What the hell is this story doing here, in the science section?
At one end of the spectrum we have experienced editors of respectable publications who thoroughly vet all stories published under their watch for accuracy. At the other end we have chimps who have learned to click the OK button. Unfortunately, Slashdot seems more of a chimp kinda place.
You recall incorrectly. From the Forbes.com article on the remote controlled woman:
The young lady's vestibular system, which controls her sense of movement and balance, has been thrown off-kilter by two weak electrical currents delivered just behind her ears....
This sort of electrical stimulation is known as galvanic vestibular stimulation, or GVS. When a weak DC current is delivered to the mastoid behind your ear, your body responds by shifting your balance toward the anode. The stronger the current, the more powerful its pull.
DC current. Not EM radiation.
The "seeing god" one is EM radiation, but the results are not different enough from normal sensory deprivation to convince me. C'mon, they stick you in a chair with ping pong ball halves taped over your eyes and a motorcycle helmet on your head.
There is really no reason to insist that none of this EMR is doing anything. We just don't know, and there seems to be no desire to find out based on the strong negatively worded opinions around here.
No, you've got it all wrong. The fact is that RF radiation is well understood already and its effects have been thrashed to death over the last hundred years is what causes intelligent people to dismiss these ridiculous claims out of hand. If there's any willful ignorance here, it's on the part of anyone who believes this malarky on the basis of anecdotal "evidence" and specious statistical analyses.
Depends on how you measure exposure I suppose. I believe the power drops by the square of the distance?
Either way, its just as impossible to say this does not happen as it is to say it does. So people acting like this is so scientifically not-happening are on just as shaky ground.
No, given that max EIRP for a wifi xmitter is only 4 watts, according to the inverse square rule he is on much shakier ground-- unless he's claiming he can feel the RF by putting his head right next to the antenna.
And yet the documents are being released to the public? Why can't the translators be employed by a contractor or a low security department?
Hiring a contractor who employs forty translators is not appreciably easier than hiring the translators directly. The employment rules are only slightly relaxed (the translators will likely STILL require background checks), and getting permission to hire a contractor is intentionally difficult. Usually requires legislation.
Really? Obvious? Smirk... How many auctions have you been to? Was that idea *ever* relevent before internet auctions? Nope...
Insightful, my ass. A "Buy it now" auction is precisely analogous to a classified ad in the newspaper saying "1978 Chevy Citation, $200 OBO". The first guy to pony up $200 gets it, and if no one comes up with that, the best offer is taken.
Most good ideas are obvious in retrospect.
And even old ideas seem novel if you've never heard of them before.
Have you actually read the patent? Maybe there is more to it.
I've read the whole ridiculous, tedious patent. No, there really isn't any more to it. It's a patent on buy it now, on a computer, with a database. It's absurd.
There is no evidence that companies spend money - and lots of it - in R&D when creating different software products? There is no evidence that MS spends money creating Windows? There is no evidence that Blizzard spent money on WoW?
No, there's no evidence that the availability of patent protection had anything to do with the motivation to finance development. The fact that you keep bringing up World of Warcraft illustrates your ignorance. Name a patent that Blizzard has on any part of WoW.
The American government has an annual budget exceeding $2 trillion, yet according to MSNBC, the government cannot buy an adequate number of translators.
You've obviously never worked for the government. It ain't that simple. Nothing they do is simple.
If Washington paid a translator salary of $200,000, hordes of translators would suddenly appear out of the woodwork.
Would they? Are you going to quit your job to make $200K for one year, maybe two, then be out of a job once this big translation job is done?
Further, if these Iraqi documents are so vital, I would expect the American government to keep them under wraps.
Don't be daft. They've already culled the obvious "good stuff". This is just piles and piles of low-grade information that, once translated and sifted through, might yield some important insights on the big picture.
This story simply does not add up.
Only to those who can't add.
The real story behind this story is that the American government is doing one of two things: (1) psy-ops (i.e. psychological warfare) against the enemy
Yeah, because releasing the meeting minutes of a Ba'ath party planning committee in 1998 will totally devestate the morale of the insurgents.
(2) political games to improve support for the Iraqi war effort.
