Uh, I think the real problem is who's responsible for security. If someone else (incluging the USG or it's contractor in my case) looses/publishes my SSN and then a third party accepts it as proof of identity, why is it my fault?
Just make the bank responsible for positively identifying people and liable for all looses -- including court costs, loss of time, mental energy -- and they'll start taking identity seriously.
I use a cannon IP 3000 with duplex. I pay under $10/ cartridge and they last for about 1.5 reams (1500 page sides). Thats 2/3 cent/page side plus the paper (I'm picky and like my paper to be bright) which adds 2/3 cent per page side. Plus, the text looks great. Only problem is that it isn't water proof. Not sure I'm getting ripped off though.
If there was a cheap laser that was small and had duplex, I'd consider it. But last time I had one I found that the current it drew when it started was outrageous (my monitor and all my CFL's dimmed) and that it's sleep current was significantly higher than my ink jet. So, I returned it.
That thing looks great. Too bad about the manual duplex. I'm a student and print, 40 page papers several times a week, duplex = half the bulk in my bag and half the bulk on the shelf.
Okay, seriously though, almost none of the lost laptops is actually lost, it just isn't documented correctly in the system.
These standards are completely silly and represent the worst of government--it's all command and control, central clearing houses, et cetera. When the federal government does the best is when it says
you must write down a plan for serious issue x
you must follow your plan
Someone from another orginization will come around from time to time and make sure the plan was good and that it is being followed
This rule amounts to just this:
There is only one good plan and we have it, you will adapt
This is then followed by confusion as to why adaptation is slow and not as they expected. The simple fact is that there are special circumstances, and the people doing the work usually know best how to do it. They are the ones that can best turn the spirit of the rule into the letter of the rule for their situation. They can minimize unintended consequences.
You could take some solice in the fact that the sun (and other stars) apparently don't have problems with these particles passing through them. While the interaction cross section would likely be far smaller at relativistic velocities, I don't think they would be zero (this is the critical assumption). if you think about the number of these events that happen on a regular basis to stars, including neutron stars, which have an escape velocity of half the speed of light meaning that whats left after a collisions is more likely to stick around. Now, neutrons starts have density similar to nuclei, so it's reasonable to expect that traveling through a few miles of nuclei several times would be similar to spending quite a while vibrating around in Earth.
yeah, I looked at the one picutre on the articles page and I was instantly reminded what I don't like about KDE and GNOME, clunky buttons, unclear separation of sections. I can't figure out at all whats going on in that screen capture!
thanks a lot for the links! I've never had cable or satellite and I've always thought everyone over estimated how many people have cable and satellite. But looks like I was wrong.
just thought I'd point out that improvements in productivity have never lead to saving energy, just increased output and thus using more energy. While it would be possible to increase productivity and go to a 7 hour instead of 8 hour day, it doesn't appear to be part of our culture (at least, not in the US).
In my last post I was trying to say that we have argued into a place where I know what I'm saying and you know what you're saying, we both know what the other is saying and we're both happy with where we are. The way I see it, your saying something along the lines "science is what scientists do." and I'm saying "science is the diamond in the rough," it's the theory that was put to a test that was so harsh that the critics of the theory were smiling as it happened because they knew that the test was going to prove them right and the theory wrong.
What I mean by theory is a claim, a prediction, that something obeys a set of rules. Consider the following claim:
any two spherical masses will attract each other with a force proportional to the product of thier masses and inversely proportional to the distance between them. There will be a proportionality constant for this too, and this proprotionality constant will be the same regardless of location, time, distance, and the object in play.
In response to, "why aren't you in the field" the answer is, I am, but the field I chose is a social science. So little is known, there is lots of room for great science.
fair enough, I don't argue that it's perfect, I argue that it's far from it. But if the lawyers did get lots of cash (as everyone says) and this is much better than MS having lots of cash.
I would preffer that it would be that anybody could sue on behalf of the affected people and that there would be a reasonable lawyers fee and the funds would be given to the government or perhaps just a lottery that the people in the affected class could play at no cost.
I wrote, '"The Data Is As It Is" theory is the ultimate calibration model: when it's disproved, you update to "The Data Is As It Is" theory (new and improved with new data) that's the problem.' and you responded, "True, but once it is disproved, you do have to come up with a new theory. The framework still holds, but the instance of it is different. That's pretty much how science works."
This is the centeral issue and I guess we just come at this from different angles. The way I see it, what you are describing is more the day to day activities of a scientist. What I'm trying to describe is not what we call science today or what kinds of claims one can make and be called a scientist (this is a valid angle and is Kuhn's approach). What I'm describing is the system by which theories that people have are translated into something with currency well in the future. I would argue that most scientists are too close to the day in and day out process of being employed as a scientist to see it, but then again, most scientists contribute almost nothing that lasts even until the 80th anniversary of their birth.
