Well, I was *thinking* that Newton's postulates were simpler, but that relativistic mechanics have greater predictive power (Einstein explaining Newtonian physics basically as estimates that are reasonably accurate when relativistic factors are minimal, Newtonian mechanics as simply not extending into the realm of relativity). Anything dealing with the speed of light is going to quickly go outside the realm of self-evident:)
It's hard to imagine two systems, built on different postulates, collapsing to a truly indentical set of theories. I'd look for some way to show that the postulates actually match up, or where the theories predict differently for specific circumstances, and thus either show that the theories ARE the same, or have a way to test and see how they're different. Or maybe one theorizes part of what the other postulates and vice versa.
If it were to happen though, I think you'd fall back on something like Occam's Razor to try to decide which is 'right' - which relies on the fewest or simplest set of assumptions, IF you can even ascertain that (as above, it may be debatable).
Rereading, I guess you were providing a concrete example of a substitute/contrary postulate and building off of it.
Non-euclidean geometry is definitely fascinating stuff - it's hard, but not impossibly so, to imagine 2-d space being wrapped around a sphere (or an hourglass, etc.) rather than a plane, and thus making a different set of postulates - that's where justification for things like wormholes comes from.
I agree 100% that you can do interesting things by changing postulates and reevaluating whatever theories/hypotheses/axioms you had based on the old set. I'd just be leery of going too far down those roads without some good reason for choosing a particular set of postulates, and the notion of acclerons acting on neutrinos is pretty far out there to simply assert and move on with, IMHO.
My point was that a postulate is an assertion - accepted as true or false, rather than something that can be proven or disproven via testing, logical proof, etc.
From the Article, it looked to me like they were *hypothesizing* the existence of accelerons, which is far more interesting to me than merely postulating them.
I could postulate that the universe is expanding at an increasing rate because it wants to get the hell away from Earth, now that we're MOSTLY Harmless. It's equally useful if you're not going to go make a hypothesis or twenty based on the postulate.
See the first response to my post though - I'll concede that it'd be useful enough to postulate accelerons IF a theory based on the postulate is developed with meaningful predictive capability, but still... weird, given that the accleron postulate is pretty 'out there' and (so far at least) lacks any known evidence to support it's validity.
So, I'd like it better if the notion of acclerons was itself a hypothesis that gets some experimental testing/validation before we start basing anything else off of it. The article mentions the possibility of neutrino detector data being of some use here, so that's a good place to start...
This is starting to remind me of the whole graviton thing.
I guess I agree with you - perhaps new theories that postulate the existence of accelerons will be formulated, and perhaps they'll hold up well experimentally.
But if so, this is one of those postulates, like the one that there's a quantifiable unit/particle/whatever of gravity, where I hesitate to just blindly grant the assertion that it exists. How much is a seemingly-solid theory worth if it's built upon postulates that are contrived - compared, say, to a slightly-less solid theory based on less-stretchy postulates? I'd give a concrete example but none come to mind (there's probably a good one in the Newtonian vs. relativistic models of mechanics, though).
Basically, I'll accept Euclid's postulate as being fairly self-evident, but things like the existence and behavior of accelerons (which act on neutrinos, which are strange beasts in and of themselves) are not exactly what I'd call self-evident.
I'd like to have proof, or at least some evidence, first; that a theory based on them is self-consistent doesn't buy you squat since, as you pointed out, internally consistent systems can be built upon postulates of what we'd typically assert the opposite. In other words:
"That's a fine theory, but does it have ANYTHING to do with our particular reality?"
'Well, since you postulated accelerons and we don't have any evidence that that postulate (And not it's converse) is true, um, I don't know.'
That predictive capability of the theory is sort of an empiric statement about the quality of the postulate; but it's hard for that to be valuable unless that predictive capability is substantially stronger than any competing theory.
I actually RTFA (no, I'm not new here...), and I think the submitter is wrong about one thing.
As far as I can tell, the existence of this new particle is being *hypothesized*, and since there's discussion of using neutrino detectors to see if they're right, it may soon be *theorized*.
