what did they expect, really, that a bunch of sci-fi geeks would generate a lot of excitement about the history of another show? the key is to get bigger and better technology to generate interest. the best they came up with is the time traveller.
maybe if they gave scott bakula some kind of super power they could generate some hype. i think he should get heat vision and super speed. that would cancel out the history stuff for sure.
or maybe it was those aliens on that unlikely planet that supposedly generated 5 different sentient species. those repile things with all the things sticking out of their head were just ridiculous -- what the heck kind of warrier species has fragile stuff sticking out all over that would make good handles in a fight anyway.
on a positive note, i still want to nail claudia black. i think it's the accent. no wait, that's a different show. nevermind.
A distributed compute-engine simulation calculated a worst case temperature rise of 11C. While I have absolutely no doubt that their simulations produced these results, I - unlike most of the population listening to this on the news - am fully aware of what simulations are and how they work.
It requires accurate initial conditions, accurate models, and an accurate physics engine.
So what does this mean?
As an example, a story from one of the grad students I met who was working on modeling a supernova explosion: we were chatting in the lab and I was fascinated by the process (they were running it on a Connection Machine -- a bunch of processors networked in a hypercube topology). He told me he had a physics model with over 200 parameters and the star had a fairly simple composition model, also with many parameters. He ran 4000 simulations before he got an explosion.
A climate model is an enormous undertaking.
1) You divide the planet into finite element. This is a long process, done offline where you must decide what portions of the atmosphere can be divided into 10 km voxels and what portions should be divided into 1km voxels. You then divide the surface into a grid and incorporate elevation data (which is important for prevailing winds). You divide the entire ocean into voxels.
2) You assign all the initial conditions, the density, composition, viscosity, fluid flow velocity, etc. Then you try to predict how it will change over time. There's a lot of guesswork here because you don't know what the exact composition of the ocean is or it's complete temperature profile, but you can get kind of close. Same problem with land cover - satellite data can give you percentage of plant cover, but you're really limited to visible light for absorption spectra, and you'll never know how land usage will change over time, so you project current trends. (We should all know how accurate curve fitted projections are outside the data set.)
3) You then project changes in the atmosphere due to human activity and apply adjustments throughout the run.
4) You develop physics models. Note that climate models are not the same as weather models. Weather models are HIGHLY non-linear and sensitive to initial conditions (chaoitic) and can't be used more than several days into the future before they diverge greatly. A climate model depends on long term averaging of weather chaotic behavior, taken primarily from history data. This too is difficult. We have perhaps 200 years of measured climate data, and aren't very sure about its accuracy or how it relates to worldwide surface temperatures (basically because nobody was measuring it back then.
Your physics engine becomes full of tweakable parameters. You tune it by attempting to make it behave as your (scant and full of assumptions) history data, based on initial conditions and population dynamics that are also largely guesswork.
5) You then run the simulations in Monte Carlo, varying your input parameters according to some algorithm that you also invent, then run more simulations, varying even more parameters, in an attempt to find the most sensitive parameters, all the while hoping that you don't get stuck in local minima. You focus on refining your most sensitive parameters and acquire more accurate data for initial conditions, while spending less time on parameters that have little effect on the outcome.
This critical process is Model Validation. You must be absolutely sure that your models accurately reflect what happens in real life to trust the simulation. For those of us who run simulations for a paycheck, the phrase is "your simulation is only as good as your model."
From a critical eye, and being smart enough to actually understand it, I absolutely require seeing the data, the initial conditions, the parameters, and the process by which models are validated, because I know for a fact that you can make a simulat
I think it's time to write that book I've been meaning to write about God's secret messages in pi. I am convinced that if you express pi in binary and then print it out, you can search it for not only all knowledge previously known, but images of virtually anything.
In fact, I'm pretty sure there's a picture of a picture of a grilled cheese with Michelle Pfeiffer on it at index 3,444,738,956,368,665,431,233. And not only that, Jesus is a mere three billion and 6 away from that!
That means something. God put those pictures in pi in order to tell us he loves us.
I don't imagine they'll have much luck selling a completely open-source cell phone in the US because it's difficult to incorporate secret law enforcement features into them.
I want one now. And a vocoder module with strong encryption.
I doubt it. The most likely scenario is that the engineering requirements extremely conservative in order to make the mission successful and save NASA from a black eye. The fact that they come out looking rosey is a side effect of their CYA program.
Like it or not, this, along with the wide disparities of copyright law are likely to force the world to come together, at least whereas it applies to the internet.
One can only hope that the US will come out on top regarding free speech, and that someone else will come out will come out on top regarding privacy rights (hopefully not China.)
Sure the guys want to make some money, but they made it explicitly clear that the only reason they are having an IPO is that the SEC was going to enforce public reporting requirements on them anyway. All indications are that they would have been perfectly happy staying private.
That's why they got away with the 10x voting shares for the insiders, and for that matter the Dutch auction.
Does this mean I can target my DIY Missle into someone's window now without danger of blowing up their backyard. I've been dying for a package that would do that.
