Information loss behold the threshold of detection is irrelevant.
Or as my physics prof used to say: Mathematicians will tell you to take the limit to infinity. Physicsts will tell you take the limit until you can no longer detect a change.
Robotic probes are so incredibly limited in what they can accomplish compared to humans that it's insane we're even having this conversation. I attribute it to the typical slashdot geek technology worship factor.
but none that we've ever detected going on now or in the recent past.
You mean other than puffs of methane in the atmosphere?
Seriously. To claim trace amounts of methane in the atmosphere is a signature of life is a huge stretch. Methane is naturally all throughout the solar system. This could be nothing more than a subterranean fissure opening into a methane pocket in the crust of Mars and venting periodically.
Heck, the amounts they are talking about are so small, it could be the remnants from a comet impact ten thousand years ago.
that Stonehenge 1 is, itself, a reconstruction, right? It was just a pile of tipped and fallen stones until a bunch of British archaeologists got together and rebuilt it according to their best guess of what it originally looked like.
The U.N. gave the conditions Iraq had to meet in order to give proof. Saddam failed to do it.
To people looking at this objectively (translation: without a blind hatred of Bush), it's pretty obvious that Saddam was bluffing. He WANTED the world to think he had the program.
He was buying off France, Russia and Germany with the Oil for Food program to get them to lift the sanctions against him.
He had a WMD program ready to ramp up the moment the sanctions were lifted. Until then, he was playing a bluff. He was making the world think he had the WMD so they'd leave him alone, and he was bribing France, Russia and Germany to get the sanctions lifted so he could actually build a WMD program and not bluff anymore.
The problem for Iraq was, Bush and not Gore got elected and 9/11 happened. Iraq's ties to Al Qaeda were well known and documented through most of the Clinton years, but Clinton's attitude toward terrorism had been to treat it as a law-enforcement issue. 9/11 pushed Bush into thinking of terrorism more as a war than as law enforcement. Iraq suddenly went from a country supporting a criminal organization, to a country involved in war against the United States. Ditto Iran and North Korea. (Bush called them the axis of evil because of their support and sponsoring of terrorist organizations.)
Usay made a very interesting quote near the end of the U.S. invasion.
"I think this is the end. Bush is not Clinton."
Saddam miscalculated. He had always maintained that America was squeamish. Bleed them enough and they sue for peace or retreat. He saw it happen in Mogadeshu, and it was his stated strategy in the Gulf War. He claimed that if he could fill a thousand body bags a day, in a week, the U.S. would be negotiating for a cease fire and peace with him still in Kuwait. Fortunately, his military was incapable of accomplishing his desire.
This is not rocket science if you understand certain things:
There are power-mad dictators in the world. Bush is not one of them.
Yep. Just because a million North Vietnamese are boiling grass to keep from starving to death. After all, they're just little yellow people on the other side of the world. Excuse me while I smoke a joint.
Nah. Bump Tiger back a couple of weeks. While everyone is going on an on about the potential features of Longhorn available next year, Apple throws Tiger at everyone with that it can do NOW and punctures all the Longhorn hype like a balloon full of rotten swamp gas.
Bull. All life pollutes. That's a biological fact. I would laugh at this fantasy construction of some pristine utopian paradise that Mother Earth would be without mankind if these same loons weren't running around trying to become little dictators.
And if the Incans, Mayans and tribal Americans had had the military power and technology, they would have done exactly the same thing to the Europeans in reverse, and a bunch of whiny French would now be complaining about the genocide of the Mayans along the Rheine.
Oh, great. Just great. My sister was the one on the run, you insensitive clod, and now she's disappeared. And all because you wouldn't help set up the safe house for her.
Slashdot Mirror
Shoot the messenger fallacy. The sponsor is irrelevant if the study is valid. Look at the study, not who sponsored it or presented it.
Who said anything about transcoding over and over again? The criticism was ONE re-encoding from a WMV expanded to WAV and then re-encoded to MP3.
Information loss behold the threshold of detection is irrelevant.
Or as my physics prof used to say: Mathematicians will tell you to take the limit to infinity. Physicsts will tell you take the limit until you can no longer detect a change.
If you really are a biochemist, then you would even be making this statement.
Come talk to me when you can find an inorganic mechamism to create 10-formyl-tetrahydrofolate.
Robotic probes are so incredibly limited in what they can accomplish compared to humans that it's insane we're even having this conversation. I attribute it to the typical slashdot geek technology worship factor.
but none that we've ever detected going on now or in the recent past.
