He's not going to pitch it to Paramount for political reasons but is going to try to apply fan pressure to get them to cave? Is anyone really under the impression that that has the slightest chance of working?
Paramount is well aware of the rabid and loyal fan base -- a fan base that is willing to sit through such dreck as Voyager and Enterprise. They still cancelled it. That proves that fan pressure alone is not enough to make them change their minds.
Yeah, this is pretty goofy. Come on, any repetitive stress can cause damage. There's nothing particularly special about the Blackberry in this regard. Playing too much video games or sitting at a desk all day filling out forms or continually lifting heavy, awkward boxes can be the cause of this.
That they even admit that there are no known cases shows how the news item is pretty contentless.
It's hard to be sympathetic for this guy. He signed an NDA, didn't read it, then did something incredibly stupid, and is getting sued for it. He even admits it -- but seems to think it's unfair that he should have to face the consequences of his actions. Why should we care, exactly?
This isn't Big Brother, this isn't Evil Corporate America, this is someone explicitly and knowingly entering into a contract and then flagrantly violating it. That he didn't read the NDA, or apply the tinyiest inkling of common sense, makes that his fault, and no one elses.
What does he think the appropriate resolution should be, exactly? Getting a cookie?
Sure, but that's well on the way to when the probabilty is being ruled out. The point is the probability steadily increases, and then once the probability distribution shrinks to the point that the Earth moves out of the highest risk area, it very rapidly decreases to zero.
What you say is ideally true but what you're not considering is that the orbit refinement is not a continuous process, it's a discrete process. There are a finite number of observations and these help refine the orbit. It's very likely that each successive batch of observations will increase the probability until one batch refines it so that impact is many sigmas out, and then the probability jumps to zero.
Which is, of course, exactly what happened. It's Torino 0 now. Troll, indeed!
And, in fact, hitting the page now (15:30 Pacific time), it's clear that the risk is gone; the object is now a Torino 0 (for all projected future encounters).
Keep in mind that the very nature of the situation will result in the probability slowly creeping upward until (hopefully of course), it is eliminated entirely. The very nature of having a low-probability situation whose likelihood has to be determined with continued measurements to increase the precision of the prediction means that as the likely set of paths is refined, the cylinder that represents the likely set of paths of the asteroid shrinks. Because it shrinks, the probability that it will be at any given point in that cylinder goes up.
At the point when the cylinder is projected to miss Earth entirely, the probability of impact will suddenly go to (very near) zero. In other words, the very nature of the situation regarding refining the data we have means that the probability will creep slowly upward before it goes to zero. (This happens for all close encounters, of course; it's just that no one's watching the actual probabilities for those too carefully.)
So the steady rise of the impact probability may be disquieting, but it is not unexpected and does not actually indicate anything particularly additionally troubling going on.
Note that a Torino 4 is a 1% or greater chance of regional devastation. Even if it does impact, depending on where it hits, there's still a possibility it won't be the worst disaster in human history. (I wouldn't be betting on it at that point, but the chances are not negligible.)
Well, look. Fans of Babylon 5 will like it almost unconditionally. So a long-time Babylon 5 fan telling us that Crusade was really going to be great and didn't get its chance to shine doesn't really tell us anything. The problem is, only a long-time fan with cognitive dissonance could claim that Crusade was anything other than the unmitigated piece of crap that it was. It was cancelled, yes, because it deserved to be cancelled. It was really bad, and everyone knew it. (For the record I did carefully watch every episode on a SCIFI channel replaying to make sure I know of what I speak.)
The rest of us will judge it on its merits. What Babylon 5 had going for it was a detailed universe (probably created over many years of JMS' life). There was a lot of thought and work in there, and there was an arc -- something almost unheard of in television science fiction at the time or since (Deep Space Nine picked up on this at least a little bit and added several arc-like elements). It was a little slow to start, but when Babylon 5 hit its stride in late season two and season three, it was really something to watch. Season four was a bit anticlimactic, and since there was no guarantee of a season five until it was green-lit, season five had no arc and so wandered aimlessly and was uninteresting.
