But weakly observing it can have value. It would be possible, for instance, to determine whether there is a cat in the box at the moment (perhaps by weighing the box and comparing the finding with a predetermined minimum-weight-of-cat value). This is important because a cat that is not observed in any way may or may not be in any particular place. Anyone who has ever lived with a cat knows this. People who have never been owned by a cat may be incapable of understanding this, and probably should not look for a career as a quantum mechanic.
But that explanation might be too subtle for classical physicists (who likely do not much like cats, ever since Schrödinger soured them on the cute little beasties). So for them the dilemma can be stated in a more gross fashion: how can you even know whether a cat in the box is a part of the device you are trying to build unless you at least look at whether a box is or is not present? It would seem that some degree of weak observation is indeed necessary if anything is to be done.
The underlying problem is of course that quantum mechanics sits in the intersection of physics and semantics. It is not only the case that classical physics is unable to handle what is happening at the quantum level. It is also the case that as a product of this Universe, the human brain is basically incapable of understanding quantum level events. There's something happening here, but what it is ain't exactly clear... and never will be. So sayeth the Copenhagen convention.
I don't expect anyone on Slashdot to accept this on face value. But I do have a citation: check this out. One of the more obvious implications is that if you do not have a sense of humor, then becoming a quantum mechanic is not a good career choice for you.
The true state of the cat is that it is not dead yet.
It is not alive in any functional way since like a good cubicle minion it is not interacting with anything outside of its box. And sooner or later it will be dead, for that is the eventual fate of all cats and minions. But since it is possible that the box may be opened somehow before the inevitable death, even though it is not functionally living at the moment we cannot say it is truly dead yet.
There is an equivalent situation in USA Presidential politics right now. At this moment whether Obama or Romney wins the election depends on whether a small number of undecided registered voters come out of their 'don't give a damn' boxen and participate one way or the other. An interesting thing is that this small number of Schrödinger's voters are influencing millions of dollars of campaign expenses. Enough to fund the teacher's salaries for a small city for several years. Enough to pay for the implementation of meaningful election reform on a nationwide basis. Enough to pay the salaries and perks that the USA Congress critters have given themselves for a day or two. Truly a great deal of money.
The implications for quantum engineering are great, but unfortunately this slashdot comment is not large enough to contain the explanation.
Not if Iran was a rational, twenty-first century nation. So I guess I need to qualify my earlier remark:
It seems humans are most often at peace with each other when all the sane ones have the same kind of club, and manage to keep the loonies from getting hold of any club.. Not as pithy, but closer to correct.
Thanks for pointing out the weakness in the original expression.
These projectiles will certainly be guided (http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2012-08/its-experimental-rail-gun-navy-wants-gps-guided-hypersonic-projectiles) with accuracies at least as good as current ICBM systems
First, a hint about arguing on slashdot: if you want to have any credibility in a technical discussion, learn at least enough about HTML to post your citations of web pages as links. Like this: Article on PopSci web page that is written at the middle school level of reading comprehension and talks about the guidance system for rail gun ordnance that the Navy would really, really want to have (if only it could be done IRL). And that fine article also describes guided mortar rounds, which is something entirely different, not hyperkinetic at all.
There are plenty of ways to guide a very fast munition that do not require sticking control surfaces out in a hypersonic air stream.
In your dreams, and in USA Navy's outermost levels of disinformation, maybe.
Articles like the PopSci one do serve a useful purpose in that intelligence gatherers of foreign nations have to evaluate them, and that ties up their intellectual resources for a little bit, and sometimes might even put someone on a wild goose chase.
I ride in Portland, Oregon-- the best bicycle city in the USA.
About half the riders I see wear helmets. It is more common on the bike paths in the residential areas. Close to 100% of the cyclists in costume-- spandex, clipon footwear, etc-- are in helmets. Downtown there are many more without helmets and most of those are not in costume and are not riding fancy bikes. IIRC, about 7% of the downtown work force commute by bike. That is expected to increase to 11% over the next year or so.
I wear a helmet on my workout rides, but not always when I'm running errands. I know their value: a couple of years ago a pickup truck hit me from behind hard enough that I now have a titanium cage holding my broken spine together. I also had a severe concussion, and by the way the back of my helmet was crushed, I would have had a skull fracture if it had not absorbed the impact.
That said, for basic daily riding like commuting and errands I don't think a helmet is necessary. The crash I was involved in was because I was out after dark which I had not planned for, dressed in dark clothes, using only one tail light, and probably not being as careful as I should have been at a bad intersection where the lane markings were all worn away. The helmet prevented the crash from being worse than it was, but a reflective jacket and lighting up my bike like a christmas tree would have prevented the crash. That intersection has now been completely re-engineered (N Willamette and Bryant).
I currently wear a bike helmet mostly because I overheard a preschool kid say to her mother "That man is not wearing a helmet." So I do it for the kids.
For all but high speed recreational riding or hazardous conditions, a helmet has no value for a typical adult rider. But for several reasons kids should wear helmets, and if they see grandfather figures wearing them, I think it is more likely that they will do so, too.
The first rail guns will be small systems with short ranges of 200 some odd miles, but the future intent is to bring these up to 2 Ton 10,000 mile systems. They will have the ability to throw a hunk of tungsten so fast and so far that it's explosive force will be in the 30K ton of TNT range and it will be capable of penetrating almost a hundred feet of solid rock or reinforced concrete. They will be capable of putting a rod on target within 5 minutes of order.
