Dropbox is an application that can be installed by anyone with just a rudimentary level of computer skill. OP's suggestion was far more complicated and time-consuming and wouldn't provide as many features - in fact, it wouldn't even provide those features which practically define Dropbox as a service. Just like being your own mail man is more complicated, more time-consuming and doesn't provide as many features. I think my analogy holds up pretty well.
Paintings and Canvas are not done to be exact replicas of nature
They don't have to be exact to bear some relation to reality, and it wouldn't be unremarkable to discover that some painters would take pride in capturing the beauty of nature as exactly as possible.
Pollution is not the only, or even the best, explanation for the colors the artist chose.
The abstract doesn't mention pollution, per se (man-made or otherwise). Still, the authors have found a correlation, albeit a slight one which they only tentatively propose to be of limited utility. Yes, many things will have a bearing on how an artist paints his pictures. But it hardly seems outside the realm of possibility to me that when the sky is redder, artists will tend to paint redder paintings. That's all you need for there to be a correlation. You could give an artist a choice of two shades of red to paint his from-life sunsets, and only allow him to paint entire canvases in solid colour, and you could still find a correlation given enough paintings.
Monet didn't set out to paint photo-realistic paintings of waterlilies, and yet you can chart the progression of his cataracts (and their subsequent surgical removal) by the general colour tone of this paintings during that period.
Will this finding actually be of any future scientific use? I find that hard to believe, and I suspect any suggestion of that is more to do with the article's writers than the paper's.
Drop Box is nothing more than a gussied up repackaging of a SFTP or FTPS and a nice fancy ol' GUI.
The post office is nothing but a gussied up repackaging of walking to your friend's house and giving him the letter yourself. The fax machine is nothing but a waffle iron with a phone attached!
No, it's slightly more than that.
You set up a server for SFTP or FTPS and download a nice, friendly little program called FileZilla.
...and then? Will Filezilla run on startup, settle itself inconspicuously in the systray without a running window you could accidentally close, connect to the SFTP server, download files automatically to local directories so they're instantly accessible, then monitor, sync and notify you of any changes? Will it allow you to dish out invitations to share directories and files direct from your desktop, and manage those permissions for an unlimited number of users and directories?
It would be impossible to try and make any type of measurement for what they are trying to measure based on paintings, when the majority of those paintings contain mythical and unrealistic objects.
Just Google search "Ancient Greek Paintings"
Perhaps you should try reading the article properly. I think I see where you went wrong:
A team of Greek and German researchers [...] analysed hundreds of high-quality digital photographs of sunset paintings done between 1500 and 2000.
No, I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt because the only reasonable information I've seen on what they've achieved suggests they've got something interesting, and also because it a) doesn't seem that ridiculous to me and b) doesn't really matter enough to me personally to go and investigate further. They haven't claimed the sky is falling. Why are you, and others, going ape-shit (as so often happens on Slashdot) just because someone's dared to suggest - tentatively suggest, at that - something that you (and I'm going to go out on a limb and assume, by the law of averages only, that you're not actually a climate scientist) think sounds implausible?
The authors call it a "tentative proposal." It's not like they've claimed they can read the future in tea leaves, is it?
I don't think it sounds far-fetched. You, clearly, do. That's great, because the pursuit of differing ideas and opinions is how we get anything solved. But why are you so annoyed that my opinion - based, let's be honest, as yours was only on the article and possibly the abstract of the paper - differs from yours?
I personally try to avoid claiming people are idiots unless I know more about their subject than they do.
You'd revoke their science card for what the authors freely admit is a "tentative proposal"? And based on, what, your hunch that what they describe is too good to be true?
They sampled red-green ratios from various painters, compared it to historical pollution data and found a correlation. They got an artist to paint before and after a dust event (of which he was unaware) and found a similar correlation. Doesn't sound that far-fetched to me. Will it "help study the Earth’s past atmosphere" as the headline suggests? Perhaps not - I'm sure there are probably much better ways. But I don't see why it has to be dumped in the pseudo-science bin.
