I compiled whitespace from the Haskell source (could have apt-get install whitespace'ed it, but this was more fun =] ). Then fed it that page's source... no output. Anyone want to reverse engineer some probable CMS-noise?
On to my question. If you have enough high amplitude random noise that is effectively destructive interference, would this make an enviorment where low amplitude sound could not be hear or even mechanically sensed easily?
The effect you've described is called sound masking (more generally, auditory masking), so yes, but the cause isn't quite what you inferred (destructive interference).:-)
There was a time when cities just grew out of towns, streets went anywhere, etcetera; complexity grew organically, with the odd extreme here and there. In newer developments, streets started getting laid out in grids years ahead of need... cue cookie-cutter houses, the 1950s, etcetera again. Now I'm no urban planner, so I shouldn't comment on it (-grin-), but this urban-information-integration prototype sure seems like a Good Thing, to me (in the sense that it's a prototype/trial of a planned information infrastructure).
Just because something doesn't make (business/economic/monopolist/technological/political/social) sense now, doesn't mean it won't later, and having infrastructure in place, however crude or preliminary, is better than nothing. So here's an exercise: imagine this sort of thing has already happened where you live, and that everyone has an Android-friendly iPhone-whatever that talks to anything nearby... what do you think would really change things? What would an open-access, high-bandwidth information utility be used for? (Assume funding is whatever mix of private, government, and donation/subscription makes sense.)
And now, the $64,000 question: what exactly is information?;-)
I hope there's a stack of OSs (or at least microkernels) in the OS... one for the radio, one for the display, one to manage data, one for voice, one to drive the (add-on) FPGA-ish hardware that lets this be more than "just" a phone, etcetera. I mean, I know it's asking for a lot (and it's pretty vague, at that!), but if we're going to speculate on a "perfect handheld computer/phone", why not go all the way down to our architectural assumptions?:-D
As a result, there's little competition in U.S. broadband -- if you're lucky, you have a choice between the services offered by the local cable monopoly and the local phone monopoly. The price is high and the service is poor, but there's nowhere else to go.
So what happens if Google starts just giving it away?
Seriously, think about it for a while. Heresy, I know, but... why not?:-)
However, there are still problems that need to be overcome before the technique could be used more widely. In particular, small crystal imperfections in the wire impede progress, slowing down some domain walls and stopping others altogether.
Maybe it's obvious, but wouldn't carbon nanotubes be a prime suspect, here?
I'm not so sure I'd want to put my name out there as "the guy who brought down the computers on a plane". He'll be lucky not to land on the no-fly list, I think.
Not anymore... thank you, Slashdot, for the alt-press exposure! -grin-
Who said only one "virtual pixel" was going to be reflected at a time? A quick skim of TFA reveals that, for any sample, some set of mirrored beams will be engaged, not just one.
We're really obsessed with our "one beam to rule them all" thing, culturally, aren't we?;-)
--So how to solve an unsolvable problem? Rephrase it! IMO, the problem isn't "too much information", as that's already been solved by the "biocomputer" we all watch the Simpsons with: our senses/brains already process "too much information" handily, but with lots of errors. No, the problem is that we're using the wrong approach to what we call "information" in the first place! - -Well, not true. I thought autistics had the problem of NOT throwing information away. But Im sure you're researching that.
I'm aware of some of the work in the cognitive sciences, but it's certainly not my area.;-) And yeah, "not throwing information away" is a failure of the "handily processing too much information" mechanism that the non-autistic majority have. Indeed, we seem to learn by taking in way, way too much, abstracting something (anything!) out, discarding most of what we took in, then refining the chunk(s) we extracted over time.
-Secondly, information for us is quantified data, which does mean using numbers. Electronics can use both types: analog and digital. In digital, you can control the bits, and how they "flow". A device is either on or off. Simple. In analog, you have an infinite amount of states because everything is a continuously changing wave. The very fact of testing an analog circuit changes it in unpredictible ways. Now, analog and digital circuits have their places but digital is far easier to work with due to its binary states.
