You have a point in generalizing to other objects, but interest is mostly in the mind of the beholder. This item touches on adding personality to your computer, and that could turn out to become a big thing.
Significant correlation is usually very powerful tool for pointing out that there is a relationship. However, it's not proof and it's really bad at helping you to understand the relationship.
I agree in general. I did not mean that correlations indicate causation.
Complex systems have a network of cyclical cause-effect relations. Say, global warming can result in CO2 changes.
But in this specific context I'd have a lot more confidence in the models if there is proof(heh-heh) of
historical CO2(main component of greenhouse gasses) -Temperature correlation . To me it would put me at ease-subjectively- with that the models are playing in the right ballpark.
I don't think they're all doing 'miscalculations', just don't trust a certain self evident intuition. One should judge the detailed realistic model more by the toy models from which it's derived.
The early cries about global warming were certainly based on insulator models. The effect is real enough, but how long have they been adding details, 'adding tweaking buttons' to this model?
Are there also models where CO2 acts as a 'regime shift trigger'(merely pushing the system in a new regime, like triggering an ice age that could also occur spontaneously), models where it acts as a 'climate stability controller'(making climate more predictable or more erratic, rather than warmer or colder) or as an 'amplifier'(multiplyling the impact of other factors)?
The common intuition fits models where CO2 is an and insulator (plain greenhouse effect).
And I'm not sure if the bulk of the media can handle any information that does not match this intuition.
I recall the 'karatand' in the book Stand on Zanzibar. It was a soft glove that would become rigid when hit. So the bearer would stick his hand between a door that slams shut, and he would have an instant fist iron in a fist fight
the specialty that studies weird flowing behaviour is called rheology. Honey is viscous but given time , it flattens out. It's still a 'normal' substance.
Mayonnaise is 'extra hard' when treated softly: the mini mountainscape in the pot can stay for months. But it's much softer than honey when you apply force. Silly putty flows when treated softly, but freezes when you apply force(specifically, it bounces).
So at first sight, the new STF thingy looks like SSP (super silly putty). For some reason military preferred some other name over SSP. Pity. But to be fair, there's more params.
I'm out of touch with the science part, but a thing that would convince me of the human impact is climate archeology showing a tight correlation between co2 and average temperature. The aim is then to distinguish between intrinsic variability and the impact of humanity, intrinsic variability being , uh, large. I think(from memory) the total variation of sea level since the ternary is about 200m. Is this mirrored in the CO2 levels? A link anyone?
Another angle is , why think in terms of proof if climate change is caused(or maybe triggered) by humans or not. The question then becomes "is it worth it to try and take control over CO2 levels",which is a bit more general, and not related to blame.
And the general question becomes just "what can we do to reduce the damage from climate change", which does more than just 'try and reduce the cause'
Finding out for myself! Brrrr, I'd rather take the word for it from a scientist i have confidence in. And in that case, let's skip statisticians. Weather is a lousy system for taking samples. The average temperature in one century is different from the average temperature in another century, the same applies for millenia, and so on. It doesn't average out.
a guy who was working on blue LED's told me over a year ago that the problem with LED TV's, or in fact any LED display , was that the blue LED's made them horribly expensive. So his company was trying to make cheap blue LED's, which would open up a huge market.
Apparently the witty virus doesn't really overwrite the first sectors , but this could have value in general:
I once recovered a system from attack of the CIH virus. One thing the virus does is overwrite your harddisk starting from the first sector. It continues until your system crashes. So you lose partition table, MBR and FAT. I used the tool 'cleancih' to reconstruct the data. That machine has been functional since, though it displays a first partition of 1 GB instead of 2GB:)
That suggests two things:
1. whatever the cause of the destruction, it should be possible to recover the first sectors. I think , the fact that there was more than 1 partition helped.
2. There are some things on my todolist that I never get around to.
It's also interesting that movies pick the spectacular approach, even if it's wrong. Blowing up an asteroid with nuclear bombs does little to change the direction(lots of energy but not much momentum), and it multiplies the projectiles.
