You disagree with his analysis but the points you raise do not refute the evidence he presents that the exit poll data gets corrected. You say you disagree with his conclusion and use that disagreement as a refutation of his data, otherwise you would agree that the exit polls get corrected. You seem to believe he falsified the data for his paper. Are you a professor of law? The lead author of the paper, Steven Freeman, is. If you don't provide better evidence on the unrelated analysis points you contest, an impartial observer would more likely believe the professor's analysis over the opinion of a slashdotter who breezed through the paper in under one hour.
You also said:
the fact of the matter is that we have no evidence initial exit polls disagreed with the count other than "a guy who says on his blog that he heard a guy on the news say that"
Not true. In my first post that you responded to I provided a link to a
UK Independent article that said Obama had a 4% lead in the exit polls. It is now a day later and I see no retraction or correction. I also gave you a link to Freeman's scientific paper that gave evidence that exit poll data in America is now "corrected". Furthermore, even Freeman's critics agree with him that the exit polls in the 2004 election deviated significantly from the official count. Like in your post above, they criticize him for discounting explanations for the discrepancy but the don't argue, like you, that the discrepancy didn't exist. Freeman provided links to MSM exit poll results that now agree with the official results. Since almost everyone in the world (except you) agrees there was a discrepancy and since there is no longer a discrepancy in the published exit polls, the results must have been changed.
If, as you seem to suggest, the Freeman paper was using faulty data, he would have become a laughing stock years ago. Why would there be any discussion of his analysis if the raw exit poll data agreed with the official result?
Part of the reason the issue [exit poll discrepancies] went away for the media and simultaneously raised suspicion on the web is secrecy and confusion about the data and what exactly is being characterized as the exit poll. If you go to the CNN website or any other website on which 2004 exit poll data are available, you'll see numbers very different from those released on election day. This is because the survey results originally collected and presented to subscribers were subsequently corrected to conform to official tallies.
The exit poll numbers in the LA Times article you cite were "corrected" to conform with the official results.
We are not delusional or paranoid, you got snookered by the MSM.
Try not to let it happen again.
There are others besides the UK Independent that reported Obama had a 4% to 5% lead in the exit polls. The reason the data you link to disagrees is because the exit poll data gets "normalized" to the official result as the official results get released.
In the past decade there has been a change of power in Serbia, (the former Soviet Republic) Georgia, and the Ukraine because the exit polls disagreed with the official results. Mismatching exit polls are assumed to be prima facie evidence of election fraud. Ever since the widespread introduction of electronic polling machines in America there have been a rash of embarrassing exit poll anomalies.
The quick fix of the main stream media has been to suppress publication of the actual exit poll data indicating who won and then doctoring their exit poll data after the fact in order to ensure it jives with the official results.
I believe the poster I responded to suffered from the same misunderstanding that you have about how exit poll data is presented in the American media. If you want the real numbers you have to grab them before the official results are released or get them from a foreign source. The post by Aku Head, a couple posts under mine in this thread demonstates how this works.
Part of the reason the issue [exit poll discrepancies] went away for the media and simultaneously raised suspicion on
the web is secrecy and confusion about the data and what exactly is being characterized as the
exit poll. If you go to the CNN website or any other website on which 2004 exit poll data are
available, you'll see numbers very different from those released on election day. This is because
the survey results originally collected and presented to subscribers were subsequently corrected
to conform to official tallies.
There is an excellent summary of the current New Hampshire problem on Counter Punch (warning: very left leaning site). I very much liked the conclusion:
Jonathan Simon, an attorney and co-founder of the group Election Defense Alliance, says that the vote discrepancies between machine and hand counts in New Hampshire's Democratic primary are troubling, and defy easy explanation.
"The trouble is, whenever you have a surprise result in an election, and it runs counter to the polls, the media always say the problem is the polling, not the counting." But he adds, "The thing is, these things always work in one direction-in favor of the more conservative candidate, and that defies the law of quantum mechanics."
I won't call bullshit on you because I think it was an honest and easy-to-make misunderstanding. Perhaps we should all call bullshit on the American media.
The
UK Independent said the exit polls gave Obama a 4 point lead:
The exit polls were wrong too, giving Obama a smaller four-point lead.
