I wonder if they're doing it right too, but not in the same way.
NASA is great at doing advanced research and basic tehnologies. That's their core competency, and they should focus on that, the stuff that nobody would ever try to do because there's no obvious profit to be made.
Anything that's more routine and potentially profitable should be outsourced either to another division inside the government (a space corps?) or, better, to an external company. Government agencies are notorious for being hamstrung by the petty political winds that determine their funding: that's why the space shuttle is such a monstrosity, every different freaking part needs to be built in another powerful representative's district. A company would be far more innovative at safely lowering costs and, better, would be driven to provide their services to the rest of our economy at the best price possible. Hell, fund the startup and give every US citizen a nonvoting share, if you're worried about transferring public money to the private sector.
Leave operational details to (yes, regulated) private industry - NASA's ownership of space access has kept our space capability primitive for decades. We're flying nearly thirty year old orbiters, ferchrisake, private businesses would be able to forecast capital expenditures and replacement cycles, instead of changing basic priorities every 2 to 4 years. You just can't do efficient long range planning that way.
A while back, I read that the BIOS on a wintel box is only really used in Windows' booting process, and that lacking the BIOS doesn't stop the EFI Intel Macs from running Windows as much as it stops them from booting Windows (and thus getting to the running part).
If this is true (is it?), couldn't Linux be used as an intermediate step to getting Windows running?
Personally, I'm offended that so many lay people "don't believe" in dark matter. Just because we humans can only experience EM interactions (i.e. see, feel, smell, hear) why must everything in the Universe interact with photons?
OK, first: once you start taking offense at which tentative, incomplete theories lay people choose to "not believe" in, you're way off in silly land. As William Shatner once said, "get a life."
Secondly: these are just tentative incomplete theories. Both dark matter/energy theories and MONDs (modified newtonian dynamics) are still being formed - each have good arguments in their favor. As one person summarized it, there's definitely a perturbation from our earlier understanding of mechanics happening: the only real question is whether it's intrinsic to the universe, or sourced from something discrete. A definite answer is a good ways off.
So really, nobody should have any strong belief in either position - premature belief is the antithesis to science. Skepticism from all parties, lay people included, is healthy and should be encouraged.
They say that nature abhors a vacuum. When I was working to finish my Physics degree, we had a saying:
Physicists abhor a 2nd order differential equation.
The more elegant (usually meaning simple) a theory is, the more we feel that we've arrived at a "deeper" understanding of the universe. And that's what drives most physcists.
The problem is that as a result physicists really, really like very elegant theories when there's no particular reason to believe that the Universe itself has the same bias. Similarly, we like to take theories that work on scales and locations that we know and can easily interact with, and assume that they smoothly apply in the places that we can't get to know quite so easily. It's reasonable even if it isn't logical - we have to go with what we already have. It's a decision born of practicality.
In Cosmology, there's even a phrase for this: we assume homogeneity and isotropy. That is, that there's nothing special about where and when we are, and that the universe is pretty much the same (in physical laws) everywhere. The first time I heard about "dark matter," it was in the context of closure of the Universe. Physicsts really really wanted the universe to have enough mass/energy in order to be "closed," but we simply weren't finding enough matter. There was no reason to believe that the universe is closed (curvature 1.0), but it just seemed more elegant. So, they started to look for the "missing mass."
These are not logical assumptions, they're just assumptions that we have to make in order to get anywhere. Again, there's no reason that the universe will cooperate on this matter.
My own bias is to reject dark matter in favor of a revised theory of gravity, but that's just my own love of elegance - a different gravity feels more elegant than dark matter and dark energy, and in fact would hint at much more interesting cosmologies. But that's just how I am seduced by elegance...
Some people are comparing this to the tight integration of Xbox-360 games with the Xbox-360. I don't think that's a good comparison. XBox 360 games are all specifically created to play on the specific game platform. That's not at all true for music, which is intended to be played on anything compatible with the format.
Not so.
The PS2 version of Star Wars: Battlefield II is made to work on the PS2. The XBox version is made to work on the XBox. Both are largely the same content, adapted to their target platform.
The iTunes music store version of a song is made for the iTunes and PMPs that support Fair Play (namely, the iPod and the Motorola ROKR - licensed Fairplay from Apple). The MSN Music Store version of a song is made for PMPs that support protected WMAs (licensed from Microsoft).
