The KKK are a whole I don't really see as being among "the brightest and the best",
Don't take my response as a direct critique of what you were saying, I see your point and generally agree:)
I was speaking of the leading figures, and some relatively silent backers. We don't have the KKK over here, but we do have groups with similar ideologies. My impression of the majority of people in lower levels of extremistic groups are that while they're not necessarily outright stupid, they're more likely to have a very simplistic view of the world. They ignore common sense and reason in a way that's frightening. They are also more likely to be "weak" and easily led, maybe with a history of personal and/or school problems, such as being the victims of bullying or very bad parenting. Being a member of some fringe group not generally accepted by the rest of the community can lead to a strong sense of belonging somewhere, especially if you've always been considered a loser by your peers.
Fascinatingly, I have noticed the exact same mechanism at play in activist groups that advocate anti-racism, and attack the racists. The similarities and aggression in an anti-racist group described to me by a friend were thought-provoking.
It's not right to judge all by the same critera because, as you say, they can have myriad reasons for joining and staying. I do feel the need to say something when I hear "They're stupid anyway, just ignore them", since some are the opposite, and they can be the most dangerous. You weren't really saying that in the GGP post though, I got a little carried away:)
but I do wonder about being intelligent enough to be a sysadmin but dumb enough to be a member of such a group...
Actually, while many are crackpots, you'll frequently see highly educated and intelligent people being members of, and leading, such groups. They stay in the background, while the relatively stupid grunts do the dirty work and get most of the publicity. The motivation for the educated ones may be a craving for adolation from and power over other people, an ability to organise such a group, a real political persuasion, a strong personality and presence, and/or the fact that they're "evil" for any number of reasons. Usually it's a combination of these.
It's a while since I discussed this with a friend, but two examples I remember are William Luther Pierce, Ph.D., who initially was a professor of physics, and Harald Trefall (Google translation of Norwegian Wikipedia), who was a brilliant Norwegian experimental physicist. A Doctor of Science, he was also a strongly pronounced racist, who worked politically for eviction of all non-western immigrants (what's the correct term?) from the country.
Sadly, there are lots of other examples. This turned out to be a little "ranty", but it's important not to disregard all of these scumbags as simply stupid people.
Writing random numbers would be more sufficient than just zeros.
What I've heard from (paranoid?) people is something like this: For each bit on the drive, if you had a zero and wrote a zero (0->0) you get the end value 0.0 (or a magnetic field extremely close to it). If you overwrite one with zero (1->0) you get 0.1. (0->1) gives 0.9, while (1->1) gives very close to one. Thus if the real magnetic strength is 0.1 OR 1.0, your previous value was 1. Read 0.0 or 0.9, it was zero. I've never heard of anyone actually *accomplishing* this, mind you.
If you wrote just zeroes you would need the same sensitivity to distinguish between former 1 and 0 (0.0 and 0.1), therefore writing random values is not much better.
I never believed that this could be very reliable even for just one overwrite, and what people are saying now is that it is theoretically impossible due to the drives pushing the efficiency to the limits of the "magnetic resolution" for existing data that has not been overwritten at all.
Re my sig: Isn't "more sufficient" a bit strange?:)
I suspect I'm being trolled, whatever. Hope you enjoy it. I'll simply quote myself.
It's a solid, medical, academic education, no woo-woo stuff at all.
We're obviously just squabbling over terminology here. Traditional ("straight", woo) chiropractors did incidentally have a very good anatomical knowledge of the vertebrae, joints and muscles. Modern chiropractors (non-woo) simply focus and expand on this area exclusively.
He IS practising physical therapy, and his six years of specialised training makes him a greater expert on pains related to joints, tendons and muscles than physical therapists and most MDs by far. It involves no healing, no philosophy, no anti-medication, no energy channeling/zones, no nonsense, no woo whatsoever. Where I live MDs are apt to send patients to a chiropractor for certain ailments because they can give superior treatment, but for instance never to a homeopath (those people ARE quacks, with their water memory and sugar pills). I see no use in continuing this exchange. HAND
Why not just get a degree in a *real* medicine that specializes in soft-tissue and anatomy and then practice that?
