Guess you canucks don't stomp on gov officials who exceed their authority any more than we down here. Why this inspector isn't being fired for stepping outside the bounds of his job is beyond me.
"I get to decide what goes in this country. Do you have a problem with that?"
Guess that asshat didn't pay attention in training and has no concept of what enforcing the law means, like, it isn't your personal opinion, asshole...:-(
Ah. Guess the information I had was old. Interesting, tho. Although I'm not sure we can put climatical causes to the Sand Hills, given the amount of cattle ranging out there, and the increased amount of irrigation in the last couple hundred years from farming; it's a fact that the Ogalla water layer is being rapidly drained.
You are right about warming shrinking deserts - because it tends to cause increased rainfall, there's more moisture being evaporated and more being delivered thru the atmosphere to places where it wouldn't normally be. So I guess that means the climate is warming, overall.
(20/20's comparison of American education with Belgium education)...
Seems to me that they are doing it right over in Belgium. Kudos to them, seems their laws/system aren't hampering their education system much, not like ours here in the US.
Um, no. The Sahara is growing, expanding into the Sahel region (which is shrinking) and Lake Chad is disappearing fast.
I don't have any data about the Sand Hills (despite living not far from there) but nothing I've heard indicates that the region they encompass is shrinking. Dunno where you are getting your data from.
Not to mention how confusing this is [going to be] to people who aren't following or can't follow the argument.
The "astronomically challenged" people who have asked me about this are divided between wondering if the IAU is becoming politically correct or just simply too interested in definition over discovery. (paraphrased for the sake of the post, but the term "navel contemplation" was part of one comment; and it's sorta scary that this has made the mainstream press enough that I have people who aren't science geeks asking about it. Mostly they are just confused. I can't blame them.)
It's a ridiculous debate and it's wasting way too much time and resources. It's like debating the definitions of Jupiter's plethora of moons. (That's not a moon, it's temporarily captured asteroidal body! Wait, it's a Not So Temporarily captured asteroidal body/has iron/carbonaceous/water-ice/blah blah properties\\ and therefore it deserves it's own proper name!)
How far is this going to go? Do we honestly need to keep (re)inventing two or three word definitions for everything? It's not like anything new is being invented here (well, plutons may qualify, but that sounds like something out of the Bugs Bunny cartoons) and anyway, we already have a name for them, they are Kuiper Belt Objects. Pluto was a planet long before KBO's were even thought of.
Sheesh. KISS. It's a planet (orbits the sun), it's a moon (orbits another body larger than it) or it's an asteroid (something too small to be a planet yet still orbits the sun). Those "in the know" can still keep using the same language we always have - it's a "body" w/characteristics mass, diameter, density, vector, composition, etc. Isn't the public at large confused enough? Does all this require yet another chapter in Astro 101 textbooks? (It may so, if just for the explanations!)
(meant to be at least partly humorous, of course, depending on the defintion of humor and only after a thorough analysis of the grammatical properties and social implications of the text posted)
Semi-Coherent Rant(SCR) over, you may now return to your regularly scheduled mental programming, and big Carlinesque Fuck You to everyone, just to be friendly.
SB
blah blah disclaimer, IAAAAWDOF,M (I Am An Amateur Astronomer Who Drinks On Fridays, Mostly)
Thanks a lot. I just spewed beer all over my keyboard.
Not many posts on slashdot cause that reaction nowadays. Hey, mods, he deserves more funny points, for the double (triple?) meaning, at least. Come on, you know it's true...
It sure doesn't hurt that Google is making their apps, for the most part, available for linux. Picasa is one of the best photo managers I've seen, *and* it's free *and* there's a version for linux. Not quite stable for now, and I haven't played with the windows version yet, so I can't compare features, but it is still fantastic.
If Google continues making multiplatform versions of their apps available, that could have a tremendous impact on other companies who develop applications. Let the good folks at Google know they are doing right, so they keep it up.
While I understand and respect your point, I've had similar experiences with windows - ie, having to beat my head repeatedly against the wall for days trying to figure out why something isn't working right. Granted fewer problems with XP, but there are still some that took some time. Like the printer driver for my HP Business Inkjet 2200 that installed fine on the last XP install I did a few years back, but after a hard drive crash and a reinstall of XP the driver simply would not install correctly (same driver file, turned out to be an obscure conflict with a windows update, took nearly a week)
I do tech support on the side and most of the problems I fix - for windows users - (and I'm going to leave out viruses, trojans, and the like as that isn't what we're talking about) are more or less simple fixes for me but nearly impossible for them.
