I conceded that you might be happy with the puff piece...
Just by the way, I never stated any measure of satisfaction with the standard of the article and still haven't. At least I recognised what the purpose of the piece was and didn't try to imply that rigourous standards should be imposed on reportage that doesn't deserve it. Intellectual arrogance for the win.
Which is not what you originally imply in your post, which was that they weren't addressed at all.
My exact words were:"The article lacks important details." I stand by that.
Interesting that you selectively quote your own words...your post went on to imply that three questions were not addressed: coincidentally those I picked up on. So in fact your statement that those were your "exact words" is false: you included three specific examples of what you felt was missing. I pointed out that these had been addressed in the article, not the extent that they had been addressed. Your implication was that they hadn't been addressed. If you had posted based on what you have subsequently tried to imply you meant then I'd simply point out that trying to misapply standards meant for scientific results on material that is not presented as a scholarly article. This is intellectual arrogance, simply designed to karma whore.
It does matter. People are biased. If articles were selected by people who read both articles & knew the source, the samplings could be tainted to favor one of the sources.
You seem to be unable to follow your arguments to a logical conclusion. Assume that the editors of Nature were prepared to open themselves up to complaints of professional misconduct which may well threaten their standings on the editorial board on the basis of a trivial comparison between Wikipedia and the Britannica. Assume that those involved had spent hundreds of hours reading both encyclopdiaedias simply to choose articles that reflected badly on one or the other -- after all, the comparison is Earth-shattering science and will be remembered for eternity as a distinct turning point in history. Then what motivation do you ascribe for them doing this? Perhaps you might remember a principle called Occam's Razor: think on it. If they were after a particular result they could have simply printed the article without even bothering to send any articles; they also could have sent the articles out and then paid the referees money to say that the Wikipedia articles were of approximately the same quality; the possibilities of what they could have done are endless.
I'm also amused that you assume that the editors of an extremely well-respected science journal wouldn't follow standard experimental design and methodological procedures reinforced ad nauseum from the first days of university training. But then again, I don't have a superiority complex.
Again, it stated they "were not told which encyclopedia the stories were from" (emphasis mine). If they were emailed or faxed or mailed a copy of the two articles & were told one came from Wikipedia & one came from Britannica (but not which came from which), it wouldn't take a rocket scientist to find which article came from which source. Even if they weren't informed of the original sources, I think it should be simple for professionals who routinely perform literature searches to figure it out.
The blind could be established if the person who copied the articles was different than the one who described the task to the scientists & who analyzed the data. The sources could be revealed after the results were in.
Wow, I guess that the editors of Nature obviously hadn't thought of that when they designed the effort. After all they are probably only freshmen at universities, not practising scientists with years of work under their belts. But then again, they obviously need more professsional people on the staff. You can probably apply for the job as editor-in-chief
All your questions are answered in the text of the article.
Are we reading the same article? They weren't answered very well at all.
Am I dreaming or are you now saying that the article answered the questions, just that these answers were not as informative as you'd prefer? Which is not what you originally imply in your post, which was that they weren't addressed at all.
As to how they were chosen: I think it matters little how they were chosen: whether they were pet topics of one of the editors at Nature or by some other method is irrelevant to the comparison.
You've already addressed your own second question by stating that your question was perhaps already covered in the article. The article doesn't imply -- it states explicitly: "Each reviewer examined the entry on a single subject from the two encyclopaedias".
As to the third question: the article states that the reviewers were unaware of the source of the articles. One would assume that the editors from Nature are aware of the value of ensuring their data are valid.
A news-bite is hardly worthy of publishing rigourous data about the methodology (though I'm sure if you are that interested Nature would share the data). The point is not to prove a scientific hypothesis but to provide a simple comparison of the accuracy of Wikipedia against the paragon that Britannica is held up to be.
They looked at 42 articles. How were these chosen? Were they on the same topics for the two encyclopedias? Was this done double-blind?
Gotta love getting an Insightful when you haven't even bothered to read the article thoroughly.
All your questions are answered in the text of the article.
Looks like the reviews are back -- he's obviously keeping tabs on this thread! He also made me a foe, so I maybe have to apologise for breaking his thin skin?