Well.... If you can do it from orbit. That would be the only sure way.
Doing it from a ship or land based gun will give you problems because the Earth has this curvature, and your hypersonic dart is pretty much going to travel in a straight line. So things that are over the horizon are pretty much out of reach since drilling straight through the Earth is not really practical. You could use the thing as The BIGGEST MORTAR EVUH and get around the curvature problem, but the time between pulling the trigger and impact is then pretty long. A ship based railgun would be able to take out shore installations very effectively, but its range is pretty much limited to what you can see from the boat's highest crows nest.
Where railguns shine is in taking out things that are in the air. Hypervelocity, yes, but also precision targeting at very long ranges. So a railgun boat would be able to shield bombers from fighter planes or ground based missiles for a considerable distance, or work as an anti missile defense system. A few patrolling the waters off Israel would probably be very comforting to the Israelis right now.
Railguns will revolutionize warfare, probably in a very bad way.
Quite possibly so. It seems humans are most often at peace with each other when everyone has the same kind of club.
Perhaps more to the point, iirc funding for cold fusion research is also going through the Navy. Putting money into rail gun development as well could make a thinking person stop and wonder if the USA is on the verge of developing an entirely new battlefield paradigm.
Any country hostile to the USA would need to devote some of its resources, both money and brains, into similar RAD. And divert some of their intel gathering to the USA program. Which leaves these countries with fewer resources for developing nuclear delivery systems or weapons grade refinement processes. Having nuclear tipped ICBMs does little good if a couple of boats in, say, the Persian Gulf-- or maybe off the Korean coast-- could chew your rockets to shreds before they are very high above the launch gantries. Which is the kind of thing that a railgun could do.
I'm guessing that the USA is thinking that spending a credible amount on developing these things is well worth the cost simply because it will cost countries that have declared themselves enemies of the USA more than they can really afford in their attempt to keep up. Or to even keep tabs on the programs.
And of course there is always the possibility of a breakthrough, and suddenly having working technologies in hand. Sometimes when you are running a bluff, luck turns your way and you end up with the winning hand you were only pretending to have.
that $2 billion loan to Brazil to drill off of their shores rather than our own. . . . I have no idea why Obama would invest in Brazilian oil and not Gulf of Mexico oil.
Above sounds like some Romney's statements, criticising actions without bothering to learn anything about the situation first.
There is clearly at least one poster on slashdot who either has not bothered to pay attention to the news, or does not have the wits to fill in the dots. Brazil sits on a huge reserve of off shore oil. It needs money to develop deep drilling techniques. The reserves are large enough that they could free the USA and the rest of the developed world from dependency on Mid East oil. Compared to the Brazilian reserves, Mexico's reserves are small potatoes. They certainly are not large enough that any investment there would change the USA position wrt other oil producers.
The USA investment in developing Brazil's deep water oil reserves will be paid back in barrels of oil. The benefits will be huge.
English is evolving very rapidly now. The impact of having more English as a second language users than native speakers is bringing about rapid changes in what is acceptable.
At this point, using "their" instead of "his" or "hers" is now acceptable when the gender of the person is unknown. Also, "themself" in place of "himself" or "herself", etc.
This is not a bad thing. With the Internet a truly international language has had to be developed and for several reasons English has emerged as the best basis for that language.
One of these reasons is that English grammar has long been recognized as descriptive of accepted usage. Not prescriptive. The basic rule of English grammar is that so long as the statement is understood as intended by the consensus of its audience, the grammar used is acceptable.
That point needs to be clarified. There are persons with a strong interest, multimillion dollar investments, in the USA presidential election who believe that all men may be created equal but some are more equal than others.
Nominee Rominy has expressed this point of view very clearly. For him and his cronies, 47% of USA citizens are less equal than others, and that it is kind of a drag to have them around.
Gee, what can I say? I failed to state that to 5 significant figures, the number of potential parents removed from the reproductive circus in every committed gay or lesbian relationship is 2.0000 Does that now make you happy?
Also, 97.8% of all statistics are made up on the spot.
There are harsh words in parent post. Not really untrue, but very harsh to the delicate ears of slashdotters.
But rather than Darwin awards, the better method of population control is to support the GLBT in their efforts to establish gay marriage rights, and so on. Each gay marriage removes TWO individuals from the reproductive circus. We need much more of that happening.
Generally the living regard their status as better than the alternative, so from their point of view, they are entitled to feel superior to those who have offed themselves in obviously stupid ways.
But I do see that the Darwin meme is often an expression of "I haven't been that stupid, yet." It really is not appropriate for anyone under 40 to use it.
Factors that have influenced my jumping from one distro to another:
1. Most important: good support of software I needed to use at this time or that.
2. Almost as important: good support for peripherals I wanted to use. Basically graphics cards and digitizing tablets, but a time or two the printer drivers were important (using a 9 cartridge inkjet printer that could do photorealistic poster size images was a challenge at one point) .
3. Very important: what others around me were doing at the time. Especially those I sucked up to since I wanted them to be my unpaid tech support staff.
None of these factors are as important now as they used to be. I am currently using Ubuntu which meets all the above quite well, and will continue to do so for as far as I can see into the future.
