Clicking on that from a mobile gives you the option to open the link in the YouTube player. Isn't that what you say you want in the thread you linked to?
"Now if only Netflix had content that was less than a year old, it'd be great."
That's the thing...does it really matter at all if it is behind?
I mean, it will still be new to you when you see it streamed from NF, won't it?
It depends if what you are interested in is solely the experience of watching the content, or if you also care about the cultural experience of discussing it with other people.
In fact, the screen width is almost exactly 9.5 boxes--I managed to make what looked like a perfectly horizontal row with two quarter-box gaps. A full row ain't gonna' happen.
As a professor, I have two tasks that I must perform in every class I teach. I must educate my students, and I must evaluate their work. No one has ever explained to me how the 'evaluation' process can reasonably work in an on-line setting. Nothing is stopping me from enrolling my girlfriend's cat in an on-line degree program and taking all his tests. I assure you, Marvin's grades will be very good, but I don't suggest you hire him; he would be sleeping on the job an awful lot.
It's a shame, because I think that for many students, these kinds of programs could provide an education as good or better than a traditional classroom for a much lower price. But until there is a good reason to take the final transcript seriously, I don't think it will ever really catch on.
This is the fundamental aspect of business that many in washington do not understand. Any move you make to increase operating costs in the US will simply result in the gradual movement of those industries affect to other countries that are less expensive to operate in.
Unless you can get the UN to jam this system down the throats of every industrialized manufacturing country, it's just going to make the US economy worse while helping the economy somewhere else. Not a big problem while the US was booming, but definitely counter productive under the current situation.
I'm curious, do you have any specific examples in mind? Because it seems to me that, for most manufacturing companies, the cost of energy is dwarfed by the cost of labor, which can already be found much cheaper in other countries (China being the primary example). I would guess that many companies that continue to manufacture in U.S. have very good reasons for remaining here, besides cost. (For example, military manufacturing, power generation, etc). We're simply not the dominant country for manufacturing anymore, and that's not likely to change anytime soon.
However, a huge share of global business is in products developed or marketed by U.S. firms. A major point of the regulations, reinforced by TFA, is to spur technical development which allows U.S companies to stay in front in this respect. China will eventually improve it's greenhouse-gas emission regulations; they don't want their coastal cities flooding any more than we do. If, by that point, US companies have off-the-shelf tech that China can buy to meet those regulations, they will, and US companies will continue to lead.
Greenhouse gasses unquestionably contribute far more to recent warming than solar activity, although solar activity is definitely a factor.
I question it. NASA also questions it. Quote: "Indeed, the model suggests aerosols likely account for 45 percent or more of the warming that has occurred in the Arctic during the last three decades."
Agreed. The aerosol question is interesting. I was only commenting on the relationship between greenhouse gases and solar output. I agree that these are not the only factors. I don't know of any serious (ie peer-reviewed) model which attributes nearly as much recent warming to solar output as ggs.
And sure, that's all (well, mostly) anthropogenic, but it's not the dreaded carbon dioxide (which actually has a much lower greenhouse effect than the water vapor in the atmosphere).
Well, yes, but the amount of H2O in the air is relatively stable.
Correct. Other bodies in the solar system are warming as well. Climate scientists know this. In fact they know there are a number of factors which can influence the temperature here on Earth. That's why they've performed many experiments and collected enormous amounts of data to determine to what extent each factor could possibly be responsible for the warming we've seen. Greenhouse gasses unquestionably contribute far more to recent warming than solar activity, although solar activity is definitely a factor. This is all summarized on the Wikipedia entry for Global Warming (with appropriate sources).
As a broader point, science is hard. Blogs, news reports and movies will never accurately convey it, and often intentionally mislead. The only thing that makes sense to me is to trust the scientists. The (US) National Academy of Science in particular is filled with very, very smart people and has a historical record of speaking purely from scientific considerations (ie, it's objective). They believe that anthropogenic climate change is real and significant. No scientific body of remotely comparable credibility disagrees; virtually all similar institutions from other countries have reached the same conclusion.