Speaking of astroturfing (as the first reviewer does), I find it very suspect that the last review is by vonvalour, when his Jem Report alias is Valour. Kinda puts all the 5-star reviews into perspective. At least he's creative in his choice of reviewer names.
Re:Yawn -- don't bother with this - comments
on
Sun-isms Debunked
·
· Score: 1
Sorry I didn't, as Mr Sensitive has removed the banner for his book as well as blocked access to the reviews on Amazon (which is where the banner linked to in any case).
Suffice it to say that the reviews were more critical than critical acclaim.
Yawn -- don't bother with this
on
Sun-isms Debunked
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
This is the same guy who wrote a pathetic review of a Sun Blade that the eds for some unknown reason thought was worthy of mention here some months ago. The guy is ill-informed and is not a Solaris user. Both his Sun-related articles mention his inability to get Solaris to perform and yet he blames it on Solaris; of course it would have nothing to do with his inexperience -- after all he is the author of the world-famous The Jem Report, The Internet's Best Computer Review Site (!!!), so he's obviously a guru.
And the ad for the "critically acclaimed" novel was cringe-worthy -- for some fun, read some of the comments from those that bought the novel.
I just hope the eds remember not to run stories from this site again.
Althought no one has confirmed it, it does appear the universe is a closed system.
So what? Even if this is found to be true, does the fact that Earth is covered mostly by water mean that I will not die of thirst in the Sahara Desert? We are not discussing whether life evolved in the Universe (of which we can't determine the answer), just whether the Earth (where we can answer that question) is a closed system, which it isn't.
We haven't observed mass or energy going either in or out.
This simply shows how unsound your inductive reasoning is. If it "does appear that the universe is a closed system", how can you make this statement without any observations? Oh, wait, I forgot, you're a Creationist, you don't need to rely on facts.
Just an FYI: grammatical criticism is not considered a fatal wound.
No, not necessarily, but it does indicate sloppy thought. Oh, and BTW, I didn't actually try to fault you grammatically (even though I made reference to your syntax (which BTW is a completely different beast from grammar)), I specifically directed my arguments against your ideas.
The fatal wounds to your argument you mysteriously neglect to rebut. Sometimes what you don't say speaks volumes.
If I had been more motivated, I would have gone at your logical fallacies, which litter your expression.
I originally typed lowest exergy, but assumed that not many people know the difference between energy and exergy, and those who did should be smart enough to figure out what I meant, so I changed it.
Even if you had written exergy, it wouldn't alter your argument. The quality of the energy transaction doesn't matter if your other premisses are false. Your system still isn't closed. Your conclusion is still wrong.
This behaviour simply doesn't make the grade either: I meant to say this but thought that most people wouldn't understand it. If you thought that many wouldn't understand your argument, then you need to explain it further, not weaken it by saying something incorrect.
You seem very angry.
Only against ignorance. Your further troll isn't very creative either. Don't assume that every anti-Creationist doesn't say prayers: I might be a member of the Church of Satan. That would satisfy your preconceptions, now wouldn't it?
...although I don't discount the literal interpretation, either.
Well, at least you're honest in your ignorance. This comment is so confused as to be unintelligible. I'll give you some leeway as your screed as written suggests that English isn't your first language.
The universe tends toward the lowest energy state.
Obviously, we live in different universes, you and I. In mine, the Universe tends towards equilibrium. Yours must be fscking cold at close to absolute zero, which would be the lowest energy state attainable. Pretty hard to do anything down at that level of energy, huh. Maybe this is why your "plenty of rational thought" hasn't led you to a more sound conclusion than the literal interpretation of the Bible.
Additionally, scientist have experimented with "primordial soups" thought to be similar to the earth's atmosphere 4 billions years ago, and found that lightning could spark the formation of simple amino acids, but that's all the further it got. It certainly never showed any inclination to build DNA or wrap it's self in a lipid bi-layer or even form whole proteins. Granted the time period was relatively extremely short, so I'll offer a little more.
Actually, check Science, vol 306, p. 283 for an article by Ghadiri et al. on how the volcanic gas carbonyl sulphide reacts directly with the amino acids you mention to spontaneously link them into peptides.
The reaction occurs under a wide variety of plausible prebiotic conditions and has been shown to join up to 80% of the available amino acids into peptides. This was the missing link in the chain of how the first proteins came about.