Crusade was a pathetically hollow attempt to set up a dungeons-and-dragons style quest, right down to adding one character of each DD class. It was largely uninteresting and really wandered very far away from the core of what Babylon 5 good. Hey, if you're really into D&D maybe you'll think that's really superb. Most of the rest of humanity won't, however.
The fact that Galen -- the most hilariously bad character from Crusade is going to play at least some part in the new movie is a good sign that JMS didn't realize how bad Crusade was perceived.
Yes, and that was one of the most embarassingly lame characters from one of the most embarassing science fiction series ever. Babylon 5 had something going on at its peak, but Crusade was terrible.
I think that to some extent this might be missing the point. I don't think anyone (cranks aside) questions whether the release of greenhouse gases causes global warming. The fundamental question is about how much of an effect human activity will have over other, natural factors, and what outcome that activity will have. There is a significant amount of disagreement on this point, and what to do about it as an insurance policy. Saying "Humans contribute to global warming" is not nearly enough.
Even if a spider is scanning URLs that were obtained from Google, that doesn't mean that it's being done institutionally by Microsoft. It could just simply be someone fiddling with something.
And to all of you out there saying, "Boo hoo, Kerry lost. Get over it." How is it that Democracy in America is being hijacked, and you don't seem to give a shit?
Because even if all these "anomalies" went 100% to Kerry, Bush would still have won.
That's easy: A bluff is simply betting when you yourself don't think you have the best hand. It doesn't matter what the hand value of your hand is, what matters is that you're pretty sure it's a loser.
A semibluff is when you still think you're beaten but have outs to get what you think will be the best hand.
But it's not authoritative -- how could it be? There is by definition no authority associated with it, and that is Wikipedia's main feature.
Wikipedia is extremely useful, but one must always keep in mind that you're dealing with information that is not vouched for by any authoritative or semiauthoritative source -- just like the rest of the general Web pages you'll find. That doesn't mean it's wrong, that doesn't mean it's right, but it means that you need to keep your wits about you.
I've encountered people, for instance, who have stated that one of their hobbies is writing Wikipedia articles -- they'll do it on whatever subjects they wish. I've encountered people that asked other people questions so that they could write a Wikipedia article simply for the sake of doing it. I suppose that's fine, but it's hard to hear that out of one corner of someone's mouth and then have them tell me how authoritative it is with the other.
Wikipedia is good. It is not authoritative. It never was meant to be.
What a completely boring game of semantics. Who cares whether it's capitalized or not? Why in the world is it news when they choose not to capitalize it any longer? What self-absorbed nonsense!
He most certainly does not say that they're not going to sue anymore people. He's just saying they're not going to sue any more people right now. Big difference.
The main problems are that this just shifts the point of failure (or deception or fraud) to third parties. Instead of you yourself lying about your identity to someone over an insecure communications system, now you're dependent on whatever procedure people identify themselves with to this registry. Ultimately someone at the registry has to examine the documents submitted by someone and decide whether or not it's legitimate (and thereby mark the user as verified). How can he managed to never be deceived? One mechanism mentioned is photocopies of documents (photocopies are notoriously easy to manipulate) and a notary public -- but how do you know that the notary public isn't working for the bad guys (after all, it's not like it takes a huge amount of effort to become a notary public)?
Ultimately there's going to be an issue of liability. You cannot guarantee 100% reliability, and so you're going to get sued whenever someone who is mistakenly verified by the system defrauds someone else. Do you really want that?
That's easy -- they won't try to make it consistent. This is Star Trek remember -- why would anyone be under the mistaken impression that they would even make a token attempt at consistency?
Slashdot Mirror
Since the FCC and the NRC have nothing whatsoever to do with each other, is this supposed to be anything other than a pointless comparison?
