I have a fair coin that always lands on heads, just with about 50% background noise.
The whole point of an experiment is to remove the "background noise", which is another way of saying "uncontrolled variables". If your experiment can't isolate the target variable, then you need to fix your experiment. In the extremely rare case that the experiment can't be fixed, like in cases where a small number of particles matters (including the very small number of photons hitting a telescope sensor), you still should be acknowledging your experimental problems. Own up to having a low p-value, and explain how you did absolutely everything possible with today's technology to pull signal from that background noise.
[We] instead should be assessing research on its relative merit and making judgments about quality from a deeper understanding of the problems that some experiments face.
I agree, but to do that, we'd need a good way to quickly educate every other scientist on that "deeper understanding", and why it's not possible to do any other experiment that does a better job of isolating the variables. Without that, it's easy to simply claim that an overly-complicated random-number generator with cherry-picked results is really an extremely-sensitive test apparatus supporting some pet theory.
This way research which appears interesting but which doesn't hit that magical p == 0.05 can be published and discussed
The significance value is essentially a measurement of how good a researcher is at their job. Unfortunately, a lot of academics feel that they shouldn't be bothered by silly things like "accountability", because they've chosen the noble ivory tower of research.
If your experiment can't hit that level of certainty, redesign your experiment. Go get more samples, run more simulations, and grow more cultures. Alternatively, go ahead and publish, but include the note that the job isn't actually finished. Use the partial result to justify asking for more funding so you can complete the work.
Half of your samples died unexpectedly? If you were a better researcher with better lab practices, you'd have had someone check that the equipment stayed plugged in over spring break.
Nobody responded to your survey? Maybe you should try something more effective than standing in a corner of the local pub for an hour asking the drunks if you can "get something good from them real quick".
You can't get enough reagents for your chemical process? Perhaps you should have actually budgeted for supplies, rather than host an open-bar party celebrating that you received that grant.
You ran out of time on the cluster computer? Next time try asking the computer science students to review your program for efficiency, rather than trying to run a direct implementation of your whiteboard notes.
(These are all things I saw first- or secondhand during my time in academia)
I'd be fine getting rid of the p-value, but it would have to be replaced by something else that does an equal job of filtering out the half-assed crank "research" that makes more headlines than discoveries. The only replacement I can think of that wouldn't be vulnerable to similar "hack" methods would be to require that every experiment go through an exhaustive process inspection before, during, and after the run. That's an even more painful thing to deal with than making sure your experiment can produce significant results.
If your professional workload needs a lot of RAM, Apple will sell you a system for it. They're not going to question why or say "Gee, that's a lot." They'll just put in the higher-end components and send it with a bill. What it's used for is up to the customer.
You want to edit 4K video with a huge RAM-backed cache? This will do it.
You want to run 50 VMs to test your shiny new software? This will do it.
You want to take advantage of your newly-minted CTO's "upgrade everything!" drive before he gets beaten down by the penny-pinching board and you don't see any more upgrade funding until the Lions win the Super Bowl? This will do it.
TLDR: You don't seem to understand science, logic, physics, or astronomy.
It becomes dishonest to require that I prove a negative for my arguments to have merit.
That's not actually true. Having a counterproof is a long-established and straightforward way to disprove something, and I simply note that you don't have any proof (in the form of a testable alternative model, for example) for your counterclaim (that folding space is impossible). It is dishonest to claim a negative, then hide behind the difficulty of proving it as a means to escape the burden of your claim.
Keep in mind evidence is not proof of anything
With apologies to Randall Monroe, "[Evidence] doesn't imply [proof], but it does waggle its eyebrows suggestively and gesture furtively while mouthing 'look over there'."
The notion of "proof" in science is merely that the evidence is so plentiful and the error is so small that a claim is generally accepted as a fact. We have plenty of evidence that our models are correct... and basically none that it's incorrect (because every time we get good evidence, we change the model).
We treat science too much like a church once a model has been introduced...
Ah, sure... that's why we still think atoms are like plum pudding, light moves through the luminiferous aether, and maggots spontaneously form out of rotting meat. Once upon a time, those were all accepted models, until experiments showed that a different model produced more accurate results.
...and because someone cannot disprove something someone cannot even prove yet we get really bent out of shape when someone says... uh no, I am not going to believe that.
That's quite the cognitive dissonance you have there. Science isn't a textbook of facts or a roster of subjects that only nerds can study. It is the process by which we improve our understanding of the world. There is no belief or disbelief. There is only what experiments have shown, and what has not been tested. We have shown conclusively that maggots do not spawn from raw meat, so that concept can be put into the "tested" category. You don't get to simply "not believe" something untested just because you don't like the idea, any more than you could say you do believe in it because you like the notion.
Belief or disbelief without testing is the realm of religion, but science requires having an open mind to everything that is possible.
As an engineer... the math only looked like it worked.
It sounds like your architects need better models. As I recall, that is precisely why architects' designs are handed to certified engineers for structural analysis.
I am still not saying such phenomenon cannot exist... that is not something I have the knowledge to predict... I am just saying that "their" model of what they say is possible is what is not correct because it fails a check with other things we do already know like reality... or at least things we "think we know". And that is why I called it a fantasy.
Or in other words, you think you understand the universe better than physicists, so you're rejecting and disparaging their conclusions because you can't bring yourself to consider something working without building it first.
This scientist is off wasting time on Steps 2 and 3 to a problem without solving the problem of Step 1... finding and getting close enough to a wormhole to even test the merit of such a hypothesis.