That said, I have been spending a lot of time lately checking out different desktop environments. I expect to stay with some flavor of Ubuntu, but there has to be something better out there than the recent trainwreck that is Gnome 3, the continuing trainwreck in slow motion that has been KDE, Unity which would probably be a trainwreck if they ever figure out how to hook the engine up to the rail cars, etc. I have not yet looked at Mate or the one I confuse with xkcd, mostly because I would like to find a Real Life support person on hand before I jump into those unknowns.
There is not a Windows or Apple equivalent to the agonizing decisions that Linux users face wrt desktop environments. That's a weakness of the proprietary OSs and a strength of Linux.
Tried RedHat and Mandrake a couple of times, 10+ years ago. Had to go back to Windows, I needed more support than was available to get proper drivers, etc, working.
Free Geek version of Debian around 2004.Mostly worked, except lacking good image editing. That was partly hardware limitations, not the OS.
Ubuntu since about 2008. Finished migration from Windows in 2011, with Gimp v2.5+ and Bamboo graphics tablet being the last changes. I think I have Win7 on a laptop that gathers dust in a closet, but working computers run Ubuntu v10.4 (netbook) or v12.04 (graphics work station).
Still have not settled on a DE. Liked Gnome v2.x, but v3.x not so much. But I think Unity sucks and KDE is not much better. Will stay with Gnome 3 in "classic" mode for now but thinking about alternatives.
I have been using Linux distros on and off since 1998 and the quality has dropped pretty dramatically in the last 5 years or so.
That is weird, considering the huge numbers of persons who have tried some Linux distro in the last 5 years and have stayed with it and keep upgrading it every time a new version is released. Their behavior demonstrates they think the quality has been good and has been improving.
So evidently what parent post means by "quality" is something very different than what most people think of as "quality". Author of parent post is apparently speaking in one of those confusing foreign tongues whose words look and sound like English words but mean something completely different. You know, like the language of the astroturfers or the Trollspeak tongue, or one of the languages like those.
Parent post makes some good points. There are a couple of corrections, though.
First, the Gimp v2.8 that was released earlier this year offers nested layers, CMYK color separation, a strong vector graphics editor, and a reasonably effective video editor for short clips. This covers everything needed by more than 90% of professional users, with the possible exception of adjustment layers. Those are expected to come soon, and in the meantime there are workarounds. I can personally attest to Gimp working well with 100 MB files of more than 60 individual layers, that I have used as resource files in some 3D texture work.
The main reason why Gimp will not see an upsurge in use by professionals is that making the change from Photoshop would be more frustrating than changing from a Qwerty to a Dvorak keyboard, when you are on deadline to publish that dissertation that will guarrantee that you keep your job. In short, Gimp is crippled in the marketplace by the "inertia between the ears" problem. Unless you are aiming for a career in graphics arts, that is not an issue.
Second, Blackboard does not list any Linux distro as "supported" but users have found that at least some distros do in fact work, even with "unsupported" browsers. Also Blackboard is willing to take $2500 from you in exchange for them teaching you how to set up a Blackboard system on RedHat, which is very much a Linux distro. If the server can be run from Linux, then Blackboard would have to be really screwed up if Linux clients would not work with it. A final point: a lot of schools have dropped Blackboard and gone to Moodle. I do not know why that is but I suspect that as a very active open source project, Moodle is less expensive, easier to administer, and provides a more consistent student experience.
But yeah, the basic point of parent post is that if you are stuck in some backwater university that is not keeping up with opencourseware and similar 21st century teaching methods, then if all they know how to do is use an abacus, you are better off if you get an abacus and forego the scientific calculator. I agree with that logic. Of course you are best off if you transfer out of that diploma mill, but that would be a rant about using the level of Linux support as an indicator of the quality of the university.
"Facts" mentioned in parent post are five-plus years out of date.
Talking about Linux versus Windows is pretty much like talking about aircraft versus Chevrolet sedans. There are as many variants of Linux as there are different kinds of aircraft, so there are not many generalized comparisons that can be made between all of them and Windows. Just like it is hard to find a general comparison between Chevies and (fighter jets/helicopters/bush planes/cargo planes).
Of the several Linux distros that are directly comparable with Windows in the college student setting, Ubuntu is probably the best known. It is more secure than Windows, easier to administer than Windows, recognizes most peripherals, and is just generally better than Windows all the way around. One caveat is that its current default desktop environment (DE) is Unity, which is still having some teething problems. However unlike Windows, it is possible to change the DE quite easily. There is a Gnome or KDE variant for every user's work style.
The most important thing about Ubuntu, though, is that there are now Ubuntu communities in every college setting. The new user will have no trouble finding someone to help them set up their machine for the stuff they want to do. This is very different from the Windows model, where there most common form of "expertise" is the salesperson who knows just which $125 software package will do exactly what you want, and by the way, did you know that if you buy this $300 foot pedal and steering yoke peripheral you can drive quickly through all your spreadsheet chores?
I just thought of one way in which aircraft can be compared with Chevies. Aircraft are generally well built with hundreds of different experts examining each piece to make sure they all work properly together. Chevies? Not so much. Same thing between Linux distros and Windows.
Of course if the important thing is playing games rather than the studies, then certainly Windows is the way to go.
Well, I know enough about biology and science generally to know that it is based on facts
Well, that sums up your problem in comprehension right there.
Science is not based on facts. It is based on models that are known to be approximations, and a method of testing proposed modifications to these models known as the scientific method. The results of properly done experiments trump any existing "facts" that disagree with the new findings. If there is little likelihood that the experiment was done wrong (and in this case it looks like it would be very hard to get it wrong and very easy to validate its correctness through repeatability), then the "facts" have to be changed to fit the new findings.
