The article makes a common error: asserting that China's CO2 emissions are rising. This is just White House propaganda to undermine Kyoto. China is actually *cutting* CO2 output. Here is an article from Science to that effect. This particlar article only discusses up to 2000, but the downward trend has continued since then.
Like Earth, Mars has seasons that cause its polar caps to wax and wane. "It's late spring at the south pole of Mars," says planetary scientist Dave Smith of the Goddard Space Flight Center. "The polar cap is receding because the springtime sun is shining on it."
Similarly, the warming on Pluto is also apparently seasonal (though its seasons are long, of course). From Space.com:
Pluto's atmospheric pressure has tripled over the past 14 years, indicating a stark temperature rise, the researchers said. The change is likely a seasonal event, much as seasons on Earth change as the hemispheres alter their inclination to the Sun during the planet's annual orbit.
When scientists worry about global warming on earth, they're not just griping about the arrival of spring!
Oh, heh... an answer to my question, brought by the magic of RTFA.:-)
Because of the ethical issues associated with deception, Jagatic and Johnson had to obtain permission from the Human Subjects Committee, which approves experiments on campus that involve humans and ensures studies are ethical and do not violate participants' privacy.
This story has the same irrational hyping as the old Y2K stories. Here's a snippet:
"There has always been the possibility of meeting in dark alleys, and that was hard for law enforcement to detect."
Now, every computer terminal with an Internet connection has the potential to become a dark alley.
The first quote rationally points out that unmonitored communication has always been a fact of life. (Thank goodness.) The second sentence seems ominous, but of course-- every alley gets dark every night. It isn't like all other communication channels are tightly controlled and the internet is this critical missing link.
I know what you mean! Watching AOL is like watching a slow train wreck.
For years one had to wonder, "How can a company based on dial-up service and in-house content survive in an age broadband and the unlimited content of the web?"
Simple question, simple answer: they can't.
For some years, while people were still coming online for the first time, AOL was signing up ever more dialup customers. But that age is over and they've still not switched tracks.
Now it's the end of the line and the screeching and crunching of steel has begun...
The 95-0 vote was in 1997. In a 2003 vote on emissions reductions, the vote was 55-43. Attitudes are changing.
Furthermore, a major objection to Kyoto was that it does not require emissions reductions from third-world countries. However, the major third-world producer of CO2-- China-- has been steadily reducing it's emissions anyway. So that argument isn't so compelling anymore. (Then again, they're at 1/8 the US level per capita anyway...)
I think there are a couple advantages to a top-flight program.
First, you'd be in the company of much brighter, more driven, higher-achieving students. If you're really into computer stuff, then this could be fun, motivating, and extremely educational-- classes and professors aside.
Second, stronger programs are more likely to focus on ideas beyond mere software development: the theory of computation, algorithm design, and mathematics. Now, if you just want to build mundane user interfaces, this would all pretty much be a waste of your time. However, if you're interested in doing work that involves some level of challenge beyond just structuring the software itself and getting algorithms out of a book, then this stuff can be really useful.
You could graduate from your current school, work for a while, and-- if you decide you need deeper knowledge-- go get a master's or PhD somewhere else.
The 13th root of a 100-digit number is an 8-digit number. Here's how YOU can find TWO of those 8 digits in an instant.
1. The leading digit is ALWAYS 4.
2. The last digit of the 13-th root of N is always the same as the last digit of N.
(The first fact follows because Floor[N[(10^100 - 1)^(1/13)]] = 49238826 and Floor[N[(10^99 - 1)^(1/13)]] = 41246263. The second holds because N^13 is congruent to N modulo 10.)
With minimal practice, you can get the second-highest digit from the magnitude. Beyond that I can only speculate what he's doing. But by taking an alternating sum of the digits, you get its value mod 11, which gives you the value of the root mod 11, which buys you another digit. Now you're halfway there...
It would be really funny if it turned out that the researchers had miscounted during the experiments.
I once saw an elderly woman at a canoe rental place get into an argument about correct change with-- get this-- an International Mathematics Olympiad gold medalist *AND* a winner of the Putnam mathematics competition at the same time.
