Intelligent design argues, as I understand, that there is much that is not understood about evolution, etc., so maybe a supreme power was involved in some of these areas.
Science tries to figure out how things work and might have worked in the past.
If you believe a supreme power was involved, that's fine, but it is really hard to prove by saying "science doesn't have an answer here, so it must be a supreme power".
That isn't science at all, so why teach it at school?
The scientists should be more open about discussing what they don't know anyway. I think the fact that the "Creationists" jump on every unknown make them anxious to make everything as solid seaming as possible, when in reality there are huge unknowns.
The comment by Mr. Bush is probably just a way to tie up press attention that would otherwise be focused on the Karl Rove investigation.
"The first concept, fasting, is of dubious value. BUT: According to the CRON diet people, and peer-reviewed research into longevity, the ONLY known way to extend the lifespan of a mouse is to reduce their available caloric intake while maintaining a proper nutritional diet."
Well, are there any ways proven to reduce the lifetime of a mouse?
The unstated assumption is that the average human is not doing anything that will shorten their lifetime artificially, which is unlikely to say the least.
I suspect a diet exists that tastes good, results in good health, and has no associated cravings. It probably involves a lot of vegetables.
Who wants a keyboard that you need to look at to see what key to press?
I'd rather keep my eyes on the screen where they belong and click options from changeable icons there.
Cringely made the point once that if you pretend the existing technology is the new technology you can gain insight into its advantages.
For example, new keyboard with fixed key functionality! Control your computer without ever taking your eyes off the screen! Priced at a fraction of current keyboards that required a OLED display on each key!
Discrete components often have leads that have been tinned with lead-based solder. I'd be very cautious about wearing anything next to my skin long-term that was coated in lead.
On the other hand, the stuff looks really cool and a lot the items don't have that problem.
Science News printed this vitamin D story last year. I thought the bit about the needs and lack of vitamin D in the elderly in the US were particularly interesting.
It seems that many of the global warming skeptics think that because the science isn't 100% certain, nothing should be done. Silly.
Technology both existing and relatively near term can substantially reduce energy consumption. Subsidies for energy efficiency could be increased in vehicles as well as homes and early stage R&D money could be provided by the government, both at relatively low cost if not done on an emergency basis. Of course there is a minimal amount of this going on in the U.S. now, but nothing like what could be done with the proper political backing.
Such remedies are relatively inexpensive have side benefits of cleaner air and less good and services traded to Persian Gulf countries for oil to be used in the U.S.
It's hard for me to understand why many feel global warming remedies are so scary. Perhaps they are influenced by subtle PR campaigns conducted by large firms that benefit from the status quo (see the book, "Toxic Sludge is Good for You").
OceanStore is a global persistent data store designed to scale to billions of users. It provides a consistent, highly-available, and durable storage utility atop an infrastructure comprised of untrusted servers.
Any computer can join the infrastructure, contributing storage or providing local user access in exchange for economic compensation. Users need only subscribe to a single OceanStore service provider, although they may consume storage and bandwidth from many different providers. The providers automatically buy and sell capacity and coverage among themselves, transparently to the users. The utility model thus combines the resources from federated systems to provide a quality of service higher than that achievable by any single company.
OceanStore caches data promiscuously; any server may create a local replica of any data object. These local replicas provide faster access and robustness to network partitions. They also reduce network congestion by localizing access traffic.
We must assume that any server in the infrastructure may crash, leak information, or become compromised. Promiscuous caching therefore requires redundancy and cryptographic techniques to protect the data from the servers upon which it resides.
OceanStore employs a Byzantine-fault tolerant commit protocol to provide strong consistency across replicas. The OceanStore API also allows applications to weaken their consistency restrictions in exchange for higher performance and availability.
A version-based archival storage system provides durability which exceeds today's best by orders of magnitude. OceanStore stores each version of a data object in a permanent, read-only form, which is encoded with an erasure code and spread over hundreds or thousands of servers. A small subset of the encoded fragments are sufficient to reconstruct the archived object; only a global-scale disaster could disable enough machines to destroy the archived object.
