The really cool thing that they're totally missing is that prosthetic limbs aren't limited to replacements.
Research has shown that the brain has the ability to handle additional limbs and/or senses. So if an amputee can learn to control a replacement arm, then a normal person could also learn to control an extra pair of arms. The neat thing is that the brain would just adapt to it and it would seem natural.
This is just stupid. Digital audio recorders are ubiquitous. Anyone can make a high quality recording right from the stereo output jack of their computer, or even a passable recording by putting a microphone in front of the speakers. There just isn't any way to prevent that.
It's a handy piece of evidence against young-earth creationism because it's indisputable evidence that the universe has been functioning according to the laws of physics as we understand them for billions of years.
Some young-earth creationists try to explain away the problem of light from distant stars by saying that the laws of physics may have been different or may have changed, allowing light to reach us from the most distant galaxies without taking millions or billions of years to get here.
This observation of a predicted phenomenon functioning in the expected way proves that light did indeed take as long as expected to cover the observed distances. The effect doesn't work unless the light from the more distant galaxy has been traveling in the normal manner for eleven billion years.
Reverse car sensors connected to an Ass-Kicking-Driver's-Seat
Actually, I think you've got something there. Although people likely won't adopt bulky extra-sensory gadgets to wear around all the time, I bet they could be installed in vehicles with more success.
Your reverse car sensor could be translated to a row of buzzers against the back or under a thigh. The seatbelt could have that direction-sense built into it.
I think an interesting experiment would be to find out whether someone could adapt to seeing both ahead and behind by combining their eyes with a rear-view camera to something like that tongue-display device. If it were installed in a vehicle, the problem of a bulky system wouldn't even be an issue.
"I think it's obvious that musicians (especially independents and small labels) will find themselves with the short end of the stick if they are asked to pay a fee to have their music streamed as fast as larger bands or even corporations."
I think it's obvious that musicians (and too many other people) don't know how the Internet works.
Nobody "owns" the Internet. If some ISPs or backbone companies decide to limit bandwidth to certain sites, then they will simply lose business to the service providers who don't limit bandwidth.
And what would prevent musicians and their fans from using P2P techniques for distributed streaming?
Every "gag order" is a state-backed command to lie. The "gagged" person is compelled into deceit.
What makes this really stupid, is the fact that the order implicitely assumes that they can trust the victim to comply, even though the only way the victim can comply is to be untrustworthy.
Some types of dogs, cats, and horses are specifically bred for their disposition or behavior, not just for obvious physical traits.
Birds hatched in isolation will still make the same complex call, build the same kind of nest, and do the same mating dance as the rest of their species.
Turtle hatchlings seek the water and mother turtles bury their eggs, both without training.
Young birds raised in a hole in a tree know how to fly on their first attempt even though it's the first time they've ever stretched their wings.
Honey bees use a dance-language to communicate the coordinates of new food sources. No one has yet observed the young bees taking dance-language lessons.
There are millions of examples of staggeringly comblex behaviors which are somehow built into various species. We call them instincts.
Why should we think that we don't have instincts? Given the complexity of our brains, compared to birds for example, why wouldn't we expect our instincts to be even more complex?
Personally, I wonder what kinds of human vocalizations and body movements have instinctual significance. Is there a branch of behavioral science devoted to instinct? What might be the differences in behavioral dispositions in the different breeds of the human species?
Non-Vista-compatible version?
on
ReactOS Revealed
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Having begun the struggle with adapting application installers to Vista, I think I'd be more interested in a version of ReactOS that ISN'T Vista compatible.
Fire is a side-effect of chemical breakdown due to heat. Materials get hot, their materials begin to break down, resulting in solids, liquids and/or gasses. If the gasses can readily combine with the atmosphere to produce even more heat, you can get a self-propagating chain reaction; fire.