Well, that's exactly what it is. The education is called Clinical Biomechanic / Chiropractor or something to that effect, at a regular high-quality university (only Danish, sorry). It's a solid, medical, academic education, no woo-woo stuff at all. In Scandinavia we don't really have the "Straight chiropractic" variety, which might be the source of our confusion:) Here chiropractors are trained according to the views on the right of this chart, with emphasis on extensive anatomical knowledge.
Chiropractors are quacks. If you have medical problems I'd suggest seeing somebody trained in medicine. Perhaps a physical therapist?
Not all chiropractors are as you describe. My brother is a clinical chiropractor, recently educated in Denmark. The education runs in parallell with the MDs. In fact, the three first years are identical, except for the chiropractors having additional courses in anatomy. After three years the MDs specialise on diagnostics and illness, while the chiropractors continue with mostly anatomy and physical injury. Both educations total 6 years. He has absolutely no philosophical view on chiropractics, and ignore this aspect of it entirely. In effect he is an extremely well trained physical therapist, and knows more about anatomy than the vast majority of MDs.
He treated a knee injury that's been bothering me for several years after i cracked my kneecap, which a knee specialist medical doctor (orthopedist?) gave up on. My knee is now perfectly fine after his manual (and extremely painful) treatment. He was flabbergasted that the specialist couldn't identify the cause of my knee problems, and shocked that I had to go untreated for so many years.
Modern chiropractors with a clinical education are definitely not quacks, they are highly trained therapists that can help a lot of people. What they practice is an aspect of clinical medicine, just like a physical therapist with extended education. My father is a MD with 30 years of experience, and he occasionally consults my brother for advice in certain areas.
Is there a reasonable way to upgrade a motherboard designed to take sub-GHz CPUs past 512 MB, or should I just recycle it and get a new PC?
Any money spent on trying to upgrade your RAM is wasted IMO.
I always upgrade parts only. Motherboard, RAM, and a processor gives you a cheap upgrade. For an office box you can go with integrated graphics, or a low end video card if you need Dualhead. For a gaming rig I usually go with middle end video cards, best bang for the buck. Thus I end up paying about half of what a comparable complete machine costs.
Disclaimer: After having parts die on me due to a cheap PSU, I bought a really good and expensive one a few years ago. It will probably support the power demands of my box many years into the future as well.
I submitted an idea to them a while ago where I proposed that they include exchange rates in Google Calculator. A few weeks later, the feature was there.
While this is such a simple idea that they've probably gotten hundreds of requests for it, I am grateful that they included it.
In fact, I never considered that I should be rewarded. They also stated so clearly on the submission page (which I can't find right now). I use the feature frequently, and am glad it is there. It's a benefit for me as well as for Google.
Interesting solutions, I've also wondered about why this isn't more common. In the article they also mention generating hydrogen:
The battery is not the only storage experiment Xcel Energy is running: It has been testing using electricity from wind and solar installations to generate hydrogen and then burn the hydrogen in a generator to turn it back into electricity when as needed.
Taking it even further, the energy might be stored mechanically from the start, by for instance using pumps in the turbines to build pressure, then converting that pressure into electricity at convenient times. I guess the complexity and weight of the turbines might cause engineering problems, but you might be able to save on a more efficient power conversion.
The article also mentions a change which will come if hybrid cars get more common; people could be enticed to charge at night (lower prices?), effectively storing the energy in thousands of high-capacity accumulators all over the place.
Nevertheless, any development in this area is very exciting:)
Fine for washing machine, dryer, lights, computers, etc, not for charging an electrical car.
And therein lies the problem. An extremely large part of the world's transportation relies on fossil fuels. Even if we could find an efficient way of running all that transportation with electricity, we'll need an efficient way of providing that electricity.
That goes for distributing it, but more importantly, for generating it. It's possible, but for now it's a lot more cost-effective to burn dead dinosaurs sucked out of the ground. A ready-made energy soup there for the taking. Sad, but simple.
Still, I'm excited about any invention/discovery that leads us down the path of not burning those dead animals. We need it.
If you don't know why this kind of thing causes DTP people to grind their teeth, just take my word for it.
