Perhaps you live someplace much more rural than I do? Here, Holmes is visible if you know where and what you're looking for. But it's not something you'd ever notice by looking up, the way you could with Hale-Bopp.
(Most of the "OMG, I SAW TEH COMET!!!!" conversation I've heard is from people who probably saw Mars instead, but from your description, you obviously are at least talking about the actual comet.)
TBH, your post belies an attitude which saddens me... the fact that the visual impact of thing is more important than the scientific reality of it.
It's not a matter of "more important", just that astrophysics and stargazing are two different things. The pulsar with planets is cool, even if we can't look up and see it. But Holmes has been hyped for its visual impact, which I'd say is.. lacking.
I guess that's interesting on some level, but for all the fuss about this comet I was expecting something more Hale-Boppish. Not just some barely visible, round blur.
Sincere question -- why on earth does any one person need more than a laptop, a desktop computer with monitor and one printer at home? (OK, I'll throw in a "media center", also.) Not that one necessarily needs even that, but I'm always baffled by these comments here about home networks that sound more like 15 person businesses.
Presumably there's an answer, but cross-platform development is the only one I can come up with, and are there really so many people compiling on VMS at home?
If the people who created Netflix's system are still with the company, I'd say they deserve some retroactive recognition (and bonuses). That's pretty damn good optimization if it's that hard to improve upon, and there seem to have been some really sophisticated people trying to beat them.
Umm...actually...for one week after a single "Get out the mail" e-mail...10% is *pretty damned good* as a response rate.
That's precisely my point. This isn't some policy issue, it's a law that would send all of them to jail! We can conclude that 10% is about as good as you can possibly get -- thus "upper bound".
The Poker Players Alliance, a group that says it represents the interests of online gamblers, began a letter-writing campaign last week and has generated 1,700 letters to the governor and various state legislators. The Washington-based organization has 16,000 members in Massachusetts, which is a fraction of what the alliance estimates are the 250,000 online poker players in the state.
That's a pretty good upper bound for estimating civic-mindedness. The state is threatening to send their asses to jail for two years and their membership can barely scrape up a 10% letter writing rate!
I know posting after the first five minutes on any YRO story is pointless, especially on something as inflammatory as this, but since no one will RTFA:
1) "The brainchild of top FBI counterterrorism officials Phil Mudd and Willie T. Hulon, according to well-informed sources, the project didn't last long. It was torpedoed by the head of the FBI's criminal investigations division, Michael A. Mason, who argued that putting somebody on a terrorist list for what they ate was ridiculous -- and possibly illegal."
2) "All signs point to the credit card companies providing this data" is a rather generous spin on a theory that the author simply made up.
3) Do Iranians eat falafel at all? I've never seen it in Persian restaurants. Or do none of you people know the difference between them and Arabs?
I think the open-source CMSs have locked up at least the top five slots (Joomla, Pheap, Blosxom,...). Although PolypAudio would have been competitive if they hadn't changed the name. It sounds like you'd need chemotherapy after installing it.
The beads look like candy, and aren't a choking hazard. I can easily see them getting bought for older kids, and a toddler scarfing down (or getting fed) a handful of them. It doesn't seem like something you'd buy for a toddler.
I'd never heard of these things before yesterday, but it looks like a fantastic toy. Except for, y'know, the coma part. Hopefully they'll reformulate them/
I'm having trouble figuring out what you think "empirical" means, and therefore what your point is.
The study looked at BMI because height and weight data are widely available, and accurate body fat measurements and subjective estimates of hotitude aren't. All of those are empirical data.
It's wrong to teach BMI in schools. It's wrong to use it as a measure. If you want to know fat, break out the calipers. Anything less, is wrong, and anything based on it, is absurd.
BMI combined with a shred of common sense is a perfectly fine approximation of obesity. There are two Unix admins here with scary-high BMIs, and you don't need calipers to know which one is obese and which one is just on steroids.
Although few people who work there are willing to state it out loud, the rumblings are being felt that the decline of computer science research at MIT has in no small part been due to this negative influence of the building on daily worklife.
It's interesting that you say that -- from the day the skeleton of that building went up, it struck me that such a jumbled mess of architecture seems counterproductive to a good frame of mind for CS and math research. Just walking by it, your head starts to spin.
The new neuroscience research building is absolutely superb, though, as is Stata's other across-the-street neighbor, Whitehead.
San Antonio also seems like an odd location: blazing hot and a river that (admittedly I've only seen it in pictures) doesn't look like it generates Columbia-level hydropower.
