We had a 99.9(whole bunch more 9s)96% chance of having been killed during that time! I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm buying a lottery ticket!
Which is, of course, a moot point - had we been wiped out by a species-ending event, you wouldn't have been able to say that. Old fallacy, I'm afraid, but a good one. Of course we weren't wiped out in the past. Maybe some of the species that have kicked the bucket might have evolved - in a few millenia - to be able to flip the same coin. But now they can't. Who knows? Either way, the fact that it didn't happen to us in the past proves nothing, I'm afraid.
My point is that you do not assume something without empirical data that logically implies that assumption.
On the contrary my dear, er, alienw. One of the cool things about the scientific method is that it allows for no special cases. You can indeed pull theories out of your arse, as described (as long as they meet the "disprovable" requirement otherwise stated). Its just that scientists, and others, have found over the years that most completely random theories not based on observed facts are very, very easy to disprove. So few people bother.
Re:Deity does not help analyze things
on
Bad Science Awards
·
· Score: 1
You do not need to prove God exists, infact, you would have to prove he doesn't. Einstin has been quoted as saying, "No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong." Using God as a hypothesis is not a copout, the evedence points closer to that then anything else. Simply because you do not want to accept the possibility that there is a being that is much higher then you does not mean that it could not be what is infact right. Until the existance of God is disproved, God is a possible answer to how the universe and everything in it sprung into existance.
Here's the trouble with that theory. For every scientific hypothesis out there (I'd say almost every one, but I can't think of an exception), there are obvious ways to disprove it. At least, any competent researcher in the field could come up with a list of experiments and a set of results that - if obtained - would disprove the theory. Agree?
Now I challenge you - or anyone of similar mindset - to come up with a set of experiments that could indeed disprove the existance of God. Without them, then using God as a hypothesis is indeed a copout (to use your words). You're effectively saying, "Well, unless you can disprove an unprovable hypothesis, I win." Nice try, but unfortunately not very helpful.
Note: This isn't intended purely (or even mostly) as an attack on the theory. If you do have such a list, I would really like to read it. I just haven't yet encountered anyone who did.
Your explanation is right but your units in the first line should have been G = 9.8 m/s^2.
Nope, that's the rate of acceleration. The speed (represented in "distance per time") would indeed be measured in "meters per second," as the original post had it. Its just that the acceleration rate is by far the most commonly quoted statistic that starts out with "9.8 m/s" so our brains fill in the gap. Mine did too, I had to reread it to be sure.
And they've been using firefox even longer than they've been using linux. And they still dont' understand tabbed browsing, why its better
Maybe because it isn't better for them? Possibly because they use their computer for different tasks than you use yours for? Personally, I find that I can do rough systems design faster using a pen and paper than any electronic form. Does that mean that you should use the same system? Not at all.
I wonder if FireFox' crashes have to do with stupid web pages with embedded active X controls, dumb implementations of Java because they have been DESIGNED to be used on IE.
On the contrary. It is perfectly acceptable (in a theoretical sense, although your users might disagree) for Firefox to fail to render some pages. It is likewise admissable for them to poorly render a page that is poorly structured.
Crashing, no matter what the input to a program, is an unacceptable outcome. Or at least it should be by now.
The thing I like best about the iPod is the UI... the thing that really bothered me about the iPod was the lack of bass
Hmm. The iPod puts out fairly accurate low end when its hooked up to a stereo. Sounds to me like mavis had a problem with the headphones and decided to fix it in a rather too drastic manner. Ah, the curse of the early adopter who is influenced by the lure of the shiny new toy.
The poster does mention trying new headphones with the iPod (near the end of the "review"), but fails to say if they made a difference. The implication is that they didn't. Maybe this is because the iPod is missing a simple "bass boost" button (something which is far from lacking, between equalization and the desire for many people to listen to music without significant alterations)? Then again, this was written by a self-proclaimed bass-head non-audiophile...
I'm not really sure how to end this, in terms of recommending the HD3 or not - I guess you can come to your own conclusion based (in part) on what my experience has been. I will say this though - if there was a way I could return this thing, I'd do it in a second... I feel like I wasted my money
Hmm. Sounds like a pretty solid vote for "not recommended" to me...
Most of the systems I've been on limit logon attempts to 3 to 5 failures. I've never seen a big Unix system which allowed unlimited failed logon attempts (though I'm sure someone could point me to one).
I guess my thought here is that if you have a low limit - like five - you will confound an automated attack but the user may still run into the situation. With a higher limit, like 100, you confound the automated attack almost exactly as much, but the user doesn't even know about it.
