they go from a 750 million euro profit to a 200 million euro loss and their sales have been in free fall ever since. Yes they needed a revitalization in the smart phone market where Apple and Google were kicking their ass, but they had sales and profits to fix that. Until Elop issued his "burning platform" memo and announced an all-out switch to Microsoft, that is. If Microsoft hires him it's nothing but kickback for burning Nokia to the ground to promote Windows Phone.

I state that since Mr. John Enck & I BOTH came up with the idea independently, specifically for DB work, & posted it to their "FAQ" section of the EEC Systems/SuperSpeed.com website in fact - I was doing that type of thing with DBase III temp/scratch tables way, Way, WAY before it also albeit native ramdisk softwares (DOS usually) -> http://ep.yimg.com/ty/cdn/superspeed/ScReadMe41.txt

(Hence the biblical chapter/verse quote I closed off the post you just replied to, since imo, it too "holds true" here)

I suspect not ONLY for Oracle doing pretty much what I did, but very possibly OTHERS DOING IT BEFORE MYSELF doing it too!

HOW/WHY?

Heck: Since I am FAIRLY certain I was "no 1st" here because it's SO DAMNED OBVIOUS to do for performance purposes per less latencies in RAM vs. being diskbound... (but, you never know!).

---

* I do, however, also see a LOT of usage of in-memory DB tech, Virtual Machine, Terminal Server applications the past 1/2 decade now in "industry" via SSD usage, which amounts to damn near the SAME thing too - & it seems the "youth of today" have stumbled upon it, finally, lol!

(Which is yet later another way I applied this, not with software ramdisks in software this time, but later, in hardware via CENATEK's "RocketDrive" PC-133 SDRAM 4gb/16gb PCI 2.2 bus striped-spanned hardware ramdrive cards, & later still doing the same with Gigabyte IRAM 4gb/16gb striped-spanned DDR-2 RAM SATA II bus PCI Express based ramdrive boards - this idea/technique's "taken off" most recently though on the areas noted, using FLASH based SSD's... the only REAL difference, but the principals are the same - albeit FASTER in system memory though using ramdrive softwares!).

---

Thus - I really don't *THINK* Oracle CAN patent this technique to be quite honest... why? Well, what the "artsy/fartsy" people are wont to state, in "It's been done..."

---

Heh - This ALL reminds me of the "Outer Limits" episode "The FINAL exam" - when Seth the main character says:

"When a Science is ready? It can't help but make the next discovery ..."

APK

P.S.=> Bottom-Line: Yes - I'd be VERY surprised if my idea came before anyone else on this note on the entire planet & mainly, since BOTH myself + Mr. Enck (technical editor for Windows IT Pro/Windows NT mag) both put it up on their website as a technique for superior performance purposes (albeit I had been applying it & told the folks @ EEC/SuperSpeed to do so too, on paid contract, while increasing SuperCache I/II's efficacy by up to 40% in code too)... apk

Now that is innovation and market leadership.

No, you missed it -- Yahoo! now has a new logo. Just think of all of the corporate processing power that had to be invoked for such a dramatically change from this to this.

That's why they get the big bucks.

That's right! This villain is responsible for hundreds of years of oppression, and he must be punished for his crimes against humanity!

Seriously. You are a sicko.

I gotcha Magic Finger right here.

And Here.

And here.

And (finally) here.

Chinook helicopter?
http://air-boyne.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/ch-47-chinook-1024x768.jpeg

Now comes in micro-indoor version:
http://ep.yimg.com/ca/I/yhst-94582326164583_2231_135403177

The new skyhawks are sadly bloody ugly. My old skyhawk fortunately still works, although it's now my third choice watch:
http://ep.yimg.com/ca/I/jomashop_2207_625378425

I did have to get the glass replaced after around 10 years, as it was a tad scratched, but otherwise it's been great.

(it doesn't pick up radio time signals, which is one reason it's down to 3rd choice, behind a watch that does - although also ahead of another watch that does. I own too many watches)

This might be cheating, "but..."

Oh, you mean this one:

http://d.yimg.com/kq/groups/28137547/sn/1480601627/name/JEWISH+AHMADINEJAD.jpg

http://t2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcR-I7DwsCxvhbdcC6_kCCvZEXD8tVTg1R7CSanjma2m0oqU95s&t=1&usg=__ovlHlg-NLLtGBqKgiV58UyrJCEY=

There's a despair poster, I believe, with a caption along the lines "it could be, your main purpose in life, is to provide a warning to others". (Damn it, the internet made me check ... "It could be that the purpose of your life is only to serve as a warning to others."

ZFS's purpose was not to be a next generation file system, but to encourage next generation file systems to be built. Free Software has a tendency to get stuck at "good enough" sometimes. And someone has to come along and show that there is a better way. Competition is good. Sometimes it's internal (gcc vs egcs), sometimes it commercial (CVS vs perforce and bitkeeper).

