Much louder, I'd say. It is especially annoying in a very confined space such as an elevator. And remarkably, some seem to get annoyed if they think you are listening to their conversation. Go figure.
I think one could also say that most philosophers do not have a working knowledge of the science from the last 100 years. I don't think it is an accident that a great deal of the most famous philosophers came from the mechanistic era before relativity and quantum mechanics.
Depends upon the field. It doesn't necessarily have to be about publishing. I see it a lot in the pharmaceutical and medical fields. Somebody, either an academic institution or a company, does some initial research on a small sample group. They see some possible correlation at a 1 or 2 sigma level. Next thing you know, there is a press release touting the "discovery" that oat bran reduces your cholesterol, or that such-and-such has high levels of anti-oxidants and "may reduce your chance of cancer by up to 50-percent." Of course, more research is needed.
Maybe it is the rush to fame, the rush to patent filing, or trying to make a strong case that further funding is justified. Often, it seems to me, that the marketers get involved. Those old enough to remember the oat bran craze will recall that suddenly everything had oat bran added to it. Then somewhere down the line it all fades away because, surprise surprise, further research shows that the effect isn't there, or it is small, etc. Another great example of marketeer influence is the famous 4-hour erection (priapism) danger with Viagra and other ED drugs. Did you know that there weren't any examples of that happening during the clinical trials, but think of how important is became to the marketing campaigns. In fact, the risk of it happening is a concern for people with sickle-cell anemia, leukemia or urethral inflammation, but you wouldn't get that impression from the ads. Here you have a case where something that has an apparent very small effect become a major part of advertising.
Cold fusion is another good example for this thread (I didn't read the original article, but it if wasn't mentioned, it should have been). When the first reports came out, and then the first conferences, we clearly were going to have a free-energy society by now.
It seems that a lot of the articles now are just links to someone's blog. Not being a blogger myself so I'm not sure how this works, but besides the ego boost of having a lot of people go to your blog, are there other gains for having this happen, like increased ad revenue? Personally, I would rather just have the direct link to Wired or NYT story rather than having to go to someone's page who then links to that same story.
I find it fascinating where people decide to make the world black and white and where they like their grays. I hear people arguing about how these government documents should be released because "we" pay our taxes, etc., etc., etc. I personally don't see how releasing these diplomatic papers, some of which contain frank and candid assessments that may embarrass or chagrin diplomatic counterparts and thus strain our relationships with countries, be in the best interest of anyone, particularly the US. Buy hey, if that is where you want to draw your black and white divider, then fine. The problem in these situations is you (here, I'm using the figurative "you"; I'm not saying you) choose some high and absolute truth then lay down these black-and-white lines (you're with me or against me). Then because reality never neatly fits in the black-and-white model, you need to start lawyering up explanations. In this case apparently every utterance by any person representing the government is a relevant political fact. Really? What if it is wrong, and hence not a fact? Is the fact that someone multi-layers down on some org chart is wrong, or has their own assessment of something that is not necessarily in agreement with official government policy now a relevant political fact?
The other thing I don't understand is the corporation angle. I haven't bothered to learn what the arguments are regarding justifying the desire to release corporate secrets. Regarding Tiger Woods, he is a corporation. He makes WAY more money on his name and image than playing golf, so that should justify releasing every little detail about him, by these arguments. Clearly it is our right to not only see and digest every sex-related text, but all his texts, emails, and the frequency of his bowel movements. I would appreciate it if someone could summarize this argument for me; at first blush it sounds like they are striving for the kind of simplistic and unrealistic world that Ayn Rand liked to place her protagonists, you know where Reardon's steel was so superior to everyone else's that he wasn't allowed to compete on contracts (pardon my memory, but it has been decades since I read that). Or do I have it wrong and they're not proposing that all corporate secrets be opened, just the ones pertaining to government relations?
Re:I was all set to go see it
on
Tron: Legacy
·
· Score: 1
Kids have no appreciation for good cinema these days.
I was disappointed to note that the 3D glasses darkened the film in general and when I took them off for comparison during 2D scenes, the colours were much move vivid.
When dealing with polarizers in general, you only get about 50% transmission through them.
Are you suggesting that if there is a discussion within some State Department cables that a foreign diplomat or head of state is having an affair, and with whom, that Wikileaks will edit that out?
For small businesses, at least ones as small as the one I work for, once you've created savvy and non-savvy groups, you're pretty much out of employees (that being said, if you go by the Government's definition of small business, you can have about 1000 employees and your suggestion would work much better).
Actually what is left are a handful of machines that aren't regularly patched or have passwords because they figured they were safe behind the firewall.
You certainly evidence your age if you think the children of the 80's are the "me" generation. There is a whole over-hyped group that wore that mantel proud. Interesting enough, the children of that generation are being labeled with that same descriptor with all the self-absorbed websites and blogs.
