In some defense, if he is a member of the organization not in a capacity of financial beneficiary of copyright, then it isn't quite so clear cut.
Sorry but it is very clear cut. When you go to trial you expect to face an unbiased judge who will decide based on the merits of the case. Everyone's justice system relies on this principle. In reality of course everyone has their own biases. This is why it is essential for judges to be publicly apolitical to a large degree. To do otherwise makes it impossible for anyone to believe in the justice system because it is so easy to claim that they reached a particular verdict due to some political affiliation whether or not this is really the case. The result is complete loss of confidence in the justice system which is a bad place to be.
What, the cracker can't reboot into single-user mode?
You can do things to make that hard - although I'll admit that most do not. However Linux boxes are frequently (even predominantly?) accessed remotely and are not always located somewhere physically accessible (those in our server room for example). Windows boxes are almost always physically accessible because it is hard to use them remotely.
Yes but for Linux they require root access and I would argue that acquiring that in the first place requires a lot of work and skill whereas with Windows is it generally handed to you as long as you are sat in front of the machine.
I think his point was that was that there is a huge market and since it is becoming viable it is a good way to serve that market.
True but is this a real market i.e. do employers take these qualifications seriously or is it just that people have the impression that they take them seriously?
I guess we will find out. I think the business model isn't in your favor. Current school costs are not sustainable and don't adequately serve the non-traditional age student.
The vast majority of students are "traditional" age though and it is those that the system is primarily designed for. Your example with a film is flawed because there is essentially no difference between the cinema or a DVD other than the size of the screen. There is a considerable difference between a degree from the University of Phoenix and, say, the University of Cambridge though.
After all, East Asia has 81, Africa 122, North America 133 etc. why single out Middle East with 157, with words like "no surprise" and "paltry"?
Probably because it was written by an American who was trying to sound funny by pointing out that the Middle East had produced more documents than the entire continent of North America? By calling that number 'paltry' is implying even more of an insult to the number they produced.
The GP really ought to calm down and not try to deliberately interpret things in the worst possible light.
Actually, IIRC, you need a beam wide enough to irradiate the entire patient's body at once otherwise the Fourier transform used to generate the picture gives artifacts so I don't think a pencil thin beam will help. However I have heard that it is great for killing tumours. Apparently you can slice and dice them with a coherent X-Ray source and it is far worse for them than healthy tissue. This way you can reduce the collateral damage to tissue near the tumour.
Why? It should be inferred. He is talking about legitimate schools.
I have never heard of the University of Phoenix so how do I know it is a legitimate university? Even if it is legitimate the quality of education at legitimate universities varies considerably. The OP's point that simply because they are able to do this makes it a good idea is ludicrous. The quality of the education has to be taken into account.
By face-to-face I assume you mean where you can see the professor's face with aid of binoculars and occasionally talk to a TA?
You describe first year courses and possibly a few second year ones. You are certainly correct that these can be greatly helped along by IT and indeed that's where I use most online material. However by the time you reach the 3rd and 4th years the courses are far smaller and the material is sufficiently advanced that face-to-face teaching is required because you need the interactivity so that you know what has not been understood and can spend more time explaining it. Hence my assertion that IT will assist and improve but not supplant face-to-face teaching.
If the Higher Learning Commission accepts the institution's model then why are you so skeptical of it?
I'm guessing here but perhaps it is because he got a good education which means that he questions things put before him and does not blindly accept what a bureaucratic body tells him. I'm not saying he is right but Einstein would not have got very far with General Relativity if his argument had been "I'm Einstein and you all know from my 1905 papers that I'm really smart so this must be right too.".
I will not say anything about the quality of the education they offer, but if they are physically ABLE TO accommodate that many students and that many classes, then it can be done.
Don't you think that you should say something about the quality of the education they offer? If you ignore this then you can set up an office with a webserver and a laser printer. Give the customers a webpage to read, a short online quiz and then print and mail them their diploma. Of course the qualification would be utterly worthless but since you are ABLE TO do it and I am sure that somewhere some people ARE DOING IT then this proves it needs to be done, right?
Just like books are a tool that helped education computers and the webs are also helping. However to think that they will completely replace face to face education is insane. They will augment and improve it, not supplant it.
There is a big problem with going with a highly insulated home: moisture.
Actually all the walls here are hermetically sealed - something I'm not a fan of because the house becomes stifling in summer. The reason is that with the temperature outside -10 or lower any moisture inside will condense and, as it moves further outside, freeze. The result is a moist layer at some depth into the wall which will happy rot anything there. Even with thin insulation the problem would exist because of the temp difference and the humid beings inside. Air circulation will simply move the condensation somewhere else. The only way to stop it is to seal the wall.