The OceanStore introspection layer adapts the system to improve performance and fault tolerance. Internal event monitors collect and analyze information such as usage patterns, network activity, and resource availability. OceanStore can then adapt to regional outages and denial of service attacks, pro-actively migrate data towards areas of use and maintain sufficiently high levels of data redundancy.
Many components of OceanStore are already functioning in isolation. A complete prototype is currently under development.
If you look at the report this came from you see it was released in October 1997. The Ka-band data services the report picked as being imminent has yet to happen.
Doonesbury is coincidentally running a video game addiction series. See:
http://www.doonesbury.com/strip/dailydose/index.ht ml?uc_full_date=20040802
http://www.doonesbury.com/strip/dailydose/index.ht ml?uc_full_date=20040803
http://www.doonesbury.com/strip/dailydose/index.ht ml?uc_full_date=20040804
that the evidence is being picked and then editorially filtered by very biased men.
As a Physicist I can tell you that that is exactly like science works and that it has worked well for centuries.
There is a method that, when put bluntly, is like this: "If you put forward an extraordinary, off-mainstream hypothesis you've better a) come from a respectable university/research group, b) show some extraordinary, easily reproducible evidence for it too and c) get ready for some serious ad hominem bashing, ridicule and possibly loss of funds". It all comes with the territory
But perhaps science would progress more quickly if unexpected theories were easier to investigate.
Rockets just seem dangerous because they make fire and smoke. The payload mass a rocket can carry could be delivered more easily by any number of other methods. Rockets are limited to a relatively small payload of 40 lbs max. A truck payload, or van payload, or suitcase payload could all be larger. There are innumerable approaches a terrorist could take--it seems the homeland security people are wasting too much time worrying about the minor threat of model rockets instead of cargo containers, ships, trucks, etc.
BTW, it seems that people are confused about the smaller model rockets they had as kids and the larger, newer "high power rocketry" rockets. This whole issue only applies to the larger class of rockets.
The question should be, of the early buyers of the PS2, how many were influenced by backward compatibility, not, of all PS2 owners, how many value backward compatibility. The more recent buyers probably don't value it at all.
The only problem is that the same nanotube technology that would enable a space elevator will also enable a reusable single-stage-to-orbit spacecraft capable of putting mass into orbit at a much lower cost.
Just to pick some numbers:
Space elevator: $5B each, one 4 ton payload per day
Nanotube composite rocket: $.1B each, one 8 ton payload every two days
> "...but we doubled the NIH budget and increased NSF funding." > >Which has nothing to do with the accusations the scientists are making. I wonder what sort of mindset the administration has when its science advisor can't even read the letter he's responding to.
It is simply a subtle or not so subtle threat--if they can increase funding, they can decrease it as well.
The virus problem is simply poor design. Mac OSX is existence proof that a PC need not be inherently virus prone.
Admitedly, software is very complex, but a well engineered system should be "user proof" for common tasks. Witness the difference between the external support required for Windows OS PCs vs Mac OS PCs.
The lady said that they missed having me as a customer and wanted to give me an opportunity to sign up again. I asked if her system said how long ago I was a customer, and she said it didn't.
I said, "well it was over two years ago, and I'm on the national do-not-call list, so this is an $11,000 violation for you."
She got off the line in about three seconds.
I thought it was fun because she didn't seem to realize it hadn't gone into effect yet, but I did fell slightly bad as well.
It gave me the idea that with all the legal uncertainty about the list, I will now carefully get the name of the firm, number, and name of the individual on the phone, then tell them I'm taking them to small claims for $11000.
If enough people say things like this and follow through, they won't take a chance of calling anyone on that list.
The four neutrons/minute quoted would be the detected rate. Given that the detector efficiency is probably around.01%, factoring in the solid angle, he's probably generating ~40000 neutrons/minute.