Actually, the scientist in TFA is suggesting that photons in a laser beam may increase in energy through a gravitational slingshot, just as we already know spacecraft and other particles can, and that this effect may be utilized for accelerating other massive objects.
Nevermind that, though... You brought up wormholes, so let's talk about wor
...what real difference does it make if they were placed in a landfill?
Unfortunately, the low-oxygen conditions inside landfills makes for a very poor environment for the aerobic bacteria that eat organic material like paper and plant waste. Without those bacteria and a good supply of fresh air, that waste won't decompose in a landfill much better than plastic.
That's one reason why worms are so important in composting. Their tunnels carry enough oxygen to keep the bacteria alive, reducing the need to constantly turn the soil.
Firstly, we have no evidence that it's not possible to fold space to make wormholes, but we do have a pile of evidence that it might be possible, in the form of the mathematical models that keep getting tested and shown to actually match the way the real universe behaves. There have been plenty of experiments that take a form like "according to those models, if we find this object with X and Y parameters, it should also have Z", and when we actually stumble across an object matching those parameters, the model is confirmed at those parameters.
The speculative (not "fiction") part comes when we start looking at the edge cases of those models. What if we had a black hole that was extremely low mass, and compressed with forces stronger than gravity? What if its particles were entangled with those in another black hole? What if multiple black holes are arranged to produce a particular spacetime curvature to amplify other relativistic effects like time dilation?
For cases like those, the math works out, and shows weird results that we haven't observed in the physical world. That doesn't mean they aren't possible, but just might not be natural in conditions seen since the Big Bang. As humans, though, we excel at creating unnatural conditions. We can synthesize large quantities of unstable atoms, and trigger their decay with extreme precision. We can focus lasers to target single molecules. We can create beams of entangled particles and send them to locations a thousand kilometers apart, with enough surviving to perform further experiments.
Perhaps some day, we'll be able to engineer a way to directly test those edge cases in our models. Until then, they remain as open questions, best described as "apparently possible".
Now, as for your example...
Go ahead and wave your arms over your head. You've just warped spacetime, in a tiny and (for human technology at this time) immeasurable way. A record of your action is spreading out into the universe in the form of a gravitational wave, showing a slight shift in the position of your arm's mass. It took very little energy to move your arm, but you've actually deformed spacetime.
All of the physics involved in the preceding paragraph are measured and well-tested. Those tests allow us to gauge the scale of universal processes. It takes very little work to warp spacetime... literally just existing will do it. According to our models, though, we'd need a huge amount of deformation to create something like a wormhole. Multiply those scales together, and you end up with a problem on the larger side of "reasonable". It'll take energy levels somewhere between a nuclear bomb and a star (because estimates like this aren't exactly precise), but it's something humans could feasibly test before our extinction.
Once that test happens, one of two results will follow. Either we will have wormhole-creation technology and can go exploring the universe with wormholes as a tool, or we will have an observation that breaks our predicted models, and we'll have to create a new model that accounts for all of our observations. Either way, it'll be an exciting day for physicists.
That's a perfectly straightforward solution. For claims that can't be established as true or not, simply label them as inconclusive. For complex subjects, enumerate the claims, and evaluate them independently. Jussie Smollett might have been proven to lie about things in the past, and he might have been proven to tell the truth in the past as well, but those have minimal impact on the current issue, whose truth has not yet been determined.
Now, mind you I used to work for the defense industry, so I may be a bit biased...
I think war technology is a good thing. I would much prefer to simply not go to war, but that sentiment hasn't really held sway at any point in the last few thousand years or so. Somebody always wants to abuse somebody else, and when that ambition reaches the scale of having entire demographics in conflict, you get a war.
Like all large-scale endeavors, a war is messy. People often have their own goals for joining an organization. In a large corporation, their goals might be as sinister as "get paid to sleep", but in a war, they might find a convenient way to hide a murderous rampage under the guise of patriotic service. Of course, this is something everyone (else) would like to avoid, but it's hard to spot the difference between a psychopathic killer and a well-trained soldier.
In the rest of society, this is where a justice system comes into play. Knowing that evidence will be collected and that a crime is likely to be punished deters further crime. Attempts to hide a crime often just produce more evidence against the perpetrators. No, it's not a perfect system, and the justice system itself can be abused, but it's still a net benefit in a peaceful society.
In war, the rigid justice system is often placed second to completing a mission, and any allegations of wrongdoing will be accompanied by very sparse surviving evidence. Within a few days of a crime, witnesses are reassigned, memories are repressed, and new missions take priority over a bureaucratic boondoggle.
Technology doesn't have those limits. Events can be captured, and recordings can be archived. Decisions can be made far from the field of battle, in the safety of a conference room and with the pooled knowledge and awareness of the whole team, supported by streaming intelligence from remote surveillance. Those decisions and the resulting actions can be analyzed, dissected, replayed, and repeated endlessly as a training exercise, until every soldier behaves exactly as the commanders (right up the chain to the top) have authorized.
No, it's not going to be easy. Yes, there will be misbehavior and abuse. There will still be the rampaging marauders who use the military as a ride to a third-world country so they can indulge their own anarchist fantasy. Even if everyone acts appropriately, there will be edge cases that lead to mistakes in everyone's judgement. Nothing will be a perfect solution, but we can work to make it better.
We can put always-on cameras on each soldier. We can use AI to suggest different interpretations of intelligence reports. We can use high-precision guided weaponry to avoid collateral damage. We can use computerized information systems to present an accurate understanding of evidence, and most importantly, we can support a military culture where soldiers know they will be accountable for their actions, and can trust that they will be guided appropriately.
