Then we'd have to roll all the way back to either 1970 or 1949 depending how extreme you'd want to be when gutting particle physics, and start totally fresh. That would be *AMAZING* and I want it so badly.
This last comment surprised me. I'd always assumed those more or less on the inside would be more excited to *confirm* the standard model rather than turn it on its head. Personally, I think, as a distant observer of physics, i'd be a little bit disappointed if they didn't find the Higgs as predicted, which would seem to imply that science is not as far advanced as we'd hoped. Having to go back to '70 or '49 would invalidate a lot of research, wouldn't it?
I have to right-click twice to get the context menu. Haven't seen this before today and I've had ff4 for awhile now..
Also, the checkbox to post anonymously doesn't work any more.
Teachers in Madison WI (focus of the current fight) are pulling down $100K in wages and benefits
Can't let that one slide. Without even looking it up or verifying it in any way, I can tell you with 100% certainty that teachers in Madison make nothing in the ballpark of $100K a year. That would be absurd. Even $50K takes a decade or more to work up to. I do earn money in that ballpark and I'm not even 40 yet, and do I deserve to make more than a school teacher, with the responsibility they're given? heck no. If you paid them better, we'd get better teachers, that's economics 101.
Also, the system is broken because it IS gutted.
I understand Keynesian economics. But I think it is wrong at best and wicked at worst.
Ah, an ideologue. Put your books down and look at the real world. Total privatization of the U.S. in the vein of your heroes von mises, hayek, et al, would lead to a banana republic and mass poverty on the scale of which the world has never seen. Mountains of evidence suggest so. A cursory glance at world history suggests so (and a deep look proves it). So unless a truly stratified class society is your 'ideal', then you're just plain wrong. If it IS your ideal, which is, I suspect, deep down for you so-called libertarians, to be the case, then you are literally wicked at worst.
Yes, Obama's peace prize, given to him only months after he was elected, was essentially because he was in a position to do the 'right thing' whatever that might be. It is politically motivated and has little to do with real accomplishments.
The prize in economics is also somewhat of a joke. It is given based on influence rather than true accomplishment, since accomplishments in economics are difficult to judge and very political. I personally don't believe the prizes are awarded politically, since past recipients include ultra right-wingers F. Hayek and M. Friedman, as well as left-winger Paul Krugman.
The assumption would be that it's intended to be a megaphone for getting progressive values into the public sphere, gaining suitable publicity, and any money-making activity there should be limited to the non-profit, self-perpetuating kind.
I heard it recently and I had to look it up just now: She was actually a republican in the 80's and 90's. Not only that, but she wrote a handful of articles for the National Review and was married to a republican congressman. I personally have no doubts that since that time she's come to sincerely hold many of the same views as HuffPo (conservatives who get smarter with time reach a point when they realize they're plain wrong), but I think her will to be successful/rich is and always has been stronger than her ties to any one ideology. HuffPo's format is a strong testament to that: celebrity drivel mixed with superficial politics (I'm a proud liberal, but much of their politics coverage is just flame-baiting with the right). Their popularity, however, enables a lot of very intelligent and worthy opinion journalists or analysts to find a platform, so it does and always will have some value as long as these opinions don't get suppressed by AOL.
Also, keep in mind that the sole purpose of a newspaper, especially on the web, is to have headlines that grab attention. One perfect example of the bullshit headline-grabbing science journalism was last week's betelguese-supernova story, which, the headline states, will happen in 2012, though as you read deeper in the article, the journalist admits that, actually, it may happen in 2012, or any other year for the next thousand years, nobody really knows.
My guess is that no one's actually covering science at that news outlet. They push a liberal arts guy to write one or two 'science' articles a week, and we see what they come up with. I'll bet that these days, only the very major news outlets like NYT actually employ a dedicated (or at least qualified) science journalist who has at least some respect or even a mild interest in the topic. I've actually seen great science articles from NYT, the Guardian and NPR. 'Studies' articles are almost always bullshit posted in order to grab headlines 'X proven to cause cance', 'people who do x live longer', or anything having to do with sex or dating.