So unless you provide a link to some actual evidence, I'm going to have to call bullshit on you.
On the other hand, I think it is possible to explain these very strange results without resorting to election fraud. Even so, I do think the current situation warants further scrutiny.
The Independent said there was a 11 point swing between the average of the polls (Obama +8) and the official results (Clinton +3). There are reasons other than fraud for Clinton to beat the polls:
Voter complacency after Obama's huge lead in the polls. This would lead more independents to vote in the Republican Primary instead of "wasting" their vote for Obama. Also, some first time voters (like students) may have stayed away from the polls confident that Obama would win easily. This could easily account for 3% of the swing.
Females deciding to vote for Clinton in the last day. There were two events, both widely publicized by the MST that would have made Clinton more appealing to women. First, the way Edwards came to Obama's defense in the Saturday debate could have made both men appear to be anti-female. Second, the most widely publicized event of the primary was Clinton's teary moment that also might have appealed to females. The exit polls said the late deciders were a wash, they followed the trend of the entire vote. I think the two moments cited above nullified what would have been a swing towards Obama in the late deciders. I'd say this could account for 1 point in the overall 11 point swing.
The Bradley Effect where white voters lie to pollsters in bi-racial elections. This is the non-fraud explanation for the 7% discrepancy in the exit polls (Obama +4 vs. Clinton +3). We must give this 7%.
IMO, the discrepancy in the exit polls is the most troubling statistic. If we don't see similar discrepancies (of 5% or more) in primaries in other mostly white states then I think election fraud would be the only possible explanation of the New Hampshire results.
Yes, I realize there are over 500 languages being used in Nigeria and their official language is English. I just hope the courts in Nigeria can grind a little faster than the courts in America.
IMO this ploy by LANCOR against OLPC is a carbon copy of the SCO scheme against Linux. I wonder if the company funding LANCOR is the
same company that funded the SCO fiasco.
While I agree with the author that the software development model (open vs. closed) can affect the psychology of the coder and hence the quality of the code, I think the conclusion he reached is upside down and backwards.
I've done both open-source and closed-source software development for 30 years. I've seen a lot of bugs. While every coder and every project is different, I have noticed some trends in the type of bugs found in open vs. closed source code. At the risk of sounding airy-fairy, I've found that good coding is usually based on good information flow. For a simple example, if a piece of code encounters an error or other unexpected condition, it is essential that the condition either be dealt with or passed along. This applies to blocks of code, subroutines, applications, and even operating systems. Writing code that is easy to read (with appropriate comments) is another kind of good information flow.
IMO clean information flow is the essence of good software.
I've noticed over and over that open-source development tends to produce code with better information flow than closed-source development. I have no proof, but I believe this is because, subconsciously, closed-source developers are intent on restricting information flow and this affects the code they write. I've seen similar problems when people (especially relative newbies) use what Larry Wall describes as bondage and discipline languages but that is an entirely different flamewar.
I think this simple model (closed source development leads to unnaturally restricted information flow in code) goes a long way to explaining the reaction to Microsoft's products by the computer literate. Most (but perhaps not all) of the really good technical people I've known have tended to hate working with Microsoft products even though they have often been unable to precisely articulate what drives them batty (sometimes they say the products are too paternalistic). I think the conflicts arise because the techies have a certain set of reasonable expections of what good software should do based on the code having good information flow. Microsoft, because of their closed-source mentality, defied all of these expectations. On the other hand, the general public did not have any expectations about information flow and so were not immediately turned-off by Microsoft's products.
As others have probably pointed out, the author need only compare Microsoft's Vista with FOSS development over the same period of time. The open-source community has made great strides forward while Microsoft appears to have made a step backwards in many ways.
The Communist Party of Peru (Spanish: Partido Comunista del Perú), more commonly known as the Shining Path (Sendero Luminoso), is a Maoist guerrilla organization in Peru that launched the internal conflict in Peru in 1980.
Perhaps when OLPC is complete, Negroponte should start OLP/.er.
I suspect he'll [Martin Freeman] be rather too old to carry off "Young" Bilbo.
The "young"
Bilbo was 50 when the Hobbit started. Martin Freeman is 36. So I was thinking the exact opposite, that Freeman is too young to play Bilbo. I guess it depends on how much Jackson decides to Hollywood-ize the film.