Even without the fire, those original materials would still break down due to heat. Frequently, this beginning stage causes enough odor that the problem is discovered before the equipment fails completely, or before a fire starts. Putting the equipment into an environment that excludes the use of the human nose may not be a good idea.
First, I thought "What about meteorites?!?"... then I RTFA.
So I found out that they're planning to cover the inflatables with lunar "regolith" (sandy soil stuff). Then I remembered... that stuff is supposed to be pretty nasty. Without erosion like we have on earth, broken up rock keeps all its sharp points and edges all the way down to the microscopic scale.
Essjay has been representing himself as 'a tenured professor of theology... [degree, degree, degree,...].
His real identity came to light after Wikia offered him a job: It turns out that he is really 24 years old with no degree living in Louisville, KY.
A professor of theology teaches about imaginary things and pretends to know what he's talking about.
A 24-year-old liar makes things up and pretends to know what he's talking about.
I'm wondering what the difference is. Neither one would be good for a reliable reference site.
So a poor Kalahari bushmen can somehow magically get access to a book?
Oh, first he needs an Internet connection.
Oh, before that he needs a computer
Oh, before that he needs electricity
OK...um...well..nevermind then
If your Kalahari bushmen get this book,
are they going to read it in English, do you think?
This is just stupid. I have already seen examples of deaf people signing to each other via cell phone. (See the movie, "Babel".) It's choppy, sure, but a 30fps video mobile was just announced which should do the trick.
My point is, the technology for simply transporting full video is already becoming available for purchase. I don't see any need for a specialized codec.
The thing that bothers me most about this story was that nobody knew how the police ever found out about the photos... and nobody seems to care.
The "child porn" charge is a technicality. They took the pictures of themselves and only showed them to each other. No victim, no exploitation, no harm. And you can bet that these kids' parents wouldn't turn them in as child pornographers.
How did anyone find out what was in those teens' personal e-mail? Interpersonal communications are supposed to be private and there are laws forbidding invasion of privacy without a court order. So who was peeking at these kids' e-mail, and why aren't they being charged? Isn't that the real story?
Wow, a theory totally unrelated to modern string theory was once disproved, and you "predict" that string theory will also be disproved for similar reasons.
That's a nice retort, but my line of thinking is actually somewhat more reasonable than that.:-)
We already have a pretty convincing mathematical understanding of electromagnetic fields and waves, and how energy travels in this form. So the first thing that strikes me whenever I read about this string theory is that they're talking about "strings of energy". What exactly is that supposed to mean? It sounds plausible like "strings of molecules" or "strings of spaghetti" but can energy really be "stringy"? I doubt it.
The topology of knots bears a conceptual resemblance to the problems of particle physics. Unfortunately, that doesn't mean that the two are actually related.
If by chance string theory happens to line up with physical reality for a bit, I think it's likely for the same reason as it did before with chemical elements. Coincidence.
Back when folks were still trying to figure out the Periodic Table of Elements, there was a promising idea which came out of the field of topology. It was based on the topology of knots, such as one could visualize as closed loops of string. It seemed to "predict" chemical properties for elements as heavy as Calcium but broke down beyond that. The similarity of the two patterns turned out to be only a coincidence, so the theory was discarded.
I predict that this new incarnation of "string theory" will be similar. It will seem reasonable for some of the simpler things (if any) but will fail to predict results when applied to more complex things.
Who knows? String theory could be a practical joke perpetrated by frustrated topology dweebs.
Scientists are supposed to be skeptical. It's their job.
--
You're calling into question the very Laws of Newton!
This could get us all decertified as scientists.
I'm sorry Mr. Einstein, but we can't publish this.
I hadn't really thought about this until the question came up, but it sounded like a fun mental challenge so I came up with a few ideas for improving the concept:
Multiple Activation Stages
The first thing that came to my mind was a DMS to warn you that your main DMS will be triggered soon if you don't "check in". A second stage would send a similar warning to a few other people, encouraging them to find you and to personally warn you about the DMS themselves. You might want to disguise that one as a "request for critical maintenance" from a system which sounds important.
