You've spent a lifetime debunking claims of the paranormal, and for that we thank you.
In your opinion, are there areas in modern society which are not identified as paranormal that should be investigated? If you were addressing a cadre of young scientists willing to make efforts into verifying or debunking things, are there important social issues which should be examined? Which issues would those be?
To frame the question in context, here are examples of the types of issues I am referring to:
1) Economic opinions and "schools of thought", "a little inflation is good" even though no one can state what the best value is, or come up with an analytical way of measuring it
2) Antidepressants have no effect, 90 percent of cancer studies can't be reproduced. The peer review process and scientific publishing in general.
3) Most soft science papers are confident to 95%, implying that on average the results of 1 out of 20 scientific papers arose due to chance.
I've read several of your books, used to have a subscription to "Skeptical Inquirer", and generally support your activities and those of other skeptics. (I sometimes point out that the emperor has no clothes on this very site:-)
Your books, and transcripts and stories of skeptic investigations, hold a generally belittling attitude towards the people you're investigating. Not at all the dispassionate, "here's the evidence, here's our conclusions" type of prose that is customary in scientific literature.
Regarding this tone of voice, what advice can you give to someone who does public writing? Has this attitude helped your cause, or served to impede it? If you were given the chance to start over, would you take the same attitude?
Basically, is "snark" a good writing style?
Nota Bene: For those who think this is a troll (it's not), I grabbed "Flim Flam" by James Randy off of my bookshelf (the first of his books I could find). Opening at random and starting from chapter 6 (Erich von Daniken &c) reads sentences/fragments such as: "The only facts in his four books [named] that I depend on are the page numbers", "perpetrated... a literary diddle of enormous scope", [Chapter 8] "Along with Freudian psychiatry, this madness has persisted to the present day".
I found the book informative and interesting, but the tone, sometimes nuanced and sometimes explicit, fairly screams "prejudice!" to the reader. To my mind, the style detracts from the credibility.
Online, tone of voice is everything. We have an opportunity to find out whether snark writing is more effective than dispassionate, and perhaps that will inform online writing.
Yeah, I know. I should have been more explicit in my post.
I'm not saying that port knocking should be the product API. Port knocking is a terrible security measure.
I'm saying that a backdoor could be hidden in such a way that it would be impossible to find - and port knocking is one of those methods. It's simple and effective - even if it's "security by obscurity".
Since this exploit is not well hidden, chances are it isn't a purpose-built backdoor, but more likely an oversight of some kind.
Port knocking is where the inbound system won't connect until a series of unsuccessful attempts is tried on a known sequence of ports - the system will open the door only when the visitor gives the "secret knock".
For example, a system won't normally accept connection requests. If the visitor attempts (unsuccessfully) ports 1010, 1050, 3042, and 4725 in that order, the system then accepts a connection at port 9000. (Use different numbers and length as needed for security.)
It is nigh impossible for a security audit to detect this type of camouflage. This technique has been well-known for years.
If China were putting back-doors in hardware systems, they could make them virtually impossible to find.
That's circumstantial evidence that this isn't a case of espionage on the part of the manufacturer. It's more likely a flaw in the software or a debugging port that wasn't compiled out in the released version.
FWIW, I did get the reference (and I own the movie).
I was addressing the intent of the reference in its original context. There's lots of reason to despair the heartless actuarial calculations of corporations, but only where warranted.
Note that I didn't snark your post (an urge that I find difficult to control). Don't be disheartened - your post wasn't modded "Funny", even though it's a valid attempt. I was just trying to supply some background.
So what you're really saying is "Take the number of [batteries] in the field, A, multiply by the probable rate of failure, B, multiply by the average out-of-court settlement, C. A times B times C equals X. If X is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one. "
The actual answer is more nuanced.
FAA regulations define 5 levels of critical for safety systems: levels A through E.
Level A is for things that can knock a plane out of the sky when they fail; for example the stall speed alarm. Level C is for things that can cause injury or at most a single death; for example, the cabin pressurization system Level E is for things that don't affect flight safety; such as, in-flight entertainment or the microwave in the galley
For reference, I wrote the software for cabin pressurization systems. It's level C (hardware == B), which means that failure in pressurization is an emergency situation, but isn't expected to kill everyone on board. The masks drop and the pilot immediately dives to under 10,000 feet to restore breathable air.
If the cabin fills with smoke, it's not life-threatening per se. The pilot can override the pressurization system and "dump" the cabin atmosphere, and it clears pretty quick. (The captain also dives to under 10,000 feet if necessary.)
The battery catching fire isn't a problem SO LONG AS the fire itself won't cripple the aircraft. The battery underpowering the plane when the alternator dies MAY BE a problem which would kill people.
The people who design these things take these levels into consideration, and the general rule is "fail safe". If you can't "fail safe", then "fail in the least dangerous way". In my experience, the engineer must make many choices when designing an aircraft unit. The answer is always "do it *this* way, because if *that* happens it will be less dangerous.
Let's wait and see what the investigation uncovers. Here are some Cliff notes:
1) Li-Ion batteries might behave differently at altitude (cabin pressure is reduced while flying) 2) The battery may be performing to spec, while trying to compensate for a more dangerous problem 3) Smoke in the cabin is not as dangerous as you might think 4) Things that burn are designed to not damage things when burning 5) People who design aircraft are pretty smart, and have a generally high moral standard. 6) People who investigate aircraft incidents are really, really thorough, and have a good track record.
(Note: Glossing over some details to make an easier read.)
Epson printers (and most inkjet printers in general) have a single photo-interrupter that detects proper paper feed. These are simple units - not the complex photocopiers in your workplace.
