>>Beyond being nearly infinitely funny to first graders, physicists are lead to wonder why that is.
Yeah, the coherence problem and a lot of similar effects are very troubling. At the quantum scale, photons can travel backwards in time, or fly faster or slower than C, or appear before the energy to create them arrives, and a bunch of other really weird stuff.
I find it interesting that people don't wonder more about why the universe is put together the way it is. It's really amazing, and I suspect you'll either end up believing in God or going insane from the Lovecraftian horror of it all.
>>In a way you can "remember" future, it's called deja vu.
Don't watch Fringe. It'll destroy your capability to do science. (Fun fact: Gold necklaces do NOT float in strong magnetic fields.) When Fringe says that deja vu is remembering the future or an alternate dimension, just block it out and research what it actually is: signals from your brain arriving at different times, leading to the sensation that you've experienced it before.
>>The real rules for the time traveler include: know exactly what's going to happen when you start screwing around with fundamental universe wide constants like causality.
Do we have causality though?
The resolution to the EPR paradox was that causality was the casualty.
>>What else would you call it? It is electromagnetic energy that radiates from the device.
Because most people don't know the difference between EM radiation and ionizing radiation. They hear the word "radiation" and think of the scary trifoil symbol, not "anything that can possibly radiate from something".
Interesting. You came to this article with a preconceived belief that scientists are idiots and/or self-deceiving, and then you applied that belief to the scientists in question without properly evaluating their research - I assume you haven't bothered to read any of the peer-reviewed journal published papers from this research group, and are just relying on a few quotes from the media and a Slashdot summary to confirm your predetermined bias?
I think the article/summary itself is misleading. The groups were presented a series of facts and possible outcomes, and people decided between the results of those fact based on their personal values.
And this is seen as a bad thing?
Are we so brainwashed as a society that we're no longer allowed to make value judgments as to the use of science? We've been told for so long that values and ethics don't belong in science ("a nuclear bomb will work if we want it to or not") - are we now entering an era where we can't even make a value judgment about the usage of science?
>>I'm sure with proper planning anyone can avoid being born in a war-torn or impoverished nation.
The half/half argument isn't a scientific observation, but rather the notion that life can shit on you, and you can't do anything about it, but you can still control a lot of your life and make the best of it that you can.
The notions that life is totally under our control, or totally out of our control, are both very harmful and wrong.
>>Where do you think most of the pilfered credit card numbers really come from?
I had a friend (and no, it really was a friend, not me) that was involved in a ring of guys that did that sort of stuff out of Northridge. They'd take lists of CC numbers, pair them with PINs, reprogram some new cards using mag card writers, and then go to some place around 11:30, pull out all the money they could, wait for midnight to flip around, pull out all the money they could, split the money amongst them all, and bailed.
They'd use card readers and compromised clerks to get the CC numbers, and shoulder surfing (I imagine) to get the PINs. They'd move from gas station to gas station randomly in the LA area.
>>The human experience is one that is made up of great hardship, pain, loss, death, and a multitude of experiences seemingly designed to destroy a person.
I think the authors have confused real life with video games!
There's certainly a lot of bad things that happen in life, but if you run your own life wisely, you can minimize the pain and maximize the pleasures.
I really like a lesser-known saying by Machiavelli: "Life is half random, and half under our control." While we can't control whether or not we get cancer (beyond doing certain things like not smoking and eating veggies), there is a lot we can do that is under our control, and with planning you can attempt to minimize the random events that come your way. You shouldn't expect to completely eliminate them, but if you do your best, you can get pretty good odds for living a happy life.
>>To clarify, the brakes didn't respond well because at WOT, the vacuum assist has almost no vacuum. I once didn't believe when I heard in sudden acceleration cases that the brakes also didn't work, until someone reminded me about the air pressure in the manifold.
Yeah, unfortunately both very true and very scary. Your instinctive reaction is to just press down harder on the brakes, but they don't work hardly at all, and certainly not enough to deal with the full acceleration coming out of the engine.
It still kind of galls me that GM never acknowledged the problem.