Secure Check-In Protocol
Have your DMS send you a unique check-in ID which you must use in your response. Or if a first-stage DMS has already been triggered, require a special password for deactivation of the continuing DMS sequence.
Multiple Triggers
More than one trigger input, in combination and/or in sequence, to more robustly define the conditions for activation. For example, if you haven't checked in recently AND several check-in reminder messages have bounced.
Ultimately though, if it's something important then I think a human being should be part of the process. A person would be a good sanity check. Nobody writes bug-free software, and I'm guessing that it could be pretty difficult to test a complicated DMS.
Exactly what is "free will" supposed to mean? It's the ability to choose, free from what?
The answer is, "free from the influence of god". That's why the whole idea was invented, to rationalize the idea of a creator who gets angry at his creations for turning out just the way he made them.
Once a person quits believing in supernatural fairy tales, "free will" doesn't even mean anything.
I remember reading (somewhere) a scent-related experiment which was suggested for kids. The purpose was to demonstrate that people can differentiate the odors of other individuals even though they don't consciously smell anything at all.
The procedure went something like this:
Distribute a freshly-cleaned T-shirt in a zip-lock bag to all participants. Groups trying this experiment should be small, less than 10 people. Each person should bathe in the evening and wear the T-shirt overnight, placing it back into the zip-lock bag in the morning (no distinctive folding or rolling, just shoved in). When everyone is back together again, the bags are gathered while a non-participant draws numbers from a hat, writing the number on the bag and recording who brought it. The number correspondence is kept secret. Bags are then passed around and participants try to guess who wore each shirt.
The article I was reading said that you should expect "uncanny" accuracy, the difference in scent seeming like a "hunch" or a "feeling" rather than a conscious recognition.
Now the even weirder part. A similar experiment was done where the shirt-wearers were unknown to the sniffers. The people smelling the shirts were given a set of photographs, and asked which one the shirt seemed to belong to. Apparently, they scored correctly by a significant margin.
Now, since I'm busy I'll just leave it up to the reader (and Google, perhaps) to find the sources.
Slashdot Mirror
The really cool thing that they're totally missing is that prosthetic limbs aren't limited to replacements.
Research has shown that the brain has the ability to handle additional limbs and/or senses. So if an amputee can learn to control a replacement arm, then a normal person could also learn to control an extra pair of arms. The neat thing is that the brain would just adapt to it and it would seem natural.
This is just stupid. Digital audio recorders are ubiquitous. Anyone can make a high quality recording right from the stereo output jack of their computer, or even a passable recording by putting a microphone in front of the speakers. There just isn't any way to prevent that.
When will these recording-industry idiots learn?
If terrorists are expected to design and build devices, then ...DUH!... of course they'll be engineers.
Can you imagine the havoc which could be wrought by a terrorist cell whose operatives majored in comparative literature? Oh, the horror!
It's a handy piece of evidence against young-earth creationism because it's indisputable evidence that the universe has been functioning according to the laws of physics as we understand them for billions of years.
Some young-earth creationists try to explain away the problem of light from distant stars by saying that the laws of physics may have been different or may have changed, allowing light to reach us from the most distant galaxies without taking millions or billions of years to get here.
This observation of a predicted phenomenon functioning in the expected way proves that light did indeed take as long as expected to cover the observed distances. The effect doesn't work unless the light from the more distant galaxy has been traveling in the normal manner for eleven billion years.
So much for a 6000 year old universe! Ha!
I'd be a lot more optimistic about this if it had been a Venezuelan company announcing this.
It's twice the size of a man but weighs 3000 pounds (about twenty times what a man weighs)...
and it flew??
Actually, I think you've got something there. Although people likely won't adopt bulky extra-sensory gadgets to wear around all the time, I bet they could be installed in vehicles with more success.