Yeah, because releasing Iraq ministry of manufacturing quarterly progress reports will really light a fire in the bellies of the American people.
Alternatively, Washington knows that some pro-war Republican/Democratic bloggers will scan these documents. Further, Washington knows that on, say, page 15 (of the documents), there is a tidbit or blatant statement asserting that Saddam Hussein had planned to create weapons of mass destruction all along. Washington hopes that the bloggers will find page 15 and will start hollering about how right we were to invade Iraq. In short, the bloggers are mindless automatons, and Washington has just skillfully manipulated public opinion.
As if intelligence analysis is that simple. Nothing is ever that obvious, and if it showed up in such an obvious form, everyone with half a brain would die laughing at such an obvious put-up. You may mark my words and rub my face in it if I'm wrong, but I guaran-fucking-tee that nothing like that will come of these documents.
To get on-topic, I think that humans constantly categorize and assign labels to things as either a member of a group or outside it, which IS binary.
That creature is a fish|not a fish. That creature is a mammal; or it lays eggs and has a bill, so it is a bird (ummm, bad example, on second thought). That rock is igneous; or it is not. That tree is deciduous|not deciduous.
What is the point of defining something if the definition does not allow us to use it to categorize?
The whole drive to categorize and pigeonhole all of science is a very 19th century notion, like Newtonian determinism. The whole ridiculous kingdom-phylum-class-etc. system is a twisted mess-- and until a thorough genetic catalog can be compiled, it will remain so. It's important to remember that just because we humans like to categorize things doesn't mean we categorize them correctly...
The angled flight deck was a significant improvement that allowed safer and better operations, especially with jet aircraft.
The GP never said it wasn't. Point was, how does being first to think of painting lines on the deck at a 10 degree angle fifty years ago demonstrate skill at automation.
Oh, the RN was also the first organization to land a jet aircraft on a carrier.
Again, how does being first at a non-automation related feat demonstrate skill at automation?
And they also invented a lot of the automatic guidance equipment used to guide pilots to safe landings on carriers.
There you go, there's something more relevant. Now is there something not from the 1950's?
Their carriers in WW2 had armored steel flight decks during a time when most US carriers had wooden decks
Oh deal, now were in the FORTIES, and talking about building materials...
Someone else has already mentioned the steam catapult.
Ingenious to be sure, but again, 1950's. The OP asked whether the brits have the technological know how to build such an automated carrier. Like the GP poster, I think they undoubtedly do, but this absurd parade of non sequitur "proof" is laughable. It like asking an Italian engineering firm for references of their experience building modern long-span suspension bridges and having them hard you a book on 2000 year old Roman engineering.
actually got a 19. I had a two guesses (one wrong) where it actually made no sound at all because it was trying to play too fast. It seems to keep speeding up until your error rate hits some threshold.
I was just proud to get half at time of the "top performers". Yay. You would think they would skew the scores the other way to get old people to buy their crap. Or maybe it's skewed this way (I am in the youngest age bracket) to make old people who compare their scores with their kid's (or grandkid's) score even more worried.
So at least 27 ms isn't a minimum score.
Yeah, I got 23 myself, also despite getting some wrong for the same reason-- though I missed some of mine because it doesn't indicate when it registers your first click and ended up doubling the first when I thought my touchpad missed it. Stupid crap test anyway. When we can score less than the lowest recorded score for any group, i suspect serious irrelevance.
so, what is it that you are trying to say? Do you have *anything* constructive to add?
What he was trying to say was that your status as a neuroscientists is not necessarily proof that you have brains. The original rhetorical question was "What, only windows users have brains?" Remember that part?
Would it make you happier if copyright infringement was finally defined as theft in the criminal code and not simply in legislation?...In the western mind, all crimes against property can be defined as theft and intangible property is still property: "He who steals my good name steals all."
Your arguments are a meanigless amalgam of semantic nonsense. "Theft" is the unlawful taking of real property. Copyright infringement deprives no one of real property. This is why the two crimes are handled by entirely separate parts of the US Code. A law defining copyright infringement as a type of theft is as logically invalid as passing a law defining January as the beginning of summer so people will stop complaining about the cold weather.
