>Why is there a perpetual claim that religious belief negates scientific thought?
The article talks about an earthquake in Pakistan that killed thousands. When the author asked his Muslim students (he's a professor in a university there), the vast majority thought Allah did it as punishment.
That's a university! It seems like a pretty good example of relgious beliefs negating scientific thought.
OpenOffice.org is a horrible mess _because_ it was developed in house with paid developers etc.
Look at the koffice code instead - it's beautiful. It uses KDE parts, the Qt library, the general KDE spelling framework, and so on. It's modular and reusable. The formula thing (one part that I happen to know about) it used koffice, but also has it's own program for standalone math editing, and is also used by another program that uses it as frontend to math engine (maxima etc).
I know reuse isn't proof of clean code, but it's evidence of such:)
Sure, just pointing out that if it requires a floppy disk in an age when few computers even come with floppy drives, then it's not quite right to say that it installs "just fine".
When you say that you don't believe in atoms, does that mean that you are more certain that they don't exist than that they do? If so, how can you possibly justify your beliefs?
> The existence of atoms is not certain. Granted, we can build equipment that takes measurements which seem to confirm that they do exist, but that is all based on extrapolating observations from our experience.
If you feel that this is just "extrapolating observations from our experience" then you can say the same thing about, well, anything. You can't trust that the Sun exists, that that arms exist, and so on.
How does that saying go? It's always worth having an open mind, but not so open that everything falls out:-D
> The thing I find funny about so many "experts" is that they will argue that a model is fact and ridicule anyone who questions it.
Who argues this? I bet you can't find any (real) scientist saying this.
If I buy the latest XP home or something cd, will it install on a SATA system? I'm not sure what "MCE 2005" means - is that a special version or something?
It's hard to go from the acceleration at some time t and velocity at time t, then predict the velocity at time t+1. You might initially think to just do velocity + acceleration*timestep but the trouble is that errors quickly get introduced. Instead you have integrate over the time, numerically.
Also a million bodies is a pretty small galaxy. A typical average galaxy is more like a 10^11 stars - a hundred billion stars. But even if you have a million stars say, then to calculate the gravitational force between them is a fully connected mesh problem - so that's (n^2+n)/2 = half a trillion. That's a lot of calculations;)
My job is actually to maintain a large computer cluster for doing exactly these types of calculations, for simulating the big bang.
For the doppler equations however, just looking at the width will tell you directly the speed of the outermost stars in a galaxy. if you know the size of the galaxy, you can thus find out the rotational speed.
Just to clarify this, the hydrogen to helium conversion would happen just fine, but then the helium would be struck pretty quickly and converted back into hydrogen.
You need the temperature to be hot enough to create helium, but cold enough that it isn't destroyed again straight away.
And you are the primary school kid who takes the opposite opinion from what the adults and the other kids say, because you like to be alone?
I read through the link. The first half is just a rehash of general relativity, written to sound as if physics was wrong ("There is no gravitational force! woooo!") when it's just saying exactly what physics says now.
He argues some stuff about the red shift coming from spacetime curvature, although I can't see how he accounts for the evidence that shows our spacetime is extraordinarily flat.
His figure 6 describes the whole idea of big bang, big crunch, big bang cycle. But I don't see how he copes with the usual problem of entropy. The big crunch has much much higher entropy than the big bang - you need some way to restart entropy.
He says that these explosions account for the background radiation, but he's way seems to offer no prediction of the temperature etc. However the standard physics model correctly predicts the ratios of matter from the background radiation.
Bah I'm bored going through it now. But it seems to keep going on like this. If he submitted this to a journal, it would be torn apart.
However, most theories would probably be torn apart too, so I'm not rejecting it as useless. But he's got a _long_ way to go.
> like you know that there ought to be a hydrogen line at a certain spot, but if its moved over, you know what the shift is?
Right. You take light from a telescope, and you pass it through a prism (well, a diffraction grating). This splits the light up into it's colors (wavelengths). You know the hydrogen line should be at a certain point, and if it's moved then the object is moving - a doppler shift.
For a rotating galaxy, one side would be moving away, and the other side would be moving towards us, relative to the 'average'. Thus you'd get a wider hydrogen line than normal. The width of the line tells us the rotation speed.
> Is star light that precisely measured from millions of light years away? Sure, it doesn't change as it travels through space.
