If I was your manager and you talked up this expensive proprietary product and it crashed and burned AND made me look bad, you're not going to be sticking around too long.
Your job, everyone's job, is to make your boss look good.
Your boss wants to use up his entire budget, and deliver a working solution as promised. There doesn't have to be any connection between those two. I think that the gpp was proposing that you help chose a proprietary system which would burn up the budget, and that you use you spare time to set up a F/OSS system which would work.
When the proprietary system fails, put the free one on to cover the gap. Now that it's working, it's pretty hard to argue that it can't do the job. Your boss has used the money, he's gotten the kickbacks from the salesmen, he's delivered a solution, you've made him look good. As long as he gets to take credit for everything, you'll be sticking around.
Since you know that they went out of their way to NOT restart, I would guess that they have had bad experiences with critical windows updates, and weren't going to be part of the experiment.
Those are your knowledgeable users, who read and understood your message.
... if we program what we know into a simulation, the simulation will be based on what we know!
... programed "Life" into a computer.... until you actually run the program, you would never have expected the results!
A simulation can tell you things you didn't realize you knew, but it can't tell you things you actually didn't know.
All argument by analogy leads you astray as soon as the anaolgy breaks down.
When you run the game of Life, you learn about the behavior of the cells on the game board under the rules you put into the simulation. You learn all the things which are implicit in the rules, but not obvious to you. Since you make up all the rules, there is no underlying reality with hidden rules which can make reality differ from your simulation.
Running a simulation can let you see that reality differs from the results of your model. From that you can infer that there are rules in reality that didn't make it into your model.
... 21st Century Science and Technology is NOT a reputable, peer-reviewed scientific journal.
I won't argue with your assessment. However, they didn't publish the research in question.
The original article was published in Physics-Uspekhi (Advances in Physical Sciences), which looks like a respectable journal. The English version of the Russian article is here. The abstract doesn't say what 21st Century Sci-Tech says. The reviewer's comments are here.
If anyone can get access to the full text, let us know if Shnoll, et al did claim that decay rates are variable, and what the reviewers said about it.
Just to be pedantic, radioisotope dating is precise (by your example), but may not be accurate. Precise indicates that you can get results with many significant figures (like +/-25,000 years out of 65 million). Accurate indicates that you can get results which are correct.
It is possible to have precision without accuracy. The parent post was suggesting radiometric dating suffers from inaccuracy, you have claimed it does not suffer from imprecision. You might both be right.
Why didn't they take up a big blue tarp, to cover the panel and shut it down? Better yet, why not take up a big space blanket, which would be lighter and provide better shade?
As for why they can't just wait for night, the period of the ISS orbit is about 93 minutes. They'd have to work fast.
What many tech people consider a "reasonable" wage actually puts them in the top 10%.
If your I.Q. is in the top 10%, isn't it reasonable to expect a salary in the top 10%? You are obviously intellectually capable of doing almost anything, so your opportunity cost is likely to be quite high.
... 42% of people earn less than 25K a year.
Half of all people are of below average intelligence. Most of your 42% is in that bottom half. What do their earnings have to do with the earnings of scientists and engineers, who are much closer to the 90th percentile than the 50th?
Nie hao ma? Does it really help to speak Chinese with a Russian accent?
Without the right tones, pronunciation really doesn't matter.
With the right tones, the pronunciation features we English speakers focus on don't matter much, anyway.
The Chinese are going to be laughing at you anyway, but they'll be pleased that you're trying, and they'll make an effort to communicate. Just learn to write the characters, or even the pinyin (which I've obviously forgotten) and you'll do fine.
How do you tie the hexayurts down so they don't blow away in the first breeze? I don't see any hard points to tie a rope to.
Your site has patterns for the 6 footer, and the stretch 6. Any patterns for the bigger ones?
What tape are you using? I saw passing references, but I'm not sure of the details.