As it turned out, they were right. But it was ALMOST a really great story.:-)
According to the US State Department, around 20-30 Americans are killed by foreign terrorists each year. Typically, ZERO of these attacks are on American soil. In many cases, the attackers were no doubt unaware that their victims were Americans. For example, when Chechens took over a Moscow theater, there happened to be a few Americans in the audience.
The 2001 attack was the big exception: 3000 Americans were killed that year on US soil.
However, to put this in context, about 40,000 Americans are killed every year in auto accidents.
So this is what we're sacrificing liberty for: a phenomenon that is typically less than 0.1% of the threat from auto accidents, and didn't evern break 10% in the worst year ever.
The page you cite concludes the opposite of what you imply. Quoting:
He also says that anthropogenic [man-made] CO2 emissions overwhelm this [volcanic] estimate by at least 150 times.
The price of uncertainty.
on
Global Dimming
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
The important point here is: we are altering the planetary system, but can not predict the effects.
There is no doubt that we are changing the planetary system. If nothing else, CO2 concentrations are rising dramatically and human activity is definitely the culprit. And global temperatures are definitely rising. Humans may or may not be the culprit, but a back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests that more CO2 should cause higher temps.
The problem is that we can't predict the effects of these changes. It isn't like there's a global thermostat that we can turn up or down a half-degree by altering our industrial output. Rather, it is like throwing random chemicals into a bowl in a closed room, hoping you don't create toxic fumes. You might, you might not, but you don't know one way or the other, and you can't get out in any case.
I spent several months looking into climate models and concluded that they're complete bunk. We can't predict the weather a week out, but people use the very same techniques to "predict" the climate a century out. Consider this: if you believe in a human activity-climate link, then in order to predict climate, you have to predict human activity. So predicting the behavior of the entire world economy is just one small source of the uncertainty in these models! They're garbage! Computer climate models just create a false sense of predictability about climate change.
So this leaves us in a scary place. Here we are on earth. If we screw it up, we have nowhere else to go. We're making changes, but we don't know the effects. Since we don't understand the planetary system, we can't necessarily undo the effects. It's like remodeling an aircraft in flight.
This is apparently a true story. At least, I have Dantzig's account here in "History of Mathematical Programming -- A Collection of Personal Reminiscences." Two interesting side nodes:
Dantzig also formulated the notion of a linear program-- one of the really big ideas of computer science. Then he went to show the idea to von Neumann-- the genius's genius. Von Neumann's inital response was, "Get to the point." So... In under one minute, I slapped on the blackboard a geometric and algebraic version of the problem. Von Neumann stood up and said, 'Oh that!' Then, for the next hour and a half, he proceeded to give me a lecture on the mathematical theory of linear programs. It seems that Von Neumann had a way of making really, really smart people feel slow in comparison.
It seems that for every American legend, there must be a corresponding Russian legend. (For example, I understand that Lenin is credited with many of the same feats as Lincoln and Washington.) In this case, I've heard several Russians tell the same story about their premiere national mathematician, Kolmogorov.
This is the paper by Diffie and Hellman that originated public-key cryptography. This paper explained for the first time (in an unclassified place) how two parties could communicate privately over an open channel without previously agreeing on a secret key. Every time your browser says, "Setting up a secure connection..." when you order from Amazon or check your bank account, you're witnessing the impact of this work.
Is there any reason to believe that this Broadcast Flag scheme will actually *work*? Has the means of encryption already been determined? Schemes to make bits uncopyable don't have a great history of success...
I don't think it matters, and I think that's a pretty common view in the US.
For example, the people of my Catholic-leaning state (Massachusetts) just elected a Mormon governor. He seems like a pretty honest guy, relative to our usual lot.
Do you think newspapers should list all the people involved in the recent corporate finanace scandals that are devoutly Jewish? What's the difference?
I love the endless news stories that shout gleefully when the national average SAT score rises slightly and moan woefully when the national average sinks slightly.