I won't dispute your argument, as it's obviously correct, but I will challenge you on the final point: just because something is "far easier to work with" doesn't make it the right way to do it. Countless examples from history support this statement.
Moreover, I'm not at all sure that all information really is expressible quantitatively: what is love, or the Mona Lisa's smile, or that gut-feeling you get when going over a sudden bump? If you choose to define "information" as "that which is expressible quantitatively", then I think you're missing a lot of stuff, just for the sake of being able to apply convenient/ready tools, rather than wondering why those tools/paradigms/whatever don't work in such obvious (well, to me, anyhow) cases. But don't get me started.... =)
Sounds to me like the old "information overload" phenomenon. The solution-pattern to this situation is never going to be found via incremental improvements in information processing, as the growth is exponential. Nor will an "add-on" approach solve the problem; while hyperlinks, search engines, and other qualitatively-impressive tools are awesome in their own right (and do help!), they only add a layer or two to an information-growth process that adds layers supralinearly... they're another "stop-gap measure", though they're also the best we've come up with, so far.
So how to solve an unsolvable problem? Rephrase it! IMO, the problem isn't "too much information", as that's already been solved by the "biocomputer" we all watch the Simpsons with: our senses/brains already process "too much information" handily, but with lots of errors. No, the problem is that we're using the wrong approach to what we call "information" in the first place! We're rather fond of numbers (numeric forms of representation), as they've been around for around eight thousand years, and words (linear forms of representation) go back even farther. Pictures, music, etcetera store far more information (qualitative, structural forms of representation), but usually get mapped back to bitmaps, byte counts, and Shannon's information theory when this discussion starts. And that's the heart of it right there: everyone assumes that reducing (or mapping) everything to numbers is the only way to maintain objectivity, or measure (functional) quality.
Here's a challenge: is there a natural way to measure the "information-organizing capability" of a system? Meaning some approach/algorithm/technique simple enough for a kid or grandparent to understand, that most human beings will agree on, and that puts humans above machines for such things as recognizing pictures of cats (without having to have "trained" the machine on a bajillion pictures first). [Grammars are a reasonable start, but you have to explain where the grammars come from in the first place, and what metric you want to use to optimize them.]
A constant insistence/reliance on numeric measurements of accomplishment just ends up dehumanizing us, and doesn't spur the development of tools to deal with the root problem: the lack of automatic and natural organization of the "too much information" ocean we're sinking in. If we're not a little bit careful, we'll end up making things that are "good enough" -- perhaps an AI, perhaps brain augmentation, [insert Singularity thing here] -- as this is par for the course in evolutionary terms. But it's not the most efficient approach; we already have brains, let's use 'em to solve "unsolvable" problems by questioning our deep assumptions on occasion!:-)
Disclaimer: the research group I work with (when not on "programming for profit" breaks, heh) is investigating one possible avenue in this general direction, a mathematical, structural language called ETS, which we hope will stimulate the growth of interest in alternative forms of information representation.
Taking the joke seriously for a moment, and having not RTFA, I feel compelled to point out one obvious flaw in the formula. Namely, the final term, 1/(1-sin(F/10)), contains a division by zero if the value of F is 5*pi (or 25*pi or...). What sort of tomfoolery *is* this? =)
The issue here isn't with that sort of low level interoperability, but with the schism in the encryption standard used. I haven't checked (in true Slashdot style), but I suspect that Infozip's tool won't handle ZIPs encrypted with recent versions of PK's or WZ's software....
I'm Canadian, and am not sad. See, not everyone loves the US or hates China. I love those who will *get us off the rock* soonest, and hate those who slow that process down....