He's not going to pitch it to Paramount for political reasons but is going to try to apply fan pressure to get them to cave? Is anyone really under the impression that that has the slightest chance of working?
Paramount is well aware of the rabid and loyal fan base -- a fan base that is willing to sit through such dreck as Voyager and Enterprise. They still cancelled it. That proves that fan pressure alone is not enough to make them change their minds.
Yeah, this is pretty goofy. Come on, any repetitive stress can cause damage. There's nothing particularly special about the Blackberry in this regard. Playing too much video games or sitting at a desk all day filling out forms or continually lifting heavy, awkward boxes can be the cause of this.
That they even admit that there are no known cases shows how the news item is pretty contentless.
It's hard to be sympathetic for this guy. He signed an NDA, didn't read it, then did something incredibly stupid, and is getting sued for it. He even admits it -- but seems to think it's unfair that he should have to face the consequences of his actions. Why should we care, exactly?
This isn't Big Brother, this isn't Evil Corporate America, this is someone explicitly and knowingly entering into a contract and then flagrantly violating it. That he didn't read the NDA, or apply the tinyiest inkling of common sense, makes that his fault, and no one elses.
What does he think the appropriate resolution should be, exactly? Getting a cookie?
Sure, but that's well on the way to when the probabilty is being ruled out. The point is the probability steadily increases, and then once the probability distribution shrinks to the point that the Earth moves out of the highest risk area, it very rapidly decreases to zero.
What you say is ideally true but what you're not considering is that the orbit refinement is not a continuous process, it's a discrete process. There are a finite number of observations and these help refine the orbit. It's very likely that each successive batch of observations will increase the probability until one batch refines it so that impact is many sigmas out, and then the probability jumps to zero.
Which is, of course, exactly what happened. It's Torino 0 now. Troll, indeed!
And, in fact, hitting the page now (15:30 Pacific time), it's clear that the risk is gone; the object is now a Torino 0 (for all projected future encounters).
Keep in mind that the very nature of the situation will result in the probability slowly creeping upward until (hopefully of course), it is eliminated entirely. The very nature of having a low-probability situation whose likelihood has to be determined with continued measurements to increase the precision of the prediction means that as the likely set of paths is refined, the cylinder that represents the likely set of paths of the asteroid shrinks. Because it shrinks, the probability that it will be at any given point in that cylinder goes up.
At the point when the cylinder is projected to miss Earth entirely, the probability of impact will suddenly go to (very near) zero. In other words, the very nature of the situation regarding refining the data we have means that the probability will creep slowly upward before it goes to zero. (This happens for all close encounters, of course; it's just that no one's watching the actual probabilities for those too carefully.)
So the steady rise of the impact probability may be disquieting, but it is not unexpected and does not actually indicate anything particularly additionally troubling going on.
Note that a Torino 4 is a 1% or greater chance of regional devastation. Even if it does impact, depending on where it hits, there's still a possibility it won't be the worst disaster in human history. (I wouldn't be betting on it at that point, but the chances are not negligible.)
Well, look. Fans of Babylon 5 will like it almost unconditionally. So a long-time Babylon 5 fan telling us that Crusade was really going to be great and didn't get its chance to shine doesn't really tell us anything. The problem is, only a long-time fan with cognitive dissonance could claim that Crusade was anything other than the unmitigated piece of crap that it was. It was cancelled, yes, because it deserved to be cancelled. It was really bad, and everyone knew it. (For the record I did carefully watch every episode on a SCIFI channel replaying to make sure I know of what I speak.)
The rest of us will judge it on its merits. What Babylon 5 had going for it was a detailed universe (probably created over many years of JMS' life). There was a lot of thought and work in there, and there was an arc -- something almost unheard of in television science fiction at the time or since (Deep Space Nine picked up on this at least a little bit and added several arc-like elements). It was a little slow to start, but when Babylon 5 hit its stride in late season two and season three, it was really something to watch. Season four was a bit anticlimactic, and since there was no guarantee of a season five until it was green-lit, season five had no arc and so wandered aimlessly and was uninteresting.