It's not that different at all. The only difference, in fact, is that the Fair Play products have been more successful in the marketplace.
This is a very good example of a good part of the problem with public debates on this level - a large number of the participants don't have the slightest idea of what is actually science and what isn't. See my original comment about people who don't understand NOMA.
Hint: In what world is social darwinism science? What testable hypotheses have been made under it, how have they been tested, and how did those hypotheses fare?
Social and political philosophies that pick and choose their bigotries from real science are no more science than Voodoo is.
It was such a disappointment that we returned it in a couple of days... a Vic-20 and an Osbourne 1 followed not too long after, and were much more usable.
Nobody should be allowed to comment on religion and science without first reading and understanding the late Stephen Jay Gould's essay, Nonoverlapping Magisteria (aka, NOMA).
It's very clear that when religion goes head to head with science, religion loses - because science is defined by what works. NOMA articulates the boundaries that intelligent, thoughtful people can use, between the realms where science is valid and where religion is valid.
Mr. Cohen said in an interview on Monday that he and Ms. Glick-Weil demanded the warrant because the FBI agents did not indicate that anyone at Brandeis faced a "clear and present danger." If there had been such a danger, Mr. Cohen added, agents probably would have seized the computers without even asking for them.
I ask because I just started playing... I think I made level 12 in about 8 hours of game play. I've been playing a week now and am up to 16th level... I haven't encountered anything I'd call "grinding" yet.
I dunno, maybe the race/class combo matters here. I'm playing a Tauren Druid.
Figures, this shows Slashdot's anti-Apple bias. Put the article describing the problem on the front page, bury the correction of the problem in a slashback.
For the non-USians: There are those in the US who like to say that the media has a liberal bias because it puts Bush administration screwups on the front pages and corrects erronious details in lower profile places.
I wonder how long it'll be before they simply have your RFID tag (or the RFID tag of your consumer loyalty card, or whatever) and you'll just be able to walk through the fast entry lane (either having prepurchased, or automatically getting a seat assignment upon entry).
What I'd love is a read out telling you (1) how long your estimated time to arriving at your destination is, and (2) how long it would take to take the stairs.
There are many times when I would take the stairs if I knew it would be much faster, especially at conventions.
Re:Screw that, I wrote about Web 4.0
on
Web 3.0
·
· Score: 1
Hey, great idea!
I propose that:
Paper 1.0 is about allowing individuals to create and share ideas
Paper 2.0 is about allowing groups to create and share ideas
Paper 3.0 is about allowing societies to create and share ideas
All done! Now, everyone just go out at build it just like I said.
I'm not sayin' it's right, but I suspect that they'll go after not the facts per se, but use a strategy that depends upon the compilation copyright on how those facts are delivered en masse.
An example: you can't copyright individual phone numbers, but the phone companies do own a compilation copyright on the collections of those phone numbers. Since MLB owns the broadcasts, and the derivitive works made from those broadcasts, I suspect that they'll say that the grouping of those statistics that is delivered with a broadcast is copyrighted, so any transcription of those statistics is copyrights, and so those compilations can not be delivered to the fantasy leagues in the first place (before individual facts are extracted from the compilations).
I had an Amiga (also a 68k processor), and there was some company back then that sold a board that allowed you to take ROMs out of a dead Mac and put them on their board, and then you could boot Mac OS up as a task under AmigaDOS.
LOL. Yep, that was the EMPLANT, and worked really well. The main problem with the product was that the company's president (Jim Drew) would consistently absurdly overpromise on the newsgroup (to the point where people were maintaining a huge file called "Jim Drew's lies"). The product itself was pretty solid, except that it turned out that despite Jim Drew's claims that the board had a custom magic emulation engine, really wasn't much more than a glorified dongle with serial ports and a socket to read the Mac ROMs.
At some point later, Christian Bauer released Shapeshifter to compete with EMPLANT, and then after Jim Drew claimed that Shapeshifter was stealing EMPLANT ip (which kind of put the lie to his earlier claims that the card held the emulation engine) released the GPLed Basilisk II, which is still usable on modern hardware - emulating the MCM680x0 Mac under Windows, x86 Linux and Unixes, and PPC Mac OS X.