My thoughs before I read the article (in true Slashdot tradition) or any of the comments (to remain as unbiased as I can be, which isn't terribly much, admittedly):
Why wait a decade? Why not poll around for a group of, say, eight or ten people willing to be sent on a one-way trip to Mars? They'd go in, say, two linked ships (linking them facilitates artificial gravity [by spinning them about a common tether, which might remain behind, in [geostationary] orbit, as a sort of radio station/weathersat/etcetera]) which allows some redundancy in case of catastrophic loss of one of the ships and two entry landers (again: redundancy).
Send regular supply drops for them to replenish tools/atmosphere/food/medicine/etcetera from, say on a bimonthly basis, using the parachute/airbag system currently used for the landers/rovers (though since most of the stuff would be inert, there's less to go wrong). "Precharge" their arrival area with several such drops. They'll be a bit scattered, but that's not a huge deal if they have a "Mars Car" (or two) to to get 'em.
Build an underground habitation facility, with airlocks and hydroponics, with two of those "safe, buried" nuclear reactors for power (like they were discussing for that Alaskan town). Better still, make TWO such habitats, again, to protect against catastrophic loss of the whole colony. People could/would switch off between them when they started to get cabin fever with their mates. Keep 'em busy, and it won't degenerate as fast as in isolation on Earth... they will ALWAYS have stuff to do.
Their objective would be twofold: build a permanent, ever-growing, and self-sustaining human presence on Mars and perform the scientific studies and explorations of our sister planet that we simply can't do with autonomous rovers.
I'm sure there'd be more than eight volunteers, even if it *is* probably a one-way ticket. Hell, a third objective (which would appeal to the corps, should they get involved) would be to build the facilites to construct, fuel, and launch Mars-to-Earth vessels. This wouldn't be as hard as it sounds if the really tricky stuff (small parts, electronics, etc.) could be delivered from Earth. Then you can return samples (fairly easily), people (not bloody likely: too much invested in getting them there), and even precious minerals from mining projects (later on, perhaps by running a mag-lin-accelerator up the side of Olympus Mons?).
And so on.
But without a "be able to get them back to Earth" mechanism, the US would never go for it. Depsite the fact that that's precisely how their country was pioneered/settled. And which is also why China is more than likely to be the ones to establish such a colony, first.
Your analogy is flawed, since these particular virus/worm writers aren't doing it to "leave a mark on the world", they aren't gloating about what they've done... they're *using* those infections as part of their *business*. Witness the latest worm's DDoS assault on SpamHaus.
These writers won't get caught because they can't help but leave signposts, but they *may* get caught if someone in their dirty end of the world rats them out. I mean, after all, they've obviously built up this tool (a private, massive, distributed, anonymized network of PCs) for a reason, and that's for one of two obvious reasons: 1) to sell spam-sourcing services to folks who can't get an ISP to let them send, 2) to cruch their competition/adversaries.
It's a (commercial) battlefield out there in Packet Land.
Why do I imagine little, digital Simpsons characters running around making icons at each other, and seeing who gets kicked off the server each episode? =]
Re:Giger who? James Cameran is the primary influen
on
Alien Case Mod
·
· Score: 1
Bingo. I'd mod you up if I could, but guess what? I already posted. Silly moderation rules. =)
This isn't just about Aliens
on
Alien Case Mod
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· Score: 4, Informative
This isn't an Aliens theme so much as it's an H.R. Giger tribute. The alien theme was only one of his works...
Well, let me open by referring you to another comment in this thread that offers a nice quote on the subject. Further, I'll cite my original response, and elaborate on the key points:
Consider the pace of development of technology versus that of science. Through the course of human history, (major) scientific discoveries are indeed rare, but occur at reasonably regular intervals. We've been quite overdue for a non-technological discovery for quite a while, now.