Crusade was a pathetically hollow attempt to set up a dungeons-and-dragons style quest, right down to adding one character of each DD class. It was largely uninteresting and really wandered very far away from the core of what Babylon 5 good. Hey, if you're really into D&D maybe you'll think that's really superb. Most of the rest of humanity won't, however.
The fact that Galen -- the most hilariously bad character from Crusade is going to play at least some part in the new movie is a good sign that JMS didn't realize how bad Crusade was perceived.
Yes, and that was one of the most embarassingly lame characters from one of the most embarassing science fiction series ever. Babylon 5 had something going on at its peak, but Crusade was terrible.
I think that to some extent this might be missing the point. I don't think anyone (cranks aside) questions whether the release of greenhouse gases causes global warming. The fundamental question is about how much of an effect human activity will have over other, natural factors, and what outcome that activity will have. There is a significant amount of disagreement on this point, and what to do about it as an insurance policy. Saying "Humans contribute to global warming" is not nearly enough.
This is clearly not a universal problem; even with low signal strengths, I haven't had this problem.
Why am I reminded of the Sam Waterston SNL skit about Old Glory Insurance?
Even if a spider is scanning URLs that were obtained from Google, that doesn't mean that it's being done institutionally by Microsoft. It could just simply be someone fiddling with something.
That's quite all right if CBS doesn't see journalism elsewhere, because the rest of us are having difficulty finding journalism in CBS.
Because even if all these "anomalies" went 100% to Kerry, Bush would still have won.
That's easy: A bluff is simply betting when you yourself don't think you have the best hand. It doesn't matter what the hand value of your hand is, what matters is that you're pretty sure it's a loser.
A semibluff is when you still think you're beaten but have outs to get what you think will be the best hand.
Is anyone really under the impression that it isn't dead already?
Who said anything about mastery? Playing games for enjoyment does not always entail "mastering" them, whatever that means.
You heard it here first.
But it's not authoritative -- how could it be? There is by definition no authority associated with it, and that is Wikipedia's main feature.
Wikipedia is extremely useful, but one must always keep in mind that you're dealing with information that is not vouched for by any authoritative or semiauthoritative source -- just like the rest of the general Web pages you'll find. That doesn't mean it's wrong, that doesn't mean it's right, but it means that you need to keep your wits about you.
I've encountered people, for instance, who have stated that one of their hobbies is writing Wikipedia articles -- they'll do it on whatever subjects they wish. I've encountered people that asked other people questions so that they could write a Wikipedia article simply for the sake of doing it. I suppose that's fine, but it's hard to hear that out of one corner of someone's mouth and then have them tell me how authoritative it is with the other.
Wikipedia is good. It is not authoritative. It never was meant to be.
What a completely boring game of semantics. Who cares whether it's capitalized or not? Why in the world is it news when they choose not to capitalize it any longer? What self-absorbed nonsense!
He most certainly does not say that they're not going to sue anymore people. He's just saying they're not going to sue any more people right now. Big difference.
The main problems are that this just shifts the point of failure (or deception or fraud) to third parties. Instead of you yourself lying about your identity to someone over an insecure communications system, now you're dependent on whatever procedure people identify themselves with to this registry. Ultimately someone at the registry has to examine the documents submitted by someone and decide whether or not it's legitimate (and thereby mark the user as verified). How can he managed to never be deceived? One mechanism mentioned is photocopies of documents (photocopies are notoriously easy to manipulate) and a notary public -- but how do you know that the notary public isn't working for the bad guys (after all, it's not like it takes a huge amount of effort to become a notary public)?
Ultimately there's going to be an issue of liability. You cannot guarantee 100% reliability, and so you're going to get sued whenever someone who is mistakenly verified by the system defrauds someone else. Do you really want that?
That's easy -- they won't try to make it consistent. This is Star Trek remember -- why would anyone be under the mistaken impression that they would even make a token attempt at consistency?