>>On what planet? I'm an environmentalist and I'm all in favor of nuclear power.
Sorry, I didn't qualify that statement correctly. Irrational environmentalists have a knee-jerk reaction against it. Logical environmentalists ought to be for nuclear power.
>>We'd have a discussion about how to handle the amount of radioactive waste instead. Great. There still is no good way to handle nuclear waste.
Demonstrating my point that only ignorant people make arguments about nuclear power. If you've researched the issue, you'd know that the problem is political, not scientific. For now, we're fine just putting a soda-bottle sized can of waste into a cooling pool every now and again. But Terrapower can burn the "waste", which is one of its selling points. And only political restrictions prevent us from otherwise using "waste" (which is actually quite usable as a source of energy).
Such is the cost of more complicated technology. Although, I will admit, this problem seems awfully widespread for Toyota to have not caught this at some point in their QC/QA process.
I'm reminded of the "recall" speech in Fight Club...
Me too, except my car, which also had a sudden acceleration problem, never got recalled. '85 Caprice Classics were famous for their cruise control systems engaging spontaneously, and at an arbitrarily high speed level, meaning that one day when I was driving around the campus loop, my car suddenly accelerated. I sped through a 4-way stop, nearly hit a few pedestrians, brakes didn't respond (because the accelerator was down) and I had a very panicked few seconds of driving until I just turned the car off and stomped both feet on the now non-power braking brakes. Fortunately I didn't hit anyone or even get a ticket, but the car company never acknowledged it as a problem, though you'll find accounts of similar stories all over the internet.
>>The changes Microsoft made to both Windows Vista and 7 have resulted in more CO2 savings that most other efforts combined.
Which is really sad, since the overall effect is quite small.
If we'd gone nuclear since the 70s, we'd have met every CO2 target out there today, and we wouldn't be having all this annoying debate. Well, we'd be having some kind of annoying debate, but not so much over CO2 production.
I watched that talk by Gates a few days ago, and he has an interesting design for a nuclear reactor, that basically would work like burning a candle - "burning" starts on one end of the nuclear log and proceeds down the log until 50 years later, when you pop it out and put a new log in. The little bit of waste left over could be put into a new log, and it runs on unenriched uranium, which makes fuel a lot less expensive, and a lot more available. It could all be a pipe dream, but it would be great if they could get it working. Given that Gates can bankroll all the R&D out of his deep pockets, I'm cautiously optimistic about Terrapower.
The sad thing is that environmentalists have a sort of knee jerk reaction every time they hear the word nuclear, even though it is the only power source that is cheap, safe, and good for the environment. The only people who oppose it are the ignorant (Nuclear Power means Nuclear War!) or people who think life would be AWESOME if we could all go back to living in caves.
As a young adult (24) I often find vacation spots and condos that won't rent to anybody under 25. I find that incredibly offensive as well. Since I am mild mannered and am often looking to rent a condo to escape the high-pressure day-to-day, I'd assume I'm actually a perfect guest, one who is quiet and generally no hassle.
But apparently my money is no good. Is there any basis for an ageism suit? Doubtful. But it's clear ageism happens across the entire age spectrum.
Agreed. As a relatively mild mannered Computer Science student, I had a very hard time finding houses to rent, with people either eyeballing us and telling us they don't take our kind around here, or taking our application and never calling us back. One guy, a lawyer, was actually a pretty good judge of character and rented the house to us on the spot. One of the best landlords we had, too. Tremblay, I think his name was.
The worst, though, is that all of the major rental car companies don't rent to people under 25. When my car got rear-ended when it was parked (don't ask) and totaled, their insurance offered a rental car for me. Which would have been great, except no place would rent me a car. Since I needed a car to get to my work, this was not a good situation. I finally found some small ghetto place in downtown San Diego that'd rent me a Geo Metro with no power steering. Awesome.:p
I am a conservative and over 40, a parent of three school age children and I couldnt agree more. They are trying to legislate a schools right to ground children as though the school/state is the parent. Dangerous territory. Whats more, are our civil rights so damaging and dangerous that they cant be extended to children, or at least defined/abridged in an explicit way? I have met adults that arent more mature than a 15 year old. Maybe their rights should be removed too, hmm?