The implication being that I consider our current scientific "system" to be (at least partially) degenerate in the sense that there is an overemphasis on the technological... otherwise I would not have brought the point up. If I choose to save time by not explaining the obvious (to me, anyhow), I'm bound to be misunderstood some of the time. As this is Slashdot (hardly an important setting) I don't really care, either: my role here is to offer commentary, not essays. Note that this does not extend to my role as story-submitter, though as explained elsewhere I would have spent that time, had I realized the article would make the main page.
Now, to the original questions:
What system are we talking about?
Scientific publication, peer-review, internet publication and popularization (as embodied by the original 'public-consumption' article). With emphasis on the latter.
Why does faith need to be renewed in it?
Without getting into details (this is a stale thread, after all), I cite the ridiculous amount of attention paid to quacks, fringe work and hoaxes... and the scant attention paid to *real* work. The truth is that real work just isn't that interesting to the masses. Further, the system has degenerated (see above) to focus overly strongly on the concrete, or implementation, letting the theoretical or abstract side of things languish in a sort of cut-budget limbo. Science is NOT a business, but is treated like one: I am amazed when the system manages to achieve a (non-technolical) advance, despite the hurdles put in place against it.
What, have you lost faith in physics because it doesn't discover new laws every day?
Of course not, see above.
I trust this satisfies your desire for a more eloquent or complete answer to the original query. Now, if you're *still* full of questions, then I've done my job well, for our purpose is to inquire and to never be satisfied with our answers.
Please don't confuse the use of a common expression with a "theologial" stance: I consider myself to be among the most skeptical of people. Note also the use of a mood-lightening emoticon immediately following the statement to which you take issue. It was not inteded to be taken that seriously.
See this comment, elsewhere in this thread, for an interesting quote on the subject.
My perception was that the (re-written, popularized) article introduced a logical fallacy by juxtaposing the concepts of quantum spin and electrostatic spin. By 'dumbing down', I meant an elaboration of this perception, which would only be necessary if the article was presented to a general audience, rather than science.slashdot.org....
Slashdot Mirror
I compiled whitespace from the Haskell source (could have apt-get install whitespace'ed it, but this was more fun =] ). Then fed it that page's source ... no output. Anyone want to reverse engineer some probable CMS-noise?
On to my question. If you have enough high amplitude random noise that is effectively destructive interference, would this make an enviorment where low amplitude sound could not be hear or even mechanically sensed easily?
:-)
The effect you've described is called sound masking (more generally, auditory masking), so yes, but the cause isn't quite what you inferred (destructive interference).
There was a time when cities just grew out of towns, streets went anywhere, etcetera; complexity grew organically, with the odd extreme here and there. In newer developments, streets started getting laid out in grids years ahead of need ... cue cookie-cutter houses, the 1950s, etcetera again. Now I'm no urban planner, so I shouldn't comment on it (-grin-), but this urban-information-integration prototype sure seems like a Good Thing, to me (in the sense that it's a prototype/trial of a planned information infrastructure).
Just because something doesn't make (business/economic/monopolist/technological/political/social) sense now, doesn't mean it won't later, and having infrastructure in place, however crude or preliminary, is better than nothing. So here's an exercise: imagine this sort of thing has already happened where you live, and that everyone has an Android-friendly iPhone-whatever that talks to anything nearby ... what do you think would really change things? What would an open-access, high-bandwidth information utility be used for? (Assume funding is whatever mix of private, government, and donation/subscription makes sense.)
And now, the $64,000 question: what exactly is information? ;-)
I hope there's a stack of OSs (or at least microkernels) in the OS ... one for the radio, one for the display, one to manage data, one for voice, one to drive the (add-on) FPGA-ish hardware that lets this be more than "just" a phone, etcetera. I mean, I know it's asking for a lot (and it's pretty vague, at that!), but if we're going to speculate on a "perfect handheld computer/phone", why not go all the way down to our architectural assumptions? :-D
As a result, there's little competition in U.S. broadband -- if you're lucky, you have a choice between the services offered by the local cable monopoly and the local phone monopoly. The price is high and the service is poor, but there's nowhere else to go. So what happens if Google starts just giving it away? Seriously, think about it for a while. Heresy, I know, but ... why not? :-)
Maybe it's obvious, but wouldn't carbon nanotubes be a prime suspect, here?
