There was a bicycle helmet study that concluded that helmets protect against more than 100% of head injuries. When this was pointed out to the authors (an error in their maths that meant they didn't realise that was what their figures showed), their reaction was not "I guess our methodology must have been a bit crap", "but never mind the details, the bogus numbers still clearly show that helmets save lives as we'd decided in advance that they would". Another widely quoted study showed that helmets not only prevent 88% of head injuries, they also prevent leg injuries and make you more likely to be white, middle class, and cycling in a suburb in a park rather on the streets in a city.
2000 a year of them, according to http://www.poison.org/prevent/battery.asp I think Jeff's right, almost all of those will be small kids and the phone number is for their parents.
Proponent would be more usual in that example in UK English too. Exponent if they were doing the advocating by demonstration, so that sense one of the Chambers definition also applies: exponent noun 1 someone able to perform some art or activity, especially skilfully. 2 someone who explains and promotes (a theory or belief, etc). 3 math a number that indicates how many times a given quantity, called the base, is to be multiplied by itself, usually denoted by a superscript number or symbol immediately after the quantity concerned, eg 64 = 6 x 6 x 6 x 6. Also called power, index. cf. proponent noun a supporter or advocate of something; someone who argues in favour of their cause.
I'm over 40 and have never played WoW, but it makes sense to me (without any idea where Ferelas and Gadgetzan are I don't know how long it might take to do the same without teleport or what obstacles might be in the way, but the basic idea is there).
Re:Not all AAs are created equal
on
USB Batteries
·
· Score: 1
> Where I agree that it's rediculous that the voltage is different (breaking the standard?)
Yeah, damn battery makers obeying the laws of physics, who do they think they are?
> How does having a paper trail make the results any more verifiable? Because the voter can physically see that their vote has been recorded they way they cast it.
> What if ballots are (somehow) stolen from (or added to) the paper trail container? If the ballots have identifying serial numbers on, then a check can detect that ballots were added or stolen, and a re-election can be called for with evidence. (Yes, this means that you can't guarantee complete anonymity of voting, but with suitable supervision you can make it very hard to match votes to voters without a court order in cases of personation etc..)
> Paper trails are just as susceptible to fraud as electronic systems. No. We have many many years of experience in supervising elections with paper ballots in such a way as to make vote rigging relatively difficult.
> Real estate only makes sense when you know the population will increase, and demand will increase.
There's a story about an Oxbridge college (which one varies with the telling) left another bequest. The senior common room is discussing what to do with it, and one of the fellows says "well, land has done very well for the college for the last five hundred years". And the history professor says "Ah yes, but the last five hundred years have been atypical."
> "The easiest thing to find in your office will always be your wall".
I've seen offices where I knew there must be a wall behind the bookcases behind the piles of stuff, but not because I could see it....
Re:Editorial Oversight != Truth (i.e. FOX News)
on
When Wikipedia Fails
·
· Score: 0, Redundant
> I suppose we should take it for granted that it isn't just liberals, but that every fair-minded observer will label Fox News as "Faux News"?
No, you should do some research, and then observe that that is the case. Did you really not know that "Fair and Balanced" is self-parody, not a realistic description?
More likely just a careless mod. "Overrated" works better for "this isn't really a troll or flamebait, but I don't like it, and I don't want to suffer in metamoderation".
> a screen would have to show different images depending on the angle
In theory you might be able to do that, using the same sort of principle as lenticular animations, with a holographic lens. For some applications you could get away with only doing it in two dimensions, so you show up clearly to anyone lying on the ground looking up at you silouetted against the sky, or anyone looking down at you from a staircase, but not to anyone with eyes at normal head level. Slightly more plausibly, you can be hidden from one particular person whose movements you track (using your magic nano-cameras) and show the image needed for their viewpoint only.
And most people don't understand probability. Say there is a one in on million change of your DNA matching someone else's in a test (the tests aren't perfect, and they don't compare the whole of your DNA, so it isn't only identical twins that match). The police get a DNA match on a sample at a crime scene, and you are the only match in the database. What's the chance that they have the wrong person?
Most people will look at the 1 in 1,000,000 figure and think it's almost certainly your DNA. In fact with 60,000,000 people in the UK the chances they have the right suspect based on DNA evidence alone is only one in 60. If other evidence leads them to suspect you, then they do the test and it matches, then there's a very high chance you were at the scene. But if the only reason you ever because a suspect was because your DNA was in the database already, possibly from an earlier investigation where you were cleared of any suspicion, and the other 59 matches weren't, the situation is very different. Once the police are convinced you are guilty, the chances of them "finding" supporting evidence goes up and the amount of looking for the real culprit goes down.
