Perfect 10 publisher Norm Zada said he is targeting Google because the company is using the allure of naked women to draw more visitors to its site and generate more advertising revenue.
Riiiiggght. That's been Google's business model all along! Now that you mention it, the two "O's" in Google do kind of look like giant breasts! Who knew I was using a porn search engine all along???
Please, this is ridiculous. I'd hate to see Google settle with these idiots.
The best idea is to fool the users. Keep the E icon for Internet Explorer, but have it point to the Firefox executable. That's idiot-proofing.
A friend of mine who is in charge of a bookstore had a similiar experience. He installed Firefox on all the machines, then deleted all the shortcuts and references to Internet Explorer. Shortly after, he had employees asking him where IE was, despite an icon on the desktop that clearly read "Mozilla Firefox Web Browser".
Eventually, some users would go back and find ways to run IE (whether through MS Word or Start -> Run). They spent more time trying to find/"reinstall" the IE rather than simply starting Firefox, simply because they were too scared to try a new program!
Finally, he kept all the IE links and icons, but changed the executable to point to Firefox. No complaints since then.;)
The main thing is that people are stubborn and too timid to bother learning a new program. I guess it can be an intimidating thing, so I don't blame them. Ultimately, I think we'll get a decent market share, it will just take time. It's taken a bit of prodding, but I've eventually gotten many of my friends and even my parents to switch to Firefox exclusively.
Interestingly enough, Lichtman's colleague in this Keys to the Whitehouse prediction system, was Dr. Keilis-Borok, who predicted two earthquakes in Central California and Japan, and failed to correctly predict an earthquake in Southern California.
Quite a bit of his research (both in geophysics and non-geophysics related subjects) has been devoted to the mathematics of pattern recognition.
Good idea and San Francisco is a great place to visit, but shouldn't they do something to help the unemployed and homeless in that town? And when I say "help the homeless", I mean REALLY help them, like get them a place to live and a way to make a buck, not just handouts, which they've done in the past.
While the submitter stated Newsom's goal of wi-fi access for all, the focus of his speech *was* on the homeless problem in San Francisco.
He said that, "Homeless are the new symbol of San Francisco" and proposed expanding our "Care Not Cash" program to help them out. (Care not Cash actually cuts their welfare benefits and finds places for them to live, as well as help with jobs and such)
Regarding free wi-fi access for all, it's so prevalent already that I don't think it should be that big of a deal. Between all these cafes and things that run hotspots and residential units running unsecure wi-fi, it's fairly easy to get wireless access in the city already.
I live on a hill in the inner Sunset, and if I stand on our balcony with my laptop, I can get 12 unsecured networks!
I think the parent also means that we can't see things below a certain plane no matter what, mostly due to the fact that the telescope is stationarily located in the northern hemisphere. So this telescope can never be used to examine features in the southern sky.
When is it appropriate for a leader to change their opinion? Both sides have been accused of flip-flopping on important issues -...
President George Bush Responds:
President Bush declined to answer this question. - Editor
--
Such a decisive leader!
Seriously, that should have been a cinch to answer, but as Nader and Kerry indicate the current administration is fond of changing facts to support their answers. Anyone who claims not to ever have made mistakes is to be met with a great degree of skepticism.
To be fair, none of the candidates addressed that question at all. While it is somewhat odd that Bush didn't even attempt to answer the question, both Nader's and Kerry's answers were verbal diarrhea.
There seems to be a little confusion among those who didn't actually read the article, so I might as well waste a few seconds:
There is no lava actually coming out visibly. When they say there is magma at the surface, the geologists really mean it's just below the surface. I guess the point of the article is that this is new growth inside the lava dome, as opposed to lava deep down pushing up the whole dome from beneath. Microsoft is still safe baring any truly cool explosions and there's really no danger of forest fires. Any lava would have a lot of crater filling to do before it spilled over the north face. Plus I read somewhere that the lava tends to come out of Mt. St. Helens pretty viscous (thick crust?) so it doesn't flow well anyways.
Yeah, the magma below the Cascade ranges have quite a high silica content. The higher the silica content, the more viscous the lava is, as well as more explosive.
