>>In other words, computers are not a magic bullet. They only work well when you actually invest the time to find out what you need them to do, and then make them do that.
Right, but there's actually quite a bit of research showing tremendous benefits for computer systems implemented well in hospitals. Without computers, doctors can spend as much as 75% of their time away from patients, fucking around with paperwork.
At my wife's hospital, they don't have the best system in the world, but they have an electronic drug ordering system, automated drug vending machines on each floor for commonly used drugs which tie into the hospital-wide inventory database, have electronic files, etc. The thing goes down waay too often for something that is marketed toward hospitals, but at least the company provides 24 on-call support.
>>The hospitals I worked in, the staff that were on call (CAT scan techs, nuke med techs, OR nurses, recovery room nurses, dialysis folks) were paid $1 or $2 per hour just for carrying the beeper.
It's also important to point out that at many hospitals (my wife works for the biggest hospital in the area) you don't see 24-hour on-call shifts. Usually they have a fixed period of time that they are on call for, so they don't need to worry about being woken up at 3AM unless something is seriously wrong with one of their existing patients.
I wouldn't be able to stand being a 24-hour on-call IT guy.
Seems like another unnecessary piece of legislation. In my opinion, just jacking gas up to reasonable rates (say, $6 to $6 per gallon, somewhere in the vicinity of the rest of the world) and using the tax brought in with that measure for roads and public transit would help a great deal more, while allowing those 30% of station wagon drivers who actually require the space to choose for themselves if they want or don't want to pay up.
Fair enough. Public transit only really works in dense urban areas though, and since America has a lot more land available (LA County would cover all of London and out to the coast to the east and south) its public transportation systems tend to likewise suck. I actually like public transportation, but even when I lived in the Bay Area, which has one of the most developed public transit systems, it would take 3.5 hours on the BART to get somewhere that was about 45 minutes by car, with traffic. LA public transportation is even worse, and they've been investing heavily in public transportatio instead of highways for the last 30 years. All they got out of it was a road system that was hopelessly snarled compared with the contiguous Orange County, which took the opposite approach. The transition from LA to OC on the interstate is like waking up from a nightmare.
In places like downtown Manhattan, though, public transit works quite fine, because it is dense enough to make sense.
If we're concerned with CO2 emissions, we can halve our national CO2 output in America simply by switching to nuclear power. The outlay on this (I've run the numbers myself) would range between $400B and $4T at current prices (though when building plants en masse and providing liability protection would likely put the cost around $300B), and would allow us to meet all conceivable CO2 goals without making the utterly impractical approach of trying to get people to stop driving. People won't change their habits.
I'm giving a guest lecture on global warming tomorrow at a local college, and the students know this, so I'm going to poll them how many drove to the school vs. biked or walked, as well as how many think global warming is a serious problem. If my experience is right, about 75% will think it's a problem, and yet all of them will have driven anyway.
>>Being European, I'm also not that familiar with the Clean Air Act, but seeing how the DMCA, CAN-SPAM or the Various Wars on Stuff are working out, I can imagine expense and results.
Similar measures were taken in England, to get rid of the killer smog that was killing thousands of people every year. Not saying that was bad (nobody wants to live next to a dirty smokestack), but all the particulate matter we were throwing into the year wasn't just stopping the global warming from the CO2, but was actually causing a decrease in global temperatures. When filters were put on, you can measure the corresponding decrease in atmospheric particulate count, and global temperatures started rising quite swiftly after that. I can provide references if you'd like, I have them all on hand for the lecture I'm prepping right now.
>>There are a number of things that the model does not account for, such as the growth of new connections (somewhat accounted for in the GA-NN NEAT), and the exponential response nature (accounted for in CRTNN networks).
It has long been established that physical movement is a major neurotropic factor. I can dig up the reference if you want.
It's always amusing when Slashdot touts something as amazing when it's been known for a long time.
>>Well, anything that'll increase mortality in SUV drivers is a good thing. Let's hope this sells a few extra Priuses or even Del Sols.