1. The Navy is bankrolling the development, presumably to allow government employees to surf around without leaving ".gov" and ".mil" ip addresses in logs.
2. JAP supposedly has a German Government implanted backdoor that this one shouldn't because it's open source.
I think that the US Government is bankrolling it to piss off the Chinese.
Frankly this wire tapping business has gone on long enough.
Any time a person picks up a phone to call someone, there is
a subtle change in his thinking if he thinks he might be surreptitiously
monitored. There are certain things you just don't say.
How is this different from meeting with someone on the
street, perhaps to organize some political effort? If you think you may be
overheard, it changes what you say.
(Thinking from a two hundred year old perspective,) the
difference is that on the street, you can see who is listening. You know what
is being said.
Secret wire taps by a third party subvert the entire process
that granting the political freedom of assembly was intended to protect. If I
want to speak to someone on the phone, law enforcement should be absolutely
limited to compromising that other party in order to get in on the
conversation. If there is a second party on the phone, I should get a little
flashing light informing me that there is another listener.
I would just switch to Skype,
except I have no idea how secure their encryption is either.
I wrote a really bitchy blog entry about this a while back right
here, if you care.
I interviewed for a job in Ann Arbor, MI to work on the electrical design of just such a device. (They didn't offer enough.)
The one in question has issues because using blood to support the turbines causes too much sheer stress on the blood. The newest designs are bigger, but come use magnetically levitated turbine impellers that are specially designed for low sheer stress on the fluid.
I don't buy that scenario. It would mean that someone would be constantly monitoring a map on the computer the whole time. Nobody does that in wait of a bust raid.
If it were ME, I'd set my phone to beep when it looses service.
Slashdot Mirror
i think we should also outlaw passengers. the the only thing they're really good for anyway is getting into the hov lanes.
what did they expect, really, that a bunch of sci-fi geeks would generate a lot of excitement about the history of another show? the key is to get bigger and better technology to generate interest. the best they came up with is the time traveller.
maybe if they gave scott bakula some kind of super power they could generate some hype. i think he should get heat vision and super speed. that would cancel out the history stuff for sure.
or maybe it was those aliens on that unlikely planet that supposedly generated 5 different sentient species. those repile things with all the things sticking out of their head were just ridiculous -- what the heck kind of warrier species has fragile stuff sticking out all over that would make good handles in a fight anyway.
on a positive note, i still want to nail claudia black. i think it's the accent. no wait, that's a different show. nevermind.
http://www.nature.com/news/2005/050124/full/050124 -10.html
A distributed compute-engine simulation calculated a worst case temperature rise of 11C. While I have absolutely no doubt that their simulations produced these results, I - unlike most of the population listening to this on the news - am fully aware of what simulations are and how they work.
It requires accurate initial conditions, accurate models, and an accurate physics engine.
So what does this mean?
As an example, a story from one of the grad students I met who was working on modeling a supernova explosion: we were chatting in the lab and I was fascinated by the process (they were running it on a Connection Machine -- a bunch of processors networked in a hypercube topology). He told me he had a physics model with over 200 parameters and the star had a fairly simple composition model, also with many parameters. He ran 4000 simulations before he got an explosion.
A climate model is an enormous undertaking.
1) You divide the planet into finite element. This is a long process, done offline where you must decide what portions of the atmosphere can be divided into 10 km voxels and what portions should be divided into 1km voxels. You then divide the surface into a grid and incorporate elevation data (which is important for prevailing winds). You divide the entire ocean into voxels.
2) You assign all the initial conditions, the density, composition, viscosity, fluid flow velocity, etc. Then you try to predict how it will change over time. There's a lot of guesswork here because you don't know what the exact composition of the ocean is or it's complete temperature profile, but you can get kind of close. Same problem with land cover - satellite data can give you percentage of plant cover, but you're really limited to visible light for absorption spectra, and you'll never know how land usage will change over time, so you project current trends. (We should all know how accurate curve fitted projections are outside the data set.)
3) You then project changes in the atmosphere due to human activity and apply adjustments throughout the run.
4) You develop physics models. Note that climate models are not the same as weather models. Weather models are HIGHLY non-linear and sensitive to initial conditions (chaoitic) and can't be used more than several days into the future before they diverge greatly. A climate model depends on long term averaging of weather chaotic behavior, taken primarily from history data. This too is difficult. We have perhaps 200 years of
measured climate data, and aren't very sure about its accuracy or how it relates to worldwide surface temperatures (basically because nobody was measuring it back then.
Your physics engine becomes full of tweakable parameters. You tune it by attempting to make it behave as your (scant and full of assumptions) history data, based on initial conditions and population dynamics that are also largely guesswork.
5) You then run the simulations in Monte Carlo, varying your input parameters according to some algorithm that you also invent, then run more simulations, varying even more parameters, in an attempt to find the most sensitive parameters, all the while hoping that you don't get stuck in local minima. You focus on refining your most sensitive parameters and acquire more accurate data for initial conditions, while spending less time on parameters that have little effect on the outcome.