You mean other than puffs of methane in the atmosphere?
Seriously. To claim trace amounts of methane in the atmosphere is a signature of life is a huge stretch. Methane is naturally all throughout the solar system. This could be nothing more than a subterranean fissure opening into a methane pocket in the crust of Mars and venting periodically.
Heck, the amounts they are talking about are so small, it could be the remnants from a comet impact ten thousand years ago.
that Stonehenge 1 is, itself, a reconstruction, right? It was just a pile of tipped and fallen stones until a bunch of British archaeologists got together and rebuilt it according to their best guess of what it originally looked like.
Let me play poker with you some time, because the concept of bluffing is obviously totally alien to you.
The U.N. gave the conditions Iraq had to meet in order to give proof. Saddam failed to do it.
To people looking at this objectively (translation: without a blind hatred of Bush), it's pretty obvious that Saddam was bluffing. He WANTED the world to think he had the program.
He was buying off France, Russia and Germany with the Oil for Food program to get them to lift the sanctions against him.
He had a WMD program ready to ramp up the moment the sanctions were lifted. Until then, he was playing a bluff. He was making the world think he had the WMD so they'd leave him alone, and he was bribing France, Russia and Germany to get the sanctions lifted so he could actually build a WMD program and not bluff anymore.
The problem for Iraq was, Bush and not Gore got elected and 9/11 happened. Iraq's ties to Al Qaeda were well known and documented through most of the Clinton years, but Clinton's attitude toward terrorism had been to treat it as a law-enforcement issue. 9/11 pushed Bush into thinking of terrorism more as a war than as law enforcement. Iraq suddenly went from a country supporting a criminal organization, to a country involved in war against the United States. Ditto Iran and North Korea. (Bush called them the axis of evil because of their support and sponsoring of terrorist organizations.)
Usay made a very interesting quote near the end of the U.S. invasion.
"I think this is the end. Bush is not Clinton."
Saddam miscalculated. He had always maintained that America was squeamish. Bleed them enough and they sue for peace or retreat. He saw it happen in Mogadeshu, and it was his stated strategy in the Gulf War. He claimed that if he could fill a thousand body bags a day, in a week, the U.S. would be negotiating for a cease fire and peace with him still in Kuwait. Fortunately, his military was incapable of accomplishing his desire.
This is not rocket science if you understand certain things:
There are power-mad dictators in the world.
Bush is not one of them.
Yep. Just because a million North Vietnamese are boiling grass to keep from starving to death. After all, they're just little yellow people on the other side of the world. Excuse me while I smoke a joint.
We're talking about North Korea. What country are you talking about?
UN still didn't buy into the 'proof'.
You mean, France, Russia and Germany didn't buy into it. And, um, perhaps that might just have been because Saddam was buying them off with oil
Nah. Bump Tiger back a couple of weeks. While everyone is going on an on about the potential features of Longhorn available next year, Apple throws Tiger at everyone with that it can do NOW and punctures all the Longhorn hype like a balloon full of rotten swamp gas.
To itself.
A meaningless statement. Who sets the criteria as to when mankind has proven it to itself? When all mankind agrees with you?
There is no problem which cannot be solve by a sufficient application of force.
All life does that. ANY organism will expand until all resources are consumed.
Humans are the ONLY organism that makes a conscious decision not to, as evidenced by this thread.
The pollution can still be stopped.
Bull. All life pollutes. That's a biological fact. I would laugh at this fantasy construction of some pristine utopian paradise that Mother Earth would be without mankind if these same loons weren't running around trying to become little dictators.
Prove to who? You? God?
And if the Incans, Mayans and tribal Americans had had the military power and technology, they would have done exactly the same thing to the Europeans in reverse, and a bunch of whiny French would now be complaining about the genocide of the Mayans along the Rheine.
in a universe that is supposedly uniform, these sorts of things only happen hundreds of millions of light years away?
You remind me of the geek lemming.
"Look at all those morons! Everyone knows that intelligent lemmings follow each other over THIS cliff."
No, Apple invented a hard drive mp3 player that wasn't crap.
You, my friend, need to find a good technical writer.
It's called inverted pyramid writing and goes something like this:
You simply provide a sidebar nagivation in the summary page that takes you to the level you want.
The "dumb down" argument is nothing more than the desperate flailings of ego trying to still prove to the world that it is justified.
Oh, great. Just great. My sister was the one on the run, you insensitive clod, and now she's disappeared. And all because you wouldn't help set up the safe house for her.
Some day, you'll grow up enough to comprehend the difference between R&D and logistics.