I also live in the "boondocks" - the Washington D.C. metro area. I have almost no cell phone signal at either home or work. However, it works pretty well for me even so because I can use T-mobile's calling over wi-fi to get a pretty good voice service on my phone. (There's no additional charge for this.)
I'm using a plan, which may be discontinued now, which gives me a ~$10 lower charge/month because I provided my own phone. So, overall it works reasonably well for me most of the time.
I currently have both netflix and amazon prime. Overall, the free streaming with amazon is roughly comparable, in my experience, with netflix. A few things I've looked for have only been available on one or the other. On the other hand, the advantage of amazon is the non-free selection. If one doesn't mind paying for the additional material sometimes, it increases the range of what is available to quite a large extent. However, my fear is that if netflix dies, then the "free" material on amazon would reduce substantially, and they'd try to sell more of the one-time rentals.
Actually, these days, PBS seems to carry more and more dubious infomercial type "medical" programs, very bland music, and ancient British TV programs. (OK, I exaggerate a little, not all the British TV programs are old.)
Why do you call the committee members pseudo-scientists? I'm rather sure everyone has a PhD in astronomy/astrophysics. (I'm technically an IAU member, although I've had little involvement with it.)
They don't experiment. They don't work in a lab. They may be involved in the scientific community, but they're not doing any scientific work per-se. They're bureaucrats with training in science.
Can you specify some names so I can check this is really true? (Not many of us astronomers work in labs or experiment anyway. We mainly obtain and analyze data, construct theoretical models. A smaller number of us work on instrumentation which might involve working in an actual lab.)
Why do you call the committee members pseudo-scientists? I'm rather sure everyone has a PhD in astronomy/astrophysics. (I'm technically an IAU member, although I've had little involvement with it.)
No, rich people are currently forced to use Roombas to get themselves back from the pub when they're wrecked. The roomba follows a random pattern which eventually gets you back home, and it takes so long you're generally sober by then as well.
The original study was published in Science, one of the most prestigious journals with high rejection rate. Just another proof highly selective journals by commercial publishers don't decide to publish based on technical correctness but on trendiness. Sensationalistic papers are accepted even if they are technically incorrect, technically correct but non trendy ones are rejected because they're too boring. This is the biggest problem with commercial scientific publishing, they have no incentive to publish correct science, only incentives to publish science that get them in the newpapers.
I think that you're way overstating this. Although Science (and Nature) definitely want to publish high-impact science, and there's usually a need to do things very quickly, which increases the chance of error, papers are heavily refereed. The paper would have been sent to 3 referees, and to have the paper published, at least 2 of them would typically have had to agree to publication. In addition, "interesting" papers have a higher chance of being wrong that a run-of-the-mill paper appearing in some other journal which has no surprising results.
As I understand it, the controversy really heated up when this researcher started shouting 'SEXISM!' at the first sign of peer criticism. As Sagan said (paraphrased) "If you're gonna make an extraordinary claim, be prepared to back it up with extraordinary proof!" Not assertions that those mean old boys are picking on you because you're a girl.
A generator suitable for real emergency use for vulnerable people is not that inexpensive. For that situation you'd really need one powered by natural gas with automatic start if the main electricity supply failed. It would have to be powerful enough, in most areas, to be able to drive air conditioning, and perhaps other energy demanding systems.
correct, it's on the airline to worry about whether their planes are taken over or fall out of the sky. it's on the passenger to choose an airline that makes them feel safe. Note most skyscrapers aren't cost reduced crap like the Twin Towers were, you run a plane into say the Sears Tower and you'll ruin a perfectly serviceable jet aircraft.
And apart from that cheaply built pentagon-shaped thing as well?
The minority of people that are still ufing ethernet for laptops need to carry an ethernet cable with them anyway. It's no hardship to them to take a cable with a dongle in instead..
It's a problem, speaking as a macbook air owner since the machine was first released, if you only use ethernet occasionally, and forget to take your adapter with you when traveling to a wi-fi poor region like Japan...
I took typing classes in high school. Now I find though that I only type "properly" (all fingers) with my left hand. I only use one or two fingers on my right hand. I think the reason for this may be that I'm generally having to move my right hand around to grab the mouse, and so my R.H. strays away too often from the home position. (Even hitting "return" tends to move my hand out of position as well.)
(Maybe some people may have got a different idea on this from the subject...)
Slashdot Mirror
I also live in the "boondocks" - the Washington D.C. metro area.
I have almost no cell phone signal at either home or work.
However, it works pretty well for me even so because I can use T-mobile's calling over wi-fi to
get a pretty good voice service on my phone. (There's no additional charge for this.)
I'm using a plan, which may be discontinued now, which gives me a ~$10 lower charge/month because I
provided my own phone. So, overall it works reasonably well for me most of the time.
I currently have both netflix and amazon prime. Overall, the free streaming with amazon is roughly comparable, in my experience, with netflix. A few things I've looked for have only been available on one or the other. On the other hand, the advantage of amazon is the non-free selection. If one doesn't mind paying for the additional material sometimes, it increases the range of what is available to quite a large extent. However, my fear is that if netflix dies, then the "free" material on amazon would reduce substantially, and they'd try to sell more of the one-time rentals.