People are not the lowest energy state. They have an orderly arrangement of trillions of cells, each composed of millions of atoms that took energy to arrange.
Just in case you haven't noticed, people aren't composed of pure energy, hence can't attain any energy state (unless you count the particular colloquial state I'm in: "tired of ignorant Creationists"). The energy that arranged the creation of a human being is derived from the food that the mother ate while pregnant.
In short, formation of a complex being goes against the thermodynmic model of the universe.
No, it doesn't. You do realise that the concept of thermodynamic entropy as used in the second law of thermodynamics is stated as operating in a closed system don't you? Obviously not, like other Creationists, you simply ignore science and fasten onto the words you can then choose to redefine. You ignore the fact that the Earth is not a closed system, as it receives significant amounts of input from the Sun as solar energy. At a more personal level, a pregnant female isn't a closed system either, just in case your "plenty of rational thought" didn't extend to thinking of this.
If you'd bothered to read the article, you'd know that it's Gordon Brown's work, not Blair's. The article states that the Blair camp is pissed off about it.
You might use VirtualPC (software emulation) to run VB.NET or you can wait a while for the Mono project to finish their stuff (although a lot is already done).
Have a look at VirtualPC here. (Yes, it's a MS product, but like most of their good products, they bought it from someone else.)
I have an AGP version, so I don't have any experience with the PCI version. However, here's what I did.
Created a Windows boot floppy with the nVidia flasher on it plus a copy of the Mac ROMs for my card (Twinview, ROM version 1075). Stuck the card in a PC and booted it. Ran the flasher and backed up the existing ROM from the card onto the floppy. Then re-ran the flasher and flashed the Mac ROM onto the card.
After the flash, the card went into the Sawtooth and it worked perfectly (well until 10.3, at any rate).
I know there were problems with Quartz Extreme and PCI video cards in general -- although there seems to be info about the PCI versions of the GF2MX at www.xlr8yourmac.com. It seems you need to boot into OpenFirmware and execute some commands to force it to recognise the card on the PCI bus. Have a look, you should be able to get it working!
No, you are unfortunate. I have 768 MB RAM and a flashed Asus 7100 GeForce 2 MX (32 MB RAM). 10.3.2 is running fine -- I just put my Rage 128 away in a drawer.
Threat: If something damages the thermal protection system, the shuttle might turn into tons of flaming debris raining down on a random Texas town.
Conclusion: We might need to know if there are holes in the wing.
Result: Install sensors slightly more informative than reporting the destruction of the landing gear assembly.
Sounds pretty reasonable to me.
The problem with your "analysis" is that the damage sensors would indicate the damage immediately after it occurred, thus presumably stopping the shuttle attempting re-entry until a solution was found. The sensors reporting the destruction of the landing gear assembly kicked in so soon before the catastrophe that nothing could have been done.
Not really that odd -- they are a rainforest tree. There are lots of rainforest pockets in the dry sclerophyll that is behind much of the NSW coast. However, as a rainforest tree, it is more likely to get a better match for its preferred environment in tropical Queensland.
No, I have noticed the increase of spam to my unused Telstra email address. The list of addresses is not random: it specifies particular names without any pattern (aside from the alphabetization). As I have a very common surname, Kelly, you'd expect other variations on that. There were none listed.
I also noticed that the recipient names on the last spam I checked were a mixture of one initial and surname (i.e., skelly) with more-than-one initial and surname (i.e., sfkelly).
The other odd thing was that there were quite a few uncommon surnames included and few common ones (no Smith, for example).
Based on this I'd say that either they were sold or they were harvested and carefully preened.
In the US, material published before 1989 has to have a copyright notice on it to be in copyright, otherwise it is public domain.
This isn't the case. The work is copyright from the moment it's created. The provisions
of the Copyright Act 1976 state that the notice is not mandatory, but is advised as a means to establish the date of copyright , which makes it easier to dismiss arguments of use through innocent infringement. The work is copyright irrespective of the copyright notice and does not automatically pass into the public domain.
Outside of the US, it will be public domain 70 years after the death of the last author of the manual.
This also isn't true -- it depends on the copyright laws enacted in the country. In Australia, Singapore, Italy and the Russian Federation, for example, it's 50 years. In fact the Berne Convention states 50 years, so most signatories to the Berne Convention will use the 50-year term. It's 70 years only where the national laws have extended it beyond the 50 provided for under Berne.
