Is she at work? What kind of work? What she got on underneath?
I guess I was the only one who just looks at the pictures.:) Is this a hidden insight into Nielson's mind?
A comment more on-topic: I like Nielson's points on what NOT to do; but his design edicts seem really dreary, such as the path at the top of the page, the dearth of color, the overly-large type, the drab layout....
What a nice project, to correlate (which does not prove causation*) ground and orbital studies. It must have been difficult -- which suggests skills acquired for future challenges.
On the more aesthetic side, "Earth as Art" is just starting out, but very encouraging.
Wasn't it Al Gore who proposed a live video feed from a satellite watching Earth. Please don't share your opinion on Gore or the cost -- but wouldn't that be a nice little channel to have? I could name about 20 cable channels I'd surrender to get it (small loss). You could be one of the first to detect the first nuclear conflict. See, I'm not all that optimistic.
There are a lot of amazing photos out there, I am always interested in hearing of more, especially if explicated. I'm glad to see them coming to increasingly creative use, beyond assessing crops and measuring ocean temperatures -- useful as these things are!
But your experiment would be open to (idiotic) charges of image manipulation
(*That is why I suggested showing *multiple* exposure levels, and leave it up to the reader to pick the one that they think is the best fit.*)
What, you couldn't make multiple fakes?:)
Besides, their bizarre argument is that the supposedly etched crosses were added separately. So in making your fakes you would do the same thing, either because you are brainwashed or an enforcer of the conspiracy trolling the web for minds to poison.
Any picture of a brightly backlit subject shows this annoying phenomenon.
You see how frustrating these folks can be. Don't get me started on evolution -- which is harder for the debunkers, because it can't be proved to the 99% level (only 95%:) or with a Lego set and a camera.
Nicely put. I hadn't thought of it that way. Microsoft has benefitted enormously from being in the U.S., not least because of the size of the market here. And, believe it or not, from the decent legal system that is has used to go after others plenty of times.
Of course, Microsoft wouldn't be Microsoft if the gov't had sought serious enforcement years earlier, as in their earlier investigation (here is a timeline of earlier and now forgotten legal activity).
Which way will the wind blow in Europe?
A minor addendum, the judge in this case, Judge Motz in Baltimore, is a bright and politically moderate guy, likely a good person for the difficult task (I assume he was assigned the case randomly?). Expect him to get reversed and affirmed a couple of times, MS litigates aggressively.
*
This is OT, but have y'all noticed that everyone mistypes DMCA? Me too. Congress should rename it DCMA when they get around to fixing it.
It's interesting to guess whether others are submitting a given story. I guess this was a no-brainer.
Coercion: the power to require Microsoft to include Java is the same that allows the gov't, or any successful antitrust plaintiff, to force them to do anything different. Because of their market power, which puts them on nearly every desktop in America, their default config has a lot of promotional influence. Up to now, that influence has entirely favored Microsoft, which sounds appropriate... until you get back to that monopoly abuse.
Whether THIS particular coercion is a good idea, we'll see. Whether coercion is never the right thing, well that's much broader.
A partial analogy would be Microsoft owning the default Yellow Pages distributed to everyone's door and selecting who can be in it -- say, virtually everyone but "Sun." Now, anyone can go get one of the other free directories, but will they? Advantage: Microsoft.
Also, Java isn't exactly a competitor's product; it's also an attempt at an industry-wide open standard that Microsoft wants to subvert, dominate, and exploit. Hey, they already tried.
It's a difficult problem to set things right in the wake of antitrust problems. Market forces generally do a decent job of figuring these things out (the "invisible hand"). But when some clever party makes the market its own, and then abuses it, the rules have to change, and gov't regulation, or a breakup, are the most common remedies.
If you don't think MS should have been sued in the first place, you will not believe any of these rationales, and probably not that antitrust is necessary in the first place. Many think some market failures need correction, but not everyone.