Technically, schools do have the rights of a parent (for the most part) when THE KID IS AT SCHOOOL. It's called in loco parentis.
They don't (or at least, shouldn't) have any rights as a parent when the kid is back at home. So these sorts of things (like the PA spying case) should be treated as any other illegal intrusion by a government agency.
>>Beign griefed is not fun for such a person so UO failed to grow.
No, but the sheer openness of UO was what made it fun. Knowing that at any time someone would try to rob you or kill you meant that you had to be on your toes all the time, transforming the mundane (walking down a dirt road back to the mines) into something interesting.
>>No other game that allows griefign will be fun so you won't see them get developed or launched.
WoW world PvP is one of the worst designed pieces of shit ever, so you won't hear me arguing for that system, but every once in a while, when you get into world PvP situations between yourself and opponent(s) of equal level and gear, it would actually be quite fun. If they'd given it official game mechanic support (say, badges of some kind for killing equal level opponent, and no, the Icecrown gank quests don't count) then it could have been a much better game than the grindfest that WoW is. I prefer much more open and freeform games, with some degree of structure.
UO would have been an awesome MMORPG, except there wasn't anything to do, officially. There wasn't any structure to it at all.
>>What a load of tosh. So you need a CompSci degree to be a professional coder ?
Sort of. The process itself of having someone look over your code and beat you over the head when you do Common Mistake Number 12 is very valuable.
In a particular bit of irony, Walter Savitch (author of TFA's textbook) was my professor for intro to computer science, and we beta tested his C++ textbook (the one before his java one). We got (nearly) free books, and I got a job working as a professional coder after just two quarters in his class. I'd been programming all my life, but having experienced TAs look over my code was very very helpful.
>>Does anybody actually believe that we have progressed significantly in our use of tech to educate? I sure don't.
I work in the field of education and technology, and I think most research efforts have shown, by and large, adding computers to something doesn't help. In fact, a lot of the time it hurts education.
Mainly this is because educators throw kids in front of a computer and tell them to "research their paper" or something like that, and 3.02 seconds later the kids are all on ESPN.com or IMing each other.
Computers should be used in education when there is a real reason to do so. Want to show kids what life was like in San Francisco before and after the Great Fire a bit over 100 years ago? Textbooks can't do that nearly as well as the primary source video footage taken in 1905 and 1906.
But the way most teachers use it, it's just counterproductive.
Slashdot Mirror
Apparently, how their vandalism detector works right now is by automatically reverting any edits done by anonymous editors.
(And yeah, that's a bit sarcastic, but somewhat true.)
>>Beyond being nearly infinitely funny to first graders, physicists are lead to wonder why that is.
Yeah, the coherence problem and a lot of similar effects are very troubling. At the quantum scale, photons can travel backwards in time, or fly faster or slower than C, or appear before the energy to create them arrives, and a bunch of other really weird stuff.
I find it interesting that people don't wonder more about why the universe is put together the way it is. It's really amazing, and I suspect you'll either end up believing in God or going insane from the Lovecraftian horror of it all.
>>In a way you can "remember" future, it's called deja vu.
Don't watch Fringe. It'll destroy your capability to do science. (Fun fact: Gold necklaces do NOT float in strong magnetic fields.) When Fringe says that deja vu is remembering the future or an alternate dimension, just block it out and research what it actually is: signals from your brain arriving at different times, leading to the sensation that you've experienced it before.
>>The real rules for the time traveler include: know exactly what's going to happen when you start screwing around with fundamental universe wide constants like causality.
Do we have causality though?
The resolution to the EPR paradox was that causality was the casualty.
>>What else would you call it? It is electromagnetic energy that radiates from the device.
Because most people don't know the difference between EM radiation and ionizing radiation. They hear the word "radiation" and think of the scary trifoil symbol, not "anything that can possibly radiate from something".
I think the article/summary itself is misleading. The groups were presented a series of facts and possible outcomes, and people decided between the results of those fact based on their personal values.
