I was about to say "Even Al Queda thinks he's dead", but you beat me to it, I don't think I read it in any of the other comments above though and I see it as important and telling that this is not about proof and more about the message.
What comes across to me is the sheer coldness of this whole business...
He was unarmed. So, what of it ?
Can we see his body ? No. Fuck off
Can we visit his grave? No. Fuck off
Can we see his effects ? No. Fuck off
It is so assertive in a way that splashing an image of his corpse all over the news could never be. In this instance I think the style is important and that Obama is being very effective.
were attended by 100s of students. I can't see there being much capacity available to upload or download 10s of Mbytes per student for 100s or 1000s of students in a small campus area. I don't believe the infrastructure in most places would be able to handle "download your textbook and turn to the section on..." in a timely manner.
as I got older. I figured if I could not actually be a brilliant eccentric then at least I could behave like one and hope someone would fall for my ploy.
A lot of people seem to have missed the point here. Either that or the old sensors were cleverer than I thought. Anyhow, I like this approach, I wonder how well it copes with fingers bunched together looking like a single fat finger or whether it can still be confident that the finger it tracks out of a bunch is the same one it tracked going in without getting confused.
Sucks, I know (and agree); but no one forces you to use a cellphone.
Nor is anyone forced to travel by air, or to use a computer, or a library or to walk around downtown...
But I sure am getting sick of being barred from any modern human activity if I should want to go about my business without enhanced levels of surveillance.
Of all the millions of financial transactions that have some reasonable use (like financing business or housing loans), the vast majority should be straightforward enough to be handled by a well established computer assisted system. What remains, the extremes of complex derivative trading or whatever could probably be dispensed with without bringing the financial world to its knees (and have probably done much to create crisis in the past). In short, if it was so complex that it was not done prior to 1970 then we could probably live without it now. The risk these stochastic calculus wielding geniuses are taking affects more than just their own bonuses, their irresponsible pursuit of their $50k harms us all when they screw it up. How about they devote some of their talents to making markets more functional and reliable for ordinary investors. Oh, but then that would deprive them of the "grease" they raid from 401ks and other ordinary savings to pay for their stochastic calculus.
I want to see children graduating from grade school that have a basic understanding of how most modern things work. I'd trade a few PhDs for a greater general understanding of science in the general populace.
Pipes are weird in all measurement systems, they are generally rated for strength and the particular material they are made of will then dictate wall thickness for a particular strength. As materials have changed so have wall thicknesses so that even if one diameter is a sensible number (internal or external) the other diameter is invariably a strange and inconvenient number. At least in the US the pipe sizes have remained the same for quite a while so there are fewer combinations of fitting sizes to juggle. The fittings already take up an entire wall at my local home depot, adding a new standard to the mix might double the number of combos.
What gets me knotted up is the fractions of an inch. Having to continually try to figure out what is 1/64" more than 7/8". That kind of thing is much easier in metric: what is 0.5mm more than 16.5mm ? No sweat. Could they really not have defined 1" = 25.6mm ?
Let's say I'm an ISP and I have a bunch of IPv4 addresses. I can invest and convert my customers to IPv6 or only add new IPv6 customers. Or I can make like the IPv4 addresses are a rare commodity and charge more for them. Hmmmm... Gouge or invest, what will it be, what would Ma Bell do, where's my federal subsidy ?
what kind of process they're using, I imagine it will be a 40nm process or some similar feature size. What if we all just concentrated on making cheap short run fabrication machines, maybe something that could make a 150nm feature-size on pre-sliced wafers. That way I could quickly print something up in-house. Maybe my design could have some re-programmability, but I can't see that being the biggest use for FPGAs. Even if post-shipping re-programmability is feasible, I doubt many FPGA designs actually use it in their lifetimes.
Indeed, any scientific theory might be disproved in any number of ways, but in order to qualify as being a scientific theory it must be testable and falsifiable. If it turns out to be falsifiable without testing it directly then fair enough, but it must be falsifiable or it's not a theory. One of the other criteria for a theory is that it permit us to make predictions about things we have not yet observed (yet another is that anyone with the right training and equipment and circumstances can recreate the findings, there is not "privileged" group of people who alone can use the theory). I am not an astrophysicist, but the big bang theory will allow us to make some predictions and those predictions can be tested. If the outcome of these tests disagrees with the theory the scientists will need to "sharpen their pencils" again and re write some or all of it. To my mind re-creating the big bang would be interesting and may lead to more insight, but perhaps not as interesting as testing the consequences that flow from the original event since the consequences flowing from a recreation might tell us about what we did, which may not be anything like what actually happened Write more if you like, but I'm done commenting on this.
"A theory can be perfectly valid without being testable."
No, see... scientific theories have to be falsifiable (and hence testable); otherwise they are not scientific theories. If you want to introduce more folksy uses of the term "theory" then other rules may apply, but the context of this discussion is generally about scientific theories and introducing other uses of the word looks to me like mischief.
everyone should be forced to surrender one kidney. The government will keep it preserved to permit detailed DNA identification, and will of course swap it for your other kidney if it turns out you need it at any point in your life. It's not just a cure for terrorism, it's a vital safety net for people who are feckless with their kidneys.
Slashdot Mirror
I was about to say "Even Al Queda thinks he's dead", but you beat me to it, I don't think I read it in any of the other comments above though and I see it as important and telling that this is not about proof and more about the message.
What comes across to me is the sheer coldness of this whole business...
