. ..it just appears to be a platform from which one can boast about things that may never have happened, and feel important despite never having done anything to justify having a massive ego.
Leonard Cohen has an account . ..down by the river.
I was afraid of that, but on further examination it appears that my neighbors are merely overfed habilis who steal their fire from the erectus on the other side.
I've been reading about choas theory since before it was even called that.
I've also personally measured a lot of coin tosses.
. ..by observing the coin right as it leaves the hand
You are confused about the difference between weather and climate. Weather is what you can see "as it leaves the hand." Climate is the "coin toss" before it happens.
This computer is ostensibly trying to predict climate from past "tosses." Its model is built on statistical analysis, not observational mechanics.
Even simple weather is as yet unpredictiable. Many times when you think the weatherman "got it right" he didn't really. You are simply engaging in the sort of selective observation that makes cold readers a living. If he says you have a 60% chance of getting hit by a thunderstorm and you do, you count that as a correct "prediction" and if you don't you count it as an incorrect prediction.
But he didn't predict you would get hit by a thunderstorm at all. He predicted that "someone" vaguely in your area might get hit by a thunderstorm.
Anytime a "prediction" is couched in terms of chance it is subject to the laws of . ..chance, because the prediction was founded in the first place upon those laws.
Trust me, the output of this computer is going to be couched in the terms of chance, because they not only cannot observe the coin as it leaves the hand, they do not even have accurate knowledge of the deterministic laws at work after it does so.
All they have is a statistical analysis of past "trends," but if you actually look at those trends you find that they are, in fact, indistinguishable from chance.
Predicition is hard business, even about the past, but the past has the advantage of being relatively testable.
Call me back when their model can predict the past. Before it can do that it isn't ready to even begin predicting the future, except by scrying.
Really, so your sarcasm-laden "advice" is actually support for niche-market sales?
Yes, put forward in all seriousness, complete with a lesson in how many of these products are actually developed.
I was working on some clothing design prototypes and my sewing aunt recommended that I use a product on my cut edges that prevents fraying, so I got some. Four bucks an ounce and a half. As a making stuff geek it took me about 4 seconds to figure out what this stuff really was - diluted rubber cement. About twenty five bucks a gallon at retail.
The Sticky Pad really is the same stuff as the K-Mart placemats. It's about ten bucks a yard if you buy it that way. Dozens of nine dollar Sticky Pads per yard.
Identify a niche. Go to Home Depot and buy the fixin's. Slap a niche label on it. Mark it up 1000% or so. Profit!
You'll need to buy a new set every five years or so, even if you don't use them, because these batteries have a shelf life. Mistreat them once, and you may have to buy a new set, even if they're only a few months old.
You might want to factor that into your cost per mile.
The batteries are about three bucks apiece in bulk. Now that you've spent your $20K, all you need is a car.
Eccles, if you're still out there, please note that these are off the shelf, consumer item batteries made by the megabuttload. There is going to be no reduction in cost when they go "into mass production."
Then why are you overlooking it? Get out there and do it.
Here, I'll start you out. Go to K-Mart and buy two placemats made out of the same stuff as the iSticky Pad, for the same price.
Cut a couple dozen ZenSticky pads out of them and sell them to your Zen owning friends for 5 bucks each, nearly half what the poor iPod suckers have to pay for one of those things.
Shhhhhhhh! Don't tell anybody about the placemats.
Let's take the simplest possible uncertain event, the tossing of a coin. Try to build a model that can predict clustering trends into the future. Go ahead, try it. You can do it on an 8088.
You can't do it any better on a supercomputer.
Which is to say you can't do it at all with any amount of computing power, because historical trends of clustering have no effect on future clustering. To a human mind they look like they do, due to our innate tendency to build patterns out of nothing, which might lead you take the project seriously. Casinos make their living off of this.
There are certain cyclic phenomena that you can sort of, kind of, if you squint real hard and don't expect anything like precision, "predict," like sunspot cycles, at least in the sense that you know they really exist, for now at least. Sunspot cycles are climate and prone to do unexpeted things, resulting in unpredictable solar weather, leading to unpredictable. . .
Predicting climate by predicting climate rather begs the question, don't you think?
And then there are the thousands of uncertainties on the coin toss level that can all noticably effect the weather. Not one of these can be predicted, never mind all of them at once.