Of course, these changes only measure variations in the difficulty of the exam.
The attorneys sought to sue more than 500 people from all around the world in one lawsuit brought in Santa Clara County, Calif. [...] The point is we would like to get the Supreme Court to affirm that the use of one case to (target) multiple people who are distributing information is appropriate," Kessler said.
This is kinda scary. A major limitation on RIAA/MPAA is that they have to sue their enemies one at a time. Since each lawsuit is expensive and they have about 50,000,000 enemies, this is problematic. So they want permission to able to do a sort of "reverse class-action", where they're allowed to sue everyone at once. They started with a tidy block of 500 defendants, but why not 5000 in the next round? Or 500,000?! Woohoo!
The courts are already too-often used by those who can afford lawsuits to bludgeon those who can not. Allowing corporations to sue hundreds or even thousands of people at once would be a disaster for the American legal system and America in general.
I'm ignorant, who is this guy and why would finding him be too embarrasing?
James Bulger was the leader of the Boston mob for quite a few years and, at the same time, an FBI informant. However, as it turns out, he was running his FBI handlers rather than the other way around. In effect, the FBI kept Bulger out of jail while he murdered and extorted merrily along for years. His main handler, fomer FBI agent John Connolly was recently sentenced to 10 years in prison. But plenty more FBI agents were involved. Futher complicating matters, James Bulger's brother-- William Bulger-- was the dictatorial ruler of the Massachusetts senate at the time and currently heads the state university system. In the last couple weeks, we've learned that William has been in touch with his fugitive brother and urged him NOT to turn himself in. William just recently took the 5th when forced to testify before Congress on the matter.
So this is a very messy case. Likely the FBI is using this initiative in part to dispel the notion that they don't really want to catch James Bulger for fear of further embarassment.
John McCain takes issue with the VC (VietCong) who were notoriously evil in combat. These were mostly 12- 18 year old boys and girls in black pajams who setup traps using their own women and children as bait. They frequently slaughtered entire villages of their own people by purposely putting them in the line of fire... Men like McCain who had to fight them [k]now just how evil they were
John McCain was a navy pilot. He never fought the Vietcong at close quarters.
Slashdot Mirror
The article makes a common error: asserting that China's CO2 emissions are rising. This is just White House propaganda to undermine Kyoto. China is actually *cutting* CO2 output. Here is an article from Science to that effect. This particlar article only discusses up to 2000, but the downward trend has continued since then.
Oops... The source for the second quote is here on space.com.
You're a bit off on your timescales. The southern icecap on Mars is melting because it is spring there:
From NASA:
Like Earth, Mars has seasons that cause its polar caps to wax and wane. "It's late spring at the south pole of Mars," says planetary scientist Dave Smith of the Goddard Space Flight Center. "The polar cap is receding because the springtime sun is shining on it."
Similarly, the warming on Pluto is also apparently seasonal (though its seasons are long, of course). From Space.com:
Pluto's atmospheric pressure has tripled over the past 14 years, indicating a stark temperature rise, the researchers said. The change is likely a seasonal event, much as seasons on Earth change as the hemispheres alter their inclination to the Sun during the planet's annual orbit.
When scientists worry about global warming on earth, they're not just griping about the arrival of spring!
Oh, heh... an answer to my question, brought by the magic of RTFA. :-)
Because of the ethical issues associated with deception, Jagatic and Johnson had to obtain permission from the Human Subjects Committee, which approves experiments on campus that involve humans and ensures studies are ethical and do not violate participants' privacy.
Isn't this illegal? I thought that research on human subjects-- even psychological research like this-- required consent.
I don't *know* that, but I've heard people moan about the bureaucratic requirements for doing research involving human subjects in the past.
This story has the same irrational hyping as the old Y2K stories. Here's a snippet:
"There has always been the possibility of meeting in dark alleys, and that was hard for law enforcement to detect."
Now, every computer terminal with an Internet connection has the potential to become a dark alley.