I'm not a climate scientist, so I don't know with firsthand certainty the truth of the matter. But, forced to choose (for example, as a factor when deciding whom to vote for) I listen to the most trustworthy organization I can find. And their conclusions are clear.
instruction book that we wrote to describe physics?
There's the thing that you don't understand. We didn't create mathematics to describe physics,
I don't know quite who you mean by we, but Newton (along with many, many others) actually were trying to describe physics when they created mathematics. As stated above, it's not too much of a surprise that they eventually got it right.
Another vote here for Sage. On the open-source side of things, nothing comes close, because everything else that's any good (Maxima for example) is included within Sage, in a fairly transparent way. (I.e., the user doesn't need to know she's using Maxima.)
Secondly, the (free) support is awesome. If you spend a little while learning Python and the basics of Sage, and you still have questions, the response time at sage-support at googlegroups is incredible.
If it's possible to enumerate all valid proofs I propose the following proving algorithm: Run through all valid proofs; once you get to a proof whose conclusion is the theorem you want to prove, return that proof.
[if you don't know whether your theorem is true or not, run the above algorithm on its negation as well].
What's wrong with my algorithm?
The problem is that some propositions P have the following two properties:
1: P has no proof
2: (not P) has no proof.
So your algorithm searches forever and you don't know if it just hasn't found anything yet, or if there is nothing to be found.
I would have replied to this sooner, but my irony meter collided with my paradox prevention device, creating a HUGE mess.
Look, Mr Barstow, you're trying to sell a story about the media being used to paint a false picture to the American public, yes? But you, yourself, are a member of the media? Reporting on a topic that paints a picture of the picture-painters to the American public? In an election year?
Please, for the love of all that is good and logical, STFU. Or at least have the good sense to blog anonymously about this stuff like everyone else... So you don't care that many of the "unbiased analysts" presented in the media actually had large financial ties to the military? Is this because you were able to independently verify what the conditions were in Iraq? Because you don't consider the war to be important news? Or because you base your opinions on the war on your ideology and not information?
The next story, if the media is up to it's usual games, would be to present a count of how many times Mr Barstow's own organization has used these same experts to sell it's own rags to the masses. Actually, the article included documentation of the times that the NYT did exactly that. No media organization is perfect, but I very much appreciate finding out where they aren't. I like information a lot, and (perhaps unfortunately) only large media corporations have the resources to interview high-profile people and travel extensively in or near war zones halfway around the world. What else can we do but try to keep them as honest as possible?
As to the hypocrisy, <sarcasm> you're criticizing a person? Aren't you a person? </sarcasm>
So the military is trying to counter the traditional anti-war bias found in the mainstream media? How is that suprising. The media has been shaping hearts and minds here in the United States for decades. It is not unfair for the military to want a piece of the action.
To me, it's not about the military, but about the media. Of course the military is going to try to convince the public to support its policies. What's disappointing is that so many mass-media organizations were offering up people with large, ongoing, financial ties to the military as "unbiased analysts". Surely we can all agree that this is wrong?
But another question is - Why redo that book again?
Because Dune is quite obviously an allegory for the politics of the Middle East. And people care more (and understand more) about that today then they did in the 80s.
Dune is about as topical as sci-fi gets, these days. In the hands of talented director it should have very broad appeal.
From TFA: "to tackle unforeseen natural disasters"
Legitimately unforeseen natural disasters would be things like a comet impact, volcanoes erupting in downtown LA, or perhaps alien invasion. Oh wait, that last would be an unnatural disaster, wouldn't it? But come to think of it, the ones I just mentioned have all been foreseen too.
I guess I just don't foresee a need for this software. Maybe they should work on software for foreseeable disasters. What about the Spanish Inquisition? No one forsees the Spanish Inquisition.