It seems like this sort of romanticism is seen in all fields of study, and if you are active in that field, then it's going to annoy you. I'm endlessly irritated by the portrayal of computer programmers in hollywood and some science fiction. And in the end, it's not always that far off for some representative people in the field. There are a few people who have to consider adding a new universe (or whatever) in order to make the equations fit. It's just people such as Brian Greene who 'work downward' to create all of the imaginative aspects for their own purposes, even if it misrepresents what physicists actually do. I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing; as a former science journalist at my university's paper, I had to try and inspire the imaginations of semi-literate undergrads every week with stories about esoteric research projects, and if that means using 'creative' imagery or speculation, then so be it, as long as you're careful not to misrepresent the original research (and I really don't believe Greene does so). As far as science journalists being the most gullible, it really is a difficult position they're placed in: they aren't (and can't be) experts in the field they're writing about, but they're supposed to be critical of their subject matter. It takes experts of the same caliber, if not greater, to critique another expert. Imagine if NPR called B.S. on Brian Greene or Stephen Hawking.
This guy gets some flak from moderators, but really, he makes an interesting point. How do we know that 'dark matter' isn't an invention to compensate for errors in our understanding of the gravitational force in the same way that the 'luminescent ether' was an invention? I'm not saying the parent is right, I'm only asking, how do we know?
One more thing: people seem to forget that (unlike Ellsberg), Julian Assange does not actually have a classified status. I.e. he didn't actually leak the cables, or for that matter anything he publishes on the site. To the extent that the information is damaging, it is as much a failure on the part of our national security to protect the information from being leaked in the first place. Wikileaks is just an easy target. To actually clean up our fragile intelligence classification system would be expensive and, though it is the real problem here, those responsible for making the information so easily 'leak-able' have chosen to demonize the messenger instead.
This is why I support Wikileaks and not those trying to hush them. If this is a national security issue (and not just a transparency issue), it has everything to do with our gov't's ability to keep the information secure and nothing to do with wikileaks. Let me say it again: he didn't commit espionage to obtain the information; he was GIVEN it.
That being said, the press needs to be questioning the gov't to find out what steps have been taken to limit access to information that endangers our national security. I'm guessing nothing unless they find a way to outsource the mgmt of classified information to a multi-national company like Haliburton for twenty-seven times the cost, otherwise there's no money for it.
Assange didn't 'leak' anything. The person who leaked it has been apprehended. Wikileaks only publicized and distributed it.
It's funny people are blaming Assange when the U.S. gave one guy access to hundreds of thousands of pages of this classified information without even monitoring how much of it he was accessing or asking why he needed to access it in the first place. If our classified intelligence system is so fragile and such a joke, maybe our problems are greater than wikileaks? Seriously, this whole story has been mischaracterized by basically everyone.
Sorry, I realized that after I posted and went back to fivethirtyeight to read what he was saying. It looks like Silver's analysis this time around uses different methods, and again he's received a C&D to stop commenting.
The headline on this article was stupidly misleading. Months ago, if not over a year, Nate Silver at fivethirtyeight.com called out R2K for just this one thing. You may remember Silver's interesting observation that the least significant digits in the polling results did not follow a normal random distribution. For example there may have been too many.9's in the results (58.9 or 63.9, etc) while there were few instances of other digits.
The pollster was subscribed to by DailyKos, among hundreds of other news organizations, and the results were skewed IN FAVOR OF RIGHT-WING CAUSES, not left-wing, so the assumption that DailyKos was somehow complicit in this is absolutely not true. (And I've rarely, if ever, read DailyKos, so I have no personal interest in defending them.. the headline is just grossly misleading).
Step 1 is not so bad, but step 2 is where the problem begins. From there, it's only a matter of time before step 3 happens, because few politicians will go on the record as supporting porn.
Furthermore, step 3 might not be blocking the websites (which would be in direct violation of the first amendment), but requiring that anyone accessing them obtain a gov't issued license enforced by ISPs, etc.
And replace.xxx with any type of content and that type of content can be effectively banned using the same process.
As for the pentaho.com website... you would think that the webcasts, papers, etc would be hard to miss but hey I guess if you don't need a data integration tool you probably don't know what it's for.
"My Humble Blog"? You sound like an arrogant prick. Not to mention your third paragraph explains why your second paragraph is wrong: if the student knew what Kettle was in the first place, he could've saved a lot of time.
And finally, it is standard practice to tailor any piece of communication to the audience to which it is being communicated. It's likely we./ readers know what SQL is, but ETL or whatever is less widely known and asking for its definition is not out of line. If you have an interest in the success of Pentaho/Kettle, and it appears you do, then tell people what it can do for them and even help them to find ways to use it to make their lives easier. Even in your response to the comment below mine, you say 'if you have no need for data integration, you won't be looking for it'. The student you spoke of had a need for data integration, but didn't know what to look for.
This seems like a +5 interesting question. What exactly are the conditions that need to be met in order for it to be said that a program has curiosity?