I'm not so sure I'd want to put my name out there as "the guy who brought down the computers on a plane". He'll be lucky not to land on the no-fly list, I think.
... thank you, Slashdot, for the alt-press exposure! -grin-
Not anymore
Who said only one "virtual pixel" was going to be reflected at a time? A quick skim of TFA reveals that, for any sample, some set of mirrored beams will be engaged, not just one. We're really obsessed with our "one beam to rule them all" thing, culturally, aren't we? ;-)
Just to be sure, has anyone checked to see if this is a joe-job? Shady competition in a shady area?
:-)
Maybe this is the way nature/evolution handles things when laws don't work? Hey, I'm just asking....
--So how to solve an unsolvable problem? Rephrase it! IMO, the problem isn't "too much information", as that's already been solved by the "biocomputer" we all watch the Simpsons with: our senses/brains already process "too much information" handily, but with lots of errors. No, the problem is that we're using the wrong approach to what we call "information" in the first place!
;-) And yeah, "not throwing information away" is a failure of the "handily processing too much information" mechanism that the non-autistic majority have. Indeed, we seem to learn by taking in way, way too much, abstracting something (anything!) out, discarding most of what we took in, then refining the chunk(s) we extracted over time.
-
-Well, not true. I thought autistics had the problem of NOT throwing information away. But Im sure you're researching that.
I'm aware of some of the work in the cognitive sciences, but it's certainly not my area.
-Secondly, information for us is quantified data, which does mean using numbers. Electronics can use both types: analog and digital. In digital, you can control the bits, and how they "flow". A device is either on or off. Simple. In analog, you have an infinite amount of states because everything is a continuously changing wave. The very fact of testing an analog circuit changes it in unpredictible ways. Now, analog and digital circuits have their places but digital is far easier to work with due to its binary states.
I won't dispute your argument, as it's obviously correct, but I will challenge you on the final point: just because something is "far easier to work with" doesn't make it the right way to do it. Countless examples from history support this statement.
Moreover, I'm not at all sure that all information really is expressible quantitatively: what is love, or the Mona Lisa's smile, or that gut-feeling you get when going over a sudden bump? If you choose to define "information" as "that which is expressible quantitatively", then I think you're missing a lot of stuff, just for the sake of being able to apply convenient/ready tools, rather than wondering why those tools/paradigms/whatever don't work in such obvious (well, to me, anyhow) cases. But don't get me started.... =)
Sounds to me like the old "information overload" phenomenon. The solution-pattern to this situation is never going to be found via incremental improvements in information processing, as the growth is exponential. Nor will an "add-on" approach solve the problem; while hyperlinks, search engines, and other qualitatively-impressive tools are awesome in their own right (and do help!), they only add a layer or two to an information-growth process that adds layers supralinearly ... they're another "stop-gap measure", though they're also the best we've come up with, so far.
:-)
So how to solve an unsolvable problem? Rephrase it! IMO, the problem isn't "too much information", as that's already been solved by the "biocomputer" we all watch the Simpsons with: our senses/brains already process "too much information" handily, but with lots of errors. No, the problem is that we're using the wrong approach to what we call "information" in the first place! We're rather fond of numbers (numeric forms of representation), as they've been around for around eight thousand years, and words (linear forms of representation) go back even farther. Pictures, music, etcetera store far more information (qualitative, structural forms of representation), but usually get mapped back to bitmaps, byte counts, and Shannon's information theory when this discussion starts. And that's the heart of it right there: everyone assumes that reducing (or mapping) everything to numbers is the only way to maintain objectivity, or measure (functional) quality.