And this is seen as a bad thing?
Are we so brainwashed as a society that we're no longer allowed to make value judgments as to the use of science? We've been told for so long that values and ethics don't belong in science ("a nuclear bomb will work if we want it to or not") - are we now entering an era where we can't even make a value judgment about the usage of science?
>>You're an asshole. Whatever happened to Love Thy Neighbor?
I don't think it applies when your upstairs-apartment neighbors stomp around over your head all the time.
That's why my friend has a AP called "WalkMoreSoftly"
>>I'm sure with proper planning anyone can avoid being born in a war-torn or impoverished nation.
The half/half argument isn't a scientific observation, but rather the notion that life can shit on you, and you can't do anything about it, but you can still control a lot of your life and make the best of it that you can.
The notions that life is totally under our control, or totally out of our control, are both very harmful and wrong.
It's video now. And is still a primary source since it has been untransformed. Kind of neat how technology works, isn't it?
>>Where do you think most of the pilfered credit card numbers really come from?
I had a friend (and no, it really was a friend, not me) that was involved in a ring of guys that did that sort of stuff out of Northridge. They'd take lists of CC numbers, pair them with PINs, reprogram some new cards using mag card writers, and then go to some place around 11:30, pull out all the money they could, wait for midnight to flip around, pull out all the money they could, split the money amongst them all, and bailed.
They'd use card readers and compromised clerks to get the CC numbers, and shoulder surfing (I imagine) to get the PINs. They'd move from gas station to gas station randomly in the LA area.
Now you know, and knowing is half the battle.
>>The human experience is one that is made up of great hardship, pain, loss, death, and a multitude of experiences seemingly designed to destroy a person.
I think the authors have confused real life with video games!
There's certainly a lot of bad things that happen in life, but if you run your own life wisely, you can minimize the pain and maximize the pleasures.
I really like a lesser-known saying by Machiavelli: "Life is half random, and half under our control." While we can't control whether or not we get cancer (beyond doing certain things like not smoking and eating veggies), there is a lot we can do that is under our control, and with planning you can attempt to minimize the random events that come your way. You shouldn't expect to completely eliminate them, but if you do your best, you can get pretty good odds for living a happy life.
>>To clarify, the brakes didn't respond well because at WOT, the vacuum assist has almost no vacuum. I once didn't believe when I heard in sudden acceleration cases that the brakes also didn't work, until someone reminded me about the air pressure in the manifold.
Yeah, unfortunately both very true and very scary. Your instinctive reaction is to just press down harder on the brakes, but they don't work hardly at all, and certainly not enough to deal with the full acceleration coming out of the engine.
It still kind of galls me that GM never acknowledged the problem.
>>On what planet? I'm an environmentalist and I'm all in favor of nuclear power.
Sorry, I didn't qualify that statement correctly. Irrational environmentalists have a knee-jerk reaction against it. Logical environmentalists ought to be for nuclear power.
>>We'd have a discussion about how to handle the amount of radioactive waste instead. Great. There still is no good way to handle nuclear waste.
Demonstrating my point that only ignorant people make arguments about nuclear power. If you've researched the issue, you'd know that the problem is political, not scientific. For now, we're fine just putting a soda-bottle sized can of waste into a cooling pool every now and again. But Terrapower can burn the "waste", which is one of its selling points. And only political restrictions prevent us from otherwise using "waste" (which is actually quite usable as a source of energy).
>>Wow, you have created some sort of God-Emperor of Strawmen there.
He grants spells up to 6th level, too.
But seriously, it's true.
Bleh, forgot to close the blockquote tag, sorry.
>>The changes Microsoft made to both Windows Vista and 7 have resulted in more CO2 savings that most other efforts combined.
Which is really sad, since the overall effect is quite small.
If we'd gone nuclear since the 70s, we'd have met every CO2 target out there today, and we wouldn't be having all this annoying debate. Well, we'd be having some kind of annoying debate, but not so much over CO2 production.