So any magma that does reach the surface will be extremely viscous, not move very far and be quite irregular as it cools. Most likely, it will form a type of volcanic rock called rhyolite or dacite, rather than basalt, which is what people usually associate with lava flows (and is the stuff produced from low silica content eruptions, such as the Hawaiian Islands).
(Hey, California's no better. They've not even fixed the damage from the last major earthquake, nevermind made improvements to handle another crisis, even though there's a quite significant risk of another crisis in the comparatively near future. Roads don't build themselves and emergency crews aren't exactly equipt with all-terrain vehicles. Though that would probably not be a bad idea, for high-risk areas.)
Err what?
Since the Northridge Earthquake in 1994, every major freeway interchange in Southern California has been retrofitted with steel and cement sleeves to make them seismically safe. They should be able to stand most earthquakes that are thrown at them, except perhaps the I-10/I-215 interchange which is built directly on top of the San Jacinto Fault (oops!). If that decides to rupture, write that part of the freeway off.
It is also against the law to build within 60 feet of an active fault line as well. Not to mention, new buildings today are built to strict codes, ensuring they should stand up in an earthquake.
Even factoring 1994's M6.7 Northridge Earthquake, which was one of the most expensive natural disasters in U.S. history, there were 51 deaths. This is considerably less deaths than similiar (and even smaller sized) quakes in Iran, Turkey, Indonesia or even Mexico. It is definitely a testiment to strict building codes, which have gotten better with more research and understanding of wave/crustal/structural dynamics.
They also have a seismogram on the southern side of Mt. Saint Helens that directly posts information onto the internet. While many might not understand the significance of reading it, you can still actually see there is quite a bit of activity.
Interestingly enough, they actually had a seismogram that was on top of the lava dome, but it was destroyed in the first steam explosion at the beginning of the month.
I'm also pretty sure they've proven Kansas is actually flatter than a pancake. It's actually not that difficult to be flatter than a pancake, you see, because pancakes usually aren't all that flat--they're more sort of slightly curved towards the edges.
I've been watching that lunatic Keilis-Borok for quite some time and you have not described his activities accurately. K-B never claimed to have accurately predicted more than the 2 quakes in Japan and San Simeon. He made a well-publicised recent prediction that there would be a 6.5 quake at a specific spot near the Mohave Desert.
Which I believe I mostly said, though I give him a little more credit than yourself. Regardless, I did say he predicted the two earthquakes in Japan and San Simeon as well as a failed prediction for the Mojave Desert (which ironically, is in Southern California).
Also, K-B was *against* announcing the prediction. The chair person of the Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics at UCLA urged him to announce his results. He begrudingly agreed. Throughout the prediction time frame, Dr. K-B admitted there was only a slight chance the Mojave prediction would even be right.
I read K-B's papers and analyzed his theories and they are complete horseshit, unscientific garbage. I am not a seismologist, but I used to work as a data analyst with professional seismologists, so I know what I'm talking about.
In case you'd like to really read K-B's paper of his methods, you can find it here. Using the same methods he used to predict the Japan and San Simeon quakes, he was able to backtrack and use data to show that his method could have predicted five other earthquakes. There really is nothing phony about this and it's simply good science to test your results against a "control."
I suppose I should end this with my own disclaimer: I've worked for the Southern California Earthquake Center. And like you, I also know what I'm talking about.
As a geologist, I do find the prospect of earthquake prediction quite exciting. I even worked a few doors down from Dr. Keilis-Borok (predicted Japan and San Simeon, failed prediction in Southern California) this summer at UCLA, doing some earthquake research.
Dr. K-B's approach used statistical analysis and was quite an interesting idea. His paper even correlated some previous earthquakes (such as Landers and Northridge) using his "tail-wag-the-dog" method to try and verify his results.
Anyway, regarding these latest predictions by John Rundle and his team, I decided to read the paper. You can actually find it here.
I'm not understanding how they succesfully predicted certain things or how useful his theories are. They are saying they predicted three of the earthquakes that happened in Big Bear.
From what I am understanding, the way their method works is that it shows potential "hot spots" for earthquakes for the next 10 years. That means the whole Big Bear/San Bernardino Mountains area should show up as a hotspot on their map. This doesn't mean they have succesfully predicted all 3 earthquakes though if I understand this right. They predicted the potential for one M5.0 or greater there withing the next 10 years. The fact that there were three of them is just icing on the cake I suppose?