In the case of Epson, once the motor starts the paper has to trip the photo-interrupter within a window of some milliseconds (like - between 1/2 and 1 second) or the unit will throw a paper jam error.
After removing all the gears and rollers in the back of the printer, you have the photo-interrupter in hand, still wired to the unit. An easy way to use it is to make a "carrier board" on which to place your medium (filter paper, for instance). Put a notch in the front corner of the carrier so that when the first part of the carrier goes through the paper feed it doesn't trip the interrupter, but past the notch it does. If you cut your notch to the right length the timing is obeyed and the carrier is processed as a piece of paper.
(IOW, the leading edge of the carrier is 8" wide, because a 1/2" strip is cut from one side. Two inches further in the paper is 8 1/2" wide. The photo-interrupter is placed so that the notch doesn't interrupt, but the full width does.)
The print head rides above the paper surface roughly.06" (varies with printer, and is adjustable on some printers), so you may need to raise the print head a little. A dremel tool cutoff wheel and some washers for spacing will work here.
Epson printers use piezo print heads. These are available for thin money everywhere, sometimes for free: salvation army store, town dump, craigslist.
Hackers are using these to print etch-resist directly to copper-clad boards for making PCBs. The Epson ink is wax based instead of pigment based, so some of the inks make good etch resist (Mispro yellow apparently works best.) (Glossing over a few details.)
The cartridges are counter locked, but you can purchase a reflash tool on eBay for under $5 that will reset the code counter on any cartridge.
You can also purchase new, empty cartridges for just about any printer online (example: inksupply.com). That might be more convenient than trying to wash out a used cartridge, and the used cartridge may have wear-and-tear anyway.
The original article claims that the small nozzle/droplet size of modern printers make them unsuitable for biological printing. I'm skeptical of this claim, but if they say so...
Slashdot, you're really not hitting the high registers with these videos.
A video of people talking is good, but you need to punch it up a little. Use some powerpoint-style slides with text bullet points, then have the speaker read out the text as the audience follows along.
All that action and movement does little to enhance the video, and the scripted text makes it seem somehow terse. Don't do that - the discluencies - "ah", "uhmmm", "you know", and so on - are what make the speech sound normal. Drag the dialogue out a little!
And the cuts! A dozen or more different scenes in the example video doesn't add to the experience - just use one or two as you are currently doing. Showing someone flipping screens on a tablet is good - we need more articles about apps and products that people can purchase.
And be sure to put your video intro at the front every time. That way if the viewer is uninterested in the video, at least they will have spent the time looking at your logo.
The bloggers are not testing the scientific method, they are testing methods that are scientific. Those are two vastly different concepts. Their work is important, but not epic.
I'm not so sure about that.
We believe in a scientific method founded on observation and reproducible results, but for a great number of papers the results are not reproduced.
Taking soft sciences into consideration (psychology, social sciences, medical), most papers hinge on a 95% confidence level. This means that 1 out of every 20 results arise from chance, and no one bothers to check.
Recent reports tell us depression meds are no better than chance and scientists can only replicate 11% of cancer studies, so perhaps the ratio is higher than 1 in 20. And no one bothers to check.
I've read many follow-on studies in behavioral psychology where the researchers didn't bother to check the original results, and it all seems 'kinda fishy to me. Perhaps wide swaths of behavioral psychology have no foundation; or not, we can't really tell because the studies haven't been reproduced.
And finally, each of us has an "ontology" (ie - a representation of knowledge) which is used to convey information. If I tell you a recipe, I'm actually calling out bits of your ontology by name: add 3 cups of flour, mix, bake at 400 degrees, &c.
This assumes that your ontology is the same as mine, or similar enough that the differences are not relevant. If I say "mix", I assume that your mental image of "mix" is the same as mine....but people screw up recipes, don't understand assembly instructions, and are confused by small nuanced differences in documentation.
Does this happen in chemistry?
(Ignoring the view that reactions can depend on aspects that the researchers were unaware of, or didn't think were relevant. One researcher told me that one of her assistants could always make the reaction work but no one else could. Turns out that the assistant didn't rinse the glassware very well after washing, leaving behind a tiny bit of soap.)
It's good that people are reproducing studies. Undergrads and post-grads should reproduce results as part of their training, and successful attempts should be published - if only as a footnote to the original paper ("this result was reproduced by the following 5 teams..."). It's good practice for them, it will hold the original research to a higher standard, and eliminate the 1 out of 20 irreproducible results.
Also, reproducing the results might add insight into descriptive weaknesses, and might inform better descriptions. Perhaps results should be kept "Wikipedia" style, where people can annotate and comment on the descriptions for better clarity.
But then again, that's a lot of work. What was the goal, again?
So nice to see that so many dumbasses are out there willing to trust people like that with their data. What could possibly go wrong.
What part of "data is encrypted at the client using javascript" don't you understand?
I'll be happy to explain it to you. Was it the "javascript" part? Or maybe "encryption"? I can go over the difference between "client side" processing and "server side" if you like.
Please tell us. I've got a professional interest in sorting the dumbasses from the rest of the internet, and you seem to be able to tell the difference.
You can set up any number of separate E-mail addresses which get forwarded to your main E-mail, and if you set mega as the "exclusive sender" there's no limit count on that address.
The best part of the article is this quote from [Guardian correspondent] Felicity Lawrence:
"You get what you pay for," wrote Felicity Lawrence in the Guardian.
"The only surprise about the latest adulteration scandal, in which beefburgers at rock bottom prices turn out to contain horsemeat and traces of pig, is perhaps that they contain meat at all."
It's just so obvious! The low price should have been a clear tipoff to consumers that the beef advertized as beef wasn't what it seemed.