I have done a lot of what you do, also in academic publishing. Most authors are reasonable and let me do what I'm good at. A few will bicker to no end, just as you describe, and there are a couple of books we've almost refused to publish because the author doesn't understand the concept of deadlines, what is and isn't a reasonable change late in the process, and so on.
We try to be as flexible as possible when it comes to document formats and stuff like that. The authors should focus on the content of their book, our job is making whatever they submit look good. Of course we use our own tools to make that happen. In my experience the most difficult authors are the LaTex users, they are most prone to insist on keeping some horrendous layout rather than letting the professionals do their job. Coincidence, I'm sure:)
We've learnt not to start layout work until all major changes to the manuscript are done. Only then do we import it into our DPT software, in which it is very convenient to apply styles and layout.
The only way to open iexplore.exe in my home computers is through the "run" tab. This is to prevent unfit users from not using one of the other browsae.
Can't you open any folder and then enter the URL in the address bar?
I just tried at my work computer, it opens Firefox on WinXP. I guess that's because Firefox is my default browser.
That's most likely why the wait staff always give you dirty looks when you ask to split the check.
That's ridiculous. Any waiter except a very bad one will respect your wishes when you're at a restaurant, they will also be able to handle 3rd grade math or whatever mentally.
Most people wouldn't go back to a place where they were treated like that, and the waiter knows it. Their manager will also notice if they do it consistently.
My experience is that if their equipment doesn't handle it they'll do the math, or let us help out if they're not configdent. The total tip is likely to turn out bigger as well. Maybe things are different here in Europe? No, I'm not Dutch:)
However, I always notice them if they forgot to put an item on the bill... While they won't get docked for it they'll look bad to management.
However there is one single flaw in this solution. While people like to yell how much they are against death penalty there are only a few, who want to take actions against it.
Except for in civilised societies, where the state doesn't kill people (includinginnocentones), and "life for life, Eye for eye" is not taken literally. Here most people have agreed on taking action against it a long time ago.
There are so many unfixable objective problems with capital punishment that societies that value justice should avoid it altogether. The single flaw in your solution is presuming that the law should include such punishment.
It's not ordinary baryonic matter (made of protons and neutrons) at all; that would have completely altered the ratio of elements created in the Big Bang to something we don't observe.
Thanks, your post answered several of my questions. If you have the time, could you explain a bit more about this ratio? What implications would it have if dark matter consisted of baryonic matter? Honest question, I simply don't know:)
Slashdot Mirror
71 on both counts here... Disabling the plugin, not removing it.
Don't take my response as a direct critique of what you were saying, I see your point and generally agree :)
I was speaking of the leading figures, and some relatively silent backers. We don't have the KKK over here, but we do have groups with similar ideologies. My impression of the majority of people in lower levels of extremistic groups are that while they're not necessarily outright stupid, they're more likely to have a very simplistic view of the world. They ignore common sense and reason in a way that's frightening. They are also more likely to be "weak" and easily led, maybe with a history of personal and/or school problems, such as being the victims of bullying or very bad parenting. Being a member of some fringe group not generally accepted by the rest of the community can lead to a strong sense of belonging somewhere, especially if you've always been considered a loser by your peers.
Fascinatingly, I have noticed the exact same mechanism at play in activist groups that advocate anti-racism, and attack the racists. The similarities and aggression in an anti-racist group described to me by a friend were thought-provoking.
It's not right to judge all by the same critera because, as you say, they can have myriad reasons for joining and staying. I do feel the need to say something when I hear "They're stupid anyway, just ignore them", since some are the opposite, and they can be the most dangerous. You weren't really saying that in the GGP post though, I got a little carried away :)
Actually, while many are crackpots, you'll frequently see highly educated and intelligent people being members of, and leading, such groups. They stay in the background, while the relatively stupid grunts do the dirty work and get most of the publicity. The motivation for the educated ones may be a craving for adolation from and power over other people, an ability to organise such a group, a real political persuasion, a strong personality and presence, and/or the fact that they're "evil" for any number of reasons. Usually it's a combination of these.
