They didn't act surprised about the Higgs boson, because it was hot enough on its own.
No, we were not surprised because it had been predicted as a solution in 1964. Then we built a massive collider and two huge experiments specifically to search for it. Anyone who expressed surprise at finding it in 2012 would have to have been an idiot.
Indeed the vast majority of recent surprises in particle physics have been exactly the opposite to what the article suggests. In our case, the surprises have generally turned out to be someone making a serious error. For example, the claim of a faster than light neutrino surprised everyone because it violated relativity. The eventual result was that it was caused by a cable that was not properly plugged in, which was a result that surprised nobody.
A similar thing happened a few years ago at the LHC where both experiments started to see signs of a surprising new resonance. However, as more data were collected the significance declined and it appears that it was just a statistical fluke. So in my experience surprising results are usually the ones that turn out to be wrong which is what you expect when you have a good understanding of what you are studying.
If you have lots of surprising results which turn out to be right then you clearly have a very poor understanding of whatever you are studying because the predictions of your theoretical model are constantly being proved wrong.
Even if it were climate change it would not be the first "bankruptcy" due to climate change. That would belong to the hunters of Doggerland about 10,000 year ago which is where the North Sea is today due to climate change. Now admittedly the concept of bankruptcy was a little different back then, there being no banks, but they certainly traded and were definitely put out of business by climate change.
How about being highly forgettable? The opposite of love is not hate but indifference. I did not hate the film I just found it so bland and generic that I can only vaguely remember what happened in it.
So one vendor can't make an "evil" license with vendor lock-in.
If it truly is open source then there is no vendor lock-in. Anyone can fork the code and then develop it and distribute it themselves which I suspect is exactly what Amazon is doing. If you can't do that it is closed source. Open source means more than just being able to see the source code.
That does not explain the rate suddenly increasing 300 million years ago. If anything the rate of random disturbances should decrease steadily over time as rocks are pushed into the inner solar system removing them from the belt.
Their working theory is a collision in the asteroid belt 300 million years ago which suddenly caused a large increase in the number of rocks available to impact. If true though then presumably the same sudden increase in rate should be visible on other planets too.
Phones and computer don't make anyone smarter, they just give you access to more information.
That was my initial reaction too but phones can process information as well and the ability to process and sift through information is arguably a component of intelligence. For example, while an embedded chip in your head has many serious problems, if you could perform mathematical calculations rapidly or instantly recall details of memories you might appear smarter. This does not happen with a phone because everyone can see it is the phone, not you, doing the work.
Black Mirror already covered some of the consequences of instant memory recall though so we might want to think carefully about the wisdom of this...
The era of big physics is most definitely not over but I find it hard to believe that there is sufficient justification for this kind of expenditure. We don't have any good sense of the scale of the physics required to explain Dark Matter or why the Higgs boson is so light (something called the fine-tuning or hierarchy problem).
Without knowing the energy scale we need to reach to discover new physics building the machine is dangerous because, if it doesn't find anything, then it will be almost impossible to get the even bigger machine we need to make those discoveries. We need the ILC first to do precision physics on the Higgs and use that to guide the design of the FCC. I know that's slower and more boring but I woudl rather we make any discoveries later than not at all.
You old an election and once elected, there's not enough majority to form a government? That seems weird from a US perspective
Really? I thought that happened quite frequently in the US just differently when a president from one party cannot get his government approved by a congress controlled by the other.
They may eventually become the hardiest and tallest trees around, if their ancestors are any indication.
Tallest, yes, but hardy implies that they can endure difficult conditions. If they struggle to endure reduced fog in their native habitat this suggests that they are not particularly hardy.
...or maybe they should stop using blur filters because it is fine to see actors and actresses with a few wrinkles. However, I don't think this is a blur filter because otherwise, it will look terrible on a big movie screen where it is intended to be used.
What are you talking about? Voice recognition is pretty much amazing!
No, it is not. Only yesterday Siri on my Apple TV was failing so badly to understand my spelling of a password that I gave up in frustration and watched the CBC show on my laptop. Voice recognition "sort of" works but it is not always reliable, even slight background noises can distract it and it still needs training. At least that is my experience speaking English with an English accent.
I guess we should just strike through that "give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to be free" crap, eh?
Based on my experience getting a green card 20 years ago you already did. I had to show that I was not too tired to get a job, had enough money to support myself and did not, nor had ever, belonged to the wrong sort of political party (communist) or thought polygamy was a good idea (which is usually a religious belief).
If you want to update it to the modern reality I would suggest: "give us your energetic, your reasonably well-off, your huddled masses yearning to pay fees".
...or don't live in the US. This concept of a government shutdown is a bizarre one for those of us living in other countries.
In countries with a UK-style parliament the budget is regarded as a confidence motion and if it fails then the government automatically falls and there is an election. In addition, the budget usually only deals with changes and specific investments so if one fails to pass normal operations just carry on as they were before but there are no new projects or changes in taxes or benefits. You guys should try it some time.