I can't wait to hear Felicity's special in-depth report on generic drugs.
Suppose you have a "smart" credit card in the form of one of those "credit card" calculators. Keypad + simple LCD display.
When you use the card, you type a pin/password on the card, which then generates a new single-use credit card number which attaches to your account, encrypts it with your personal key, and sends it off when the card is swiped.
If you lose your card, no one else has access since they don't have your PIN(*). No one can snoop the data since it's encrypted en-route. No one can copy your card since the information never leaves the card and anyway the number is single-use only.
Suppose this same card is in the form of a thumb drive. It identifies as a security token, and will encode and decode on request, but will not under any circumstance let the keys out. All calculations are done on the device, the code is fixed and cannot be changed, and requires a PIN once when the computer boots.
You don't have to worry about viruses or data leaks.
Since it is a thumb drive, you can add public keys with abandon. To do business with any company, you send them a token encoded with your private key and their public key, they send you information using their private key and your public key. The card will require the operator to enter the PIN to store a new corporate key (for convenience). All the public keys for your credit cards, store cards, bank access, &c are stored in one place.
Suppose the device is blue-tooth enabled. Now you don't need to hunt around for a USB port - you can enter your pin and hit "accept" when you want to make a purchase at a store - after the LCD display shows you the purchase price.
If you lose your device you get a new one. Go to the bank, show identification, get a new card with the bank's keys on it. If the bank keeps a backup of your stored corporate keys, they can download the keys along with your new private key at their secure site.
The important bit for all of this is a) the calculations are done on the device not an external computer, and b) storage for multiple corporate keys (visa, MC, Pennys, Wal-Mart, &c) in one device.
This has been obvious for years, it's just one of those cases where the entrenched monopoly has no incentive to fix the problem.
(*) Even assuming a thief can hack the physical card, it takes credit card theft away from "millions of cards were exposed by computer hack" to "lots of work required to hack a single card". And your bank will invalidate your old private key when the new card is issued.
The problem with Mr. Dot-Butt-Cum and his illegal theft operation is that he is clearly attempting to facilitate the theft of assets legally owned by folks other than himself, depriving these legal owners of income from their legally owned assets.
That's not a problem for me.
It's reached the point where I just don't care about the feelings or rights of the "legal owners of income" any more.
For lots of issues there are mitigating circumstances, ways to "consider the other person's point of view", ways to frame the discussion as shades of grey.
Not for these people.
I don't care about the arguments any more. No mitigating circumstances, no heartfelt appeals to starving artists, no reframing of the situation from their point of view.
There comes a point when considering their view is too much of a reach, and you admit to yourself that these people are just plain evil.
Buddah fought against evil, and so do I.
Mr. Dot-Butt-Cum is a despicable low-life (really) whose illegal operation will do more good for the world than all the media conglomerates put together. I applaud him for his sense of hurt, his outrage, and most importantly - his sense of doing something about it!
It's a problem for you, not a problem for me. I wonder how many people think it's not a problem for them, either?
The page under "Server requirements" has this interesting tidbit:
"Unfortunately, we can't work with hosting companies based in the United States. Safe harbour for service providers via the Digital Millennium Copyright Act has been undermined by the Department of Justice with its novel criminal prosecution of Megaupload. It is not safe for cloud storage sites or any business allowing user-generated content to be hosted on servers in the United States or on domains like.com /.net. The US government is frequently seizing domains without offering service providers a hearing or due process."
Get out the popcorn, this should be fun to watch!
(And a P.S. for web designers: mega.co.nz is a model of website design efficiency. Easy to read, short and to-the-point, graphics and layout which improve the presentation, and fast loading.)
The site isn't live yet, but the information pages are *really* interesting.
1) Distributed storage?
Mega is inviting people to be a mega storage node. Allocate some storage and bandwidth on your system, and Mega will store files there.
This would imply (to me, at least) that the site will use distributed storage. If I'm right, that means it will be nigh impossible for any authority to take the data offline in a single action. All Kim needs is a list associating peoples' files with where they are physically stored, and it won't matter to *the users* if the site gets taken down - he can just publish the list and everyone can get their files from the cloud storage nodes directly. (I'm probably overlooking a more elegant solution, such as unpublicized backup domains which can be announced as alternate portals if the main site gets taken down.)
Also - They propose to *pay you* for being a mega storage node. That won't be popular, no sirreee...
2) Published API?
They propose to publish a comprehensive API and software dev kit. In their words: "We hope to see a thriving ecosystem of crypto-enabled third-party client apps emerge."
We don't need to trust Kim for security. Open source applications will sprout like weeds, and you can choose from whichever publisher you trust. (The Firefox plugin from Mozilla perhaps, or the version put out by the Apache foundation...)
2) Encryption == No liability?
In their words: "You hold the keys to what you store in the cloud, not us."
This neatly avoids any liability on their part for hosting content, and at the same time protects everyone's online content from random web snooping by the likes of CIA, NSA, and various repressive regimes. Including Chinese hackers.
IANAL, correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems that attaching liability to this type of storage would require new laws, and a sea shift in the way liability is determined. Any such change would be unworkable, since it would also encompass broad swatches of the existing internet.
3) Better functionality
The site mentions improvements in functionality, such as having servers near the customer for speed (due to the distributed nature of storage), complete disk functionality, and so on.
====================
I have to say, this *really does* look like it will change the world, and will be the future made manifest.
Go check out Mega.co.nz and see for yourself - it's an interesting read.
(Oh, and if you would like to help erode the influence of the media conglomerates (RIAA, MPAA, &c), getting a free account and storing your legally owned files would be a drop in the bucket towards that end.)