If you want suck genres for the 60s and 70s, my votes are bubblegum rock and disco.
I don't think anyone questions his credentials, but I think it does make for a slow news day to point out his 88th birthday. Is this an annual announcement that is made here? Were there front page stories for his 73rd, 68th, or what about 86th?
For what it is worth, it also was the 91st birthday of John Lee Hooker, the 69th birthday of Carl Yastrzemski, and the 146th birthday of Claude Debussy. If you want to argue that these people don't fit in with the slashdot crowd (and before you do, don't forget that baseball nerds and geeks by far predate computer geeks), shouldn't we have mentioned that the 11th was Steve Wozniak's 58th birthday, the 7th was James Randi's 80th birthday (good lord, I didn't know he was that old, but at least that is one of those decadal numbers people get all worked up about), the 5th was Neil Armstrong's 78th, and the 19th would have been Gene Roddenberry's 87th birthday.
Unless there is some significance to this particular birthday, I would have to agree with the GP that it must be a slow news day for this to make the front page.
Forgive my lack of Star Wars geekdom knowledge, but was there mention of a Sith Council in the story? I thought at the end of the first movie Yoda says to Samuel Jackson something to the effect of there are always two: a Sith Lord and an apprentice; never more and never less.
Mono-layer substrates that are on average one atom (or molecule) thick are considered 2-d materials in physics. And depending on the context, such as the wavelengths or other length scale-setting parameters in use, 2-d can be much thicker.
There probably isn't much speculation amongst the scientists and engineers about applying it as an invisibility cloak (at least outside of the context of free publicity and pitching for Congressional pork money) because it most likely would not be effective, at least in the sense most of the breathless SF fanboys around here think. I don't think that you'll be able to construct something that can bend a continuous spectrum, such as sunlight. Single frequencies, sure. The Nature abstract mentions a "broad spectral range," but I have to get on a computer that has access to the article to see what they are talking about. Let's say it works in the red region, you'll still see your object well in the blue.
There are also a lot of optical effect issues with using a flexible material that is draped around an object resulting in curved surfaces. This wouldn't make anything disappear, even if the material worked over all wavelengths, because you'd end up with something that looked real funky depending on the environment in which it was located.
I'm not saying there wouldn't be useful camouflage applications, but we're not talking about the kind of thing Frodo goes around wearing.
There certainly was a lot of shenanigans with the university (their "anonymous donor" support of the Cold Fusion institute led to the retirement of the university president), but that doesn't forgive (in the scientific sense, at least) the refusal of showing data or apparatus, and especially trying to quash valid scientific opinions with lawyers. Those are the tactics of snake oil peddlers such as Randy Mills and the perpetual motion scams.
P&F, for all accounts, don't fall into the same category as Mills and others, but it should not be a surprise that if they use (some of) the same tactics that they will get the same treatment from the larger scientific community.
Cold fusion had developed a stigma after the fallout in the late 80s, which I am sure made it tough to get funding. But I think it is pretty clear that if there are any reactions going on, if those reactions are producing any measurable effects, the effects certainly are very small or subtle. This has moved this area of research into more of an academic-interest arena. If there was consistent reproducibility showing significant energy release, it would get a lot more attention and funding, but if it is always on the fringe of detection with no clear roadmap to a large payoff, it won't get much money or attention. The most ardent of cold fusion supporters cry bias and conspiracy, but I see it as the way science works (in the realm of limited funding resources).
Don't make the whole Pons and Fleishman thing out to be a story of the Davids going against Big Oil and getting squashed, because that isn't what happened. I was in graduate school at the time P&F released their preprint and it was a very exciting time. That preprint flew around the world via fax machines very quickly (if I can dig, I should still have my nth-generation copy) and it was all you heard in the hallways.
My memory is a bit foggy, but P&F did a string of things that were quite out of bounds in terms of the spirit as well as the way science operates. They let loose this amazing claim and when their results started being questioned, they refused to let anyone see their lab books or apparatus. Then when another science group wrote a paper in Nature stating how you couldn't get cold fusion from the P&F cells, a P&F lawyer threatened them with a libel suit. There were a string of things like those that make them pariahs in the scientific community. The whole thing was a mess and I have always had a hard time generating any sympathy for them given how they behaved and contributed to the circus that got out of hand.
From their abstract they say they corrected the residual wavefront error to 0.05-microns, which for the 659.9-nm light they tested works out to lamda/13, which is not bad for the imaging surface for a mirror. Then again, the mirror was only 37-mm in diameter, so it would be interesting to see how it scales (especially with actuator number).
Slashdot Mirror
Much louder, I'd say. It is especially annoying in a very confined space such as an elevator. And remarkably, some seem to get annoyed if they think you are listening to their conversation. Go figure.
