That kind of superior attitude comes mainly from walking through a sea of crashing Windows machines and recompile-reboot-repeat Linux machines only to end up at a FreeBSD machine that's more reliable than running water.
That would resonate a little more with me if it actually resembled my experience with Linux. Why do I get the feeling that you're trying to start an unnecessary fight here?
What, those people were low on the come-when-you-yawn neurotransmitter?
If anyone knows what that is, I'd be interested (although my problem is the opposite of that).
Truth be told, nobody has much of an idea WTF happens to make the brain do anything, nonetheless what causes it to do odd things. "Research" involves randomly cooking up new chemicals in the lab and seeing what they do to living brains.
There's a revolution going on now in neuroscience now; check it out. Things are much further along than you seem to realize. There are also a lot of charlatans out there, so make sure your info is tracable to peer-reviewed work from reputable sources. I see a lot of references to authorities with names like "Dr. Bubba" around here...
But I wouldn't blame that on a school system that's becoming more designed for "good little girls," so much as a school system that doesn't have the resources any more to substitute for absentee parents who can't or won't teach their (non-add) children controlled and respectful social behavior.
I have no (informed) opinion about whether ADHD is a valid diagnosis or not, but the truth is that many parents are discovering -- for whatever reason -- that stimulants can improve their children's performance in school. That's arguably great for the kids and their parents, but one possible consequence of this is that it may force other parents into a kind of drug arms race in an effort to give their kids an edge. This has been a problem in competitive athletics for a long time, and in that realm they've chosen to ban performance-enhancing drugs precisely because otherwise athletes would be forced to use them in order to compete against others who do.
Now, if ADHD is a "real" disorder (and not just a region in the normal range of human personality) and a particular drug relieves its symptoms but has no effect on those not so afflicted, then this argument doesn't hold. Can anyone shed some light on this?
My only concern/point is that it doesn't advance science one bit (and future pain sufferers) if the techniques cannot be reliably duplicated.
These testimonials are almost always tied to the specific person providing the treatment, and not the treatment itself. I.e., it's not the accupuncture per se, but rather Dr. Whomever's application of it that is the key. If the treatment were reliably replicated, then you wouldn't have to go to Dr. Whomever for it. Cultifying it in this way also keeps it mysterious and untestable, and all of this is good as far as Dr. Whomever is concerned...
The other thing is the expectation people place on their kids these days. And the ridiculous level of activity kids are expected to be involved in. (Baseball, Soccer, Football every F*cking day?!! WTF?!) Kids should be allowed to do things like sit in the backyard baking mud pies or making snowmen.
Absolutely. I look at the structured, hyper-supervised lives that most kids seem to live now, and I feel sorry for them. When I was growing up back in the 60s, we flew out the door in the morning and our parents didn't worry much unless we didn't show up for dinner. Parents now, however, are scared shitless that something horrible will happen if their 8-year old is allowed to ride a bike around the block. They will say that it's not as safe now as it used to be, but statistically speaking that just isn't true. They've just grown up themselves under constant bombardment by media that sensationalize -- and, maybe more importantly, personalize -- every bad or tragic thing that happens, anywhere. It all feels like it's happening right next door.
Here's a thought experiment: What if the murder (or abduction, or whatever) rate were orders of magnitude lower that what it's ever been? What if there were, say, an average of one every month in the entire U.S.? You know what would happen. The media would treat each one like it was the O.J. Simpson case, and we'd be getting 365.24 days of murder news a year. The stories would be designed, as they are now, to make the crimes feel "close to home" so that we'll pay attention and sit through the commercials. Would we feel any safer than we do now? I doubt it...
I am afraid you have it backwards. Compression is removal of repetitive, guessable parts. The better you compress, the more random the output becomes.
Perhaps I should have used the word "noise" rather than "randomness", but in any case your point is well-taken: any lossless compression algorithm will preserve random noise, and the poor performance of JPEG on noisy images shows that it's not throwing much of it out, either. I often run a median or averaging filter over raw images before compressing them, and hence my statement that compression is the removal of redundancy (the repetitive, guessible parts) and noise.
For example, you would expect the least significant bits in a jpeg to be more or less random - any degree of organisation there could be a hidden text or something else.
Actually, I would expect relatively little randomness in a compressed image, because removal of randomness (along with redundancy) is what compression is all about. And since well-encrypted data should appear random, you'd get further by testing for bits that are too random, rather than for hidden structure.
It may save tax dollars - but it is a step toward private business enforcing it's own laws. Has anyone read Snowcrash (by Neal Steavenson) where the different parts of the city all have their own rent-a-cops that enforce different laws?
It is important to understand that both kinds of scholars exist, and the best way to tell one from the other is to learn the jargon and read through what they have actually written. A smart reader will know a bullshitter immediately, I think.
