Thomas Jefferson said "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.".
From reading a lot of what gets posted by "patriots" on slashdot, you would think that Jefferson said "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the drool of wingnuts."
"Outraged over the outcome of a zoning dispute, he armored a Komatsu D355A bulldozer with layers of steel and concrete and used it on June 4, 2004, to demolish the town hall, the former mayor's house, and other buildings in Granby, Colorado. The rampage ended when the bulldozer got stuck in the basement of a Gambles store he had previously destroyed. Heemeyer then killed himself with a handgun." (See here.)
While Bengtsson is wrong on this, he's no crackpot. This paper was rejected, but most of his previous ones were published and he is (was?) a respected scientist in the field. His problem seems to be that he has allowed himself to mix his politics with the science. That's wrong, but so is your ad hominem; calling him a crackpot cheapens the word, and your argument.
I think it's perfectly fair to label somebody who calls their ideological opponents Communists and McCarthyites a crackpot. YMMV.
And the National Review is calling it McCarthyism.
Sorry, but refusing to provide a public forum for crackpots is not a witch-hunt, or McCarthyism. It's science. The journal didn't publish the paper because the referee said it was an unsalvageable piece of crap, which is precisely how peer review is supposed to work.
I don't know about anyone else, but when I pick up my phone, I want it to work. Every time. This kind of interlock just adds another point of failure. Suppose a bunch of thugs (you know who I mean) are in my house, and I need to call the police?
If these things are ever sold anywhere, by anyone, it will be the first step in a slippery slope by which the phone grabbers will gut the First Amendment right to call anybody I want, any time. How long before the FCC demands a remote kill switch?
What this means is that BICEP2 are happy that the approach they took should eliminate the foregrounds correctly. The challenge is that they misapplied a preliminary Planck foreground map, which presented foregrounds across a range of frequencies, as applying only to a single frequency. If they actually did this then the BICEP2 analysis will certainly have to be redone, but there's no way Kovac is going to comment on that while work is going on behind -- it would be breach of contract if nothing else. If BICEP2 have done it and it comes out either in their own further release (most likely dropping the detection of gravitational waves down to a constraint of r~0.15 or so, which would still be good results) or ultimately in Planck's own polarisation release, then they'll explain what's gone wrong, or have it explained for them. Of course, it will be less embarrassing if they release their own partial retraction and explain their own mistake, rather than having others do it for them.
I certainly hope AC is not a member of the Planck team. If he (or she) is, he (or she) should really think twice about shooting his (or her) mouth off in public about details of pre-release "polarisation" data, especially when it amounts to a veiled threat aimed at the competition. Just sayin'.
(Also while I agree with a couple of other posters that science by blog is pretty nauseating, it's ultimately no different from its previous incarnation, science by conference coffee break - just more pervasive. I still really don't like it but it's a fairly natural progression.)
There's a big difference between rumors spreading among specialists in a field at conference coffee breaks and somebody putting them on a public blog, where it's picked up by the press. If Falkowski had something substantive to say about the subject himself (and that's doubtful, since he's a particle physicist and not an expert on CMB foreground removal), he should have written a paper, put it on arXiv, and submitted it for peer review. Running to the press with unsubstantiated rumors is seriously unethical.
There are at least a half a dozen experiments either taking data or analyzing data which will either confirm or refute the BICEP2 data, some releasing results in less than a year. Then we'll know the answer.
It's interesting, and sort of icky, how much "science" is being done by blog these days. No hard data to back up the claims, just rumors and hearsay. Yech.
E-wallets have been popular in Japan for years. They are extremely convenient, especially if you use public transport a lot (and Japan has good public transport). No more messing about with change at the convenience store either. Vending machines take them too.
Public transit would be a very useful application for an e-wallet, especially in Tokyo with all those incompatible rail lines where you have to pay to transfer trains. But that could be solved by a dedicated transit pass which auto-recharges from a credit card account, sort of like the EZPass does in the U.S.
Maybe this sort of thing contributes to why Japan had a murder rate of 0.4 per 100,000 people in 2009, compared to the U.S. rate of 4.4 (Afganistan, for the record, had a murder rate per 100,000 of 2.4 in 2008).
