You need a certain degree of faithfulness: if you lose too much information each transcription, there's no selection. I think geneticists have math for this that I'm not perfeclty versed in, but if you, say, lose 50% of your genome each generation, the increased chance that the next generation gets your good genes is negligible compared to the chance that they would have received that gene randomly. The news here is that they got transcription good enough to "evolve" their XNA, that is a high enough proportion of each generation was viable that they could be cycled through to the next population.
It's not about "beating" it. If you're determined to beat this device, you can. But if you are determined to beat this device in the contexts it aims to be used in (i.e., you are determined to interrupt people, and are determined to talk in libraries) you are an asshole.
No. That's the point is that if you begin speaking, when confronted with an immediate replay of your voice, your instinct is to STOP speaking. It interferes with your ability to monitor your own speech based on what you hear.
And you are right, but like no one else on this board seems to get, the point is not to FORCE people to stop speaking, but to prevent them from speaking out of turn unconsciously. People who talk in libraries, and people who interrupt during conversations, more often than not are not doing so because they believe they have every right to interrupt, or disturb people around them, but because they temporarily forget that they should not be speaking. If you are consciously trying to interrupt someone when they are speaking, this will not help. If you are constantly interrupting them because you get carried away and are thinking faster than the conversation is proceeding, this will help both you and your conversational partner tremendously.
Earbuds playing music, I assume? Which they will talk over? I'm pretty sure that, if you go into a library, wearing headphones (which are not allowed in plenty of libraries already!) and talking, you should be shot with a real gun.
Useless as the weird dystopian weapon you are trying to make it out to be. Useful for moderating debates and designated quiet areas? Yes. If you wear earplugs into a library just so you can talk loudly, you're a jackass, not the inventors
Sweet Jesus. TFA itself makes it very clear exactly what this is, and yet STILL has the same stupid, overblown reaction as this thread. All the gun does is beam a slightly delayed copy of your own words back at you, so if you try to start talking out of turn, you will have the urge to not speak. Should you wish to continue being a loud jackass, for example when you are telling the kid from the mailroom how great Ron Paul is with such effort as to shake pieces of Rice-Krispie treat from your neckbeard, you can of course power through the discomfort, or plug your ears, which you do anyway. This is not a silence spell, it simply makes it more difficult to speak when it is not appropriate for you to be speaking, with nothing other than a lingering feeling of discomfort. And it can be circumvented by wearing earplugs. Any totalitarian government trying to mobilize this for nefarious purposes will be sorely disappointed
As an energy researcher, I feel it is important to correct this glaring mistake. I have no desire to stick my whole arm into this piranha tank, but:
Also, remember, we can ship coal everywhere - you can't ship wind everywhere:)
is a disingenous argument. While it is true that, for example, wind turbines cannot be wired directly into a grid for every location on the planet (though really, given that my power as I write this comes from seriously hundreds of miles away leads me to believe that pretty much everyone can find a place without a lot of trees) that is not how energy works. One cannot simply say that because a wind turbine cannot be hooked directly into a persons home that person must burn fossil fuels. Storage plants make this a non issue: in theory, any place that is capable of receiving power from a coal plant is capable of receiving power from a station connected to a wind farm. Though indeed, efficiency is a problem. What puzzles me is that you seem to be arguing against increased efficiency because it would...somehow lead to energy poverty? If you were phrasing your argument in terms of "we shouldn't be abandoning high efficiency energy for low efficiency energy" I'd see where you were going, but you are predicating your argument against wind power on the assumption that wind power is inherently inefficient, which is a rather subtle petitio principii: claiming that wind power research doesn't deserve money because it hasn't already been researched.
More than likely, someone will stop you and harass you for wearing a lab coat outside of the lab, and wonder what they hell you're carrying a clipboard, instead of a lab notebook. No one who knows what they are doing thinks a lab coat says you know what you are doing (except in medicine, where lab coats are not safety equipment, but magical raiments invested with doctorly powers...f---in prodocs...)