Which is what is so intereting about this particular experiment: it calls into question a number of things we thought we knew which might instead be one of the parts of our model that we got wrong. What with the increased use of Roundup and GM engineering, it is kind of important that we do not mess up this part of the model.
Time for bed. Have a good evening. For that matter, enjoy the rest of your life.
I usually do not respond to ACs, but what the heck. I did once in this thread, I might as well do so again.
I have never made the claim to be a scientist. I do, however, have reasonably good skills at critical reading and a pretty good grasp of general knowledge, especially in the way that biological research works. Enough that I made a good living in highly technical professions for the 40 years before I retired.
The research presents extraordinary findings, not extraordinary claims. These findings were simple matters of identifying and measuring tumors, something that first year med students could do reliably, without much training. And in determining whether a rat is dead yet, which even pre-med students can be trained to do reliably. So the findings are not extraordinary in the sense that they are hard to obtain or difficult to extract from background noise; they are extraordinary because they are so simple and obvious, but just do not fit with the current models of biological processes that are the basis for Monsanto's spreadsheets, etc.
That these findings fly in the face of what AC thinks he knows about biology just demonstrates that AC thinks he knows a whole lot more than he really does. Perhaps he has studied everything that everyone has published about every aspect of the biological sciences. All that would still be a small amount compared to how much we do not know yet, and there can be no question that some of what we do not yet know is going to prove that some of what we now think we know is actually wrong. AC's hubris is a common problem for the graduates of a lot of diploma mills, who do not recognize yet that they have been educated beyond the current level of their intelligence, and that they really need to stop parrotting what they have learned about science, and sit down and figure out how to actually do scientific thinking. That involves improving their intellectual skills until those are at least as good as the academic skills they have spent so many years mastering.
Suggesting that research done by established scientists has to be wrong somehow because it does not happen to agree with what you have been taught is not the way to do science. Doing so in a public forum simply adds more FUD to the discussion.
Now I suggest that you go to your corner and do not come forth again until you can re-read this post without getting all pissed off.
Actually if author of parent post could comprehend what he has read, he would have recognized that the effects were seen at more than 100x less than the official safe limits of exposure. Which are typically more than 100x less than the level at which negative effects begin to be seen. So by his logic I should be lambasted for failing to recognize that a result is 10,000x less likely to be real than to be caused by experimental flaws.
AC of parent post is a fool and a dolt, who has yet to master the art of reading with comprehension. Not only that, but he lacks any understanding of the corrective mechanisms of scientific discourse. This paragraph is not an ad hominem attack; it is instead a statement of appropriate conclusions based on the evidence presented in the AC's comment.
Also, his mother dresses him funny.
Now that last IS an ad hominem attack. Since the way his mother dresses him has nothing whatsoever to do with his inability to comprehend what he reads.
It should also be noted that nobody can do genetic manipulation of any specific species, since the concept of "species" is an abstract categorization that we have agreed to use so that the complexities of real life will look more simple, and make it easier for us to pretend to understand it all.
There are no species Out There; the only place where species exist is in your thoughts. In reality there are just massive ecosystems with so many dependencies and shared pathways between their parts that it is far easier to detail all the chemical reactions in a candle flame than to accurately map what is going on in the fields.
Genetic manipulation does not change species. It changes entire ecosystems. Monsanto cannot afford to recognize this truth since there is no way that it could assure the safety of its GM work, or of Roundup and several of its other revenue streams, if it did so. Monsanto is a corporation that will not let reality get in the way of its profits.
I am blowing off a couple of mod points to answer this, but parent post's spin doctoring needs to be addressed.
RTFA, and you will find that the study showed a similar increase in diseases in the experimental groups that received only GM corn (no Roundup), only Roundup, and both GM corn and Roundup. With no statistical difference between the lowest dose groups and the highest dose groups. This, according to the study, suggests that both Roundup and the genetic manipulation that provides corn with protection against Roundup both interfere in the same way with some critical biochemical pathway at levels at least 100 times lower than those that are currently considered safe by the USDA, etc. The interference is described as a "threshhold effect", meaning that the presence of something in the GM manipulated corn and also in Roundup switch a pathway completely from one thing to another. This could happen, for instance, if the pathway was in the epigenetic mechanisms that turn sets of genes on and off. Some product of partial metabolism of Roundup and of the genetics that provide Roundup immunity might be throwing switches the wrong way.
One would hope that follow-up studies would explore whether the problem occurs at a specific phase of gestation or growth. Perhaps after a certain age there are no ill effects at all (the experiment was designed for whole life exposures, nothing more granular than that).
There is the possibility that the experimental design was flawed, or that some lowly lab tech was hired by agents of Treehuggers Anonymous to sabotage the work. Those possibilities appear to be vanishingly small, considering the reputations of the agencies behind the study.
There is however a relatively high probability that agents of the Monsanto Industrialized Food Complex will attempt to introduce FUD into any Slashdot discussion of the subject. Actually, irrespective of the intelligence and naievity levels of author of parent post, the probability of MIFC agents becoming active on ths Slashdot discussion approaches 1.00.
Slashdot Mirror
But weakly observing it can have value. It would be possible, for instance, to determine whether there is a cat in the box at the moment (perhaps by weighing the box and comparing the finding with a predetermined minimum-weight-of-cat value). This is important because a cat that is not observed in any way may or may not be in any particular place. Anyone who has ever lived with a cat knows this. People who have never been owned by a cat may be incapable of understanding this, and probably should not look for a career as a quantum mechanic.