Alan Grayson is one of the few members of the house who acts on principle and not on money interest, and one of the few dems who, in the words of a popular talk show host, "goes on the offense and stays there.":) Sometimes he says silly things, but they're not half as silly as what we hear daily from the other side of the aisle. Open your ears.
Slashdot Mirror
This last comment surprised me. I'd always assumed those more or less on the inside would be more excited to *confirm* the standard model rather than turn it on its head. Personally, I think, as a distant observer of physics, i'd be a little bit disappointed if they didn't find the Higgs as predicted, which would seem to imply that science is not as far advanced as we'd hoped. Having to go back to '70 or '49 would invalidate a lot of research, wouldn't it?
I have to right-click twice to get the context menu. Haven't seen this before today and I've had ff4 for awhile now.. Also, the checkbox to post anonymously doesn't work any more.
+1 parent
No, because Mono isn't a language. C# and F# are languages.
Can't let that one slide. Without even looking it up or verifying it in any way, I can tell you with 100% certainty that teachers in Madison make nothing in the ballpark of $100K a year. That would be absurd. Even $50K takes a decade or more to work up to. I do earn money in that ballpark and I'm not even 40 yet, and do I deserve to make more than a school teacher, with the responsibility they're given? heck no. If you paid them better, we'd get better teachers, that's economics 101. Also, the system is broken because it IS gutted.
Ah, an ideologue. Put your books down and look at the real world. Total privatization of the U.S. in the vein of your heroes von mises, hayek, et al, would lead to a banana republic and mass poverty on the scale of which the world has never seen. Mountains of evidence suggest so. A cursory glance at world history suggests so (and a deep look proves it). So unless a truly stratified class society is your 'ideal', then you're just plain wrong. If it IS your ideal, which is, I suspect, deep down for you so-called libertarians, to be the case, then you are literally wicked at worst.
Yes, Obama's peace prize, given to him only months after he was elected, was essentially because he was in a position to do the 'right thing' whatever that might be. It is politically motivated and has little to do with real accomplishments. The prize in economics is also somewhat of a joke. It is given based on influence rather than true accomplishment, since accomplishments in economics are difficult to judge and very political. I personally don't believe the prizes are awarded politically, since past recipients include ultra right-wingers F. Hayek and M. Friedman, as well as left-winger Paul Krugman.
Yes, well I haven't been this excited since King's Speech won the 'Turing Award' of Movies!
Or raise taxes?
I heard it recently and I had to look it up just now: She was actually a republican in the 80's and 90's. Not only that, but she wrote a handful of articles for the National Review and was married to a republican congressman. I personally have no doubts that since that time she's come to sincerely hold many of the same views as HuffPo (conservatives who get smarter with time reach a point when they realize they're plain wrong), but I think her will to be successful/rich is and always has been stronger than her ties to any one ideology. HuffPo's format is a strong testament to that: celebrity drivel mixed with superficial politics (I'm a proud liberal, but much of their politics coverage is just flame-baiting with the right). Their popularity, however, enables a lot of very intelligent and worthy opinion journalists or analysts to find a platform, so it does and always will have some value as long as these opinions don't get suppressed by AOL.
Also, keep in mind that the sole purpose of a newspaper, especially on the web, is to have headlines that grab attention. One perfect example of the bullshit headline-grabbing science journalism was last week's betelguese-supernova story, which, the headline states, will happen in 2012, though as you read deeper in the article, the journalist admits that, actually, it may happen in 2012, or any other year for the next thousand years, nobody really knows.
My guess is that no one's actually covering science at that news outlet. They push a liberal arts guy to write one or two 'science' articles a week, and we see what they come up with. I'll bet that these days, only the very major news outlets like NYT actually employ a dedicated (or at least qualified) science journalist who has at least some respect or even a mild interest in the topic. I've actually seen great science articles from NYT, the Guardian and NPR. 'Studies' articles are almost always bullshit posted in order to grab headlines 'X proven to cause cance', 'people who do x live longer', or anything having to do with sex or dating.
It seems like this sort of romanticism is seen in all fields of study, and if you are active in that field, then it's going to annoy you. I'm endlessly irritated by the portrayal of computer programmers in hollywood and some science fiction. And in the end, it's not always that far off for some representative people in the field. There are a few people who have to consider adding a new universe (or whatever) in order to make the equations fit. It's just people such as Brian Greene who 'work downward' to create all of the imaginative aspects for their own purposes, even if it misrepresents what physicists actually do. I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing; as a former science journalist at my university's paper, I had to try and inspire the imaginations of semi-literate undergrads every week with stories about esoteric research projects, and if that means using 'creative' imagery or speculation, then so be it, as long as you're careful not to misrepresent the original research (and I really don't believe Greene does so). As far as science journalists being the most gullible, it really is a difficult position they're placed in: they aren't (and can't be) experts in the field they're writing about, but they're supposed to be critical of their subject matter. It takes experts of the same caliber, if not greater, to critique another expert. Imagine if NPR called B.S. on Brian Greene or Stephen Hawking.