Slashdot Mirror
Just by the way, I never stated any measure of satisfaction with the standard of the article and still haven't. At least I recognised what the purpose of the piece was and didn't try to imply that rigourous standards should be imposed on reportage that doesn't deserve it. Intellectual arrogance for the win.
Which is not what you originally imply in your post, which was that they weren't addressed at all.
My exact words were:"The article lacks important details." I stand by that.
Interesting that you selectively quote your own words...your post went on to imply that three questions were not addressed: coincidentally those I picked up on. So in fact your statement that those were your "exact words" is false: you included three specific examples of what you felt was missing. I pointed out that these had been addressed in the article, not the extent that they had been addressed. Your implication was that they hadn't been addressed. If you had posted based on what you have subsequently tried to imply you meant then I'd simply point out that trying to misapply standards meant for scientific results on material that is not presented as a scholarly article. This is intellectual arrogance, simply designed to karma whore.
It does matter. People are biased. If articles were selected by people who read both articles & knew the source, the samplings could be tainted to favor one of the sources.
You seem to be unable to follow your arguments to a logical conclusion. Assume that the editors of Nature were prepared to open themselves up to complaints of professional misconduct which may well threaten their standings on the editorial board on the basis of a trivial comparison between Wikipedia and the Britannica. Assume that those involved had spent hundreds of hours reading both encyclopdiaedias simply to choose articles that reflected badly on one or the other -- after all, the comparison is Earth-shattering science and will be remembered for eternity as a distinct turning point in history. Then what motivation do you ascribe for them doing this? Perhaps you might remember a principle called Occam's Razor: think on it. If they were after a particular result they could have simply printed the article without even bothering to send any articles; they also could have sent the articles out and then paid the referees money to say that the Wikipedia articles were of approximately the same quality; the possibilities of what they could have done are endless.
I'm also amused that you assume that the editors of an extremely well-respected science journal wouldn't follow standard experimental design and methodological procedures reinforced ad nauseum from the first days of university training. But then again, I don't have a superiority complex.
Again, it stated they "were not told which encyclopedia the stories were from" (emphasis mine). If they were emailed or faxed or mailed a copy of the two articles & were told one came from Wikipedia & one came from Britannica (but not which came from which), it wouldn't take a rocket scientist to find which article came from which source. Even if they weren't informed of the original sources, I think it should be simple for professionals who routinely perform literature searches to figure it out.
The blind could be established if the person who copied the articles was different than the one who described the task to the scientists & who analyzed the data. The sources could be revealed after the results were in.
Wow, I guess that the editors of Nature obviously hadn't thought of that when they designed the effort. After all they are probably only freshmen at universities, not practising scientists with years of work under their belts. But then again, they obviously need more professsional people on the staff. You can probably apply for the job as editor-in-chief
Are we reading the same article? They weren't answered very well at all.
Am I dreaming or are you now saying that the article answered the questions, just that these answers were not as informative as you'd prefer? Which is not what you originally imply in your post, which was that they weren't addressed at all.
As to how they were chosen: I think it matters little how they were chosen: whether they were pet topics of one of the editors at Nature or by some other method is irrelevant to the comparison.
You've already addressed your own second question by stating that your question was perhaps already covered in the article. The article doesn't imply -- it states explicitly: "Each reviewer examined the entry on a single subject from the two encyclopaedias".
As to the third question: the article states that the reviewers were unaware of the source of the articles. One would assume that the editors from Nature are aware of the value of ensuring their data are valid.
A news-bite is hardly worthy of publishing rigourous data about the methodology (though I'm sure if you are that interested Nature would share the data). The point is not to prove a scientific hypothesis but to provide a simple comparison of the accuracy of Wikipedia against the paragon that Britannica is held up to be.
A useful explanation of the phenomenon here. Note that it doesn't have to be a light source.
Gotta love getting an Insightful when you haven't even bothered to read the article thoroughly. All your questions are answered in the text of the article.
Looks like the reviews are back -- he's obviously keeping tabs on this thread! He also made me a foe, so I maybe have to apologise for breaking his thin skin?