I agree that it is doable but unlike in Europe the houses here are all wood which seems to make the walls a lot thinner. In fact our estate agent was not happy when she asked what we were looking for and I replied a house made of bricks - they do exist but not in our price range! The result is that the walls are thin, even though insulated, and there is no cavity wall to pack with more insulation.
Additionally the winters here in Edmonton range from -10 to -30 (and sometimes lower) so they are significantly colder. However the summers are quite warm +23-28 and even with the insulation we have the house becomes stiflingly hot to the point where we have thought about air conditioning which would probably negate any savings made in the winter.
The standard model isn't wrong, any more than newtonian physics is wrong.
Sorry but we know that both Newtonian physics and the Standard Model are wrong - in the case of the SM we just don't know exactly how it goes wrong yet - other than neutrino masses which are easy to fix. Just because Newtonian physics works for everyday events does not make it correct - it is fundamentally wrong but it is a good and useful approximation to what is really happening.
In the same way the SM is also wrong. It has no explanation of gravity, a huge fine tuning problem and no explanation of Dark Matter and Baryon number violation. So we know that fundamentally it is wrong since it does not explain all the phenomena of the Universe we live in. However it is a very good approximation and correctly models all the phenomena we can produce in the lab. It is really what we call an "effective field theory" which means that it is a low energy approximation of a fundamental theory. Unfortunately we just don't know what that fundamental theory actually is.
From the paper, it looks like this is enough stronger than a hypothesis, to justify the appellation "theory".
They are suggesting a new type of charged particle that somehow we have not seen - the diagram in the article summary is the wrong one, you need to read the paper. As such it is extremely hypothetical and, unless the experiment is trivial (and at the sensitivity levels suggested I'm not sure that it is), it would be good to see some evidence that these new charged particles are consistent with the ultra-precise g-2 experimental results testing QED. There are also precision K and B physics experimental data that could be affected as well. Its an interesting idea though.
This won't be debunked, its true. Once you look at the feynman diagrams its obviously a possible effect.
If you read the paper and not the very bad summary in the article - along with a wrong diagram - then this is not what they are suggesting. They calculate the neutrino digram shown in the article and which you estimated and come up with a probability of O(10^-130) times a function of the neutrino mass, barrier thickness and photon energy. This would be an interesting way to measure neutrino mass if the probability were not so low.
What they are actually wanting to test is whether there are new, fractionally charged particles out there. So this is not something that is guaranteed to work. In fact I do not see how we would not have already seen such particles before now in virtual effects in K and B experiments if nothing else...but I have not looked at it in detail.
Ideas in physics are never proven true. They are shown not to contradict any existing evidence, that is all. I can't think of any more than a few decades old which have survived even this.
I can: Relativity (both Special and General) and Quantum Mechanics. These have been around for over 100 years (since 1905). SR and quantum theory are the two most precisely tested scientific theories ever.
Sure, we're not all US, but US households are becoming a de-facto benchmark because they're the biggest consumers of energy on a per-household (or per-capita) basis.
Actually they are not. In Canada we have a bigger household energy consumption than the US but this is due to heating. When it the winter lasts 6 months and temperatures drop to -40C heating tends to use a lot of energy no matter how efficient your home's insultation is.
Bolting the barn door after the horse has bolted is indeed a pointless exercise. However that does not mean that you are any less at fault for not having bolted it in the first place.
I think it's great. It shows that NASA can take a joke
If they could take a joke they would have named the module after him instead of copping out like this. If you are going to have a public poll for the name then you have to be prepared to accept the consequences. If you are not then pick the name yourself.
True but Uranium is highly toxic so you might not die of radiation but you may still die or at least get rather sick. Also pure U-238 is called depleted Uranium so it is not really a completely fair comparison because weapons use enriched Uranium which has a far higher concentration of U-235. I can't remember the exact percentage required off the top of my head but since the half-life is over 6 times less than U-238 this will increase the radiation.
Microsoft continually talks about "experience" -- if a crappy driver spoils my experience, then Microsoft has a problem, even if MS is not at fault.
MS is at fault. They should not allow the hardware manufacturer to claim their hardware is compatible with Windows if it isn't. Battling buggy and incompatible drivers is only part of the Windows experience because MS allow it to be.
I'll admit this was high tech stuff back in 1945, but it's now the year 2009. It's largely a question of cost.
It was still a question of cost then. Thankfully isotope separation is extremely hard to do but at some point technology will give us a way to do it more easily and cheaply (France already is investigating laser isotope separation techniques) and when it does we should be very worried.
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At least it is only lobbying - in the US they are members of political parties and sometimes get to decide elections.
In some defense, if he is a member of the organization not in a capacity of financial beneficiary of copyright, then it isn't quite so clear cut.
