There's no law against being creepy. Normal, well adjusted people don't do it, but it's not illegal. Women know that if they dress provocatively they'll get leered at. They certainly have a right to expect they won't get assaulted though.
Besides, staring isn't necessarily creepy. A little staring followed by charming embarrassment when she catches you can be pretty endearing.
Yes, this project seems like a great use of an off the shelf simulation. I was replying to the GP who wrote:
"Why bother building and programming little robots to physically carry out the task of gathering "food", when the whole thing obviously could have been simulated?"
Checking something with pure simulation is a great way of checking that your assumptions are indeed correct given... your assumptions. As you point out, if you take the opportunity to test (and improve) your simulation against the real world as you're testing your robot against the real world, you end up with a robot that works AND a simulation that is much better.
Yes. People look at calorie values all the time, if they're available. Some people will choose not to buy popcorn, or buy less, if they know the ridiculous number of calories that are actually in movie theatre popcorn.
"But it's the issue that the "Government" is forcing businesses to reveal calorie count in the name of trying to create a more healthy society, and thus subtly impinging on a person's ability to make a choice for good or ill."
The government forcing businesses to make information available is impinging on someone's ability to make an informed choice?
I can't tell if you a) are supremely ironic and also supremely subtle b) don't read what you write or c) normally write for Fox news.
Because a simulation is only as good as the person who made it. You never know whether your simulated robots are actually doing something new/useful/whatever, or just exploiting some flaw in your simulation.
Simulations are great for quick development, but at some point you need to move into the real world.
"look at what she was wearing, she was asking for it"
That depends what "it" is. If "it" is physical violence, you're absolutely right, it's horrible. What you're wearing never justifies physical violence. If "it" is being stared at, it's perfectly reasonable.
"Also, the "expected results" section in grants are sometimes difficult to write down,"
That doesn't seem to have anything to do with publish or perish. In general you should have a hypothesis, and a justification for it, when you start, and that's an "expected result." If you're fishing in the dark, or data mining, the granting agency should probably know that.
If you have to fight with someone for first authorship on a paper you know who not to collaborate with next time, which is often knowledge as valuable as a paper.
Scientists who don't contribute shouldn't get funding.
Yes, there need to be reasonable limits. As I said elsewhere, if you want to evaluate a person you need to use your brain, not your calculator. But off the top of my head I can think of a professor (in life sciences) at a major university who didn't publish any first author papers during her ten year post doc, and hasn't published any papers as a professor. She's coming up on her five year review in a few months. She SHOULDN'T be funded and shouldn't be a professor. Her lack of productivity is tying up money and positions that could be given to actual productive scientists and she's ruining students to boot.
Ha. I love it. You say that ANYBODY who did a degree in computer science is shortchanging himself by not using Ruby. I say some people are better served using Python while others are probably better off with Ruby and you imply I'M making overly broad generalizations.
"If you have a degree in CS and are doing Python by choice you're shortchanging yourself."
If you have a (real) degree in CS and you're doing web development, you're probably shortchanging yourself. If you're not, Ruby and Python are very similar languages (I find Ruby harder to read so I prefer Python) but Python has MUCH better scientifically oriented libraries.
"At the end of the day the energy requirements are the same."
No.
Conventional rocket: you have to haul up the fuel and the reaction mass. Also very inefficient
Ion thruster: very efficient, can be solar powered, but you still have to haul up the reaction mass
Lasers: probably more efficient than a conventional rocket, can be solar powered, don't need reaction mass (they use the asteroid for that)
The amount of stuff you have to haul up to the asteroid is GREATLY reduced using the laser solution, and therefore the total required energy is much less.
Lasers are more efficient because they use bits of the asteroid itself as reaction mass.
This idea is to use lots of little lasers instead of one big one. The big one could theoretically be directed Earthward, maybe, but the little ones almost certainly can't. They're too small to have much effect through the atmosphere.
If some military with launch capabilities wants to put lasers in orbit, you won't even know about it. Why would they advertise it by calling it an asteroid shield?