I watched that talk by Gates a few days ago, and he has an interesting design for a nuclear reactor, that basically would work like burning a candle - "burning" starts on one end of the nuclear log and proceeds down the log until 50 years later, when you pop it out and put a new log in. The little bit of waste left over could be put into a new log, and it runs on unenriched uranium, which makes fuel a lot less expensive, and a lot more available. It could all be a pipe dream, but it would be great if they could get it working. Given that Gates can bankroll all the R&D out of his deep pockets, I'm cautiously optimistic about Terrapower.
The sad thing is that environmentalists have a sort of knee jerk reaction every time they hear the word nuclear, even though it is the only power source that is cheap, safe, and good for the environment. The only people who oppose it are the ignorant (Nuclear Power means Nuclear War!) or people who think life would be AWESOME if we could all go back to living in caves.
>>Often also for the commute between home and school. That includes responsibilities regarding safety of the child during that trip.
Fair enough. Still doesn't include spying on them at home. =)
Agreed. As a relatively mild mannered Computer Science student, I had a very hard time finding houses to rent, with people either eyeballing us and telling us they don't take our kind around here, or taking our application and never calling us back. One guy, a lawyer, was actually a pretty good judge of character and rented the house to us on the spot. One of the best landlords we had, too. Tremblay, I think his name was.
The worst, though, is that all of the major rental car companies don't rent to people under 25. When my car got rear-ended when it was parked (don't ask) and totaled, their insurance offered a rental car for me. Which would have been great, except no place would rent me a car. Since I needed a car to get to my work, this was not a good situation. I finally found some small ghetto place in downtown San Diego that'd rent me a Geo Metro with no power steering. Awesome. :p
Technically, schools do have the rights of a parent (for the most part) when THE KID IS AT SCHOOOL. It's called in loco parentis.
They don't (or at least, shouldn't) have any rights as a parent when the kid is back at home. So these sorts of things (like the PA spying case) should be treated as any other illegal intrusion by a government agency.
>>Beign griefed is not fun for such a person so UO failed to grow.
No, but the sheer openness of UO was what made it fun. Knowing that at any time someone would try to rob you or kill you meant that you had to be on your toes all the time, transforming the mundane (walking down a dirt road back to the mines) into something interesting.
>>No other game that allows griefign will be fun so you won't see them get developed or launched.
WoW world PvP is one of the worst designed pieces of shit ever, so you won't hear me arguing for that system, but every once in a while, when you get into world PvP situations between yourself and opponent(s) of equal level and gear, it would actually be quite fun. If they'd given it official game mechanic support (say, badges of some kind for killing equal level opponent, and no, the Icecrown gank quests don't count) then it could have been a much better game than the grindfest that WoW is. I prefer much more open and freeform games, with some degree of structure.
UO would have been an awesome MMORPG, except there wasn't anything to do, officially. There wasn't any structure to it at all.
>>What a load of tosh. So you need a CompSci degree to be a professional coder ?
Sort of. The process itself of having someone look over your code and beat you over the head when you do Common Mistake Number 12 is very valuable.
In a particular bit of irony, Walter Savitch (author of TFA's textbook) was my professor for intro to computer science, and we beta tested his C++ textbook (the one before his java one). We got (nearly) free books, and I got a job working as a professional coder after just two quarters in his class. I'd been programming all my life, but having experienced TAs look over my code was very very helpful.
>>The post I was replying to said "primary source video footage" - which is wrong, because the primary source footage was film.
And it's now video. It's still a primary source, Mr. Pedantic.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKRbTF5afSE
>>Does anybody actually believe that we have progressed significantly in our use of tech to educate? I sure don't.
I work in the field of education and technology, and I think most research efforts have shown, by and large, adding computers to something doesn't help. In fact, a lot of the time it hurts education.
Mainly this is because educators throw kids in front of a computer and tell them to "research their paper" or something like that, and 3.02 seconds later the kids are all on ESPN.com or IMing each other.
Computers should be used in education when there is a real reason to do so. Want to show kids what life was like in San Francisco before and after the Great Fire a bit over 100 years ago? Textbooks can't do that nearly as well as the primary source video footage taken in 1905 and 1906.
But the way most teachers use it, it's just counterproductive.