It's long past time for the U.S. to stop setting firearms policy based on the paranoid fantasies of a bunch of brain-damaged rednecks.
I'm not too worried about corporations knowing everything about me, but then again I'm also not a privacy nut.
I'm not too worried about the government and corporations tracking everything I do, but then again I'm also not a privacy nut.
I'm not too worried about getting molested by the TSA, but then again I'm also not a privacy nut.
I guess "privacy nut" is a term that describes people with a bit of sense, because with how often I see people defending egregious privacy violations, nothing else makes sense.
Whether is pleases the tinfoil hat brigade or not, universities are moving to outsourced and cloud-based services for a lot of things that used to be done in-house. It's hard to see this as anything besides a net plus for education, since (in my experience at least), most university IT departments couldn't find their own asses with both hands and a special ass map. And their funding is getting cut, not increased.
If you go with an outsourced provider of email, classroom services, whatever, that provider is going to have access to the data. There's really no way around that. Google, at least, tends to make highly usable products. Sounds like a win to me.
Slashdot Mirror
Easy.
Or use dnsmasq.
I have Adblock on my refrigerator.
Thomas Jefferson said "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.".
From reading a lot of what gets posted by "patriots" on slashdot, you would think that Jefferson said "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the drool of wingnuts."
Marvin Heemeyer is the man though..
"Outraged over the outcome of a zoning dispute, he armored a Komatsu D355A bulldozer with layers of steel and concrete and used it on June 4, 2004, to demolish the town hall, the former mayor's house, and other buildings in Granby, Colorado. The rampage ended when the bulldozer got stuck in the basement of a Gambles store he had previously destroyed. Heemeyer then killed himself with a handgun." (See here.)
Truly a 'Merkin hero.
That's going to work.
The only FBI agent I have ever known reasonably well was a scoutmaster and used his boy scout troop as couriers to deal weed. True story.
While Bengtsson is wrong on this, he's no crackpot. This paper was rejected, but most of his previous ones were published and he is (was?) a respected scientist in the field. His problem seems to be that he has allowed himself to mix his politics with the science. That's wrong, but so is your ad hominem; calling him a crackpot cheapens the word, and your argument.
I think it's perfectly fair to label somebody who calls their ideological opponents Communists and McCarthyites a crackpot. YMMV.
And the National Review is calling it McCarthyism.
Sorry, but refusing to provide a public forum for crackpots is not a witch-hunt, or McCarthyism. It's science. The journal didn't publish the paper because the referee said it was an unsalvageable piece of crap, which is precisely how peer review is supposed to work.
I don't know about anyone else, but when I pick up my phone, I want it to work. Every time. This kind of interlock just adds another point of failure. Suppose a bunch of thugs (you know who I mean) are in my house, and I need to call the police?
If these things are ever sold anywhere, by anyone, it will be the first step in a slippery slope by which the phone grabbers will gut the First Amendment right to call anybody I want, any time. How long before the FCC demands a remote kill switch?
"if only there were some way for the common people to decide what we should do"
That's called the free market.
If it were left entirely to the free market, net neutrality would have been gone years ago. Careful what you wish for.
I'll stick with the blood of the young, thank you very much.
Very well then. Carry on :-).
What this means is that BICEP2 are happy that the approach they took should eliminate the foregrounds correctly. The challenge is that they misapplied a preliminary Planck foreground map, which presented foregrounds across a range of frequencies, as applying only to a single frequency. If they actually did this then the BICEP2 analysis will certainly have to be redone, but there's no way Kovac is going to comment on that while work is going on behind -- it would be breach of contract if nothing else. If BICEP2 have done it and it comes out either in their own further release (most likely dropping the detection of gravitational waves down to a constraint of r~0.15 or so, which would still be good results) or ultimately in Planck's own polarisation release, then they'll explain what's gone wrong, or have it explained for them. Of course, it will be less embarrassing if they release their own partial retraction and explain their own mistake, rather than having others do it for them.