The current approach (and the above argument against nukes)was described by Freeman Dyson in 1995. Send out mass drivers to intercept the asteroids as early as possible. The earlier you start pushing, the less power you need(Quote: it's proportional to the inverse square of the warning time). Could well work- if you invest a lot in early warning systems, but for a movie, it's boring.
such an impact would be known long in advance. There is no risk of 'misinterpretation'. There would be time to move people - to the extent that that is relevant(if the affected area is limited).
I wouldn't want to underestimate the current chance of accidental nuclear war - there is plenty of other people for that - but this is not a credible trigger.
the mathematically oriented astrologists use the 'ephemerides', a book with coordinates of planets. Since the numbers in the book are not affected, they can stick to their conclusions where it is suitable. Also, the focus is on visible planets, not Pluto.
Apart from that, a new planet is an opportunity for new excuses, rather than a problem.
Disproving astrology is like convincing an paranoic that he's not being watched...He said bitterly.
The spinning is an argument that takes me by surprise
One counter argument would be: wouldn't a factor 10 (suppose you can only push 10% of the time- sideways)mean that pushing remains in the same scale of feasibility? So it would be harder, but not like a 30 year technology gap
About odds, 3 things i can add here(only one answer, but hey).
are you multiplying scale of destruction with chance of the event? then i don't know what weighs most. An asteroid that kills half the planet equals a lot of small impacts.
Then, if we compare two asteroids, one being 1000 times bigger than the other one. Would it be easier to detect the big one? I can't tell. Maybe other things count more(color? distance from sun?).
Are they harder to deflect? The longer the warning time, the longer you can push , and the less you have to deflect it to make it miss target. So warning time works in two ways(reverse square).
Overall gut feeling : i'd start by investing in detection, not by designing defenses. It would also allow you to prepare for recovery after impact.
I agree that it's better to break it up than to do nothing at all. Breaking it up has the disadvantage of less control over the pieces,(so don't start with breaking up and then we'll see), and how much impulse is actually transferred? Is it worth it? Or is it sth like lightning? An impressive power, but too short to amount to anything useful
An advantage would be that some pieces will miss their target, and smaller pieces probably means less total damage.
Let's call it a last resort to limit damage. If you have a solution that keeps the asteroid in one piece , it's much better.
Another way to limit damage is to push the right way so it falls on your emerging geopolitical competitor instead of on you. Of course this is only relevant if the asteroid is not really big.
That's it. Plain screwing. The possibility of using high pressure to locally melt the ice is an interesting way to optimize the process(how much?), but the basics is screwing. As a process it's more robust too. Don't want to be blocked by a stone
I'm not sure about your energy argument. Consider the old test of the wire with two weights on either side. The wire slowly sinks through the block of ice. High pressure is a way to move through ice with little energy cost(the ice freezes again on the other side). Screwing through the ice could make sense(it's a way to create high pressure). Maybe combine it with some salt analogy. Although a teflon analogy would be more valuable(water molecules not sticking to the side).
Usually the subject is the rottenness of both of them:) I can't imagine that when a diversity of opinions is represented in a two party system, that the parties represent much of an ideology, but there are some differences of style.
This interview with George Lakoff is about the difference between the perceptions of conservatives and liberals. I think it's insightful. Consider a crude mapping of conservative to republican and liberal to democrat.
One of the guidelines I have to find code to refactor : look for comments. Comments should be in the checkin log of the file, in the changelog of the project , in the header files and in the naming of variables and functions. And in the diff between revisions.
If they are in the code you have a good chance to point out weaknesses in the code. Occasionally these are weaknesses that are very hard to avoid. Often not.
Which leads to guideline two: always try to upgrade the clarity of the code when you do a small mod(usually a fix) . Small mods tend to degrade the code quality, the maintainability, even though the code works better than before.
Comments in the code also quickly become irrelevant, and even misleading, if they aren't already bad from the start. So take a weak fix and append a confusing comment,and you get a very recognisable frustration. Only, the solution for it is not 'better comments'. It's better code
Slashdot Mirror
The issue affects cvs +pserver. It's listed with references at Mitre.
Microsoft should stop publishing these exploits. It practically forces you to update to preempt the attacks that follow.
Well, to be more accurate, they should delay it longer.
You have a point in generalizing to other objects, but interest is mostly in the mind of the beholder. This item touches on adding personality to your computer, and that could turn out to become a big thing.
tamagochi-like personal agent for a mobile phone
agent based computing , see earlier slashdot item on ghosts.