I also can't find any information that shows how many false-positives they nailed as well. This might be kind of hard since they won't know about false-positives until after their prediction period is up in 2010. Without that data though, we can't really be sure of how good this method works. And even if it misses some, it only reduces the chance of an earthquake happening in the next X years to some percentage (which we already have certain data for from the USGS. 67% chance of a M6.7 or greater striking the Bay Area before 2030 and an 80% chance of a M7.0 or greater striking Southern California before 2030).
Admitedly, if this method is promising, it might put better constraints on the data though, so we could say something like, "97% chance of an M7.0 striking within 10 years." However, this still won't help all that much in the scheme of things.
If only the Deep Atlantic Conveyer Belt would shut down so the colonialist European pigs would freeze to death.
I keep seeing this theory hopped up in every discussion about global warming. How cold water runoff (from melting ice sheets) from the North Pole and Greenland will mix with the North Atlantic and cause the Gulf Stream to suddenly stop. Then there's all these horrible scenarios about ice ages and such.
Perhaps someone can answer this for me, but isn't the only reason there is a Gulf Steam/strong current in the Atlantic Ocean anyway is because of the Coriolis Effect? So technically, unless the Earth stops rotating, the "Deep Atlantic Conveyer Belt" should still work (albeit, the northern latitudes may be colder because of the melting ice sheets, but you'd still have the current there).
Though this doesn't conclusively show that Bush wins, since neither candidate would receive the minimum requirement of 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidency.
Software firewalls do a good job of monitoring outgoing connections, especially when it comes to setting permissions on what programs can access the internet.
Hardware firewalls are slightly more cumbersome when trying to set this up, as most only allow you to filter outgoing connections by ports.
Actually, LA and san fran, and if both go, it will clean up the a lot of the mess today. (riaa, mpaa, holywood, and just plain scummy cities)
The rest of cali is worlds better.
Sorry to disappoint, but San Francisco and Los Angeles are on opposite sides of the San Andreas. So no matter what, you'll be stuck with one of them... most likely San Francisco.
Anyway, maybe California will break off and the rest of the United States will sink. Now *that* would truly be a miracle.;)
This isn't a success. The earthquake today was on a completely different segment of the fault, and was significantly weaker than the prediction, not to mention over three weeks after the generous nine month time period.
Don't get me wrong, I like the research, they've had some surprising success in the past, and I hope they continue. But even by the generous error margins allowed for primitive earthquake predictions, they're wrong this time...and if you asked them I'm sure they'd say the same thing.
And yes, I am a geologist.
As another geologist, I agree.
Not sure where the submitter got his information, but this earthquake isn't even related to KB's prediction *at all*. This quake occured 250 miles northwest of KB's proposed area. In fact, it fell within the range of the area for the quake he predicted last year (the San Simeon earthquake).
However, I would be willing to wager that this earthquake *is* the one that the researchers involved in the Parkfield Experiment have been waiting for, only 11 years overdue. Especially since that segment of the S.A.F. through Parkfield has consistantly produced M6.0's or greater roughly every 22 years from 1857 to 1966.
I think you might be taking your knowledge of the English language for granite.;)
Heh. That wasn't gneiss.:(
Re:And this is an issue because?
on
Open the Debates
·
· Score: 1
Second, you do not need 50 percent. You've been misinformed. The last President to get 50% of the so-called popular vote was George H. W. Bush in 1992. You need more than 50% of the electoral college votes to win the election outright, but that's not very interesting either, because that's not a requirement either: if no one gets more than 50% of the electoral college votes, then the House decides the winner from the top three (which is what happened with John Quincy Adams).
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, it is pretty random. This site has been around for awhile.
Perhaps the "sudden interest" in it was the fact that it was posted on MetaFilter yesterday.
It's real.
Displacement during the 1906 earthquake was upward of 20 feet in some places.
Just a site for a bunch of nerds... ;)
Half Life uses the Quake engine (albeit heavily modified):
1,2.