Actually, these days, PBS seems to carry more and more dubious infomercial type "medical" programs, very bland music, and ancient British TV programs.
(OK, I exaggerate a little, not all the British TV programs are old.)
Why do you call the committee members pseudo-scientists? I'm rather sure everyone has a PhD in astronomy/astrophysics. (I'm technically an IAU member, although I've had little involvement with it.)
They don't experiment. They don't work in a lab. They may be involved in the scientific community, but they're not doing any scientific work per-se. They're bureaucrats with training in science.
Can you specify some names so I can check this is really true?
(Not many of us astronomers work in labs or experiment anyway. We mainly obtain and analyze data, construct theoretical models. A smaller number of us work on instrumentation which might involve working in an actual lab.)
Why do you call the committee members pseudo-scientists? I'm rather sure everyone has a PhD in astronomy/astrophysics. (I'm technically an IAU member, although I've had little involvement with it.)
No, rich people are currently forced to use Roombas to get themselves back from the pub when they're wrecked. The roomba follows a random pattern which eventually gets you back home, and it takes so long you're generally sober by then as well.
The US isn't a democracy. It's a constitutional republic.
No, it's a liberal democracy!
The original study was published in Science, one of the most prestigious journals with high rejection rate. Just another proof highly selective journals by commercial publishers don't decide to publish based on technical correctness but on trendiness. Sensationalistic papers are accepted even if they are technically incorrect, technically correct but non trendy ones are rejected because they're too boring. This is the biggest problem with commercial scientific publishing, they have no incentive to publish correct science, only incentives to publish science that get them in the newpapers.
I think that you're way overstating this. Although Science (and Nature) definitely want to publish high-impact science, and there's usually a need to do things very quickly, which increases the chance of error, papers are heavily refereed. The paper would have been sent to 3 referees, and to have the paper published, at least 2 of them would typically have had to agree to publication. In addition, "interesting" papers have a higher chance of being wrong that a run-of-the-mill paper appearing in some other journal which has no surprising results.
As I understand it, the controversy really heated up when this researcher started shouting 'SEXISM!' at the first sign of peer criticism. As Sagan said (paraphrased) "If you're gonna make an extraordinary claim, be prepared to back it up with extraordinary proof!" Not assertions that those mean old boys are picking on you because you're a girl.
Is this really true? What is your source for that?
I believe that one of the biggest critics of the original research was Rosie Redfield (who is female).
Redfield is also a co-author of on the Science papers.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=study-fails-to-confirm-existence
http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2010/12/this_paper_should_not_have_been_published.html
A generator suitable for real emergency use for vulnerable people is not that inexpensive. For that situation you'd really need one powered by natural gas with automatic start if the main electricity supply failed. It would have to be powerful enough, in most areas, to be able to drive air conditioning, and perhaps other energy demanding systems.
We're pretty dense here in the Washington D.C. metropolitan area.
In fact, all cities are rather dense....
This is ./ , what doe you expect from us you...you...Anonymouse Coward!
dotslash?
Is that slashdot's evil counterpart from a parallel universe?
correct, it's on the airline to worry about whether their planes are taken over or fall out of the sky. it's on the passenger to choose an airline that makes them feel safe. Note most skyscrapers aren't cost reduced crap like the Twin Towers were, you run a plane into say the Sears Tower and you'll ruin a perfectly serviceable jet aircraft.
And apart from that cheaply built pentagon-shaped thing as well?
Right, what pilot could possibly go crazy and do stupid stuff?
Well, apart from ones on Jet Blue....
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/sns-rt-us-usa-jetblue-pilotbre85e19b-20120615,0,7994226.story
But, anyway...
The minority of people that are still ufing ethernet for laptops need to carry an ethernet cable with them anyway. It's no hardship to them to take a cable with a dongle in instead..
It's a problem, speaking as a macbook air owner since the machine was first released, if you only use ethernet occasionally, and forget to take your adapter with you when traveling to a wi-fi poor region like Japan...
Edward Teller testified against Oppenheimer's security clearance. Could he have been against Feynman as well?
...Or like complaining that Google's Street View cameras caught you paying for hookers?
Or, if you're in the Secret Service, not paying for hookers...
Sounds almost like a (musical) synthesizer controller is what you need.
e.g. something like:
http://www.behringer.com/EN/Products/BCF2000.aspx
secure but unclassified
I thought the term was "sensitive but unclassified"...
The lego version doesn't have knees. Do knees count as a breakthrough?!
sceptics(sic).
sceptic is the English (as opposed to US) spelling of skeptic.
I took typing classes in high school.
Now I find though that I only type "properly" (all fingers) with my left hand. I only use one or two fingers on my right hand. I think the reason for this may be that I'm generally having to move my right hand around to grab the mouse, and so my R.H. strays away too often from the home position. (Even hitting "return" tends to move my hand out of position as well.)
(Maybe some people may have got a different idea on this from the subject...)
Maybe you really mean you *couldn't* agree more...
I think people knew about basic sanitation in 1918.
Also, we still don't have very good vaccines against flu.
Not being able to find the keys isn't the stress inducer, they're just reasonably cheap replaceable objects.
Have you seen the price for replacement car keys these days? They can be hundreds of dollars...