Climate prediction models are just very expensive, computerized chickens guts. It's pure scrying. The finding of patterns where there aren't any and trying to match them to future illusory patterns.
But by falling pray to the Gambler's Fallacy "scientists" believe that they can build a climate prediction model; all they need is more data and to massage the model to match it; a process that it turns out cannot even predict the past the model is specifically built around. It's an endless; and pointless, cycle in its own right.
These people do not need more data. They need to go back and take Probability 101 again, because they obviously didn't get it the first time around.
predictable routes for typhoons
Across the Pacific.
identify areas that are recurring targets for heavy rains
The lee side of the mountains on the lee coast.
abundant snow
The tops of those mountains.
high waves
Cape Horn, where the wind has lots of scope.
heavy winds
Where the wind has lots of scope.
scorching heat
In the sun.
or crop-threatening droughts
On the weather side of the mountains.
Much beyond that, toss a coin . . and try to predict it.
My suggestion is going to seem simplistic, yet in this case it really is the answer. Get over it. Refuse to accept your own embarrassement. It is nothing but a chain you forge yourself, binding you as slave to the master; you.
You're a human being. You have life. Your life may not be "perfect," but you can take what you have and live the most with it.
I know that I need to improve my communications skills over what they have been reduced to since then.
How do you get to Carnegie Hall?
All skills are simply a matter of practicing them. Use it or lose it, as they say. You have lost it. If you use it, you'll get it back. Yes, you'll suck at first, just as someone just learning the piano sucks at first. But with each repetition you get better.
You can't relearn the skills in preperation to going out. You're going have to go out to regain the skills, because that's where the pracitice is.
Here's a tip about learning any skill. Don't focus on the errors. That makes you error focused. Note the errors if there's something you can learn from them, but then let them go. Focus on the successes and rejoice in them. Strive to do that again (as opposed to trying not to do the errors again).
When I take a new music student I can tell within a few lessons how they are going to progress; and it has little to with that thing we call "talent." Most view practice as a drudge, something they have to endure in order to be able to play "someday." Some of these people obviously have loads of "talent," but I know they're never really going to go anywhere and every step of the way is going to be painful, for them; and me. I'm hardly even there as a teacher, but more of a "motivator," just to keep them going. What I really need to achieve with them, before any real teaching can take place, is to convert them into the other kind of student.
These people enjoy the learning, the process. Practice is playing, playing is practice. Developing skills is itself a joy and a goal unto itself. They enjoy the ride. They don't simply endure it in order to get to the destination. Some of these people obviously have little "talent," but they turn into players anyway. They can't help but turn into players.
If you learn to enjoy the path the destination takes care of itself. Get out, meet people. The road will necessarily be rocky at first, but it will also necessarily get smoother as you go along.
Oh Jesus, don't get me started on the parks "industry." If you've read my posts for any length of time you know that I have a habit, now and again, of going all "mountain man." Not "camping" or "hiking" in the approved manner, but simply wandering off into the woods and living as a natural animal in the natural environment for a time.
It has reached the point where I am compeled to be a criminal to do this. The "natural environment" has acquired "rules."
Slashdot Mirror
1) are you one of those new found homo floriensis (hobbits)?
Well, I'm the shortest one in my family.
2) if yes do you live aboard a giant alien mothership that serves as a human incubator and/or alien zoo?
Schenectady. So I guess the answer it "yes."
KFG
. . .it just appears to be a platform from which one can boast about things that may never have happened, and feel important despite never having done anything to justify having a massive ego.
.down by the river.
Leonard Cohen has an account . .
KFG
looks like we all live on the same block!
I was afraid of that, but on further examination it appears that my neighbors are merely overfed habilis who steal their fire from the erectus on the other side.
KFG
. . . if they ever find the neantherthal DNA, if it exists.
I might suggest they have a look around my neighbor's house.
KFG
In future degrees will be awarded on the basis of library fines.
KFG
Could happen. In my neighborhood a man actually risked his life running into a frickin' tornado to save what turned out to be a Cabbage Patch doll.
KFG
the majority of people who are aware of this problem seem to be comprised of either theives or theif sympathizers. . .
.the artists.
.
Like. .
If you want to put an end to this. .
Become their worst nightmare; produce free content.
KFG
When the lawsuit is over, all proceeds from the lawfirm will be . . .
spent on a turnip.
KFG
I've been reading about choas theory since before it was even called that.