No, not according to the relatively conservative nat'l organization. Nor atheists, maybe. If anything they are clamping down. A recent example illustrating philosophical tension within the organization.
I'm afraid that acronym is another of those words that through relaxed usage has come to mean all of these concoctions, e.g., here. I actually like it better the modern way, as some acronyms are pronounced or said different by different people -- URL -- and acronym to be connotes the abbr. of a common word by squashing letters out of it. OK?
This source says acronyms are a novel 20th century affliction.
What amuse me are the words that vary not in sound but by a letter, which sticklers nonetheless insist are entirely different -- farther/further, inquire/enquire, insure/ensure, potato/potatoe (heh-heh -- just kidding -- I wouldn't have let that one go!)
OK, admittedly I am careful in my writing to follow most of these stupid rules, excepe for splitting infinitives, which I do with abandon if it suits the occasion.
So Sagan's arguments were flawed... there are alien visitors.
My logic skills are bad, but not that bad.;-) As Sherlock Holmes might have observed, when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be in the Weekly World News. The impossible goes to the National Enquirer ("all the crap that's fit to print").
If intelligent life were visiting the Earth, why would it waste its time collecting such peculiar specimens? Or maybe that's the point, the same reasons humans collect six-toed cats.
Maybe I'm just jealous and wish they'd come visit me. Nah, I'd probably cause Earth's first interstellar incident.
Yes, that did occur to re cross-hairs. Any photographer knows light "bleeds" in massive overexposure. But eour experiment would be open to (idiotic) charges of image manipulation. There ought to be a simple try-at-home, like hold a pencil vertical at arm's length before the sun? Can you see the pencil? (Can you see anything? Ever again?:)
Anyway, this is a pretty pathetic argument to refute the entire Apollo program!
(?) It has nothing to do with rockets even by analogy, that's Newtonian physics 101. Same in space or atmosphere, the "pushes against" was always bogus.
Thanks, I'll look for his book as the library today.
Debunking is intellectually challenging because here are a set of facts you can't add to or modify, and here is (hypothetical) cretin who requires the most brutally elegant of persuasion to come around. Imagine explaining something to someone with the mental age of a five year-old, not because the hoaxsters are idiots but because that's the fun of the challenge. To can't send the hoaxsters to the Moon, however tempting it would be, for reasons of expense and that they'll disbelieve the experience anyway. (Thank you Capricorn One.)
Remember, it's not about proof but persuasion. You can't just throw a sheaf of paper and pictures on the table and say, figure it out. A famed critic-killer is Pasteur's swan-necked flasks.
So the challenge: What do you think, based on what we've done so far, can be used to construct the ideal, concise argument that we went to the Moon?
An example is an IMHO irrefutable debunk of the backlighting theories can be found here.
But your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to come up with the killer argument that settles the whole thing. Think of it as the simplest proof of the Pythagorean Theorem (there are many alternatives). Sell the solution to NASA, or in the spirit of free info just post it here.
My joking argument is that it would have been a hell of a lot easier to go to the Moon, and probably cheaper, that create a sinister murderous hoax of such dimensions. More seriously, who really thinks our government is this competent?!? NASA bumbling is ironically a beautiful defense.
The nice thing is that debunking is fun. It makes us feel superior because we can argue a conspiracist under the table, and enlightens us along the way. Some of the debunking explanations -- and badastronomy offers just some of the many -- are quite elegant, like why the lander exhaust didn't carve a giant divot in the Moon's soft dusty surface. I love the Lego demo someone did of why astronauts in shadow were nonetheless brightly lit. And some of hoax contentions are hilarious, like why did the flag stand out straight if there's no air? (It had a rod, you idiots.)
The problem is not proof, which exists. The problem is persuasion, and you can't persuade someone uninterested in being proved wrong. Mark Twain supposedly said, "A fanatic is someone who can't change his mind and won't change the subject." (A favorite of mine, and soooo true.:)
NASA's core business is delivering science and engineering, not education.