A *postulate* is something else - a statement that is accepted as truth, usually as the basis of a theory or argument. Here's a helpful definition.
I'm sure these people don't expect anyone to simply "accept as truth" the existence of accelerons, but rather want to go do experiments and turn their hypothesis into either a theory or a failed hypothesis.
A postulate is something along the lines of "Through a point not on a line, one and only one line can be drawn parallel to the given line."
That is, you can accept it as truth or deny it, but trying to actually prove or disprove it *experimentally* is difficult or impossible. There's either a logical counterexample, or not (or we haven't found it yet).
Sure, it's not always universally side-splitting funny, but what form of entertainment is?
I say keep watching if you like it, and move on if you don't - no need to get all philosophical about it.
I was worried that it was basically over after the first season, but the 2nd season has had its moments as well (like Doc's "Okay, but I don't think it'll stick.").
Given the cost of admission - FREE, pay for the high res episodes or DVDs if you like it enough - how can anyone complain? It's not like someone's holding a plasma rifle to your head and making you watch it...
Xentax (ps. Episode 2 of the first season is still my favorite - "Griff - chupa-thingy, how 'bout that? I like it....it's got a ring to it....")
Thanks. That matches fairly well with my guess based on the article, but it's good to know that most of it's problems are things we've gotten better at since WW2.
Ahh. I thought that had more to do with using the nature of Monopoly A to create a Monopoly B, not merely the funds from it, but I could be mistaken.
If my thinking were accurate, then the XBox wouldn't qualify unless you had to buy a retail copy of Windows to run any console except the XBox, or something like that.
So, is this all coming from plants that were producing weapons-grade material?
What I'm getting at is, how much of this waste is comparable (in terms of which specific materials, and in what volumes) to what a nuclear powerplant would produce?
I'm not trying to diminish the magnitude of the mess or the impact it has on the area, but I can already see people taking this and running in the wrong direction with it - namely, that every nuclear power plant will produce this sort of mess over time. I *believe* this is the exception rather than the rule, because this site was/is producing weapons material rather than electricity, but it'd be great if someone with hard data could confirm/invalidate that...
I don't think you need to be a monopoly in the Console market to be profitable - neither Sony, Nintendo, (or Sega or Atari for that matter) ever had what I'd consider a 'monopoly marketshare' and yet all have been (or still are) profitable.
XBox will be profitable eventually, though it may not be until the next-gen box has been out awhile.
I sorta hope it's backwards compatible, too - even if they have new versions of many key games available at launch, I wouldn't want to buy a new console AND a bunch of new games all at once. But, given that it's a new chip, and a new GPU, and who knows what other major changes, it'd have to be one heck of a good emulation system - either the new hardware will have to be an order of magnitude faster, or a very slick emulation layer, or both (probably both).
I'd say fucking with IBM, the annual #1 patent receiver (among other legally-interesting habits) probably knows a thing or two about getting and using great lawyers as well:)
Taking on Linux via legal tomfoolery is a mistake, but not the biggest one (lots of companies shirk their GPL responsibilities but most come to see reason, for example).
Fucking with the deepest-pocketed, and one of the most veteran, companies in the computer industry, was (IMHO) their biggest mistake.
Maybe they'll sue Ford next, claiming they invented the production line automobile...
I was saying I wasn't sure what the 'technical' defition of a leading edge was, just that the nose would fit within my concept of it - the area most exposed to heating. I assume you meant heating stress, since there are probably other areas of the wing with much higher tension/loadbearing stress, the area of the fuselage where the engines are mounted probably has more resonance stress to deal with, etc.
It sounds like we'll want to favor liquid-fuel over solid when possible, which most folks already were thinking already. That's good news.
And, of course, air-release solutions that break the problem up (a big turbojet to get you to ~50,000 feet and thus less fuel to burn to get X tons to orbit) should be better in this department than from-ground solutions.
On a serious note, there are at least technically multiple leading edges on most craft (including this one).