What if ZFS was GPL? What if it went into Linux? It might get incremental tweaks, but it would stagnate at "good enough". Instead, btrfs, hammer, etc were developed -- much better, much cleaner file systems.

ZFS has some cute tricks. What could be better than taking a sledgehammer to a disk drive without causing problems? But ultimately, ZFS would hold linux back.

Found this picture at Yahoo news reporting the same thing.

Or maybe Oliver Wendall Jones?

You must be old here.

Or maybe Oliver Wendall Jones?

Get a bunch of hackers together and tell them to do their best to DDOS your old site!

I believe this kid is available.

I guess I just don't know how to think different. BTW, does anybody know what model Mac the Mahatma used?

Unfortunately, our legislation is open to the highest bidder. I doubt that other industrialized nations' governments are anywhere near as corrupt.

That's why we have such low voter turnout -- not that those people are apathetic, but that they know whatever crook they vote for, the corporate interests will be served, and theirs won't.

here's a picture of Gary Stoller and Susan Stellin discussing the hack in Stellin's office.

If anyone finds a link to side-by-side images from the old and new cameras, please post it!

I'll give it a shot. (note: on some of these I'm using MAST's archive since the main NASA site seems to be down and I am not linking you to full resolution photos as well as seeming to be at different ranges)

Old (2007) Image of NGC 6302 compare with new image of NGC 6302
Old (2004 not HST, ground observatory can't find HST image) Image of NGC 6217 compare with new image of NGC 6217
Old (2007) Image of Carina Nebula compare with new image of Carina Nebula
Old (1998 land observatory) Images (2000 HST) of Stephen's Quintet compare with new image of Stephen's Quintet
Old (2008) Omega Centauri compare with new Omega Centauri
Old (2005) Supernova Remnant LMC N132D compare with new Supernova Remnant LMC N132D

Hopefully that gives you an idea, most of those old images are Hubble but I threw in some ground based observatory ones so that you can get an idea of what Hubble's been doing for us for 15 years.

Why the hell are informative/insightful comments being modded flamebait today? Parent's post is informative in response to the GP. You might not agree with his last paragraph but that doesn't make the whole post irrelevant.

It's NOT *just* the last paragraph that offends the SlashKOS crowd. It's the outing of misinformation being used against individual gun ownership, and on top of that, specifically outing misinformation being spread by Obama.

That's always been the modis operandi of the liberal-left: being unable to compete in an open debate on the facts and the outcomes of their ideas, they seek to silence opposition. Just look at the healthcare town meetings.

When organized, bussed-in protesters were out screaming about GWB and his policies (which I disagreed with also, as the R's are not truly conservative) or any number of other liberal causes, that was patriotic and simply free speech. The town meeting protesters and the Tea Party protesters are labeled as everything from Nazis & white supremacists to gun-crazy extremists, racist rednecks, and astroturfers paid by health insurance companies. Never mind that SEIU thugs physically attacked an African-American outside one of the town hall meetings.

The liberal-left had best be careful. It's waking a sleeping giant in the form of the normally-silent vast majority of US citizens that normally pay politics no mind, and these people are pissed that they're finding themselves having to put their normal lives on hold and being forced to act to preserve the country they love.

I came across this video that I found quite powerful & moving, and describes that vast normally-silent majority of people in the US when they realize their freedoms & way of life are being threatened.

http://d.yimg.com/kq/groups/15523565/1322781786/name/TeaPartyCommercial.wmv [yimg.com]

Strat

"Flamebait"

Thanks for proving my point. :)

Strat

Why the hell are informative/insightful comments being modded flamebait today? Parent's post is informative in response to the GP. You might not agree with his last paragraph but that doesn't make the whole post irrelevant.

It's NOT *just* the last paragraph that offends the SlashKOS crowd. It's the outing of misinformation being used against individual gun ownership, and on top of that, specifically outing misinformation being spread by Obama.

That's always been the modis operandi of the liberal-left: being unable to compete in an open debate on the facts and the outcomes of their ideas, they seek to silence opposition. Just look at the healthcare town meetings.

When organized, bussed-in protesters were out screaming about GWB and his policies (which I disagreed with also, as the R's are not truly conservative) or any number of other liberal causes, that was patriotic and simply free speech. The town meeting protesters and the Tea Party protesters are labeled as everything from Nazis & white supremacists to gun-crazy extremists, racist rednecks, and astroturfers paid by health insurance companies. Never mind that SEIU thugs physically attacked an African-American outside one of the town hall meetings.

The liberal-left had best be careful. It's waking a sleeping giant in the form of the normally-silent vast majority of US citizens that normally pay politics no mind, and these people are pissed that they're finding themselves having to put their normal lives on hold and being forced to act to preserve the country they love.