You know that the green movement caused us to have SUVs, right? We used to have these things called "station wagons", but CAFE standards essentially forced car companies to reinvent them (since there was a strong consumer need) as light trucks.
Kind of like how the Clean Air Act is responsible for global warming. It's one of those things that eco-hippies don't like to talk about.
>>Heck, when it was proven he had had the Briffa data for YEARS while demanding Briffa had to give him the data and proclaiming that Briffa's failure to give it up was proof he was cherry picking, did McIntyre (who works in a mining company as a consultant after working for another as CEO) retract?
I find it hilarious that this was your response to my post mocking the fact that people dismiss McIntyre because he was an engineer.
The truth of the matter is, engineers are smart people, and he's found errors that climate scientists have accepted and printed retractions for. But if we can't get access to the raw data, only the massaged data, then it's quite possible that the climate scientists have made mistakes, and we'll never know, because they're afraid of being shown wrong, which is very anti-scientific.
>>I cannot help but ponder how many of the people calling for open access to the information would scream about intellectual property rights if someone asked them to do the same.
From government weather stations?
Please.
They used as an excuse the small (5%) of stations that had access agreements to withold the entire raw data set, instead only providing massaged data. They would actually provide the raw data set, but not to people that would disagree with them. Explicitly - Phil Jones made it very clear he didn't want to give data to anyone who might contradict him.
>>The science isn't the issue here. What the "skeptics" want is more opportunity for cherry-picking, more quotes that can be mined, more areas to force the battle over to the PR area, where they have a huge advantage.
I think you vastly overstate the influence of skeptics in the "PR area". We've heard for years the science on this is settled. Remember Al Gore?
And providing a raw data set doesn't provide any quotes that can be cherry picked, as far as I can tell. And people like McIntyre have done valid science finding errors in climate science papers.
In any event, hiding data is both anti-scientific and made it look like, well, you have something to hide.
>>Most merchant ships cannot carry deadly weapons legally into most ports in the world. Certainly not any of the big ports. Jail time or worse can result from violating these laws. >>... >>AND you can explain why your ship is armed
A friend of mine in the Navy used to rig a massive air cannon / spud gun to the side of his destroyer, for fun. The recoil on it would actually drive the ship backwards in the water. They had quite a bit of range on it, and if you've ever seen the Pumpkin Chunkin' competition on TV, you can see how far those projectiles can go and how much damage they can do.
TFA had a range of 400m... the world record air cannon shot a pumpkin almost a mile, at a velocity around the speed of sound. I think the dinky little boats the pirates use would disintegrate if hit by one of those things.
Best of all, you don't need to explain why your ship is armed, since it appears to be nothing more than some PVC piping and an empty propane cylinder.
>>If you thought climate skeptics were giant assholes who cheat and lie and ridicule you and your work in public, would you want to help them?
Yes, I would, because if the science is solid, it will stand up to analysis. I used to work for the San Diego Supercomputer Center doing modeling of oceanwater, and we never did anything scurrilous like this.
Besides, even RC.org has admitted that by withholding data and denying repeated FOIA requests for years, it made them look like they had something to hide.
And best of all Real Climate.org tends to censor posts. I just asked Gavin how he responded to Phil Jones email (just to him) saying that they'd found a loophole around having to release their data through FOIA requests. (http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=914&filename=1219239172.txt) For someone so hot and heavy about publicizing all the data, it certainly seems that he was fine with it way back in 2008. Of course, he might have responded to Jones about it, but it wasn't in the published archive. Hence, I asked.
My favorite quote so far from the leaked emails:
"We have 25 years or so invested in the work. Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it?" -Phil Jones
>>If you can't check the data because the "dog ate my homework" then some is entitled to ask on what basis are we refactoring the entire world economy by causing an artificial shortage of energy?
You must obviously be working for Exxon or are an engineer of some kind.
And seriously, Real Climate.org says that Steve McIntyre must be dismissed because he used to be a Mining Engineer. (http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/12/myths-vs-fact-regarding-the-hockey-stick/)
Let alone the fact that he actually has, you know, actually found errors in data that has forced various scientists to print retractions, it's amazing that even just being an engineer is grounds for having your views dismissed.