A military is a machine, and for as long as there have been soldiers, they have just been parts in that machine. With modern technology, we can improve the machine, to make it the most reliable, most accurate, and least error-prone.
It's pushing the borders of that "blasphemous" label, but I'd recommend Adam Black's comic "Locus". The actual blasphemous parts are supporting details for a bigger story about the sort of things a deity might fear.
Personally, I'm opposed to the idea that anybody's purely evil. I think people are driven by motivations we just don't understand or don't agree with.
From that perspective, I'll wildly speculate with no evidence or context! That's what Slashdotters do best!
By threatening regulation instead of actually proposing regulation, Pai has actually opened the door for carriers to avoid compliance. They can present timelines pulled from dark and smelly orifices, promising that they'll be compliant sometime in 2083, and Pai can then turn around and issue statements that the FCC is now working "for the people" and "working with carriers to ensure timelines are met". Any further push by the public to accelerate the standards' implementation will just be called political posturing, led by the Deep State to undermine the FCC's authority.
Meanwhile, the big carriers will demand subsidies to implement this new standard, and in the name of system-wide compatibility, they will insist the government adopt (and mandate) another new standard, conveniently authored by several industry insiders, and which relies on a software patent with exorbitant licensing fees, just-so-unfortunately out of reach for a startup carrier's budget.
To be clear, this post is intended to be modded "Funny". Please do not let it be "Insightful". For the sake of all Americans, I hope to be completely wrong.
Well, there you have it. That's the most insightful first comment I've seen on Slashdot in a very long time.
You're absolutely right. Outside of "legacy support" (including supporting legacy workflows and legacy users who don't want to learn a new interface), the only real reasons to run Windows are for application and data compatibility. Previously, I'd have included Active Directory as a vital Windows-only service, but Samba is capable enough now to be a viable alternative.
Application compatibility is already gone in this case: Even on Windows, you're still on ARM. You can't expect software will work cleanly.
Data compatibility is a hairier issue, but it pretty much boils down to Office documents and PDF. Other formats are either standard enough (like image formats) that third-party (and FOSS) software can work with them perfectly, or rare enough that perfection isn't a general expectation. PDF support in FOSS is getting better, to the point where it's approaching perfection, and Adobe doesn't have any reason to make the format intentionally unusable for others. Office formats, on the other hand, are full of things that don't actually conform to the published "standards", and Microsoft is quite happy to be the only player in that game.
If it's a trade-off between "faster" and "better", I expect most producers will choose "faster", especially for rendering various preview edits.
Of course, the magic word is really "licensing"... Adobe could license the software encoding algorithms from others and build ASICs around them, or make it possible to load a software encoder to run on Adobe's processors.
I would not expect to see uncompressed frames sent over any current PC I/O technology. Compared to the speeds possible inside a custom device, that I/O link would likely be a bottleneck. Lossless compression might help, but that seems like extra work for Adobe to just make a market for other companies.
We're talking video rendering, which is almost entirely unrelated to the decoding process that's so fast (and already supported by custom silicon like inside that Roku player you mentioned).
As an AC said:
Once an editor is finished editing a film, they have to render it. This process [stitches] all the edits and effects together into one video file.
Now, note that those edits include computing special effects (like chroma key), compositing layers on top of other layers, as well as arranging different clips into one big video, then the whole result must be encoded. Typically, the video codecs are asymmetric, doing a lot more processing during the encoding step so the decoding can be faster and easier (and therefore supporting higher framerates with cheaper decoding hardware).
4K video, in 24-bit color and uncompressed (which is really necessary to do the full compositing operation) is about 25 megabytes per frame. At 60 FPS, that's 1.5 gigabytes per second, or 12 Gbps, to use typical bandwidth units. In comparison, that will just about fully saturate a PCI-e x16 slot and some of the lower DDR4 specs. That's okay, because you won't be storing that data in memory for very long anyway... 64 GB of RAM will only store 42 seconds of uncompressed video. During the encoding process, you'll want to have that old video accessible, because it's useful for making more efficient compression of future frames.
That's a lot of data, all to get a seamless composition, which is really rather important for having modern CGI effects blend invisibly into the recorded footage. Without the full rendering process, the effect layers may get different handling, so they'll appear noticeably different in the final render. In the effort to produce uncompromising results for you, the viewer, studios just take longer for rendering, spending more money on salaries so you get a better result... or they just cut corners and render at a lower resolution.
Having custom devices (and custom silicon) would mean that Adobe (or another vendor) would be able to take advantage of things like dedicated GDDR5X memory for high-bandwidth (256Gbps per chip, and lots of chips to increase capacity) storage, ARM processors for processing (though not necessarily rendering (in the non-video usually-3D sense)) special effects, and ASICs for the compositing and encoding operations, only relying on the host computer for storing the final product. In theory, a shoebox-sized peripheral could replace a data center render farm, enabling near-real-time rendering of edited film. That means directors and production crews can see their results more quickly, allowing them more time to reshoot or otherwise make a better product.
It's certainly a commercial gamble for Adobe... but like I said, they're one of very few companies with a market position that makes custom hardware sensible.
For just about anybody else, I'd agree with you... For Adobe, though, it kinda makes sense.
Adobe's cash cow is the media industry, and one of their biggest performance bottlenecks is video rendering. While not a particularly large market, having a premium hardware product that improves rendering speed is worth quite a lot of money to certain companies. I expect that's what Adobe is looking to capture with this push, with a model that would look very similar to how Bitcoin miners operated: Plug in an ASIC as a coprocessor, and it will handle the application workload.