I've put off buying new CDs for the last six years, waiting for the high resolution formats to become available and cheap. There is no point in buying new discs if you're going to replace them right away. I will likely replace some existing CDs with high resolution versions of the same material if it isn't too expensive.
While it would be nice to be able to gain market share among average users, as others have pointed out, there are still significant obstacles. (ease of use, lack of games, no consistent single UI style, lack of compatibility with every digital camera, etc.)
While working to overcome these obstacles, it seems the real marketing and development focus should be aimed at markets where desktop linux would be useful and don't offer as many obstacles.
Markets such as small businesses, grade schools and high school administration, larger businesses that use computers for data entry, point of sale machines, etc, all don't care about many of the issues that are obstacles to mainstream users.
Once you've used the internet enough, watching a TV news program is incredibly annoying, with all the "ok, this interesting sounding story will be coming up soon". The internet spoils you with the instant information, on what you want and right now, compared to TV. I can only see the amount of TV that anyone who uses the web much continuing to go down.
For long trip, the car only needs a trailer with a gas engine and generator. I remember reading about an engineer who had an electric car he could drive cross country if he wished, simply by hooking up a very small trailer.
Perhaps the trailers could be rented, so you wouldn't have to keep it around all the time when you didn't need it.
The discussion on efficiency and total cost of ownership misses the point. All new technologies must start somewhere, and if you can develop it with revenue from early adopters, its much better than raising private investment.
If you looked at the very first airplane and calculated how well it would work for travel vs how much it would cost, it wouldn't pass any tests.
This car is nice because it has enough features to attract a small portion of the total car buying market, and the revenue can help the company refine the technology, gain practical real-world experience with electric cars, etc.
All new technologies have to start somewhere, and this looks like a great starting point.
Slashdot Mirror
Intelligent design argues, as I understand, that there is much that is not understood about evolution, etc., so maybe a supreme power was involved in some of these areas.
Science tries to figure out how things work and might have worked in the past.
If you believe a supreme power was involved, that's fine, but it is really hard to prove by saying "science doesn't have an answer here, so it must be a supreme power".
That isn't science at all, so why teach it at school?
The scientists should be more open about discussing what they don't know anyway. I think the fact that the "Creationists" jump on every unknown make them anxious to make everything as solid seaming as possible, when in reality there are huge unknowns.
The comment by Mr. Bush is probably just a way to tie up press attention that would otherwise be focused on the Karl Rove investigation.
"The first concept, fasting, is of dubious value. BUT: According to the CRON diet people, and peer-reviewed research into longevity, the ONLY known way to extend the lifespan of a mouse is to reduce their available caloric intake while maintaining a proper nutritional diet."
Well, are there any ways proven to reduce the lifetime of a mouse?
The unstated assumption is that the average human is not doing anything that will shorten their lifetime artificially, which is unlikely to say the least.
I suspect a diet exists that tastes good, results in good health, and has no associated cravings. It probably involves a lot of vegetables.
Who wants a keyboard that you need to look at to see what key to press?
I'd rather keep my eyes on the screen where they belong and click options from changeable icons there.
Cringely made the point once that if you pretend the existing technology is the new technology you can gain insight into its advantages.
For example, new keyboard with fixed key functionality! Control your computer without ever taking your eyes off the screen! Priced at a fraction of current keyboards that required a OLED display on each key!
Discrete components often have leads that have been tinned with lead-based solder. I'd be very cautious about wearing anything next to my skin long-term that was coated in lead.
On the other hand, the stuff looks really cool and a lot the items don't have that problem.
Science News printed this vitamin D story last year. I thought the bit about the needs and lack of vitamin D in the elderly in the US were particularly interesting.
. asp
. asp
http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20041009/bob8
http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20041016/bob9
It seems that many of the global warming skeptics think that because the science isn't 100% certain, nothing should be done. Silly.