I agree in general. I did not mean that correlations indicate causation.
Complex systems have a network of cyclical cause-effect relations. Say, global warming can result in CO2 changes .
But in this specific context I'd have a lot more confidence in the models if there is proof(heh-heh) of historical CO2(main component of greenhouse gasses) -Temperature correlation . To me it would put me at ease-subjectively- with that the models are playing in the right ballpark.
I don't think they're all doing 'miscalculations', just don't trust a certain self evident intuition. One should judge the detailed realistic model more by the toy models from which it's derived.
The early cries about global warming were certainly based on insulator models. The effect is real enough, but how long have they been adding details, 'adding tweaking buttons' to this model?
Are there also models where CO2 acts as a 'regime shift trigger'(merely pushing the system in a new regime, like triggering an ice age that could also occur spontaneously), models where it acts as a 'climate stability controller'(making climate more predictable or more erratic, rather than warmer or colder) or as an 'amplifier'(multiplyling the impact of other factors)?
The common intuition fits models where CO2 is an and insulator (plain greenhouse effect). And I'm not sure if the bulk of the media can handle any information that does not match this intuition.
I recall the 'karatand' in the book Stand on Zanzibar. It was a soft glove that would become rigid when hit. So the bearer would stick his hand between a door that slams shut, and he would have an instant fist iron in a fist fight
the specialty that studies weird flowing behaviour is called rheology. Honey is viscous but given time , it flattens out. It's still a 'normal' substance.
Mayonnaise is 'extra hard' when treated softly: the mini mountainscape in the pot can stay for months. But it's much softer than honey when you apply force. Silly putty flows when treated softly, but freezes when you apply force(specifically, it bounces).
So at first sight, the new STF thingy looks like SSP (super silly putty). For some reason military preferred some other name over SSP. Pity. But to be fair, there's more params.
I'm out of touch with the science part, but a thing that would convince me of the human impact is climate archeology showing a tight correlation between co2 and average temperature. The aim is then to distinguish between intrinsic variability and the impact of humanity, intrinsic variability being , uh, large.
,which is a bit more general, and not related to blame.
I think(from memory) the total variation of sea level since the ternary is about 200m. Is this mirrored in the CO2 levels? A link anyone?
Another angle is , why think in terms of proof if climate change is caused(or maybe triggered) by humans or not.
The question then becomes "is it worth it to try and take control over CO2 levels"
And the general question becomes just "what can we do to reduce the damage from climate change", which does more than just 'try and reduce the cause'
Finding out for myself! Brrrr, I'd rather take the word for it from a scientist i have confidence in.
And in that case, let's skip statisticians. Weather is a lousy system for taking samples. The average temperature in one century is different from the average temperature in another century, the same applies for millenia, and so on. It doesn't average out.
let's make a piece of software that assembles a mirror from google cache. Or wait, let's just float the idea and hope sb else does the work..
That's just the trap!
a guy who was working on blue LED's told me over a year ago that the problem with LED TV's, or in fact any LED display , was that the blue LED's made them horribly expensive. So his company was trying to make cheap blue LED's, which would open up a huge market.
kinda curious what the status is now.
There's already proof of cases where a complete person was replaced.
Apparently the witty virus doesn't really overwrite the first sectors , but this could have value in general:
:)
I once recovered a system from attack of the CIH virus. One thing the virus does is overwrite your harddisk starting from the first sector. It continues until your system crashes. So you lose partition table, MBR and FAT. I used the tool 'cleancih' to reconstruct the data. That machine has been functional since, though it displays a first partition of 1 GB instead of 2GB
That suggests two things:
1. whatever the cause of the destruction, it should be possible to recover the first sectors. I think , the fact that there was more than 1 partition helped.
2. There are some things on my todolist that I never get around to.
It's also interesting that movies pick the spectacular approach, even if it's wrong. Blowing up an asteroid with nuclear bombs does little to change the direction(lots of energy but not much momentum), and it multiplies the projectiles.
