Math education has virtually nothing to do with logic -- you are, in school, required to memorize formulas, and then plug in values when asked. You don't need to know the first thing about what you're actually doing, why any of it works, how these formulas were derived, or anything else, so long as you can dance on cue.
No one should get out of school thinking that math is about memorizing formulas. Math is about deducing interesting results out of very basic principles. This is not trivial, and it depends on thought patterns acquired over years of study.
Unfortunately, your experience regarding math education is now the norm. I don't know your background, but it's quite common to see even people with engineering and scientific bachelor degrees that only use math like they'd use a computer language -- as just another tool.
We have different takes on this. You're using a lot of assumptions regarding favorable operating conditions to justify these as forgivable design problems. With military grade equipment you can make no such assumptions. I see all these issues as negligent corner cutting.
Problem (1) indicates that the system has a critical design flaw -- one that defeats its sole purpose.
Problem (2) shows that Lockheed Martin didn't follow the specs and actually refused to test some subsystems for compliance. If the engineer displays good judgement, he can incorporate parts that operate out of spec and only slightly increase the failure rate (and decrease the MTBF). But these are military systems, you want them to have very, very small failure rates, and you want to guarantee this. This can be brutally expensive, but that's one of the reasons why military contractors charge an order of magnitude more than civilian contractors.
Problem (3) is just lousy design on a system designed to be secure. It doesn't matter if the boat is meant to be at sea most of the time. You want secure communications in all possible scenarios, including the very unlikely ones. Even if someone planted a radio receiver in the bridge. Somehow you assume that these subsystems passed their tests. I for one am not giving Lockheed-Martin the benefit of the doubt, specially considering how much RF tends to leak and how strict secure communication standards are.
I just spent the last half hour reading some of her old Usenet posts, and she wrote a *lot* of great stuff about the SR-71, the Orbiter and some other NASA projects.
Right. This is actually a corollary of what I posted, since an organization that manages to wipe out the US and Israel effectively achieves world domination.
I like how my original post is now "Flamebait", seeing how it's much closer to reality than the one which started the thread.
Does anyone else think that these terrorists' true purpose is not to kill the passengers on a few planes but to inconvenience travellers for years to come?
Their immediate goal is to kill as many infidels as possible, with the final objective of wiping out the US and Israel. It's their mission statement, they make no effort to hide it and anyone who thinks otherwise might as well believe in unicorns.
A country is allowed to defend itself, but it has to be a proportionate response, otherwise it is a war crime. The Israelis are destroying the entire Lebanon infrastructure with little or no regard for civilian lives. Surely you agree that the Israeli response to Hezbolla capturing prisoners of war is a "disproportionate response".
It's not so clear to me. Hezbollah created a state within a state, so in effect Lebanon is responsible for Hezbollah's actions. It impresses me that no government official in Lebanon can speak against Hezbollah, and gives no guarantee that it'll be disarmed. And the two captured Israeli soldiers are still in enemy hands, if not dead.
Sure, if there were no weapons and if they had no chance of fighting back, then taking them prisoner would've been the right thing to do. But this is an ideal scenario, because you never have this sort of certainty, and storming the place would most likely result in casualties.
They didn't appear to have any weapons, and were trying to hide behind walls and such (which didn't work since the gunship was circling.) That turned my stomach.
Why are you under the impression that war should be fair? That crew is not obligated to give the insurgents a fighting chance -- if they don't have weapons ready, don't know where the fire is coming from and cannot defend themselves -- tough luck!
This response reminds me of recent comments about Israel's "disproportionate response" to Hezbollah. The whole point of war is to destroy the enemy. War is not an Olympic event!
Most journalists and business analysts are notable for doing a half-assed job and taking credit for cut & paste jobs. Journalists who actually spend time researching their stories are a dying breed, so my take on this is that Google would rather not waste their time answering stupid questions from people who don't even understand what they're publishing. Their time is much better spent recruiting smart people or just talking to grad students in some sort of academic goodwill.
If you're acing finals after skipping classes for 6 weeks, then your course was next to trivial.
It doesn't matter how smart you are -- if you can get good grades without studying, then this wasn't a proper college test.
Re:Nintendo's Wii akin to Chevrolet's Nova?
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Both Sides of Wii
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· Score: 1
GM marketers discussed the possibility of confusion with the name, but "they kept the name and it sold very well.... I think that the word is sufficiently incorporated into the language as meaning 'new' as in 'bossa nova' that the criticism isn't valid."
Except that bossa nova is a Brazilian music genre. And in Portuguese, 'nova' is the feminine form of 'new'. The "doesn't go" interpretation is exclusive to Spanish. Using a Brazilian term is a pretty stupid way to prove a point in Spanish. A marketer that can't distinguish between these two languages clearly doesn't care about Latin America.