Sorry but it is very clear cut. When you go to trial you expect to face an unbiased judge who will decide based on the merits of the case. Everyone's justice system relies on this principle. In reality of course everyone has their own biases. This is why it is essential for judges to be publicly apolitical to a large degree. To do otherwise makes it impossible for anyone to believe in the justice system because it is so easy to claim that they reached a particular verdict due to some political affiliation whether or not this is really the case. The result is complete loss of confidence in the justice system which is a bad place to be.
What, the cracker can't reboot into single-user mode?
You can do things to make that hard - although I'll admit that most do not. However Linux boxes are frequently (even predominantly?) accessed remotely and are not always located somewhere physically accessible (those in our server room for example). Windows boxes are almost always physically accessible because it is hard to use them remotely.
Yes but for Linux they require root access and I would argue that acquiring that in the first place requires a lot of work and skill whereas with Windows is it generally handed to you as long as you are sat in front of the machine.
I think his point was that was that there is a huge market and since it is becoming viable it is a good way to serve that market.
True but is this a real market i.e. do employers take these qualifications seriously or is it just that people have the impression that they take them seriously?
I guess we will find out. I think the business model isn't in your favor. Current school costs are not sustainable and don't adequately serve the non-traditional age student.
The vast majority of students are "traditional" age though and it is those that the system is primarily designed for. Your example with a film is flawed because there is essentially no difference between the cinema or a DVD other than the size of the screen. There is a considerable difference between a degree from the University of Phoenix and, say, the University of Cambridge though.
After all, East Asia has 81, Africa 122, North America 133 etc. why single out Middle East with 157, with words like "no surprise" and "paltry"?
Probably because it was written by an American who was trying to sound funny by pointing out that the Middle East had produced more documents than the entire continent of North America? By calling that number 'paltry' is implying even more of an insult to the number they produced.
The GP really ought to calm down and not try to deliberately interpret things in the worst possible light.
I'd be more worried if someone copyrighted my gravestone epitaph in the year I was born. Especially when said epitaph included my year of death.
Actually, IIRC, you need a beam wide enough to irradiate the entire patient's body at once otherwise the Fourier transform used to generate the picture gives artifacts so I don't think a pencil thin beam will help. However I have heard that it is great for killing tumours. Apparently you can slice and dice them with a coherent X-Ray source and it is far worse for them than healthy tissue. This way you can reduce the collateral damage to tissue near the tumour.
Right now X-Ray sources are quite random and waste _a lot_ of energy. A nice pencil thin directional beam would do wonders for CT scanners.
You are kidding right? Have you any idea how hideously inefficient a particle accelerator is?
Why? It should be inferred. He is talking about legitimate schools.
I have never heard of the University of Phoenix so how do I know it is a legitimate university? Even if it is legitimate the quality of education at legitimate universities varies considerably. The OP's point that simply because they are able to do this makes it a good idea is ludicrous. The quality of the education has to be taken into account.
By face-to-face I assume you mean where you can see the professor's face with aid of binoculars and occasionally talk to a TA?
You describe first year courses and possibly a few second year ones. You are certainly correct that these can be greatly helped along by IT and indeed that's where I use most online material. However by the time you reach the 3rd and 4th years the courses are far smaller and the material is sufficiently advanced that face-to-face teaching is required because you need the interactivity so that you know what has not been understood and can spend more time explaining it. Hence my assertion that IT will assist and improve but not supplant face-to-face teaching.
If the Higher Learning Commission accepts the institution's model then why are you so skeptical of it?
I'm guessing here but perhaps it is because he got a good education which means that he questions things put before him and does not blindly accept what a bureaucratic body tells him. I'm not saying he is right but Einstein would not have got very far with General Relativity if his argument had been "I'm Einstein and you all know from my 1905 papers that I'm really smart so this must be right too.".
I will not say anything about the quality of the education they offer, but if they are physically ABLE TO accommodate that many students and that many classes, then it can be done.
Don't you think that you should say something about the quality of the education they offer? If you ignore this then you can set up an office with a webserver and a laser printer. Give the customers a webpage to read, a short online quiz and then print and mail them their diploma. Of course the qualification would be utterly worthless but since you are ABLE TO do it and I am sure that somewhere some people ARE DOING IT then this proves it needs to be done, right?
Just like books are a tool that helped education computers and the webs are also helping. However to think that they will completely replace face to face education is insane. They will augment and improve it, not supplant it.
There is a big problem with going with a highly insulated home: moisture.
Actually all the walls here are hermetically sealed - something I'm not a fan of because the house becomes stifling in summer. The reason is that with the temperature outside -10 or lower any moisture inside will condense and, as it moves further outside, freeze. The result is a moist layer at some depth into the wall which will happy rot anything there. Even with thin insulation the problem would exist because of the temp difference and the humid beings inside. Air circulation will simply move the condensation somewhere else. The only way to stop it is to seal the wall.