Your reverse car sensor could be translated to a row of buzzers against the back or under a thigh. The seatbelt could have that direction-sense built into it.
I think an interesting experiment would be to find out whether someone could adapt to seeing both ahead and behind by combining their eyes with a rear-view camera to something like that tongue-display device. If it were installed in a vehicle, the problem of a bulky system wouldn't even be an issue.
I think it's obvious that musicians (and too many other people) don't know how the Internet works.
Nobody "owns" the Internet. If some ISPs or backbone companies decide to limit bandwidth to certain sites, then they will simply lose business to the service providers who don't limit bandwidth.
And what would prevent musicians and their fans from using P2P techniques for distributed streaming?
The whole "threat" is nonsense.
Every "gag order" is a state-backed command to lie. The "gagged" person is compelled into deceit.
What makes this really stupid, is the fact that the order implicitely assumes that they can trust the victim to comply, even though the only way the victim can comply is to be untrustworthy.
There are millions of examples of staggeringly comblex behaviors which are somehow built into various species. We call them instincts.
Why should we think that we don't have instincts? Given the complexity of our brains, compared to birds for example, why wouldn't we expect our instincts to be even more complex?
Personally, I wonder what kinds of human vocalizations and body movements have instinctual significance. Is there a branch of behavioral science devoted to instinct? What might be the differences in behavioral dispositions in the different breeds of the human species?
Having begun the struggle with adapting application installers to Vista, I think I'd be more interested in a version of ReactOS that ISN'T Vista compatible.
Fire is a side-effect of chemical breakdown due to heat. Materials get hot, their materials begin to break down, resulting in solids, liquids and/or gasses. If the gasses can readily combine with the atmosphere to produce even more heat, you can get a self-propagating chain reaction; fire.
Even without the fire, those original materials would still break down due to heat. Frequently, this beginning stage causes enough odor that the problem is discovered before the equipment fails completely, or before a fire starts. Putting the equipment into an environment that excludes the use of the human nose may not be a good idea.
First, I thought "What about meteorites?!?" ... then I RTFA.
So I found out that they're planning to cover the inflatables with lunar "regolith" (sandy soil stuff). Then I remembered... that stuff is supposed to be pretty nasty. Without erosion like we have on earth, broken up rock keeps all its sharp points and edges all the way down to the microscopic scale.
A professor of theology teaches about imaginary things and pretends to know what he's talking about.
A 24-year-old liar makes things up and pretends to know what he's talking about.
I'm wondering what the difference is. Neither one would be good for a reliable reference site.
If your Kalahari bushmen get this book,
are they going to read it in English, do you think?
An international knowledge bank needs an international language that works.
Se via Kalaharaj vilaghanoj akirus tiun libron,
chu ili legos ghin Angla-lingve, vi pensas?
Internacia sciobanko postulas tiun internacian lingvon kiu funkcias..
This is just stupid. I have already seen examples of deaf people signing to each other via cell phone. (See the movie, "Babel".) It's choppy, sure, but a 30fps video mobile was just announced which should do the trick.
My point is, the technology for simply transporting full video is already becoming available for purchase. I don't see any need for a specialized codec.
The thing that bothers me most about this story was that nobody knew how the police ever found out about the photos... and nobody seems to care.
The "child porn" charge is a technicality. They took the pictures of themselves and only showed them to each other. No victim, no exploitation, no harm. And you can bet that these kids' parents wouldn't turn them in as child pornographers.
How did anyone find out what was in those teens' personal e-mail? Interpersonal communications are supposed to be private and there are laws forbidding invasion of privacy without a court order. So who was peeking at these kids' e-mail, and why aren't they being charged? Isn't that the real story?