>>This is what I mean with damned if they do,damned if they don't.
You're making it more dramatic than it sounds.
They had the data, and willfully ignored FOIA requests to release it, saying they could only release the "massaged" data, not the raw data. They wouldn't even release raw data for places which had no NDA (which is the vast majority of stations).
And they did release the data to other groups (like Georgia State), just not to 'climate skeptics'. You can see Jones and the others mocking the climate skeptics when they made their FOIA requests - not to mention the email sent out asking them to delete data in advance of a FOIA request.
It's malfeasance on the part of Phil Jones - but people like Real Climate.org refuse to see that, instead taking up an it's-us-or-them mentality, defending the indefensible ("there's been no malfeasance") and thus calling their entire side into question.
>>Anti-gambling advocates would claim that telling customers "you can win" is itself fraud.
Telling people "You WILL win" is fraud. Telling people they CAN win is not... unless it's a rigged game like 3-card monty.
I once put a nickel into a slot machine at Chuckchansi, telling him my "strategy for slots" was to hit the jackpot every time. I hit the button, and made 15 bucks off of it. His expression was priceless.
>>Is there any American out there who can explain to me how it's somehow "wrong"
There's been a long, long history of considering gambling to be a social evil. To a certain extent, I sympathize with it, as I had a friend inherit a house, move to Vegas, and a year later have no house. He runs a fish store now, in Bakersfield. (Bakersfield!)
That said, I think the government should only be involved in online gambling to prevent fraud and enforce contracts. (You know, the main reason why government should be involved in any business - enforcing the rule of law.)
>>Also, going from raw data to graph isn't something you need a climate scientist for, anyone with a background in statistics and programming should be able to understand it and draw the same conclusions.
Well to be fair, a lot of the debate over the hockey stick, i.e., "Mann's Nature Trick" was to segue from historical (tree-ring) data to real-world data on the same graph. Since the two measures don't correlate during time periods we have measurements for both for (which is an old, known problem), it is problematical/unethical to use them both in the same graph. Mann of course claimed that he didn't do this, which Climategate revealed rather that he did.
It's fraud, and the only reason people like RC.org are protecting him is because they're playing politics over honesty of science.
Not to mention the suppression of papers arguing against them in climate journals or the deletion of emails for FOIA requests.
Most transformer blocks on laptops will say they'll work across the ranges you find in North America, Japan and the various countries in Europe, but mine blew out after being plugged in to the wall in a London hotel for only a few hours. Made carrying around that desktop replacement laptop for the next month across Europe kind of annoying.
Could be coincidence of course, but I did double check the numbers printed on the block to make sure it matched the power in the hotel. My sister's netbook worked fine.
My advice to the OP: just don't confuse a travel power adapter (which makes your laptop work with the different and varied kinds of plugs found around the world) with a transformer.
>>This is insane for any server application that is limited by network bandwidth or storage bandwidth rather than CPU time (i.e. most of them).
That's why I said grid application, not server application. If you don't know the difference, then you shouldn't be calling something you don't understand insane.
>>Also, clicks from people running "welfarebooks" aren't going to be worth anything to a pay-per-click advertiser.
Right, the point is the secret purpose would be to take advantage of the subsidized CPU cycles the netbook offers for grid applications. If they can sell it at cost, or near cost, and get people to power it and keep it connected to the net, while Google retains control of the OS and background apps, they could get a massive compute engine for free or cheap. The ads would either just be window dressing, or would be just another data point in Google's attempt to know everything.
Slashdot Mirror
>>In other words, computers are not a magic bullet. They only work well when you actually invest the time to find out what you need them to do, and then make them do that.
Right, but there's actually quite a bit of research showing tremendous benefits for computer systems implemented well in hospitals. Without computers, doctors can spend as much as 75% of their time away from patients, fucking around with paperwork.
At my wife's hospital, they don't have the best system in the world, but they have an electronic drug ordering system, automated drug vending machines on each floor for commonly used drugs which tie into the hospital-wide inventory database, have electronic files, etc. The thing goes down waay too often for something that is marketed toward hospitals, but at least the company provides 24 on-call support.