I'm glad that the operatives are trained it physical fitness: I'd hate to see a nuclear arsenal in the hands of someone who doesn't know to properly stretch their calf muscles before a long run
A state is a monopoly on violence exercised over territory. I'll let you figure out where THAT paraphrasing is from (Hint: it's from someone who didn't own slaves).
And way to quote Dick Analfroth, grandparent. What are we gonna do? March to the doors of the "government" and start shooting government employees because they handled an online identity theft case indelicately? Hint: before you start whipping your libertarian dick out, make sure there's a reason to, and maybe also make sure it's big enough that you won't be embarrassed.
I'm sort of concerned about the "serving of milk" and "serving of meat." What about those two things are fundamental nutritional requirements? This isn't the fifties: we don't consider the day improperly started without at least two hamsteaks. I'm not upset about the government intervention, I'M upset about the government incompetent.
The oxidation emission of organic molecules is NOT easy to interpret, at least not any easier than the reflectance spectrum! You would be getting the spectrum of the molecular orbitals of each intermediate oxidation product, which for large molecules like THC and nicotine is a lot of confusing information.
However, the parent post makes a good point, in that visible spectra are very difficult to interpret, because they rarely show complex structure. The camera goes up to 10,000/cm but spectra in that area are still electronic transitions. It's like trying to read a book where each word is represented by the letter that occurs in it most.
You kind of answered your own question, hoss. It's not like murder, where someone doesn't show up to work and so police KNOW a crime has been committed: financial crimes are successful when the "victim" institution simply doesn't know the difference. It's especially the case where the amount being stolen is large on the scale of the individual, but small on the scale of the transaction/company ledger (i.e. an "office space" scam), which makes it easier for the ledger to be doctored, or at least for transactions to be deliberately misrepresented.
True, the debate is over whether or not human activity has caused global warming. In any case, when the fate of the human race is at stake, Prevention Science is a better prescription than "healthy skepticism"
While I in general agree, you forget that several principles of scientific thought (Occam's Razor, the Null Hypothesis) require one to assume that a claim is INCORRECT unless you are prevented with incontrovertible proof that it is correct. While this does not mean you kick people out of science for making extraordinary claims, or even that a claim is impossible, but that you can only call yourself responsible if you conduct the remainder of your inquiry as if it were false, as you should regard all claims that do not have evidence to support them. There are new scientific traditions (i.e. so called "preventative science") which dictate that the "worst case" as defined by the goals of the investigation must be assumed unless incontrovertible proof is presented such as to render them not worst case, but no case. But I assume this is not what you are talking about when you mean skepticism is unhealthy,
Through *Hephaestus'* mastery of technology. I'd say even a piece of otherwise hard science fiction should be stripped of that title if it includes a part where the scientists are stumped by a problem, but God comes down and does it for them (Rama Revealed? *Shudder*)
As you say, they are rocket scientists. Which means that when the rocket scientists say don't go, you don't go, because they are the goddam rocket scientists and no matter how "cool" your head is, you know less than them about rocket scientist. Yes, there are mismanaged agencies all over the world and all throughout history. However, when the military makes a poor decision, or the FDA, they at least have the defenses that their endeavors are risky to begin with, that they have responsibilities that at times conflict with careful procedure, and that their management requires the synthesis of varied data towards a relatively nebulous end. Space programs are feats of science and engineering, both of which are far more concrete in their aims and guidelines. If a research program in say, a university laboratory, experienced accidents on the scale of the challenger disaster, large inquiries would be launched, and the guilty parties or policies identified, rather than the "whoopsie!" reaction NASA seems to always give, which given that they were forewarned in this case is especially troubling.