There's the leading edge of the wings, the horizontal stabilizers, the vertical stabilizer, etc. A combat aicraft might have more leading edges for external hardpoints - really, the front-facing part of any protrusion from the fuselage. Whether the nose/front of the fuselage itself is 'technically' a leading edge or not.
Um, not that I automatically disbelieve you or anything, but could you elaborate and/or cite some sources?
The shuttle SRBs separate pretty early in the launch process - I wouldn't think any of their exhaust would be high enough off the ground to make it to the ozone layer.
Let's not forget the scale, either -- even the shuttle pales in comparison to, say, the amount of CFCs put into the atmosphere (and I mean up where it counts) by volcanic eruptions (though I haven't done the math on amount per eruption and eruption rate vs. the amount and rate of rocket launches).
I'm not saying you're wrong, I just want some real data on how solid rockets are impacting the ozone layer, given their launch profile.
No kidding. This sounds like Andy griping that Linus' "school project" is an inferior kernel.
Sounds like a semantic argument to me; where the Rubber Meets The Road, Linux is the kernel of a variety of widely used, production-quality OS's, while Minix is an academic *model* (on purpose, to be sure, but a *model* rather than a useable-on-a-daily-basis kernel, nevertheless). Similary, claiming SQL is crappy for various academic/theoretical reasons doesn't change the fact that it's in wide use today, as a concrete solution to any number of million- and billion-dollar abstract problems.
So, if SQL is so bad, maybe they should stop cursing the darkness, and show us the light. In the meantime, people will use (and incrementally) improve the tools at hand to solve the problems at hand.
Right now, SQL-based database solutions are generally the best solutions for *real* data problems that we have to solve, from mySQL-driven personal webpages, to enterprise-grade databases powering major websites, business-to-business e-commerce, and everything in between.
Invent a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your door. Criticizing the mousetrap as an inferior pest control device doesn't do much to keep the mice out...
This *is* already done - statistical filters are trained on both words that are 'spamlike' (words that show up only, or mostly, in lots of email marked by the user as spam), and words that are NOT (words that show up only, or mostly, in email marked not spam).
This is (AFAIK) done against tokens in both the mail body and the headers, which pays dividends if the delivery paths are clustered (for example, if your whole family has accounts with MyISP.com, you'll probably get good filtering provided the spam isn't originating from MyISP.com as well).
I've used a Bayesian plugin before that let you set thresholds - so a certain score would be marked as "probably good" and be left in your inbox, a range would be set as "probably spam" and put in a possible junk folder, and beyond that was "definitely" spam and went in a spam or trash folder.
It defaulted to like 10/90 (I don't remember which score was more spamlike, so imagine less than 10 was almost certainly ok, and greater than 90 was almost certainly spam) - I set it much lower for awhile (50) until I was reasonably comfortable that even the worst legitimate messages where getting nowhere near the 'almost certainly spam' score.
I like that approach in general - keep a gray area for hand review, and trust that anything worse than that IS spam. And, in general, sort everything by score - then you can just watch the borders for trouble.
Now, that all assumes that a false positive doesn't TANK, that it misses the cut by a narrow margin. Is that a valid assumption? From what I can tell, if you're training against your own mail, and catching any that are borderline and retraining if necessary, yes. Of course, if you have a bunch of friends that are trying to sell you 'enhancement' or stock tips via email, things may be more complicated for you... (solution: get new friends).
Slashdot Mirror
Well, I was *thinking* that Newton's postulates were simpler, but that relativistic mechanics have greater predictive power (Einstein explaining Newtonian physics basically as estimates that are reasonably accurate when relativistic factors are minimal, Newtonian mechanics as simply not extending into the realm of relativity). Anything dealing with the speed of light is going to quickly go outside the realm of self-evident :)
It's hard to imagine two systems, built on different postulates, collapsing to a truly indentical set of theories. I'd look for some way to show that the postulates actually match up, or where the theories predict differently for specific circumstances, and thus either show that the theories ARE the same, or have a way to test and see how they're different. Or maybe one theorizes part of what the other postulates and vice versa.