I've been developing an algorithm to solve that game for years, and so far all I've come up with is: start with the middle square.
Nah, that's false.
If you're going first, put your mark in the corner. Almost regardless of what your opponent does, put your next mark in an adjacent corner. He'll now have to block you, and then you put your third mark in yet another corner, and voila, you have 2 winning moves.
Almost... The best strategy (as first player) is to start with a corner. If your opponent does not take the center with their first move, you take it with your second and now it's very easy to force a win.
The problem is that almost anyone you play will take the center square with their first move. In this case, your second move should be the OPPOSITE corner that you started with (like 1 & 9 on a cell phone keypad). A great many people (as second player) will now put their mark in one of the remaining corners because they know that tic-tac-toe is easy and doesn't require thought. You are forced to block them, but this block gives you two winning moves, and the game is over.
You'd be surprised at how many smart people I've been able to beat (once) with this strategy. (The hard part is convincing them to play in the first place...)
Note: IAAM(athematician). You pose a good question. The game in mathematics, though, is not to "make up random rules so that something that occurs to them suddenly works". It's (broadly speaking) to make up new rules which are completely consistent with all the old rules which allow us to understand a previously mysterious example. This is where "imaginary" numbers succeed tremendously, and "nullity" fails miserably. See my post downthread for why nullity sucks.
"Imaginary" numbers are just the "thingys" which are solutions to polynomials. I.e., mathematicians find it useful to have an answer to the question "for what values of x does x^2 + 1 = 0?" The answers are useful, even though they aren't good at measuring length or breadth or depth or other one-dimensional concepts. They're useful because they allow mathematicians to develop a theory which has answered questions which couldn't be answered before. This is true even though both the question and the answer both lie in the realm of real numbers. Should there be an answer to every question of this type that doesn't use complex numbers? Perhaps, but it certainly doesn't have to be pretty, or easy to discover. Often the shortest path to a "real" truth lies on an "imaginary" line.
It's sad that he teaches math and thinks this is a worthwhile concept.
For just one example of why it sucks, he BEGINS by defining: (infinity) = 1/0 and
(-infinity) = -1/0.
My conclusion: (0)*(infinity)=1
So 2*0*infinity = 2*1
So 2 = 2*0*infinity = (2*0)*infinity = 0*infinity = 1
And once you know that 2 != 1 and 2 =1, it turns out you can prove quite a bit...
Total nonsense, and the BBC is encouraging it. *shakes head* Although, I've got to say, it's nice, for once in my life, to deservedly be a smug American.
"I live far from grocery stores and public transportation, and never learned to drive. Should I get behind the wheel and risk killing people, or should I wait at home until someone chooses to feed me or I starve?"
Dude, learn to drive. Did you not realize there was going to be an election until today?
North Korea (and most of these arguments apply to Iran equally well) isn't even on the same planet with sane. North Korea WILL eventually start another war. There isn't any doubt whether he has WMD anymore and he has the missles to deliver them.
You realize North Korea is a country and not a person, right? Assuming you are referring to Kim Jong-Il (or Ahmadinejad, or Chavez, or Hussein, or whomever you think it is most important to be scared of today) have you considered that maybe it requires just a little bit of sanity to remain in control of an entire country? There are other people who would like the job, after all. (Note: I'm not saying that any of these people are necessarily very smart, just that they all certainly prefer being in power to being dead.)
The most likely reasons for North Korea's developing of these weapons are self-defense and, more importantly, a negotiation chip to use towards stopping sanctions. All indications are that this is what's happening. (One sample analysis, written recently, is here.)
Confirmation of NKs nuclear capabilities reduces our diplomatic power over them slightly, since it makes the threat of a direct military attack by us on them slightly less credible. This is unfortunate, but not a reason to panic, and not a reason to initiate an attack which would certainly: (a) result in many innocent deaths, and (b) damage our relationships with countries that could affect the well-being of Americans. (Make no mistake, not even Great Britain would support us on this one).