Operating systems aren't perfect, whether Windows, MacOSX, or Linux. Users can expect automagical perfect functionality, but there is no operating system which provides it. Not one; and there will likely never, ever be one. That's why geeks like us keep getting those telephone calls...
Linux has come a long ways - and will continue to evolve; personally I feel it's evolving much, much faster than windows is. If one considers, oh, Redhat 5x to be about the equivalent of win3.1 - I started with RH 5.1 and that's how it felt to me - and looks at the timeframe from then until now with such incredible dists as Ubuntu*, the future looks bright indeed...
Cheers, SB
* Another experience: I have a cheapass usb 802b wireless device I bought on clearance at Radio Shack some years ago - drivers under windows were never stable at all and even when they worked the throughput sucked; but a few months back whilst going thru some of my old stuff I found it and decided to give it a try on the same laptop, but this time under Ubuntu. Works like a charm, 100% stable, only thing I had to do was call up the wireless lan config and tell it to use dhcp. Bing! and running as fast as my other, newer 802b, which works well under both OS's. Sure, it's a driver issue. But it *worked* using a FOSS driver. Shocked me somewhat, and it's nice to be able to use that old laptop everywhere:-)
I don't think that revisions to CoE nor CoM would necessarily invalidate all science since the beginning of time. After all, the revisions to Newton's theory didn't invalidate such basic local frame experiments as dropping a rock and a feather on the moon in a vacuum. (Derek tried to equivocate relativity to "other realms" as if it doesn't apply to the real world; I called him on it and he went ad hom. Eh? Relativity doesn't make enough of a measurable difference in the rock and feather experiment to worry about - unless one is one of those who is very exact about it - but it does make differences in things like the ephemeris of Mercury's orbit - very obvious differences there on the order of years - and in GPS calculations - and the latter, at least, is hardly something that is "another realm".)
That's just the sort of thinking that I was talking about. "We know that *insert axiom here* is valid because of repeated experiment, therefore *insert odd results here* cannot be true, because we know that *axiom* is valid, it's an Immutable Fact(tm). But the whole idea of science is that we continue questioning the framework we are building on, yes?...
To paraphrase what you said, if we are going to regard Theory X as immutable law, we might was well throw out all science since the beginning of time, because there's nothing left to discover about it, it's Fact. (although I'd phrase it "since the beginning of human discovery".)
One has to consider the human factor in theory - that being that we are limited in our senses (less so with the more technology, as I tried to point out to Derek) but still limited to our senses and the constructs we can develop from them. Such constructs have always, *always* proven to be at least partially flawed given enough time. Always. There's no reason to believe that the "laws" of conservation will not prove equally so, given sufficient data. We just don't know, and that's why it bugs me that they are called Laws - like some sort of immutable thing. As far as we can measure, right now, yes, they are. As far as we can measure.
An example would be the phenomenon known as singularities - where, it appears, nobody can agree whether or not any of our physical theories (or "laws") apply. There are as many opinions on this as there are physicists, and then some:-)
Quantum theory gives us indications (such as vacuum fluctuation) that energy can be spontaneously created. Our theories tell us that there has to be a balance, ie, an anti-particle created for every particle, such that the net energy balance is zero. But we can't prove that; and some Big Bang theories postulate that there was an imbalance in that creation, that we ended up with more "matter" than we did "antimatter"; yet our current theories of vacuum fluctuation postulate that an antiparticle is created to balance every particle created. So there's a conservation of energy there, where? Where did it go? Is it possible that we are creating the balance purely within our theories?
Here we enter into the realm of metaphysics, but when there are a half dozen or so competing theories for the GUT, metaphysics is the only place we can speculate in;-)
I'd say that the various permutations of the GUT qualify as "wild cards", wouldn't you?
But I'm one of those people who doesn't recognize limitations on thought, not to be hypocritical or anything;-) - and an affirmed skeptic. So take that as you will, and remember that skepticism does not mean regarding accepted theory as Gospel.If that were true, we'd have no such thing as QM.
If you read a couple of my other posts, you'll find I was *not* defending them "all over the place" - actually I am, as I stated, of the opinion that it is snake oil; BUT I was trying to point out that we shouldn't pretend we know everything about how the universe works, either (and yes, I'll include Conservation of Energy and CoM in that, as well - while they are very well-tested theories, they are *still* theories and it's not impossible that there may be phenomena found someday that force a revision of those theories. Extraordinarily unlikely, yes, but not impossible.)
I just hate the kneejerk "that's impossible" reponse because it has been said very often in history, by established scientists who were later proved to be wrong. Many times even in the 20th century. It has the feel of religious dogma to me.