Re:So they moved from UNIX to Linux
on
NYSE Moves to Linux
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Unfortunately, Capitalism in our current society has very little to do with what Adam Smith actually said. There is a similar disconnect between the actions of some/many people who call themselves Christians and the teachings of Jesus. Or the disconnect between what Marx and Ingels said and the modern implementations of Communism.
From what I've seen of the world, "infinite profit, infinite growth, and maximum self-interest" is a more accurate description of the goals of some/many large corporations than anything Adam Smith said. Unfortunately for all of us, greed in our society is treated as a virtue, not a necessary (or unavoidable) evil. I think this is the heart of problems caused by our so-called Capitalist system.
For many generations, as long as
the divine nature lasted in them, they were obedient to the laws, and
well-affectioned towards the god, whose seed they were; for they possessed
true and in every way great spirits, uniting gentleness with wisdom in the
various chances of life, and in their intercourse with one another. They
despised everything but virtue, caring little for their present state of
life, and thinking lightly of the possession of gold and other property,
which seemed only a burden to them; neither were they intoxicated by
luxury; nor did wealth deprive them of their self-control; but they were
sober, and saw clearly that all these goods are increased by virtue and
friendship with one another, whereas by too great regard and respect for
them, they are lost and friendship with them. By such reflections and by
the continuance in them of a divine nature, the qualities which we have
described grew and increased among them; but when the divine portion began
to fade away, and became diluted too often and too much with the mortal
admixture, and the human nature got the upper hand, they then, being unable
to bear their fortune, behaved unseemly, and to him who had an eye to see
grew visibly debased, for they were losing the fairest of their precious
gifts; but to those who had no eye to see the true happiness, they appeared
glorious and blessed at the very time when they were full of avarice and
unrighteous power.
Railroad workers, airline workers, even taxicab drivers - when any of these professions strike, it is felt immediately by the general population, so there is a push to resolve the issues amicably, so that they could return to work.
Bullshit. In 1981 Ronald Regan fired thousands of Air Traffic Controllers two days after they went on strike. That might have been amicable for large corporations who saw the average number of strikes per year drop from 300 to 30 but it sure as hell wasn't amicable for the workers and they sure as hell didn't return to work.
... one of the things I dislike about OSS: Interop. ...
It's nice that the source is out there... but...
nobody wants to interoperate in any meaningful way.
I'm pretty sure that if everything was FOSS then it (calendaring, PIM) would be all be interoperating now. IMO it is the proprietary software that was intentionally made difficult or impossible to interoperate with.
Take a look at the history of the Samba project for just one example. Or WinModems. The FOSS people want to interoperate. I think your blame is misplaced.
Behind the scenes, though, McBride said SCO's legal team has unearthed some details about Kimball's rulings that may provide a glimmer of hope for his company's ongoing fight.
"There's one little tidbit that we came across just a few days ago," he said. "Whereas the popular press has said, O.K., this thing is now over, there is an appeal process, and the other fact is that if you look inside that appeals process and you take a microscope and look at the record of Kimball's summary judgement rulings that have gone to appeals, he gets overturned the vast majority of the time. It's nearly two-thirds of the time. That was something I was a little curious about myself.
"This apparently is a [judge] who very regularly, the majority of the time, gets [overturned] when it goes to the replay booth. That's the one sort of a news fact that's not out there today that [could] maybe temper some of this enthusiasm out there" about SCO's troubles. "He certainly has a dismal record on appeals."
Like most other things coming out of Darl McBride's mouth, these words would have been less "horrible" had they been true. I swear, if that man says it is a clear day you'd best bring your umbrella. He seems incapable of telling the truth.
People who read a lot of books LIKE having huge bookshelves to impress people on how many books they have.
Or maybe they don't like buying the same books over and over and over again. Once I've read a book, I usually don't want to read it again for another few years but after 3 or 4 years it is almost like it is a new book to me again and I get a tremendous hunger to read it again.
I then have to re-buy the books that I've given away or donated. Often they are no longer in print so I have to get a crappy used version (or pay a ton for a good version if the book was popular). Often only the paperback version is available and I much prefer hardbacks.