Here's a challenge: is there a natural way to measure the "information-organizing capability" of a system? Meaning some approach/algorithm/technique simple enough for a kid or grandparent to understand, that most human beings will agree on, and that puts humans above machines for such things as recognizing pictures of cats (without having to have "trained" the machine on a bajillion pictures first). [Grammars are a reasonable start, but you have to explain where the grammars come from in the first place, and what metric you want to use to optimize them.]
A constant insistence/reliance on numeric measurements of accomplishment just ends up dehumanizing us, and doesn't spur the development of tools to deal with the root problem: the lack of automatic and natural organization of the "too much information" ocean we're sinking in. If we're not a little bit careful, we'll end up making things that are "good enough" -- perhaps an AI, perhaps brain augmentation, [insert Singularity thing here] -- as this is par for the course in evolutionary terms. But it's not the most efficient approach; we already have brains, let's use 'em to solve "unsolvable" problems by questioning our deep assumptions on occasion!
Disclaimer: the research group I work with (when not on "programming for profit" breaks, heh) is investigating one possible avenue in this general direction, a mathematical, structural language called ETS, which we hope will stimulate the growth of interest in alternative forms of information representation.
Every blog, community, news site and even webcomic I've read today is telling me to vote. I CAN'T. I'M CANADIAN.
Is it really so much to ask that people who *insist* on telling everyone that they *must* vote prefix their sermon with "if you're an American"?
*sigh*
Well, the blurb did say F was frequency...
Taking the joke seriously for a moment, and having not RTFA, I feel compelled to point out one obvious flaw in the formula. Namely, the final term, 1/(1-sin(F/10)), contains a division by zero if the value of F is 5*pi (or 25*pi or ...). What sort of tomfoolery *is* this? =)
The issue here isn't with that sort of low level interoperability, but with the schism in the encryption standard used. I haven't checked (in true Slashdot style), but I suspect that Infozip's tool won't handle ZIPs encrypted with recent versions of PK's or WZ's software....
I'm Canadian, and am not sad. See, not everyone loves the US or hates China. I love those who will *get us off the rock* soonest, and hate those who slow that process down....
It's only sad if you're an American. ;-)
My thoughs before I read the article (in true Slashdot tradition) or any of the comments (to remain as unbiased as I can be, which isn't terribly much, admittedly):
... they will ALWAYS have stuff to do.
Why wait a decade? Why not poll around for a group of, say, eight or ten people willing to be sent on a one-way trip to Mars? They'd go in, say, two linked ships (linking them facilitates artificial gravity [by spinning them about a common tether, which might remain behind, in [geostationary] orbit, as a sort of radio station/weathersat/etcetera]) which allows some redundancy in case of catastrophic loss of one of the ships and two entry landers (again: redundancy).
Send regular supply drops for them to replenish tools/atmosphere/food/medicine/etcetera from, say on a bimonthly basis, using the parachute/airbag system currently used for the landers/rovers (though since most of the stuff would be inert, there's less to go wrong). "Precharge" their arrival area with several such drops. They'll be a bit scattered, but that's not a huge deal if they have a "Mars Car" (or two) to to get 'em.
Build an underground habitation facility, with airlocks and hydroponics, with two of those "safe, buried" nuclear reactors for power (like they were discussing for that Alaskan town). Better still, make TWO such habitats, again, to protect against catastrophic loss of the whole colony. People could/would switch off between them when they started to get cabin fever with their mates. Keep 'em busy, and it won't degenerate as fast as in isolation on Earth
Their objective would be twofold: build a permanent, ever-growing, and self-sustaining human presence on Mars and perform the scientific studies and explorations of our sister planet that we simply can't do with autonomous rovers.
I'm sure there'd be more than eight volunteers, even if it *is* probably a one-way ticket. Hell, a third objective (which would appeal to the corps, should they get involved) would be to build the facilites to construct, fuel, and launch Mars-to-Earth vessels. This wouldn't be as hard as it sounds if the really tricky stuff (small parts, electronics, etc.) could be delivered from Earth. Then you can return samples (fairly easily), people (not bloody likely: too much invested in getting them there), and even precious minerals from mining projects (later on, perhaps by running a mag-lin-accelerator up the side of Olympus Mons?).