Actually it's a bit stronger than that. Most models of string theory do predict something that we haven't seen yet (Higgs Boson for example) which can be looked for (The LHC that will be finished next year after 20 years of work).
However other models also predict Higgs Boson. So if we don't find the Higgs Boson (aka 'God particle') then we know (mostly) string theory is wrong, afaik. If we do find it, then it doesn't really confirm string theory, since there are 'simpler' explanations for it (standard model).
30 years is not a long time! The experiments themselves are taken that long - the LHC (Large Hadron Collider) alone has taken 20 years.
I don't get these people running around going "omg it's 30 years, and they haven't solved the universe yet". jeez.
String theory has produced a lot of useful science and mathematics. Even if string theory is wrong (which it probably is) it is needed to expand our understanding. It is not like a car journey where you chose a road then have to double back if you took the wrong turn.
In the work place, most people might enter a fake installation code for example, but won't go as far as to apply a crack. If the software requires you to apply a crack to use it, then I think most people at work will get their company to buy it. If it just installs anyway with just a small nag screen or something, then most people won't buy it.
It seems that your whole argument is that ODF should have implemented Excel bugs in the standard just in case a user wants to use ceiling in openoffice, then save as Excel, open in Excel and modify the formula so it's not ceiling any more, then import that back into openoffice and save as an Excel file.
And this makes you so angry that you hope ODF will fail?
Slashdot Mirror
Well written
Sigh. Yes, let's just redefine words to make them far broader than their usual meaning. That's useful.
I'm a biologist, because I once looked at some animals.
And I'm a photographer because once I actually took a photo.
This is fun!
>Why is there a perpetual claim that religious belief negates scientific thought?
The article talks about an earthquake in Pakistan that killed thousands. When the author asked his Muslim students (he's a professor in a university there), the vast majority thought Allah did it as punishment.
That's a university! It seems like a pretty good example of relgious beliefs negating scientific thought.
I also look after my wife and children in my own time. Is this an implicit admission that they are worth little as well?
Any with patent clauses - the apache license for example. Or the one eclipse uses.
I just have to defend OSS here :)
:)
OpenOffice.org is a horrible mess _because_ it was developed in house with paid developers etc.
Look at the koffice code instead - it's beautiful. It uses KDE parts, the Qt library, the general KDE spelling framework, and so on. It's modular and reusable. The formula thing (one part that I happen to know about) it used koffice, but also has it's own program for standalone math editing, and is also used by another program that uses it as frontend to math engine (maxima etc).
I know reuse isn't proof of clean code, but it's evidence of such
oh okay :)
Sure, just pointing out that if it requires a floppy disk in an age when few computers even come with floppy drives, then it's not quite right to say that it installs "just fine".
When was the last time your saw a modern system with a floppy drive?
So is there anything that you do know?
When you say that you don't believe in atoms, does that mean that you are more certain that they don't exist than that they do? If so, how can you possibly justify your beliefs?
> The existence of atoms is not certain. Granted, we can build equipment that takes measurements which seem to confirm that they do exist, but that is all based on extrapolating observations from our experience.
:-D
I'm not really sure what you mean. You know that we can practically "see" an atom with a scanning tunnelling microscope? http://www.physics.uci.edu/~wilsonho/Physics%20Today%20On%20The%20Web%20-%20Search%20and%20Discovery_files/chasfeb1.jpg for example
If you feel that this is just "extrapolating observations from our experience" then you can say the same thing about, well, anything. You can't trust that the Sun exists, that that arms exist, and so on.
How does that saying go? It's always worth having an open mind, but not so open that everything falls out
> The thing I find funny about so many "experts" is that they will argue that a model is fact and ridicule anyone who questions it.
Who argues this? I bet you can't find any (real) scientist saying this.
Hi Nuzak,
Can you clarify this for me..
If I buy the latest XP home or something cd, will it install on a SATA system? I'm not sure what "MCE 2005" means - is that a special version or something?
Just try installing XP on a system with sata drives (like most new computers in the last few years). XP install doesn't support SATA.
It's hard to go from the acceleration at some time t and velocity at time t, then predict the velocity at time t+1. You might initially think to just do velocity + acceleration*timestep but the trouble is that errors quickly get introduced. Instead you have integrate over the time, numerically.
;)
Also a million bodies is a pretty small galaxy. A typical average galaxy is more like a 10^11 stars - a hundred billion stars.