So, since a large group of engineers who do read Slashdot and design electronics for RF gear, or work in the RF industry might know a thing or 2.
You're being too optimistic. Most posts are actually written by self-absorbed nerds who think they're experts in RF because they saw Maxwell's equations sometime during college. If that.
A lot of misinformation goes around in these discussions, and even though most posters want to sound authoritative, they certainly aren't competent engineers.
Their customers have such low expectations that licensing a beta should be quite profitable. What's the worse it could do? Destroy their credibility as a software company? Hah.
I've used Linux (first Slackware, then RedHat and now Fedora) for 10 years and my box doesn't crash when I run a stable kernel. I stopped using the development tree a few years ago, and since then I only recall crashing due to hardware problems or mistakes on my part while writing low level code.
The pervasive use of Microsoft products makes people believe crashes are an intrinsic characteristic of computers, almost like a necessary evil. Reinstalling all your software, being infected with spyware and having your computer crash daily are part of popular culture. They're seen as events that one just has to live with.
Even if true, there's a world of difference between a weakly sustained chain reaction and a high yield nuclear explosion.
Re:As Dave Barry pointed out....
on
Bang But No Splash
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· Score: 2, Informative
A nuclear bomb can be detonated by taking two lumps of metal and banging them together real fast. The romans could have done that, easily.
That's ridiculous. Your two lumps of metal are highly enriched uranium or plutonium, neither of which occur naturally. The process to obtain them in sufficient quantities requires huge amounts of energy, raw materials and precision engineering.
So no, the Romans couldn't have done that, and specially not easily.
The objective function certainly cuts the number of total individuals by several orders of magnitude but it doesn't decrease the length of the shortest loop-free path between a 1st generation individual and a differentiated example of a new species. Since Spetner is generous regarding evolution, he actually calculates probabilities for this shortest path. In other words, Spetner's analysis already accomodates non-random selection even though he doesn't say so.
I haven't got the time to read that article now, but the author has his mind set on criticizing Spetner for his Jewish beliefs and dwells a lot on that. I also disagree with his (initial) criticism of Spetner's probabilities.
Your parents remind me of my father. He finds the notion of evolution repulsive and doesn't want anything to do with it.
Evolution does away with the concept of a personal creator, and that's uncomfortable from a theological point of view. It doesn't clash logically with the Bible's notion of personal god, but it practice it certainly draws people away from religion. In response, people like your parents lash out and don't even bother with facts.
I haven't read the book you mentioned, but I've read a few good books questioning evolution. My favorite is Not by Chance, by Spetner. The author's got a Physics Ph.D. from MIT and has a background on information theory. He analyses probabilities involved with successful evolution using actual numbers. After a very generous analysis the conclusion is that evolution is impossible from a complexity point of view.
Every single text book and article I've read on evolution treats it as an issue of faith. They simply quote each other, presenting a probabilistic theory without attributing values and without estimating -- no matter how roughly -- the chances involved. Justifying reality with imagination is not science or even philosophy. In the interest of fact-checking, I think you'd like Spetner's analysis.
The problem with Christianity and all other religious beliefs is that they have no basis in any kind of facts or evidence and are therefore perfectly capable of changing to suit any situation.
Christianity has the largest historical record among major religions. It details the lives of real men and their acts which were witnessed by thousands of people. It's not derived from unverified evidence such as a person's dream or vision.
You may choose to reject biblical records, but what would you do about secular documents which corroborate them? Academic honesty would force you to reject them as well. Assuming an unbiased treatment, applying the same level of scrutiny to historical accounts would obligate you to reject most of what's known about human history. You might as well dismiss ancient Greek history and philosophy, for instance, since Christian records by far outweigh them in quality and numbers.
We should listen to what Christian Theology has to say about life elsewhere with exactly the same weight as listening to the trilling of nightingales to tell us about life elsewhere since both are equally meaningless
Fair enough. My comment questioned the original poster's attack on major religions. Extraterrestrial life poses no contradiction to any major religion's theology, and concluding this is good enough for me.
Please explain how extraterrestrial life contradicts theology from the world's major religions.
Christianity certainly makes humans special, but in no way precludes the existence of other extraordinary mortal creatures. Doing so would actually be inconsistent, since the scriptures mention other special creatures (angels and demons) which don't exist exclusively on Earth.
Therefore, even intelligent extraterrestrial life wouldn't pose a threat to Christian theology. Since Mars is expected (at best) to harbor bacterial life, there's no point in having this discussion.
It seems like you're trying to find reasons to condemn religion, but this certainly isn't one. Atheism is the most fashionable belief, but in the end it just rejects every concrete point of view without actually explaining anything.