I guess this would be more susceptible to human-engineering type attacks, like running through your children's names, but a decent (but not sadistic) set of requirements as far as things like alphanumerics should fix this.
I always figured that if you can't get your password right in 5 attempts, you need to sober up and talk to a sysadmin
I would agree with this - if and only if the sysadmin is available 24/7 and willing and able to validate your identity and get you into your account within a very short amount of time. Maybe have a policy of three free counter-resets (requiring no ID process) that would let your road-warrior-with-presentation get back into their system after their nephew locked them out, but would trigger a system watch on that login to make sure that nothing nefarious is going on?
how much IT increases productivity
how much IT cuts costs in other parts of the company
Er, that would be the T in that there TCO acronym. That's why its so hard to calculate. If one solution gets you a productivity hit, that becomes part of its TCO - its the same numbers, just indexed from ideal down instead of from nothing up.
"All passwords can be broken within 45 to 60 days," says Carl Herberger, senior director of information security services for SunGard Availability Services. He recommends that companies force employers to change their passwords every month.
Of course, this is predicated on some stupid-ass server being willing to answer the "Is this password correct?" question more than once every, oh, fifteen seconds. Heck, just answering it once per second would still kick that time way, way up. And that's assuming that there's no lockout-trigger.
Personally, I don't see why lockout triggers can't be set at a threshold of, say, 100 consectuive bad attempts (maybe adding a limit of 250/week as well). That's low enough to confound brute force cracks, but high enough that you should never run into it, even if you're logging in while drunk or to report a broken arm to the helpdesk or something.
Same here. Except that at my last company it was ten - they didn't have a minimum change time though. I just did:
password: realPassword You must change your password! new password: realPassword0 new password: realPassword1 new password: realPassword2 new password: realPassword3... new password: realPassword
So, how are we going to stop volcanoes from violating the sainted Kyoto treaty?
Please, allow me to quote from the article that you yourself referenced, just so that there's no possible claim of article bias (or rather that if there was, it would cancel itself out - gotta love feedback cycles):
Worldwide, sulfur dioxide emissions from volcanoes add up to about 15 million tons a year, compared to the 200 million tons produced by power plants and other human activities
Yup. So... its an influence, but hardly the major one.
Besides, that's sulfur dioxide. Going back to the original point about carbon dioxide, and again quoting from the article:
Nothstein, of the state energy office, says the Centralia coal plant puts out about 28,000 tons a day. Statewide, automobiles, industries, and residential and business heating systems emit nearly 10 times that amount.
On a global scale, the difference is even more dramatic, said Gerlach, who often gets calls from power-plant operators and oil-company executives who believe nature is just as responsible for global warming as man. His answer always disappoints them.
"I tell them the amounts don't even come close and I usually never hear from them again."
Worldwide, people and their activities pump 26 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, he said. The total from volcanoes is about 200 million tons a year -- or less than 1 percent of the man-made emissions.
I can understand not RTFA that's part of the story. But not R your own FA? C'mon now...
What is missing is the foolproof connection between them.... At the same time, we should be ready to admit that (a) the connection might not be there and (b) environmental science has a track record of hysterical predictions that have not been backed up by reality.
Oh, agreed. But there are a lot of relatively inexpensive things that we could be doing, right now, to help mitigate this. Maybe its a problem - maybe it isn't. Still, why does not having a "foolproof" connection mean that you not only shouldn't try to fix it, but should in all appearances actively try to go against it (rolling back EPA mileage requirement dates, etc)?
It wasn't that long ago when there was no public "foolproof" connection between smoking and cancer. Everyone knew that it was bad for you, although we weren't sure exactly how bad, but again people used that as an excuse not to address a destructive behavior. Apparently its a common human trait, just an odd one.
"Documented cases of civilians killed by the US is up around 15,000. [iraqbodycount.net, etc]"
Exactly my point. This is nowhere near 100,000.
Sorry, but that's not entirely true. The numbers on IraqBodyCount.net are fully-backed media documented numbers about specific incidents with specific casualties. That means that, out of the thousands of civillians killed during the war in Iraq, we have hard and fast proof about that many, right now, with zero additional time spent gathering information.
The 100,000+ number is a reasonable guesss about the actual numbers of casualties, inclulding those who didn't specifically make the fscking international news.
Sheesh.
I don't know if a 6:1 ratio of casualties to media-reported specific casualties is correct, but it seems reasonable. It seems a whole lot more reasonable than a 1:1 ratio which is, I believe, what you're choosing to go with.
Heck, I was just told by our office manager that "Some people's internets are down." Careful probing revealed that, to her, internet==networkDrop. Who knew?