But that explanation might be too subtle for classical physicists (who likely do not much like cats, ever since Schrödinger soured them on the cute little beasties). So for them the dilemma can be stated in a more gross fashion: how can you even know whether a cat in the box is a part of the device you are trying to build unless you at least look at whether a box is or is not present? It would seem that some degree of weak observation is indeed necessary if anything is to be done.
The underlying problem is of course that quantum mechanics sits in the intersection of physics and semantics. It is not only the case that classical physics is unable to handle what is happening at the quantum level. It is also the case that as a product of this Universe, the human brain is basically incapable of understanding quantum level events. There's something happening here, but what it is ain't exactly clear... and never will be. So sayeth the Copenhagen convention.
I don't expect anyone on Slashdot to accept this on face value. But I do have a citation: check this out. One of the more obvious implications is that if you do not have a sense of humor, then becoming a quantum mechanic is not a good career choice for you.
The true state of the cat is that it is not dead yet.
It is not alive in any functional way since like a good cubicle minion it is not interacting with anything outside of its box. And sooner or later it will be dead, for that is the eventual fate of all cats and minions. But since it is possible that the box may be opened somehow before the inevitable death, even though it is not functionally living at the moment we cannot say it is truly dead yet.
There is an equivalent situation in USA Presidential politics right now. At this moment whether Obama or Romney wins the election depends on whether a small number of undecided registered voters come out of their 'don't give a damn' boxen and participate one way or the other. An interesting thing is that this small number of Schrödinger's voters are influencing millions of dollars of campaign expenses. Enough to fund the teacher's salaries for a small city for several years. Enough to pay for the implementation of meaningful election reform on a nationwide basis. Enough to pay the salaries and perks that the USA Congress critters have given themselves for a day or two. Truly a great deal of money.
The implications for quantum engineering are great, but unfortunately this slashdot comment is not large enough to contain the explanation.
Not if Iran was a rational, twenty-first century nation. So I guess I need to qualify my earlier remark:
It seems humans are most often at peace with each other when all the sane ones have the same kind of club, and manage to keep the loonies from getting hold of any club.. Not as pithy, but closer to correct.
Thanks for pointing out the weakness in the original expression.
These projectiles will certainly be guided (http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2012-08/its-experimental-rail-gun-navy-wants-gps-guided-hypersonic-projectiles) with accuracies at least as good as current ICBM systems
First, a hint about arguing on slashdot: if you want to have any credibility in a technical discussion, learn at least enough about HTML to post your citations of web pages as links. Like this: Article on PopSci web page that is written at the middle school level of reading comprehension and talks about the guidance system for rail gun ordnance that the Navy would really, really want to have (if only it could be done IRL). And that fine article also describes guided mortar rounds, which is something entirely different, not hyperkinetic at all.
The Wikipedia article cited has no relevance to the discussion.
There are plenty of ways to guide a very fast munition that do not require sticking control surfaces out in a hypersonic air stream.
In your dreams, and in USA Navy's outermost levels of disinformation, maybe.
Articles like the PopSci one do serve a useful purpose in that intelligence gatherers of foreign nations have to evaluate them, and that ties up their intellectual resources for a little bit, and sometimes might even put someone on a wild goose chase.
I ride in Portland, Oregon-- the best bicycle city in the USA.
About half the riders I see wear helmets. It is more common on the bike paths in the residential areas. Close to 100% of the cyclists in costume-- spandex, clipon footwear, etc-- are in helmets. Downtown there are many more without helmets and most of those are not in costume and are not riding fancy bikes. IIRC, about 7% of the downtown work force commute by bike. That is expected to increase to 11% over the next year or so.
I wear a helmet on my workout rides, but not always when I'm running errands. I know their value: a couple of years ago a pickup truck hit me from behind hard enough that I now have a titanium cage holding my broken spine together. I also had a severe concussion, and by the way the back of my helmet was crushed, I would have had a skull fracture if it had not absorbed the impact.
That said, for basic daily riding like commuting and errands I don't think a helmet is necessary. The crash I was involved in was because I was out after dark which I had not planned for, dressed in dark clothes, using only one tail light, and probably not being as careful as I should have been at a bad intersection where the lane markings were all worn away. The helmet prevented the crash from being worse than it was, but a reflective jacket and lighting up my bike like a christmas tree would have prevented the crash. That intersection has now been completely re-engineered (N Willamette and Bryant).
I currently wear a bike helmet mostly because I overheard a preschool kid say to her mother "That man is not wearing a helmet." So I do it for the kids.
For all but high speed recreational riding or hazardous conditions, a helmet has no value for a typical adult rider. But for several reasons kids should wear helmets, and if they see grandfather figures wearing them, I think it is more likely that they will do so, too.
The first rail guns will be small systems with short ranges of 200 some odd miles, but the future intent is to bring these up to 2 Ton 10,000 mile systems. They will have the ability to throw a hunk of tungsten so fast and so far that it's explosive force will be in the 30K ton of TNT range and it will be capable of penetrating almost a hundred feet of solid rock or reinforced concrete. They will be capable of putting a rod on target within 5 minutes of order.
Well.... If you can do it from orbit. That would be the only sure way.