They should change the name from "We The People" to "Why We Won't Listen".
I mean, seriously - has any petition on that site been acted upon? Does the number of petitioners even matter?
The site was only a stop-gap measure to give people hope in the credibility of the federal government. It's run its course as people have realized how pointless it is.
It was total PR, it's purpose was to address growing anger at the federal government and defuse some of the "Occupy Wall Street" demonstrations.
While writing the post I googled the article, but can't find it. The current debate on gun control is flooding the search results right now, even for something as specific as Scientific American.
On further reflection, I decided to say nothing as to which side was the "right" side of this issue. I'm trying to make a larger point, and the actual debate is secondary. Also, I'm hoping that this will encourage people to post evidence that I'm unaware of. (I clam that the evidence is clear on this issue, but I might be wrong.)
I can remember reading the article in my youth, it had clear conclusions. It's less relevant today than more modern statistics.
Sorry for the omission, it was somewhat on purpose.
I applaud the attitude. Verifying assumptions and otherwise scientific thinking are what we need most.
An increasing number of politicans will only listen to the scienticians if what they're saying supports the conclusions they've already arrived at.
They're not interested in facts, just their own ideology.
It's not just politicians, it's everywhere - even on Slashdot.
If you look at the gun control debate and only consider the evidence, the answer is obvious. It's been obvious for a long time - there was an article in Scientific American decades ago which explained the evidence and statistics. The conclusion hasn't changed since then.
And yet, people go back and forth on this very website arguing storylines instead of facts. Both sides continuously cite heartfelt stories in an attempt to sway others that what they believe is correct. The statistics are there, there's some attempt to mislead the debate by framing the numbers in specific ways, but overall it's clear-cut.
Being a scientist means you make evidence-based decisions. I may not like the decisions, and it may feel wrong to me, but at the end of the day I know that basing decisions on evidence is the most likely path to success.
If you don't form your beliefs based on evidence in the gun debate, why bother using evidence at all? If you can believe stories over evidence, then vaccinations cause autism, cell phones cause cancer, a little inflation is good, and a talking snake convinced a rib-woman to eat an apple from a magic tree.
There are cases where we don't have enough information, and "best guess" and "expert opinion" can probably serve; however, many times the evidence is overwhelming and the path is clear.
We would all do well to stop talking "pathos" in our posts and concentrate on facts.
That's what we should be doing, really: keep the debate focused on evidence. When there's a clear indication from evidence, don't let the other side wander off into storyland.
(I chose gun control as an emotionally-charged topic that's fresh in people's minds. I claim the point is valid for many issues discussed on Slashdot.)
Consider all the entities [stars, galaxies, or whatnot] in your study as points in 3-space. The descriptive length of the data is the total number of bits that describes the location of all points in your study.
If all points are random and evenly distributed, then the total number of bits required is (number of points)x(number of bits for 1 location).
Suppose you notice a clumping of points. Is this a structure or random variation?
Rework your data description as follows: for any point, use the first bit to determine whether a point is a member of the clump or not, and subsequent bits to complete the description, depending on whether the point is in the clump.
For this description, the total number of bits required is 1x(total number of points) + (number of points in clump)x(number of bits for location relative to clump) + (number of points not in clump)x(number of bits for general location).
If the 2nd description is shorter than the 1st description, then by Occam's razor the second description is more likely correct.
In fact, the number of bits directly tells the probability that the 2nd description is correct: if the 2nd description requires 10 fewer bits (total) than the 1st, then the 2nd description is more likely to be correct by a factor of 1024. Alternately, there is a 1/1024 chance that the 2nd description is *not* the correct description of the data.
If you have lots of data, it's not unusual for a descriptive length to be thousands of bits shorter than the baseline description; meaning, that it's virtually certain that the new description is correct and that the new structure does not arise from random variation.
I haven't seen the data, but I assume that describing all galaxies in the universe using the newly described "clump" as a categorical structure gives a smaller descriptive entropy than describing all galaxies without the extra category of "clump".
When I was a senior developer, I would have a weekly status meeting with my team. The meeting always started off with basic status reports (what did you do, what are you stuck on, what do you need help with), followed by project updates from other teams (where pertinent) and finally a free topic session to discuss any issue.
Okay, just to be clear.
In your meetings, everyone waits while one person tells his status, then everyone waits while a 2nd person tells his status, and so on.
How is this more efficient than everyone composing a 1-paragraph summary and sending it around in E-mail? How is this more efficient than the boss visiting everyone one-at-a-time, taking notes, and typing up a summary E-mail?
How is a "free topics" meeting with everyone better than "targetted topics" meetings with only the people involved? Aren't impropmtu get-togethers with a couple of people in the bosse's office more effective than big meetings in the conference room?
I'm confused. What about your meetings make them good meetings?
Sovereign debt isn't the core issue, in that debt is neither good nor bad and has some uses.
What I find objectionable is the blanket pronouncement by economists that "it's not like your family debt" as a way of deflecting analysis and criticism of the US government's situation.
It's disingenuous, and it belies the deep problems with the current US policy.
(To contrast, I think that much of our current debt is the bad kind. Of the rest, economists would be better served by saying "it's for *this* purpose and only for a little while, and then we'll pay it down" or similar. But they don't do that.)
I'm not against sovereign debt properly used.
From your answer, you probably understand the issues. I just wanted to make clear that I object to the blanket statement.
Slashdot Mirror
You've spent a lifetime debunking claims of the paranormal, and for that we thank you.