Look, I'm not arguing that there isn't value in string theorists spending time on these things. I don't know if there is or isn't. What I'm arguing is that unless they can come up with a harsh test -- a test that has some probability of making them sigh and admit they have to move on to something that is not string theory -- the idea won't be seriously regarded in 30 or 40 years.
Not sure if you know this, but Grisham is a novelist, and a good one at that. As with all good writers, the focus is on what makes the best story, not what is reality. I've never read this book so I can't refute it's central points, but I can't imagine a country without tort and without class action tort.
In the end, the system isn't perfect, but having the lawyers get rich is better than having the companys get rich mainly because of the incentive system that it sets up for companies.
put it this way, if you want to keep the cookies in the jar, you can put a sign on the jar that says, "don't take cookies" and then if someone takes them you ask them to put it back (but don't punish them if they don't) or you could allow another person to catch them and take the cookie from them. When you do the latter, the incentive is to catch people, and there is little incentive to take (most of the cookies stay in the jar). When you do the former, people just take the cookies and you've got nothing left.
Here's the thing. Our market uses a capitalist market structure, so the firms that make the most money beat the other firms. Put another way, if there is a way to make more money, the contentious executive who is thinking of his shareholders will make the money (most MBA graduates say that the maximizing shareholder value is the primary focus of an employee).
In light of this, when someone does something counter competitive, just taking money away from them helps quite a bit. Now we can argue about where it should go, but this is better than the other options (leaving the money with the company that swindled the consumer). Put another way, if one company starts to swindle and nothing happens, all competitors will either start to do the same or go out of business. Class action lawsuits provide some protection against that and are an overall boon for the consumer in net, if not in effect per lawsuit.
Popper is the philosopher of science who gets currency everywhere because his theory hits the nail on the head. Everything since him has just faded away as the personality behind it fades away.
Two (your convention), "The Data Is As It Is" theory is the ultimate calibration model: when it's disproved, you update to "The Data Is As It Is" theory (new and improved with new data) that's the problem.
You need to take the long view of these things, i.e. lets say that for string theory you get it all right once you've got the assumptions right and one scalar measurement. To get the assumptions right, you may require just as many measurements as otherwise and then you're just pushing this data in the back door as modifying assumptions and pretending that you didn't need all these measurements to get them right.
Three (again...), That's the point. Relativity wasn't tested on Newtonian physics, it wasn't seriously arguable that there were problems there at very low relative speeds--the harsh tests had been performed. Same thing for Lorentz invariance. String theory needs to make a new prediction that previous theories disagree strongly with and then go to the lab.
Four and Five: See 2 regarding back-dooring constants.
Six, and would this particle accelerator fit between here and Jupiter? It is an interesting question that you raise here. If we can't test it, and may never be able to test it -- but we can imagine testing it -- is it science? I think yes, but not for us.
finally, I worked as a radiation physicist for several years, but I'm not qualified to talk about the finer points of quantum field theory. I left physics because it didn't look like there were many interesting questions left to answer. I think the popularity of string theory among academics results from a physics problem that (unlike other hard sciences) there are only so many interesting particles to study -- compare to biology and chemistry.
'calibration' is a term of art (jargon) it doesn't matter what you call it. The point is that "string theory" per se can't be disproved. Thus the test is not a harsh test, thus string theory is not science (yet).
right, but it's just a calibration because the author points out that if the test rejects the null hypothesis then some assumptions have to be adjusted and string theory survives. If the test doesn't put the theory at serious risk, it isn't a test--it's a calibration.
You may want to read about philosophy of science. Specifically, Karl Popper's contribution. So one of his claims would be that you are dead wrong when you claim , '"Well, our theory is: The Data Is As It Is." Such a theory would be absolutely right. It would even be science.' There would be no way for the data to not be as it is -- there is no way to falsify the theory, it isn't science.
As an example, Einstein was able to predict not just that Newtonian physics would be an excellent approximation for almost all measurements made in his time, but also the behavior of a star behind the sun during a solar eclipse. This was a harsh test -- had he been wrong the star would not have been visible. Harsh tests is what makes a theory go from nothing to worth something.
So now we come around to the central criticism of string theory--no harsh tests to date. Even the recently proposed test of string theory would only show that some assumptions would have to be changed in the words of the proposer. This implies that string theory is a "calibration model" which means that when new data is brought to light a correction is applied. So, it isn't a test of the theory, it's a calibration. When you have a theory like this, it can't ever be wrong and it's impossible to disprove (there is always a new know to "calibrate") and it isn't science.