I think one could also say that most philosophers do not have a working knowledge of the science from the last 100 years. I don't think it is an accident that a great deal of the most famous philosophers came from the mechanistic era before relativity and quantum mechanics.
Depends upon the field. It doesn't necessarily have to be about publishing. I see it a lot in the pharmaceutical and medical fields. Somebody, either an academic institution or a company, does some initial research on a small sample group. They see some possible correlation at a 1 or 2 sigma level. Next thing you know, there is a press release touting the "discovery" that oat bran reduces your cholesterol, or that such-and-such has high levels of anti-oxidants and "may reduce your chance of cancer by up to 50-percent." Of course, more research is needed.
Maybe it is the rush to fame, the rush to patent filing, or trying to make a strong case that further funding is justified. Often, it seems to me, that the marketers get involved. Those old enough to remember the oat bran craze will recall that suddenly everything had oat bran added to it. Then somewhere down the line it all fades away because, surprise surprise, further research shows that the effect isn't there, or it is small, etc. Another great example of marketeer influence is the famous 4-hour erection (priapism) danger with Viagra and other ED drugs. Did you know that there weren't any examples of that happening during the clinical trials, but think of how important is became to the marketing campaigns. In fact, the risk of it happening is a concern for people with sickle-cell anemia, leukemia or urethral inflammation, but you wouldn't get that impression from the ads. Here you have a case where something that has an apparent very small effect become a major part of advertising.
Cold fusion is another good example for this thread (I didn't read the original article, but it if wasn't mentioned, it should have been). When the first reports came out, and then the first conferences, we clearly were going to have a free-energy society by now.
Excellent point; one I didn't consider. Perhaps the OP was watching the movie with their head on their sweetie's shoulder? :)
It seems that a lot of the articles now are just links to someone's blog. Not being a blogger myself so I'm not sure how this works, but besides the ego boost of having a lot of people go to your blog, are there other gains for having this happen, like increased ad revenue? Personally, I would rather just have the direct link to Wired or NYT story rather than having to go to someone's page who then links to that same story.
I find it fascinating where people decide to make the world black and white and where they like their grays. I hear people arguing about how these government documents should be released because "we" pay our taxes, etc., etc., etc. I personally don't see how releasing these diplomatic papers, some of which contain frank and candid assessments that may embarrass or chagrin diplomatic counterparts and thus strain our relationships with countries, be in the best interest of anyone, particularly the US. Buy hey, if that is where you want to draw your black and white divider, then fine. The problem in these situations is you (here, I'm using the figurative "you"; I'm not saying you) choose some high and absolute truth then lay down these black-and-white lines (you're with me or against me). Then because reality never neatly fits in the black-and-white model, you need to start lawyering up explanations. In this case apparently every utterance by any person representing the government is a relevant political fact. Really? What if it is wrong, and hence not a fact? Is the fact that someone multi-layers down on some org chart is wrong, or has their own assessment of something that is not necessarily in agreement with official government policy now a relevant political fact?
The other thing I don't understand is the corporation angle. I haven't bothered to learn what the arguments are regarding justifying the desire to release corporate secrets. Regarding Tiger Woods, he is a corporation. He makes WAY more money on his name and image than playing golf, so that should justify releasing every little detail about him, by these arguments. Clearly it is our right to not only see and digest every sex-related text, but all his texts, emails, and the frequency of his bowel movements. I would appreciate it if someone could summarize this argument for me; at first blush it sounds like they are striving for the kind of simplistic and unrealistic world that Ayn Rand liked to place her protagonists, you know where Reardon's steel was so superior to everyone else's that he wasn't allowed to compete on contracts (pardon my memory, but it has been decades since I read that). Or do I have it wrong and they're not proposing that all corporate secrets be opened, just the ones pertaining to government relations?
Kids have no appreciation for good cinema these days.
And you probably want them off your lawn too. :P
I was disappointed to note that the 3D glasses darkened the film in general and when I took them off for comparison during 2D scenes, the colours were much move vivid.
When dealing with polarizers in general, you only get about 50% transmission through them.
Are you suggesting that if there is a discussion within some State Department cables that a foreign diplomat or head of state is having an affair, and with whom, that Wikileaks will edit that out?
Well, that certainly wasn't a very diplomatic response. :)
Isn't it funny how your comment, which actually is relevant to the story, gets modded "offtopic"?
Besides all his great mathematical puzzle books, I really loved Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science.
All the gifts of life are held within CentOS???
Now I'm going to have that song in my head for the rest of the day...
For small businesses, at least ones as small as the one I work for, once you've created savvy and non-savvy groups, you're pretty much out of employees (that being said, if you go by the Government's definition of small business, you can have about 1000 employees and your suggestion would work much better).
Zone Alarm! :)
Actually what is left are a handful of machines that aren't regularly patched or have passwords because they figured they were safe behind the firewall.