"Mostly false" is usually a hedge bet. It doesn't mean the referenced claim is any more worthy of consideration.
I can make the statement that "the daytime sky is blue because there are millions of blue fairies flying around during the day, and they sleep at night." It's easy for a fact-checker to say that claim is false, because the physics of a blue sky are well-understood. Then I can turn around and attack the fact-checkers for slandering me, because it's obvious that the sky is indeed blue. By including just a small bit of truth, I can both appeal to people with only a simple understanding (like those who have looked outside and seen a blue sky), and also give myself ammunition for a later counter-attack against the fact-checkers: "See? This part is provably true, and they didn't acknowledge it! They're clearly biased against me!"
That counter-attack itself serves multiple goals. Of course, it makes my life easier if fact-checkers are discredited, since I can lie with impunity later, but it also provides a bit more cover of the original claim. While everyone is discussing how truthful the "sky is blue" claim is, they're not discussing the claim about "blue fairies sleep at night". If my political goal is to subsidize my chain of hotels catering to fairies, I can fill the conversation with arguments about fact-checkers and truth meters, while quietly pushing my agenda. If I can lie enough and manufacture enough controversy to discredit all fact-checkers, then I can lie with complete impunity. Even new start-up fact-checkers can be quickly shot down by lumping them in with my previously-discredited victims.
This is why it's important to read the full articles. The tiny assessments can give you an idea of how severely a politician is trying to manipulate you, but to really understand what's true or false, you have to read the fact-checker's full report.
In other words, despite what propagandists love to spout, the economy is global, and buying from anywhere creates jobs everywhere. It's stupidly short-sighted to focus on one particular industry in one particular location, because global shipping is so cheap that it's more cost-effective to move parts around than to stand up a local manufacturing process.
Buy parts from country A, built components in B and C, assemble in D, sell to E. Everybody benefits a little bit, and the end result is a product that's cheap enough to be reasonably affordable.
This isn't democrats vs republicans. It is that Trump is an Insane Idiot, not fit to be president.
Precisely.
My thoughts while reading TFS were "Unlimited funding sounds silly", then "Mars by 2020... that's ridiculously aggressive..." and I started thinking about the planetary motions involved, and current launch capabilities (for humanity, not just NASA), and started constructing a timetable in my head. They'd need to launch by early 2020, with supplies for a year, and we'd still need some way to get them home... it just isn't going to happen.
None of that has anything to do with who's in the White House. Even with unlimited funding, there is reality to be dealt with. Space is big. Rocket science is hard. Humankind has not yet built a spacecraft that is capable of landing humans on another planet (with planet-scale gravity) and taking off again, let alone actually returning them to Earth. If we don't return them to Earth, human society has not reached a point where it's generally acceptable to send people to their certain death.
"But is there any way we could do it by the end of my first term?"
Again, my thought: "Oh, of course. That's why it's a ridiculous date. He wants a headline."
Past presidents had reasons for their decisions, however they affected NASA's funding. I may not agree with those reasons or their priorities, but at least they had American societal interests in mind. Trump is only interested in his own brand.
Oh yes... I'd like to see something similar to Ubuntu's PPA system implemented by Microsoft.
Within Windows, maintain a list of software and URLs (and perhaps licensing identifiers). When a program is installing, it can ask to enable automatic updates, and if approved, it can add a URL to the list. Those URLs would point to an XML file (or JSON, or whatever) describing available versions, along with how to run the installer (preferably in a silent update mode). Windows itself can then periodically search for updates, alert the user with a consistent UI, and update as requested.
I'm assuming the Windows Store was built to do much of that, but having the walled garden approach limits its appeal.
I'm not the old guy saying "all modern music sucks"
Yes, you are.
I'm not saying you're wrong, mind you...
but I am saying a lot of it sucks because of how it was recorded (often starting with no-talent acts put together by focus group).
My preferred phrasing is that there's "no art in the craft". For every thousand performers who want to go out and create something, there's only a dozen or so that have any knowledge or skill to add to the field. As Sturgeon's Law states, "90% of everything is crap", and that includes artistic people (and other people, but let's not get too far off track). Of course, that principle applies to not just the artists themselves, but the audio engineers, producers, marketers, and all the others who are involved in making music available to the masses. Even if a musician is phenomenal, chances are you're never going to hear their work.
As for the "old guy" part, it's perfectly reasonable. Time is the great filter that separates the average crap from the groundbreaking work that advances the start of the art. The forgettable works are forgotten, and the memorable ones are remembered... then spoofed, paid tribute, and regarded as inspiration for the future generation of mostly-crap derivative. In 50 years, we'll still be complaining about how modern music sucks, but we'll have a select few examples from the 2010s, about which we'll say "it really defined the genre" and "they were a musical genius".
All communication with students has to be archived as it should be accessible to parents via the Freedom of Information App.
Wait, what?
You can't be talking about the Freedom Of Information Act, because that only covers making federal records available. It doesn't actually mandate keeping any records, though - that's covered by other acts like the Presidential Records Act which has been in the news lately.
For educational records, there is the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, but that has a similar effect in that it allows for records to be reviewed and corrected, but it doesn't appear (in my quick reading) to actually require schools to make new records.
It also protects teachers from unfounded accusations by students.
Well, it seems people really like their cell phones, computers, voice-controlled lights, and all those other luxuries of the ever-advancing modern society, so people keep working.