In your opinion, are there areas in modern society which are not identified as paranormal that should be investigated? If you were addressing a cadre of young scientists willing to make efforts into verifying or debunking things, are there important social issues which should be examined? Which issues would those be?
To frame the question in context, here are examples of the types of issues I am referring to:
1) Economic opinions and "schools of thought", "a little inflation is good" even though no one can state what the best value is, or come up with an analytical way of measuring it
2) Antidepressants have no effect, 90 percent of cancer studies can't be reproduced. The peer review process and scientific publishing in general.
3) Most soft science papers are confident to 95%, implying that on average the results of 1 out of 20 scientific papers arose due to chance.
I've read several of your books, used to have a subscription to "Skeptical Inquirer", and generally support your activities and those of other skeptics. (I sometimes point out that the emperor has no clothes on this very site :-)
Your books, and transcripts and stories of skeptic investigations, hold a generally belittling attitude towards the people you're investigating. Not at all the dispassionate, "here's the evidence, here's our conclusions" type of prose that is customary in scientific literature.
Regarding this tone of voice, what advice can you give to someone who does public writing? Has this attitude helped your cause, or served to impede it? If you were given the chance to start over, would you take the same attitude?
Basically, is "snark" a good writing style?
Nota Bene: For those who think this is a troll (it's not), I grabbed "Flim Flam" by James Randy off of my bookshelf (the first of his books I could find). Opening at random and starting from chapter 6 (Erich von Daniken &c) reads sentences/fragments such as: "The only facts in his four books [named] that I depend on are the page numbers", "perpetrated ... a literary diddle of enormous scope", [Chapter 8] "Along with Freudian psychiatry, this madness has persisted to the present day".
I found the book informative and interesting, but the tone, sometimes nuanced and sometimes explicit, fairly screams "prejudice!" to the reader. To my mind, the style detracts from the credibility.
Online, tone of voice is everything. We have an opportunity to find out whether snark writing is more effective than dispassionate, and perhaps that will inform online writing.
Yeah, I know. I should have been more explicit in my post.
I'm not saying that port knocking should be the product API. Port knocking is a terrible security measure.
I'm saying that a backdoor could be hidden in such a way that it would be impossible to find - and port knocking is one of those methods. It's simple and effective - even if it's "security by obscurity".
Since this exploit is not well hidden, chances are it isn't a purpose-built backdoor, but more likely an oversight of some kind.
Port knocking is where the inbound system won't connect until a series of unsuccessful attempts is tried on a known sequence of ports - the system will open the door only when the visitor gives the "secret knock".
For example, a system won't normally accept connection requests. If the visitor attempts (unsuccessfully) ports 1010, 1050, 3042, and 4725 in that order, the system then accepts a connection at port 9000. (Use different numbers and length as needed for security.)
It is nigh impossible for a security audit to detect this type of camouflage. This technique has been well-known for years.
If China were putting back-doors in hardware systems, they could make them virtually impossible to find.
That's circumstantial evidence that this isn't a case of espionage on the part of the manufacturer. It's more likely a flaw in the software or a debugging port that wasn't compiled out in the released version.
FWIW, I did get the reference (and I own the movie).
I was addressing the intent of the reference in its original context. There's lots of reason to despair the heartless actuarial calculations of corporations, but only where warranted.
Note that I didn't snark your post (an urge that I find difficult to control). Don't be disheartened - your post wasn't modded "Funny", even though it's a valid attempt. I was just trying to supply some background.
So what you're really saying is "Take the number of [batteries] in the field, A, multiply by the probable rate of failure, B, multiply by the average out-of-court settlement, C. A times B times C equals X. If X is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one. "
The actual answer is more nuanced.
FAA regulations define 5 levels of critical for safety systems: levels A through E.
Level A is for things that can knock a plane out of the sky when they fail; for example the stall speed alarm.
Level C is for things that can cause injury or at most a single death; for example, the cabin pressurization system
Level E is for things that don't affect flight safety; such as, in-flight entertainment or the microwave in the galley
For reference, I wrote the software for cabin pressurization systems. It's level C (hardware == B), which means that failure in pressurization is an emergency situation, but isn't expected to kill everyone on board. The masks drop and the pilot immediately dives to under 10,000 feet to restore breathable air.
If the cabin fills with smoke, it's not life-threatening per se. The pilot can override the pressurization system and "dump" the cabin atmosphere, and it clears pretty quick. (The captain also dives to under 10,000 feet if necessary.)
The battery catching fire isn't a problem SO LONG AS the fire itself won't cripple the aircraft. The battery underpowering the plane when the alternator dies MAY BE a problem which would kill people.
The people who design these things take these levels into consideration, and the general rule is "fail safe". If you can't "fail safe", then "fail in the least dangerous way". In my experience, the engineer must make many choices when designing an aircraft unit. The answer is always "do it *this* way, because if *that* happens it will be less dangerous.
Let's wait and see what the investigation uncovers. Here are some Cliff notes:
1) Li-Ion batteries might behave differently at altitude (cabin pressure is reduced while flying)
2) The battery may be performing to spec, while trying to compensate for a more dangerous problem
3) Smoke in the cabin is not as dangerous as you might think
4) Things that burn are designed to not damage things when burning
5) People who design aircraft are pretty smart, and have a generally high moral standard.
6) People who investigate aircraft incidents are really, really thorough, and have a good track record.
(Note: Glossing over some details to make an easier read.)
Epson printers (and most inkjet printers in general) have a single photo-interrupter that detects proper paper feed. These are simple units - not the complex photocopiers in your workplace.
In the case of Epson, once the motor starts the paper has to trip the photo-interrupter within a window of some milliseconds (like - between 1/2 and 1 second) or the unit will throw a paper jam error.