"Not only is the universe stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine" -Sir Arthur Eddington
"Not only does God play dice, but he sometimes throws them where they cannot be seen." - Hawking
I'm not just an ignorant pus as Derek seems to assume. There are limits to what we understand or can understand, and acknowledging that those limits exist seems to be a bit difficult for some people.
Thanks for not diving headfirst into ad hom as Derek did.
From what I've seen, it's my opinion that he's violated his oath of office, anyway, so impeaching him ought to be easy, especially for his own party, right,? I mean, if a sitting prez can be impeached by his opponents for lying about a blowjob...
Is it not true that one has to take into account relativity when doing GPS calculations?
Different realms? What? It's the same damned universe.
Replaced? No. Superceded by *theories* that built on the previous theories, on the previous theories, on the..., as all good science does. Such is the nature of scientific inquiry.
Not "laws". When it comes to human understanding of the universe, there is no such thing as "laws" - just theories. "laws" - absolute truth - are a fallacy.
Just like everything one learns, you should question what you learned in high school.
And they still think the same thing today - because Newton's Laws still hold.
Within certain conditions.
This has been proven by decades experimental work as well as empirically. Anyone who just quotes definitions, as you do, doesn't have a clue what he's talking about.
So has Einstein's work.
Within the limits of our technology, Newton was canon for centuries.
Within the limits of our technology, Einstein is canon (some would argue that)
So what's your point, that you understand what Theory is? Theory is the "best working explanation". Doesn't mean that there isn't something better. I don't think you understand it at all.
Slashdot Mirror
[Carlin] Fuckin' pussies...[/Carlin]
Sorry. It had to be said.
SB
Guess you canucks don't stomp on gov officials who exceed their authority any more than we down here. Why this inspector isn't being fired for stepping outside the bounds of his job is beyond me.
"I get to decide what goes in this country. Do you have a problem with that?"
Guess that asshat didn't pay attention in training and has no concept of what enforcing the law means, like, it isn't your personal opinion, asshole...
Helluva world this is becoming.
SB
Ah. Guess the information I had was old. Interesting, tho. Although I'm not sure we can put climatical causes to the Sand Hills, given the amount of cattle ranging out there, and the increased amount of irrigation in the last couple hundred years from farming; it's a fact that the Ogalla water layer is being rapidly drained.
You are right about warming shrinking deserts - because it tends to cause increased rainfall, there's more moisture being evaporated and more being delivered thru the atmosphere to places where it wouldn't normally be. So I guess that means the climate is warming, overall.
SB
Can we borrow your politicians for a while? We need them to come over to the US and kick some people where it hurts ;-)
SB
In that case, you may want to watch this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfRUMmTs0ZA
(20/20's comparison of American education with Belgium education)
Seems to me that they are doing it right over in Belgium. Kudos to them, seems their laws/system aren't hampering their education system much, not like ours here in the US.
SB
The Sahara is currently shrinking.
Um, no. The Sahara is growing, expanding into the Sahel region (which is shrinking) and Lake Chad is disappearing fast.
I don't have any data about the Sand Hills (despite living not far from there) but nothing I've heard indicates that the region they encompass is shrinking. Dunno where you are getting your data from.
SB
On my first beer of the evening? I think not.
SB
Massage oils are so out of fad...
SB
Not to mention how confusing this is [going to be] to people who aren't following or can't follow the argument.
The "astronomically challenged" people who have asked me about this are divided between wondering if the IAU is becoming politically correct or just simply too interested in definition over discovery. (paraphrased for the sake of the post, but the term "navel contemplation" was part of one comment; and it's sorta scary that this has made the mainstream press enough that I have people who aren't science geeks asking about it. Mostly they are just confused. I can't blame them.)
It's a ridiculous debate and it's wasting way too much time and resources. It's like debating the definitions of Jupiter's plethora of moons. (That's not a moon, it's temporarily captured asteroidal body! Wait, it's a Not So Temporarily captured asteroidal body/has iron/carbonaceous/water-ice/blah blah properties\\ and therefore it deserves it's own proper name!)
How far is this going to go? Do we honestly need to keep (re)inventing two or three word definitions for everything? It's not like anything new is being invented here (well, plutons may qualify, but that sounds like something out of the Bugs Bunny cartoons) and anyway, we already have a name for them, they are Kuiper Belt Objects. Pluto was a planet long before KBO's were even thought of.
Sheesh. KISS. It's a planet (orbits the sun), it's a moon (orbits another body larger than it) or it's an asteroid (something too small to be a planet yet still orbits the sun). Those "in the know" can still keep using the same language we always have - it's a "body" w/characteristics mass, diameter, density, vector, composition, etc. Isn't the public at large confused enough? Does all this require yet another chapter in Astro 101 textbooks? (It may so, if just for the explanations!)