The current approach (and the above argument against nukes)was described by Freeman Dyson in 1995. Send out mass drivers to intercept the asteroids as early as possible. The earlier you start pushing, the less power you need(Quote: it's proportional to the inverse square of the warning time). Could well work- if you invest a lot in early warning systems, but for a movie, it's boring.
such an impact would be known long in advance.
There is no risk of 'misinterpretation'.
There would be time to move people - to the extent that that is relevant(if the affected area is limited).
I wouldn't want to underestimate the current chance of accidental nuclear war - there is plenty of other people for that - but this is not a credible trigger.
Actually , Sedna has several meanings in innuit, the most common being "unhospitable place where those who survive the cold, are bored to death."
I would suggest an english translation, but i don't want to offend the people who live there.
It's sometimes used to indicate a date who has little competence in bed.
the mathematically oriented astrologists use the 'ephemerides', a book with coordinates of planets. Since the numbers in the book are not affected, they can stick to their conclusions where it is suitable. Also, the focus is on visible planets, not Pluto.
..He said bitterly.
Apart from that, a new planet is an opportunity for new excuses, rather than a problem.
Disproving astrology is like convincing an paranoic that he's not being watched.
The spinning is an argument that takes me by surprise
One counter argument would be: wouldn't a factor 10 (suppose you can only push 10% of the time- sideways)mean that pushing remains in the same scale of feasibility? So it would be harder, but not like a 30 year technology gap
About odds, 3 things i can add here(only one answer, but hey).
are you multiplying scale of destruction with chance of the event? then i don't know what weighs most. An asteroid that kills half the planet equals a lot of small impacts.
Then, if we compare two asteroids, one being 1000 times bigger than the other one. Would it be easier to detect the big one? I can't tell. Maybe other things count more(color? distance from sun?).
Are they harder to deflect? The longer the warning time, the longer you can push , and the less you have to deflect it to make it miss target. So warning time works in two ways(reverse square).
Overall gut feeling : i'd start by investing in detection, not by designing defenses. It would also allow you to prepare for recovery after impact.
I agree that it's better to break it up than to do nothing at all.
Breaking it up has the disadvantage of less control over the pieces,(so don't start with breaking up and then we'll see), and how much impulse is actually transferred? Is it worth it? Or is it sth like lightning? An impressive power, but too short to amount to anything useful
An advantage would be that some pieces will miss their target, and smaller pieces probably means less total damage.
Let's call it a last resort to limit damage. If you have a solution that keeps the asteroid in one piece , it's much better.
Another way to limit damage is to push the right way so it falls on your emerging geopolitical competitor instead of on you. Of course this is only relevant if the asteroid is not really big.
And don't forget to divert the attention.
That's it. Plain screwing. The possibility of using high pressure to locally melt the ice is an interesting way to optimize the process(how much?), but the basics is screwing. As a process it's more robust too. Don't want to be blocked by a stone
I think you mean lyxesdia.
I'm not sure about your energy argument. Consider the old test of the wire with two weights on either side. The wire slowly sinks through the block of ice. High pressure is a way to move through ice with little energy cost(the ice freezes again on the other side). Screwing through the ice could make sense(it's a way to create high pressure). Maybe combine it with some salt analogy. Although a teflon analogy would be more valuable(water molecules not sticking to the side).
I wonder where the energy comes from. Nuclear?
Usually the subject is the rottenness of both of them :) I can't imagine that when a diversity of opinions is represented in a two party system, that the parties represent much of an ideology, but there are some differences of style.
This interview with George Lakoff is about the difference between the perceptions of conservatives and liberals. I think it's insightful. Consider a crude mapping of conservative to republican and liberal to democrat.
One of the guidelines I have to find code to refactor : look for comments. Comments should be in the checkin log of the file, in the changelog of the project , in the header files and in the naming of variables and functions. And in the diff between revisions.
,and you get a very recognisable frustration. Only, the solution for it is not 'better comments'. It's better code
If they are in the code you have a good chance to point out weaknesses in the code. Occasionally these are weaknesses that are very hard to avoid. Often not.
Which leads to guideline two: always try to upgrade the clarity of the code when you do a small mod(usually a fix) . Small mods tend to degrade the code quality, the maintainability, even though the code works better than before.
Comments in the code also quickly become irrelevant, and even misleading, if they aren't already bad from the start. So take a weak fix and append a confusing comment