While your exploration analogy appeals well to intuition, it is disingenuous insofar as space exploration is not a group of bold pioneers setting out with bowie knives and covered wagons, nor is it a capitalist enterprise where a few workers caught in the gears are considered acceptable losses: it is a careful and scientific exploration of human capability, and in such an exploration, care, more than speed or distance or results, is paramount. The Challenger disaster was a failed experiment, not in that it returned an unwelcome result, but that in it return no result of use. We now know that when you send humans into space with equipment you know to be faulty, there is a chance they will perish: how does that enrich our understanding? A failed exploration at least illuminates the conditions for failure; a slew of workplace accidents are unlikely to spoil the products of industry even as they illuminate no hazards. There was no illumination here, because the initial conditions were known, and led to the result we were almost certain to obtain. If a death happens, it happens. If a death happens, and it could have been prevented, but was not due to any concern which is ancillary to the central aim of the endeavor, is unforgiveable
Riiiiiight, because whenever someone is pardoned, everyone goes "whew" and starts feeling good. I have never heard of an injust use of law, reneged upon by its perpetrating body, that was excused because "they pardoned them!"
How exactly will a pardon minimize the injustice? It will still be on the record, it will still be in the history books. Do you really think that the reversal of the Salem Witch Trial verdicts "minimized" that injustice? Indeed, in that case all the laws regarding the diagnosis and investigation of witchcraft were followed. All letting these verdicts stand does is leave them as legal precedent: no one is going to look at them and say "I'm glad this person was never pardoned, or I might be inclined to pass a similar verdict, on the basis that every country is allowed to do this at least once"
Why does every discussion of a space program devolve rapidly into people calling every space program that isn't their favorite a bunch of incompetent jerks. Guys. Space travel is fucking HARD. There is no agency with any kind of pedigree that doesn't also have a lot of embarrassing screwups. SpaceX is just as bad as any of them: if it has fewer failures, it's because it has fewer successes.
Everyone working in any kind of aerospace program is very intelligent. They are doing something very difficult, with very little room for error, in a room with a lot of different people. I think it's safe to say that space travel has a fairly consistent success rate across agencies, at least up to a reasonable error.
Slashdot Mirror
You need a certain degree of faithfulness: if you lose too much information each transcription, there's no selection. I think geneticists have math for this that I'm not perfeclty versed in, but if you, say, lose 50% of your genome each generation, the increased chance that the next generation gets your good genes is negligible compared to the chance that they would have received that gene randomly. The news here is that they got transcription good enough to "evolve" their XNA, that is a high enough proportion of each generation was viable that they could be cycled through to the next population.
It's not about "beating" it. If you're determined to beat this device, you can. But if you are determined to beat this device in the contexts it aims to be used in (i.e., you are determined to interrupt people, and are determined to talk in libraries) you are an asshole.
No. That's the point is that if you begin speaking, when confronted with an immediate replay of your voice, your instinct is to STOP speaking. It interferes with your ability to monitor your own speech based on what you hear.
And you are right, but like no one else on this board seems to get, the point is not to FORCE people to stop speaking, but to prevent them from speaking out of turn unconsciously. People who talk in libraries, and people who interrupt during conversations, more often than not are not doing so because they believe they have every right to interrupt, or disturb people around them, but because they temporarily forget that they should not be speaking. If you are consciously trying to interrupt someone when they are speaking, this will not help. If you are constantly interrupting them because you get carried away and are thinking faster than the conversation is proceeding, this will help both you and your conversational partner tremendously.
Earbuds playing music, I assume? Which they will talk over? I'm pretty sure that, if you go into a library, wearing headphones (which are not allowed in plenty of libraries already!) and talking, you should be shot with a real gun.