Slashdot Mirror
I have a fair coin that always lands on heads, just with about 50% background noise.
The whole point of an experiment is to remove the "background noise", which is another way of saying "uncontrolled variables". If your experiment can't isolate the target variable, then you need to fix your experiment. In the extremely rare case that the experiment can't be fixed, like in cases where a small number of particles matters (including the very small number of photons hitting a telescope sensor), you still should be acknowledging your experimental problems. Own up to having a low p-value, and explain how you did absolutely everything possible with today's technology to pull signal from that background noise.
[We] instead should be assessing research on its relative merit and making judgments about quality from a deeper understanding of the problems that some experiments face.
I agree, but to do that, we'd need a good way to quickly educate every other scientist on that "deeper understanding", and why it's not possible to do any other experiment that does a better job of isolating the variables. Without that, it's easy to simply claim that an overly-complicated random-number generator with cherry-picked results is really an extremely-sensitive test apparatus supporting some pet theory.
This way research which appears interesting but which doesn't hit that magical p == 0.05 can be published and discussed
The significance value is essentially a measurement of how good a researcher is at their job. Unfortunately, a lot of academics feel that they shouldn't be bothered by silly things like "accountability", because they've chosen the noble ivory tower of research.
If your experiment can't hit that level of certainty, redesign your experiment. Go get more samples, run more simulations, and grow more cultures. Alternatively, go ahead and publish, but include the note that the job isn't actually finished. Use the partial result to justify asking for more funding so you can complete the work.
(These are all things I saw first- or secondhand during my time in academia)
I'd be fine getting rid of the p-value, but it would have to be replaced by something else that does an equal job of filtering out the half-assed crank "research" that makes more headlines than discoveries. The only replacement I can think of that wouldn't be vulnerable to similar "hack" methods would be to require that every experiment go through an exhaustive process inspection before, during, and after the run. That's an even more painful thing to deal with than making sure your experiment can produce significant results.
This is precisely the point.
If your professional workload needs a lot of RAM, Apple will sell you a system for it. They're not going to question why or say "Gee, that's a lot." They'll just put in the higher-end components and send it with a bill. What it's used for is up to the customer.
You want to edit 4K video with a huge RAM-backed cache? This will do it.
You want to run 50 VMs to test your shiny new software? This will do it.
You want to take advantage of your newly-minted CTO's "upgrade everything!" drive before he gets beaten down by the penny-pinching board and you don't see any more upgrade funding until the Lions win the Super Bowl? This will do it.
TLDR: You don't seem to understand science, logic, physics, or astronomy.
It becomes dishonest to require that I prove a negative for my arguments to have merit.
That's not actually true. Having a counterproof is a long-established and straightforward way to disprove something, and I simply note that you don't have any proof (in the form of a testable alternative model, for example) for your counterclaim (that folding space is impossible). It is dishonest to claim a negative, then hide behind the difficulty of proving it as a means to escape the burden of your claim.
Keep in mind evidence is not proof of anything
With apologies to Randall Monroe, "[Evidence] doesn't imply [proof], but it does waggle its eyebrows suggestively and gesture furtively while mouthing 'look over there'."
The notion of "proof" in science is merely that the evidence is so plentiful and the error is so small that a claim is generally accepted as a fact. We have plenty of evidence that our models are correct... and basically none that it's incorrect (because every time we get good evidence, we change the model).
We treat science too much like a church once a model has been introduced...
Ah, sure... that's why we still think atoms are like plum pudding, light moves through the luminiferous aether, and maggots spontaneously form out of rotting meat. Once upon a time, those were all accepted models, until experiments showed that a different model produced more accurate results.
...and because someone cannot disprove something someone cannot even prove yet we get really bent out of shape when someone says... uh no, I am not going to believe that.
That's quite the cognitive dissonance you have there. Science isn't a textbook of facts or a roster of subjects that only nerds can study. It is the process by which we improve our understanding of the world. There is no belief or disbelief. There is only what experiments have shown, and what has not been tested. We have shown conclusively that maggots do not spawn from raw meat, so that concept can be put into the "tested" category. You don't get to simply "not believe" something untested just because you don't like the idea, any more than you could say you do believe in it because you like the notion.
Belief or disbelief without testing is the realm of religion, but science requires having an open mind to everything that is possible.
As an engineer... the math only looked like it worked.
It sounds like your architects need better models. As I recall, that is precisely why architects' designs are handed to certified engineers for structural analysis.
I am still not saying such phenomenon cannot exist... that is not something I have the knowledge to predict... I am just saying that "their" model of what they say is possible is what is not correct because it fails a check with other things we do already know like reality... or at least things we "think we know". And that is why I called it a fantasy.
Or in other words, you think you understand the universe better than physicists, so you're rejecting and disparaging their conclusions because you can't bring yourself to consider something working without building it first.
This scientist is off wasting time on Steps 2 and 3 to a problem without solving the problem of Step 1... finding and getting close enough to a wormhole to even test the merit of such a hypothesis.
Actually, the scientist in TFA is suggesting that photons in a laser beam may increase in energy through a gravitational slingshot, just as we already know spacecraft and other particles can, and that this effect may be utilized for accelerating other massive objects.
Nevermind that, though... You brought up wormholes, so let's talk about wor
...what real difference does it make if they were placed in a landfill?
Unfortunately, the low-oxygen conditions inside landfills makes for a very poor environment for the aerobic bacteria that eat organic material like paper and plant waste. Without those bacteria and a good supply of fresh air, that waste won't decompose in a landfill much better than plastic.