Technology both existing and relatively near term can substantially reduce energy consumption. Subsidies for energy efficiency could be increased in vehicles as well as homes and early stage R&D money could be provided by the government, both at relatively low cost if not done on an emergency basis. Of course there is a minimal amount of this going on in the U.S. now, but nothing like what could be done with the proper political backing.
Such remedies are relatively inexpensive have side benefits of cleaner air and less good and services traded to Persian Gulf countries for oil to be used in the U.S.
It's hard for me to understand why many feel global warming remedies are so scary. Perhaps they are influenced by subtle PR campaigns conducted by large firms that benefit from the status quo (see the book, "Toxic Sludge is Good for You").
Use handwritten challenges and let the spammers solve the handwriting recognition problem for us.
Overview from the homepage:
OceanStore is a global persistent data store designed to scale to billions of users. It provides a consistent, highly-available, and durable storage utility atop an infrastructure comprised of untrusted servers.
Any computer can join the infrastructure, contributing storage or providing local user access in exchange for economic compensation. Users need only subscribe to a single OceanStore service provider, although they may consume storage and bandwidth from many different providers. The providers automatically buy and sell capacity and coverage among themselves, transparently to the users. The utility model thus combines the resources from federated systems to provide a quality of service higher than that achievable by any single company.
OceanStore caches data promiscuously; any server may create a local replica of any data object. These local replicas provide faster access and robustness to network partitions. They also reduce network congestion by localizing access traffic.
We must assume that any server in the infrastructure may crash, leak information, or become compromised. Promiscuous caching therefore requires redundancy and cryptographic techniques to protect the data from the servers upon which it resides.
OceanStore employs a Byzantine-fault tolerant commit protocol to provide strong consistency across replicas. The OceanStore API also allows applications to weaken their consistency restrictions in exchange for higher performance and availability.
A version-based archival storage system provides durability which exceeds today's best by orders of magnitude. OceanStore stores each version of a data object in a permanent, read-only form, which is encoded with an erasure code and spread over hundreds or thousands of servers. A small subset of the encoded fragments are sufficient to reconstruct the archived object; only a global-scale disaster could disable enough machines to destroy the archived object.
The OceanStore introspection layer adapts the system to improve performance and fault tolerance. Internal event monitors collect and analyze information such as usage patterns, network activity, and resource availability. OceanStore can then adapt to regional outages and denial of service attacks, pro-actively migrate data towards areas of use and maintain sufficiently high levels of data redundancy.
Many components of OceanStore are already functioning in isolation. A complete prototype is currently under development.
If you look at the report this came from you see it was released in October 1997. The Ka-band data services the report picked as being imminent has yet to happen.
Doonesbury is coincidentally running a video game addiction series. See:
. ht ml?uc_full_date=20040802o m/strip/dailydose/index.ht ml?uc_full_date=20040803o m/strip/dailydose/index.ht ml?uc_full_date=20040804
http://www.doonesbury.com/strip/dailydose/index
http://www.doonesbury.c
http://www.doonesbury.c
Doonesbury is coincidentally running a video game addiction series. See: http://www.doonesbury.com/strip/dailydose/index.ht ml?uc_full_date=20040802
http://www.doonesbury.com/strip/dailydose/index.ht ml?uc_full_date=20040803
http://www.doonesbury.com/strip/dailydose/index.ht ml?uc_full_date=20040804
As a Physicist I can tell you that that is exactly like science works and that it has worked well for centuries.
There is a method that, when put bluntly, is like this: "If you put forward an extraordinary, off-mainstream hypothesis you've better a) come from a respectable university/research group, b) show some extraordinary, easily reproducible evidence for it too and c) get ready for some serious ad hominem bashing, ridicule and possibly loss of funds". It all comes with the territory
But perhaps science would progress more quickly if unexpected theories were easier to investigate.