In the interest of fairness, try to be more open minded and less prejudiced.
Signal propagation doesn't require electrons to move fast at all. We're looking at speeds of a few cm/s at most in a metal and less in a semiconductor.
It's not feasible to move much faster, and fortunately not required either.
Slashdot Mirror
The chromosome copying is already spellchecked.
Both prokaryotic and eukaryotic cells have copy verification and repair machinery which drastically reduce replication errors.
Math education has virtually nothing to do with logic -- you are, in school, required to memorize formulas, and then plug in values when asked. You don't need to know the first thing about what you're actually doing, why any of it works, how these formulas were derived, or anything else, so long as you can dance on cue.
No one should get out of school thinking that math is about memorizing formulas. Math is about deducing interesting results out of very basic principles. This is not trivial, and it depends on thought patterns acquired over years of study.
Unfortunately, your experience regarding math education is now the norm. I don't know your background, but it's quite common to see even people with engineering and scientific bachelor degrees that only use math like they'd use a computer language -- as just another tool.
We have different takes on this. You're using a lot of assumptions regarding favorable operating conditions to justify these as forgivable design problems. With military grade equipment you can make no such assumptions. I see all these issues as negligent corner cutting.
Problem (1) indicates that the system has a critical design flaw -- one that defeats its sole purpose.
Problem (2) shows that Lockheed Martin didn't follow the specs and actually refused to test some subsystems for compliance. If the engineer displays good judgement, he can incorporate parts that operate out of spec and only slightly increase the failure rate (and decrease the MTBF). But these are military systems, you want them to have very, very small failure rates, and you want to guarantee this. This can be brutally expensive, but that's one of the reasons why military contractors charge an order of magnitude more than civilian contractors.
Problem (3) is just lousy design on a system designed to be secure. It doesn't matter if the boat is meant to be at sea most of the time. You want secure communications in all possible scenarios, including the very unlikely ones. Even if someone planted a radio receiver in the bridge. Somehow you assume that these subsystems passed their tests. I for one am not giving Lockheed-Martin the benefit of the doubt, specially considering how much RF tends to leak and how strict secure communication standards are.
Wow, Mary Shafer's amazing!
I just spent the last half hour reading some of her old Usenet posts, and she wrote a *lot* of great stuff about the SR-71, the Orbiter and some other NASA projects.
Thanks for the reference.
Right. This is actually a corollary of what I posted, since an organization that manages to wipe out the US and Israel effectively achieves world domination.
I like how my original post is now "Flamebait", seeing how it's much closer to reality than the one which started the thread.
Does anyone else think that these terrorists' true purpose is not to kill the passengers on a few planes but to inconvenience travellers for years to come?
Their immediate goal is to kill as many infidels as possible, with the final objective of wiping out the US and Israel. It's their mission statement, they make no effort to hide it and anyone who thinks otherwise might as well believe in unicorns.
A country is allowed to defend itself, but it has to be a proportionate response, otherwise it is a war crime. The Israelis are destroying the entire Lebanon infrastructure with little or no regard for civilian lives. Surely you agree that the Israeli response to Hezbolla capturing prisoners of war is a "disproportionate response".
It's not so clear to me. Hezbollah created a state within a state, so in effect Lebanon is responsible for Hezbollah's actions. It impresses me that no government official in Lebanon can speak against Hezbollah, and gives no guarantee that it'll be disarmed. And the two captured Israeli soldiers are still in enemy hands, if not dead.
Sure, if there were no weapons and if they had no chance of fighting back, then taking them prisoner would've been the right thing to do. But this is an ideal scenario, because you never have this sort of certainty, and storming the place would most likely result in casualties.
They didn't appear to have any weapons, and were trying to hide behind walls and such (which didn't work since the gunship was circling.) That turned my stomach.
Why are you under the impression that war should be fair? That crew is not obligated to give the insurgents a fighting chance -- if they don't have weapons ready, don't know where the fire is coming from and cannot defend themselves -- tough luck!
This response reminds me of recent comments about Israel's "disproportionate response" to Hezbollah. The whole point of war is to destroy the enemy. War is not an Olympic event!
Most journalists and business analysts are notable for doing a half-assed job and taking credit for cut & paste jobs. Journalists who actually spend time researching their stories are a dying breed, so my take on this is that Google would rather not waste their time answering stupid questions from people who don't even understand what they're publishing. Their time is much better spent recruiting smart people or just talking to grad students in some sort of academic goodwill.
If you're acing finals after skipping classes for 6 weeks, then your course was next to trivial.
It doesn't matter how smart you are -- if you can get good grades without studying, then this wasn't a proper college test.