I dont have the burden of proof, b/c it's not my research.
I'm not saying you wouldn't be correct to assume that they don't have the understanding until it's proven otherwise - which this study is by no means definitively claiming to have done - but you said "Crows don't "understand" water displacement," which sounds like a definitive statement of fact.
The scientists are claiming they **DO**
Nope. They're only claiming that they may.
It's simple cause/effect and memory...why is this a controversial statement?
What evidence is there that it's any truer than the alternative? The scientists who've spent time and effort investigating certainly seem to believe there's room for doubt, if nothing else.
Ah, my bad - I was in a hasty mood and assumed, when you said "in particular this," and liked to a comment, that you were indicating only the initial comment, not the discussion which followed. In retrospect it did seem a bit odd...
Why did any of the crows drop a stone into the water in the first place? Why did they go for water over sand?
On the other side of the argument, what did their "brief training period" comprise?
The problem here is that we're working with four paragraphs. That's precious little to come up with any definitive statement - let alone ones which contradict the - by their own admission, cautious (the article is peppered with "may"s)- conclusion of the study.
Slashdot Mirror
Thanks; that seems to explain the contents of the article sufficiently such that I will now abort trying to comprehend it.
Why sixty and not thirty? Why not 120?
Your analogy is retarded.
Why?
Dropbox is an application that can be installed by anyone with just a rudimentary level of computer skill. OP's suggestion was far more complicated and time-consuming and wouldn't provide as many features - in fact, it wouldn't even provide those features which practically define Dropbox as a service. Just like being your own mail man is more complicated, more time-consuming and doesn't provide as many features. I think my analogy holds up pretty well.
Paintings and Canvas are not done to be exact replicas of nature
They don't have to be exact to bear some relation to reality, and it wouldn't be unremarkable to discover that some painters would take pride in capturing the beauty of nature as exactly as possible.
Pollution is not the only, or even the best, explanation for the colors the artist chose.
The abstract doesn't mention pollution, per se (man-made or otherwise). Still, the authors have found a correlation, albeit a slight one which they only tentatively propose to be of limited utility. Yes, many things will have a bearing on how an artist paints his pictures. But it hardly seems outside the realm of possibility to me that when the sky is redder, artists will tend to paint redder paintings. That's all you need for there to be a correlation. You could give an artist a choice of two shades of red to paint his from-life sunsets, and only allow him to paint entire canvases in solid colour, and you could still find a correlation given enough paintings.
Monet didn't set out to paint photo-realistic paintings of waterlilies, and yet you can chart the progression of his cataracts (and their subsequent surgical removal) by the general colour tone of this paintings during that period.
Will this finding actually be of any future scientific use? I find that hard to believe, and I suspect any suggestion of that is more to do with the article's writers than the paper's.
It's both, numbnuts.
Drop Box is nothing more than a gussied up repackaging of a SFTP or FTPS and a nice fancy ol' GUI.
The post office is nothing but a gussied up repackaging of walking to your friend's house and giving him the letter yourself.
The fax machine is nothing but a waffle iron with a phone attached!
No, it's slightly more than that.
You set up a server for SFTP or FTPS and download a nice, friendly little program called FileZilla.
...and then? Will Filezilla run on startup, settle itself inconspicuously in the systray without a running window you could accidentally close, connect to the SFTP server, download files automatically to local directories so they're instantly accessible, then monitor, sync and notify you of any changes? Will it allow you to dish out invitations to share directories and files direct from your desktop, and manage those permissions for an unlimited number of users and directories?
They're not suicidal. They're just nuts.
Maybe he's just sad that dogs get sad.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
It would be impossible to try and make any type of measurement for what they are trying to measure based on paintings, when the majority of those paintings contain mythical and unrealistic objects.