That's one reason why worms are so important in composting. Their tunnels carry enough oxygen to keep the bacteria alive, reducing the need to constantly turn the soil.
I don't think your hostility is warranted...
Firstly, we have no evidence that it's not possible to fold space to make wormholes, but we do have a pile of evidence that it might be possible, in the form of the mathematical models that keep getting tested and shown to actually match the way the real universe behaves. There have been plenty of experiments that take a form like "according to those models, if we find this object with X and Y parameters, it should also have Z", and when we actually stumble across an object matching those parameters, the model is confirmed at those parameters.
The speculative (not "fiction") part comes when we start looking at the edge cases of those models. What if we had a black hole that was extremely low mass, and compressed with forces stronger than gravity? What if its particles were entangled with those in another black hole? What if multiple black holes are arranged to produce a particular spacetime curvature to amplify other relativistic effects like time dilation?
For cases like those, the math works out, and shows weird results that we haven't observed in the physical world. That doesn't mean they aren't possible, but just might not be natural in conditions seen since the Big Bang. As humans, though, we excel at creating unnatural conditions. We can synthesize large quantities of unstable atoms, and trigger their decay with extreme precision. We can focus lasers to target single molecules. We can create beams of entangled particles and send them to locations a thousand kilometers apart, with enough surviving to perform further experiments.
Perhaps some day, we'll be able to engineer a way to directly test those edge cases in our models. Until then, they remain as open questions, best described as "apparently possible".
Now, as for your example...
Go ahead and wave your arms over your head. You've just warped spacetime, in a tiny and (for human technology at this time) immeasurable way. A record of your action is spreading out into the universe in the form of a gravitational wave, showing a slight shift in the position of your arm's mass. It took very little energy to move your arm, but you've actually deformed spacetime.
All of the physics involved in the preceding paragraph are measured and well-tested. Those tests allow us to gauge the scale of universal processes. It takes very little work to warp spacetime... literally just existing will do it. According to our models, though, we'd need a huge amount of deformation to create something like a wormhole. Multiply those scales together, and you end up with a problem on the larger side of "reasonable". It'll take energy levels somewhere between a nuclear bomb and a star (because estimates like this aren't exactly precise), but it's something humans could feasibly test before our extinction.
Once that test happens, one of two results will follow. Either we will have wormhole-creation technology and can go exploring the universe with wormholes as a tool, or we will have an observation that breaks our predicted models, and we'll have to create a new model that accounts for all of our observations. Either way, it'll be an exciting day for physicists.
That's a perfectly straightforward solution. For claims that can't be established as true or not, simply label them as inconclusive. For complex subjects, enumerate the claims, and evaluate them independently. Jussie Smollett might have been proven to lie about things in the past, and he might have been proven to tell the truth in the past as well, but those have minimal impact on the current issue, whose truth has not yet been determined.
Now, mind you I used to work for the defense industry, so I may be a bit biased...
I think war technology is a good thing. I would much prefer to simply not go to war, but that sentiment hasn't really held sway at any point in the last few thousand years or so. Somebody always wants to abuse somebody else, and when that ambition reaches the scale of having entire demographics in conflict, you get a war.
Like all large-scale endeavors, a war is messy. People often have their own goals for joining an organization. In a large corporation, their goals might be as sinister as "get paid to sleep", but in a war, they might find a convenient way to hide a murderous rampage under the guise of patriotic service. Of course, this is something everyone (else) would like to avoid, but it's hard to spot the difference between a psychopathic killer and a well-trained soldier.
In the rest of society, this is where a justice system comes into play. Knowing that evidence will be collected and that a crime is likely to be punished deters further crime. Attempts to hide a crime often just produce more evidence against the perpetrators. No, it's not a perfect system, and the justice system itself can be abused, but it's still a net benefit in a peaceful society.
In war, the rigid justice system is often placed second to completing a mission, and any allegations of wrongdoing will be accompanied by very sparse surviving evidence. Within a few days of a crime, witnesses are reassigned, memories are repressed, and new missions take priority over a bureaucratic boondoggle.
Technology doesn't have those limits. Events can be captured, and recordings can be archived. Decisions can be made far from the field of battle, in the safety of a conference room and with the pooled knowledge and awareness of the whole team, supported by streaming intelligence from remote surveillance. Those decisions and the resulting actions can be analyzed, dissected, replayed, and repeated endlessly as a training exercise, until every soldier behaves exactly as the commanders (right up the chain to the top) have authorized.
No, it's not going to be easy. Yes, there will be misbehavior and abuse. There will still be the rampaging marauders who use the military as a ride to a third-world country so they can indulge their own anarchist fantasy. Even if everyone acts appropriately, there will be edge cases that lead to mistakes in everyone's judgement. Nothing will be a perfect solution, but we can work to make it better.
We can put always-on cameras on each soldier. We can use AI to suggest different interpretations of intelligence reports. We can use high-precision guided weaponry to avoid collateral damage. We can use computerized information systems to present an accurate understanding of evidence, and most importantly, we can support a military culture where soldiers know they will be accountable for their actions, and can trust that they will be guided appropriately.
A military is a machine, and for as long as there have been soldiers, they have just been parts in that machine. With modern technology, we can improve the machine, to make it the most reliable, most accurate, and least error-prone.
It's pushing the borders of that "blasphemous" label, but I'd recommend Adam Black's comic "Locus". The actual blasphemous parts are supporting details for a bigger story about the sort of things a deity might fear.