A friend once boasted that he could fit all of his possessions into a Volkswagon beetle. I told you "you should let us teach you how to read."
I'm sure some people have large libraries as an ego thing but not all people do. A large library is also a PITA because you have to dust and keep the sun off of the books and keep it organized, and it takes up valuable floor/shelf space. I love that all my audio is accessible from Amorok now, I'd love to be able to do something similar with most (but not all) of my books.
My favourite are roads that haven't been ridden for years. Sometimes, I leave a log on the road to see if someone else will travel here. When I return in a year or two, seeing my log has not been moved suggests that I still have no followers.
I have a computer illiterate friend who has an el-cheapo HP machine that is a few years old. She runs Windows and constantly gets infected with viruses. She periodically takes it to a computer shop to get Windows reinstalled which costs about $40.
I've run Linux on her machine via LiveCDs but I've had no joy with her winmodem and she is strictly dialup. An external modem from the local (very small town) computer shop is about $90. The Walmart specs for their $200 Linux PC say it has a modem. I figured this meant they got the modem working with Linux so I suggested she purchase one of these from Walmart. Even with the yearly Windows re-install tax, her Windows install keeps breaking.
The review points out that the $200 Walmart PC also has a winmodem which is also useless under Linux. So I called my friend and told her not to buy it.
We looked through the code on paper, literally line by line, and just couldn't for the life of us imagine what the problem was.
This may be the least effective method of debugging in existence.
Decades ago I was writing machine code for an Intel SBC-80 single board computer based on their 8080 processor. My "terminal" was a rackety old teletype that printed on rolls of aged yellow paper. One of the few debugging aids I had was printing out a hex dump of the machine instructions. IIRC, the instructions could be one, two, or three bytes long so I would first circle the bytes grouping them into instructions, then dis-assemble the instructions by hand, and then finally check all the addresses by hand.
This provided very strong motivation to write correct code from the start. BTW, I learned to leave small gaps between routines so I wouldn't have to relink everything if I needed to squeeze a few more bytes in somewhere.
Anyway, one program was driving me bananas. I couldn't figure out why it wasn't working properly. I dis-assembled my printout over and over again and I could not find any mistake yet the code did not work. Then I figured out that if one particular instruction was wrong (a call instead of a jump perhaps) it would account for the errant behavior, yet the instruction was correct in the printout. So I printed out another hex dump and sure enough, that instruction was wrong. It turned out that I had made a typo when typing in the hex codes and then the damned teletype made a symmetric typo converting the mistyped character back to the one I thought I had typed in, hiding my mistake. I think it was actually a perfect flaw in the yellow paper that made a "3" look like a "B".
I think it is a bit early to claim there are no experimental tests or verifications. The theory does predict new particles and new forces. ISTM that this new theory will be much more likely than string theory to provide experimental tests.
But even if it doesn't give us new physics that can be tested in the real world, if this paper holds up and really does unify the Standard Model with gravity then it would be a very wonderful, Nobel-worthy addition to physics. Using the single symmetry group, E8, is much more beautiful than the various smaller symmetry groups used by the Standard Model. If E8 can also be used to describe gravity as well then this new theory is breathtakingly beautiful. It reminds me of Newton's law of gravity which linked celestial mechanics with the force of gravity we feel on the surface of the Earth. Linking those two things together was absolutely gorgeous and this current paper (if it is true) is beautiful in a similar way.
... the Standard Model, when applied to the bound states of nuclear particles, is just an approximation to the sought-for precise theory.... It's just a device for making calculations,
The Standard Model includes quantum electrodynamics which is the most precise theory so far created by humans. The Standard Model also includes a beautiful model of the strong nuclear force. As you have pointed out, it is tough to impossible to make precise calculations of the strong force using the Standard Model, but that is not because the SM is not precise.
We can make very precise calculations of quantum electrodynamics using the standard model because the coupling coefficient, the fine structure constant (roughly 1/137, represented by the Greek letter alpha) is small enough to allow us to use an approximation, expanding the exact solution by orders of alpha:
The coupling constant for the strong force is roughly one so we can't get meaningful results from a similar simple expansion.