I came across this video that I found quite powerful & moving, and describes that vast normally-silent majority of people in the US when they realize their freedoms & way of life are being threatened.

http://d.yimg.com/kq/groups/15523565/1322781786/name/TeaPartyCommercial.wmv

Strat

I'll be modded down for saying this (I don't care, my karma is excellent and I have no need to whore) but it looks to me like their hardware isn't much better than their software.

They call it "bugs" in software, and "product defects" in hardware. But it's the same thing -- a shoddy product. You can get away with that when you have a virtual monopoly.

What sort of hardware would you recommend without breaking the bank?

I've got it! World class hardware, and service to match. Buy yourself some space on one of these. It's your cheapest option.

So much for being green, eh?

http://d.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/p/ap/20090121/capt.7d249c265a934f498f2a848402460546.inauguration_a_nation_gathers_dcck123.jpg?x=400&y=263&q=85&sig=AY._KA2FX3wuJVDMlJF03g--

Gerrymandering, really? An old Magic player, are you?
There is a "Gerrymandering" Magic the Gathering card, but term gerrymandering predates it.

Actually, what the card ought to do is let you choose which lands each player gets, so long as they get the same number of lands. :-)

Looks like you'd be playing whack-a-mole: Yahoo's new profile style appears to mimic MySpace and Facebook.

Starcraft II is exactly the same, and yet, people are whining now...? Am I missing something?

I blame the ubiquity of the Internet, please see the greater internet dickwad theory.

From some of the view pages:

Bat Bike in use

View from the back

Video preview

This picture was also thought to be the Bat-Bike
The new bat-bike?

Some super-big pictures:

Front
Back

A light review
CHRISTIAN BALE was banned from riding Batman's hi-tech motorbike on the set of The Dark Knight - because the producers considered it too dangerous.

The actor said: "Embarrassingly, I didn't get to ride it. There are other motorbikes in the film that I got to burn about on, but not the Batpod - it was deemed too dangerous; they needed me in one piece to finish the damn movie."

Bale says a stunt rider took his place in scenes involving the Batpod in case the actor came off it and injured himself. The machine - described as a steamroller combined with a motorbike and atomic missile - is the caped crusader's latest gadget.

He said the machine was so hard to handle that only one stuntman on the set could ride it without falling off. But he is determined to master the Batpod before the film has its world premiere in New York on July 14.

"I've asked the producers if I can have a go on it before the premiere, so that I really can ride it before I get asked any more of these questions - you can't be Batman and not have been on the bloody Bat bike!"

The Dark Knight is released in the US on July 18 and in the UK on July 25.

Go...Penguin ...Go...

Dude... you're Batman?

First of all, comparing modern PCs to NES is like comparing a jackhammer to a wooden hammer. You're comparing two entirely different levels of hardware complexity. Secondly, not only your comparison is pretty much ridiculous and groundless in relationship to more modern consoles, the second half of the argument is incorrect as well. Did you know that 16% of X360 are likely to have serious hardware problems within six to ten months after a warranty purchase? Well, according to this article, they are:

Red Ring of Failure. Is your Xbox 360 still working? You must be one of the lucky ones.
http://us.i1.yimg.com/videogames.yahoo.com/feature/red-ring-of-failure/1192354

If you do an hour of research and buy your PC components from established and trusted manufacturers like Logitech or ASUS, there's no way in hell your hardware failure rate will be near those 16%. I've dealt with hundreds of PC components over a decade and I only encountered 4 hardware problems that are relevant for this discussion. 2 of them came from cheap WD hard drives, 1 came from an extremely cheap generic name motherboard, the other 1 came from an initially defected ATI video card that was replaced by the manufacturer within a week. On the other hand, we have two PS2s, both of which stopped working after 2 and 4 years of use, and an Xbox 360 that works whenever it feels like it.

As of "PC components are just more prone to failure than consoles, for a multitude of reasons", what exactly is the multitude of reasons you're talking about? Consoles have fixed hardware components that are generally not upgradeable. Analogically, if you get a decent PC box and do not open it or tinker with it in any way, I fail to see why its failure tendency will be any different from a PS3 that stands next to it. Of course, if you factor in an unexperienced upgrader in a fur coat with two super magnets in its pockets, you will get all sorts of statistics to support your line of reasoning. But if you do, please factor in the people who think that cleaning their consoles in a dishwasher is a good idea as well.

And if the price is not good enough, the product picture will do the job :)

We'll know we're there when we start reading about how the hot sauce treatment works better when they start rubbing the proverbial salt in the wounds. That's definitely too Food Channel for a legitimate MD.

Here's a hint: if a "doctor" comes in, and his white coat buttons up double breasted (like this), run, limp or crawl to the nearest exit as fast as you can. Remember, you want this, not this. If you get this, and you're not in San Francisco, you've wandered onto a movie set.