From the article:
Perfect 10 publisher Norm Zada said he is targeting Google because the company is using the allure of naked women to draw more visitors to its site and generate more advertising revenue.
Riiiiggght. That's been Google's business model all along! Now that you mention it, the two "O's" in Google do kind of look like giant breasts! Who knew I was using a porn search engine all along???
Please, this is ridiculous. I'd hate to see Google settle with these idiots.
Perhaps you read it in a novel by Clive Cussler entitled, Atlantis Found? A fictional book whose main character discovers Atlantis in Antarctica. ;)
Regardless, it's definitely a fun read. Check it out if you get a chance.
The best idea is to fool the users. Keep the E icon for Internet Explorer, but have it point to the Firefox executable. That's idiot-proofing.
;)
A friend of mine who is in charge of a bookstore had a similiar experience. He installed Firefox on all the machines, then deleted all the shortcuts and references to Internet Explorer. Shortly after, he had employees asking him where IE was, despite an icon on the desktop that clearly read "Mozilla Firefox Web Browser".
Eventually, some users would go back and find ways to run IE (whether through MS Word or Start -> Run). They spent more time trying to find/"reinstall" the IE rather than simply starting Firefox, simply because they were too scared to try a new program!
Finally, he kept all the IE links and icons, but changed the executable to point to Firefox. No complaints since then.
The main thing is that people are stubborn and too timid to bother learning a new program. I guess it can be an intimidating thing, so I don't blame them. Ultimately, I think we'll get a decent market share, it will just take time. It's taken a bit of prodding, but I've eventually gotten many of my friends and even my parents to switch to Firefox exclusively.
Interestingly enough, Lichtman's colleague in this Keys to the Whitehouse prediction system, was Dr. Keilis-Borok, who predicted two earthquakes in Central California and Japan, and failed to correctly predict an earthquake in Southern California.
Quite a bit of his research (both in geophysics and non-geophysics related subjects) has been devoted to the mathematics of pattern recognition.
Good idea and San Francisco is a great place to visit, but shouldn't they do something to help the unemployed and homeless in that town? And when I say "help the homeless", I mean REALLY help them, like get them a place to live and a way to make a buck, not just handouts, which they've done in the past.
While the submitter stated Newsom's goal of wi-fi access for all, the focus of his speech *was* on the homeless problem in San Francisco.
He said that, "Homeless are the new symbol of San Francisco" and proposed expanding our "Care Not Cash" program to help them out. (Care not Cash actually cuts their welfare benefits and finds places for them to live, as well as help with jobs and such)
Regarding free wi-fi access for all, it's so prevalent already that I don't think it should be that big of a deal. Between all these cafes and things that run hotspots and residential units running unsecure wi-fi, it's fairly easy to get wireless access in the city already.
I live on a hill in the inner Sunset, and if I stand on our balcony with my laptop, I can get 12 unsecured networks!
I think the parent also means that we can't see things below a certain plane no matter what, mostly due to the fact that the telescope is stationarily located in the northern hemisphere. So this telescope can never be used to examine features in the southern sky.
When is it appropriate for a leader to change their opinion? Both sides have been accused of flip-flopping on important issues -...
President George Bush Responds:
President Bush declined to answer this question. - Editor
--
Such a decisive leader!
Seriously, that should have been a cinch to answer, but as Nader and Kerry indicate the current administration is fond of changing facts to support their answers. Anyone who claims not to ever have made mistakes is to be met with a great degree of skepticism.
To be fair, none of the candidates addressed that question at all. While it is somewhat odd that Bush didn't even attempt to answer the question, both Nader's and Kerry's answers were verbal diarrhea.
There seems to be a little confusion among those who didn't actually read the article, so I might as well waste a few seconds:
There is no lava actually coming out visibly. When they say there is magma at the surface, the geologists really mean it's just below the surface. I guess the point of the article is that this is new growth inside the lava dome, as opposed to lava deep down pushing up the whole dome from beneath. Microsoft is still safe baring any truly cool explosions and there's really no danger of forest fires. Any lava would have a lot of crater filling to do before it spilled over the north face. Plus I read somewhere that the lava tends to come out of Mt. St. Helens pretty viscous (thick crust?) so it doesn't flow well anyways.