And so on.
But without a "be able to get them back to Earth" mechanism, the US would never go for it. Depsite the fact that that's precisely how their country was pioneered/settled. And which is also why China is more than likely to be the ones to establish such a colony, first.
Your analogy is flawed, since these particular virus/worm writers aren't doing it to "leave a mark on the world", they aren't gloating about what they've done ... they're *using* those infections as part of their *business*. Witness the latest worm's DDoS assault on SpamHaus.
These writers won't get caught because they can't help but leave signposts, but they *may* get caught if someone in their dirty end of the world rats them out. I mean, after all, they've obviously built up this tool (a private, massive, distributed, anonymized network of PCs) for a reason, and that's for one of two obvious reasons: 1) to sell spam-sourcing services to folks who can't get an ISP to let them send, 2) to cruch their competition/adversaries.
It's a (commercial) battlefield out there in Packet Land.
Anyway, that's my take on it. =)
Why do I imagine little, digital Simpsons characters running around making icons at each other, and seeing who gets kicked off the server each episode? =]
Bingo. I'd mod you up if I could, but guess what? I already posted. Silly moderation rules. =)
This isn't an Aliens theme so much as it's an H.R. Giger tribute. The alien theme was only one of his works...
Well, let me open by referring you to another comment in this thread that offers a nice quote on the subject. Further, I'll cite my original response, and elaborate on the key points:
... otherwise I would not have brought the point up. If I choose to save time by not explaining the obvious (to me, anyhow), I'm bound to be misunderstood some of the time. As this is Slashdot (hardly an important setting) I don't really care, either: my role here is to offer commentary, not essays. Note that this does not extend to my role as story-submitter, though as explained elsewhere I would have spent that time, had I realized the article would make the main page.
... and the scant attention paid to *real* work. The truth is that real work just isn't that interesting to the masses. Further, the system has degenerated (see above) to focus overly strongly on the concrete, or implementation, letting the theoretical or abstract side of things languish in a sort of cut-budget limbo. Science is NOT a business, but is treated like one: I am amazed when the system manages to achieve a (non-technolical) advance, despite the hurdles put in place against it.
Consider the pace of development of technology versus that of science. Through the course of human history, (major) scientific discoveries are indeed rare, but occur at reasonably regular intervals. We've been quite overdue for a non-technological discovery for quite a while, now.
The implication being that I consider our current scientific "system" to be (at least partially) degenerate in the sense that there is an overemphasis on the technological
Now, to the original questions:
What system are we talking about?
Scientific publication, peer-review, internet publication and popularization (as embodied by the original 'public-consumption' article). With emphasis on the latter.
Why does faith need to be renewed in it?
Without getting into details (this is a stale thread, after all), I cite the ridiculous amount of attention paid to quacks, fringe work and hoaxes
What, have you lost faith in physics because it doesn't discover new laws every day?
Of course not, see above.
I trust this satisfies your desire for a more eloquent or complete answer to the original query. Now, if you're *still* full of questions, then I've done my job well, for our purpose is to inquire and to never be satisfied with our answers.
Please don't confuse the use of a common expression with a "theologial" stance: I consider myself to be among the most skeptical of people. Note also the use of a mood-lightening emoticon immediately following the statement to which you take issue. It was not inteded to be taken that seriously.
See this comment, elsewhere in this thread, for an interesting quote on the subject.
My perception was that the (re-written, popularized) article introduced a logical fallacy by juxtaposing the concepts of quantum spin and electrostatic spin. By 'dumbing down', I meant an elaboration of this perception, which would only be necessary if the article was presented to a general audience, rather than science.slashdot.org....
Clear as mud? =)