It's a while since I discussed this with a friend, but two examples I remember are
William Luther Pierce, Ph.D., who initially was a professor of physics, and
Harald Trefall (Google translation of Norwegian Wikipedia), who was a brilliant Norwegian experimental physicist. A Doctor of Science, he was also a strongly pronounced racist, who worked politically for eviction of all non-western immigrants (what's the correct term?) from the country.
Sadly, there are lots of other examples. This turned out to be a little "ranty", but it's important not to disregard all of these scumbags as simply stupid people.
Try this one: http://www.technologyreview.com/computing/21971/page1/.
Replace page1 with page2 to get to the second page if you have further problems :)
What I've heard from (paranoid?) people is something like this: For each bit on the drive, if you had a zero and wrote a zero (0->0) you get the end value 0.0 (or a magnetic field extremely close to it). If you overwrite one with zero (1->0) you get 0.1. (0->1) gives 0.9, while (1->1) gives very close to one. Thus if the real magnetic strength is 0.1 OR 1.0, your previous value was 1. Read 0.0 or 0.9, it was zero. I've never heard of anyone actually *accomplishing* this, mind you.
If you wrote just zeroes you would need the same sensitivity to distinguish between former 1 and 0 (0.0 and 0.1), therefore writing random values is not much better.
I never believed that this could be very reliable even for just one overwrite, and what people are saying now is that it is theoretically impossible due to the drives pushing the efficiency to the limits of the "magnetic resolution" for existing data that has not been overwritten at all.
Re my sig: Isn't "more sufficient" a bit strange? :)
I suspect I'm being trolled, whatever. Hope you enjoy it. I'll simply quote myself.
We're obviously just squabbling over terminology here. Traditional ("straight", woo) chiropractors did incidentally have a very good anatomical knowledge of the vertebrae, joints and muscles. Modern chiropractors (non-woo) simply focus and expand on this area exclusively.
He IS practising physical therapy, and his six years of specialised training makes him a greater expert on pains related to joints, tendons and muscles than physical therapists and most MDs by far. It involves no healing, no philosophy, no anti-medication, no energy channeling/zones, no nonsense, no woo whatsoever. Where I live MDs are apt to send patients to a chiropractor for certain ailments because they can give superior treatment, but for instance never to a homeopath (those people ARE quacks, with their water memory and sugar pills).
I see no use in continuing this exchange. HAND
Well, that's exactly what it is. The education is called Clinical Biomechanic / Chiropractor or something to that effect, at a regular high-quality university (only Danish, sorry). It's a solid, medical, academic education, no woo-woo stuff at all. :)
In Scandinavia we don't really have the "Straight chiropractic" variety, which might be the source of our confusion
Here chiropractors are trained according to the views on the right of this chart, with emphasis on extensive anatomical knowledge.
Not all chiropractors are as you describe. My brother is a clinical chiropractor, recently educated in Denmark. The education runs in parallell with the MDs. In fact, the three first years are identical, except for the chiropractors having additional courses in anatomy. After three years the MDs specialise on diagnostics and illness, while the chiropractors continue with mostly anatomy and physical injury. Both educations total 6 years.
He has absolutely no philosophical view on chiropractics, and ignore this aspect of it entirely. In effect he is an extremely well trained physical therapist, and knows more about anatomy than the vast majority of MDs.
He treated a knee injury that's been bothering me for several years after i cracked my kneecap, which a knee specialist medical doctor (orthopedist?) gave up on. My knee is now perfectly fine after his manual (and extremely painful) treatment. He was flabbergasted that the specialist couldn't identify the cause of my knee problems, and shocked that I had to go untreated for so many years.
Modern chiropractors with a clinical education are definitely not quacks, they are highly trained therapists that can help a lot of people. What they practice is an aspect of clinical medicine, just like a physical therapist with extended education. My father is a MD with 30 years of experience, and he occasionally consults my brother for advice in certain areas.
Any money spent on trying to upgrade your RAM is wasted IMO.
I always upgrade parts only. Motherboard, RAM, and a processor gives you a cheap upgrade. For an office box you can go with integrated graphics, or a low end video card if you need Dualhead. For a gaming rig I usually go with middle end video cards, best bang for the buck. Thus I end up paying about half of what a comparable complete machine costs.