Doing it from a ship or land based gun will give you problems because the Earth has this curvature, and your hypersonic dart is pretty much going to travel in a straight line. So things that are over the horizon are pretty much out of reach since drilling straight through the Earth is not really practical. You could use the thing as The BIGGEST MORTAR EVUH and get around the curvature problem, but the time between pulling the trigger and impact is then pretty long. A ship based railgun would be able to take out shore installations very effectively, but its range is pretty much limited to what you can see from the boat's highest crows nest.
Where railguns shine is in taking out things that are in the air. Hypervelocity, yes, but also precision targeting at very long ranges. So a railgun boat would be able to shield bombers from fighter planes or ground based missiles for a considerable distance, or work as an anti missile defense system. A few patrolling the waters off Israel would probably be very comforting to the Israelis right now.
Railguns will revolutionize warfare, probably in a very bad way.
Quite possibly so. It seems humans are most often at peace with each other when everyone has the same kind of club.
Perhaps more to the point, iirc funding for cold fusion research is also going through the Navy. Putting money into rail gun development as well could make a thinking person stop and wonder if the USA is on the verge of developing an entirely new battlefield paradigm.
Any country hostile to the USA would need to devote some of its resources, both money and brains, into similar RAD. And divert some of their intel gathering to the USA program. Which leaves these countries with fewer resources for developing nuclear delivery systems or weapons grade refinement processes. Having nuclear tipped ICBMs does little good if a couple of boats in, say, the Persian Gulf-- or maybe off the Korean coast-- could chew your rockets to shreds before they are very high above the launch gantries. Which is the kind of thing that a railgun could do.
I'm guessing that the USA is thinking that spending a credible amount on developing these things is well worth the cost simply because it will cost countries that have declared themselves enemies of the USA more than they can really afford in their attempt to keep up. Or to even keep tabs on the programs.
And of course there is always the possibility of a breakthrough, and suddenly having working technologies in hand. Sometimes when you are running a bluff, luck turns your way and you end up with the winning hand you were only pretending to have.
that $2 billion loan to Brazil to drill off of their shores rather than our own. . . . I have no idea why Obama would invest in Brazilian oil and not Gulf of Mexico oil.
Above sounds like some Romney's statements, criticising actions without bothering to learn anything about the situation first.
There is clearly at least one poster on slashdot who either has not bothered to pay attention to the news, or does not have the wits to fill in the dots. Brazil sits on a huge reserve of off shore oil. It needs money to develop deep drilling techniques. The reserves are large enough that they could free the USA and the rest of the developed world from dependency on Mid East oil. Compared to the Brazilian reserves, Mexico's reserves are small potatoes. They certainly are not large enough that any investment there would change the USA position wrt other oil producers.
The USA investment in developing Brazil's deep water oil reserves will be paid back in barrels of oil. The benefits will be huge.
English is evolving very rapidly now. The impact of having more English as a second language users than native speakers is bringing about rapid changes in what is acceptable.
At this point, using "their" instead of "his" or "hers" is now acceptable when the gender of the person is unknown. Also, "themself" in place of "himself" or "herself", etc.
This is not a bad thing. With the Internet a truly international language has had to be developed and for several reasons English has emerged as the best basis for that language.
One of these reasons is that English grammar has long been recognized as descriptive of accepted usage. Not prescriptive. The basic rule of English grammar is that so long as the statement is understood as intended by the consensus of its audience, the grammar used is acceptable.
That point needs to be clarified. There are persons with a strong interest, multimillion dollar investments, in the USA presidential election who believe that all men may be created equal but some are more equal than others.
Nominee Rominy has expressed this point of view very clearly. For him and his cronies, 47% of USA citizens are less equal than others, and that it is kind of a drag to have them around.
Gee, what can I say? I failed to state that to 5 significant figures, the number of potential parents removed from the reproductive circus in every committed gay or lesbian relationship is 2.0000 Does that now make you happy?
Also, 97.8% of all statistics are made up on the spot.
Silly rabbit. Get off of my lawn.
There are harsh words in parent post. Not really untrue, but very harsh to the delicate ears of slashdotters.
But rather than Darwin awards, the better method of population control is to support the GLBT in their efforts to establish gay marriage rights, and so on. Each gay marriage removes TWO individuals from the reproductive circus. We need much more of that happening.
Generally the living regard their status as better than the alternative, so from their point of view, they are entitled to feel superior to those who have offed themselves in obviously stupid ways.
But I do see that the Darwin meme is often an expression of "I haven't been that stupid, yet." It really is not appropriate for anyone under 40 to use it.
Now get off my lawn...
Factors that have influenced my jumping from one distro to another:
1. Most important: good support of software I needed to use at this time or that.
2. Almost as important: good support for peripherals I wanted to use. Basically graphics cards and digitizing tablets, but a time or two the printer drivers were important (using a 9 cartridge inkjet printer that could do photorealistic poster size images was a challenge at one point) .
3. Very important: what others around me were doing at the time. Especially those I sucked up to since I wanted them to be my unpaid tech support staff.
None of these factors are as important now as they used to be. I am currently using Ubuntu which meets all the above quite well, and will continue to do so for as far as I can see into the future.
That said, I have been spending a lot of time lately checking out different desktop environments. I expect to stay with some flavor of Ubuntu, but there has to be something better out there than the recent trainwreck that is Gnome 3, the continuing trainwreck in slow motion that has been KDE, Unity which would probably be a trainwreck if they ever figure out how to hook the engine up to the rail cars, etc. I have not yet looked at Mate or the one I confuse with xkcd, mostly because I would like to find a Real Life support person on hand before I jump into those unknowns.