> I like:q!. AFAIK, no other editor has an explicit option to "get me the hell out of here, I'm done, don't bother me about it. Thank you."
While kill-emacs isn't bound to a shortcut by default and save-buffers-kill-emacs is, you can easily change that in your.emacs file if you want. (But if you like a moded editor (don't like control or meta keys), then vim is more efficient that emacs in one of it's assorted vi emulation modes. Just because emacs can do everything doesn't make it the right answer for everybody.)
Still missing the Amiga's flat memory space where one bad user-space application could trash everything else? I heard similar arguments about how virtual memory just encouraged lazy programming back then.
I say "Microsoft" has 9 letters, not "Microsoft" have 9 letters. We might say "trials are ongoing", but that's talking about some trials. '"Trials" is a noun' is talking about the word, not about some trials.
Dashes are more common than slashes in logfile-name-, for obvious reasons. (Though in that case many people will spot that big-endian sorts better than middle-endian.)
> It doesn't really matter if it's caused by humans or not > How much of that damage will be prevented if we do something now?
Those two are connected in a way. If we caused (most of) the warming, we have a good chance of being able to stop it getting worse, or at least reducing the rate at which it gets worse, by not going on doing the same stuff (which might mean "put our entire economy on hold" or might mean "do different stuff"). If it is random natural variation and all our burning fossil fuel etc. really is insignificant, then we're probably stuffed, because any fixes we can manage will probably be equally insignificant.
Slashdot Mirror
There was a bicycle helmet study that concluded that helmets protect against more than 100% of head injuries. When this was pointed out to the authors (an error in their maths that meant they didn't realise that was what their figures showed), their reaction was not "I guess our methodology must have been a bit crap", "but never mind the details, the bogus numbers still clearly show that helmets save lives as we'd decided in advance that they would".
Another widely quoted study showed that helmets not only prevent 88% of head injuries, they also prevent leg injuries and make you more likely to be white, middle class, and cycling in a suburb in a park rather on the streets in a city.
2000 a year of them, according to http://www.poison.org/prevent/battery.asp
I think Jeff's right, almost all of those will be small kids and the phone number is for their parents.
Proponent would be more usual in that example in UK English too. Exponent if they were doing the advocating by demonstration, so that sense one of the Chambers definition also applies:
exponent noun 1 someone able to perform some art or activity, especially skilfully. 2 someone who explains and promotes (a theory or belief, etc). 3 math a number that indicates how many times a given quantity, called the base, is to be multiplied by itself, usually denoted by a superscript number or symbol immediately after the quantity concerned, eg 64 = 6 x 6 x 6 x 6. Also called power, index.
cf. proponent noun a supporter or advocate of something; someone who argues in favour of their cause.
> P.S. Yes, I know that TC's rely on a temperature differential, not just a temperature
So does anything that doesn't break the laws of thermodynamics. The differential is mentioned in the article, just not in the submitter's summary.
I'm over 40 and have never played WoW, but it makes sense to me (without any idea where Ferelas and Gadgetzan are I don't know how long it might take to do the same without teleport or what obstacles might be in the way, but the basic idea is there).
> Where I agree that it's rediculous that the voltage is different (breaking the standard?)
Yeah, damn battery makers obeying the laws of physics, who do they think they are?
> How does having a paper trail make the results any more verifiable?
Because the voter can physically see that their vote has been recorded they way they cast it.
> What if ballots are (somehow) stolen from (or added to) the paper trail container?
If the ballots have identifying serial numbers on, then a check can detect that ballots were added or stolen, and a re-election can be called for with evidence. (Yes, this means that you can't guarantee complete anonymity of voting, but with suitable supervision you can make it very hard to match votes to voters without a court order in cases of personation etc..)
> Paper trails are just as susceptible to fraud as electronic systems.
No. We have many many years of experience in supervising elections with paper ballots in such a way as to make vote rigging relatively difficult.
> Real estate only makes sense when you know the population will increase, and demand will increase.
There's a story about an Oxbridge college (which one varies with the telling) left another bequest. The senior common room is discussing what to do with it, and one of the fellows says "well, land has done very well for the college for the last five hundred years". And the history professor says "Ah yes, but the last five hundred years have been atypical."
> "The easiest thing to find in your office will always be your wall".
I've seen offices where I knew there must be a wall behind the bookcases behind the piles of stuff, but not because I could see it....
> I suppose we should take it for granted that it isn't just liberals, but that every fair-minded observer will label Fox News as "Faux News"?