This impending disaster could have been prevented just like WWII could have. Instead a billion will probably die.
The Bay of Pigs nuclear disaster could have been prevented it too, if only we'd have had the sense not to attack until it was absolutely necessary...oh wait, we did, and it was. Be thankful.
Larry Gonick's "A Cartoon Guide To Statistics" (Amazon) is pretty good. It's mildly entertaining, clear, and doesn't slaughter the precise concepts as badly as many "popular" books do:) Good luck.
Slashdot Mirror
Clicking on that from a mobile gives you the option to open the link in the YouTube player. Isn't that what you say you want in the thread you linked to?
"Now if only Netflix had content that was less than a year old, it'd be great."
That's the thing...does it really matter at all if it is behind?
I mean, it will still be new to you when you see it streamed from NF, won't it?
It depends if what you are interested in is solely the experience of watching the content, or if you also care about the cultural experience of discussing it with other people.
For fuck sake, editors.
EDIT!
You must be new he... wait, your UID is 5551? And you're complaining about this now?
Sir, I am in awe of your patience. Carry on.
In fact, the screen width is almost exactly 9.5 boxes--I managed to make what looked like a perfectly horizontal row with two quarter-box gaps. A full row ain't gonna' happen.
As a professor, I have two tasks that I must perform in every class I teach. I must educate my students, and I must evaluate their work. No one has ever explained to me how the 'evaluation' process can reasonably work in an on-line setting. Nothing is stopping me from enrolling my girlfriend's cat in an on-line degree program and taking all his tests. I assure you, Marvin's grades will be very good, but I don't suggest you hire him; he would be sleeping on the job an awful lot.
It's a shame, because I think that for many students, these kinds of programs could provide an education as good or better than a traditional classroom for a much lower price. But until there is a good reason to take the final transcript seriously, I don't think it will ever really catch on.
Hmmm... is it possible to meta-mod the "Infomative" mod on the parent post as "Funny"?
This is the fundamental aspect of business that many in washington do not understand. Any move you make to increase operating costs in the US will simply result in the gradual movement of those industries affect to other countries that are less expensive to operate in.
Unless you can get the UN to jam this system down the throats of every industrialized manufacturing country, it's just going to make the US economy worse while helping the economy somewhere else. Not a big problem while the US was booming, but definitely counter productive under the current situation.
I'm curious, do you have any specific examples in mind? Because it seems to me that, for most manufacturing companies, the cost of energy is dwarfed by the cost of labor, which can already be found much cheaper in other countries (China being the primary example). I would guess that many companies that continue to manufacture in U.S. have very good reasons for remaining here, besides cost. (For example, military manufacturing, power generation, etc). We're simply not the dominant country for manufacturing anymore, and that's not likely to change anytime soon.
However, a huge share of global business is in products developed or marketed by U.S. firms. A major point of the regulations, reinforced by TFA, is to spur technical development which allows U.S companies to stay in front in this respect. China will eventually improve it's greenhouse-gas emission regulations; they don't want their coastal cities flooding any more than we do. If, by that point, US companies have off-the-shelf tech that China can buy to meet those regulations, they will, and US companies will continue to lead.
Greenhouse gasses unquestionably contribute far more to recent warming than solar activity, although solar activity is definitely a factor.
I question it. NASA also questions it. Quote: "Indeed, the model suggests aerosols likely account for 45 percent or more of the warming that has occurred in the Arctic during the last three decades."
Agreed. The aerosol question is interesting. I was only commenting on the relationship between greenhouse gases and solar output. I agree that these are not the only factors. I don't know of any serious (ie peer-reviewed) model which attributes nearly as much recent warming to solar output as ggs.
And sure, that's all (well, mostly) anthropogenic, but it's not the dreaded carbon dioxide (which actually has a much lower greenhouse effect than the water vapor in the atmosphere).