Yes, but it's also about something more important than that. It's about not knowing that cosmic rays come from outside the solar system. The scientist who came up with this is a real genius.
okay, lets say it's as simple as you say. It still requires interpolation because a center fielder never stands in exactly the same spot and yet tries to hit the catcher's mit right above and to the left of home plate, so previous responses would give a noisy surface from which extrapolation would be necessary--I would argue that these calculations are perhaps more intensive than the direct physics calculations.
yet a baseball player can calculate the exact force needed to throw a baseball from center field to home plate. Here the angle and force are even overspecified and so there is a highly non-linear optimization to perform to get the minimum possible travel time to the throw. There is also an error in angle and force so a loss-function must be used to trade off accuracy for speed, in addion how important the throw is which dictates how probable an injury should be allowed. If you had a machine that let you throw the ball with all these factors, it could easily take you an hour to do the calculation. Yet the baseball player takes only a fraction of a second to do it all.
I think this is a great example of where serial mind sets inhibit us. Parsing in parallel makes a whole lot of sense once you're ready for it. Granted you need parallel data storage to make good on parallel parsing, but it's feasible if you are ready to restructure your whole mind set.
There is a very interesting theory provided by Trefethen and Bau in Numerical Linear Algebra that the existence of exact algorithms for most of the complicated interesting matrix operations may have slowed our finding a faster algorithm that approximates the result with arbitrary (i.e. slightly non-zero) error. It's been several years, but I thought that eigenvalue problems when approximated to within a few times machine epsilon can be found 1/2 order faster or some such thing than using the exact methods.
I had thought it was this project that actually stores off-peak power and then uses it during peak. It works based on this technology but uses wind power so that the variability can be managed.
Slashdot Mirror
you may want to read the exceedingly long post that's a reply to my original post. It mentions that mine is also using lots of color.
Just make the bank responsible for positively identifying people and liable for all looses -- including court costs, loss of time, mental energy -- and they'll start taking identity seriously.
If there was a cheap laser that was small and had duplex, I'd consider it. But last time I had one I found that the current it drew when it started was outrageous (my monitor and all my CFL's dimmed) and that it's sleep current was significantly higher than my ink jet. So, I returned it.
That thing looks great. Too bad about the manual duplex. I'm a student and print, 40 page papers several times a week, duplex = half the bulk in my bag and half the bulk on the shelf.
Why not just use a supper conducting magnet? Keeping it cool would then be a potential problem.
These standards are completely silly and represent the worst of government--it's all command and control, central clearing houses, et cetera. When the federal government does the best is when it says
- you must write down a plan for serious issue x
- you must follow your plan
- Someone from another orginization will come around from time to time and make sure the plan was good and that it is being followed
This rule amounts to just this:- There is only one good plan and we have it, you will adapt
This is then followed by confusion as to why adaptation is slow and not as they expected. The simple fact is that there are special circumstances, and the people doing the work usually know best how to do it. They are the ones that can best turn the spirit of the rule into the letter of the rule for their situation. They can minimize unintended consequences.You could take some solice in the fact that the sun (and other stars) apparently don't have problems with these particles passing through them. While the interaction cross section would likely be far smaller at relativistic velocities, I don't think they would be zero (this is the critical assumption). if you think about the number of these events that happen on a regular basis to stars, including neutron stars, which have an escape velocity of half the speed of light meaning that whats left after a collisions is more likely to stick around. Now, neutrons starts have density similar to nuclei, so it's reasonable to expect that traveling through a few miles of nuclei several times would be similar to spending quite a while vibrating around in Earth.
yeah, I looked at the one picutre on the articles page and I was instantly reminded what I don't like about KDE and GNOME, clunky buttons, unclear separation of sections. I can't figure out at all whats going on in that screen capture!
thanks a lot for the links! I've never had cable or satellite and I've always thought everyone over estimated how many people have cable and satellite. But looks like I was wrong.
Do you have a good reference for the 10-15% number? I can't find a good one.
just thought I'd point out that improvements in productivity have never lead to saving energy, just increased output and thus using more energy. While it would be possible to increase productivity and go to a 7 hour instead of 8 hour day, it doesn't appear to be part of our culture (at least, not in the US).
What I mean by theory is a claim, a prediction, that something obeys a set of rules. Consider the following claim:
any two spherical masses will attract each other with a force proportional to the product of thier masses and inversely proportional to the distance between them. There will be a proportionality constant for this too, and this proprotionality constant will be the same regardless of location, time, distance, and the object in play.
In response to, "why aren't you in the field" the answer is, I am, but the field I chose is a social science. So little is known, there is lots of room for great science.