Have you given any thought to ways to scale this up slightly and make it more permanent? Maybe using structural insulated panels? I realize that's totally off-topic for your immediate purpose, but it might help win acceptance if it were seen as more mainstream.
And a few hexayurt comments:
This could work well in a cold climate, if you could tie it down. Mound up dirt over a barrel stove, with the stove on one side of the mound and the stove pipe running level through the dirt and up out the far side. Put the hexayurt on the level top. People have lived through Fairbanks winters in a wall tent that way; a hexayurt would be luxurious in comparison.
A clever pattern to tie or cut a blue tarp to fit over the top might be the answer to the tie-down problem. A UV-resistant blue tarp would be a real god-send, too, if you could find such a thing.
This looks as if it could have a lot of utility in the larger sizes as a temporary shelter for scout jamborees, hunting camps, and so on. A more permanent version could be a storage shed, a workshop, a studio, a recreational cabin...
Getting back to the troubles in the tropics, you mention using cardboard honeycomb material for cheap shelter. Have you looked at wax-impregnated cardboard? There might be some problems with fire resistance and tape adhesion, but the material is wonderfully water resistant and strong.
If time becomes space-like, what would that mean for us?
Well, since time is what keeps everything from happening at once, everything would happen at once, but in different places.
Would we be able to transverse time as easily as space?
Yes, but I'm guessing you will only be able to go in one direction, and there will be a maximum (and minimum) velocity of one second per second (notice how the units cancel, neatly getting around the absence of time in our post-flip universe).
Will the cubs win the world series?
That would take a lot of time... which we would be fresh out of.
Finally, always remember that while time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana.
``The English as she is spoke'' is a reference to what I recall was the English title of a Portuguese book, purporting to teach colloquial ESL. I think that this is a send up of it, rather than the original.
So, it wasn't a desperate attempt at PC, but a desperate attempt at humor.
And did I get a promotion? Nope. And when I do, I'll still be at a lower level than most...
And there you have it in a nut shell. But it may not be exactly what you think.
I recall that at Purdue, they went through one of the periodic sensitivity manias, and found that male profs were getting more money on average than female, and female profs were, on average, remaining at the associate (pre-tenure) level longer than males (this caused the first finding, of course).
The reason for this was not discrimination, but the fact that men who were denied tenure typically left no later than the end of the academic year, while females who were denied tenure typically remained for the remainder of their contracts, often several years. This meant that a higher percentage of the female profs were lower-paid associates than were the males, even though the males and females were denied tenure at roughly the same rate.[1] A very different behavior pattern produced very different average results to the same stimulus.
How does this relate to you? Your co-workers and bosses may have learned that they can steal your credit, deny your raises, and you'll stick around anyway, unlike your male co-workers. If that's true, they're treating you differently than the men, but only because you are different than the men: you'll put up with it, and they won't.
Ask yourself this: do your cow-orkers and bosses have reason to believe that you value security and hate change more than most of your co-workers?
Or maybe you're just lousy at tooting your own horn.
[1] If the study had found any evidence of discrimination, such as higher tenure denial rates for females or lower interview rates for female candidates, they would have trumpeted it to the skies. They didn't, because the departments had all learned to ensure that they were statistically clean, in anticipation of these Maoist self-criticism sessions.
Offer them a chance to win a T-Shirt and they will give you whatever private information you want,... We did. Out of 3000 possible participants, a few more than 2000 entered.
So, one third didn't value the prize you offered enough to make up bogus information, while two thirds wanted a chance at your prize so badly they gave you a throw-away email address.
Seriously, did you try to validate that information? How many of the emails were @spamgourmet.com, or the equivalent?
As others pointed out, phone numbers are in the phone directory, so most folks don't feel to possessive about them. Some of those phone numbers might even be real. Mine wouldn't be.
I long since gave up telling people that some things are none of their business. If you want my computer passwords, I'm happy to write them on your form, but don't expect them to actually work!
while it is illegal to own a fully automatic fire arm...