If it were to happen though, I think you'd fall back on something like Occam's Razor to try to decide which is 'right' - which relies on the fewest or simplest set of assumptions, IF you can even ascertain that (as above, it may be debatable).
Xentax
Rereading, I guess you were providing a concrete example of a substitute/contrary postulate and building off of it.
Non-euclidean geometry is definitely fascinating stuff - it's hard, but not impossibly so, to imagine 2-d space being wrapped around a sphere (or an hourglass, etc.) rather than a plane, and thus making a different set of postulates - that's where justification for things like wormholes comes from.
I agree 100% that you can do interesting things by changing postulates and reevaluating whatever theories/hypotheses/axioms you had based on the old set. I'd just be leery of going too far down those roads without some good reason for choosing a particular set of postulates, and the notion of acclerons acting on neutrinos is pretty far out there to simply assert and move on with, IMHO.
Xentax
Right...so, uh, where were you going with that?
... weird, given that the accleron postulate is pretty 'out there' and (so far at least) lacks any known evidence to support it's validity.
My point was that a postulate is an assertion - accepted as true or false, rather than something that can be proven or disproven via testing, logical proof, etc.
From the Article, it looked to me like they were *hypothesizing* the existence of accelerons, which is far more interesting to me than merely postulating them.
I could postulate that the universe is expanding at an increasing rate because it wants to get the hell away from Earth, now that we're MOSTLY Harmless. It's equally useful if you're not going to go make a hypothesis or twenty based on the postulate.
See the first response to my post though - I'll concede that it'd be useful enough to postulate accelerons IF a theory based on the postulate is developed with meaningful predictive capability, but still
So, I'd like it better if the notion of acclerons was itself a hypothesis that gets some experimental testing/validation before we start basing anything else off of it. The article mentions the possibility of neutrino detector data being of some use here, so that's a good place to start...
Xentax
This is starting to remind me of the whole graviton thing.
I guess I agree with you - perhaps new theories that postulate the existence of accelerons will be formulated, and perhaps they'll hold up well experimentally.
But if so, this is one of those postulates, like the one that there's a quantifiable unit/particle/whatever of gravity, where I hesitate to just blindly grant the assertion that it exists. How much is a seemingly-solid theory worth if it's built upon postulates that are contrived - compared, say, to a slightly-less solid theory based on less-stretchy postulates? I'd give a concrete example but none come to mind (there's probably a good one in the Newtonian vs. relativistic models of mechanics, though).
Basically, I'll accept Euclid's postulate as being fairly self-evident, but things like the existence and behavior of accelerons (which act on neutrinos, which are strange beasts in and of themselves) are not exactly what I'd call self-evident.
I'd like to have proof, or at least some evidence, first; that a theory based on them is self-consistent doesn't buy you squat since, as you pointed out, internally consistent systems can be built upon postulates of what we'd typically assert the opposite. In other words:
"That's a fine theory, but does it have ANYTHING to do with our particular reality?"
'Well, since you postulated accelerons and we don't have any evidence that that postulate (And not it's converse) is true, um, I don't know.'
That predictive capability of the theory is sort of an empiric statement about the quality of the postulate; but it's hard for that to be valuable unless that predictive capability is substantially stronger than any competing theory.
As usual, we need more data!
Xentax
Well, unless you're particularly unlucky, nobody is making you watch paint dry, either...
Xentax
I actually RTFA (no, I'm not new here...), and I think the submitter is wrong about one thing.
As far as I can tell, the existence of this new particle is being *hypothesized*, and since there's discussion of using neutrino detectors to see if they're right, it may soon be *theorized*.
A *postulate* is something else - a statement that is accepted as truth, usually as the basis of a theory or argument. Here's a helpful definition.
I'm sure these people don't expect anyone to simply "accept as truth" the existence of accelerons, but rather want to go do experiments and turn their hypothesis into either a theory or a failed hypothesis.
A postulate is something along the lines of "Through a point not on a line, one and only one line can be drawn parallel to the given line."