(meant to be at least partly humorous, of course, depending on the defintion of humor and only after a thorough analysis of the grammatical properties and social implications of the text posted)
Semi-Coherent Rant(SCR) over, you may now return to your regularly scheduled mental programming, and big Carlinesque Fuck You to everyone, just to be friendly.
SB
blah blah disclaimer, IAAAAWDOF,M (I Am An Amateur Astronomer Who Drinks On Fridays, Mostly)
Thanks a lot. I just spewed beer all over my keyboard.
Not many posts on slashdot cause that reaction nowadays. Hey, mods, he deserves more funny points, for the double (triple?) meaning, at least. Come on, you know it's true...
SB
From the second link:
I have talked to Guidry on this matter and express my disappointment of not getting everyone input before putting for the argument,
Hmm.
SB
Yeah, but mostly it just makes a whoosing sound
SB
It sure doesn't hurt that Google is making their apps, for the most part, available for linux. Picasa is one of the best photo managers I've seen, *and* it's free *and* there's a version for linux. Not quite stable for now, and I haven't played with the windows version yet, so I can't compare features, but it is still fantastic.
If Google continues making multiplatform versions of their apps available, that could have a tremendous impact on other companies who develop applications. Let the good folks at Google know they are doing right, so they keep it up.
Thank you Google!
SB
While I understand and respect your point, I've had similar experiences with windows - ie, having to beat my head repeatedly against the wall for days trying to figure out why something isn't working right. Granted fewer problems with XP, but there are still some that took some time. Like the printer driver for my HP Business Inkjet 2200 that installed fine on the last XP install I did a few years back, but after a hard drive crash and a reinstall of XP the driver simply would not install correctly (same driver file, turned out to be an obscure conflict with a windows update, took nearly a week)
:-)
I do tech support on the side and most of the problems I fix - for windows users - (and I'm going to leave out viruses, trojans, and the like as that isn't what we're talking about) are more or less simple fixes for me but nearly impossible for them.
Operating systems aren't perfect, whether Windows, MacOSX, or Linux. Users can expect automagical perfect functionality, but there is no operating system which provides it. Not one; and there will likely never, ever be one. That's why geeks like us keep getting those telephone calls...
Linux has come a long ways - and will continue to evolve; personally I feel it's evolving much, much faster than windows is. If one considers, oh, Redhat 5x to be about the equivalent of win3.1 - I started with RH 5.1 and that's how it felt to me - and looks at the timeframe from then until now with such incredible dists as Ubuntu*, the future looks bright indeed...
Cheers,
SB
* Another experience: I have a cheapass usb 802b wireless device I bought on clearance at Radio Shack some years ago - drivers under windows were never stable at all and even when they worked the throughput sucked; but a few months back whilst going thru some of my old stuff I found it and decided to give it a try on the same laptop, but this time under Ubuntu. Works like a charm, 100% stable, only thing I had to do was call up the wireless lan config and tell it to use dhcp. Bing! and running as fast as my other, newer 802b, which works well under both OS's. Sure, it's a driver issue. But it *worked* using a FOSS driver. Shocked me somewhat, and it's nice to be able to use that old laptop everywhere
[Carlin] No wonder nobody in this world takes our country seriously... [/Carlin] :-)
I have nothing to say, really, except that your comment is absolutely on target. Kudos.
SB
Thanks for replying, right back atcha :-)
:-)
;-)
;-) - and an affirmed skeptic. So take that as you will, and remember that skepticism does not mean regarding accepted theory as Gospel.If that were true, we'd have no such thing as QM.
I don't think that revisions to CoE nor CoM would necessarily invalidate all science since the beginning of time. After all, the revisions to Newton's theory didn't invalidate such basic local frame experiments as dropping a rock and a feather on the moon in a vacuum. (Derek tried to equivocate relativity to "other realms" as if it doesn't apply to the real world; I called him on it and he went ad hom. Eh? Relativity doesn't make enough of a measurable difference in the rock and feather experiment to worry about - unless one is one of those who is very exact about it - but it does make differences in things like the ephemeris of Mercury's orbit - very obvious differences there on the order of years - and in GPS calculations - and the latter, at least, is hardly something that is "another realm".)
That's just the sort of thinking that I was talking about. "We know that *insert axiom here* is valid because of repeated experiment, therefore *insert odd results here* cannot be true, because we know that *axiom* is valid, it's an Immutable Fact(tm). But the whole idea of science is that we continue questioning the framework we are building on, yes?...