This isn't true. You can legally own fully automatic firearms after you have purchased a $200 tax stamp from the BATF. They do sell this stamp, upon proper application. Some states may have laws which restrict this freedom.
... it is not illegal to buy a conversion kit
Be careful with this one: it isn't generally true. The BATF has held that certain parts of a machine gun are a machine gun. Exactly what parts of a particular machine gun constitute a machine gun varies from time to time; it's decided by the whim of the BATF. It seems to boil down to ``If they want to get you, your machine gun parts are the bad parts.''
The problem here is that even though it is legal to own or manufacture machine guns, manufacture is only legal after you have bought the special manufacturers tax stamp. The BATF has refused to sell these since 1986, if I remember correctly. So, possessing certain machine gun parts (including some ``conversion kits'') is a felony. Possessing a full auto sear for an M16, and an AR15, is a felony, while possessing only the sear or only the AR15 is not, if I remember correctly (and I might be wrong on some or all of that). Possessing a full auto sear for an FAL is not a problem, but possessing an FAL receiver cut to accept that sear definitely is a felony with or without the sear, and so on.
In general, if you could put your parts together to make a machine gun, you are a felon unless you can somehow purchase that magic tax stamp.
These taxes were enacted by the National Firearms Act of 1934. There was a time when this was a free country.
... raise technology to an actual curriculum area, like English, Math, etc.
English hasn't changed dramatically in the last 100 years. We can still read Shakespeare's stuff, which are around 400 years old.
The basics of math hasn't changed dramatically in 2,000+ years. Sure, computation got a bit easier after the decimal system became wide-spread about 1,000 years ago, but that's not a change in the fundamentals.
20 year old technology is obsolete. I know: let's teach that in schools!
I don't think it makes sense to teach kids things that will be quaint and better forgotten before middle age. Language and math are great choices for an ``actual curriculum area.'' Evanescent trivia isn't.
It might be worthwhile to offer kids some high school credit for getting their teachers up to speed with that stuff, but it should be elective credit, on a par with credit for changing diapers at the nursing home.
... their algorithm would require on the order of 50^50 photons (about 10^85). For comparison, the Sun emits roughly 10^45 photons per second.
So, are you saying that this is a pretty bright idea? Or that it's not so bright?
Re:What about the rest of your evolutionism?
on
The Human Mutation
·
· Score: 1
I'm sorry to disappoint you, but I'm not an evolutionist. I'm a born-again Christian, and I used to be an evolutionist, until I actually thought about it all. Taking your comments more or less seriatim:
The physics of fusion says that it can happen with elements light enough to add up to something no heavier than iron. To make elements heavier than that, you have to add energy. So, I would expect that heavier elements are fusing in the sun occasionally. I don't know if there is a way to observe that, as opposed to inferring it.
I'm not familiar with the video series you're talking about. I do think that the ``goo-to-you'' version of evolution, which calls for molecules to self-assemble into cells, and then cells to self-assemble into us, is very implausible, and I'm quite sure we haven't ever observed it in action. I think that the old earth idea is a bit less obviously unsound, and if we didn't have Genesis, I wouldn't argue with the old earth idea. Evolution, on the other hand, just doesn't seem supportable without miracles like those described in Genesis 1. If you're going to believe in miracles, you might as well believe in God, too.
Selective breeding we all know about, and ``natural selection'' and ``survival of the fittest'' are just selective breeding, so your number 6 is just good sense, as you said.
As I said, your items 1, 4 and 5 contradict the account in Genesis 1, so I don't hold out much hope for the folks who are trying to give strictly natural, miracle-free explanations for the world around us. You can't just say ``It's turtles all the way down.'' As I say, if you're going to throw a miracle into your explanation, you might as well give God the credit for it, and if you're going to give Him credit for creation, it's probably bright to believe His story about how He did it.
Re:What about the rest of your evolutionism?
on
The Human Mutation
·
· Score: 1
2 and 3 I think we have plausible stories for.