I certainly hope AC is not a member of the Planck team. If he (or she) is, he (or she) should really think twice about shooting his (or her) mouth off in public about details of pre-release "polarisation" data, especially when it amounts to a veiled threat aimed at the competition. Just sayin'.
What exactly is "science by conference coffee break" ?
That's when you got to a Starbucks and just make shit up.
(Also while I agree with a couple of other posters that science by blog is pretty nauseating, it's ultimately no different from its previous incarnation, science by conference coffee break - just more pervasive. I still really don't like it but it's a fairly natural progression.)
There's a big difference between rumors spreading among specialists in a field at conference coffee breaks and somebody putting them on a public blog, where it's picked up by the press. If Falkowski had something substantive to say about the subject himself (and that's doubtful, since he's a particle physicist and not an expert on CMB foreground removal), he should have written a paper, put it on arXiv, and submitted it for peer review. Running to the press with unsubstantiated rumors is seriously unethical.
There are at least a half a dozen experiments either taking data or analyzing data which will either confirm or refute the BICEP2 data, some releasing results in less than a year. Then we'll know the answer.
It's interesting, and sort of icky, how much "science" is being done by blog these days. No hard data to back up the claims, just rumors and hearsay. Yech.
E-wallets have been popular in Japan for years. They are extremely convenient, especially if you use public transport a lot (and Japan has good public transport). No more messing about with change at the convenience store either. Vending machines take them too.
If I could get here what you can get from a vending machine in Japan, I might want one too!
Public transit would be a very useful application for an e-wallet, especially in Tokyo with all those incompatible rail lines where you have to pay to transfer trains. But that could be solved by a dedicated transit pass which auto-recharges from a credit card account, sort of like the EZPass does in the U.S.
If I have to carry something around in order to pay for shit, a regular wallet works just fine. With actual fiat currency in it.
FTFY.
As long as literally everybody on the entire planet accepts it, who gives a fuck?
If I have to carry something around in order to pay for shit, a regular wallet works just fine. With actual cash in it.
Wow, really? A couple hundred deaths a year from toddlers alone? Please cite a source for that, other than your ass.
Unfortunately, the NRA has made a mission out of suppressing demographic research on gun violence. Because, you know, freedom.
However, there is a good deal of evidence that the rate is significantly underreported.
Maybe this sort of thing contributes to why Japan had a murder rate of 0.4 per 100,000 people in 2009, compared to the U.S. rate of 4.4 (Afganistan, for the record, had a murder rate per 100,000 of 2.4 in 2008).
It's long past time for the U.S. to stop setting firearms policy based on the paranoid fantasies of a bunch of brain-damaged rednecks.
For educational institutions, there is no fucking excuse to give in to cloud garbage, or for them to hand over data to asshole corporations.
I don't care how convenient or useful it is to you people; I have principles.
I certainly hope those principles involve being willing to pay the required costs, either in the form of tuition, or taxes. TANSTAAFL.
I hate to tell you, but Google is On Your Lawn this very moment.
I'm not too worried about corporations knowing everything about me, but then again I'm also not a privacy nut. I'm not too worried about the government and corporations tracking everything I do, but then again I'm also not a privacy nut. I'm not too worried about getting molested by the TSA, but then again I'm also not a privacy nut.
I guess "privacy nut" is a term that describes people with a bit of sense, because with how often I see people defending egregious privacy violations, nothing else makes sense.
Let's see: lots of universities are already using Gmail for university accounts. The sky has not (yet) fallen.
Whether is pleases the tinfoil hat brigade or not, universities are moving to outsourced and cloud-based services for a lot of things that used to be done in-house. It's hard to see this as anything besides a net plus for education, since (in my experience at least), most university IT departments couldn't find their own asses with both hands and a special ass map. And their funding is getting cut, not increased.
If you go with an outsourced provider of email, classroom services, whatever, that provider is going to have access to the data. There's really no way around that. Google, at least, tends to make highly usable products. Sounds like a win to me.
Since when does RUNNING A FUNCTIONAL RANCH WITH YOUR OWN HANDS count as "welfare" on this planet?
When you're doing it on somebody else's land without compensating them?