Granted, but it would help if the bullshitters weren't passing peer review (to the extent that it credibly exists) in the first place...
I don't know about the colors, but one thing that I did find odd is the obvious and clumsy seams between the component images of the mosaics. I used to work with satellite imagery back in the early 80's, and it was pretty routine to resample the images so that they fit together seamlessly. I wonder why JPL isn't bothering to do that? It's not rocket science, after all...
Learn the jargon, it doesn't take that long to do.
But you're not getting the point here. It's not that "big words" are being used; it's that they're being used in a way that deliberately obfuscates the meaning of the text in order to protect the author from any attack that may result from saying anything definite. If you're an academic, you know it's true!
I don't entirely disagree with you, but... Maybe it's because engineers and scientists live in a world where there's usually a clear distinction between what's correct and what's not, and an emphasis of substance over form. They're expected to actually know what they're talking about, and it's usually painfully obvious if they don't. That's why you'll never hear about a humanities prof sneaking a nonsensical paper into, say, Physical Review Letters as a joke.
On the other hand, I've met and seen people insulted by plenty of computer geeks who - almost uniquely among professionals - seem to think that their little sub-island of knowledge is the only one by which true intelligence is measured, and will take every opportunity to let you know this. I almost never encounter that attitude with scientists, lawyers, or physicians. Must have something to do with maturity and social skills, but in my observation puberty is not the cure.
a human could walk over and pick up a rock that looked interesting in a matter of seconds
And picking up rocks advances science exactly how? It's the instruments - e.g., spectrometers, etc. - that return the useful data, and they're quite capable of operating on their own. You can put a lot more instrumentation on Mars for a lot less money if you leave out the humans and all of their life support (not to mention the necessary return trip).
Why cater to (define NOT_FLAMEBATE)lazy people who don't read the articles?
Well, one reason would be that linked articles often get slashdotted before most people get to them. Another is that some would like a brief heads-up without having to read an entire treatise on the subject. But then, real geeks know that keeping outsiders in the dark is the key to their mystique...
Better yet, if Cheney could get any intelligence reports to hint that the Martians might have weapons of mass destruction, then the sky's the limit as far as the budget goes. And Halliburton could get the contract!
True anarchy is impossible, but under a libertarian system (which would allow capitalism, of course), things are as anarchic as you can get, since there is the least coercive rule.
Just about all of the "isms" ultimately break down and lead to something less desirable. Libertarianism is unstable because it places no check on the unlimited accumulation of private power. Concentrated private power is every bit as dangerous to liberty as excessive government power, and in some respects even more so, since government quickly becomes its tool. Believe it or not, some people think this is going on in the U.S. right now.
True, but a lot of people thought Einstein and Newton were crazy too, and they didn't exactly have many peers at first to verify and critique their information, as they were just cast off as silly just as you've done.
That simply isn't true, but nevertheless it always gets repeated to support some odd notion that all nonsense deserves credibility. As others here have pointed out, Newton and Einstein were both taken very seriously by their numerous peers. Neither was ever considered "crazy" by anyone with their heads somewhere other than up their butts.
What they're saying is that the LEGAL STATE of marriage should extend to gay couple as well as straight ones.
What's remarkable is that the "religious" right, who have long used the AIDS epidemic to support their case, are now putting themselves on record against monogamy for gay couples. The mind just boggles.
Slashdot Mirror
That would resonate a little more with me if it actually resembled my experience with Linux. Why do I get the feeling that you're trying to start an unnecessary fight here?
If anyone knows what that is, I'd be interested (although my problem is the opposite of that).
Truth be told, nobody has much of an idea WTF happens to make the brain do anything, nonetheless what causes it to do odd things. "Research" involves randomly cooking up new chemicals in the lab and seeing what they do to living brains.
There's a revolution going on now in neuroscience now; check it out. Things are much further along than you seem to realize. There are also a lot of charlatans out there, so make sure your info is tracable to peer-reviewed work from reputable sources. I see a lot of references to authorities with names like "Dr. Bubba" around here...
Exactly. And me with no mod points.
Now, if ADHD is a "real" disorder (and not just a region in the normal range of human personality) and a particular drug relieves its symptoms but has no effect on those not so afflicted, then this argument doesn't hold. Can anyone shed some light on this?
These testimonials are almost always tied to the specific person providing the treatment, and not the treatment itself. I.e., it's not the accupuncture per se, but rather Dr. Whomever's application of it that is the key. If the treatment were reliably replicated, then you wouldn't have to go to Dr. Whomever for it. Cultifying it in this way also keeps it mysterious and untestable, and all of this is good as far as Dr. Whomever is concerned...