After removing all the gears and rollers in the back of the printer, you have the photo-interrupter in hand, still wired to the unit. An easy way to use it is to make a "carrier board" on which to place your medium (filter paper, for instance). Put a notch in the front corner of the carrier so that when the first part of the carrier goes through the paper feed it doesn't trip the interrupter, but past the notch it does. If you cut your notch to the right length the timing is obeyed and the carrier is processed as a piece of paper.
(IOW, the leading edge of the carrier is 8" wide, because a 1/2" strip is cut from one side. Two inches further in the paper is 8 1/2" wide. The photo-interrupter is placed so that the notch doesn't interrupt, but the full width does.)
The print head rides above the paper surface roughly .06" (varies with printer, and is adjustable on some printers), so you may need to raise the print head a little. A dremel tool cutoff wheel and some washers for spacing will work here.
Epson printers use piezo print heads. These are available for thin money everywhere, sometimes for free: salvation army store, town dump, craigslist.
Hackers are using these to print etch-resist directly to copper-clad boards for making PCBs. The Epson ink is wax based instead of pigment based, so some of the inks make good etch resist (Mispro yellow apparently works best.) (Glossing over a few details.)
The cartridges are counter locked, but you can purchase a reflash tool on eBay for under $5 that will reset the code counter on any cartridge.
You can also purchase new, empty cartridges for just about any printer online (example: inksupply.com). That might be more convenient than trying to wash out a used cartridge, and the used cartridge may have wear-and-tear anyway.
The original article claims that the small nozzle/droplet size of modern printers make them unsuitable for biological printing. I'm skeptical of this claim, but if they say so...
Slashdot, you're really not hitting the high registers with these videos.
A video of people talking is good, but you need to punch it up a little. Use some powerpoint-style slides with text bullet points, then have the speaker read out the text as the audience follows along.
Here's an example of what *not* to do.
All that action and movement does little to enhance the video, and the scripted text makes it seem somehow terse. Don't do that - the discluencies - "ah", "uhmmm", "you know", and so on - are what make the speech sound normal. Drag the dialogue out a little!
And the cuts! A dozen or more different scenes in the example video doesn't add to the experience - just use one or two as you are currently doing. Showing someone flipping screens on a tablet is good - we need more articles about apps and products that people can purchase.
And be sure to put your video intro at the front every time. That way if the viewer is uninterested in the video, at least they will have spent the time looking at your logo.
Overall though, it's a pretty good video. Keep up the good work! It's hard to find videos of interest to tech people.
The bloggers are not testing the scientific method, they are testing methods that are scientific. Those are two vastly different concepts. Their work is important, but not epic.
I'm not so sure about that.
We believe in a scientific method founded on observation and reproducible results, but for a great number of papers the results are not reproduced.
Taking soft sciences into consideration (psychology, social sciences, medical), most papers hinge on a 95% confidence level. This means that 1 out of every 20 results arise from chance, and no one bothers to check.
Recent reports tell us depression meds are no better than chance and scientists can only replicate 11% of cancer studies, so perhaps the ratio is higher than 1 in 20. And no one bothers to check.
I've read many follow-on studies in behavioral psychology where the researchers didn't bother to check the original results, and it all seems 'kinda fishy to me. Perhaps wide swaths of behavioral psychology have no foundation; or not, we can't really tell because the studies haven't been reproduced.
And finally, each of us has an "ontology" (ie - a representation of knowledge) which is used to convey information. If I tell you a recipe, I'm actually calling out bits of your ontology by name: add 3 cups of flour, mix, bake at 400 degrees, &c.
This assumes that your ontology is the same as mine, or similar enough that the differences are not relevant. If I say "mix", I assume that your mental image of "mix" is the same as mine. ...but people screw up recipes, don't understand assembly instructions, and are confused by small nuanced differences in documentation.
Does this happen in chemistry?
(Ignoring the view that reactions can depend on aspects that the researchers were unaware of, or didn't think were relevant. One researcher told me that one of her assistants could always make the reaction work but no one else could. Turns out that the assistant didn't rinse the glassware very well after washing, leaving behind a tiny bit of soap.)
It's good that people are reproducing studies. Undergrads and post-grads should reproduce results as part of their training, and successful attempts should be published - if only as a footnote to the original paper ("this result was reproduced by the following 5 teams..."). It's good practice for them, it will hold the original research to a higher standard, and eliminate the 1 out of 20 irreproducible results.
Also, reproducing the results might add insight into descriptive weaknesses, and might inform better descriptions. Perhaps results should be kept "Wikipedia" style, where people can annotate and comment on the descriptions for better clarity.
But then again, that's a lot of work. What was the goal, again?
So nice to see that so many dumbasses are out there willing to trust people like that with their data. What could possibly go wrong.
What part of "data is encrypted at the client using javascript" don't you understand?
I'll be happy to explain it to you. Was it the "javascript" part? Or maybe "encryption"? I can go over the difference between "client side" processing and "server side" if you like.
Please tell us. I've got a professional interest in sorting the dumbasses from the rest of the internet, and you seem to be able to tell the difference.
Try an E-mail multiplier, such as SpamGourmet.
You can set up any number of separate E-mail addresses which get forwarded to your main E-mail, and if you set mega as the "exclusive sender" there's no limit count on that address.
The best part of the article is this quote from [Guardian correspondent] Felicity Lawrence:
"You get what you pay for," wrote Felicity Lawrence in the Guardian.
"The only surprise about the latest adulteration scandal, in which beefburgers at rock bottom prices turn out to contain horsemeat and traces of pig, is perhaps that they contain meat at all."