Why would this require using a mouse to click on two icons placed next to each other when that takes time itself?
Wouldn't it make a lot more sense to map the input to two keys on a keyboard?
I have to wonder about the validity of any kind of intelligence test that lacks common sense like that.
Well, first, it's not an intelligence test, but a test of auditory processing speed; and second, it doesn't matter how fast you click the arrows, only whether you click them in the correct order. Did you even read the instructions?
Anyway, I question the seriousness of a test that's clearly there as a marketing aid for some dubious $500 "Brain Fitness" training software. Also, the fact that the best score they have recorded on their graph for ANY age group was 32, and I, a 37 year old Army vet with permanent "artillery ear" tinnitus, got 23.
Please, a few Quantum Torpedoes to knock out their shields, then beam an overloading Matter/Antimatter reaction chamber (Warp Core) into the middle of whatever Starfleet feels like making go boomsies. Game, Set and Match, Starfleet.
The DS9 TM states that quantum torpedo yield is roughly 50 isotons, while photon torpedoes are limited to a theoretical maximum of 25 isotons.
Since the theoretical maximum yield from a photon torpedo is roughly 2.7E17 joules, this would suggest that a quantum torpedo's yield is roughly 5.4E17 joules...Star Destroyers should be able to withstand roughly 1000 photon torpedoes or 370 quantum torpedoes before losing shields. This estimate is based on the ISD shield strength of 1E20 joules
Look, any argument that the Federation could ever even match the Empire is ridiculous. They're both space operas, but that doesn't mean their tech levels are necessarily at all comparable. Since they're entirely fictional, the power and advancement of their tech was set arbitrarily. Star Trek takes place a few hundred years in our future. Star Wars is set in a place where the Empire rules over a galactic state with millions of member worlds that have had interstellar travel for thousands of years. The matter simply admits no rational argument. Pitting the Federation against the Empire would be like sending a single Roman legion from 15AD to fight the 101st Airborne Division from 2006AD. the Empire would utterly cream the Federation.
If the whole stardestroyer.net is too much to read, try the 5 minute synopsis. It sums it it exquisitely.
Right, because it takes the brain more effort to put together a 3D image from two eye image sources than a 3D image from two eye image sources.
The two images from that come from real objects differ according to the real geometry of our eye spacing and our distance from the object. In a movie theater, our eyes are fed two images where the difference has been calculated beforehand by a technician who had to make a wild-ass guess at the average seating distance and eye spacing. It will always be slightly off, and because our eyes are precision intruments, while watching a 3D movie our brains will constantly be saying "calibration error: hey, that shit's fucked up".
"The only thing they didn't have was jackass behavior."
Except from you
Man, you decide someone is a jerk based on a fragmentary comment with little context and you just won't hear otherwise, will you. The more I hear from you, the more I am convinced I wouldn't want to be your TA. All I can say is that while I may very well be a jackass, judging by this exchange I'm certainly no greater a jackass than you.
This'll teach me to break my policy of not responding to people not willing to post under even a pseudonym, my anonymous friend. I have been throughly trolled.
"
Honda was the first plastic car maker that I could think of.(Hint: Plastic cars == cheap and not durable)"
Yeah, those Hondas have a reputation for non-durability. Got that right.
Do you live in Detroit, by chance, or have you just been in a cocoon for 25 years?
I think he's probably referring to the plastic-over-styrofoam bumpers vs real metal bumpers that had all the detriot iron-heads sneering in derision back in the early days. Even still, I would ask him when was the last time he saw a Ford Mustang that wasn't the same plastic car as a Honda, only without the reliability...
Slashdot Mirror
At one end of the spectrum we have experienced editors of respectable publications who thoroughly vet all stories published under their watch for accuracy. At the other end we have chimps who have learned to click the OK button. Unfortunately, Slashdot seems more of a chimp kinda place.
DC current. Not EM radiation.
The "seeing god" one is EM radiation, but the results are not different enough from normal sensory deprivation to convince me. C'mon, they stick you in a chair with ping pong ball halves taped over your eyes and a motorcycle helmet on your head.
