There are several things fundamentally wrong with the Economist article. First, correlation does not prove causality--just because the individual discussed in the opening paragraphs performs badly when the tumor grows dosen't prove that he had no choice, merely that the temptation was greater. Second, the article is based on classical mechanics and aside from a minor mention the article essentially ignores all of the very significant ramifications of quantum mechanics. For an excellent but very challenging treatment of this subject read Mind, Matter, and Quantum Mechanics by Henry Stapp (no affiliation, no Amazon kickback). Short explanation: changes in physical state in systems such as the brain require quantum mechanical processes that involve state changes which are free (meaning unpredictable by any currently known physical process).
Here's a possible explanation: When water freezes it forms hydrogen bonds that produce a crystalline structure that is less dense than water (this is why water ice floats). In a body of water near the freezing point there will be many water molecules constantly moving in and out of this fozen state (because of local temperature fluxuations). Therefore as you warm such a body of water you would expect fewer and fewer water molecules to be cool enough to bond together temporarily in a less dense crystalline fashion. In other words, as you warm a body of water that's near the freezing point, it should become less dense, and shrink.
Put your pillow in the clothes drier and let it get tossed, blown, and fluffed by the hot air for a while. This will expunge much of the dust, dust mites, and fungal spores present. It's not a panacea, but it helps.
Yahoo recently cancelled my email account without warning, and without any possibility for me to retreive my archived email, and all because I had let the account sit unused for four months. They had two other email addresses on file for my Yahoo groups account, but they didn't bother to give me any warning. I used that account for specific types of infrequent communication, and I'm really pissed that they cancelled it without warning and with NO possibility of restoring the old messages.
On the other hand, I recently logged into my Google gmail account, which I hadn't used for 10 months, and it was still there.
Short answer: Yahoo will screw you over with no chance of redress. In contrast, Google is still smart enough to not abuse its customer base like that.
If we get dig out nuclear propulsion technology...
Good point. This would also permit denser shielding that would provide protection during transit.
I hope NASA ignore's Bush's suggestion of using the Moon as a stepping stone for Mars. The moon is just another gravity well to get out of; one of the Lagrane points would require less energy while also permitting the use of nuclear rockets.
The net interprets censorship as damage, and routes around it. -- John Gilmore, co-founder of the EFF
The Internet is growing more quickly and in more directions than most people realize. Soon the information will flow like the air around the earth or the water in its seas.
If you stand in a river the water flows around you. If you surround yourself with a wall you succeed only in isolating yourself, and someday the dam will break, and the flood will cause great damage.
Intead of watching fools bicker over where to stand in the river, let us ride together across these seas of information toward a new and better world for everyone.
That's a bias (assumption) that you're using base 10. In binary 1 + 1 = 10
Doctors have removed Terry Schiavo's feeding tube.
Again, please point out the bias there.
The bias is in the decision to report this as "news". The statement is factual, but the implication that this is news is biased.
A crowd of protestors gathered in front of the royal palace today to protest the decision to send troops to Freedonia. Police estimated the crowd at 10,000 people, while the protest leaders estimated 25,000.
Again, please show me the bias.
Aside from the bias inherent in the unstated implication that this is newsworthy, there is bias in the assumption that the police and protest leaders are diametrically opposed and therefore the truth must lie between. It may in fact be the case that the police have inflated estimates to help bolster their budget, or they may happen to agree with the protester viewpoint. The real number of protesters might actually be much lower than either estimate.
The parent post is correct--all information is biased.
I pity the fool who thinks that! I sometimes take my home-made geiger counter with me when I fly, and I've never had problems with security. And it is significantly more radioactive up there, by the way...
The insanely great mathworld is a great place to start. Pick a subject and start reading. If you don't understand something just follow the link to its definition, and pop the stack when you're ready to move on.
This is timely. We have a laptop computer at home that has been essentially unusable ever since SP2 was installed. Internet Explorer takes 37 seconds to start on a 1GHz system with 256MB RAM and 97% system idle time, unable to run Windows Update, network drops out periodically, etc. Compaq tech support says that they've seen a lot of this, and they're recommending that we uninstall SP2.
I wrote email to DSC years ago complaining about their treatment of Evan Brown, and they replied that they were just enforcing his employment contract, and that they felt they were acting within the law.
Like hell. Converting SQL database queries to SVG is trivial with existing free tools. Converting anyone else's data to Flash is a major pain and requires that you give big sacks of cash to Macromedia for proprietary server-side tools.
performance varies but is generally acceptable if the artist didn't go massivly nuts.
The exact same thing can be said of SVG, especially with the new implementations on cell phones.
SVG: Slow as hell no matter how fast your machine is, poor support, I/GUESS/ there is a tool set out there, but who in their right mind would want to use it?