How many does somone or a comany need to buy to "avoid" ambiguity. I mean every slashdot is taken except slashdot.name, and it kills me that slashdot.com gets any hits for the website slashdot.org. Slashdot used to not even redirect or give you a bozo message for accessing slashdot.com, it just threw the contents of slahdot.org at you.
Actually its convenient for me - if I'm lazy, I just do slashdot[CTRL-ENTER]. I can never remember the shortcuts for.org,.net,.etc...
They think Kerry is terrible, that he has never done a single useful thing in his political career, which he built entirely on 4 months of military service, etc.
That's funny, especially since Kerry enlisted in the Navy in 1966 and wasn't discharged until 1970. He spent four months in Vietnam, from 11/68 to 4/69 as part of that duty.
Here's a simplified timeline if you're interested in more.
Its been shown - by trainers - that cats can be trained just as easily as dogs can. Its just that when you tell a dog, "Go get the paper," and it looks at you all cute and whines, you keep working at it. When you tell a cat, "Go get the paper," and it walks away, your natural tendancy is to say, "Oh, well, cats can't be trained."
Yeah, well... the trouble is, that distribution problem would greatly decrease the likelyhood of a "glass" of water in the middle of the Indian ocean - or really, any specific out-of-the-way ocean - from containing as much... and increase the likelyhood of anyone anywhere in Europe getting more. Unless there has been enough time to disperse it, in which case we're back to square one.
Not amazing, and you'd need to add some RAM, but not too shabby either. For $550, the middle choice would be a decent way to get some good Mac exposure.
Actually, it only costs $8 (maybe 9). Unless they've raised the prices since I was there last which was, oh, last night. Excellent food there too, btw, but the X-Scream was closed for maintenance.
That's a flawed method. The first time you request the page, it will probably be stored in your ISP's proxy cache, so when you try it with another browser, it will come from a cached copy even if you've cleared your browser cache.
Disabling proxies in your browser settings isn't enough as many ISPs institute interception proxies. For instance, virtually all cable modems I've come across have HTTP caches in them.
Er, that's a good thing. He was testing browser rendering speed, not network performance (beyond the local stack), so having the websites available just outside the machine is ideal for this test.
Slashdot Mirror
We had a 99.9(whole bunch more 9s)96% chance of having been killed during that time! I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm buying a lottery ticket!
Which is, of course, a moot point - had we been wiped out by a species-ending event, you wouldn't have been able to say that. Old fallacy, I'm afraid, but a good one. Of course we weren't wiped out in the past. Maybe some of the species that have kicked the bucket might have evolved - in a few millenia - to be able to flip the same coin. But now they can't. Who knows? Either way, the fact that it didn't happen to us in the past proves nothing, I'm afraid.
My point is that you do not assume something without empirical data that logically implies that assumption.
On the contrary my dear, er, alienw. One of the cool things about the scientific method is that it allows for no special cases. You can indeed pull theories out of your arse, as described (as long as they meet the "disprovable" requirement otherwise stated). Its just that scientists, and others, have found over the years that most completely random theories not based on observed facts are very, very easy to disprove. So few people bother.
You do not need to prove God exists, infact, you would have to prove he doesn't. Einstin has been quoted as saying, "No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong." Using God as a hypothesis is not a copout, the evedence points closer to that then anything else. Simply because you do not want to accept the possibility that there is a being that is much higher then you does not mean that it could not be what is infact right. Until the existance of God is disproved, God is a possible answer to how the universe and everything in it sprung into existance.
Here's the trouble with that theory. For every scientific hypothesis out there (I'd say almost every one, but I can't think of an exception), there are obvious ways to disprove it. At least, any competent researcher in the field could come up with a list of experiments and a set of results that - if obtained - would disprove the theory. Agree?
Now I challenge you - or anyone of similar mindset - to come up with a set of experiments that could indeed disprove the existance of God. Without them, then using God as a hypothesis is indeed a copout (to use your words). You're effectively saying, "Well, unless you can disprove an unprovable hypothesis, I win." Nice try, but unfortunately not very helpful.
Note: This isn't intended purely (or even mostly) as an attack on the theory. If you do have such a list, I would really like to read it. I just haven't yet encountered anyone who did.
Your explanation is right but your units in the first line should have been G = 9.8 m/s^2.
Nope, that's the rate of acceleration. The speed (represented in "distance per time") would indeed be measured in "meters per second," as the original post had it. Its just that the acceleration rate is by far the most commonly quoted statistic that starts out with "9.8 m/s" so our brains fill in the gap. Mine did too, I had to reread it to be sure.