That is, you can accept it as truth or deny it, but trying to actually prove or disprove it *experimentally* is difficult or impossible. There's either a logical counterexample, or not (or we haven't found it yet).
Xentax
...but RvB is just fine in my book.
Sure, it's not always universally side-splitting funny, but what form of entertainment is?
I say keep watching if you like it, and move on if you don't - no need to get all philosophical about it.
I was worried that it was basically over after the first season, but the 2nd season has had its moments as well (like Doc's "Okay, but I don't think it'll stick.").
Given the cost of admission - FREE, pay for the high res episodes or DVDs if you like it enough - how can anyone complain? It's not like someone's holding a plasma rifle to your head and making you watch it...
Xentax
(ps. Episode 2 of the first season is still my favorite - "Griff - chupa-thingy, how 'bout that? I like it....it's got a ring to it....")
Thanks. That matches fairly well with my guess based on the article, but it's good to know that most of it's problems are things we've gotten better at since WW2.
Xentax
Ahh. I thought that had more to do with using the nature of Monopoly A to create a Monopoly B, not merely the funds from it, but I could be mistaken.
If my thinking were accurate, then the XBox wouldn't qualify unless you had to buy a retail copy of Windows to run any console except the XBox, or something like that.
Xentax
So, is this all coming from plants that were producing weapons-grade material?
What I'm getting at is, how much of this waste is comparable (in terms of which specific materials, and in what volumes) to what a nuclear powerplant would produce?
I'm not trying to diminish the magnitude of the mess or the impact it has on the area, but I can already see people taking this and running in the wrong direction with it - namely, that every nuclear power plant will produce this sort of mess over time. I *believe* this is the exception rather than the rule, because this site was/is producing weapons material rather than electricity, but it'd be great if someone with hard data could confirm/invalidate that...
Xentax
I don't think you need to be a monopoly in the Console market to be profitable - neither Sony, Nintendo, (or Sega or Atari for that matter) ever had what I'd consider a 'monopoly marketshare' and yet all have been (or still are) profitable.
XBox will be profitable eventually, though it may not be until the next-gen box has been out awhile.
I sorta hope it's backwards compatible, too - even if they have new versions of many key games available at launch, I wouldn't want to buy a new console AND a bunch of new games all at once. But, given that it's a new chip, and a new GPU, and who knows what other major changes, it'd have to be one heck of a good emulation system - either the new hardware will have to be an order of magnitude faster, or a very slick emulation layer, or both (probably both).
Xentax
Well, he did say their *2nd* biggest mistake...
:)
I'd say fucking with IBM, the annual #1 patent receiver (among other legally-interesting habits) probably knows a thing or two about getting and using great lawyers as well
Taking on Linux via legal tomfoolery is a mistake, but not the biggest one (lots of companies shirk their GPL responsibilities but most come to see reason, for example).
Fucking with the deepest-pocketed, and one of the most veteran, companies in the computer industry, was (IMHO) their biggest mistake.
Maybe they'll sue Ford next, claiming they invented the production line automobile...
Xentax
Yes, hence the nose being the leading edge :)
I was saying I wasn't sure what the 'technical' defition of a leading edge was, just that the nose would fit within my concept of it - the area most exposed to heating. I assume you meant heating stress, since there are probably other areas of the wing with much higher tension/loadbearing stress, the area of the fuselage where the engines are mounted probably has more resonance stress to deal with, etc.
Xentax
Bingo :)
Is it "weird" (choose a definition) making a statement that a comic character's famous quote an answer to? Probably.
Xentax
Good stuff, thanks.
It sounds like we'll want to favor liquid-fuel over solid when possible, which most folks already were thinking already. That's good news.
And, of course, air-release solutions that break the problem up (a big turbojet to get you to ~50,000 feet and thus less fuel to burn to get X tons to orbit) should be better in this department than from-ground solutions.
Xentax
On a serious note, there are at least technically multiple leading edges on most craft (including this one).