BTW, it seems that people are confused about the smaller model rockets they had as kids and the larger, newer "high power rocketry" rockets. This whole issue only applies to the larger class of rockets.
The question should be, of the early buyers of the PS2, how many were influenced by backward compatibility, not, of all PS2 owners, how many value backward compatibility. The more recent buyers probably don't value it at all.
The only problem is that the same nanotube technology that would enable a space elevator will also enable a reusable single-stage-to-orbit spacecraft capable of putting mass into orbit at a much lower cost.
Just to pick some numbers:
Space elevator: $5B each, one 4 ton payload per day
Nanotube composite rocket: $.1B each, one 8 ton payload every two days
In other words, it will never happen.
> "...but we doubled the NIH budget and increased NSF funding."
>
>Which has nothing to do with the accusations the scientists are making. I wonder what sort of mindset the administration has when its science advisor can't even read the letter he's responding to.
It is simply a subtle or not so subtle threat--if they can increase funding, they can decrease it as well.
The virus problem is simply poor design. Mac OSX is existence proof that a PC need not be inherently virus prone. Admitedly, software is very complex, but a well engineered system should be "user proof" for common tasks. Witness the difference between the external support required for Windows OS PCs vs Mac OS PCs.
I got a call from DirectTV two weeks ago.
The lady said that they missed having me as a customer and wanted to give me an opportunity to sign up again. I asked if her system said how long ago I was a customer, and she said it didn't.
I said, "well it was over two years ago, and I'm on the national do-not-call list, so this is an $11,000 violation for you."
She got off the line in about three seconds.
I thought it was fun because she didn't seem to realize it hadn't gone into effect yet, but I did fell slightly bad as well.
It gave me the idea that with all the legal uncertainty about the list, I will now carefully get the name of the firm, number, and name of the individual on the phone, then tell them I'm taking them to small claims for $11000.
If enough people say things like this and follow through, they won't take a chance of calling anyone on that list.
Looking at eBay HP calculator listings, is it odd to anyone else that the HP 42S sells for $250 - $300?
The four neutrons/minute quoted would be the detected rate. Given that the detector efficiency is probably around .01%, factoring in the solid angle, he's probably generating ~40000 neutrons/minute.
I've put off buying new CDs for the last six years, waiting for the high resolution formats to become available and cheap. There is no point in buying new discs if you're going to replace them right away. I will likely replace some existing CDs with high resolution versions of the same material if it isn't too expensive.
Still waiting...
While it would be nice to be able to gain market share among average users, as others have pointed out, there are still significant obstacles. (ease of use, lack of games, no consistent single UI style, lack of compatibility with every digital camera, etc.)
While working to overcome these obstacles, it seems the real marketing and development focus should be aimed at markets where desktop linux would be useful and don't offer as many obstacles.
Markets such as small businesses, grade schools and high school administration, larger businesses that use computers for data entry, point of sale machines, etc, all don't care about many of the issues that are obstacles to mainstream users.
Once you've used the internet enough, watching a TV news program is incredibly annoying, with all the "ok, this interesting sounding story will be coming up soon". The internet spoils you with the instant information, on what you want and right now, compared to TV. I can only see the amount of TV that anyone who uses the web much continuing to go down.
For long trip, the car only needs a trailer with a gas engine and generator. I remember reading about an engineer who had an electric car he could drive cross country if he wished, simply by hooking up a very small trailer.
Perhaps the trailers could be rented, so you wouldn't have to keep it around all the time when you didn't need it.
The discussion on efficiency and total cost of ownership misses the point. All new technologies must start somewhere, and if you can develop it with revenue from early adopters, its much better than raising private investment. If you looked at the very first airplane and calculated how well it would work for travel vs how much it would cost, it wouldn't pass any tests. This car is nice because it has enough features to attract a small portion of the total car buying market, and the revenue can help the company refine the technology, gain practical real-world experience with electric cars, etc. All new technologies have to start somewhere, and this looks like a great starting point.