You're living in the past. SVG Tiny renders blazingly fast on the new cell phones that use it, and there are lots of great tools out there.
Flash and Shockwave are easy to install, frequently updated...
That's not a virtue on cell phones and other smart small devices, which is where the future is at.
Why do we still have to make a request for government information in this digital age we live in? If it's not classified as secret, why isn't the information just always available on-line?
Doesn't anyone read Science Fiction anymore? Kim Stanely Robinson gave us a nice vision of what can happen if you knock down a space elevator in his Red Mars, Green Mars, Blue Mars trilogy.
Thus one credit will be more uniform across all platforms. What's wrong with that?
It makes perfect sense from a techincal perspective. However, it's harder to understand, and therefore less compelling, and therefore less likely to attract new users.
well its not installing any NEW software, its simply upgrading the OLD software you've already installed
I realize that, but I would rather not be among the bleeding edge early adopters and discover the hard way that the upgrade has a security hole or causes some systems to stop booting up, etc...
This may very likely be the beginning of the end for SETI@Home. One of the attractions of SETI@Home for many people is the excitement of tracknig the counter of the number of work units completed. In contrast, the new BOINC-based system has a ridiculously complex and unintuitive "credit" system that users are very unlikely to find compelling.
I guess this just shows that every project, even a non-commercial one, eventually needs to have someone with some marketing sense if it wants to continue to thrive.
BOINC transparently and securely downloads new application versions. This lets us upgrade and extend SETI@home without requiring you to download and install new software.
which makes me wonder if users can disable that. I don't want anybody installing software on my computer without my approval, thank you.
The FAQ didn't answer that question--does anyone know?
To-do list tools come and go, and they all have proprietary formats. Over the years I've settled on a scheme that's simple and robust--use a text file. You can sort your items any way you like, search through them easily, switch editors or operating systems with ease, and you're not limited by someone else's view of how things should be organized or sorted.
This reminds me of George Orwell's 1984, where not even the woods were free from the microphones and cameras of the thought police.
It also reminds me of recent interest in privatizing the National Park system, and the ubiquitous railings and warning signs that would result in an effort to make the parks "safe".
People go to the wilderness precisely to get away from everything and be truly free for a while.
Take whatever devices you need to feel safe in the woods, but don't leave them there and ruin things for the rest of us.
Yes, the problem with America's public education system is that everyone is required to go, so the students that don't want to be there make it difficult for those that do.
The solution is to change the law so that students are no longer compelled go to go school after about 4th grade (before hormones kick in, and after rudimentary arithmetic and reading are studied.)
In order for some to fly, others must be allowed to fall behind. This is an unpopular notion in a society like America where the concept of "equal before the law" has been twisted in most minds to mean "equal abilities and compensation."
Slashdot Mirror
If you power down your systems at night, then BOINC won't work!
There are several things fundamentally wrong with the Economist article. First, correlation does not prove causality--just because the individual discussed in the opening paragraphs performs badly when the tumor grows dosen't prove that he had no choice, merely that the temptation was greater. Second, the article is based on classical mechanics and aside from a minor mention the article essentially ignores all of the very significant ramifications of quantum mechanics. For an excellent but very challenging treatment of this subject read Mind, Matter, and Quantum Mechanics by Henry Stapp (no affiliation, no Amazon kickback). Short explanation: changes in physical state in systems such as the brain require quantum mechanical processes that involve state changes which are free (meaning unpredictable by any currently known physical process).
Doh! What I meant to say was that it should be come more dense, and shrink. Time to recaffeinate, I guess...
Here's a possible explanation: When water freezes it forms hydrogen bonds that produce a crystalline structure that is less dense than water (this is why water ice floats). In a body of water near the freezing point there will be many water molecules constantly moving in and out of this fozen state (because of local temperature fluxuations). Therefore as you warm such a body of water you would expect fewer and fewer water molecules to be cool enough to bond together temporarily in a less dense crystalline fashion. In other words, as you warm a body of water that's near the freezing point, it should become less dense, and shrink.
Put your pillow in the clothes drier and let it get tossed, blown, and fluffed by the hot air for a while. This will expunge much of the dust, dust mites, and fungal spores present. It's not a panacea, but it helps.
Yahoo recently cancelled my email account without warning, and without any possibility for me to retreive my archived email, and all because I had let the account sit unused for four months. They had two other email addresses on file for my Yahoo groups account, but they didn't bother to give me any warning. I used that account for specific types of infrequent communication, and I'm really pissed that they cancelled it without warning and with NO possibility of restoring the old messages.
On the other hand, I recently logged into my Google gmail account, which I hadn't used for 10 months, and it was still there.
Short answer: Yahoo will screw you over with no chance of redress. In contrast, Google is still smart enough to not abuse its customer base like that.