They're already there, but it's PR more than education. Have you heard the crack that most agencies have PR depts., whereas NASA is a PR dept. that happens to have an agency? NASA has for decades focused heavily on justifying and continuing its existence.
Also, most of the skeptics like the conspiracy theories better than the truth. They make for better storytelling. If they want to seek out the truth they could do it without NASA's help but looking to the Web sites and books taht already discuss the missions, and the hoaxsters, in detail. If the doubters doubt NASA's credibility, what good is NASA's imprimatur on the debunking material?
Given the nice videoptape of the punch, and the certainty Sibrel put up a howl, it is interesting the prosecutors tooks a pass. Apparently Sibrel was poking Aldrin with a Bible, lured Aldrin to the hotel, is significantly larger than the 72 y.o. Aldrin, and was yelling insults at him at the time. You can see the video clip online. Details. So it's plausible that Sibrel was not merely annoying but threatening.
I don't think violence is an acceptable or effective way to settle the hoax dispute, or any other situation short of necessity. To Aldrin's credit in this case it appears to have been self-defense, and even if not then it was under extreme provocation.
Indeed violence is good for the bad guys; you can see here how much international publicity Sibrel got, and his fundamental motive is likely profit. I bet he made money off the incident from people inclined to believe conspiracy. Obvious senior citizen Buzz Aldrin is a ninja warrior loosed by NASA to silence their enemies.
The Sibrels of the world are best ignored, and there lies countered discreetly. NASA should focus on communicating its message clearly, not engaging in dialog with scam artists. SO perhaps it should refing its histories with additional details and replies to "but why did..." questions (except for example the allegation they murdered their own astronauts!) without once referencing their critics. (Why a handful of the criticisms are false is actually interesting, like why their are no stars in the pictures, or the source of the fill light, is not intuitively obvious -- see badastronomy and related sites.)
I know, I know, a Danish is a breakfast pastry, right? (sense 2: light sweet yeast-raised roll usually filled with fruits or cheese) Dutch is where each person pays for their own food.
Don't take the errors personally, (we) Americans are pretty clueless what goes on abroad, and at home (have you heard of the Pennsylvania "Dutch"?). A surprising number can't name the President, or explain the Supreme Court's interpretation of the 11th amendment. On the other hand, let me ask *you* a few questions about American, Mr. Resident Alien..... Yes, you probably know more than I do, don't show off. And it's pretty darn inconsiderate that Dutch doesn't sound at all like "Holland" or "The Netherlands," but does sound a lot like "Deutsch."
I've at least visited the Netherlands and thought Copenhagen was great! (A joke! Really!)
When you live in a country that's big enough to confuse you, you're less likely to look abroad for additional confusion.
legislated a speed limit again since last I heard, but unless the Feds restrict highway funds again, trust me, it won't last.
Actually the "reasonable and prudent" speed limit was ruled void for vagueness, a constitutional problem -- because it was too subjective.
Bison kills -- I have no idea -- but the majority view fingers the tongue-hunters. I know, I know, it's a vast left-wing conspiracy...
Even if it was the Indians -- where'd they get the horses and guns? European are the root of all evil. (Well, nowadays they are. Or was is Saddam? Oceania? Eastasia?):P
Slashdot Mirror
that great trailer home in space
:P
Not a trailer home! Think of it as a flying RV! A high-tech Conestoga Wagon! Our trek to the stars!
Yes, I agree.
Speaking of Amex, what the heck is the woman illustrated in #7 wearing??
:) Is this a hidden insight into Nielson's mind?
Is she at work? What kind of work? What she got on underneath?
I guess I was the only one who just looks at the pictures.
A comment more on-topic: I like Nielson's points on what NOT to do; but his design edicts seem really dreary, such as the path at the top of the page, the dearth of color, the overly-large type, the drab layout....
What a nice project, to correlate (which does not prove causation*) ground and orbital studies. It must have been difficult -- which suggests skills acquired for future challenges.