But please realize that almost all of physics consists of devices to make calculations. No physics theory is "based on reality" apart from its ability to be used as a device to make calculations. Ptolemy's epicycles were just as real as any other theory except for one thing. It lacked beauty and simplicity. The Standard Model's description of the strong force is almost the exact opposite of Ptolemy's epicycles. It has beauty and simplicity but it doesn't really serve as a device for making calculations.
My take on it is that the Standard Model is fine even though it can't make precise predictions of strong interactions. It is small and simple and beautiful. The next big step is not to improve the calculations of the standard model (although there are many bright people trying to do just that), the next big step is unifying the Standard Model with gravity and General Relativity as this paper claims to have done.
I've read the paper, I could only understand a small percentage (IWATP) but it felt right. The Standard Model is beautiful because it uses the same mechanism of symmetry groups to explain: the strong, the weak, and the electro-magnetic forces. The same game is played with different symmetry groups to describe the different forces. Perhaps it was a little ad hoc
to just pull these different symmetry groups out of a hat, but this
paper seems to cure that ad hockery.
It shows that a much larger symmetry group called E8 contains all of the groups from the Standard Model in a very natural way. It also contains a group (or groups) that can be used for describing gravity.
This is ever so much more appealing than string theory. It is string theory (not the Standard Model) that lacks ties to physical reality. If this paper holds up, even if it doesn't give us new predictions about relativistic bound states IMO it would be the biggest discovery in physics in our lifetimes. By far.
Slashdot Mirror
You also said: Not true. In my first post that you responded to I provided a link to a UK Independent article that said Obama had a 4% lead in the exit polls. It is now a day later and I see no retraction or correction. I also gave you a link to Freeman's scientific paper that gave evidence that exit poll data in America is now "corrected". Furthermore, even Freeman's critics agree with him that the exit polls in the 2004 election deviated significantly from the official count. Like in your post above, they criticize him for discounting explanations for the discrepancy but the don't argue, like you, that the discrepancy didn't exist. Freeman provided links to MSM exit poll results that now agree with the official results. Since almost everyone in the world (except you) agrees there was a discrepancy and since there is no longer a discrepancy in the published exit polls, the results must have been changed.
If, as you seem to suggest, the Freeman paper was using faulty data, he would have become a laughing stock years ago. Why would there be any discussion of his analysis if the raw exit poll data agreed with the official result?
In the past decade there has been a change of power in Serbia, (the former Soviet Republic) Georgia, and the Ukraine because the exit polls disagreed with the official results. Mismatching exit polls are assumed to be prima facie evidence of election fraud. Ever since the widespread introduction of electronic polling machines in America there have been a rash of embarrassing exit poll anomalies. The quick fix of the main stream media has been to suppress publication of the actual exit poll data indicating who won and then doctoring their exit poll data after the fact in order to ensure it jives with the official results.
I believe the poster I responded to suffered from the same misunderstanding that you have about how exit poll data is presented in the American media. If you want the real numbers you have to grab them before the official results are released or get them from a foreign source. The post by Aku Head, a couple posts under mine in this thread demonstates how this works.
If you still don't believe me, take a look at this Report from the University of Pennsylvania (pdf). They say: There is an excellent summary of the current New Hampshire problem on Counter Punch (warning: very left leaning site). I very much liked the conclusion: I won't call bullshit on you because I think it was an honest and easy-to-make misunderstanding. Perhaps we should all call bullshit on the American media.
On the other hand, I think it is possible to explain these very strange results without resorting to election fraud. Even so, I do think the current situation warants further scrutiny.
The Independent said there was a 11 point swing between the average of the polls (Obama +8) and the official results (Clinton +3). There are reasons other than fraud for Clinton to beat the polls:
-
Voter complacency after Obama's huge lead in the polls. This would lead more independents to vote in the Republican Primary instead of "wasting" their vote for Obama. Also, some first time voters (like students) may have stayed away from the polls confident that Obama would win easily. This could easily account for 3% of the swing.
- Females deciding to vote for Clinton in the last day. There were two events, both widely publicized by the MST that would have made Clinton more appealing to women. First, the way Edwards came to Obama's defense in the Saturday debate could have made both men appear to be anti-female. Second, the most widely publicized event of the primary was Clinton's teary moment that also might have appealed to females. The exit polls said the late deciders were a wash, they followed the trend of the entire vote. I think the two moments cited above nullified what would have been a swing towards Obama in the late deciders. I'd say this could account for 1 point in the overall 11 point swing.