...
...Jackass.
Personally, I'm opposed to the idea that anybody's purely evil. I think people are driven by motivations we just don't understand or don't agree with.
From that perspective, I'll wildly speculate with no evidence or context! That's what Slashdotters do best!
By threatening regulation instead of actually proposing regulation, Pai has actually opened the door for carriers to avoid compliance. They can present timelines pulled from dark and smelly orifices, promising that they'll be compliant sometime in 2083, and Pai can then turn around and issue statements that the FCC is now working "for the people" and "working with carriers to ensure timelines are met". Any further push by the public to accelerate the standards' implementation will just be called political posturing, led by the Deep State to undermine the FCC's authority.
Meanwhile, the big carriers will demand subsidies to implement this new standard, and in the name of system-wide compatibility, they will insist the government adopt (and mandate) another new standard, conveniently authored by several industry insiders, and which relies on a software patent with exorbitant licensing fees, just-so-unfortunately out of reach for a startup carrier's budget.
To be clear, this post is intended to be modded "Funny". Please do not let it be "Insightful". For the sake of all Americans, I hope to be completely wrong.
Well, there you have it. That's the most insightful first comment I've seen on Slashdot in a very long time.
You're absolutely right. Outside of "legacy support" (including supporting legacy workflows and legacy users who don't want to learn a new interface), the only real reasons to run Windows are for application and data compatibility. Previously, I'd have included Active Directory as a vital Windows-only service, but Samba is capable enough now to be a viable alternative.
Application compatibility is already gone in this case: Even on Windows, you're still on ARM. You can't expect software will work cleanly.
Data compatibility is a hairier issue, but it pretty much boils down to Office documents and PDF. Other formats are either standard enough (like image formats) that third-party (and FOSS) software can work with them perfectly, or rare enough that perfection isn't a general expectation. PDF support in FOSS is getting better, to the point where it's approaching perfection, and Adobe doesn't have any reason to make the format intentionally unusable for others. Office formats, on the other hand, are full of things that don't actually conform to the published "standards", and Microsoft is quite happy to be the only player in that game.
If it's a trade-off between "faster" and "better", I expect most producers will choose "faster", especially for rendering various preview edits.
Of course, the magic word is really "licensing"... Adobe could license the software encoding algorithms from others and build ASICs around them, or make it possible to load a software encoder to run on Adobe's processors.
I would not expect to see uncompressed frames sent over any current PC I/O technology. Compared to the speeds possible inside a custom device, that I/O link would likely be a bottleneck. Lossless compression might help, but that seems like extra work for Adobe to just make a market for other companies.
We're talking video rendering, which is almost entirely unrelated to the decoding process that's so fast (and already supported by custom silicon like inside that Roku player you mentioned).
As an AC said:
Once an editor is finished editing a film, they have to render it. This process [stitches] all the edits and effects together into one video file.
Now, note that those edits include computing special effects (like chroma key), compositing layers on top of other layers, as well as arranging different clips into one big video, then the whole result must be encoded. Typically, the video codecs are asymmetric, doing a lot more processing during the encoding step so the decoding can be faster and easier (and therefore supporting higher framerates with cheaper decoding hardware).
4K video, in 24-bit color and uncompressed (which is really necessary to do the full compositing operation) is about 25 megabytes per frame. At 60 FPS, that's 1.5 gigabytes per second, or 12 Gbps, to use typical bandwidth units. In comparison, that will just about fully saturate a PCI-e x16 slot and some of the lower DDR4 specs. That's okay, because you won't be storing that data in memory for very long anyway... 64 GB of RAM will only store 42 seconds of uncompressed video. During the encoding process, you'll want to have that old video accessible, because it's useful for making more efficient compression of future frames.
That's a lot of data, all to get a seamless composition, which is really rather important for having modern CGI effects blend invisibly into the recorded footage. Without the full rendering process, the effect layers may get different handling, so they'll appear noticeably different in the final render. In the effort to produce uncompromising results for you, the viewer, studios just take longer for rendering, spending more money on salaries so you get a better result... or they just cut corners and render at a lower resolution.
Having custom devices (and custom silicon) would mean that Adobe (or another vendor) would be able to take advantage of things like dedicated GDDR5X memory for high-bandwidth (256Gbps per chip, and lots of chips to increase capacity) storage, ARM processors for processing (though not necessarily rendering (in the non-video usually-3D sense)) special effects, and ASICs for the compositing and encoding operations, only relying on the host computer for storing the final product. In theory, a shoebox-sized peripheral could replace a data center render farm, enabling near-real-time rendering of edited film. That means directors and production crews can see their results more quickly, allowing them more time to reshoot or otherwise make a better product.
It's certainly a commercial gamble for Adobe... but like I said, they're one of very few companies with a market position that makes custom hardware sensible.
For just about anybody else, I'd agree with you... For Adobe, though, it kinda makes sense.
Adobe's cash cow is the media industry, and one of their biggest performance bottlenecks is video rendering. While not a particularly large market, having a premium hardware product that improves rendering speed is worth quite a lot of money to certain companies. I expect that's what Adobe is looking to capture with this push, with a model that would look very similar to how Bitcoin miners operated: Plug in an ASIC as a coprocessor, and it will handle the application workload.
Back in my day, we just tried to follow "responsible disclosure", and reported vulnerabilities because it made the world a safer place.
This kind of stunt undermines that, by making responsible researchers (like me) more easily confused with actual blackmailers.
"Mostly false" is usually a hedge bet. It doesn't mean the referenced claim is any more worthy of consideration.