Well, yes, but the amount of H2O in the air is relatively stable.
Correct. Other bodies in the solar system are warming as well. Climate scientists know this. In fact they know there are a number of factors which can influence the temperature here on Earth. That's why they've performed many experiments and collected enormous amounts of data to determine to what extent each factor could possibly be responsible for the warming we've seen. Greenhouse gasses unquestionably contribute far more to recent warming than solar activity, although solar activity is definitely a factor. This is all summarized on the Wikipedia entry for Global Warming (with appropriate sources).
As a broader point, science is hard. Blogs, news reports and movies will never accurately convey it, and often intentionally mislead. The only thing that makes sense to me is to trust the scientists. The (US) National Academy of Science in particular is filled with very, very smart people and has a historical record of speaking purely from scientific considerations (ie, it's objective). They believe that anthropogenic climate change is real and significant. No scientific body of remotely comparable credibility disagrees; virtually all similar institutions from other countries have reached the same conclusion.
I'm not a climate scientist, so I don't know with firsthand certainty the truth of the matter. But, forced to choose (for example, as a factor when deciding whom to vote for) I listen to the most trustworthy organization I can find. And their conclusions are clear.
instruction book that we wrote to describe physics?
There's the thing that you don't understand. We didn't create mathematics to describe physics,
I don't know quite who you mean by we, but Newton (along with many, many others) actually were trying to describe physics when they created mathematics. As stated above, it's not too much of a surprise that they eventually got it right.
Another vote here for Sage. On the open-source side of things, nothing comes close, because everything else that's any good (Maxima for example) is included within Sage, in a fairly transparent way. (I.e., the user doesn't need to know she's using Maxima.) Secondly, the (free) support is awesome. If you spend a little while learning Python and the basics of Sage, and you still have questions, the response time at sage-support at googlegroups is incredible.
If it's possible to enumerate all valid proofs I propose the following proving algorithm: Run through all valid proofs; once you get to a proof whose conclusion is the theorem you want to prove, return that proof.
[if you don't know whether your theorem is true or not, run the above algorithm on its negation as well].
What's wrong with my algorithm?
The problem is that some propositions P have the following two properties:
1: P has no proof
2: (not P) has no proof.
So your algorithm searches forever and you don't know if it just hasn't found anything yet, or if there is nothing to be found.
Analysts, on the other hand, talking about things they see on TV, might love it.
Hence, A-Space.
As to the hypocrisy, <sarcasm> you're criticizing a person? Aren't you a person? </sarcasm>
To me, it's not about the military, but about the media. Of course the military is going to try to convince the public to support its policies. What's disappointing is that so many mass-media organizations were offering up people with large, ongoing, financial ties to the military as "unbiased analysts". Surely we can all agree that this is wrong?
Because Dune is quite obviously an allegory for the politics of the Middle East. And people care more (and understand more) about that today then they did in the 80s.
Dune is about as topical as sci-fi gets, these days. In the hands of talented director it should have very broad appeal.
Legitimately unforeseen natural disasters would be things like a comet impact, volcanoes erupting in downtown LA, or perhaps alien invasion. Oh wait, that last would be an unnatural disaster, wouldn't it? But come to think of it, the ones I just mentioned have all been foreseen too. I guess I just don't foresee a need for this software. Maybe they should work on software for foreseeable disasters. What about the Spanish Inquisition? No one forsees the Spanish Inquisition.
The problem is that almost anyone you play will take the center square with their first move. In this case, your second move should be the OPPOSITE corner that you started with (like 1 & 9 on a cell phone keypad). A great many people (as second player) will now put their mark in one of the remaining corners because they know that tic-tac-toe is easy and doesn't require thought. You are forced to block them, but this block gives you two winning moves, and the game is over.
You'd be surprised at how many smart people I've been able to beat (once) with this strategy. (The hard part is convincing them to play in the first place...)