It's just so obvious! The low price should have been a clear tipoff to consumers that the beef advertized as beef wasn't what it seemed.
I can't wait to hear Felicity's special in-depth report on generic drugs.
Suppose you have a "smart" credit card in the form of one of those "credit card" calculators. Keypad + simple LCD display.
When you use the card, you type a pin/password on the card, which then generates a new single-use credit card number which attaches to your account, encrypts it with your personal key, and sends it off when the card is swiped.
If you lose your card, no one else has access since they don't have your PIN(*). No one can snoop the data since it's encrypted en-route. No one can copy your card since the information never leaves the card and anyway the number is single-use only.
Suppose this same card is in the form of a thumb drive. It identifies as a security token, and will encode and decode on request, but will not under any circumstance let the keys out. All calculations are done on the device, the code is fixed and cannot be changed, and requires a PIN once when the computer boots.
You don't have to worry about viruses or data leaks.
Since it is a thumb drive, you can add public keys with abandon. To do business with any company, you send them a token encoded with your private key and their public key, they send you information using their private key and your public key. The card will require the operator to enter the PIN to store a new corporate key (for convenience). All the public keys for your credit cards, store cards, bank access, &c are stored in one place.
Suppose the device is blue-tooth enabled. Now you don't need to hunt around for a USB port - you can enter your pin and hit "accept" when you want to make a purchase at a store - after the LCD display shows you the purchase price.
If you lose your device you get a new one. Go to the bank, show identification, get a new card with the bank's keys on it. If the bank keeps a backup of your stored corporate keys, they can download the keys along with your new private key at their secure site.
The important bit for all of this is a) the calculations are done on the device not an external computer, and b) storage for multiple corporate keys (visa, MC, Pennys, Wal-Mart, &c) in one device.
This has been obvious for years, it's just one of those cases where the entrenched monopoly has no incentive to fix the problem.
(*) Even assuming a thief can hack the physical card, it takes credit card theft away from "millions of cards were exposed by computer hack" to "lots of work required to hack a single card". And your bank will invalidate your old private key when the new card is issued.
The problem with Mr. Dot-Butt-Cum and his illegal theft operation is that he is clearly attempting to facilitate the theft of assets legally owned by folks other than himself, depriving these legal owners of income from their legally owned assets.
That's not a problem for me.
It's reached the point where I just don't care about the feelings or rights of the "legal owners of income" any more.
For lots of issues there are mitigating circumstances, ways to "consider the other person's point of view", ways to frame the discussion as shades of grey.
Not for these people.
I don't care about the arguments any more. No mitigating circumstances, no heartfelt appeals to starving artists, no reframing of the situation from their point of view.
There comes a point when considering their view is too much of a reach, and you admit to yourself that these people are just plain evil.
Buddah fought against evil, and so do I.
Mr. Dot-Butt-Cum is a despicable low-life (really) whose illegal operation will do more good for the world than all the media conglomerates put together. I applaud him for his sense of hurt, his outrage, and most importantly - his sense of doing something about it!
It's a problem for you, not a problem for me. I wonder how many people think it's not a problem for them, either?
The page under "Server requirements" has this interesting tidbit:
"Unfortunately, we can't work with hosting companies based in the United States. Safe harbour for service providers via the Digital Millennium Copyright Act has been undermined by the Department of Justice with its novel criminal prosecution of Megaupload. It is not safe for cloud storage sites or any business allowing user-generated content to be hosted on servers in the United States or on domains like .com / .net. The US government is frequently seizing domains without offering service providers a hearing or due process."
Get out the popcorn, this should be fun to watch!
(And a P.S. for web designers: mega.co.nz is a model of website design efficiency. Easy to read, short and to-the-point, graphics and layout which improve the presentation, and fast loading.)
The site isn't live yet, but the information pages are *really* interesting.
1) Distributed storage?
Mega is inviting people to be a mega storage node. Allocate some storage and bandwidth on your system, and Mega will store files there.
This would imply (to me, at least) that the site will use distributed storage. If I'm right, that means it will be nigh impossible for any authority to take the data offline in a single action. All Kim needs is a list associating peoples' files with where they are physically stored, and it won't matter to *the users* if the site gets taken down - he can just publish the list and everyone can get their files from the cloud storage nodes directly. (I'm probably overlooking a more elegant solution, such as unpublicized backup domains which can be announced as alternate portals if the main site gets taken down.)
Also - They propose to *pay you* for being a mega storage node. That won't be popular, no sirreee...
2) Published API?
They propose to publish a comprehensive API and software dev kit. In their words: "We hope to see a thriving ecosystem of crypto-enabled third-party client apps emerge."
We don't need to trust Kim for security. Open source applications will sprout like weeds, and you can choose from whichever publisher you trust. (The Firefox plugin from Mozilla perhaps, or the version put out by the Apache foundation...)
2) Encryption == No liability?
In their words: "You hold the keys to what you store in the cloud, not us."
This neatly avoids any liability on their part for hosting content, and at the same time protects everyone's online content from random web snooping by the likes of CIA, NSA, and various repressive regimes. Including Chinese hackers.
IANAL, correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems that attaching liability to this type of storage would require new laws, and a sea shift in the way liability is determined. Any such change would be unworkable, since it would also encompass broad swatches of the existing internet.
3) Better functionality
The site mentions improvements in functionality, such as having servers near the customer for speed (due to the distributed nature of storage), complete disk functionality, and so on.
====================
I have to say, this *really does* look like it will change the world, and will be the future made manifest.
Go check out Mega.co.nz and see for yourself - it's an interesting read.