"You may have missed the point that all data on most phones is already fully encrypted."
I didn't miss it because you made it up. Data on most phones is not encrypted. The data on some smartphones (iOS 4 and higher and Android 4 and higher, apparently, plus probably all Blackberries) may be encrypted. Even then, it looks like they don't encrypt everything anyway.
Regardless, if you have special hardware that manages encryption it's going to take up extra space, power, time and manufacturing cost. For something that the vast majority of these company's customers couldn't care less about. And no, your example of a desktop SSD isn't really relevant.
Don't keep secret stuff on your phone. Or, if you have to, keep it separately encrypted. There are lots of apps that are fine for moderately secure stuff that use encryption and long passwords.
And all that would slow the phone down, make it run hot and kill the battery life. The vast majority of people don't care. If you're really carrying around secret stuff on your phone then you should have one that has better security.
And that's the problem. By saving up for three years you've done yourself, your students and the scientific community a disservice. Publishing originated in scientists sending each other personal correspondence along the lines of "look at this cool thing I found! What do you think?" Publishing in "lesser" journals can still sometimes be a little like this (and that's a good thing). Saving up for a Nature publication (which tend NOT to be the actual revolutionary papers) is more along the lines of "hey, look how smart I am! Nah nah nah!"
I've heard more than one Nobel laureate say that the history of science is written in papers that were not published in Nature. The Nobel laureates who founded my own field had their paper rejected, in fact.
Not necessarily true. I know of labs where unfortunate students and post docs get stuck that only publish when they've got something Nature worthy. They have lots of publishable output, they just don't publish it. You can easily bounce back from that by... publishing.
Nature is overrated, and holding back until you have something to publish in it is silly. But lots of people do just that.
Slashdot Mirror
... someday.
There's no law against being creepy. Normal, well adjusted people don't do it, but it's not illegal. Women know that if they dress provocatively they'll get leered at. They certainly have a right to expect they won't get assaulted though.
Besides, staring isn't necessarily creepy. A little staring followed by charming embarrassment when she catches you can be pretty endearing.
Yes, this project seems like a great use of an off the shelf simulation. I was replying to the GP who wrote:
"Why bother building and programming little robots to physically carry out the task of gathering "food", when the whole thing obviously could have been simulated?"
Checking something with pure simulation is a great way of checking that your assumptions are indeed correct given... your assumptions. As you point out, if you take the opportunity to test (and improve) your simulation against the real world as you're testing your robot against the real world, you end up with a robot that works AND a simulation that is much better.
Yes. People look at calorie values all the time, if they're available. Some people will choose not to buy popcorn, or buy less, if they know the ridiculous number of calories that are actually in movie theatre popcorn.
"But it's the issue that the "Government" is forcing businesses to reveal calorie count in the name of trying to create a more healthy society, and thus subtly impinging on a person's ability to make a choice for good or ill."
The government forcing businesses to make information available is impinging on someone's ability to make an informed choice?
I can't tell if you a) are supremely ironic and also supremely subtle b) don't read what you write or c) normally write for Fox news.
Because a simulation is only as good as the person who made it. You never know whether your simulated robots are actually doing something new/useful/whatever, or just exploiting some flaw in your simulation.
Simulations are great for quick development, but at some point you need to move into the real world.
News flash for you - 150 and 250 are both greater than zero.
"look at what she was wearing, she was asking for it"
That depends what "it" is. If "it" is physical violence, you're absolutely right, it's horrible. What you're wearing never justifies physical violence. If "it" is being stared at, it's perfectly reasonable.
"Also, the "expected results" section in grants are sometimes difficult to write down,"
That doesn't seem to have anything to do with publish or perish. In general you should have a hypothesis, and a justification for it, when you start, and that's an "expected result." If you're fishing in the dark, or data mining, the granting agency should probably know that.
If you have to fight with someone for first authorship on a paper you know who not to collaborate with next time, which is often knowledge as valuable as a paper.
Scientists who don't contribute shouldn't get funding.