To paraphrase what you said, if we are going to regard Theory X as immutable law, we might was well throw out all science since the beginning of time, because there's nothing left to discover about it, it's Fact. (although I'd phrase it "since the beginning of human discovery".)
One has to consider the human factor in theory - that being that we are limited in our senses (less so with the more technology, as I tried to point out to Derek) but still limited to our senses and the constructs we can develop from them. Such constructs have always, *always* proven to be at least partially flawed given enough time. Always. There's no reason to believe that the "laws" of conservation will not prove equally so, given sufficient data. We just don't know, and that's why it bugs me that they are called Laws - like some sort of immutable thing. As far as we can measure, right now, yes, they are. As far as we can measure.
An example would be the phenomenon known as singularities - where, it appears, nobody can agree whether or not any of our physical theories (or "laws") apply. There are as many opinions on this as there are physicists, and then some
Quantum theory gives us indications (such as vacuum fluctuation) that energy can be spontaneously created. Our theories tell us that there has to be a balance, ie, an anti-particle created for every particle, such that the net energy balance is zero. But we can't prove that; and some Big Bang theories postulate that there was an imbalance in that creation, that we ended up with more "matter" than we did "antimatter"; yet our current theories of vacuum fluctuation postulate that an antiparticle is created to balance every particle created. So there's a conservation of energy there, where? Where did it go? Is it possible that we are creating the balance purely within our theories?
Here we enter into the realm of metaphysics, but when there are a half dozen or so competing theories for the GUT, metaphysics is the only place we can speculate in
I'd say that the various permutations of the GUT qualify as "wild cards", wouldn't you?
But I'm one of those people who doesn't recognize limitations on thought, not to be hypocritical or anything
Cheers,
SB
This is good news for everyone.
That depends on what Microsoft's real motivations are, doesn't it?
SB
I'd pay money to watch that.
(of course it'd probably be on YouTube anyway...)
SB
Sorry for the late reply.
If you read a couple of my other posts, you'll find I was *not* defending them "all over the place" - actually I am, as I stated, of the opinion that it is snake oil; BUT I was trying to point out that we shouldn't pretend we know everything about how the universe works, either (and yes, I'll include Conservation of Energy and CoM in that, as well - while they are very well-tested theories, they are *still* theories and it's not impossible that there may be phenomena found someday that force a revision of those theories. Extraordinarily unlikely, yes, but not impossible.)
I just hate the kneejerk "that's impossible" reponse because it has been said very often in history, by established scientists who were later proved to be wrong. Many times even in the 20th century. It has the feel of religious dogma to me.
"Not only is the universe stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine" -Sir Arthur Eddington
"Not only does God play dice, but he sometimes throws them where they cannot be seen." - Hawking
I'm not just an ignorant pus as Derek seems to assume. There are limits to what we understand or can understand, and acknowledging that those limits exist seems to be a bit difficult for some people.
Thanks for not diving headfirst into ad hom as Derek did.
Cheers,
SB
Then impeach his ass.
From what I've seen, it's my opinion that he's violated his oath of office, anyway, so impeaching him ought to be easy, especially for his own party, right,? I mean, if a sitting prez can be impeached by his opponents for lying about a blowjob...
Sigh...
SB
Is it not true that one has to take into account relativity when doing GPS calculations?
Different realms? What? It's the same damned universe.
Replaced? No. Superceded by *theories* that built on the previous theories, on the previous theories, on the..., as all good science does. Such is the nature of scientific inquiry.
Not "laws". When it comes to human understanding of the universe, there is no such thing as "laws" - just theories. "laws" - absolute truth - are a fallacy.
Just like everything one learns, you should question what you learned in high school.
SB
It's lobbyist pandering, is what it is. (get 'em in there before it's regulated they be in there)
The only real beneficiaries are the lawyers.
SB
And they still think the same thing today - because Newton's Laws still hold.
Within certain conditions.
This has been proven by decades experimental work as well as empirically. Anyone who just quotes definitions, as you do, doesn't have a clue what he's talking about.
So has Einstein's work.
Within the limits of our technology, Newton was canon for centuries.
Within the limits of our technology, Einstein is canon (some would argue that)
So what's your point, that you understand what Theory is? Theory is the "best working explanation". Doesn't mean that there isn't something better. I don't think you understand it at all.
SB
3. Get it vetted by real scientists who say it's bullshit, and
4. Profit if he still decides to market it (wanna debate that?), because most people are FUCKING STUPID(tm)
Which would still mean he proved something, eh? *snort*
SB
I think you are one of those people I'd like to see on that jury. I hope that they accept people at least as cynical as you.
Not that I saw any real content to your post.
SB