How am I supposed to mark the words of an Anonymous Coward?
You certainly evidence your age if you think the children of the 80's are the "me" generation. There is a whole over-hyped group that wore that mantel proud. Interesting enough, the children of that generation are being labeled with that same descriptor with all the self-absorbed websites and blogs.
If you want suck genres for the 60s and 70s, my votes are bubblegum rock and disco.
Touché
I don't think anyone questions his credentials, but I think it does make for a slow news day to point out his 88th birthday. Is this an annual announcement that is made here? Were there front page stories for his 73rd, 68th, or what about 86th?
For what it is worth, it also was the 91st birthday of John Lee Hooker, the 69th birthday of Carl Yastrzemski, and the 146th birthday of Claude Debussy. If you want to argue that these people don't fit in with the slashdot crowd (and before you do, don't forget that baseball nerds and geeks by far predate computer geeks), shouldn't we have mentioned that the 11th was Steve Wozniak's 58th birthday, the 7th was James Randi's 80th birthday (good lord, I didn't know he was that old, but at least that is one of those decadal numbers people get all worked up about), the 5th was Neil Armstrong's 78th, and the 19th would have been Gene Roddenberry's 87th birthday.
Unless there is some significance to this particular birthday, I would have to agree with the GP that it must be a slow news day for this to make the front page.
Forgive my lack of Star Wars geekdom knowledge, but was there mention of a Sith Council in the story? I thought at the end of the first movie Yoda says to Samuel Jackson something to the effect of there are always two: a Sith Lord and an apprentice; never more and never less.
Mono-layer substrates that are on average one atom (or molecule) thick are considered 2-d materials in physics. And depending on the context, such as the wavelengths or other length scale-setting parameters in use, 2-d can be much thicker.
There probably isn't much speculation amongst the scientists and engineers about applying it as an invisibility cloak (at least outside of the context of free publicity and pitching for Congressional pork money) because it most likely would not be effective, at least in the sense most of the breathless SF fanboys around here think. I don't think that you'll be able to construct something that can bend a continuous spectrum, such as sunlight. Single frequencies, sure. The Nature abstract mentions a "broad spectral range," but I have to get on a computer that has access to the article to see what they are talking about. Let's say it works in the red region, you'll still see your object well in the blue.
There are also a lot of optical effect issues with using a flexible material that is draped around an object resulting in curved surfaces. This wouldn't make anything disappear, even if the material worked over all wavelengths, because you'd end up with something that looked real funky depending on the environment in which it was located.
I'm not saying there wouldn't be useful camouflage applications, but we're not talking about the kind of thing Frodo goes around wearing.
There certainly was a lot of shenanigans with the university (their "anonymous donor" support of the Cold Fusion institute led to the retirement of the university president), but that doesn't forgive (in the scientific sense, at least) the refusal of showing data or apparatus, and especially trying to quash valid scientific opinions with lawyers. Those are the tactics of snake oil peddlers such as Randy Mills and the perpetual motion scams.
P&F, for all accounts, don't fall into the same category as Mills and others, but it should not be a surprise that if they use (some of) the same tactics that they will get the same treatment from the larger scientific community.
Cold fusion had developed a stigma after the fallout in the late 80s, which I am sure made it tough to get funding. But I think it is pretty clear that if there are any reactions going on, if those reactions are producing any measurable effects, the effects certainly are very small or subtle. This has moved this area of research into more of an academic-interest arena. If there was consistent reproducibility showing significant energy release, it would get a lot more attention and funding, but if it is always on the fringe of detection with no clear roadmap to a large payoff, it won't get much money or attention. The most ardent of cold fusion supporters cry bias and conspiracy, but I see it as the way science works (in the realm of limited funding resources).
Don't make the whole Pons and Fleishman thing out to be a story of the Davids going against Big Oil and getting squashed, because that isn't what happened. I was in graduate school at the time P&F released their preprint and it was a very exciting time. That preprint flew around the world via fax machines very quickly (if I can dig, I should still have my nth-generation copy) and it was all you heard in the hallways.
My memory is a bit foggy, but P&F did a string of things that were quite out of bounds in terms of the spirit as well as the way science operates. They let loose this amazing claim and when their results started being questioned, they refused to let anyone see their lab books or apparatus. Then when another science group wrote a paper in Nature stating how you couldn't get cold fusion from the P&F cells, a P&F lawyer threatened them with a libel suit. There were a string of things like those that make them pariahs in the scientific community. The whole thing was a mess and I have always had a hard time generating any sympathy for them given how they behaved and contributed to the circus that got out of hand.
From their abstract they say they corrected the residual wavefront error to 0.05-microns, which for the 659.9-nm light they tested works out to lamda/13, which is not bad for the imaging surface for a mirror. Then again, the mirror was only 37-mm in diameter, so it would be interesting to see how it scales (especially with actuator number).