Didn't they sell a device like this years ago? It had a stylish design, and a below-cost price with monthly subscriptions, it got hacked almost instantly to run Linux, it prompted a few hundred "Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these!" comments and then disappeared...?
Sure, but even the authors of this article recognize that the distribution of winning numbers is either random or extremely close to it. So, even if they had been able to identify some marginal trend, it would probably be less useful than the extremely non-random distribution of ticket numbers.
The question is whether "winning" means that a prize was awarded, as you're assuming, or simply that the numbers were drawn, in keeping with normal lottery usage. As I said, if you don't just read the article but also follow the link to the data, the latter is correct.
Slashdot Mirror
(Most of the "OMG, I SAW TEH COMET!!!!" conversation I've heard is from people who probably saw Mars instead, but from your description, you obviously are at least talking about the actual comet.)
It's not a matter of "more important", just that astrophysics and stargazing are two different things. The pulsar with planets is cool, even if we can't look up and see it. But Holmes has been hyped for its visual impact, which I'd say is .. lacking.
I guess that's interesting on some level, but for all the fuss about this comet I was expecting something more Hale-Boppish. Not just some barely visible, round blur.
Presumably there's an answer, but cross-platform development is the only one I can come up with, and are there really so many people compiling on VMS at home?
I was disappointed to find that that's a typo -- it sounded like a great site: "Get off my Second Life lawn, you lousy kids!"
There's a whole lot of devil in those details, though.
If the people who created Netflix's system are still with the company, I'd say they deserve some retroactive recognition (and bonuses). That's pretty damn good optimization if it's that hard to improve upon, and there seem to have been some really sophisticated people trying to beat them.
That's precisely my point. This isn't some policy issue, it's a law that would send all of them to jail! We can conclude that 10% is about as good as you can possibly get -- thus "upper bound".
4) If you're old enough to use a keyboard, you're too old to use the word "yummy".
1) "The brainchild of top FBI counterterrorism officials Phil Mudd and Willie T. Hulon, according to well-informed sources, the project didn't last long. It was torpedoed by the head of the FBI's criminal investigations division, Michael A. Mason, who argued that putting somebody on a terrorist list for what they ate was ridiculous -- and possibly illegal."
2) "All signs point to the credit card companies providing this data" is a rather generous spin on a theory that the author simply made up.
3) Do Iranians eat falafel at all? I've never seen it in Persian restaurants. Or do none of you people know the difference between them and Arabs?
I think the open-source CMSs have locked up at least the top five slots (Joomla, Pheap, Blosxom, ...). Although PolypAudio would have been competitive if they hadn't changed the name. It sounds like you'd need chemotherapy after installing it.
It's on a catheter, not floating around.
The beads look like candy, and aren't a choking hazard. I can easily see them getting bought for older kids, and a toddler scarfing down (or getting fed) a handful of them. It doesn't seem like something you'd buy for a toddler.
I'd never heard of these things before yesterday, but it looks like a fantastic toy. Except for, y'know, the coma part. Hopefully they'll reformulate them/
Heh, that's exactly what I said when I read that...
The study looked at BMI because height and weight data are widely available, and accurate body fat measurements and subjective estimates of hotitude aren't. All of those are empirical data.
BMI combined with a shred of common sense is a perfectly fine approximation of obesity. There are two Unix admins here with scary-high BMIs, and you don't need calipers to know which one is obese and which one is just on steroids.
It's interesting that you say that -- from the day the skeleton of that building went up, it struck me that such a jumbled mess of architecture seems counterproductive to a good frame of mind for CS and math research. Just walking by it, your head starts to spin.
The new neuroscience research building is absolutely superb, though, as is Stata's other across-the-street neighbor, Whitehead.
Ah, that makes sense -- thanks!!
San Antonio also seems like an odd location: blazing hot and a river that (admittedly I've only seen it in pictures) doesn't look like it generates Columbia-level hydropower.
I've had that also (on Jaguar, IIRC) when an external drive lost power. Lost both the data and the old backup, simultaneously.
Didn't they sell a device like this years ago? It had a stylish design, and a below-cost price with monthly subscriptions, it got hacked almost instantly to run Linux, it prompted a few hundred "Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these!" comments and then disappeared...?
Sure, but even the authors of this article recognize that the distribution of winning numbers is either random or extremely close to it. So, even if they had been able to identify some marginal trend, it would probably be less useful than the extremely non-random distribution of ticket numbers.
The question is whether "winning" means that a prize was awarded, as you're assuming, or simply that the numbers were drawn, in keeping with normal lottery usage. As I said, if you don't just read the article but also follow the link to the data, the latter is correct.