And yet, despite these crystals, no one has yet surfaced who can provably detect RF radiation.
No, you've got it all wrong. The fact is that RF radiation is well understood already and its effects have been thrashed to death over the last hundred years is what causes intelligent people to dismiss these ridiculous claims out of hand. If there's any willful ignorance here, it's on the part of anyone who believes this malarky on the basis of anecdotal "evidence" and specious statistical analyses.
No, given that max EIRP for a wifi xmitter is only 4 watts, according to the inverse square rule he is on much shakier ground-- unless he's claiming he can feel the RF by putting his head right next to the antenna.
"Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity"
Conspiracy theorists chronically overlook this unfortunate, but all too accurate insight.
Hiring a contractor who employs forty translators is not appreciably easier than hiring the translators directly. The employment rules are only slightly relaxed (the translators will likely STILL require background checks), and getting permission to hire a contractor is intentionally difficult. Usually requires legislation.
Insightful, my ass. A "Buy it now" auction is precisely analogous to a classified ad in the newspaper saying "1978 Chevy Citation, $200 OBO". The first guy to pony up $200 gets it, and if no one comes up with that, the best offer is taken.
Most good ideas are obvious in retrospect.
And even old ideas seem novel if you've never heard of them before.
I've read the whole ridiculous, tedious patent. No, there really isn't any more to it. It's a patent on buy it now, on a computer, with a database. It's absurd.
No, there's no evidence that the availability of patent protection had anything to do with the motivation to finance development. The fact that you keep bringing up World of Warcraft illustrates your ignorance. Name a patent that Blizzard has on any part of WoW.
You've obviously never worked for the government. It ain't that simple. Nothing they do is simple.
If Washington paid a translator salary of $200,000, hordes of translators would suddenly appear out of the woodwork.
Would they? Are you going to quit your job to make $200K for one year, maybe two, then be out of a job once this big translation job is done?
Further, if these Iraqi documents are so vital, I would expect the American government to keep them under wraps.
Don't be daft. They've already culled the obvious "good stuff". This is just piles and piles of low-grade information that, once translated and sifted through, might yield some important insights on the big picture.
This story simply does not add up.
Only to those who can't add.
The real story behind this story is that the American government is doing one of two things: (1) psy-ops (i.e. psychological warfare) against the enemy
Yeah, because releasing the meeting minutes of a Ba'ath party planning committee in 1998 will totally devestate the morale of the insurgents.
(2) political games to improve support for the Iraqi war effort.
Yeah, because releasing Iraq ministry of manufacturing quarterly progress reports will really light a fire in the bellies of the American people.
Alternatively, Washington knows that some pro-war Republican/Democratic bloggers will scan these documents. Further, Washington knows that on, say, page 15 (of the documents), there is a tidbit or blatant statement asserting that Saddam Hussein had planned to create weapons of mass destruction all along. Washington hopes that the bloggers will find page 15 and will start hollering about how right we were to invade Iraq. In short, the bloggers are mindless automatons, and Washington has just skillfully manipulated public opinion.
As if intelligence analysis is that simple. Nothing is ever that obvious, and if it showed up in such an obvious form, everyone with half a brain would die laughing at such an obvious put-up. You may mark my words and rub my face in it if I'm wrong, but I guaran-fucking-tee that nothing like that will come of these documents.
The whole drive to categorize and pigeonhole all of science is a very 19th century notion, like Newtonian determinism. The whole ridiculous kingdom-phylum-class-etc. system is a twisted mess-- and until a thorough genetic catalog can be compiled, it will remain so. It's important to remember that just because we humans like to categorize things doesn't mean we categorize them correctly...
The GP never said it wasn't. Point was, how does being first to think of painting lines on the deck at a 10 degree angle fifty years ago demonstrate skill at automation.
Oh, the RN was also the first organization to land a jet aircraft on a carrier.
Again, how does being first at a non-automation related feat demonstrate skill at automation?
And they also invented a lot of the automatic guidance equipment used to guide pilots to safe landings on carriers.
There you go, there's something more relevant. Now is there something not from the 1950's?
Their carriers in WW2 had armored steel flight decks during a time when most US carriers had wooden decks
Oh deal, now were in the FORTIES, and talking about building materials...