I thought we would have had much better computer voice recognition by now but the web and mobile devices are far more capable than I ever imagined they would be. The biggest disappointment is space technology which is far behind where I thought it would be by now although SpaceX is helping it get there.
Isn't that true everywhere? In fact, doesn't the US currently have a policy where agents are allowed to access everything on any device that you bring into or out of the US without even any reason for suspicion?
The problem is not that the Chinese police may access your device it is that they are looking extremely hard for any, even trivial, violation of their laws so they can arrest you to try and get leverage against the US just like they have been doing with Canada.
Really? Isn't there such a thing as fair use. IIRC all they said was something to the effect of "it's a game like the choose your own adventure books" which I had actually never heard of before (it was Fighting Fantasy when I was a kid) so I actually thought they had just made up the name for the show to avoid upsetting Fighting Fantasy which is ironic given that, thanks to Chooseco, Netflix is now fighting fantasy.
I think this is the most useless product I have ever heard of
Oh, come on. You know there is at least one guy in the US who is probably already on the phone with them asking if he can get it with an orange skin tone cartridge.
There is a real simple solution. Just charge per stream.
Isn't this what they already do? The plan we have in Canada allows us to stream to two devices simultaneously and we have 4 profiles on the account. I am going to be really mad if, when I go to the US or Europe for a conference, it blocks me from accessing Netflix because my wife or kids are watching TV back home.
Anyone who makes a lot of money relies at some level on those with a university level education. Why should we be giving a tax advantage to someone who employs university-educated people instead of gaining one themselves? The entire point of a progressive tax system is that, regardless of background, if you are making lots of money you are able to pay a larger fraction back to support the society which got you to where you are.
If we start having tax rates which depend on what benefits you have derived from society it will open a very damaging Pandora's box. For example, why shouldn't people who have had the advantage of free medical treatment (e.g. in Europe, Canada etc.) pay higher rates of tax too? How about people who at one point received welfare payments but who have since recovered etc. One of the points of government is that it acts as a single pool that we all pay into and, when we need it, it provides the resources and benefits to help us become, or remain, productive members of society because then we all benefit. Shattering this model will lead to signficant negative consequences e.g. people avoiding healthcare, education etc.
Slashdot Mirror
They didn't act surprised about the Higgs boson, because it was hot enough on its own.
No, we were not surprised because it had been predicted as a solution in 1964. Then we built a massive collider and two huge experiments specifically to search for it. Anyone who expressed surprise at finding it in 2012 would have to have been an idiot.
Indeed the vast majority of recent surprises in particle physics have been exactly the opposite to what the article suggests. In our case, the surprises have generally turned out to be someone making a serious error. For example, the claim of a faster than light neutrino surprised everyone because it violated relativity. The eventual result was that it was caused by a cable that was not properly plugged in, which was a result that surprised nobody.
A similar thing happened a few years ago at the LHC where both experiments started to see signs of a surprising new resonance. However, as more data were collected the significance declined and it appears that it was just a statistical fluke. So in my experience surprising results are usually the ones that turn out to be wrong which is what you expect when you have a good understanding of what you are studying.
If you have lots of surprising results which turn out to be right then you clearly have a very poor understanding of whatever you are studying because the predictions of your theoretical model are constantly being proved wrong.
Even if it were climate change it would not be the first "bankruptcy" due to climate change. That would belong to the hunters of Doggerland about 10,000 year ago which is where the North Sea is today due to climate change. Now admittedly the concept of bankruptcy was a little different back then, there being no banks, but they certainly traded and were definitely put out of business by climate change.
None of that makes for a bad movie.
How about being highly forgettable? The opposite of love is not hate but indifference. I did not hate the film I just found it so bland and generic that I can only vaguely remember what happened in it.
So one vendor can't make an "evil" license with vendor lock-in.
If it truly is open source then there is no vendor lock-in. Anyone can fork the code and then develop it and distribute it themselves which I suspect is exactly what Amazon is doing. If you can't do that it is closed source. Open source means more than just being able to see the source code.
That does not explain the rate suddenly increasing 300 million years ago. If anything the rate of random disturbances should decrease steadily over time as rocks are pushed into the inner solar system removing them from the belt.
Their working theory is a collision in the asteroid belt 300 million years ago which suddenly caused a large increase in the number of rocks available to impact. If true though then presumably the same sudden increase in rate should be visible on other planets too.
Phones and computer don't make anyone smarter, they just give you access to more information.
That was my initial reaction too but phones can process information as well and the ability to process and sift through information is arguably a component of intelligence. For example, while an embedded chip in your head has many serious problems, if you could perform mathematical calculations rapidly or instantly recall details of memories you might appear smarter. This does not happen with a phone because everyone can see it is the phone, not you, doing the work.
Black Mirror already covered some of the consequences of instant memory recall though so we might want to think carefully about the wisdom of this...
Trying to make it illegal is stupid, since it won't stop people.
Really? Do you want to bet on that?