2, in particular, is how the sun stays hot: two hydrogens become one helium, and give off a lot of energy. This is fusion, and it isn't chemical at all.
3 is a bit less certain, but there are theories which are consistant with a literal interpretation of genesis which allow this.
I'm still waiting for something plausible on 1, 4 and 5. They contradict the only eye witness account we have, so I don't think there's much hope for them.
The article says: ``The cuts reflect a change in emphasis away from robotic technology and toward human exploration of space.'' How is it stupid to lay off the guys doing the robotics work we no longer want? Isn't NASA a big enough boondoggle already, without adding featherbedding to the mess?
I'm all in favor of space exploration and colonisation, and that's why I think we need to shut down NASA. This does nothing for or against shutting down NASA, but it does get NASA pointed in a better direction. Unfortunately, which ever direction they point, they'll be going backwards. Let's just replace NASA with a $10e^10 prize for the first company which can provide scheduled service to geosynchronous orbit for $100 per kg. Feel free to fiddle the numbers in the reward and the price per kilogram. It's the concept that matters, not the details.
Slashdot Mirror
Ni bu nung shuo hun duo wun. Ni yo google translate
Your job, everyone's job, is to make your boss look good.
Your boss wants to use up his entire budget, and deliver a working solution as promised. There doesn't have to be any connection between those two. I think that the gpp was proposing that you help chose a proprietary system which would burn up the budget, and that you use you spare time to set up a F/OSS system which would work.
When the proprietary system fails, put the free one on to cover the gap. Now that it's working, it's pretty hard to argue that it can't do the job. Your boss has used the money, he's gotten the kickbacks from the salesmen, he's delivered a solution, you've made him look good. As long as he gets to take credit for everything, you'll be sticking around.
Those are your knowledgeable users, who read and understood your message.
A simulation can tell you things you didn't realize you knew, but it can't tell you things you actually didn't know.
All argument by analogy leads you astray as soon as the anaolgy breaks down.
When you run the game of Life, you learn about the behavior of the cells on the game board under the rules you put into the simulation. You learn all the things which are implicit in the rules, but not obvious to you. Since you make up all the rules, there is no underlying reality with hidden rules which can make reality differ from your simulation.
Running a simulation can let you see that reality differs from the results of your model. From that you can infer that there are rules in reality that didn't make it into your model.
I won't argue with your assessment. However, they didn't publish the research in question.
The original article was published in Physics-Uspekhi (Advances in Physical Sciences), which looks like a respectable journal. The English version of the Russian article is here. The abstract doesn't say what 21st Century Sci-Tech says. The reviewer's comments are here.
If anyone can get access to the full text, let us know if Shnoll, et al did claim that decay rates are variable, and what the reviewers said about it.
Just to be pedantic, radioisotope dating is precise (by your example), but may not be accurate. Precise indicates that you can get results with many significant figures (like +/-25,000 years out of 65 million). Accurate indicates that you can get results which are correct.
It is possible to have precision without accuracy. The parent post was suggesting radiometric dating suffers from inaccuracy, you have claimed it does not suffer from imprecision. You might both be right.
As for why they can't just wait for night, the period of the ISS orbit is about 93 minutes. They'd have to work fast.
If your I.Q. is in the top 10%, isn't it reasonable to expect a salary in the top 10%? You are obviously intellectually capable of doing almost anything, so your opportunity cost is likely to be quite high.
Half of all people are of below average intelligence. Most of your 42% is in that bottom half. What do their earnings have to do with the earnings of scientists and engineers, who are much closer to the 90th percentile than the 50th?
Without the right tones, pronunciation really doesn't matter.
With the right tones, the pronunciation features we English speakers focus on don't matter much, anyway.
The Chinese are going to be laughing at you anyway, but they'll be pleased that you're trying, and they'll make an effort to communicate. Just learn to write the characters, or even the pinyin (which I've obviously forgotten) and you'll do fine.
Nie hao ma? (How are you?)
Wo hun hao. (I'm fine.)