I can make the statement that "the daytime sky is blue because there are millions of blue fairies flying around during the day, and they sleep at night." It's easy for a fact-checker to say that claim is false, because the physics of a blue sky are well-understood. Then I can turn around and attack the fact-checkers for slandering me, because it's obvious that the sky is indeed blue. By including just a small bit of truth, I can both appeal to people with only a simple understanding (like those who have looked outside and seen a blue sky), and also give myself ammunition for a later counter-attack against the fact-checkers: "See? This part is provably true, and they didn't acknowledge it! They're clearly biased against me!"
That counter-attack itself serves multiple goals. Of course, it makes my life easier if fact-checkers are discredited, since I can lie with impunity later, but it also provides a bit more cover of the original claim. While everyone is discussing how truthful the "sky is blue" claim is, they're not discussing the claim about "blue fairies sleep at night". If my political goal is to subsidize my chain of hotels catering to fairies, I can fill the conversation with arguments about fact-checkers and truth meters, while quietly pushing my agenda. If I can lie enough and manufacture enough controversy to discredit all fact-checkers, then I can lie with complete impunity. Even new start-up fact-checkers can be quickly shot down by lumping them in with my previously-discredited victims.
This is why it's important to read the full articles. The tiny assessments can give you an idea of how severely a politician is trying to manipulate you, but to really understand what's true or false, you have to read the fact-checker's full report.
In other words, despite what propagandists love to spout, the economy is global, and buying from anywhere creates jobs everywhere. It's stupidly short-sighted to focus on one particular industry in one particular location, because global shipping is so cheap that it's more cost-effective to move parts around than to stand up a local manufacturing process.
Buy parts from country A, built components in B and C, assemble in D, sell to E. Everybody benefits a little bit, and the end result is a product that's cheap enough to be reasonably affordable.
Apparently it is. That's the announcement of the original Compute Module in 2014.
The new post is more recent.
This isn't democrats vs republicans. It is that Trump is an Insane Idiot, not fit to be president.
Precisely.
My thoughts while reading TFS were "Unlimited funding sounds silly", then "Mars by 2020... that's ridiculously aggressive..." and I started thinking about the planetary motions involved, and current launch capabilities (for humanity, not just NASA), and started constructing a timetable in my head. They'd need to launch by early 2020, with supplies for a year, and we'd still need some way to get them home... it just isn't going to happen.
None of that has anything to do with who's in the White House. Even with unlimited funding, there is reality to be dealt with. Space is big. Rocket science is hard. Humankind has not yet built a spacecraft that is capable of landing humans on another planet (with planet-scale gravity) and taking off again, let alone actually returning them to Earth. If we don't return them to Earth, human society has not reached a point where it's generally acceptable to send people to their certain death.
"But is there any way we could do it by the end of my first term?"
Again, my thought: "Oh, of course. That's why it's a ridiculous date. He wants a headline."
Past presidents had reasons for their decisions, however they affected NASA's funding. I may not agree with those reasons or their priorities, but at least they had American societal interests in mind. Trump is only interested in his own brand.
Oh yes... I'd like to see something similar to Ubuntu's PPA system implemented by Microsoft.
Within Windows, maintain a list of software and URLs (and perhaps licensing identifiers). When a program is installing, it can ask to enable automatic updates, and if approved, it can add a URL to the list. Those URLs would point to an XML file (or JSON, or whatever) describing available versions, along with how to run the installer (preferably in a silent update mode). Windows itself can then periodically search for updates, alert the user with a consistent UI, and update as requested.
I'm assuming the Windows Store was built to do much of that, but having the walled garden approach limits its appeal.
Yes.
It's typically "use before a security vulnerability is identified and exploited by malware".
I'm not the old guy saying "all modern music sucks"
Yes, you are.
I'm not saying you're wrong, mind you...
but I am saying a lot of it sucks because of how it was recorded (often starting with no-talent acts put together by focus group).
My preferred phrasing is that there's "no art in the craft". For every thousand performers who want to go out and create something, there's only a dozen or so that have any knowledge or skill to add to the field. As Sturgeon's Law states, "90% of everything is crap", and that includes artistic people (and other people, but let's not get too far off track). Of course, that principle applies to not just the artists themselves, but the audio engineers, producers, marketers, and all the others who are involved in making music available to the masses. Even if a musician is phenomenal, chances are you're never going to hear their work.
As for the "old guy" part, it's perfectly reasonable. Time is the great filter that separates the average crap from the groundbreaking work that advances the start of the art. The forgettable works are forgotten, and the memorable ones are remembered... then spoofed, paid tribute, and regarded as inspiration for the future generation of mostly-crap derivative. In 50 years, we'll still be complaining about how modern music sucks, but we'll have a select few examples from the 2010s, about which we'll say "it really defined the genre" and "they were a musical genius".
All communication with students has to be archived as it should be accessible to parents via the Freedom of Information App.
Wait, what?
You can't be talking about the Freedom Of Information Act, because that only covers making federal records available. It doesn't actually mandate keeping any records, though - that's covered by other acts like the Presidential Records Act which has been in the news lately.
For educational records, there is the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, but that has a similar effect in that it allows for records to be reviewed and corrected, but it doesn't appear (in my quick reading) to actually require schools to make new records.
It also protects teachers from unfounded accusations by students.
That seems more like the actual reason.
Well, it seems people really like their cell phones, computers, voice-controlled lights, and all those other luxuries of the ever-advancing modern society, so people keep working.