This guy gets some flak from moderators, but really, he makes an interesting point. How do we know that 'dark matter' isn't an invention to compensate for errors in our understanding of the gravitational force in the same way that the 'luminescent ether' was an invention? I'm not saying the parent is right, I'm only asking, how do we know?
One more thing: people seem to forget that (unlike Ellsberg), Julian Assange does not actually have a classified status. I.e. he didn't actually leak the cables, or for that matter anything he publishes on the site. To the extent that the information is damaging, it is as much a failure on the part of our national security to protect the information from being leaked in the first place. Wikileaks is just an easy target. To actually clean up our fragile intelligence classification system would be expensive and, though it is the real problem here, those responsible for making the information so easily 'leak-able' have chosen to demonize the messenger instead.
This is why I support Wikileaks and not those trying to hush them. If this is a national security issue (and not just a transparency issue), it has everything to do with our gov't's ability to keep the information secure and nothing to do with wikileaks. Let me say it again: he didn't commit espionage to obtain the information; he was GIVEN it.
That being said, the press needs to be questioning the gov't to find out what steps have been taken to limit access to information that endangers our national security. I'm guessing nothing unless they find a way to outsource the mgmt of classified information to a multi-national company like Haliburton for twenty-seven times the cost, otherwise there's no money for it.
It's funny people are blaming Assange when the U.S. gave one guy access to hundreds of thousands of pages of this classified information without even monitoring how much of it he was accessing or asking why he needed to access it in the first place. If our classified intelligence system is so fragile and such a joke, maybe our problems are greater than wikileaks? Seriously, this whole story has been mischaracterized by basically everyone.
This is not a left/right issue. It just so happens the right-wing is crazier in their anti-wikileaks rhetoric, as would be expected.
Sorry, I realized that after I posted and went back to fivethirtyeight to read what he was saying. It looks like Silver's analysis this time around uses different methods, and again he's received a C&D to stop commenting.
The pollster was subscribed to by DailyKos, among hundreds of other news organizations, and the results were skewed IN FAVOR OF RIGHT-WING CAUSES, not left-wing, so the assumption that DailyKos was somehow complicit in this is absolutely not true. (And I've rarely, if ever, read DailyKos, so I have no personal interest in defending them.. the headline is just grossly misleading).
Furthermore, step 3 might not be blocking the websites (which would be in direct violation of the first amendment), but requiring that anyone accessing them obtain a gov't issued license enforced by ISPs, etc.
And replace .xxx with any type of content and that type of content can be effectively banned using the same process.
Step 1) Introduce tld .xxx
Step 2) Pass law that says, any site with porn must be in .xxx tld
Step 3) Block .xxx domain
Step 4) Totalitarianism
+10 insightful
As for the pentaho.com website... you would think that the webcasts, papers, etc would be hard to miss but hey I guess if you don't need a data integration tool you probably don't know what it's for.
"My Humble Blog"? You sound like an arrogant prick. Not to mention your third paragraph explains why your second paragraph is wrong: if the student knew what Kettle was in the first place, he could've saved a lot of time.
And finally, it is standard practice to tailor any piece of communication to the audience to which it is being communicated. It's likely we ./ readers know what SQL is, but ETL or whatever is less widely known and asking for its definition is not out of line. If you have an interest in the success of Pentaho/Kettle, and it appears you do, then tell people what it can do for them and even help them to find ways to use it to make their lives easier. Even in your response to the comment below mine, you say 'if you have no need for data integration, you won't be looking for it'. The student you spoke of had a need for data integration, but didn't know what to look for.
thanks to the scanners, it also now appeals to perverts, wankers and child molesters
This seems like a +5 interesting question. What exactly are the conditions that need to be met in order for it to be said that a program has curiosity?
Shouldn't the title of this article be "Florida woman attempts to fraudulently raise campaign funding"?
Alan Grayson is one of the few members of the house who acts on principle and not on money interest, and one of the few dems who, in the words of a popular talk show host, "goes on the offense and stays there." :) Sometimes he says silly things, but they're not half as silly as what we hear daily from the other side of the aisle. Open your ears.
Also, note the source of the article..