Useless as the weird dystopian weapon you are trying to make it out to be. Useful for moderating debates and designated quiet areas? Yes. If you wear earplugs into a library just so you can talk loudly, you're a jackass, not the inventors
Sweet Jesus. TFA itself makes it very clear exactly what this is, and yet STILL has the same stupid, overblown reaction as this thread. All the gun does is beam a slightly delayed copy of your own words back at you, so if you try to start talking out of turn, you will have the urge to not speak. Should you wish to continue being a loud jackass, for example when you are telling the kid from the mailroom how great Ron Paul is with such effort as to shake pieces of Rice-Krispie treat from your neckbeard, you can of course power through the discomfort, or plug your ears, which you do anyway. This is not a silence spell, it simply makes it more difficult to speak when it is not appropriate for you to be speaking, with nothing other than a lingering feeling of discomfort. And it can be circumvented by wearing earplugs. Any totalitarian government trying to mobilize this for nefarious purposes will be sorely disappointed
As an energy researcher, I feel it is important to correct this glaring mistake. I have no desire to stick my whole arm into this piranha tank, but: :)
Also, remember, we can ship coal everywhere - you can't ship wind everywhere
is a disingenous argument. While it is true that, for example, wind turbines cannot be wired directly into a grid for every location on the planet (though really, given that my power as I write this comes from seriously hundreds of miles away leads me to believe that pretty much everyone can find a place without a lot of trees) that is not how energy works. One cannot simply say that because a wind turbine cannot be hooked directly into a persons home that person must burn fossil fuels. Storage plants make this a non issue: in theory, any place that is capable of receiving power from a coal plant is capable of receiving power from a station connected to a wind farm. Though indeed, efficiency is a problem. What puzzles me is that you seem to be arguing against increased efficiency because it would...somehow lead to energy poverty? If you were phrasing your argument in terms of "we shouldn't be abandoning high efficiency energy for low efficiency energy" I'd see where you were going, but you are predicating your argument against wind power on the assumption that wind power is inherently inefficient, which is a rather subtle petitio principii: claiming that wind power research doesn't deserve money because it hasn't already been researched.
More than likely, someone will stop you and harass you for wearing a lab coat outside of the lab, and wonder what they hell you're carrying a clipboard, instead of a lab notebook. No one who knows what they are doing thinks a lab coat says you know what you are doing (except in medicine, where lab coats are not safety equipment, but magical raiments invested with doctorly powers...f---in prodocs...)
I'm glad that the operatives are trained it physical fitness: I'd hate to see a nuclear arsenal in the hands of someone who doesn't know to properly stretch their calf muscles before a long run
I'm pretty sure that it was some dairy-industry agent who made it a USDA regulation in the first place, or something similar. While I don't think that it was some sort of concerted conspiracy, I can certainly imagine the policy being informed by generous information from the dairy industry about how milk grows strong bones©
A state is a monopoly on violence exercised over territory. I'll let you figure out where THAT paraphrasing is from (Hint: it's from someone who didn't own slaves).
And way to quote Dick Analfroth, grandparent. What are we gonna do? March to the doors of the "government" and start shooting government employees because they handled an online identity theft case indelicately? Hint: before you start whipping your libertarian dick out, make sure there's a reason to, and maybe also make sure it's big enough that you won't be embarrassed.
I'm sort of concerned about the "serving of milk" and "serving of meat." What about those two things are fundamental nutritional requirements? This isn't the fifties: we don't consider the day improperly started without at least two hamsteaks. I'm not upset about the government intervention, I'M upset about the government incompetent.
Let us shoot the government, using INTERNET BULLETS
The oxidation emission of organic molecules is NOT easy to interpret, at least not any easier than the reflectance spectrum! You would be getting the spectrum of the molecular orbitals of each intermediate oxidation product, which for large molecules like THC and nicotine is a lot of confusing information.
However, the parent post makes a good point, in that visible spectra are very difficult to interpret, because they rarely show complex structure. The camera goes up to 10,000/cm but spectra in that area are still electronic transitions. It's like trying to read a book where each word is represented by the letter that occurs in it most.
You kind of answered your own question, hoss. It's not like murder, where someone doesn't show up to work and so police KNOW a crime has been committed: financial crimes are successful when the "victim" institution simply doesn't know the difference. It's especially the case where the amount being stolen is large on the scale of the individual, but small on the scale of the transaction/company ledger (i.e. an "office space" scam), which makes it easier for the ledger to be doctored, or at least for transactions to be deliberately misrepresented.