There is not a Windows or Apple equivalent to the agonizing decisions that Linux users face wrt desktop environments. That's a weakness of the proprietary OSs and a strength of Linux.
Tried RedHat and Mandrake a couple of times, 10+ years ago. Had to go back to Windows, I needed more support than was available to get proper drivers, etc, working.
Free Geek version of Debian around 2004.Mostly worked, except lacking good image editing. That was partly hardware limitations, not the OS.
Ubuntu since about 2008. Finished migration from Windows in 2011, with Gimp v2.5+ and Bamboo graphics tablet being the last changes. I think I have Win7 on a laptop that gathers dust in a closet, but working computers run Ubuntu v10.4 (netbook) or v12.04 (graphics work station).
Still have not settled on a DE. Liked Gnome v2.x, but v3.x not so much. But I think Unity sucks and KDE is not much better. Will stay with Gnome 3 in "classic" mode for now but thinking about alternatives.
I have been using Linux distros on and off since 1998 and the quality has dropped pretty dramatically in the last 5 years or so.
That is weird, considering the huge numbers of persons who have tried some Linux distro in the last 5 years and have stayed with it and keep upgrading it every time a new version is released. Their behavior demonstrates they think the quality has been good and has been improving.
So evidently what parent post means by "quality" is something very different than what most people think of as "quality". Author of parent post is apparently speaking in one of those confusing foreign tongues whose words look and sound like English words but mean something completely different. You know, like the language of the astroturfers or the Trollspeak tongue, or one of the languages like those.
First sentence fourth paragraph should read:
Second, Blackboard does not list any Linux distro as "supported" but users have found that at least some distros do in fact work, even with "unsupported" browsers.
A typo had destroyed the link.
Also there is a link from the blackboard.com site to the pdf file that describes the Redhat / Blackboard training opportunity.
Parent post makes some good points. There are a couple of corrections, though.
First, the Gimp v2.8 that was released earlier this year offers nested layers, CMYK color separation, a strong vector graphics editor, and a reasonably effective video editor for short clips. This covers everything needed by more than 90% of professional users, with the possible exception of adjustment layers. Those are expected to come soon, and in the meantime there are workarounds. I can personally attest to Gimp working well with 100 MB files of more than 60 individual layers, that I have used as resource files in some 3D texture work.
The main reason why Gimp will not see an upsurge in use by professionals is that making the change from Photoshop would be more frustrating than changing from a Qwerty to a Dvorak keyboard, when you are on deadline to publish that dissertation that will guarrantee that you keep your job. In short, Gimp is crippled in the marketplace by the "inertia between the ears" problem. Unless you are aiming for a career in graphics arts, that is not an issue.
Second, Blackboard does not list any Linux distro as "supported" but users have found that at least some distros do in fact work, even with "unsupported" browsers. Also Blackboard is willing to take $2500 from you in exchange for them teaching you how to set up a Blackboard system on RedHat, which is very much a Linux distro. If the server can be run from Linux, then Blackboard would have to be really screwed up if Linux clients would not work with it. A final point: a lot of schools have dropped Blackboard and gone to Moodle. I do not know why that is but I suspect that as a very active open source project, Moodle is less expensive, easier to administer, and provides a more consistent student experience.
But yeah, the basic point of parent post is that if you are stuck in some backwater university that is not keeping up with opencourseware and similar 21st century teaching methods, then if all they know how to do is use an abacus, you are better off if you get an abacus and forego the scientific calculator. I agree with that logic. Of course you are best off if you transfer out of that diploma mill, but that would be a rant about using the level of Linux support as an indicator of the quality of the university.
I wish I had mod points.
Well done, Sir!
"Facts" mentioned in parent post are five-plus years out of date.
Talking about Linux versus Windows is pretty much like talking about aircraft versus Chevrolet sedans. There are as many variants of Linux as there are different kinds of aircraft, so there are not many generalized comparisons that can be made between all of them and Windows. Just like it is hard to find a general comparison between Chevies and (fighter jets/helicopters/bush planes/cargo planes).
Of the several Linux distros that are directly comparable with Windows in the college student setting, Ubuntu is probably the best known. It is more secure than Windows, easier to administer than Windows, recognizes most peripherals, and is just generally better than Windows all the way around. One caveat is that its current default desktop environment (DE) is Unity, which is still having some teething problems. However unlike Windows, it is possible to change the DE quite easily. There is a Gnome or KDE variant for every user's work style.
The most important thing about Ubuntu, though, is that there are now Ubuntu communities in every college setting. The new user will have no trouble finding someone to help them set up their machine for the stuff they want to do. This is very different from the Windows model, where there most common form of "expertise" is the salesperson who knows just which $125 software package will do exactly what you want, and by the way, did you know that if you buy this $300 foot pedal and steering yoke peripheral you can drive quickly through all your spreadsheet chores?
I just thought of one way in which aircraft can be compared with Chevies. Aircraft are generally well built with hundreds of different experts examining each piece to make sure they all work properly together. Chevies? Not so much. Same thing between Linux distros and Windows.
Of course if the important thing is playing games rather than the studies, then certainly Windows is the way to go.
Well, I know enough about biology and science generally to know that it is based on facts
Well, that sums up your problem in comprehension right there.