You're being too optimistic. Most posts are actually written by self-absorbed nerds who think they're experts in RF because they saw Maxwell's equations sometime during college. If that.
A lot of misinformation goes around in these discussions, and even though most posters want to sound authoritative, they certainly aren't competent engineers.
Their customers have such low expectations that licensing a beta should be quite profitable. What's the worse it could do? Destroy their credibility as a software company? Hah.
I've used Linux (first Slackware, then RedHat and now Fedora) for 10 years and my box doesn't crash when I run a stable kernel. I stopped using the development tree a few years ago, and since then I only recall crashing due to hardware problems or mistakes on my part while writing low level code.
The pervasive use of Microsoft products makes people believe crashes are an intrinsic characteristic of computers, almost like a necessary evil.
Reinstalling all your software, being infected with spyware and having your computer crash daily are part of popular culture. They're seen as events that one just has to live with.
Yeah, I've heard that story before.
Even if true, there's a world of difference between a weakly sustained chain reaction and a high yield nuclear explosion.
That's ridiculous. Your two lumps of metal are highly enriched uranium or plutonium, neither of which occur naturally. The process to obtain them in sufficient quantities requires huge amounts of energy, raw materials and precision engineering.
So no, the Romans couldn't have done that, and specially not easily.
The objective function certainly cuts the number of total individuals by several orders of magnitude but it doesn't decrease the length of the shortest loop-free path between a 1st generation individual and a differentiated example of a new species. Since Spetner is generous regarding evolution, he actually calculates probabilities for this shortest path. In other words, Spetner's analysis already accomodates non-random selection even though he doesn't say so.
I haven't got the time to read that article now, but the author has his mind set on criticizing Spetner for his Jewish beliefs and dwells a lot on that. I also disagree with his (initial) criticism of Spetner's probabilities.
For starters, 100 Prophecies is a pretty interesting web site but the internet can't replace good books.
If you choose to reject the reliability of manuscripts and their origin, make sure to throw out all of antiquity. The Gallic Wars are a good example.
Evolution does away with the concept of a personal creator, and that's uncomfortable from a theological point of view. It doesn't clash logically with the Bible's notion of personal god, but it practice it certainly draws people away from religion. In response, people like your parents lash out and don't even bother with facts.
I haven't read the book you mentioned, but I've read a few good books questioning evolution. My favorite is Not by Chance, by Spetner. The author's got a Physics Ph.D. from MIT and has a background on information theory. He analyses probabilities involved with successful evolution using actual numbers. After a very generous analysis the conclusion is that evolution is impossible from a complexity point of view.
Every single text book and article I've read on evolution treats it as an issue of faith. They simply quote each other, presenting a probabilistic theory without attributing values and without estimating -- no matter how roughly -- the chances involved. Justifying reality with imagination is not science or even philosophy. In the interest of fact-checking, I think you'd like Spetner's analysis.
Christianity has the largest historical record among major religions. It details the lives of real men and their acts which were witnessed by thousands of people. It's not derived from unverified evidence such as a person's dream or vision.
You may choose to reject biblical records, but what would you do about secular documents which corroborate them? Academic honesty would force you to reject them as well. Assuming an unbiased treatment, applying the same level of scrutiny to historical accounts would obligate you to reject most of what's known about human history. You might as well dismiss ancient Greek history and philosophy, for instance, since Christian records by far outweigh them in quality and numbers.
We should listen to what Christian Theology has to say about life elsewhere with exactly the same weight as listening to the trilling of nightingales to tell us about life elsewhere since both are equally meaningless
Fair enough. My comment questioned the original poster's attack on major religions. Extraterrestrial life poses no contradiction to any major religion's theology, and concluding this is good enough for me.
Please explain how extraterrestrial life contradicts theology from the world's major religions.
Christianity certainly makes humans special, but in no way precludes the existence of other extraordinary mortal creatures. Doing so would actually be inconsistent, since the scriptures mention other special creatures (angels and demons) which don't exist exclusively on Earth.
Therefore, even intelligent extraterrestrial life wouldn't pose a threat to Christian theology. Since Mars is expected (at best) to harbor bacterial life, there's no point in having this discussion.
It seems like you're trying to find reasons to condemn religion, but this certainly isn't one. Atheism is the most fashionable belief, but in the end it just rejects every concrete point of view without actually explaining anything.
In the interest of fairness, try to be more open minded and less prejudiced.
Maybe from a technical standpoint, but to me it looks like yet another worthless mod done by a fool with no sense of aesthetics.
That's actually incorrect.
Signal propagation doesn't require electrons to move fast at all. We're looking at speeds of a few cm/s at most in a metal and less in a semiconductor.
It's not feasible to move much faster, and fortunately not required either.