On the more aesthetic side, "Earth as Art" is just starting out, but very encouraging.
USGS has done a Landsat study of environmental change and NASA's general collection.
Wasn't it Al Gore who proposed a live video feed from a satellite watching Earth. Please don't share your opinion on Gore or the cost -- but wouldn't that be a nice little channel to have? I could name about 20 cable channels I'd surrender to get it (small loss). You could be one of the first to detect the first nuclear conflict. See, I'm not all that optimistic.
And linked from my home page is the Earth Science Image of the Day with explanations.
There are a lot of amazing photos out there, I am always interested in hearing of more, especially if explicated. I'm glad to see them coming to increasingly creative use, beyond assessing crops and measuring ocean temperatures -- useful as these things are!
*semi-inside joke
A project like this can be done for the cost of the toilets on ISS; what an interesting use of limited funds!
:)
Sharp-eyed readers will sense my implicit criticism of ISS.
But your experiment would be open to (idiotic) charges of image manipulation
:)
:) or with a Lego set and a camera.
(*That is why I suggested showing *multiple* exposure levels, and leave it up to the reader to pick the one that they think is the best fit.*)
What, you couldn't make multiple fakes?
Besides, their bizarre argument is that the supposedly etched crosses were added separately. So in making your fakes you would do the same thing, either because you are brainwashed or an enforcer of the conspiracy trolling the web for minds to poison.
Any picture of a brightly backlit subject shows this annoying phenomenon.
You see how frustrating these folks can be. Don't get me started on evolution -- which is harder for the debunkers, because it can't be proved to the 99% level (only 95%
I still like the pencil idea.
Note "wink" smiley: My logic skills are bad, but not that bad. ;-)
Deadpan just does not work around here.
Nope -- at least not in the States.
:)
That's neither trademark nor copyright.
Hey, that was almost interesting, wasn't it?
Nicely put. I hadn't thought of it that way. Microsoft has benefitted enormously from being in the U.S., not least because of the size of the market here. And, believe it or not, from the decent legal system that is has used to go after others plenty of times.
Of course, Microsoft wouldn't be Microsoft if the gov't had sought serious enforcement years earlier, as in their earlier investigation (here is a timeline of earlier and now forgotten legal activity).
Which way will the wind blow in Europe?
A minor addendum, the judge in this case, Judge Motz in Baltimore, is a bright and politically moderate guy, likely a good person for the difficult task (I assume he was assigned the case randomly?). Expect him to get reversed and affirmed a couple of times, MS litigates aggressively.
*
This is OT, but have y'all noticed that everyone mistypes DMCA? Me too. Congress should rename it DCMA when they get around to fixing it.
No, what a fucked-up comment. Geez, learn to read -- and think.
It's interesting to guess whether others are submitting a given story. I guess this was a no-brainer.
... until you get back to that monopoly abuse.
Coercion: the power to require Microsoft to include Java is the same that allows the gov't, or any successful antitrust plaintiff, to force them to do anything different. Because of their market power, which puts them on nearly every desktop in America, their default config has a lot of promotional influence. Up to now, that influence has entirely favored Microsoft, which sounds appropriate
Whether THIS particular coercion is a good idea, we'll see. Whether coercion is never the right thing, well that's much broader.
A partial analogy would be Microsoft owning the default Yellow Pages distributed to everyone's door and selecting who can be in it -- say, virtually everyone but "Sun." Now, anyone can go get one of the other free directories, but will they? Advantage: Microsoft.
Also, Java isn't exactly a competitor's product; it's also an attempt at an industry-wide open standard that Microsoft wants to subvert, dominate, and exploit. Hey, they already tried.
It's a difficult problem to set things right in the wake of antitrust problems. Market forces generally do a decent job of figuring these things out (the "invisible hand"). But when some clever party makes the market its own, and then abuses it, the rules have to change, and gov't regulation, or a breakup, are the most common remedies.