Ke bu ke yi wo qui nie de huo jian? (May I go in your rocket?)
And a few hexayurt comments:
Man, I'm going to report you to the SPCA! What did that donkey ever do to you?
Well, since time is what keeps everything from happening at once, everything would happen at once, but in different places.
Would we be able to transverse time as easily as space?
Yes, but I'm guessing you will only be able to go in one direction, and there will be a maximum (and minimum) velocity of one second per second (notice how the units cancel, neatly getting around the absence of time in our post-flip universe).
Will the cubs win the world series?
That would take a lot of time ... which we would be fresh out of.
Finally, always remember that while time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana.
So, it wasn't a desperate attempt at PC, but a desperate attempt at humor.
I agree that's a far bigger force there than here.
I looked at the site another poster linked to, and found a list of 20 features of Japanese phones. A few of them seem pretty neat. For example,
#16 privacy screens and
#20 waterproof
seem like worthwhile additions to a phone. Then there are a few more which might be nice, though probably not on a phone:
#17 Scan barcodes
#18 Mobile GPS navigation (because who needs GPS for stationary navigation, after all?)
Most of them, such as:
#12 mobile fashion consultant
#13 mobile live TV and
#19 electric wave posters (uses RFID)
sound like things I wouldn't have on a bet.
Obviously my life isn't driven by a need to conspicuously consume techno-fashion.
We can't get phones with features like ``#2 Manga on mobile'' because too many of us would pay extra to avoid them.
And there you have it in a nut shell. But it may not be exactly what you think.
I recall that at Purdue, they went through one of the periodic sensitivity manias, and found that male profs were getting more money on average than female, and female profs were, on average, remaining at the associate (pre-tenure) level longer than males (this caused the first finding, of course).
The reason for this was not discrimination, but the fact that men who were denied tenure typically left no later than the end of the academic year, while females who were denied tenure typically remained for the remainder of their contracts, often several years. This meant that a higher percentage of the female profs were lower-paid associates than were the males, even though the males and females were denied tenure at roughly the same rate.[1] A very different behavior pattern produced very different average results to the same stimulus.
How does this relate to you? Your co-workers and bosses may have learned that they can steal your credit, deny your raises, and you'll stick around anyway, unlike your male co-workers. If that's true, they're treating you differently than the men, but only because you are different than the men: you'll put up with it, and they won't.
Ask yourself this: do your cow-orkers and bosses have reason to believe that you value security and hate change more than most of your co-workers?
Or maybe you're just lousy at tooting your own horn.
[1] If the study had found any evidence of discrimination, such as higher tenure denial rates for females or lower interview rates for female candidates, they would have trumpeted it to the skies. They didn't, because the departments had all learned to ensure that they were statistically clean, in anticipation of these Maoist self-criticism sessions.
So, one third didn't value the prize you offered enough to make up bogus information, while two thirds wanted a chance at your prize so badly they gave you a throw-away email address.
Seriously, did you try to validate that information? How many of the emails were @spamgourmet.com, or the equivalent?
As others pointed out, phone numbers are in the phone directory, so most folks don't feel to possessive about them. Some of those phone numbers might even be real. Mine wouldn't be.
I long since gave up telling people that some things are none of their business. If you want my computer passwords, I'm happy to write them on your form, but don't expect them to actually work!
Ask a stupid question, get a stupid answer.
This isn't true. You can legally own fully automatic firearms after you have purchased a $200 tax stamp from the BATF. They do sell this stamp, upon proper application. Some states may have laws which restrict this freedom.
Be careful with this one: it isn't generally true. The BATF has held that certain parts of a machine gun are a machine gun. Exactly what parts of a particular machine gun constitute a machine gun varies from time to time; it's decided by the whim of the BATF. It seems to boil down to ``If they want to get you, your machine gun parts are the bad parts.''