Disclaimer: After having parts die on me due to a cheap PSU, I bought a really good and expensive one a few years ago. It will probably support the power demands of my box many years into the future as well.
I submitted an idea to them a while ago where I proposed that they include exchange rates in Google Calculator. A few weeks later, the feature was there.
While this is such a simple idea that they've probably gotten hundreds of requests for it, I am grateful that they included it.
In fact, I never considered that I should be rewarded. They also stated so clearly on the submission page (which I can't find right now). I use the feature frequently, and am glad it is there. It's a benefit for me as well as for Google.
Sounds familiar, Dune 1 I think? When do my geek points arrive? :)
Interesting solutions, I've also wondered about why this isn't more common. In the article they also mention generating hydrogen:
Taking it even further, the energy might be stored mechanically from the start, by for instance using pumps in the turbines to build pressure, then converting that pressure into electricity at convenient times. I guess the complexity and weight of the turbines might cause engineering problems, but you might be able to save on a more efficient power conversion.
The article also mentions a change which will come if hybrid cars get more common; people could be enticed to charge at night (lower prices?), effectively storing the energy in thousands of high-capacity accumulators all over the place.
Nevertheless, any development in this area is very exciting :)
And therein lies the problem. An extremely large part of the world's transportation relies on fossil fuels. Even if we could find an efficient way of running all that transportation with electricity, we'll need an efficient way of providing that electricity.
That goes for distributing it, but more importantly, for generating it. It's possible, but for now it's a lot more cost-effective to burn dead dinosaurs sucked out of the ground. A ready-made energy soup there for the taking. Sad, but simple.
Still, I'm excited about any invention/discovery that leads us down the path of not burning those dead animals. We need it.
I have done a lot of what you do, also in academic publishing. Most authors are reasonable and let me do what I'm good at. A few will bicker to no end, just as you describe, and there are a couple of books we've almost refused to publish because the author doesn't understand the concept of deadlines, what is and isn't a reasonable change late in the process, and so on.
We try to be as flexible as possible when it comes to document formats and stuff like that. The authors should focus on the content of their book, our job is making whatever they submit look good. Of course we use our own tools to make that happen. In my experience the most difficult authors are the LaTex users, they are most prone to insist on keeping some horrendous layout rather than letting the professionals do their job. Coincidence, I'm sure :)
We've learnt not to start layout work until all major changes to the manuscript are done. Only then do we import it into our DPT software, in which it is very convenient to apply styles and layout.
I just tried at my work computer, it opens Firefox on WinXP. I guess that's because Firefox is my default browser.
If you're on Ubuntu, it is available through Synaptic if you want to try it. A presentation is also available on Wikipedia.
Yes, that would make more sense :)
This is why I have my sig, I probably won't make that mistake again.
Thanks!
The first one was a typo, thanks for the other one :)
Also: s/docked for it/docked for a missing item/
That's ridiculous. Any waiter except a very bad one will respect your wishes when you're at a restaurant, they will also be able to handle 3rd grade math or whatever mentally.
Most people wouldn't go back to a place where they were treated like that, and the waiter knows it. Their manager will also notice if they do it consistently.
My experience is that if their equipment doesn't handle it they'll do the math, or let us help out if they're not configdent. The total tip is likely to turn out bigger as well. Maybe things are different here in Europe? No, I'm not Dutch :)
However, I always notice them if they forgot to put an item on the bill... While they won't get docked for it they'll look bad to management.
I just tried your Slashdot account, it doesn't work :)
Except for in civilised societies, where the state doesn't kill people (including innocent ones), and "life for life, Eye for eye" is not taken literally. Here most people have agreed on taking action against it a long time ago.
There are so many unfixable objective problems with capital punishment that societies that value justice should avoid it altogether. The single flaw in your solution is presuming that the law should include such punishment.
That clears it up a bit - thanks!
Thanks, your post answered several of my questions. :)
If you have the time, could you explain a bit more about this ratio? What implications would it have if dark matter consisted of baryonic matter? Honest question, I simply don't know
I seem to recall that if you're in Australia, you have :)
Yup.
Actually, I have an image from the inside of Google Headquarters... lots of empty space :)