Speaking of astroturfing (as the first reviewer does), I find it very suspect that the last review is by vonvalour, when his Jem Report alias is Valour. Kinda puts all the 5-star reviews into perspective. At least he's creative in his choice of reviewer names.
Sorry I didn't, as Mr Sensitive has removed the banner for his book as well as blocked access to the reviews on Amazon (which is where the banner linked to in any case).
Suffice it to say that the reviews were more critical than critical acclaim.
This is the same guy who wrote a pathetic review of a Sun Blade that the eds for some unknown reason thought was worthy of mention here some months ago. The guy is ill-informed and is not a Solaris user. Both his Sun-related articles mention his inability to get Solaris to perform and yet he blames it on Solaris; of course it would have nothing to do with his inexperience -- after all he is the author of the world-famous The Jem Report , The Internet's Best Computer Review Site (!!!), so he's obviously a guru.
And the ad for the "critically acclaimed" novel was cringe-worthy -- for some fun, read some of the comments from those that bought the novel.
I just hope the eds remember not to run stories from this site again.
Althought no one has confirmed it, it does appear the universe is a closed system.
So what? Even if this is found to be true, does the fact that Earth is covered mostly by water mean that I will not die of thirst in the Sahara Desert? We are not discussing whether life evolved in the Universe (of which we can't determine the answer), just whether the Earth (where we can answer that question) is a closed system, which it isn't.
We haven't observed mass or energy going either in or out.
This simply shows how unsound your inductive reasoning is. If it "does appear that the universe is a closed system", how can you make this statement without any observations? Oh, wait, I forgot, you're a Creationist, you don't need to rely on facts.
Just an FYI: grammatical criticism is not considered a fatal wound.
No, not necessarily, but it does indicate sloppy thought. Oh, and BTW, I didn't actually try to fault you grammatically (even though I made reference to your syntax (which BTW is a completely different beast from grammar)), I specifically directed my arguments against your ideas.
The fatal wounds to your argument you mysteriously neglect to rebut. Sometimes what you don't say speaks volumes.
If I had been more motivated, I would have gone at your logical fallacies, which litter your expression.
I originally typed lowest exergy, but assumed that not many people know the difference between energy and exergy, and those who did should be smart enough to figure out what I meant, so I changed it.
Even if you had written exergy, it wouldn't alter your argument. The quality of the energy transaction doesn't matter if your other premisses are false. Your system still isn't closed. Your conclusion is still wrong.
This behaviour simply doesn't make the grade either: I meant to say this but thought that most people wouldn't understand it. If you thought that many wouldn't understand your argument, then you need to explain it further, not weaken it by saying something incorrect.
You seem very angry.
Only against ignorance. Your further troll isn't very creative either. Don't assume that every anti-Creationist doesn't say prayers: I might be a member of the Church of Satan. That would satisfy your preconceptions, now wouldn't it?
Well, at least you're honest in your ignorance. This comment is so confused as to be unintelligible. I'll give you some leeway as your screed as written suggests that English isn't your first language.
The universe tends toward the lowest energy state.
Obviously, we live in different universes, you and I. In mine, the Universe tends towards equilibrium. Yours must be fscking cold at close to absolute zero, which would be the lowest energy state attainable. Pretty hard to do anything down at that level of energy, huh. Maybe this is why your "plenty of rational thought" hasn't led you to a more sound conclusion than the literal interpretation of the Bible.
Additionally, scientist have experimented with "primordial soups" thought to be similar to the earth's atmosphere 4 billions years ago, and found that lightning could spark the formation of simple amino acids, but that's all the further it got. It certainly never showed any inclination to build DNA or wrap it's self in a lipid bi-layer or even form whole proteins. Granted the time period was relatively extremely short, so I'll offer a little more.
Actually, check Science, vol 306, p. 283 for an article by Ghadiri et al. on how the volcanic gas carbonyl sulphide reacts directly with the amino acids you mention to spontaneously link them into peptides.
The reaction occurs under a wide variety of plausible prebiotic conditions and has been shown to join up to 80% of the available amino acids into peptides. This was the missing link in the chain of how the first proteins came about.
People are not the lowest energy state. They have an orderly arrangement of trillions of cells, each composed of millions of atoms that took energy to arrange.