>>The hospitals I worked in, the staff that were on call (CAT scan techs, nuke med techs, OR nurses, recovery room nurses, dialysis folks) were paid $1 or $2 per hour just for carrying the beeper.
It's also important to point out that at many hospitals (my wife works for the biggest hospital in the area) you don't see 24-hour on-call shifts. Usually they have a fixed period of time that they are on call for, so they don't need to worry about being woken up at 3AM unless something is seriously wrong with one of their existing patients.
I wouldn't be able to stand being a 24-hour on-call IT guy.
Ah, I see your mistake.
Why on earth would you think the destroyer was moving - let alone at maximum speed - when they were firing their air cannon?
Seems like another unnecessary piece of legislation. In my opinion, just jacking gas up to reasonable rates (say, $6 to $6 per gallon, somewhere in the vicinity of the rest of the world) and using the tax brought in with that measure for roads and public transit would help a great deal more, while allowing those 30% of station wagon drivers who actually require the space to choose for themselves if they want or don't want to pay up.
Fair enough. Public transit only really works in dense urban areas though, and since America has a lot more land available (LA County would cover all of London and out to the coast to the east and south) its public transportation systems tend to likewise suck. I actually like public transportation, but even when I lived in the Bay Area, which has one of the most developed public transit systems, it would take 3.5 hours on the BART to get somewhere that was about 45 minutes by car, with traffic. LA public transportation is even worse, and they've been investing heavily in public transportatio instead of highways for the last 30 years. All they got out of it was a road system that was hopelessly snarled compared with the contiguous Orange County, which took the opposite approach. The transition from LA to OC on the interstate is like waking up from a nightmare.
In places like downtown Manhattan, though, public transit works quite fine, because it is dense enough to make sense.
If we're concerned with CO2 emissions, we can halve our national CO2 output in America simply by switching to nuclear power. The outlay on this (I've run the numbers myself) would range between $400B and $4T at current prices (though when building plants en masse and providing liability protection would likely put the cost around $300B), and would allow us to meet all conceivable CO2 goals without making the utterly impractical approach of trying to get people to stop driving. People won't change their habits.
I'm giving a guest lecture on global warming tomorrow at a local college, and the students know this, so I'm going to poll them how many drove to the school vs. biked or walked, as well as how many think global warming is a serious problem. If my experience is right, about 75% will think it's a problem, and yet all of them will have driven anyway.
>>Being European, I'm also not that familiar with the Clean Air Act, but seeing how the DMCA, CAN-SPAM or the Various Wars on Stuff are working out, I can imagine expense and results.
Similar measures were taken in England, to get rid of the killer smog that was killing thousands of people every year. Not saying that was bad (nobody wants to live next to a dirty smokestack), but all the particulate matter we were throwing into the year wasn't just stopping the global warming from the CO2, but was actually causing a decrease in global temperatures. When filters were put on, you can measure the corresponding decrease in atmospheric particulate count, and global temperatures started rising quite swiftly after that. I can provide references if you'd like, I have them all on hand for the lecture I'm prepping right now.
>>There are a number of things that the model does not account for, such as the growth of new connections (somewhat accounted for in the GA-NN NEAT), and the exponential response nature (accounted for in CRTNN networks).
It has long been established that physical movement is a major neurotropic factor. I can dig up the reference if you want.
It's always amusing when Slashdot touts something as amazing when it's been known for a long time.
>>Well, anything that'll increase mortality in SUV drivers is a good thing. Let's hope this sells a few extra Priuses or even Del Sols.
You know that the green movement caused us to have SUVs, right? We used to have these things called "station wagons", but CAFE standards essentially forced car companies to reinvent them (since there was a strong consumer need) as light trucks.
Kind of like how the Clean Air Act is responsible for global warming. It's one of those things that eco-hippies don't like to talk about.
>>Heck, when it was proven he had had the Briffa data for YEARS while demanding Briffa had to give him the data and proclaiming that Briffa's failure to give it up was proof he was cherry picking, did McIntyre (who works in a mining company as a consultant after working for another as CEO) retract?