That's a nice retort, but my line of thinking is actually somewhat more reasonable than that. :-)
We already have a pretty convincing mathematical understanding of electromagnetic fields and waves, and how energy travels in this form. So the first thing that strikes me whenever I read about this string theory is that they're talking about "strings of energy". What exactly is that supposed to mean? It sounds plausible like "strings of molecules" or "strings of spaghetti" but can energy really be "stringy"? I doubt it.
The topology of knots bears a conceptual resemblance to the problems of particle physics. Unfortunately, that doesn't mean that the two are actually related.
If by chance string theory happens to line up with physical reality for a bit, I think it's likely for the same reason as it did before with chemical elements. Coincidence.
Back when folks were still trying to figure out the Periodic Table of Elements, there was a promising idea which came out of the field of topology. It was based on the topology of knots, such as one could visualize as closed loops of string. It seemed to "predict" chemical properties for elements as heavy as Calcium but broke down beyond that. The similarity of the two patterns turned out to be only a coincidence, so the theory was discarded.
I predict that this new incarnation of "string theory" will be similar. It will seem reasonable for some of the simpler things (if any) but will fail to predict results when applied to more complex things.
Who knows? String theory could be a practical joke perpetrated by frustrated topology dweebs.
Kids will know that the whole purpose of this "Moji" thing is to spy on them, no matter how "friendly and helpful" it is.
Scientists are supposed to be skeptical. It's their job.
--
You're calling into question the very Laws of Newton!
This could get us all decertified as scientists.
I'm sorry Mr. Einstein, but we can't publish this.
...and then the Slashdot effect pummeled their server.
I hadn't really thought about this until the question came up, but it sounded like a fun mental challenge so I came up with a few ideas for improving the concept:
Multiple Activation Stages The first thing that came to my mind was a DMS to warn you that your main DMS will be triggered soon if you don't "check in". A second stage would send a similar warning to a few other people, encouraging them to find you and to personally warn you about the DMS themselves. You might want to disguise that one as a "request for critical maintenance" from a system which sounds important. Secure Check-In Protocol Have your DMS send you a unique check-in ID which you must use in your response. Or if a first-stage DMS has already been triggered, require a special password for deactivation of the continuing DMS sequence. Multiple Triggers More than one trigger input, in combination and/or in sequence, to more robustly define the conditions for activation. For example, if you haven't checked in recently AND several check-in reminder messages have bounced.Ultimately though, if it's something important then I think a human being should be part of the process. A person would be a good sanity check. Nobody writes bug-free software, and I'm guessing that it could be pretty difficult to test a complicated DMS.
Exactly what is "free will" supposed to mean? It's the ability to choose, free from what?
The answer is, "free from the influence of god". That's why the whole idea was invented, to rationalize the idea of a creator who gets angry at his creations for turning out just the way he made them.
Once a person quits believing in supernatural fairy tales, "free will" doesn't even mean anything.
I remember reading (somewhere) a scent-related experiment which was suggested for kids. The purpose was to demonstrate that people can differentiate the odors of other individuals even though they don't consciously smell anything at all.
The procedure went something like this:
Distribute a freshly-cleaned T-shirt in a zip-lock bag to all participants. Groups trying this experiment should be small, less than 10 people. Each person should bathe in the evening and wear the T-shirt overnight, placing it back into the zip-lock bag in the morning (no distinctive folding or rolling, just shoved in). When everyone is back together again, the bags are gathered while a non-participant draws numbers from a hat, writing the number on the bag and recording who brought it. The number correspondence is kept secret. Bags are then passed around and participants try to guess who wore each shirt.
The article I was reading said that you should expect "uncanny" accuracy, the difference in scent seeming like a "hunch" or a "feeling" rather than a conscious recognition.
Now the even weirder part. A similar experiment was done where the shirt-wearers were unknown to the sniffers. The people smelling the shirts were given a set of photographs, and asked which one the shirt seemed to belong to. Apparently, they scored correctly by a significant margin.
Now, since I'm busy I'll just leave it up to the reader (and Google, perhaps) to find the sources.