(Oh, and if you would like to help erode the influence of the media conglomerates (RIAA, MPAA, &c), getting a free account and storing your legally owned files would be a drop in the bucket towards that end.)
They should change the name from "We The People" to "Why We Won't Listen".
I mean, seriously - has any petition on that site been acted upon? Does the number of petitioners even matter?
The site was only a stop-gap measure to give people hope in the credibility of the federal government. It's run its course as people have realized how pointless it is.
It was total PR, it's purpose was to address growing anger at the federal government and defuse some of the "Occupy Wall Street" demonstrations.
While writing the post I googled the article, but can't find it. The current debate on gun control is flooding the search results right now, even for something as specific as Scientific American.
On further reflection, I decided to say nothing as to which side was the "right" side of this issue. I'm trying to make a larger point, and the actual debate is secondary. Also, I'm hoping that this will encourage people to post evidence that I'm unaware of. (I clam that the evidence is clear on this issue, but I might be wrong.)
I can remember reading the article in my youth, it had clear conclusions. It's less relevant today than more modern statistics.
Sorry for the omission, it was somewhat on purpose.
I applaud the attitude. Verifying assumptions and otherwise scientific thinking are what we need most.
An increasing number of politicans will only listen to the scienticians if what they're saying supports the conclusions they've already arrived at.
They're not interested in facts, just their own ideology.
It's not just politicians, it's everywhere - even on Slashdot.
If you look at the gun control debate and only consider the evidence, the answer is obvious. It's been obvious for a long time - there was an article in Scientific American decades ago which explained the evidence and statistics. The conclusion hasn't changed since then.
And yet, people go back and forth on this very website arguing storylines instead of facts. Both sides continuously cite heartfelt stories in an attempt to sway others that what they believe is correct. The statistics are there, there's some attempt to mislead the debate by framing the numbers in specific ways, but overall it's clear-cut.
Being a scientist means you make evidence-based decisions. I may not like the decisions, and it may feel wrong to me, but at the end of the day I know that basing decisions on evidence is the most likely path to success.
If you don't form your beliefs based on evidence in the gun debate, why bother using evidence at all? If you can believe stories over evidence, then vaccinations cause autism, cell phones cause cancer, a little inflation is good, and a talking snake convinced a rib-woman to eat an apple from a magic tree.
There are cases where we don't have enough information, and "best guess" and "expert opinion" can probably serve; however, many times the evidence is overwhelming and the path is clear.
We would all do well to stop talking "pathos" in our posts and concentrate on facts.
That's what we should be doing, really: keep the debate focused on evidence. When there's a clear indication from evidence, don't let the other side wander off into storyland.
(I chose gun control as an emotionally-charged topic that's fresh in people's minds. I claim the point is valid for many issues discussed on Slashdot.)
And we all know, the best way to foster creativity is...
Consider all the entities [stars, galaxies, or whatnot] in your study as points in 3-space. The descriptive length of the data is the total number of bits that describes the location of all points in your study.
If all points are random and evenly distributed, then the total number of bits required is (number of points)x(number of bits for 1 location).
Suppose you notice a clumping of points. Is this a structure or random variation?
Rework your data description as follows: for any point, use the first bit to determine whether a point is a member of the clump or not, and subsequent bits to complete the description, depending on whether the point is in the clump.
For this description, the total number of bits required is 1x(total number of points) + (number of points in clump)x(number of bits for location relative to clump) + (number of points not in clump)x(number of bits for general location).
If the 2nd description is shorter than the 1st description, then by Occam's razor the second description is more likely correct.
In fact, the number of bits directly tells the probability that the 2nd description is correct: if the 2nd description requires 10 fewer bits (total) than the 1st, then the 2nd description is more likely to be correct by a factor of 1024. Alternately, there is a 1/1024 chance that the 2nd description is *not* the correct description of the data.
If you have lots of data, it's not unusual for a descriptive length to be thousands of bits shorter than the baseline description; meaning, that it's virtually certain that the new description is correct and that the new structure does not arise from random variation.
I haven't seen the data, but I assume that describing all galaxies in the universe using the newly described "clump" as a categorical structure gives a smaller descriptive entropy than describing all galaxies without the extra category of "clump".
When I was a senior developer, I would have a weekly status meeting with my team. The meeting always started off with basic status reports (what did you do, what are you stuck on, what do you need help with), followed by project updates from other teams (where pertinent) and finally a free topic session to discuss any issue.
Okay, just to be clear.
In your meetings, everyone waits while one person tells his status, then everyone waits while a 2nd person tells his status, and so on.
How is this more efficient than everyone composing a 1-paragraph summary and sending it around in E-mail? How is this more efficient than the boss visiting everyone one-at-a-time, taking notes, and typing up a summary E-mail?
How is a "free topics" meeting with everyone better than "targetted topics" meetings with only the people involved? Aren't impropmtu get-togethers with a couple of people in the bosse's office more effective than big meetings in the conference room?
I'm confused. What about your meetings make them good meetings?
... It looks like a simple look up of cached info.
I always use robots.txt to forbid caching my incriminating evidence.
You can't be too careful these days...
Sovereign debt isn't the core issue, in that debt is neither good nor bad and has some uses.
What I find objectionable is the blanket pronouncement by economists that "it's not like your family debt" as a way of deflecting analysis and criticism of the US government's situation.
It's disingenuous, and it belies the deep problems with the current US policy.
(To contrast, I think that much of our current debt is the bad kind. Of the rest, economists would be better served by saying "it's for *this* purpose and only for a little while, and then we'll pay it down" or similar. But they don't do that.)
I'm not against sovereign debt properly used.
From your answer, you probably understand the issues. I just wanted to make clear that I object to the blanket statement.