.by observing the coin right as it leaves the hand
.chance, because the prediction was founded in the first place upon those laws.
I've also personally measured a lot of coin tosses.
. .
You are confused about the difference between weather and climate. Weather is what you can see "as it leaves the hand." Climate is the "coin toss" before it happens.
This computer is ostensibly trying to predict climate from past "tosses." Its model is built on statistical analysis, not observational mechanics.
Even simple weather is as yet unpredictiable. Many times when you think the weatherman "got it right" he didn't really. You are simply engaging in the sort of selective observation that makes cold readers a living. If he says you have a 60% chance of getting hit by a thunderstorm and you do, you count that as a correct "prediction" and if you don't you count it as an incorrect prediction.
But he didn't predict you would get hit by a thunderstorm at all. He predicted that "someone" vaguely in your area might get hit by a thunderstorm.
Anytime a "prediction" is couched in terms of chance it is subject to the laws of . .
Trust me, the output of this computer is going to be couched in the terms of chance, because they not only cannot observe the coin as it leaves the hand, they do not even have accurate knowledge of the deterministic laws at work after it does so.
All they have is a statistical analysis of past "trends," but if you actually look at those trends you find that they are, in fact, indistinguishable from chance.
Predicition is hard business, even about the past, but the past has the advantage of being relatively testable.
Call me back when their model can predict the past. Before it can do that it isn't ready to even begin predicting the future, except by scrying.
KFG
Really, so your sarcasm-laden "advice" is actually support for niche-market sales?
Yes, put forward in all seriousness, complete with a lesson in how many of these products are actually developed.
I was working on some clothing design prototypes and my sewing aunt recommended that I use a product on my cut edges that prevents fraying, so I got some. Four bucks an ounce and a half. As a making stuff geek it took me about 4 seconds to figure out what this stuff really was - diluted rubber cement. About twenty five bucks a gallon at retail.
The Sticky Pad really is the same stuff as the K-Mart placemats. It's about ten bucks a yard if you buy it that way. Dozens of nine dollar Sticky Pads per yard.
Identify a niche. Go to Home Depot and buy the fixin's. Slap a niche label on it. Mark it up 1000% or so. Profit!
Shhhhhhhhh! Don't tell anyone.
KFG
You'll need to buy a new set every five years or so, even if you don't use them, because these batteries have a shelf life. Mistreat them once, and you may have to buy a new set, even if they're only a few months old.
You might want to factor that into your cost per mile.
KFG
something in the $20k range
.batteries. . .are. . .expensive.
The batteries are about three bucks apiece in bulk. Now that you've spent your $20K, all you need is a car.
Eccles, if you're still out there, please note that these are off the shelf, consumer item batteries made by the megabuttload. There is going to be no reduction in cost when they go "into mass production."
Good . .
KFG
Who the **** has been messing with my simulation-apps again? ****
Perhaps less time needs to be spent messing around with computers and more time spent messing around in the field looking for data worth a damn.
KFG
I think it's unfair to claim the submitter is making up the statement . . .
.but, that would imply that market analysts are just making stuff up!
But. .
KFG
You're absolutely right, Sir. I retract my advice that he "Go out there and do it" and instead suggest that he, ummmmmmm, "Go out there and do it."
Is that better?
And personally I'm leaning toward SanDisk accessories. I think I'll start with the SDShirtPocket and then move on to the SDPatchCord.
KFG
Auto mechanics seem to know how to keep from leaving a wrench inside the engine that they had in pieces.
No, actually, they don't.
To date I've never lost a tool under the hood of a bicycle though.
KFG
How the hell do I sell chips that way? You haven't thought this thing all the way through.
KFG
. . .except the bullet-proof case, *drool*
Tell me where you are - so I can not go there.
KFG
This is an overlooked market . . .
Then why are you overlooking it? Get out there and do it.
Here, I'll start you out. Go to K-Mart and buy two placemats made out of the same stuff as the iSticky Pad, for the same price.
Cut a couple dozen ZenSticky pads out of them and sell them to your Zen owning friends for 5 bucks each, nearly half what the poor iPod suckers have to pay for one of those things.
Shhhhhhhh! Don't tell anybody about the placemats.
Profit!
KFG
In the above, please transpose "lee" and "weather," because Lord knows I did.
KFG
This seems very reasonable.
No. It doesn't.