But even if you have a million stars say, then to calculate the gravitational force between them is a fully connected mesh problem - so that's (n^2+n)/2 = half a trillion. That's a lot of calculations
My job is actually to maintain a large computer cluster for doing exactly these types of calculations, for simulating the big bang.
For the doppler equations however, just looking at the width will tell you directly the speed of the outermost stars in a galaxy. if you know the size of the galaxy, you can thus find out the rotational speed.
30 years is not a long time. Be patient little rabbit.
Just to clarify this, the hydrogen to helium conversion would happen just fine, but then the helium would be struck pretty quickly and converted back into hydrogen.
You need the temperature to be hot enough to create helium, but cold enough that it isn't destroyed again straight away.
And you are the primary school kid who takes the opposite opinion from what the adults and the other kids say, because you like to be alone?
I read through the link. The first half is just a rehash of general relativity, written to sound as if physics was wrong ("There is no gravitational force! woooo!") when it's just saying exactly what physics says now.
He argues some stuff about the red shift coming from spacetime curvature, although I can't see how he accounts for the evidence that shows our spacetime is extraordinarily flat.
His figure 6 describes the whole idea of big bang, big crunch, big bang cycle. But I don't see how he copes with the usual problem of entropy. The big crunch has much much higher entropy than the big bang - you need some way to restart entropy.
He says that these explosions account for the background radiation, but he's way seems to offer no prediction of the temperature etc. However the standard physics model correctly predicts the ratios of matter from the background radiation.
Bah I'm bored going through it now. But it seems to keep going on like this. If he submitted this to a journal, it would be torn apart.
However, most theories would probably be torn apart too, so I'm not rejecting it as useless. But he's got a _long_ way to go.
> like you know that there ought to be a hydrogen line at a certain spot, but if its moved over, you know what the shift is?
Right. You take light from a telescope, and you pass it through a prism (well, a diffraction grating). This splits the light up into it's colors (wavelengths). You know the hydrogen line should be at a certain point, and if it's moved then the object is moving - a doppler shift.
For a rotating galaxy, one side would be moving away, and the other side would be moving towards us, relative to the 'average'. Thus you'd get a wider hydrogen line than normal. The width of the line tells us the rotation speed.
> Is star light that precisely measured from millions of light years away?
Sure, it doesn't change as it travels through space.
Actually it's a bit stronger than that. Most models of string theory do predict something that we haven't seen yet (Higgs Boson for example) which can be looked for (The LHC that will be finished next year after 20 years of work).
:)
However other models also predict Higgs Boson. So if we don't find the Higgs Boson (aka 'God particle') then we know (mostly) string theory is wrong, afaik. If we do find it, then it doesn't really confirm string theory, since there are 'simpler' explanations for it (standard model).
I hope that jumble of thoughts makes sense
30 years is not a long time! The experiments themselves are taken that long - the LHC (Large Hadron Collider) alone has taken 20 years.
I don't get these people running around going "omg it's 30 years, and they haven't solved the universe yet". jeez.
String theory has produced a lot of useful science and mathematics. Even if string theory is wrong (which it probably is) it is needed to expand our understanding. It is not like a car journey where you chose a road then have to double back if you took the wrong turn.
Numbers mean nothing if you can't be bothered to adjust for inflation.
The construction cost, in todays dollars, of Hubble was closer to about $3 billion.
I disagree.
In the work place, most people might enter a fake installation code for example, but won't go as far as to apply a crack. If the software requires you to apply a crack to use it, then I think most people at work will get their company to buy it. If it just installs anyway with just a small nag screen or something, then most people won't buy it.
What about the other bugs in Excel? Should ODF follow those as well, like OOXML has? Declare that 1990 is leap year etc?
It seems that your whole argument is that ODF should have implemented Excel bugs in the standard just in case a user wants to use ceiling in openoffice, then save as Excel, open in Excel and modify the formula so it's not ceiling any more, then import that back into openoffice and save as an Excel file.
And this makes you so angry that you hope ODF will fail?
The function is called ceiling. The mathematical definition is here: http://mathworld.wolfram.com/CeilingFunction.html
ODF is correct, OOXML is wrong. Nuff said.
Okay:
time from photon's POV = time_from_our_view * sqrt( 1- v^2 / c^2)
Putting in v=c:
time from photon's POV = time_from_our_view * sqrt( 1- 1) = 0 seconds
There you go.