Just in case you haven't noticed, people aren't composed of pure energy, hence can't attain any energy state (unless you count the particular colloquial state I'm in: "tired of ignorant Creationists"). The energy that arranged the creation of a human being is derived from the food that the mother ate while pregnant.
In short, formation of a complex being goes against the thermodynmic model of the universe.
No, it doesn't. You do realise that the concept of thermodynamic entropy as used in the second law of thermodynamics is stated as operating in a closed system don't you? Obviously not, like other Creationists, you simply ignore science and fasten onto the words you can then choose to redefine. You ignore the fact that the Earth is not a closed system, as it receives significant amounts of input from the Sun as solar energy. At a more personal level, a pregnant female isn't a closed system either, just in case your "plenty of rational thought" didn't extend to thinking of this.
If you'd bothered to read the article, you'd know that it's Gordon Brown's work, not Blair's. The article states that the Blair camp is pissed off about it.
Have a look at VirtualPC here. (Yes, it's a MS product, but like most of their good products, they bought it from someone else.)
Mono is here.
Created a Windows boot floppy with the nVidia flasher on it plus a copy of the Mac ROMs for my card (Twinview, ROM version 1075). Stuck the card in a PC and booted it. Ran the flasher and backed up the existing ROM from the card onto the floppy. Then re-ran the flasher and flashed the Mac ROM onto the card.
After the flash, the card went into the Sawtooth and it worked perfectly (well until 10.3, at any rate).
I know there were problems with Quartz Extreme and PCI video cards in general -- although there seems to be info about the PCI versions of the GF2MX at www.xlr8yourmac.com. It seems you need to boot into OpenFirmware and execute some commands to force it to recognise the card on the PCI bus. Have a look, you should be able to get it working!
If you want proof, go here
Just tried with a flashed PC GeForce 2MX -- yes it works for me.
Conclusion: We might need to know if there are holes in the wing.
Result: Install sensors slightly more informative than reporting the destruction of the landing gear assembly.
Sounds pretty reasonable to me.
The problem with your "analysis" is that the damage sensors would indicate the damage immediately after it occurred, thus presumably stopping the shuttle attempting re-entry until a solution was found. The sensors reporting the destruction of the landing gear assembly kicked in so soon before the catastrophe that nothing could have been done.
Not really that odd -- they are a rainforest tree. There are lots of rainforest pockets in the dry sclerophyll that is behind much of the NSW coast. However, as a rainforest tree, it is more likely to get a better match for its preferred environment in tropical Queensland.
The tree grows to about 40 m high. (Read about it here.)
Well, I'd call almost 40 m big. Certainly bigger than moss. :-)
From the Royal Botanical Gardens site: Tallest tree is 38.5 m
The UNESCO World Heritage site doesn't mention your grove, only the Australian one.
For more info on the Wollemi pine, visit here.
No wonder he speaks to us from beyond the grave -- he's a heardsman, and needs to be heard!
That should read was an Australian; Murdoch is a US citizen as of about 10 years ago.
I also noticed that the recipient names on the last spam I checked were a mixture of one initial and surname (i.e., skelly) with more-than-one initial and surname (i.e., sfkelly).
The other odd thing was that there were quite a few uncommon surnames included and few common ones (no Smith, for example).
Based on this I'd say that either they were sold or they were harvested and carefully preened.
This isn't the case. The work is copyright from the moment it's created. The provisions of the Copyright Act 1976 state that the notice is not mandatory, but is advised as a means to establish the date of copyright , which makes it easier to dismiss arguments of use through innocent infringement. The work is copyright irrespective of the copyright notice and does not automatically pass into the public domain.
Outside of the US, it will be public domain 70 years after the death of the last author of the manual.
This also isn't true -- it depends on the copyright laws enacted in the country. In Australia, Singapore, Italy and the Russian Federation, for example, it's 50 years. In fact the Berne Convention states 50 years, so most signatories to the Berne Convention will use the 50-year term. It's 70 years only where the national laws have extended it beyond the 50 provided for under Berne.
Don't say that about Taco!
Shouldn't even be a consideration if you find the summary interesting.
If you bothered to actually read the articles linked to, you'd have noticed a short bio at the bottom.
Why comment on the article if you aren't interested in it enough to actually read the summary or the linked articles?