This critical process is Model Validation. You must be absolutely sure that your models accurately reflect what happens in real life to trust the simulation. For those of us who run simulations for a paycheck, the phrase is "your simulation is only as good as your model."
From a critical eye, and being smart enough to actually understand it, I absolutely require seeing the data, the initial conditions, the parameters, and the process by which models are validated, because I know for a fact that you can make a simulat
Yum Pie!
I think it's time to write that book I've been meaning to write about God's secret messages in pi. I am convinced that if you express pi in binary and then print it out, you can search it for not only all knowledge previously known, but images of virtually anything.
In fact, I'm pretty sure there's a picture of a picture of a grilled cheese with Michelle Pfeiffer on it at index 3,444,738,956,368,665,431,233. And not only that, Jesus is a mere three billion and 6 away from that!
That means something. God put those pictures in pi in order to tell us he loves us.
I don't imagine they'll have much luck selling a completely open-source cell phone in the US because it's difficult to incorporate secret law enforcement features into them.
I want one now. And a vocoder module with strong encryption.
Given the innate warlike nature of humans, expecting space to remain non-military was just plain foolish.
Nice fantasy, though.
This is a stroke of marketing genius. In retrospect, obvious as hell. Sony and Nintendo can't be far behind -- they'd need a partner, though.
I doubt it. The most likely scenario is that the engineering requirements extremely conservative in order to make the mission successful and save NASA from a black eye. The fact that they come out looking rosey is a side effect of their CYA program.
As a parent, I've found that there is no kid-related video game problem that a sledgehammer can't fix.
40 petabytes on each hub? I question someone's math skills.
Try not to be so bitter. If you had the power you'd use it too.
Like it or not, this, along with the wide disparities of copyright law are likely to force the world to come together, at least whereas it applies to the internet.
One can only hope that the US will come out on top regarding free speech, and that someone else will come out will come out on top regarding privacy rights (hopefully not China.)
I struggle to suppress my childish streak and in the end, the adult in me forced me to erase 20 pages of "HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA" in response to French Law.
But know that I'm still feeling it in my heart.
If the software can tell if the nurse is doing it right, it ought to be able to guide a robot to do it perfect every time.
Wouldn't it be funny if it turned out that Kennedy's name ended up on that list as a form of political protest?
I should probably shut up now...
Sure the guys want to make some money, but they made it explicitly clear that the only reason they are having an IPO is that the SEC was going to enforce public reporting requirements on them anyway. All indications are that they would have been perfectly happy staying private.
That's why they got away with the 10x voting shares for the insiders, and for that matter the Dutch auction.
Does this mean I can target my DIY Missle into someone's window now without danger of blowing up their backyard. I've been dying for a package that would do that.
Lots of people know what I'm doing and I feel totally invulnerable each and every time I go take a leak.
(I know because I submitted this article too.)
1. The Navy is bankrolling the development, presumably to allow government employees to surf around without leaving ".gov" and ".mil" ip addresses in logs.
2. JAP supposedly has a German Government implanted backdoor that this one shouldn't because it's open source.
I think that the US Government is bankrolling it to piss off the Chinese.
Frankly this wire tapping business has gone on long enough.
Any time a person picks up a phone to call someone, there is a subtle change in his thinking if he thinks he might be surreptitiously monitored. There are certain things you just don't say.
How is this different from meeting with someone on the street, perhaps to organize some political effort? If you think you may be overheard, it changes what you say.
(Thinking from a two hundred year old perspective,) the difference is that on the street, you can see who is listening. You know what is being said.
Secret wire taps by a third party subvert the entire process that granting the political freedom of assembly was intended to protect. If I want to speak to someone on the phone, law enforcement should be absolutely limited to compromising that other party in order to get in on the conversation. If there is a second party on the phone, I should get a little flashing light informing me that there is another listener.
I would just switch to Skype, except I have no idea how secure their encryption is either.
I wrote a really bitchy blog entry about this a while back right here, if you care.
This all arose because he opened his big mouth. He should have kept it to himself and none of this would have ever happened.
Or he can do like I did with my last contract, which was conveniently delivered as a Microsoft Word document...
I should probably shut up now.
I interviewed for a job in Ann Arbor, MI to work on the electrical design of just such a device. (They didn't offer enough.)
The one in question has issues because using blood to support the turbines causes too much sheer stress on the blood. The newest designs are bigger, but come use magnetically levitated turbine impellers that are specially designed for low sheer stress on the fluid.
Let evolution figure out that one, eh?
I use YahooPops to retrieve my email from Yahoo and use my local ISP to send replies.
I guess I'm screwed.
I don't buy that scenario. It would mean that someone would be constantly monitoring a map on the computer the whole time. Nobody does that in wait of a bust raid.
If it were ME, I'd set my phone to beep when it looses service.
What was he thinking anyway? He was collecting personal information and people thought he was affiliated with Odeon.
Of course he could make trouble for them by filing a lawsuit under the Disabilities act, but that doesn't mean he didn't screw up.