The first quote rationally points out that unmonitored communication has always been a fact of life. (Thank goodness.) The second sentence seems ominous, but of course-- every alley gets dark every night. It isn't like all other communication channels are tightly controlled and the internet is this critical missing link.
I know what you mean! Watching AOL is like watching a slow train wreck.
For years one had to wonder, "How can a company based on dial-up service and in-house content survive in an age broadband and the unlimited content of the web?"
Simple question, simple answer: they can't.
For some years, while people were still coming online for the first time, AOL was signing up ever more dialup customers. But that age is over and they've still not switched tracks.
Now it's the end of the line and the screeching and crunching of steel has begun...
The 95-0 vote was in 1997. In a 2003 vote on emissions reductions, the vote was 55-43. Attitudes are changing.
Furthermore, a major objection to Kyoto was that it does not require emissions reductions from third-world countries. However, the major third-world producer of CO2-- China-- has been steadily reducing it's emissions anyway. So that argument isn't so compelling anymore. (Then again, they're at 1/8 the US level per capita anyway...)
I think there are a couple advantages to a top-flight program.
First, you'd be in the company of much brighter, more driven, higher-achieving students. If you're really into computer stuff, then this could be fun, motivating, and extremely educational-- classes and professors aside.
Second, stronger programs are more likely to focus on ideas beyond mere software development: the theory of computation, algorithm design, and mathematics. Now, if you just want to build mundane user interfaces, this would all pretty much be a waste of your time. However, if you're interested in doing work that involves some level of challenge beyond just structuring the software itself and getting algorithms out of a book, then this stuff can be really useful.
You could graduate from your current school, work for a while, and-- if you decide you need deeper knowledge-- go get a master's or PhD somewhere else.
The 13th root of a 100-digit number is an 8-digit number. Here's how YOU can find TWO of those 8 digits in an instant.
1. The leading digit is ALWAYS 4.
2. The last digit of the 13-th root of N is always the same as the last digit of N.
(The first fact follows because Floor[N[(10^100 - 1)^(1/13)]] = 49238826 and Floor[N[(10^99 - 1)^(1/13)]] = 41246263. The second holds because N^13 is congruent to N modulo 10.)
With minimal practice, you can get the second-highest digit from the magnitude. Beyond that I can only speculate what he's doing. But by taking an alternating sum of the digits, you get its value mod 11, which gives you the value of the root mod 11, which buys you another digit. Now you're halfway there...
It would be really funny if it turned out that the researchers had miscounted during the experiments.
:-)
I once saw an elderly woman at a canoe rental place get into an argument about correct change with-- get this-- an International Mathematics Olympiad gold medalist *AND* a winner of the Putnam mathematics competition at the same time.
As it turned out, they were right. But it was ALMOST a really great story.
This is absolutely and completely false.
According to the US State Department, around 20-30 Americans are killed by foreign terrorists each year. Typically, ZERO of these attacks are on American soil. In many cases, the attackers were no doubt unaware that their victims were Americans. For example, when Chechens took over a Moscow theater, there happened to be a few Americans in the audience.
The 2001 attack was the big exception: 3000 Americans were killed that year on US soil.
However, to put this in context, about 40,000 Americans are killed every year in auto accidents.
So this is what we're sacrificing liberty for: a phenomenon that is typically less than 0.1% of the threat from auto accidents, and didn't evern break 10% in the worst year ever.
The page you cite concludes the opposite of what you imply. Quoting:
He also says that anthropogenic [man-made] CO2 emissions overwhelm this [volcanic] estimate by at least 150 times.
The important point here is: we are altering the planetary system, but can not predict the effects.
There is no doubt that we are changing the planetary system. If nothing else, CO2 concentrations are rising dramatically and human activity is definitely the culprit. And global temperatures are definitely rising. Humans may or may not be the culprit, but a back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests that more CO2 should cause higher temps.
The problem is that we can't predict the effects of these changes. It isn't like there's a global thermostat that we can turn up or down a half-degree by altering our industrial output. Rather, it is like throwing random chemicals into a bowl in a closed room, hoping you don't create toxic fumes. You might, you might not, but you don't know one way or the other, and you can't get out in any case.