Just Google search "Ancient Greek Paintings"
Perhaps you should try reading the article properly. I think I see where you went wrong:
A team of Greek and German researchers [...] analysed hundreds of high-quality digital photographs of sunset paintings done between 1500 and 2000.
which get recycled into the "media" on a regular basis
This is a new paper, isn't it? On what basis are you lumping this particular study in with the rest of the bollocks?
No, I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt because the only reasonable information I've seen on what they've achieved suggests they've got something interesting, and also because it a) doesn't seem that ridiculous to me and b) doesn't really matter enough to me personally to go and investigate further. They haven't claimed the sky is falling. Why are you, and others, going ape-shit (as so often happens on Slashdot) just because someone's dared to suggest - tentatively suggest, at that - something that you (and I'm going to go out on a limb and assume, by the law of averages only, that you're not actually a climate scientist) think sounds implausible?
The authors call it a "tentative proposal." It's not like they've claimed they can read the future in tea leaves, is it?
I don't think it sounds far-fetched. You, clearly, do. That's great, because the pursuit of differing ideas and opinions is how we get anything solved. But why are you so annoyed that my opinion - based, let's be honest, as yours was only on the article and possibly the abstract of the paper - differs from yours?
I personally try to avoid claiming people are idiots unless I know more about their subject than they do.
Can we revoke their science card?
You'd revoke their science card for what the authors freely admit is a "tentative proposal"? And based on, what, your hunch that what they describe is too good to be true?
They sampled red-green ratios from various painters, compared it to historical pollution data and found a correlation. They got an artist to paint before and after a dust event (of which he was unaware) and found a similar correlation. Doesn't sound that far-fetched to me. Will it "help study the Earth’s past atmosphere" as the headline suggests? Perhaps not - I'm sure there are probably much better ways. But I don't see why it has to be dumped in the pseudo-science bin.
The article is four paragraphs long, with an un-narrated video. That's hardly enough on which to base your conclusion.
And the experimenters themselves have only gone as far as to say these results "may" be in favour of the alternative.
I dont have the burden of proof, b/c it's not my research.
I'm not saying you wouldn't be correct to assume that they don't have the understanding until it's proven otherwise - which this study is by no means definitively claiming to have done - but you said "Crows don't "understand" water displacement," which sounds like a definitive statement of fact.
The scientists are claiming they **DO**
Nope. They're only claiming that they may.
It's simple cause/effect and memory...why is this a controversial statement?
What evidence is there that it's any truer than the alternative? The scientists who've spent time and effort investigating certainly seem to believe there's room for doubt, if nothing else.
Ah, my bad - I was in a hasty mood and assumed, when you said "in particular this," and liked to a comment, that you were indicating only the initial comment, not the discussion which followed. In retrospect it did seem a bit odd...
...but it's too orangey for crows.
Crows don't "understand" water displacement.
How do you know they don't?
Crows see cause/effect.
Why did any of the crows drop a stone into the water in the first place? Why did they go for water over sand?
On the other side of the argument, what did their "brief training period" comprise?
The problem here is that we're working with four paragraphs. That's precious little to come up with any definitive statement - let alone ones which contradict the - by their own admission, cautious (the article is peppered with "may"s)- conclusion of the study.
Obviously you missed this [slashdot.org], and in particular this [slashdot.org].
Wow, two links to the same single counter example, can't argue with that...
particularly when that inconsistency seems to have a partisan bias.
"Seems"? Based on two opposing recent examples and the general murmurings of a few?
I'm not saying a bias won't be borne out by the facts - in fact it doesn't seem at all unlikely - but your argument could use some real numbers.
It seems merely informative to me.
No, they only paid him to say it once, then they doubled it up on the soundtrack. Cheap bastards.
And I think you're mistaken about assuming they must have made an error, since they state it clearly several times. What to do?
Meep.
Oops. The project is due to last 18 months. Well, we'll see then, then.
And yet this team of MIT alumni is still going ahead with their project after 18 months of research and $1.3 million spent. Funny that.