If you don't think MS should have been sued in the first place, you will not believe any of these rationales, and probably not that antitrust is necessary in the first place. Many think some market failures need correction, but not everyone.
gays can still be Scouts
No, not according to the relatively conservative nat'l organization. Nor atheists, maybe. If anything they are clamping down. A recent example illustrating philosophical tension within the organization.
A site...
I'm afraid that acronym is another of those words that through relaxed usage has come to mean all of these concoctions, e.g., here. I actually like it better the modern way, as some acronyms are pronounced or said different by different people -- URL -- and acronym to be connotes the abbr. of a common word by squashing letters out of it. OK?
This source says acronyms are a novel 20th century affliction.
What amuse me are the words that vary not in sound but by a letter, which sticklers nonetheless insist are entirely different -- farther/further, inquire/enquire, insure/ensure, potato/potatoe (heh-heh -- just kidding -- I wouldn't have let that one go!)
OK, admittedly I am careful in my writing to follow most of these stupid rules, excepe for splitting infinitives, which I do with abandon if it suits the occasion.
So Sagan's arguments were flawed ... there are alien visitors.
;-) As Sherlock Holmes might have observed, when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be in the Weekly World News. The impossible goes to the National Enquirer ("all the crap that's fit to print").
My logic skills are bad, but not that bad.
If intelligent life were visiting the Earth, why would it waste its time collecting such peculiar specimens? Or maybe that's the point, the same reasons humans collect six-toed cats.
Maybe I'm just jealous and wish they'd come visit me. Nah, I'd probably cause Earth's first interstellar incident.
Yes, that did occur to re cross-hairs. Any photographer knows light "bleeds" in massive overexposure. But eour experiment would be open to (idiotic) charges of image manipulation. There ought to be a simple try-at-home, like hold a pencil vertical at arm's length before the sun? Can you see the pencil? (Can you see anything? Ever again? :)
Anyway, this is a pretty pathetic argument to refute the entire Apollo program!
(?) It has nothing to do with rockets even by analogy, that's Newtonian physics 101. Same in space or atmosphere, the "pushes against" was always bogus.
As I said, use Google first. Answer is radiation/sublimation of water ice.
Thanks, I'll look for his book as the library today.
Debunking is intellectually challenging because here are a set of facts you can't add to or modify, and here is (hypothetical) cretin who requires the most brutally elegant of persuasion to come around. Imagine explaining something to someone with the mental age of a five year-old, not because the hoaxsters are idiots but because that's the fun of the challenge. To can't send the hoaxsters to the Moon, however tempting it would be, for reasons of expense and that they'll disbelieve the experience anyway. (Thank you Capricorn One.)
Remember, it's not about proof but persuasion. You can't just throw a sheaf of paper and pictures on the table and say, figure it out. A famed critic-killer is Pasteur's swan-necked flasks.
So the challenge: What do you think, based on what we've done so far, can be used to construct the ideal, concise argument that we went to the Moon?
An example is an IMHO irrefutable debunk of the backlighting theories can be found here.
But your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to come up with the killer argument that settles the whole thing. Think of it as the simplest proof of the Pythagorean Theorem (there are many alternatives). Sell the solution to NASA, or in the spirit of free info just post it here.
My joking argument is that it would have been a hell of a lot easier to go to the Moon, and probably cheaper, that create a sinister murderous hoax of such dimensions. More seriously, who really thinks our government is this competent?!? NASA bumbling is ironically a beautiful defense.
Try this.
:)
The nice thing is that debunking is fun. It makes us feel superior because we can argue a conspiracist under the table, and enlightens us along the way. Some of the debunking explanations -- and badastronomy offers just some of the many -- are quite elegant, like why the lander exhaust didn't carve a giant divot in the Moon's soft dusty surface. I love the Lego demo someone did of why astronauts in shadow were nonetheless brightly lit. And some of hoax contentions are hilarious, like why did the flag stand out straight if there's no air? (It had a rod, you idiots.)