The era of big physics is most definitely not over but I find it hard to believe that there is sufficient justification for this kind of expenditure. We don't have any good sense of the scale of the physics required to explain Dark Matter or why the Higgs boson is so light (something called the fine-tuning or hierarchy problem).
Without knowing the energy scale we need to reach to discover new physics building the machine is dangerous because, if it doesn't find anything, then it will be almost impossible to get the even bigger machine we need to make those discoveries. We need the ILC first to do precision physics on the Higgs and use that to guide the design of the FCC. I know that's slower and more boring but I woudl rather we make any discoveries later than not at all.
You old an election and once elected, there's not enough majority to form a government? That seems weird from a US perspective
Really? I thought that happened quite frequently in the US just differently when a president from one party cannot get his government approved by a congress controlled by the other.
They may eventually become the hardiest and tallest trees around, if their ancestors are any indication.
Tallest, yes, but hardy implies that they can endure difficult conditions. If they struggle to endure reduced fog in their native habitat this suggests that they are not particularly hardy.
...or maybe they should stop using blur filters because it is fine to see actors and actresses with a few wrinkles. However, I don't think this is a blur filter because otherwise, it will look terrible on a big movie screen where it is intended to be used.
I have no problem doing this for fiction.
So, actually, you really don't have a problem with using it in political ads.
What are you talking about? Voice recognition is pretty much amazing!
No, it is not. Only yesterday Siri on my Apple TV was failing so badly to understand my spelling of a password that I gave up in frustration and watched the CBC show on my laptop. Voice recognition "sort of" works but it is not always reliable, even slight background noises can distract it and it still needs training. At least that is my experience speaking English with an English accent.
I guess we should just strike through that "give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to be free" crap, eh?
Based on my experience getting a green card 20 years ago you already did. I had to show that I was not too tired to get a job, had enough money to support myself and did not, nor had ever, belonged to the wrong sort of political party (communist) or thought polygamy was a good idea (which is usually a religious belief).
If you want to update it to the modern reality I would suggest: "give us your energetic, your reasonably well-off, your huddled masses yearning to pay fees".
...or don't live in the US. This concept of a government shutdown is a bizarre one for those of us living in other countries.
In countries with a UK-style parliament the budget is regarded as a confidence motion and if it fails then the government automatically falls and there is an election. In addition, the budget usually only deals with changes and specific investments so if one fails to pass normal operations just carry on as they were before but there are no new projects or changes in taxes or benefits. You guys should try it some time.
Cokain warrior you really are overhigh if you think a wall stops people arriving at airports,
Well it could if you built it across the middle of the runway.
But, I thought "science is settled" and 97% of scientists agree?
Science never settles, it is only ever temporarily resident. That's why when the laws change it has to move.
I thought we would have had much better computer voice recognition by now but the web and mobile devices are far more capable than I ever imagined they would be. The biggest disappointment is space technology which is far behind where I thought it would be by now although SpaceX is helping it get there.
Isn't that true everywhere? In fact, doesn't the US currently have a policy where agents are allowed to access everything on any device that you bring into or out of the US without even any reason for suspicion?
The problem is not that the Chinese police may access your device it is that they are looking extremely hard for any, even trivial, violation of their laws so they can arrest you to try and get leverage against the US just like they have been doing with Canada.
That was stupid and amateurish.
Really? Isn't there such a thing as fair use. IIRC all they said was something to the effect of "it's a game like the choose your own adventure books" which I had actually never heard of before (it was Fighting Fantasy when I was a kid) so I actually thought they had just made up the name for the show to avoid upsetting Fighting Fantasy which is ironic given that, thanks to Chooseco, Netflix is now fighting fantasy.
I think this is the most useless product I have ever heard of
Oh, come on. You know there is at least one guy in the US who is probably already on the phone with them asking if he can get it with an orange skin tone cartridge.
There is a real simple solution. Just charge per stream.
Isn't this what they already do? The plan we have in Canada allows us to stream to two devices simultaneously and we have 4 profiles on the account. I am going to be really mad if, when I go to the US or Europe for a conference, it blocks me from accessing Netflix because my wife or kids are watching TV back home.
Anyone who makes a lot of money relies at some level on those with a university level education. Why should we be giving a tax advantage to someone who employs university-educated people instead of gaining one themselves? The entire point of a progressive tax system is that, regardless of background, if you are making lots of money you are able to pay a larger fraction back to support the society which got you to where you are.
If we start having tax rates which depend on what benefits you have derived from society it will open a very damaging Pandora's box. For example, why shouldn't people who have had the advantage of free medical treatment (e.g. in Europe, Canada etc.) pay higher rates of tax too? How about people who at one point received welfare payments but who have since recovered etc. One of the points of government is that it acts as a single pool that we all pay into and, when we need it, it provides the resources and benefits to help us become, or remain, productive members of society because then we all benefit. Shattering this model will lead to signficant negative consequences e.g. people avoiding healthcare, education etc.
Fine, so you underpay and say that you will be back with the correct change for the rest on the next day to settle the rest of your debt.
Indeed. So it's just a case that the monarch's late reign was caused by late rain.