The problem here is that even though it is legal to own or manufacture machine guns, manufacture is only legal after you have bought the special manufacturers tax stamp. The BATF has refused to sell these since 1986, if I remember correctly. So, possessing certain machine gun parts (including some ``conversion kits'') is a felony. Possessing a full auto sear for an M16, and an AR15, is a felony, while possessing only the sear or only the AR15 is not, if I remember correctly (and I might be wrong on some or all of that). Possessing a full auto sear for an FAL is not a problem, but possessing an FAL receiver cut to accept that sear definitely is a felony with or without the sear, and so on.
In general, if you could put your parts together to make a machine gun, you are a felon unless you can somehow purchase that magic tax stamp.
These taxes were enacted by the National Firearms Act of 1934. There was a time when this was a free country.
Can't have that! Everyone knows that's for U.S. Senators only!
Can't have the riff-raff acting like the quality folks, no sir!
English hasn't changed dramatically in the last 100 years. We can still read Shakespeare's stuff, which are around 400 years old.
The basics of math hasn't changed dramatically in 2,000+ years. Sure, computation got a bit easier after the decimal system became wide-spread about 1,000 years ago, but that's not a change in the fundamentals.
20 year old technology is obsolete. I know: let's teach that in schools!
I don't think it makes sense to teach kids things that will be quaint and better forgotten before middle age. Language and math are great choices for an ``actual curriculum area.'' Evanescent trivia isn't.
It might be worthwhile to offer kids some high school credit for getting their teachers up to speed with that stuff, but it should be elective credit, on a par with credit for changing diapers at the nursing home.
So, are you saying that this is a pretty bright idea? Or that it's not so bright?
The physics of fusion says that it can happen with elements light enough to add up to something no heavier than iron. To make elements heavier than that, you have to add energy. So, I would expect that heavier elements are fusing in the sun occasionally. I don't know if there is a way to observe that, as opposed to inferring it.
I'm not familiar with the video series you're talking about. I do think that the ``goo-to-you'' version of evolution, which calls for molecules to self-assemble into cells, and then cells to self-assemble into us, is very implausible, and I'm quite sure we haven't ever observed it in action. I think that the old earth idea is a bit less obviously unsound, and if we didn't have Genesis, I wouldn't argue with the old earth idea. Evolution, on the other hand, just doesn't seem supportable without miracles like those described in Genesis 1. If you're going to believe in miracles, you might as well believe in God, too.
Selective breeding we all know about, and ``natural selection'' and ``survival of the fittest'' are just selective breeding, so your number 6 is just good sense, as you said.
As I said, your items 1, 4 and 5 contradict the account in Genesis 1, so I don't hold out much hope for the folks who are trying to give strictly natural, miracle-free explanations for the world around us. You can't just say ``It's turtles all the way down.'' As I say, if you're going to throw a miracle into your explanation, you might as well give God the credit for it, and if you're going to give Him credit for creation, it's probably bright to believe His story about how He did it.
2, in particular, is how the sun stays hot: two hydrogens become one helium, and give off a lot of energy. This is fusion, and it isn't chemical at all.
3 is a bit less certain, but there are theories which are consistant with a literal interpretation of genesis which allow this.
I'm still waiting for something plausible on 1, 4 and 5. They contradict the only eye witness account we have, so I don't think there's much hope for them.
Why?
The article says: ``The cuts reflect a change in emphasis away from robotic technology and toward human exploration of space.'' How is it stupid to lay off the guys doing the robotics work we no longer want? Isn't NASA a big enough boondoggle already, without adding featherbedding to the mess?
I'm all in favor of space exploration and colonisation, and that's why I think we need to shut down NASA. This does nothing for or against shutting down NASA, but it does get NASA pointed in a better direction. Unfortunately, which ever direction they point, they'll be going backwards. Let's just replace NASA with a $10e^10 prize for the first company which can provide scheduled service to geosynchronous orbit for $100 per kg. Feel free to fiddle the numbers in the reward and the price per kilogram. It's the concept that matters, not the details.
Very true. However, in a sample from a normal distribution, the sample median may not be the sample average.