Yes, there need to be reasonable limits. As I said elsewhere, if you want to evaluate a person you need to use your brain, not your calculator. But off the top of my head I can think of a professor (in life sciences) at a major university who didn't publish any first author papers during her ten year post doc, and hasn't published any papers as a professor. She's coming up on her five year review in a few months. She SHOULDN'T be funded and shouldn't be a professor. Her lack of productivity is tying up money and positions that could be given to actual productive scientists and she's ruining students to boot.
There are more important things in life than money.
Ha. I love it. You say that ANYBODY who did a degree in computer science is shortchanging himself by not using Ruby. I say some people are better served using Python while others are probably better off with Ruby and you imply I'M making overly broad generalizations.
And yes, I am a scientist.
"If you have a degree in CS and are doing Python by choice you're shortchanging yourself."
If you have a (real) degree in CS and you're doing web development, you're probably shortchanging yourself. If you're not, Ruby and Python are very similar languages (I find Ruby harder to read so I prefer Python) but Python has MUCH better scientifically oriented libraries.
But way to demonstrate the GP's point.
The article: the details it has.
The proposal is to put smaller lasers up.
"I mean, obviously it's largely irrelevant at the scales they're talking about"
The measurement is highly variable so it's not a problem to have the unit be a bit vague. You said yourself it doesn't matter.
"At the end of the day the energy requirements are the same."
No.
Conventional rocket: you have to haul up the fuel and the reaction mass. Also very inefficient
Ion thruster: very efficient, can be solar powered, but you still have to haul up the reaction mass
Lasers: probably more efficient than a conventional rocket, can be solar powered, don't need reaction mass (they use the asteroid for that)
The amount of stuff you have to haul up to the asteroid is GREATLY reduced using the laser solution, and therefore the total required energy is much less.
Lasers are more efficient because they use bits of the asteroid itself as reaction mass.
This idea is to use lots of little lasers instead of one big one. The big one could theoretically be directed Earthward, maybe, but the little ones almost certainly can't. They're too small to have much effect through the atmosphere.
If some military with launch capabilities wants to put lasers in orbit, you won't even know about it. Why would they advertise it by calling it an asteroid shield?
"You may have missed the point that all data on most phones is already fully encrypted."
I didn't miss it because you made it up. Data on most phones is not encrypted. The data on some smartphones (iOS 4 and higher and Android 4 and higher, apparently, plus probably all Blackberries) may be encrypted. Even then, it looks like they don't encrypt everything anyway.
Regardless, if you have special hardware that manages encryption it's going to take up extra space, power, time and manufacturing cost. For something that the vast majority of these company's customers couldn't care less about. And no, your example of a desktop SSD isn't really relevant.
"Not really sure what the solution is."
Don't keep secret stuff on your phone. Or, if you have to, keep it separately encrypted. There are lots of apps that are fine for moderately secure stuff that use encryption and long passwords.
And all that would slow the phone down, make it run hot and kill the battery life. The vast majority of people don't care. If you're really carrying around secret stuff on your phone then you should have one that has better security.
That's not much use if they brute force the password.
And that's the problem. By saving up for three years you've done yourself, your students and the scientific community a disservice. Publishing originated in scientists sending each other personal correspondence along the lines of "look at this cool thing I found! What do you think?" Publishing in "lesser" journals can still sometimes be a little like this (and that's a good thing). Saving up for a Nature publication (which tend NOT to be the actual revolutionary papers) is more along the lines of "hey, look how smart I am! Nah nah nah!"
I've heard more than one Nobel laureate say that the history of science is written in papers that were not published in Nature. The Nobel laureates who founded my own field had their paper rejected, in fact.
It's amazing how "publish or you're fired" can change your mindset.
Not necessarily true. I know of labs where unfortunate students and post docs get stuck that only publish when they've got something Nature worthy. They have lots of publishable output, they just don't publish it. You can easily bounce back from that by... publishing.
Nature is overrated, and holding back until you have something to publish in it is silly. But lots of people do just that.