I agree that it is doable but unlike in Europe the houses here are all wood which seems to make the walls a lot thinner. In fact our estate agent was not happy when she asked what we were looking for and I replied a house made of bricks - they do exist but not in our price range! The result is that the walls are thin, even though insulated, and there is no cavity wall to pack with more insulation.
Additionally the winters here in Edmonton range from -10 to -30 (and sometimes lower) so they are significantly colder. However the summers are quite warm +23-28 and even with the insulation we have the house becomes stiflingly hot to the point where we have thought about air conditioning which would probably negate any savings made in the winter.
The standard model isn't wrong, any more than newtonian physics is wrong.
Sorry but we know that both Newtonian physics and the Standard Model are wrong - in the case of the SM we just don't know exactly how it goes wrong yet - other than neutrino masses which are easy to fix. Just because Newtonian physics works for everyday events does not make it correct - it is fundamentally wrong but it is a good and useful approximation to what is really happening.
In the same way the SM is also wrong. It has no explanation of gravity, a huge fine tuning problem and no explanation of Dark Matter and Baryon number violation. So we know that fundamentally it is wrong since it does not explain all the phenomena of the Universe we live in. However it is a very good approximation and correctly models all the phenomena we can produce in the lab. It is really what we call an "effective field theory" which means that it is a low energy approximation of a fundamental theory. Unfortunately we just don't know what that fundamental theory actually is.
From the paper, it looks like this is enough stronger than a hypothesis, to justify the appellation "theory".
They are suggesting a new type of charged particle that somehow we have not seen - the diagram in the article summary is the wrong one, you need to read the paper. As such it is extremely hypothetical and, unless the experiment is trivial (and at the sensitivity levels suggested I'm not sure that it is), it would be good to see some evidence that these new charged particles are consistent with the ultra-precise g-2 experimental results testing QED. There are also precision K and B physics experimental data that could be affected as well. Its an interesting idea though.
This won't be debunked, its true. Once you look at the feynman diagrams its obviously a possible effect.
If you read the paper and not the very bad summary in the article - along with a wrong diagram - then this is not what they are suggesting. They calculate the neutrino digram shown in the article and which you estimated and come up with a probability of O(10^-130) times a function of the neutrino mass, barrier thickness and photon energy. This would be an interesting way to measure neutrino mass if the probability were not so low.
What they are actually wanting to test is whether there are new, fractionally charged particles out there. So this is not something that is guaranteed to work. In fact I do not see how we would not have already seen such particles before now in virtual effects in K and B experiments if nothing else...but I have not looked at it in detail.
Ideas in physics are never proven true. They are shown not to contradict any existing evidence, that is all. I can't think of any more than a few decades old which have survived even this.
I can: Relativity (both Special and General) and Quantum Mechanics. These have been around for over 100 years (since 1905). SR and quantum theory are the two most precisely tested scientific theories ever.
Sure, we're not all US, but US households are becoming a de-facto benchmark because they're the biggest consumers of energy on a per-household (or per-capita) basis.
Actually they are not. In Canada we have a bigger household energy consumption than the US but this is due to heating. When it the winter lasts 6 months and temperatures drop to -40C heating tends to use a lot of energy no matter how efficient your home's insultation is.
Bolting the barn door after the horse has bolted is indeed a pointless exercise. However that does not mean that you are any less at fault for not having bolted it in the first place.
I think it's great. It shows that NASA can take a joke
If they could take a joke they would have named the module after him instead of copping out like this. If you are going to have a public poll for the name then you have to be prepared to accept the consequences. If you are not then pick the name yourself.
True but Uranium is highly toxic so you might not die of radiation but you may still die or at least get rather sick. Also pure U-238 is called depleted Uranium so it is not really a completely fair comparison because weapons use enriched Uranium which has a far higher concentration of U-235. I can't remember the exact percentage required off the top of my head but since the half-life is over 6 times less than U-238 this will increase the radiation.
Oh its far worse than that - I'm a physics professor :-)
Microsoft continually talks about "experience" -- if a crappy driver spoils my experience, then Microsoft has a problem, even if MS is not at fault.
MS is at fault. They should not allow the hardware manufacturer to claim their hardware is compatible with Windows if it isn't. Battling buggy and incompatible drivers is only part of the Windows experience because MS allow it to be.
I'll admit this was high tech stuff back in 1945, but it's now the year 2009. It's largely a question of cost.
It was still a question of cost then. Thankfully isotope separation is extremely hard to do but at some point technology will give us a way to do it more easily and cheaply (France already is investigating laser isotope separation techniques) and when it does we should be very worried.