I find it hilarious that this was your response to my post mocking the fact that people dismiss McIntyre because he was an engineer.
The truth of the matter is, engineers are smart people, and he's found errors that climate scientists have accepted and printed retractions for. But if we can't get access to the raw data, only the massaged data, then it's quite possible that the climate scientists have made mistakes, and we'll never know, because they're afraid of being shown wrong, which is very anti-scientific.
>>I cannot help but ponder how many of the people calling for open access to the information would scream about intellectual property rights if someone asked them to do the same.
From government weather stations?
Please.
They used as an excuse the small (5%) of stations that had access agreements to withold the entire raw data set, instead only providing massaged data. They would actually provide the raw data set, but not to people that would disagree with them. Explicitly - Phil Jones made it very clear he didn't want to give data to anyone who might contradict him.
>>The science isn't the issue here. What the "skeptics" want is more opportunity for cherry-picking, more quotes that can be mined, more areas to force the battle over to the PR area, where they have a huge advantage.
I think you vastly overstate the influence of skeptics in the "PR area". We've heard for years the science on this is settled. Remember Al Gore?
And providing a raw data set doesn't provide any quotes that can be cherry picked, as far as I can tell. And people like McIntyre have done valid science finding errors in climate science papers.
In any event, hiding data is both anti-scientific and made it look like, well, you have something to hide.
>>Please. Just think about what you are posting for 1 second before you hit "Enter".
Why? Because it's obvious?
It doesn't take a lot of force to move a ship in the water. I can push a sailboat with my fingers.
>>Most merchant ships cannot carry deadly weapons legally into most ports in the world. Certainly not any of the big ports. Jail time or worse can result from violating these laws.
>>...
>>AND you can explain why your ship is armed
A friend of mine in the Navy used to rig a massive air cannon / spud gun to the side of his destroyer, for fun. The recoil on it would actually drive the ship backwards in the water. They had quite a bit of range on it, and if you've ever seen the Pumpkin Chunkin' competition on TV, you can see how far those projectiles can go and how much damage they can do.
TFA had a range of 400m... the world record air cannon shot a pumpkin almost a mile, at a velocity around the speed of sound. I think the dinky little boats the pirates use would disintegrate if hit by one of those things.
Best of all, you don't need to explain why your ship is armed, since it appears to be nothing more than some PVC piping and an empty propane cylinder.
>>If you thought climate skeptics were giant assholes who cheat and lie and ridicule you and your work in public, would you want to help them?
Yes, I would, because if the science is solid, it will stand up to analysis. I used to work for the San Diego Supercomputer Center doing modeling of oceanwater, and we never did anything scurrilous like this.
Besides, even RC.org has admitted that by withholding data and denying repeated FOIA requests for years, it made them look like they had something to hide.
And best of all Real Climate.org tends to censor posts. I just asked Gavin how he responded to Phil Jones email (just to him) saying that they'd found a loophole around having to release their data through FOIA requests. (http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=914&filename=1219239172.txt) For someone so hot and heavy about publicizing all the data, it certainly seems that he was fine with it way back in 2008. Of course, he might have responded to Jones about it, but it wasn't in the published archive. Hence, I asked.
My favorite quote so far from the leaked emails:
"We have 25 years or so invested in the work. Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it?" -Phil Jones
>>If you can't check the data because the "dog ate my homework" then some is entitled to ask on what basis are we refactoring the entire world economy by causing an artificial shortage of energy?
You must obviously be working for Exxon or are an engineer of some kind.
And seriously, Real Climate.org says that Steve McIntyre must be dismissed because he used to be a Mining Engineer. (http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/12/myths-vs-fact-regarding-the-hockey-stick/)
Let alone the fact that he actually has, you know, actually found errors in data that has forced various scientists to print retractions, it's amazing that even just being an engineer is grounds for having your views dismissed.
>>This is what I mean with damned if they do,damned if they don't.
You're making it more dramatic than it sounds.