Good point. This would also permit denser shielding that would provide protection during transit.
I hope NASA ignore's Bush's suggestion of using the Moon as a stepping stone for Mars. The moon is just another gravity well to get out of; one of the Lagrane points would require less energy while also permitting the use of nuclear rockets.
Surely someone, someday, will do a good remake of the movie. I can wait.
The Internet is growing more quickly and in more directions than most people realize. Soon the information will flow like the air around the earth or the water in its seas.
If you stand in a river the water flows around you. If you surround yourself with a wall you succeed only in isolating yourself, and someday the dam will break, and the flood will cause great damage.
Intead of watching fools bicker over where to stand in the river, let us ride together across these seas of information toward a new and better world for everyone.
That's a bias (assumption) that you're using base 10. In binary 1 + 1 = 10
The bias is in the decision to report this as "news". The statement is factual, but the implication that this is news is biased.
Aside from the bias inherent in the unstated implication that this is newsworthy, there is bias in the assumption that the police and protest leaders are diametrically opposed and therefore the truth must lie between. It may in fact be the case that the police have inflated estimates to help bolster their budget, or they may happen to agree with the protester viewpoint. The real number of protesters might actually be much lower than either estimate.
The parent post is correct--all information is biased.
I pity the fool who thinks that! I sometimes take my home-made geiger counter with me when I fly, and I've never had problems with security. And it is significantly more radioactive up there, by the way...
The insanely great mathworld is a great place to start. Pick a subject and start reading. If you don't understand something just follow the link to its definition, and pop the stack when you're ready to move on.
This is timely. We have a laptop computer at home that has been essentially unusable ever since SP2 was installed. Internet Explorer takes 37 seconds to start on a 1GHz system with 256MB RAM and 97% system idle time, unable to run Windows Update, network drops out periodically, etc. Compaq tech support says that they've seen a lot of this, and they're recommending that we uninstall SP2.
I wrote email to DSC years ago complaining about their treatment of Evan Brown, and they replied that they were just enforcing his employment contract, and that they felt they were acting within the law.
That doesn't make it right.
Boycott Alcatel.
Not on cell phones
Like hell. Converting SQL database queries to SVG is trivial with existing free tools. Converting anyone else's data to Flash is a major pain and requires that you give big sacks of cash to Macromedia for proprietary server-side tools.
The exact same thing can be said of SVG, especially with the new implementations on cell phones.
You're living in the past. SVG Tiny renders blazingly fast on the new cell phones that use it, and there are lots of great tools out there.
That's not a virtue on cell phones and other smart small devices, which is where the future is at.
Why do we still have to make a request for government information in this digital age we live in? If it's not classified as secret, why isn't the information just always available on-line?
Doesn't anyone read Science Fiction anymore? Kim Stanely Robinson gave us a nice vision of what can happen if you knock down a space elevator in his Red Mars, Green Mars, Blue Mars trilogy.
It makes perfect sense from a techincal perspective. However, it's harder to understand, and therefore less compelling, and therefore less likely to attract new users.
I realize that, but I would rather not be among the bleeding edge early adopters and discover the hard way that the upgrade has a security hole or causes some systems to stop booting up, etc...
I guess this just shows that every project, even a non-commercial one, eventually needs to have someone with some marketing sense if it wants to continue to thrive.
The FAQ didn't answer that question--does anyone know?
To-do list tools come and go, and they all have proprietary formats. Over the years I've settled on a scheme that's simple and robust--use a text file. You can sort your items any way you like, search through them easily, switch editors or operating systems with ease, and you're not limited by someone else's view of how things should be organized or sorted.
Most people don't seem to be aware of the fact that coal power plants are more radioactive than nuclear power plants.
It is also now possible to design nuclear power plants so that they fail safe, unlike the poorly designed plant at Chernobyl.
Safety-driven memes are difficult to counter, but once we run out of options perhaps we'll do what we must.
This reminds me of George Orwell's 1984, where not even the woods were free from the microphones and cameras of the thought police.
It also reminds me of recent interest in privatizing the National Park system, and the ubiquitous railings and warning signs that would result in an effort to make the parks "safe".
People go to the wilderness precisely to get away from everything and be truly free for a while.
Take whatever devices you need to feel safe in the woods, but don't leave them there and ruin things for the rest of us.
Yes, the problem with America's public education system is that everyone is required to go, so the students that don't want to be there make it difficult for those that do.
The solution is to change the law so that students are no longer compelled go to go school after about 4th grade (before hormones kick in, and after rudimentary arithmetic and reading are studied.)
In order for some to fly, others must be allowed to fall behind. This is an unpopular notion in a society like America where the concept of "equal before the law" has been twisted in most minds to mean "equal abilities and compensation."