I would preffer that it would be that anybody could sue on behalf of the affected people and that there would be a reasonable lawyers fee and the funds would be given to the government or perhaps just a lottery that the people in the affected class could play at no cost.
Look, I'm not arguing that there isn't value in string theorists spending time on these things. I don't know if there is or isn't. What I'm arguing is that unless they can come up with a harsh test -- a test that has some probability of making them sigh and admit they have to move on to something that is not string theory -- the idea won't be seriously regarded in 30 or 40 years.
In the end, the system isn't perfect, but having the lawyers get rich is better than having the companys get rich mainly because of the incentive system that it sets up for companies.
put it this way, if you want to keep the cookies in the jar, you can put a sign on the jar that says, "don't take cookies" and then if someone takes them you ask them to put it back (but don't punish them if they don't) or you could allow another person to catch them and take the cookie from them. When you do the latter, the incentive is to catch people, and there is little incentive to take (most of the cookies stay in the jar). When you do the former, people just take the cookies and you've got nothing left.
In light of this, when someone does something counter competitive, just taking money away from them helps quite a bit. Now we can argue about where it should go, but this is better than the other options (leaving the money with the company that swindled the consumer). Put another way, if one company starts to swindle and nothing happens, all competitors will either start to do the same or go out of business. Class action lawsuits provide some protection against that and are an overall boon for the consumer in net, if not in effect per lawsuit.
Two (your convention), "The Data Is As It Is" theory is the ultimate calibration model: when it's disproved, you update to "The Data Is As It Is" theory (new and improved with new data) that's the problem.
You need to take the long view of these things, i.e. lets say that for string theory you get it all right once you've got the assumptions right and one scalar measurement. To get the assumptions right, you may require just as many measurements as otherwise and then you're just pushing this data in the back door as modifying assumptions and pretending that you didn't need all these measurements to get them right.
Three (again...), That's the point. Relativity wasn't tested on Newtonian physics, it wasn't seriously arguable that there were problems there at very low relative speeds--the harsh tests had been performed. Same thing for Lorentz invariance. String theory needs to make a new prediction that previous theories disagree strongly with and then go to the lab.
Four and Five: See 2 regarding back-dooring constants.
Six, and would this particle accelerator fit between here and Jupiter? It is an interesting question that you raise here. If we can't test it, and may never be able to test it -- but we can imagine testing it -- is it science? I think yes, but not for us.
finally, I worked as a radiation physicist for several years, but I'm not qualified to talk about the finer points of quantum field theory. I left physics because it didn't look like there were many interesting questions left to answer. I think the popularity of string theory among academics results from a physics problem that (unlike other hard sciences) there are only so many interesting particles to study -- compare to biology and chemistry.
'calibration' is a term of art (jargon) it doesn't matter what you call it. The point is that "string theory" per se can't be disproved. Thus the test is not a harsh test, thus string theory is not science (yet).
right, but it's just a calibration because the author points out that if the test rejects the null hypothesis then some assumptions have to be adjusted and string theory survives. If the test doesn't put the theory at serious risk, it isn't a test--it's a calibration.
As an example, Einstein was able to predict not just that Newtonian physics would be an excellent approximation for almost all measurements made in his time, but also the behavior of a star behind the sun during a solar eclipse. This was a harsh test -- had he been wrong the star would not have been visible. Harsh tests is what makes a theory go from nothing to worth something.
So now we come around to the central criticism of string theory--no harsh tests to date. Even the recently proposed test of string theory would only show that some assumptions would have to be changed in the words of the proposer. This implies that string theory is a "calibration model" which means that when new data is brought to light a correction is applied. So, it isn't a test of the theory, it's a calibration. When you have a theory like this, it can't ever be wrong and it's impossible to disprove (there is always a new know to "calibrate") and it isn't science.
Yes, but it's also about something more important than that. It's about not knowing that cosmic rays come from outside the solar system. The scientist who came up with this is a real genius.
okay, lets say it's as simple as you say. It still requires interpolation because a center fielder never stands in exactly the same spot and yet tries to hit the catcher's mit right above and to the left of home plate, so previous responses would give a noisy surface from which extrapolation would be necessary--I would argue that these calculations are perhaps more intensive than the direct physics calculations.
So how long does it take to do the calculation?
There is a very interesting theory provided by Trefethen and Bau in Numerical Linear Algebra that the existence of exact algorithms for most of the complicated interesting matrix operations may have slowed our finding a faster algorithm that approximates the result with arbitrary (i.e. slightly non-zero) error. It's been several years, but I thought that eigenvalue problems when approximated to within a few times machine epsilon can be found 1/2 order faster or some such thing than using the exact methods.
I had thought it was this project that actually stores off-peak power and then uses it during peak. It works based on this technology but uses wind power so that the variability can be managed.