True, the debate is over whether or not human activity has caused global warming. In any case, when the fate of the human race is at stake, Prevention Science is a better prescription than "healthy skepticism"
While I in general agree, you forget that several principles of scientific thought (Occam's Razor, the Null Hypothesis) require one to assume that a claim is INCORRECT unless you are prevented with incontrovertible proof that it is correct. While this does not mean you kick people out of science for making extraordinary claims, or even that a claim is impossible, but that you can only call yourself responsible if you conduct the remainder of your inquiry as if it were false, as you should regard all claims that do not have evidence to support them. There are new scientific traditions (i.e. so called "preventative science") which dictate that the "worst case" as defined by the goals of the investigation must be assumed unless incontrovertible proof is presented such as to render them not worst case, but no case. But I assume this is not what you are talking about when you mean skepticism is unhealthy,
Through *Hephaestus'* mastery of technology. I'd say even a piece of otherwise hard science fiction should be stripped of that title if it includes a part where the scientists are stumped by a problem, but God comes down and does it for them (Rama Revealed? *Shudder*)
And actually, the cut a publisher gets from a first time author's sales makes selling it online as perhaps an epub probably worthwhile
I propose they sell books, and not pass legislation preventing me from donating that book to a fucking library
*rocket science. Gosh.
As you say, they are rocket scientists. Which means that when the rocket scientists say don't go, you don't go, because they are the goddam rocket scientists and no matter how "cool" your head is, you know less than them about rocket scientist. Yes, there are mismanaged agencies all over the world and all throughout history. However, when the military makes a poor decision, or the FDA, they at least have the defenses that their endeavors are risky to begin with, that they have responsibilities that at times conflict with careful procedure, and that their management requires the synthesis of varied data towards a relatively nebulous end. Space programs are feats of science and engineering, both of which are far more concrete in their aims and guidelines. If a research program in say, a university laboratory, experienced accidents on the scale of the challenger disaster, large inquiries would be launched, and the guilty parties or policies identified, rather than the "whoopsie!" reaction NASA seems to always give, which given that they were forewarned in this case is especially troubling.
While your exploration analogy appeals well to intuition, it is disingenuous insofar as space exploration is not a group of bold pioneers setting out with bowie knives and covered wagons, nor is it a capitalist enterprise where a few workers caught in the gears are considered acceptable losses: it is a careful and scientific exploration of human capability, and in such an exploration, care, more than speed or distance or results, is paramount. The Challenger disaster was a failed experiment, not in that it returned an unwelcome result, but that in it return no result of use. We now know that when you send humans into space with equipment you know to be faulty, there is a chance they will perish: how does that enrich our understanding? A failed exploration at least illuminates the conditions for failure; a slew of workplace accidents are unlikely to spoil the products of industry even as they illuminate no hazards. There was no illumination here, because the initial conditions were known, and led to the result we were almost certain to obtain. If a death happens, it happens. If a death happens, and it could have been prevented, but was not due to any concern which is ancillary to the central aim of the endeavor, is unforgiveable
Riiiiiight, because whenever someone is pardoned, everyone goes "whew" and starts feeling good. I have never heard of an injust use of law, reneged upon by its perpetrating body, that was excused because "they pardoned them!"
How exactly will a pardon minimize the injustice? It will still be on the record, it will still be in the history books. Do you really think that the reversal of the Salem Witch Trial verdicts "minimized" that injustice? Indeed, in that case all the laws regarding the diagnosis and investigation of witchcraft were followed. All letting these verdicts stand does is leave them as legal precedent: no one is going to look at them and say "I'm glad this person was never pardoned, or I might be inclined to pass a similar verdict, on the basis that every country is allowed to do this at least once"
Why does every discussion of a space program devolve rapidly into people calling every space program that isn't their favorite a bunch of incompetent jerks. Guys. Space travel is fucking HARD. There is no agency with any kind of pedigree that doesn't also have a lot of embarrassing screwups. SpaceX is just as bad as any of them: if it has fewer failures, it's because it has fewer successes.
Everyone working in any kind of aerospace program is very intelligent. They are doing something very difficult, with very little room for error, in a room with a lot of different people. I think it's safe to say that space travel has a fairly consistent success rate across agencies, at least up to a reasonable error.