There's the leading edge of the wings, the horizontal stabilizers, the vertical stabilizer, etc. A combat aicraft might have more leading edges for external hardpoints - really, the front-facing part of any protrusion from the fuselage. Whether the nose/front of the fuselage itself is 'technically' a leading edge or not.
Xentax
Who's modding this down? That was funny, dammit.
Um, not that I automatically disbelieve you or anything, but could you elaborate and/or cite some sources?
The shuttle SRBs separate pretty early in the launch process - I wouldn't think any of their exhaust would be high enough off the ground to make it to the ozone layer.
Let's not forget the scale, either -- even the shuttle pales in comparison to, say, the amount of CFCs put into the atmosphere (and I mean up where it counts) by volcanic eruptions (though I haven't done the math on amount per eruption and eruption rate vs. the amount and rate of rocket launches).
I'm not saying you're wrong, I just want some real data on how solid rockets are impacting the ozone layer, given their launch profile.
Xentax
Nah, Vanilla Angband (at least) is easier than nethack, though you still have to be very very careful (or lucky, or both).
;)
Granted, my sample size is one datapoint - I've beaten Angband but not NetHack
Xentax
Do you work for Daily Radar or something? Just wondering.
Or maybe Cleanmates?
Xentax
AFAIK, VS 2005 should run on XP 64 in compat mode, and will *compile* for AMD64 and IA-64.
Xentax
There's a new version of Source Safe, and a *different* source control solution for the enterprise, code-named Hatteras. The thinking is this:
Team size 5: Hatteras.
Xentax
No kidding. This sounds like Andy griping that Linus' "school project" is an inferior kernel.
Sounds like a semantic argument to me; where the Rubber Meets The Road, Linux is the kernel of a variety of widely used, production-quality OS's, while Minix is an academic *model* (on purpose, to be sure, but a *model* rather than a useable-on-a-daily-basis kernel, nevertheless). Similary, claiming SQL is crappy for various academic/theoretical reasons doesn't change the fact that it's in wide use today, as a concrete solution to any number of million- and billion-dollar abstract problems.
So, if SQL is so bad, maybe they should stop cursing the darkness, and show us the light. In the meantime, people will use (and incrementally) improve the tools at hand to solve the problems at hand.
Right now, SQL-based database solutions are generally the best solutions for *real* data problems that we have to solve, from mySQL-driven personal webpages, to enterprise-grade databases powering major websites, business-to-business e-commerce, and everything in between.
Invent a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your door. Criticizing the mousetrap as an inferior pest control device doesn't do much to keep the mice out...
Xentax
This *is* already done - statistical filters are trained on both words that are 'spamlike' (words that show up only, or mostly, in lots of email marked by the user as spam), and words that are NOT (words that show up only, or mostly, in email marked not spam).
This is (AFAIK) done against tokens in both the mail body and the headers, which pays dividends if the delivery paths are clustered (for example, if your whole family has accounts with MyISP.com, you'll probably get good filtering provided the spam isn't originating from MyISP.com as well).
Xentax
I've used a Bayesian plugin before that let you set thresholds - so a certain score would be marked as "probably good" and be left in your inbox, a range would be set as "probably spam" and put in a possible junk folder, and beyond that was "definitely" spam and went in a spam or trash folder.
It defaulted to like 10/90 (I don't remember which score was more spamlike, so imagine less than 10 was almost certainly ok, and greater than 90 was almost certainly spam) - I set it much lower for awhile (50) until I was reasonably comfortable that even the worst legitimate messages where getting nowhere near the 'almost certainly spam' score.
I like that approach in general - keep a gray area for hand review, and trust that anything worse than that IS spam. And, in general, sort everything by score - then you can just watch the borders for trouble.
Now, that all assumes that a false positive doesn't TANK, that it misses the cut by a narrow margin. Is that a valid assumption? From what I can tell, if you're training against your own mail, and catching any that are borderline and retraining if necessary, yes. Of course, if you have a bunch of friends that are trying to sell you 'enhancement' or stock tips via email, things may be more complicated for you... (solution: get new friends).
Xentax