Let's take the simplest possible uncertain event, the tossing of a coin. Try to build a model that can predict clustering trends into the future. Go ahead, try it. You can do it on an 8088.
You can't do it any better on a supercomputer.
Which is to say you can't do it at all with any amount of computing power, because historical trends of clustering have no effect on future clustering. To a human mind they look like they do, due to our innate tendency to build patterns out of nothing, which might lead you take the project seriously. Casinos make their living off of this.
There are certain cyclic phenomena that you can sort of, kind of, if you squint real hard and don't expect anything like precision, "predict," like sunspot cycles, at least in the sense that you know they really exist, for now at least. Sunspot cycles are climate and prone to do unexpeted things, resulting in unpredictable solar weather, leading to unpredictable. . .
Predicting climate by predicting climate rather begs the question, don't you think?
And then there are the thousands of uncertainties on the coin toss level that can all noticably effect the weather. Not one of these can be predicted, never mind all of them at once.
Climate prediction models are just very expensive, computerized chickens guts. It's pure scrying. The finding of patterns where there aren't any and trying to match them to future illusory patterns.
But by falling pray to the Gambler's Fallacy "scientists" believe that they can build a climate prediction model; all they need is more data and to massage the model to match it; a process that it turns out cannot even predict the past the model is specifically built around. It's an endless; and pointless, cycle in its own right.
These people do not need more data. They need to go back and take Probability 101 again, because they obviously didn't get it the first time around.
predictable routes for typhoons
Across the Pacific.
identify areas that are recurring targets for heavy rains
The lee side of the mountains on the lee coast.
abundant snow
The tops of those mountains.
high waves
Cape Horn, where the wind has lots of scope.
heavy winds
Where the wind has lots of scope.
scorching heat
In the sun.
or crop-threatening droughts
On the weather side of the mountains.
Much beyond that, toss a coin . . and try to predict it.
KFG
Do you have any suggestions?
My suggestion is going to seem simplistic, yet in this case it really is the answer. Get over it. Refuse to accept your own embarrassement. It is nothing but a chain you forge yourself, binding you as slave to the master; you.
You're a human being. You have life. Your life may not be "perfect," but you can take what you have and live the most with it.
I know that I need to improve my communications skills over what they have been reduced to since then.
How do you get to Carnegie Hall?
All skills are simply a matter of practicing them. Use it or lose it, as they say. You have lost it. If you use it, you'll get it back. Yes, you'll suck at first, just as someone just learning the piano sucks at first. But with each repetition you get better.
You can't relearn the skills in preperation to going out. You're going have to go out to regain the skills, because that's where the pracitice is.
Here's a tip about learning any skill. Don't focus on the errors. That makes you error focused. Note the errors if there's something you can learn from them, but then let them go. Focus on the successes and rejoice in them. Strive to do that again (as opposed to trying not to do the errors again).
When I take a new music student I can tell within a few lessons how they are going to progress; and it has little to with that thing we call "talent." Most view practice as a drudge, something they have to endure in order to be able to play "someday." Some of these people obviously have loads of "talent," but I know they're never really going to go anywhere and every step of the way is going to be painful, for them; and me. I'm hardly even there as a teacher, but more of a "motivator," just to keep them going. What I really need to achieve with them, before any real teaching can take place, is to convert them into the other kind of student.
These people enjoy the learning, the process. Practice is playing, playing is practice. Developing skills is itself a joy and a goal unto itself. They enjoy the ride. They don't simply endure it in order to get to the destination. Some of these people obviously have little "talent," but they turn into players anyway. They can't help but turn into players.
If you learn to enjoy the path the destination takes care of itself. Get out, meet people. The road will necessarily be rocky at first, but it will also necessarily get smoother as you go along.
Have a nice trip. Start today.
KFG
I'm having Deja Vu right now, embarrassed all over again. If I were precognative I would have previewed, spellchecked and edited.
KFG
i love taking a 90 hour paycheck for 10-15 hours of work.
That's why they pay you at 1/10 rate.
KFG
. . .then I thought of Edward Abbey. . .
Oh Jesus, don't get me started on the parks "industry." If you've read my posts for any length of time you know that I have a habit, now and again, of going all "mountain man." Not "camping" or "hiking" in the approved manner, but simply wandering off into the woods and living as a natural animal in the natural environment for a time.
It has reached the point where I am compeled to be a criminal to do this. The "natural environment" has acquired "rules."
KFG