FWIW, his name is Mark Helprin, not Halprin. He's a fairly well-respected author: for more information, you can start here.
Note: IAAM(athematician). You pose a good question. The game in mathematics, though, is not to "make up random rules so that something that occurs to them suddenly works". It's (broadly speaking) to make up new rules which are completely consistent with all the old rules which allow us to understand a previously mysterious example. This is where "imaginary" numbers succeed tremendously, and "nullity" fails miserably. See my post downthread for why nullity sucks.
"Imaginary" numbers are just the "thingys" which are solutions to polynomials. I.e., mathematicians find it useful to have an answer to the question "for what values of x does x^2 + 1 = 0?" The answers are useful, even though they aren't good at measuring length or breadth or depth or other one-dimensional concepts. They're useful because they allow mathematicians to develop a theory which has answered questions which couldn't be answered before. This is true even though both the question and the answer both lie in the realm of real numbers. Should there be an answer to every question of this type that doesn't use complex numbers? Perhaps, but it certainly doesn't have to be pretty, or easy to discover. Often the shortest path to a "real" truth lies on an "imaginary" line.
It's sad that he teaches math and thinks this is a worthwhile concept.
For just one example of why it sucks, he BEGINS by defining: (infinity) = 1/0 and (-infinity) = -1/0.
My conclusion: (0)*(infinity)=1
So 2*0*infinity = 2*1
So 2 = 2*0*infinity = (2*0)*infinity = 0*infinity = 1
And once you know that 2 != 1 and 2 =1, it turns out you can prove quite a bit...
Total nonsense, and the BBC is encouraging it. *shakes head* Although, I've got to say, it's nice, for once in my life, to deservedly be a smug American.
"I live far from grocery stores and public transportation, and never learned to drive. Should I get behind the wheel and risk killing people, or should I wait at home until someone chooses to feed me or I starve?"
Dude, learn to drive. Did you not realize there was going to be an election until today?
The Bay of Pigs nuclear disaster could have been prevented it too
My bad...I just misspelled "Cuban Missle Crisis" as "Bay of Pigs" (and threw in an extra "it" for good measure.) It's definitely past my bedtime.
Good night.
North Korea (and most of these arguments apply to Iran equally well) isn't even on the same planet with sane. North Korea WILL eventually start another war. There isn't any doubt whether he has WMD anymore and he has the missles to deliver them.
You realize North Korea is a country and not a person, right? Assuming you are referring to Kim Jong-Il (or Ahmadinejad, or Chavez, or Hussein, or whomever you think it is most important to be scared of today) have you considered that maybe it requires just a little bit of sanity to remain in control of an entire country? There are other people who would like the job, after all. (Note: I'm not saying that any of these people are necessarily very smart, just that they all certainly prefer being in power to being dead.)
The most likely reasons for North Korea's developing of these weapons are self-defense and, more importantly, a negotiation chip to use towards stopping sanctions. All indications are that this is what's happening. (One sample analysis, written recently, is here.)
Confirmation of NKs nuclear capabilities reduces our diplomatic power over them slightly, since it makes the threat of a direct military attack by us on them slightly less credible. This is unfortunate, but not a reason to panic, and not a reason to initiate an attack which would certainly: (a) result in many innocent deaths, and (b) damage our relationships with countries that could affect the well-being of Americans. (Make no mistake, not even Great Britain would support us on this one).
This impending disaster could have been prevented just like WWII could have. Instead a billion will probably die.
The Bay of Pigs nuclear disaster could have been prevented it too, if only we'd have had the sense not to attack until it was absolutely necessary...oh wait, we did, and it was. Be thankful.
Larry Gonick's "A Cartoon Guide To Statistics" (Amazon) is pretty good. It's mildly entertaining, clear, and doesn't slaughter the precise concepts as badly as many "popular" books do :) Good luck.