And they've been using firefox even longer than they've been using linux. And they still dont' understand tabbed browsing, why its better
Maybe because it isn't better for them? Possibly because they use their computer for different tasks than you use yours for? Personally, I find that I can do rough systems design faster using a pen and paper than any electronic form. Does that mean that you should use the same system? Not at all.
I wonder if FireFox' crashes have to do with stupid web pages with embedded active X controls, dumb implementations of Java because they have been DESIGNED to be used on IE.
On the contrary. It is perfectly acceptable (in a theoretical sense, although your users might disagree) for Firefox to fail to render some pages. It is likewise admissable for them to poorly render a page that is poorly structured.
Crashing, no matter what the input to a program, is an unacceptable outcome. Or at least it should be by now.
Call that a link?
Octave
That, my friend, is a link.
Hmm. The iPod puts out fairly accurate low end when its hooked up to a stereo. Sounds to me like mavis had a problem with the headphones and decided to fix it in a rather too drastic manner. Ah, the curse of the early adopter who is influenced by the lure of the shiny new toy.
The poster does mention trying new headphones with the iPod (near the end of the "review"), but fails to say if they made a difference. The implication is that they didn't. Maybe this is because the iPod is missing a simple "bass boost" button (something which is far from lacking, between equalization and the desire for many people to listen to music without significant alterations)? Then again, this was written by a self-proclaimed bass-head non-audiophile...
Hmm. Sounds like a pretty solid vote for "not recommended" to me...
Most of the systems I've been on limit logon attempts to 3 to 5 failures. I've never seen a big Unix system which allowed unlimited failed logon attempts (though I'm sure someone could point me to one).
I guess my thought here is that if you have a low limit - like five - you will confound an automated attack but the user may still run into the situation. With a higher limit, like 100, you confound the automated attack almost exactly as much, but the user doesn't even know about it.
I guess this would be more susceptible to human-engineering type attacks, like running through your children's names, but a decent (but not sadistic) set of requirements as far as things like alphanumerics should fix this.
I always figured that if you can't get your password right in 5 attempts, you need to sober up and talk to a sysadmin
I would agree with this - if and only if the sysadmin is available 24/7 and willing and able to validate your identity and get you into your account within a very short amount of time. Maybe have a policy of three free counter-resets (requiring no ID process) that would let your road-warrior-with-presentation get back into their system after their nephew locked them out, but would trigger a system watch on that login to make sure that nothing nefarious is going on?
Er, that would be the T in that there TCO acronym. That's why its so hard to calculate. If one solution gets you a productivity hit, that becomes part of its TCO - its the same numbers, just indexed from ideal down instead of from nothing up.
...and this one:
"All passwords can be broken within 45 to 60 days," says Carl Herberger, senior director of information security services for SunGard Availability Services. He recommends that companies force employers to change their passwords every month.
Of course, this is predicated on some stupid-ass server being willing to answer the "Is this password correct?" question more than once every, oh, fifteen seconds. Heck, just answering it once per second would still kick that time way, way up. And that's assuming that there's no lockout-trigger.
Personally, I don't see why lockout triggers can't be set at a threshold of, say, 100 consectuive bad attempts (maybe adding a limit of 250/week as well). That's low enough to confound brute force cracks, but high enough that you should never run into it, even if you're logging in while drunk or to report a broken arm to the helpdesk or something.
Same here. Except that at my last company it was ten - they didn't have a minimum change time though. I just did:
...
password: realPassword
You must change your password!
new password: realPassword0
new password: realPassword1
new password: realPassword2
new password: realPassword3
new password: realPassword
[Sigh]
So, how are we going to stop volcanoes from violating the sainted Kyoto treaty?
... its an influence, but hardly the major one.
Please, allow me to quote from the article that you yourself referenced, just so that there's no possible claim of article bias (or rather that if there was, it would cancel itself out - gotta love feedback cycles):
Worldwide, sulfur dioxide emissions from volcanoes add up to about 15 million tons a year, compared to the 200 million tons produced by power plants and other human activities
Yup. So
Besides, that's sulfur dioxide. Going back to the original point about carbon dioxide, and again quoting from the article:
Nothstein, of the state energy office, says the Centralia coal plant puts out about 28,000 tons a day. Statewide, automobiles, industries, and residential and business heating systems emit nearly 10 times that amount.
On a global scale, the difference is even more dramatic, said Gerlach, who often gets calls from power-plant operators and oil-company executives who believe nature is just as responsible for global warming as man. His answer always disappoints them.
"I tell them the amounts don't even come close and I usually never hear from them again."