The problem is not proof, which exists. The problem is persuasion, and you can't persuade someone uninterested in being proved wrong. Mark Twain supposedly said, "A fanatic is someone who can't change his mind and won't change the subject." (A favorite of mine, and soooo true.
NASA's core business is delivering science and engineering, not education.
They're already there, but it's PR more than education. Have you heard the crack that most agencies have PR depts., whereas NASA is a PR dept. that happens to have an agency? NASA has for decades focused heavily on justifying and continuing its existence.
Also, most of the skeptics like the conspiracy theories better than the truth. They make for better storytelling. If they want to seek out the truth they could do it without NASA's help but looking to the Web sites and books taht already discuss the missions, and the hoaxsters, in detail. If the doubters doubt NASA's credibility, what good is NASA's imprimatur on the debunking material?
Fluid circulated through tubes to the backpack. Try Google "space suit" cooling.
Given the nice videoptape of the punch, and the certainty Sibrel put up a howl, it is interesting the prosecutors tooks a pass. Apparently Sibrel was poking Aldrin with a Bible, lured Aldrin to the hotel, is significantly larger than the 72 y.o. Aldrin, and was yelling insults at him at the time. You can see the video clip online. Details. So it's plausible that Sibrel was not merely annoying but threatening.
I don't think violence is an acceptable or effective way to settle the hoax dispute, or any other situation short of necessity. To Aldrin's credit in this case it appears to have been self-defense, and even if not then it was under extreme provocation.
Indeed violence is good for the bad guys; you can see here how much international publicity Sibrel got, and his fundamental motive is likely profit. I bet he made money off the incident from people inclined to believe conspiracy. Obvious senior citizen Buzz Aldrin is a ninja warrior loosed by NASA to silence their enemies.
The Sibrels of the world are best ignored, and there lies countered discreetly. NASA should focus on communicating its message clearly, not engaging in dialog with scam artists. SO perhaps it should refing its histories with additional details and replies to "but why did..." questions (except for example the allegation they murdered their own astronauts!) without once referencing their critics. (Why a handful of the criticisms are false is actually interesting, like why their are no stars in the pictures, or the source of the fill light, is not intuitively obvious -- see badastronomy and related sites.)
Your country is smaller than your penis.
:)
How did you know? Is this Heather?
Nah -- just its watering hole.
...in certain cases a trademark can be copyrighted. Arghh!
Mickey Mouse is a classic example IIRC.
Apple's jumped in, too.
Some devious mind proposed, "Can You Patent a Copyrighted Trademark?"
No comment.
I know, I know, a Danish is a breakfast pastry, right? (sense 2: light sweet yeast-raised roll usually filled with fruits or cheese) Dutch is where each person pays for their own food.
Don't take the errors personally, (we) Americans are pretty clueless what goes on abroad, and at home (have you heard of the Pennsylvania "Dutch"?). A surprising number can't name the President, or explain the Supreme Court's interpretation of the 11th amendment. On the other hand, let me ask *you* a few questions about American, Mr. Resident Alien..... Yes, you probably know more than I do, don't show off. And it's pretty darn inconsiderate that Dutch doesn't sound at all like "Holland" or "The Netherlands," but does sound a lot like "Deutsch."
I've at least visited the Netherlands and thought Copenhagen was great! (A joke! Really!)
When you live in a country that's big enough to confuse you, you're less likely to look abroad for additional confusion.
legislated a speed limit again since last I heard, but unless the Feds restrict highway funds again, trust me, it won't last.
:P
... 1984 is public domain, sort of, if you live somewhere else.
Actually the "reasonable and prudent" speed limit was ruled void for vagueness, a constitutional problem -- because it was too subjective.
Bison kills -- I have no idea -- but the majority view fingers the tongue-hunters. I know, I know, it's a vast left-wing conspiracy...
Even if it was the Indians -- where'd they get the horses and guns? European are the root of all evil. (Well, nowadays they are. Or was is Saddam? Oceania? Eastasia?)
Hmm