No, you should do some research, and then observe that that is the case. Did you really not know that "Fair and Balanced" is self-parody, not a realistic description?
More likely just a careless mod. "Overrated" works better for "this isn't really a troll or flamebait, but I don't like it, and I don't want to suffer in metamoderation".
> a screen would have to show different images depending on the angle
d fh 101.html5 4&seq=0
In theory you might be able to do that, using the same sort of principle as lenticular animations, with a holographic lens. For some applications you could get away with only doing it in two dimensions, so you show up clearly to anyone lying on the ground looking up at you silouetted against the sky, or anyone looking down at you from a staircase, but not to anyone with eyes at normal head level. Slightly more plausibly, you can be hidden from one particular person whose movements you track (using your magic nano-cameras) and show the image needed for their viewpoint only.
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~nad/pubs/IBC99-Dodgson.p
http://kagakukan.toshiba.co.jp/en/02visual/newtec
http://www.opticsexpress.org/ViewMedia.cfm?id=866
And most people don't understand probability. Say there is a one in on million change of your DNA matching someone else's in a test (the tests aren't perfect, and they don't compare the whole of your DNA, so it isn't only identical twins that match).
The police get a DNA match on a sample at a crime scene, and you are the only match in the database. What's the chance that they have the wrong person?
Most people will look at the 1 in 1,000,000 figure and think it's almost certainly your DNA. In fact with 60,000,000 people in the UK the chances they have the right suspect based on DNA evidence alone is only one in 60.
If other evidence leads them to suspect you, then they do the test and it matches, then there's a very high chance you were at the scene. But if the only reason you ever because a suspect was because your DNA was in the database already, possibly from an earlier investigation where you were cleared of any suspicion, and the other 59 matches weren't, the situation is very different. Once the police are convinced you are guilty, the chances of them "finding" supporting evidence goes up and the amount of looking for the real culprit goes down.
> I like :q!. AFAIK, no other editor has an explicit option to "get me the hell out of here, I'm done, don't bother me about it. Thank you."
.emacs file if you want.
While kill-emacs isn't bound to a shortcut by default and save-buffers-kill-emacs is, you can easily change that in your
(But if you like a moded editor (don't like control or meta keys), then vim is more efficient that emacs in one of it's assorted vi emulation modes. Just because emacs can do everything doesn't make it the right answer for everybody.)
Still missing the Amiga's flat memory space where one bad user-space application could trash everything else? I heard similar arguments about how virtual memory just encouraged lazy programming back then.
> Motorcycles can get 45 or so miles per gallon
You can get over twice that with the right bike:
http://www.dieselmotorcycles.com/models.htm - 102mpg @ 55mph.
I say "Microsoft" has 9 letters, not "Microsoft" have 9 letters.
We might say "trials are ongoing", but that's talking about some trials. '"Trials" is a noun' is talking about the word, not about some trials.
> I believe the literal understanding of Genesis is the most likely explanation of what happened
Inciteful? Inciteful? Maybe the gods are planning on destroying the moderation system.
> What IS surprising, is that there is no image
i cleID=000A040D-36A2-1434-B6A283414B7F0000
Lots of other places covered the story, some do have pictures.
http://news.google.com/news?q=Tiktaalik+roseae
e.g. http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa003&art
Bah. I meant "in logfile-name-". Moral - use preview.
Dashes are more common than slashes in logfile-name-, for obvious reasons.
(Though in that case many people will spot that big-endian sorts better than middle-endian.)
> It doesn't really matter if it's caused by humans or not
> How much of that damage will be prevented if we do something now?
Those two are connected in a way. If we caused (most of) the warming, we have a good chance of being able to stop it getting worse, or at least reducing the rate at which it gets worse, by not going on doing the same stuff (which might mean "put our entire economy on hold" or might mean "do different stuff").
If it is random natural variation and all our burning fossil fuel etc. really is insignificant, then we're probably stuffed, because any fixes we can manage will probably be equally insignificant.
Why isn't there a "funny if he's being sarcastic, scary if he isn't" modifier?
P.S. See also http://www.computerweekly.co.uk/Articles/2006/02/2 1/214269/ComputerMisuseActamendmentcouldcriminalis etoolsusedbyITprofessionals.htm
> Does this mean that they are only illegal when you intend to hack something?
u rity-research-may-become-a-crime-in-the-uk/
Or when you intend to pass them on to someone who intends to hack something.
However, part 1 of clause 35 might make it illegal to create tools that might be useful even if you don't intend them to be used in an attack.
http://www.lightbluetouchpaper.org/2006/02/10/sec