Worldwide, people and their activities pump 26 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, he said. The total from volcanoes is about 200 million tons a year -- or less than 1 percent of the man-made emissions.
I can understand not RTFA that's part of the story. But not R your own FA? C'mon now...
What is missing is the foolproof connection between them. ... At the same time, we should be ready to admit that (a) the connection might not be there and (b) environmental science has a track record of hysterical predictions that have not been backed up by reality.
Oh, agreed. But there are a lot of relatively inexpensive things that we could be doing, right now, to help mitigate this. Maybe its a problem - maybe it isn't. Still, why does not having a "foolproof" connection mean that you not only shouldn't try to fix it, but should in all appearances actively try to go against it (rolling back EPA mileage requirement dates, etc)?
It wasn't that long ago when there was no public "foolproof" connection between smoking and cancer. Everyone knew that it was bad for you, although we weren't sure exactly how bad, but again people used that as an excuse not to address a destructive behavior. Apparently its a common human trait, just an odd one.
"Documented cases of civilians killed by the US is up around 15,000. [iraqbodycount.net, etc]"
Exactly my point. This is nowhere near 100,000.
Sorry, but that's not entirely true. The numbers on IraqBodyCount.net are fully-backed media documented numbers about specific incidents with specific casualties. That means that, out of the thousands of civillians killed during the war in Iraq, we have hard and fast proof about that many, right now, with zero additional time spent gathering information.
The 100,000+ number is a reasonable guesss about the actual numbers of casualties, inclulding those who didn't specifically make the fscking international news.
Sheesh.
I don't know if a 6:1 ratio of casualties to media-reported specific casualties is correct, but it seems reasonable. It seems a whole lot more reasonable than a 1:1 ratio which is, I believe, what you're choosing to go with.
Heck, I was just told by our office manager that "Some people's internets are down." Careful probing revealed that, to her, internet==networkDrop. Who knew?
How many does somone or a comany need to buy to "avoid" ambiguity. I mean every slashdot is taken except slashdot.name, and it kills me that slashdot.com gets any hits for the website slashdot.org. Slashdot used to not even redirect or give you a bozo message for accessing slashdot.com, it just threw the contents of slahdot.org at you.
.org, .net, .etc...
Actually its convenient for me - if I'm lazy, I just do slashdot[CTRL-ENTER]. I can never remember the shortcuts for
Same for our new dog - on both counts. Except that her name's Sabrina, not Elmo.
They think Kerry is terrible, that he has never done a single useful thing in his political career, which he built entirely on 4 months of military service, etc.
That's funny, especially since Kerry enlisted in the Navy in 1966 and wasn't discharged until 1970. He spent four months in Vietnam, from 11/68 to 4/69 as part of that duty.
Here's a simplified timeline if you're interested in more.
Its been shown - by trainers - that cats can be trained just as easily as dogs can. Its just that when you tell a dog, "Go get the paper," and it looks at you all cute and whines, you keep working at it. When you tell a cat, "Go get the paper," and it walks away, your natural tendancy is to say, "Oh, well, cats can't be trained."
So who'd like to be among the first to invest in "Kittys4Less".
Nah, it'll never work. Now, if you had been trying to get money for kittys4less.com...
Yeah, well... the trouble is, that distribution problem would greatly decrease the likelyhood of a "glass" of water in the middle of the Indian ocean - or really, any specific out-of-the-way ocean - from containing as much... and increase the likelyhood of anyone anywhere in Europe getting more. Unless there has been enough time to disperse it, in which case we're back to square one.
But I sure as @#&@ don't want to do the maths.
Well, right now I see the following:
$529: eMac 1GHz/256MB/40GB/NO CD-ROM/NO MODEM
$549: eMac 1GHz/256MB/40GB/CD-ROM/NO MODEM
$699: eMac 1.25GHz/256MB/40GB/Combo/E/56K
Not amazing, and you'd need to add some RAM, but not too shabby either. For $550, the middle choice would be a decent way to get some good Mac exposure.
Actually, it only costs $8 (maybe 9). Unless they've raised the prices since I was there last which was, oh, last night. Excellent food there too, btw, but the X-Scream was closed for maintenance.
That's a flawed method. The first time you request the page, it will probably be stored in your ISP's proxy cache, so when you try it with another browser, it will come from a cached copy even if you've cleared your browser cache.
Disabling proxies in your browser settings isn't enough as many ISPs institute interception proxies. For instance, virtually all cable modems I've come across have HTTP caches in them.
Er, that's a good thing. He was testing browser rendering speed, not network performance (beyond the local stack), so having the websites available just outside the machine is ideal for this test.