Someone else has already mentioned the steam catapult.
Ingenious to be sure, but again, 1950's. The OP asked whether the brits have the technological know how to build such an automated carrier. Like the GP poster, I think they undoubtedly do, but this absurd parade of non sequitur "proof" is laughable. It like asking an Italian engineering firm for references of their experience building modern long-span suspension bridges and having them hard you a book on 2000 year old Roman engineering.
Despite the fact that "theft" appears in their names, both those crimes are prosecuted as fraud, not theft. Moron.
Yeah, I got 23 myself, also despite getting some wrong for the same reason-- though I missed some of mine because it doesn't indicate when it registers your first click and ended up doubling the first when I thought my touchpad missed it. Stupid crap test anyway. When we can score less than the lowest recorded score for any group, i suspect serious irrelevance.
What he was trying to say was that your status as a neuroscientists is not necessarily proof that you have brains. The original rhetorical question was "What, only windows users have brains?" Remember that part?
Your arguments are a meanigless amalgam of semantic nonsense. "Theft" is the unlawful taking of real property. Copyright infringement deprives no one of real property. This is why the two crimes are handled by entirely separate parts of the US Code. A law defining copyright infringement as a type of theft is as logically invalid as passing a law defining January as the beginning of summer so people will stop complaining about the cold weather.
Also, we must remember that copyright infringement is not theft, and the the difference between the two is more than just semantics.
Well, first, it's not an intelligence test, but a test of auditory processing speed; and second, it doesn't matter how fast you click the arrows, only whether you click them in the correct order. Did you even read the instructions?
Anyway, I question the seriousness of a test that's clearly there as a marketing aid for some dubious $500 "Brain Fitness" training software. Also, the fact that the best score they have recorded on their graph for ANY age group was 32, and I, a 37 year old Army vet with permanent "artillery ear" tinnitus, got 23.
Heh. Sorry, but no:
Look, any argument that the Federation could ever even match the Empire is ridiculous. They're both space operas, but that doesn't mean their tech levels are necessarily at all comparable. Since they're entirely fictional, the power and advancement of their tech was set arbitrarily. Star Trek takes place a few hundred years in our future. Star Wars is set in a place where the Empire rules over a galactic state with millions of member worlds that have had interstellar travel for thousands of years. The matter simply admits no rational argument. Pitting the Federation against the Empire would be like sending a single Roman legion from 15AD to fight the 101st Airborne Division from 2006AD. the Empire would utterly cream the Federation.
If the whole stardestroyer.net is too much to read, try the 5 minute synopsis. It sums it it exquisitely.
The two images from that come from real objects differ according to the real geometry of our eye spacing and our distance from the object. In a movie theater, our eyes are fed two images where the difference has been calculated beforehand by a technician who had to make a wild-ass guess at the average seating distance and eye spacing. It will always be slightly off, and because our eyes are precision intruments, while watching a 3D movie our brains will constantly be saying "calibration error: hey, that shit's fucked up".
Or, like Marc Rich, doesn't have any Democrat connections.
They're all dirty up there, man. They're all scum, not just Republicans.
No, therefore the Empire kicks the Federations ASS!
Yeah, one guy produced figures that were wrong once, therefore we can do anything. Excellent logic.
Except from you
Man, you decide someone is a jerk based on a fragmentary comment with little context and you just won't hear otherwise, will you. The more I hear from you, the more I am convinced I wouldn't want to be your TA. All I can say is that while I may very well be a jackass, judging by this exchange I'm certainly no greater a jackass than you.
This'll teach me to break my policy of not responding to people not willing to post under even a pseudonym, my anonymous friend. I have been throughly trolled.
Yeah, those Hondas have a reputation for non-durability. Got that right. Do you live in Detroit, by chance, or have you just been in a cocoon for 25 years?
I think he's probably referring to the plastic-over-styrofoam bumpers vs real metal bumpers that had all the detriot iron-heads sneering in derision back in the early days. Even still, I would ask him when was the last time he saw a Ford Mustang that wasn't the same plastic car as a Honda, only without the reliability...