-
The Bradley Effect where white voters lie to pollsters in bi-racial elections. This is the non-fraud explanation for the 7% discrepancy in the exit polls (Obama +4 vs. Clinton +3). We must give this 7%.
IMO, the discrepancy in the exit polls is the most troubling statistic. If we don't see similar discrepancies (of 5% or more) in primaries in other mostly white states then I think election fraud would be the only possible explanation of the New Hampshire results.LANCOR.
Yes, I realize there are over 500 languages being used in Nigeria and their official language is English. I just hope the courts in Nigeria can grind a little faster than the courts in America.
IMO this ploy by LANCOR against OLPC is a carbon copy of the SCO scheme against Linux. I wonder if the company funding LANCOR is the same company that funded the SCO fiasco.
While I agree with the author that the software development model (open vs. closed) can affect the psychology of the coder and hence the quality of the code, I think the conclusion he reached is upside down and backwards.
I've done both open-source and closed-source software development for 30 years. I've seen a lot of bugs. While every coder and every project is different, I have noticed some trends in the type of bugs found in open vs. closed source code. At the risk of sounding airy-fairy, I've found that good coding is usually based on good information flow. For a simple example, if a piece of code encounters an error or other unexpected condition, it is essential that the condition either be dealt with or passed along. This applies to blocks of code, subroutines, applications, and even operating systems. Writing code that is easy to read (with appropriate comments) is another kind of good information flow. IMO clean information flow is the essence of good software.
I've noticed over and over that open-source development tends to produce code with better information flow than closed-source development. I have no proof, but I believe this is because, subconsciously, closed-source developers are intent on restricting information flow and this affects the code they write. I've seen similar problems when people (especially relative newbies) use what Larry Wall describes as bondage and discipline languages but that is an entirely different flamewar.
I think this simple model (closed source development leads to unnaturally restricted information flow in code) goes a long way to explaining the reaction to Microsoft's products by the computer literate. Most (but perhaps not all) of the really good technical people I've known have tended to hate working with Microsoft products even though they have often been unable to precisely articulate what drives them batty (sometimes they say the products are too paternalistic). I think the conflicts arise because the techies have a certain set of reasonable expections of what good software should do based on the code having good information flow. Microsoft, because of their closed-source mentality, defied all of these expectations. On the other hand, the general public did not have any expectations about information flow and so were not immediately turned-off by Microsoft's products.
As others have probably pointed out, the author need only compare Microsoft's Vista with FOSS development over the same period of time. The open-source community has made great strides forward while Microsoft appears to have made a step backwards in many ways.
Title of Summary: OLPC a Hit in Remote Peruvian Village
Title of OP: A shining path to success...
The first result of Google(shining path) is Wikipedia(Shining Path) which begins:
Perhaps when OLPC is complete, Negroponte should start OLP/.er.
The 32-bit Flash player works on many 64-bit Linux distros. It works with both Firefox and Konqueror on my 64-bit Gentoo system.
[Xander reviews a high-school student's records.]
Willow: Have you Googled her yet?
Xander: Willow! She's seventeen!
Willow: It's a search engine.
From what I've seen of the world, "infinite profit, infinite growth, and maximum self-interest" is a more accurate description of the goals of some/many large corporations than anything Adam Smith said. Unfortunately for all of us, greed in our society is treated as a virtue, not a necessary (or unavoidable) evil. I think this is the heart of problems caused by our so-called Capitalist system.
I am reminded of Plato's description of the fall of Atlantis:
Or so that at least one of the rooms has some chairs.
I then have to re-buy the books that I've given away or donated. Often they are no longer in print so I have to get a crappy used version (or pay a ton for a good version if the book was popular). Often only the paperback version is available and I much prefer hardbacks.
A friend once boasted that he could fit all of his possessions into a Volkswagon beetle. I told you "you should let us teach you how to read."
I'm sure some people have large libraries as an ego thing but not all people do. A large library is also a PITA because you have to dust and keep the sun off of the books and keep it organized, and it takes up valuable floor/shelf space. I love that all my audio is accessible from Amorok now, I'd love to be able to do something similar with most (but not all) of my books.