In any case, if I recall correctly the ROM wasn't even used directly... you could obtain a ROM image on the net if you didn't have one to rip with the card.
A Christmas special yes, but haven't there been other specials outside of the normal series? I thought that The Five Doctors was an example of such a special.
For reference, the 2nd series ("season" in the US idiom) will start to air in the UK in ("from") April... so it seems possible that they'll go right into it, though TFA specifies that SciFi only has an option on the 2nd series.
I do wonder how they'll handle the Christmas specials... historically they were distributed differently from the main Doctor Who series, but it's been a long time since that was an issue.
Slashdot Mirror
I wonder if they're doing it right too, but not in the same way.
NASA is great at doing advanced research and basic tehnologies. That's their core competency, and they should focus on that, the stuff that nobody would ever try to do because there's no obvious profit to be made.
Anything that's more routine and potentially profitable should be outsourced either to another division inside the government (a space corps?) or, better, to an external company. Government agencies are notorious for being hamstrung by the petty political winds that determine their funding: that's why the space shuttle is such a monstrosity, every different freaking part needs to be built in another powerful representative's district. A company would be far more innovative at safely lowering costs and, better, would be driven to provide their services to the rest of our economy at the best price possible. Hell, fund the startup and give every US citizen a nonvoting share, if you're worried about transferring public money to the private sector.
Leave operational details to (yes, regulated) private industry - NASA's ownership of space access has kept our space capability primitive for decades. We're flying nearly thirty year old orbiters, ferchrisake, private businesses would be able to forecast capital expenditures and replacement cycles, instead of changing basic priorities every 2 to 4 years. You just can't do efficient long range planning that way.
A while back, I read that the BIOS on a wintel box is only really used in Windows' booting process, and that lacking the BIOS doesn't stop the EFI Intel Macs from running Windows as much as it stops them from booting Windows (and thus getting to the running part).
If this is true (is it?), couldn't Linux be used as an intermediate step to getting Windows running?
Secondly: these are just tentative incomplete theories. Both dark matter/energy theories and MONDs (modified newtonian dynamics) are still being formed - each have good arguments in their favor. As one person summarized it, there's definitely a perturbation from our earlier understanding of mechanics happening: the only real question is whether it's intrinsic to the universe, or sourced from something discrete. A definite answer is a good ways off.
So really, nobody should have any strong belief in either position - premature belief is the antithesis to science. Skepticism from all parties, lay people included, is healthy and should be encouraged.
The problem is that as a result physicists really, really like very elegant theories when there's no particular reason to believe that the Universe itself has the same bias. Similarly, we like to take theories that work on scales and locations that we know and can easily interact with, and assume that they smoothly apply in the places that we can't get to know quite so easily. It's reasonable even if it isn't logical - we have to go with what we already have. It's a decision born of practicality.
In Cosmology, there's even a phrase for this: we assume homogeneity and isotropy. That is, that there's nothing special about where and when we are, and that the universe is pretty much the same (in physical laws) everywhere. The first time I heard about "dark matter," it was in the context of closure of the Universe. Physicsts really really wanted the universe to have enough mass/energy in order to be "closed," but we simply weren't finding enough matter. There was no reason to believe that the universe is closed (curvature 1.0), but it just seemed more elegant. So, they started to look for the "missing mass."
These are not logical assumptions, they're just assumptions that we have to make in order to get anywhere. Again, there's no reason that the universe will cooperate on this matter.
My own bias is to reject dark matter in favor of a revised theory of gravity, but that's just my own love of elegance - a different gravity feels more elegant than dark matter and dark energy, and in fact would hint at much more interesting cosmologies. But that's just how I am seduced by elegance...
The PS2 version of Star Wars: Battlefield II is made to work on the PS2. The XBox version is made to work on the XBox. Both are largely the same content, adapted to their target platform.
The iTunes music store version of a song is made for the iTunes and PMPs that support Fair Play (namely, the iPod and the Motorola ROKR - licensed Fairplay from Apple). The MSN Music Store version of a song is made for PMPs that support protected WMAs (licensed from Microsoft).
It's not that different at all. The only difference, in fact, is that the Fair Play products have been more successful in the marketplace.