I spent several months looking into climate models and concluded that they're complete bunk. We can't predict the weather a week out, but people use the very same techniques to "predict" the climate a century out. Consider this: if you believe in a human activity-climate link, then in order to predict climate, you have to predict human activity. So predicting the behavior of the entire world economy is just one small source of the uncertainty in these models! They're garbage! Computer climate models just create a false sense of predictability about climate change.
So this leaves us in a scary place. Here we are on earth. If we screw it up, we have nowhere else to go. We're making changes, but we don't know the effects. Since we don't understand the planetary system, we can't necessarily undo the effects. It's like remodeling an aircraft in flight.
Hehehehehe! Hoo-whee! You guys really crack me up...
This is apparently a true story. At least, I have Dantzig's account here in "History of Mathematical Programming -- A Collection of Personal Reminiscences." Two interesting side nodes:
This is the paper by Diffie and Hellman that originated public-key cryptography. This paper explained for the first time (in an unclassified place) how two parties could communicate privately over an open channel without previously agreeing on a secret key. Every time your browser says, "Setting up a secure connection..." when you order from Amazon or check your bank account, you're witnessing the impact of this work.
Is there any reason to believe that this Broadcast Flag scheme will actually *work*? Has the means of encryption already been determined? Schemes to make bits uncopyable don't have a great history of success...
I don't think it matters, and I think that's a pretty common view in the US.
For example, the people of my Catholic-leaning state (Massachusetts) just elected a Mormon governor. He seems like a pretty honest guy, relative to our usual lot.
Do you think newspapers should list all the people involved in the recent corporate finanace scandals that are devoutly Jewish? What's the difference?
How do you put an "on" switch on a cesium atom?
I love the endless news stories that shout gleefully when the national average SAT score rises slightly and moan woefully when the national average sinks slightly.
Of course, these changes only measure variations in the difficulty of the exam.
The attorneys sought to sue more than 500 people from all around the world in one lawsuit brought in Santa Clara County, Calif. [...] The point is we would like to get the Supreme Court to affirm that the use of one case to (target) multiple people who are distributing information is appropriate," Kessler said.
This is kinda scary. A major limitation on RIAA/MPAA is that they have to sue their enemies one at a time. Since each lawsuit is expensive and they have about 50,000,000 enemies, this is problematic. So they want permission to able to do a sort of "reverse class-action", where they're allowed to sue everyone at once. They started with a tidy block of 500 defendants, but why not 5000 in the next round? Or 500,000?! Woohoo!
The courts are already too-often used by those who can afford lawsuits to bludgeon those who can not. Allowing corporations to sue hundreds or even thousands of people at once would be a disaster for the American legal system and America in general.
I'm ignorant, who is this guy and why would finding him be too embarrasing?
James Bulger was the leader of the Boston mob for quite a few years and, at the same time, an FBI informant. However, as it turns out, he was running his FBI handlers rather than the other way around. In effect, the FBI kept Bulger out of jail while he murdered and extorted merrily along for years. His main handler, fomer FBI agent John Connolly was recently sentenced to 10 years in prison. But plenty more FBI agents were involved. Futher complicating matters, James Bulger's brother-- William Bulger-- was the dictatorial ruler of the Massachusetts senate at the time and currently heads the state university system. In the last couple weeks, we've learned that William has been in touch with his fugitive brother and urged him NOT to turn himself in. William just recently took the 5th when forced to testify before Congress on the matter.
So this is a very messy case. Likely the FBI is using this initiative in part to dispel the notion that they don't really want to catch James Bulger for fear of further embarassment.
John McCain takes issue with the VC (VietCong) who were notoriously evil in combat. These were mostly 12- 18 year old boys and girls in black pajams who setup traps using their own women and children as bait. They frequently slaughtered entire villages of their own people by purposely putting them in the line of fire... Men like McCain who had to fight them [k]now just how evil they were
John McCain was a navy pilot. He never fought the Vietcong at close quarters.