Yeah, the magma below the Cascade ranges have quite a high silica content. The higher the silica content, the more viscous the lava is, as well as more explosive.
So any magma that does reach the surface will be extremely viscous, not move very far and be quite irregular as it cools. Most likely, it will form a type of volcanic rock called rhyolite or dacite, rather than basalt, which is what people usually associate with lava flows (and is the stuff produced from low silica content eruptions, such as the Hawaiian Islands).
(Hey, California's no better. They've not even fixed the damage from the last major earthquake, nevermind made improvements to handle another crisis, even though there's a quite significant risk of another crisis in the comparatively near future. Roads don't build themselves and emergency crews aren't exactly equipt with all-terrain vehicles. Though that would probably not be a bad idea, for high-risk areas.)
Err what?
Since the Northridge Earthquake in 1994, every major freeway interchange in Southern California has been retrofitted with steel and cement sleeves to make them seismically safe. They should be able to stand most earthquakes that are thrown at them, except perhaps the I-10/I-215 interchange which is built directly on top of the San Jacinto Fault (oops!). If that decides to rupture, write that part of the freeway off.
It is also against the law to build within 60 feet of an active fault line as well. Not to mention, new buildings today are built to strict codes, ensuring they should stand up in an earthquake.
Even factoring 1994's M6.7 Northridge Earthquake, which was one of the most expensive natural disasters in U.S. history, there were 51 deaths. This is considerably less deaths than similiar (and even smaller sized) quakes in Iran, Turkey, Indonesia or even Mexico. It is definitely a testiment to strict building codes, which have gotten better with more research and understanding of wave/crustal/structural dynamics.
They also have a seismogram on the southern side of Mt. Saint Helens that directly posts information onto the internet. While many might not understand the significance of reading it, you can still actually see there is quite a bit of activity.
Seismogram is viewable here.
Interestingly enough, they actually had a seismogram that was on top of the lava dome, but it was destroyed in the first steam explosion at the beginning of the month.
I'm also pretty sure they've proven Kansas is actually flatter than a pancake. It's actually not that difficult to be flatter than a pancake, you see, because pancakes usually aren't all that flat--they're more sort of slightly curved towards the edges.
Study: Kansas flatter than a pancake
I've been watching that lunatic Keilis-Borok for quite some time and you have not described his activities accurately. K-B never claimed to have accurately predicted more than the 2 quakes in Japan and San Simeon. He made a well-publicised recent prediction that there would be a 6.5 quake at a specific spot near the Mohave Desert.
Which I believe I mostly said, though I give him a little more credit than yourself. Regardless, I did say he predicted the two earthquakes in Japan and San Simeon as well as a failed prediction for the Mojave Desert (which ironically, is in Southern California).
Also, K-B was *against* announcing the prediction. The chair person of the Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics at UCLA urged him to announce his results. He begrudingly agreed. Throughout the prediction time frame, Dr. K-B admitted there was only a slight chance the Mojave prediction would even be right.
I read K-B's papers and analyzed his theories and they are complete horseshit, unscientific garbage. I am not a seismologist, but I used to work as a data analyst with professional seismologists, so I know what I'm talking about.
In case you'd like to really read K-B's paper of his methods, you can find it here. Using the same methods he used to predict the Japan and San Simeon quakes, he was able to backtrack and use data to show that his method could have predicted five other earthquakes. There really is nothing phony about this and it's simply good science to test your results against a "control."
I suppose I should end this with my own disclaimer: I've worked for the Southern California Earthquake Center. And like you, I also know what I'm talking about.
As a geologist, I do find the prospect of earthquake prediction quite exciting. I even worked a few doors down from Dr. Keilis-Borok (predicted Japan and San Simeon, failed prediction in Southern California) this summer at UCLA, doing some earthquake research.
0 5071107.htm
Dr. K-B's approach used statistical analysis and was quite an interesting idea. His paper even correlated some previous earthquakes (such as Landers and Northridge) using his "tail-wag-the-dog" method to try and verify his results.
Anyway, regarding these latest predictions by John Rundle and his team, I decided to read the paper. You can actually find it here.
I'm not understanding how they succesfully predicted certain things or how useful his theories are. They are saying they predicted three of the earthquakes that happened in Big Bear.