This is a very good example of a good part of the problem with public debates on this level - a large number of the participants don't have the slightest idea of what is actually science and what isn't. See my original comment about people who don't understand NOMA.
Hint: In what world is social darwinism science? What testable hypotheses have been made under it, how have they been tested, and how did those hypotheses fare?
Social and political philosophies that pick and choose their bigotries from real science are no more science than Voodoo is.
Technically, the Sinclair was my first computer.
It was such a disappointment that we returned it in a couple of days... a Vic-20 and an Osbourne 1 followed not too long after, and were much more usable.
Nobody should be allowed to comment on religion and science without first reading and understanding the late Stephen Jay Gould's essay, Nonoverlapping Magisteria (aka, NOMA).
It's very clear that when religion goes head to head with science, religion loses - because science is defined by what works . NOMA articulates the boundaries that intelligent, thoughtful people can use, between the realms where science is valid and where religion is valid.
Oh yeah?
Well, my mother taught me not to believe your mother!
Level 12 after months? Are you sure?
I ask because I just started playing... I think I made level 12 in about 8 hours of game play. I've been playing a week now and am up to 16th level... I haven't encountered anything I'd call "grinding" yet.
I dunno, maybe the race/class combo matters here. I'm playing a Tauren Druid.
NO!!!! BUD light!
I wonder how long it'll be before we start seeing Disney character themed iPods for kids.
That's nothing! My elementary school put it on your permanent record!
Figures, this shows Slashdot's anti-Apple bias. Put the article describing the problem on the front page, bury the correction of the problem in a slashback.
For the non-USians: There are those in the US who like to say that the media has a liberal bias because it puts Bush administration screwups on the front pages and corrects erronious details in lower profile places.
I wonder how long it'll be before they simply have your RFID tag (or the RFID tag of your consumer loyalty card, or whatever) and you'll just be able to walk through the fast entry lane (either having prepurchased, or automatically getting a seat assignment upon entry).
What I'd love is a read out telling you (1) how long your estimated time to arriving at your destination is, and (2) how long it would take to take the stairs.
There are many times when I would take the stairs if I knew it would be much faster, especially at conventions.
Hey, great idea!
I propose that:
Paper 1.0 is about allowing individuals to create and share ideas
Paper 2.0 is about allowing groups to create and share ideas
Paper 3.0 is about allowing societies to create and share ideas
All done! Now, everyone just go out at build it just like I said.
I'm not sayin' it's right, but I suspect that they'll go after not the facts per se, but use a strategy that depends upon the compilation copyright on how those facts are delivered en masse.
An example: you can't copyright individual phone numbers, but the phone companies do own a compilation copyright on the collections of those phone numbers. Since MLB owns the broadcasts, and the derivitive works made from those broadcasts, I suspect that they'll say that the grouping of those statistics that is delivered with a broadcast is copyrighted, so any transcription of those statistics is copyrights, and so those compilations can not be delivered to the fantasy leagues in the first place (before individual facts are extracted from the compilations).
Pretty revolting, but there it is.
At some point later, Christian Bauer released Shapeshifter to compete with EMPLANT, and then after Jim Drew claimed that Shapeshifter was stealing EMPLANT ip (which kind of put the lie to his earlier claims that the card held the emulation engine) released the GPLed Basilisk II, which is still usable on modern hardware - emulating the MCM680x0 Mac under Windows, x86 Linux and Unixes, and PPC Mac OS X.
In any case, if I recall correctly the ROM wasn't even used directly... you could obtain a ROM image on the net if you didn't have one to rip with the card.
Actually not. The Five Doctors was a special - and it aired in the US before it aired in the UK.
A Christmas special yes, but haven't there been other specials outside of the normal series? I thought that The Five Doctors was an example of such a special.
[After doing some digging]
For reference, the 2nd series ("season" in the US idiom) will start to air in the UK in ("from") April... so it seems possible that they'll go right into it, though TFA specifies that SciFi only has an option on the 2nd series.
I do wonder how they'll handle the Christmas specials... historically they were distributed differently from the main Doctor Who series, but it's been a long time since that was an issue.
Really? I had thought that only the Christmas Special (which is not part of the 2nd series) had aired.