Science is not based on facts. It is based on models that are known to be approximations, and a method of testing proposed modifications to these models known as the scientific method. The results of properly done experiments trump any existing "facts" that disagree with the new findings. If there is little likelihood that the experiment was done wrong (and in this case it looks like it would be very hard to get it wrong and very easy to validate its correctness through repeatability), then the "facts" have to be changed to fit the new findings.
Which is what is so intereting about this particular experiment: it calls into question a number of things we thought we knew which might instead be one of the parts of our model that we got wrong. What with the increased use of Roundup and GM engineering, it is kind of important that we do not mess up this part of the model.
Time for bed. Have a good evening. For that matter, enjoy the rest of your life.
I usually do not respond to ACs, but what the heck. I did once in this thread, I might as well do so again.
I have never made the claim to be a scientist. I do, however, have reasonably good skills at critical reading and a pretty good grasp of general knowledge, especially in the way that biological research works. Enough that I made a good living in highly technical professions for the 40 years before I retired.
The research presents extraordinary findings, not extraordinary claims. These findings were simple matters of identifying and measuring tumors, something that first year med students could do reliably, without much training. And in determining whether a rat is dead yet, which even pre-med students can be trained to do reliably. So the findings are not extraordinary in the sense that they are hard to obtain or difficult to extract from background noise; they are extraordinary because they are so simple and obvious, but just do not fit with the current models of biological processes that are the basis for Monsanto's spreadsheets, etc.
That these findings fly in the face of what AC thinks he knows about biology just demonstrates that AC thinks he knows a whole lot more than he really does. Perhaps he has studied everything that everyone has published about every aspect of the biological sciences. All that would still be a small amount compared to how much we do not know yet, and there can be no question that some of what we do not yet know is going to prove that some of what we now think we know is actually wrong. AC's hubris is a common problem for the graduates of a lot of diploma mills, who do not recognize yet that they have been educated beyond the current level of their intelligence, and that they really need to stop parrotting what they have learned about science, and sit down and figure out how to actually do scientific thinking. That involves improving their intellectual skills until those are at least as good as the academic skills they have spent so many years mastering.
Suggesting that research done by established scientists has to be wrong somehow because it does not happen to agree with what you have been taught is not the way to do science. Doing so in a public forum simply adds more FUD to the discussion.
Now I suggest that you go to your corner and do not come forth again until you can re-read this post without getting all pissed off.
Actually if author of parent post could comprehend what he has read, he would have recognized that the effects were seen at more than 100x less than the official safe limits of exposure. Which are typically more than 100x less than the level at which negative effects begin to be seen. So by his logic I should be lambasted for failing to recognize that a result is 10,000x less likely to be real than to be caused by experimental flaws.
AC of parent post is a fool and a dolt, who has yet to master the art of reading with comprehension. Not only that, but he lacks any understanding of the corrective mechanisms of scientific discourse. This paragraph is not an ad hominem attack; it is instead a statement of appropriate conclusions based on the evidence presented in the AC's comment.
Also, his mother dresses him funny.
Now that last IS an ad hominem attack. Since the way his mother dresses him has nothing whatsoever to do with his inability to comprehend what he reads.
It should also be noted that nobody can do genetic manipulation of any specific species, since the concept of "species" is an abstract categorization that we have agreed to use so that the complexities of real life will look more simple, and make it easier for us to pretend to understand it all.
There are no species Out There; the only place where species exist is in your thoughts. In reality there are just massive ecosystems with so many dependencies and shared pathways between their parts that it is far easier to detail all the chemical reactions in a candle flame than to accurately map what is going on in the fields.
Genetic manipulation does not change species. It changes entire ecosystems. Monsanto cannot afford to recognize this truth since there is no way that it could assure the safety of its GM work, or of Roundup and several of its other revenue streams, if it did so. Monsanto is a corporation that will not let reality get in the way of its profits.
I am blowing off a couple of mod points to answer this, but parent post's spin doctoring needs to be addressed.
RTFA, and you will find that the study showed a similar increase in diseases in the experimental groups that received only GM corn (no Roundup), only Roundup, and both GM corn and Roundup. With no statistical difference between the lowest dose groups and the highest dose groups. This, according to the study, suggests that both Roundup and the genetic manipulation that provides corn with protection against Roundup both interfere in the same way with some critical biochemical pathway at levels at least 100 times lower than those that are currently considered safe by the USDA, etc. The interference is described as a "threshhold effect", meaning that the presence of something in the GM manipulated corn and also in Roundup switch a pathway completely from one thing to another. This could happen, for instance, if the pathway was in the epigenetic mechanisms that turn sets of genes on and off. Some product of partial metabolism of Roundup and of the genetics that provide Roundup immunity might be throwing switches the wrong way.
One would hope that follow-up studies would explore whether the problem occurs at a specific phase of gestation or growth. Perhaps after a certain age there are no ill effects at all (the experiment was designed for whole life exposures, nothing more granular than that).
There is the possibility that the experimental design was flawed, or that some lowly lab tech was hired by agents of Treehuggers Anonymous to sabotage the work. Those possibilities appear to be vanishingly small, considering the reputations of the agencies behind the study.
There is however a relatively high probability that agents of the Monsanto Industrialized Food Complex will attempt to introduce FUD into any Slashdot discussion of the subject. Actually, irrespective of the intelligence and naievity levels of author of parent post, the probability of MIFC agents becoming active on ths Slashdot discussion approaches 1.00.