It is so assertive in a way that splashing an image of his corpse all over the news could never be. In this instance I think the style is important and that Obama is being very effective.
were attended by 100s of students. I can't see there being much capacity available to upload or download 10s of Mbytes per student for 100s or 1000s of students in a small campus area. I don't believe the infrastructure in most places would be able to handle "download your textbook and turn to the section on..." in a timely manner.
I dunno, it has the innuendo and sounds official, but is is a believable chat-up line ?
as I got older. I figured if I could not actually be a brilliant eccentric then at least I could behave like one and hope someone would fall for my ploy.
A lot of people seem to have missed the point here. Either that or the old sensors were cleverer than I thought. Anyhow, I like this approach, I wonder how well it copes with fingers bunched together looking like a single fat finger or whether it can still be confident that the finger it tracks out of a bunch is the same one it tracked going in without getting confused.
Only people with something to hide would hide something.
Hey this Koan thing is fun...
What makes you think that they would allow any evidence that exonerated anyone to come to light ? This device will only collect damning evidence.
the Bin Laden compound is on fire. I hope it was possible to recover some leads in the hunt for other AQ leaders before the blaze took hold.
Sucks, I know (and agree); but no one forces you to use a cellphone.
Nor is anyone forced to travel by air, or to use a computer, or a library or to walk around downtown...
But I sure am getting sick of being barred from any modern human activity if I should want to go about my business without enhanced levels of surveillance.
like buying 100s of 1000s of IPv4 addresses. I'll sell them another 42 of them to bring them up to the 666,666 they were looking for.
Of all the millions of financial transactions that have some reasonable use (like financing business or housing loans), the vast majority should be straightforward enough to be handled by a well established computer assisted system.
What remains, the extremes of complex derivative trading or whatever could probably be dispensed with without bringing the financial world to its knees (and have probably done much to create crisis in the past).
In short, if it was so complex that it was not done prior to 1970 then we could probably live without it now. The risk these stochastic calculus wielding geniuses are taking affects more than just their own bonuses, their irresponsible pursuit of their $50k harms us all when they screw it up.
How about they devote some of their talents to making markets more functional and reliable for ordinary investors. Oh, but then that would deprive them of the "grease" they raid from 401ks and other ordinary savings to pay for their stochastic calculus.
I want to see children graduating from grade school that have a basic understanding of how most modern things work. I'd trade a few PhDs for a greater general understanding of science in the general populace.
meet the Flintstones. They established prior art on everything form vacuum cleaners to record players.
But there are 20 cups to a gallon in the UK. At least metric is the same everywhere.
Pipes are weird in all measurement systems, they are generally rated for strength and the particular material they are made of will then dictate wall thickness for a particular strength. As materials have changed so have wall thicknesses so that even if one diameter is a sensible number (internal or external) the other diameter is invariably a strange and inconvenient number.
At least in the US the pipe sizes have remained the same for quite a while so there are fewer combinations of fitting sizes to juggle. The fittings already take up an entire wall at my local home depot, adding a new standard to the mix might double the number of combos.
What gets me knotted up is the fractions of an inch. Having to continually try to figure out what is 1/64" more than 7/8". That kind of thing is much easier in metric: what is 0.5mm more than 16.5mm ? No sweat.
Could they really not have defined 1" = 25.6mm ?
Let's say I'm an ISP and I have a bunch of IPv4 addresses. I can invest and convert my customers to IPv6 or only add new IPv6 customers. Or I can make like the IPv4 addresses are a rare commodity and charge more for them.
Hmmmm... Gouge or invest, what will it be, what would Ma Bell do, where's my federal subsidy ?
Too effective to be allowed by law.
what kind of process they're using, I imagine it will be a 40nm process or some similar feature size. What if we all just concentrated on making cheap short run fabrication machines, maybe something that could make a 150nm feature-size on pre-sliced wafers. That way I could quickly print something up in-house. Maybe my design could have some re-programmability, but I can't see that being the biggest use for FPGAs. Even if post-shipping re-programmability is feasible, I doubt many FPGA designs actually use it in their lifetimes.
Single layer PCBs. The free copy of Eagle is much more useful.
Indeed, any scientific theory might be disproved in any number of ways, but in order to qualify as being a scientific theory it must be testable and falsifiable. If it turns out to be falsifiable without testing it directly then fair enough, but it must be falsifiable or it's not a theory.
One of the other criteria for a theory is that it permit us to make predictions about things we have not yet observed (yet another is that anyone with the right training and equipment and circumstances can recreate the findings, there is not "privileged" group of people who alone can use the theory).
I am not an astrophysicist, but the big bang theory will allow us to make some predictions and those predictions can be tested. If the outcome of these tests disagrees with the theory the scientists will need to "sharpen their pencils" again and re write some or all of it. To my mind re-creating the big bang would be interesting and may lead to more insight, but perhaps not as interesting as testing the consequences that flow from the original event since the consequences flowing from a recreation might tell us about what we did, which may not be anything like what actually happened
Write more if you like, but I'm done commenting on this.
"A theory can be perfectly valid without being testable."
No, see... scientific theories have to be falsifiable (and hence testable); otherwise they are not scientific theories.
If you want to introduce more folksy uses of the term "theory" then other rules may apply, but the context of this discussion is generally about scientific theories and introducing other uses of the word looks to me like mischief.
everyone should be forced to surrender one kidney. The government will keep it preserved to permit detailed DNA identification, and will of course swap it for your other kidney if it turns out you need it at any point in your life. It's not just a cure for terrorism, it's a vital safety net for people who are feckless with their kidneys.
is a programming language, along the lines of "brainfuck" using crude ascii art. But thanks for giving us all a good laugh at the interview...
It's just part of the script that Charlie Sheen wrote for his violent torpedo of truth concert.