From what I am understanding, the way their method works is that it shows potential "hot spots" for earthquakes for the next 10 years. That means the whole Big Bear/San Bernardino Mountains area should show up as a hotspot on their map. This doesn't mean they have succesfully predicted all 3 earthquakes though if I understand this right. They predicted the potential for one M5.0 or greater there withing the next 10 years. The fact that there were three of them is just icing on the cake I suppose?
I also can't find any information that shows how many false-positives they nailed as well. This might be kind of hard since they won't know about false-positives until after their prediction period is up in 2010. Without that data though, we can't really be sure of how good this method works. And even if it misses some, it only reduces the chance of an earthquake happening in the next X years to some percentage (which we already have certain data for from the USGS. 67% chance of a M6.7 or greater striking the Bay Area before 2030 and an 80% chance of a M7.0 or greater striking Southern California before 2030).
Admitedly, if this method is promising, it might put better constraints on the data though, so we could say something like, "97% chance of an M7.0 striking within 10 years." However, this still won't help all that much in the scheme of things.
Additional information:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2004/10/0410
John Rundle's Paper
If only the Deep Atlantic Conveyer Belt would shut down so the colonialist European pigs would freeze to death.
I keep seeing this theory hopped up in every discussion about global warming. How cold water runoff (from melting ice sheets) from the North Pole and Greenland will mix with the North Atlantic and cause the Gulf Stream to suddenly stop. Then there's all these horrible scenarios about ice ages and such.
Perhaps someone can answer this for me, but isn't the only reason there is a Gulf Steam/strong current in the Atlantic Ocean anyway is because of the Coriolis Effect? So technically, unless the Earth stops rotating, the "Deep Atlantic Conveyer Belt" should still work (albeit, the northern latitudes may be colder because of the melting ice sheets, but you'd still have the current there).
Though this doesn't conclusively show that Bush wins, since neither candidate would receive the minimum requirement of 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidency.
Software firewalls do a good job of monitoring outgoing connections, especially when it comes to setting permissions on what programs can access the internet.
Hardware firewalls are slightly more cumbersome when trying to set this up, as most only allow you to filter outgoing connections by ports.
Actually, LA and san fran, and if both go, it will clean up the a lot of the mess today. (riaa, mpaa, holywood, and just plain scummy cities)
The rest of cali is worlds better.
Sorry to disappoint, but San Francisco and Los Angeles are on opposite sides of the San Andreas. So no matter what, you'll be stuck with one of them... most likely San Francisco.
Anyway, maybe California will break off and the rest of the United States will sink. Now *that* would truly be a miracle.
Ummmmm...no.
This isn't a success. The earthquake today was on a completely different segment of the fault, and was significantly weaker than the prediction, not to mention over three weeks after the generous nine month time period.
Don't get me wrong, I like the research, they've had some surprising success in the past, and I hope they continue. But even by the generous error margins allowed for primitive earthquake predictions, they're wrong this time...and if you asked them I'm sure they'd say the same thing.
And yes, I am a geologist.
As another geologist, I agree.
Not sure where the submitter got his information, but this earthquake isn't even related to KB's prediction *at all*. This quake occured 250 miles northwest of KB's proposed area. In fact, it fell within the range of the area for the quake he predicted last year (the San Simeon earthquake).
However, I would be willing to wager that this earthquake *is* the one that the researchers involved in the Parkfield Experiment have been waiting for, only 11 years overdue. Especially since that segment of the S.A.F. through Parkfield has consistantly produced M6.0's or greater roughly every 22 years from 1857 to 1966.
In case you aren't aware, there is a project similiar to YahooPOPs for Hotmail, called Hotmail Popper.
I think you might be taking your knowledge of the English language for granite.
Heh. That wasn't gneiss.
Second, you do not need 50 percent. You've been misinformed. The last President to get 50% of the so-called popular vote was George H. W. Bush in 1992. You need more than 50% of the electoral college votes to win the election outright, but that's not very interesting either, because that's not a requirement either: if no one gets more than 50% of the electoral college votes, then the House decides the winner from the top three (which is what happened with John Quincy Adams).
;)
You mean 1988.