Yeah, I know, I must be new here.
I have a computer illiterate friend who has an el-cheapo HP machine that is a few years old. She runs Windows and constantly gets infected with viruses. She periodically takes it to a computer shop to get Windows reinstalled which costs about $40.
I've run Linux on her machine via LiveCDs but I've had no joy with her winmodem and she is strictly dialup. An external modem from the local (very small town) computer shop is about $90. The Walmart specs for their $200 Linux PC say it has a modem. I figured this meant they got the modem working with Linux so I suggested she purchase one of these from Walmart. Even with the yearly Windows re-install tax, her Windows install keeps breaking.
The review points out that the $200 Walmart PC also has a winmodem which is also useless under Linux. So I called my friend and told her not to buy it.
This provided very strong motivation to write correct code from the start. BTW, I learned to leave small gaps between routines so I wouldn't have to relink everything if I needed to squeeze a few more bytes in somewhere.
Anyway, one program was driving me bananas. I couldn't figure out why it wasn't working properly. I dis-assembled my printout over and over again and I could not find any mistake yet the code did not work. Then I figured out that if one particular instruction was wrong (a call instead of a jump perhaps) it would account for the errant behavior, yet the instruction was correct in the printout. So I printed out another hex dump and sure enough, that instruction was wrong. It turned out that I had made a typo when typing in the hex codes and then the damned teletype made a symmetric typo converting the mistyped character back to the one I thought I had typed in, hiding my mistake. I think it was actually a perfect flaw in the yellow paper that made a "3" look like a "B".
I think it is a bit early to claim there are no experimental tests or verifications. The theory does predict new particles and new forces. ISTM that this new theory will be much more likely than string theory to provide experimental tests.
But even if it doesn't give us new physics that can be tested in the real world, if this paper holds up and really does unify the Standard Model with gravity then it would be a very wonderful, Nobel-worthy addition to physics. Using the single symmetry group, E8, is much more beautiful than the various smaller symmetry groups used by the Standard Model. If E8 can also be used to describe gravity as well then this new theory is breathtakingly beautiful. It reminds me of Newton's law of gravity which linked celestial mechanics with the force of gravity we feel on the surface of the Earth. Linking those two things together was absolutely gorgeous and this current paper (if it is true) is beautiful in a similar way.
We can make very precise calculations of quantum electrodynamics using the standard model because the coupling coefficient, the fine structure constant (roughly 1/137, represented by the Greek letter alpha) is small enough to allow us to use an approximation, expanding the exact solution by orders of alpha:
The coupling constant for the strong force is roughly one so we can't get meaningful results from a similar simple expansion.But please realize that almost all of physics consists of devices to make calculations. No physics theory is "based on reality" apart from its ability to be used as a device to make calculations. Ptolemy's epicycles were just as real as any other theory except for one thing. It lacked beauty and simplicity. The Standard Model's description of the strong force is almost the exact opposite of Ptolemy's epicycles. It has beauty and simplicity but it doesn't really serve as a device for making calculations.
My take on it is that the Standard Model is fine even though it can't make precise predictions of strong interactions. It is small and simple and beautiful. The next big step is not to improve the calculations of the standard model (although there are many bright people trying to do just that), the next big step is unifying the Standard Model with gravity and General Relativity as this paper claims to have done.
I've read the paper, I could only understand a small percentage (IWATP) but it felt right. The Standard Model is beautiful because it uses the same mechanism of symmetry groups to explain: the strong, the weak, and the electro-magnetic forces. The same game is played with different symmetry groups to describe the different forces. Perhaps it was a little ad hoc to just pull these different symmetry groups out of a hat, but this paper seems to cure that ad hockery. It shows that a much larger symmetry group called E8 contains all of the groups from the Standard Model in a very natural way. It also contains a group (or groups) that can be used for describing gravity.
This is ever so much more appealing than string theory. It is string theory (not the Standard Model) that lacks ties to physical reality. If this paper holds up, even if it doesn't give us new predictions about relativistic bound states IMO it would be the biggest discovery in physics in our lifetimes. By far.
Then the first US hydrogen bomb was also a toy and useless as a weapon since it weighed 80 tons.