Absolutely. I look at the structured, hyper-supervised lives that most kids seem to live now, and I feel sorry for them. When I was growing up back in the 60s, we flew out the door in the morning and our parents didn't worry much unless we didn't show up for dinner. Parents now, however, are scared shitless that something horrible will happen if their 8-year old is allowed to ride a bike around the block. They will say that it's not as safe now as it used to be, but statistically speaking that just isn't true. They've just grown up themselves under constant bombardment by media that sensationalize -- and, maybe more importantly, personalize -- every bad or tragic thing that happens, anywhere. It all feels like it's happening right next door.
Here's a thought experiment: What if the murder (or abduction, or whatever) rate were orders of magnitude lower that what it's ever been? What if there were, say, an average of one every month in the entire U.S.? You know what would happen. The media would treat each one like it was the O.J. Simpson case, and we'd be getting 365.24 days of murder news a year. The stories would be designed, as they are now, to make the crimes feel "close to home" so that we'll pay attention and sit through the commercials. Would we feel any safer than we do now? I doubt it...
Just be sure to leave enough time before you die so you can look at, read, listen to, and/or play with all of that stuff!
I've been filtering subject lines with too much punctuation for some time now; it catches quite a bit.
Perhaps I should have used the word "noise" rather than "randomness", but in any case your point is well-taken: any lossless compression algorithm will preserve random noise, and the poor performance of JPEG on noisy images shows that it's not throwing much of it out, either. I often run a median or averaging filter over raw images before compressing them, and hence my statement that compression is the removal of redundancy (the repetitive, guessible parts) and noise.
Actually, I would expect relatively little randomness in a compressed image, because removal of randomness (along with redundancy) is what compression is all about. And since well-encrypted data should appear random, you'd get further by testing for bits that are too random, rather than for hidden structure.
Sounds like Libertarian nirvana to me...
Well, of course I don't hate you.
It is important to understand that both kinds of scholars exist, and the best way to tell one from the other is to learn the jargon and read through what they have actually written. A smart reader will know a bullshitter immediately, I think.
Granted, but it would help if the bullshitters weren't passing peer review (to the extent that it credibly exists) in the first place...
I don't know about the colors, but one thing that I did find odd is the obvious and clumsy seams between the component images of the mosaics. I used to work with satellite imagery back in the early 80's, and it was pretty routine to resample the images so that they fit together seamlessly. I wonder why JPL isn't bothering to do that? It's not rocket science, after all...
But you're not getting the point here. It's not that "big words" are being used; it's that they're being used in a way that deliberately obfuscates the meaning of the text in order to protect the author from any attack that may result from saying anything definite. If you're an academic, you know it's true!
You can read the entire paper in the next issue of Social Text...
I don't entirely disagree with you, but... Maybe it's because engineers and scientists live in a world where there's usually a clear distinction between what's correct and what's not, and an emphasis of substance over form. They're expected to actually know what they're talking about, and it's usually painfully obvious if they don't. That's why you'll never hear about a humanities prof sneaking a nonsensical paper into, say, Physical Review Letters as a joke.
On the other hand, I've met and seen people insulted by plenty of computer geeks who - almost uniquely among professionals - seem to think that their little sub-island of knowledge is the only one by which true intelligence is measured, and will take every opportunity to let you know this. I almost never encounter that attitude with scientists, lawyers, or physicians. Must have something to do with maturity and social skills, but in my observation puberty is not the cure.
That paper used lots of big words and I didn't understand it at all, so it must have been written by really smart people!
And picking up rocks advances science exactly how? It's the instruments - e.g., spectrometers, etc. - that return the useful data, and they're quite capable of operating on their own. You can put a lot more instrumentation on Mars for a lot less money if you leave out the humans and all of their life support (not to mention the necessary return trip).
Well, one reason would be that linked articles often get slashdotted before most people get to them. Another is that some would like a brief heads-up without having to read an entire treatise on the subject. But then, real geeks know that keeping outsiders in the dark is the key to their mystique...
Better yet, if Cheney could get any intelligence reports to hint that the Martians might have weapons of mass destruction, then the sky's the limit as far as the budget goes. And Halliburton could get the contract!
Just about all of the "isms" ultimately break down and lead to something less desirable. Libertarianism is unstable because it places no check on the unlimited accumulation of private power. Concentrated private power is every bit as dangerous to liberty as excessive government power, and in some respects even more so, since government quickly becomes its tool. Believe it or not, some people think this is going on in the U.S. right now.
That simply isn't true, but nevertheless it always gets repeated to support some odd notion that all nonsense deserves credibility. As others here have pointed out, Newton and Einstein were both taken very seriously by their numerous peers. Neither was ever considered "crazy" by anyone with their heads somewhere other than up their butts.
Well put. I'm mailing this to all of the MS captives
I know.
Well, I wasn't a dictator.
Oh yeah, I didn't succeed either. Never mind...
What's remarkable is that the "religious" right, who have long used the AIDS epidemic to support their case, are now putting themselves on record against monogamy for gay couples. The mind just boggles.