They had the data, and willfully ignored FOIA requests to release it, saying they could only release the "massaged" data, not the raw data. They wouldn't even release raw data for places which had no NDA (which is the vast majority of stations).
And they did release the data to other groups (like Georgia State), just not to 'climate skeptics'. You can see Jones and the others mocking the climate skeptics when they made their FOIA requests - not to mention the email sent out asking them to delete data in advance of a FOIA request.
It's malfeasance on the part of Phil Jones - but people like Real Climate.org refuse to see that, instead taking up an it's-us-or-them mentality, defending the indefensible ("there's been no malfeasance") and thus calling their entire side into question.
>>You need to have two very thin pots of gold first, so you can find the end of the rainbow.
I wonder if you kidnap the scientists they'll grant you three wishes?
Tag: Leprechaun
>>Anti-gambling advocates would claim that telling customers "you can win" is itself fraud.
Telling people "You WILL win" is fraud. Telling people they CAN win is not... unless it's a rigged game like 3-card monty.
I once put a nickel into a slot machine at Chuckchansi, telling him my "strategy for slots" was to hit the jackpot every time. I hit the button, and made 15 bucks off of it. His expression was priceless.
>>Is there any American out there who can explain to me how it's somehow "wrong"
There's been a long, long history of considering gambling to be a social evil. To a certain extent, I sympathize with it, as I had a friend inherit a house, move to Vegas, and a year later have no house. He runs a fish store now, in Bakersfield. (Bakersfield!)
That said, I think the government should only be involved in online gambling to prevent fraud and enforce contracts. (You know, the main reason why government should be involved in any business - enforcing the rule of law.)
>>Also, going from raw data to graph isn't something you need a climate scientist for, anyone with a background in statistics and programming should be able to understand it and draw the same conclusions.
Well to be fair, a lot of the debate over the hockey stick, i.e., "Mann's Nature Trick" was to segue from historical (tree-ring) data to real-world data on the same graph. Since the two measures don't correlate during time periods we have measurements for both for (which is an old, known problem), it is problematical/unethical to use them both in the same graph. Mann of course claimed that he didn't do this, which Climategate revealed rather that he did.
It's fraud, and the only reason people like RC.org are protecting him is because they're playing politics over honesty of science.
Not to mention the suppression of papers arguing against them in climate journals or the deletion of emails for FOIA requests.
How anyone can defend Phil Jones is beyond me.
Well, at least they can't blame it on the 2-party system in India, eh?
Kinda takes the wind out of the sail out of a lot of the parroted arguments made on /..
>>What about if you access your files over a VPN?
If they can tell what files I'm sending over an encrypted VPN link, then they have some impressive technology indeed.
But your point is valid - how do they know if the music I'm sending is an authorized transfer or not? What if I'm the person who owns the content?
>>79% accurate. That's pretty useless. I've got a pair of dice that can do just as badly.
79% accurate? That's good enough for government work!
Most transformer blocks on laptops will say they'll work across the ranges you find in North America, Japan and the various countries in Europe, but mine blew out after being plugged in to the wall in a London hotel for only a few hours. Made carrying around that desktop replacement laptop for the next month across Europe kind of annoying.
Could be coincidence of course, but I did double check the numbers printed on the block to make sure it matched the power in the hotel. My sister's netbook worked fine.
My advice to the OP: just don't confuse a travel power adapter (which makes your laptop work with the different and varied kinds of plugs found around the world) with a transformer.
>>This is insane for any server application that is limited by network bandwidth or storage bandwidth rather than CPU time (i.e. most of them).
That's why I said grid application, not server application. If you don't know the difference, then you shouldn't be calling something you don't understand insane.
>>Also, clicks from people running "welfarebooks" aren't going to be worth anything to a pay-per-click advertiser.
Right, the point is the secret purpose would be to take advantage of the subsidized CPU cycles the netbook offers for grid applications. If they can sell it at cost, or near cost, and get people to power it and keep it connected to the net, while Google retains control of the OS and background apps, they could get a massive compute engine for free or cheap. The ads would either just be window dressing, or would be just another data point in Google's attempt to know everything.