I will admit that I am late to the party and have not read all of the posts on this yet. Regardless, does this matter at all? Does this change the historical fact that Lincoln did die from the wound of an assassin? How does this advance our current knowledge or adapt the interpretation of the recorded events?
Of course it does not affect any of this. There is really no scientific merit to this at all. Perhaps the tag should be "what if" rather than "science."
Let me be noted as the first person to state that my death could have been prevented with the technological advances available in 140 years from now! I will gladly accept my great posthumous honors in advance for this amazing "discovery."
I bought a pair of expensive polarized glass lens sunglasses from a Maui Jim reseller some years ago. One of the screws was constantly coming loose and falling out. I considered this a defect, so I sent them in and they were replaced. The replacement pair had lenses that were not properly fit in the frame, thus allowing light to come through the edges of the lens where there were no coatings. This irked my pretty bad, so I began the customer service nightmare that we are all familiar with. After mailing those in and having them returned with a proclamation that they were normal, I wrote a letter to the CEO sending a copy to the crappy support manager. To Maui Jim's credit (or the CEO), he sent me a new pair, a t-shirt, and a hat. I still use the glasses daily.
More recently, I purchased a car from Hertz that had ~20,000 miles. It was a good deal compared to blue book, and the car came with a 3-day (or so, can't recall the specifics now) no-questions-asked refund. The problem was that the car I wanted was only available a long ways from where I live. So I made a road trip out of the purchase, and the guarantee refund was to expire between picking it up and driving to my home. Unfortunately, within 1 hour of leaving Tampa where the car was, and this was after the dealership had closed for the day, an air dam that was improperly secured after an oil change or some other service, came loose and got ripped off under the front wheel. The car was drivable, but I was obviously upset and a bit shaken (it was loud and seemed like a dramatic blowout). I called the salesman at the next phone (my Verizon was refusing to let me connect, but that's another story), and he agreed that they would cover the repair once I got the car to my destination. The car needed $1500 of repairs (new bumper skin, paint, air dam, etc.), and the Hertz service center was welching on the promise to cover the repair. The service manager in Oklahoma was essentially calling me a liar and saying there was no way that this could have been the result of their negligence. This escalated until I contacted, you guessed it, the CEO of Hertz North America. He personally called me and handled the situation. He agreed completely that they were responsible for the repairs, and he made good on it.
So... Sometimes it does pay to be the squeaky wheel.
"Is there even a point to voting any more if the will of the people can so easily be subverted by two people?" one voter posted on a comment blog. Uh, this is an argument for voting, not an argument against it. If you believe these two elected officials are subverting the will of the people they represent, you get their asses kicked out the next time around. This is exactly what happened in Kansas when the Kansas school board had a majority of creationists embarassing the majority of Kansans by trying to force creationsism (yeah, they call it "intelligent design" now, but we know better) down students' throats. The voters came to the ballots and put those people out on the street.
So this is a compelling reason to vote, not a reason to wuss out of the democratic process.
How can anyone with the name 'Fuzzy' possible claim defamation of character as grounds for a lawsuit? I would have thought his parents would be the first target to go after.
I always thought of firewalls as being some variation of a rectangle myself, so getting round firewalls would seem to make them easier to circumvent. But if the holes they are punching are round, wouldn't the round firewalls just plug the holes?
But you still have to consider the cumulative impact of all the packaging based on petro-chemicals. You reduce the amount of plastic, you reduce the amount of petroleum being used overall. Your line of thinking is overly simplistic.
I don't know which is the bigger statement from your post:
1) That peak oil predictions were ridiculously off-base,
or
2) That science education is so crappy that you were using a textbook that was at least 12 years old!
Seems like #2 to me. And we wonder why people have such a poor grasp of science issues.
This is not a useful comment in the light of the real issue being reported in the original post. You have picked a one-up, unique situation where a rogue individual serves as a bad example of how to conduct oneself during an election. The RNCC actions, on the other hand, are a disgraceful, and illegal action attempting to disenfranchise voters, or get them to think ill of the Democrat candidate at a grand scale (much more effect than a few slashed tires). This is so much more duplicitous and underhanded than one guy's son getting caught slashing tires of potential voters, not that the dumbass who did the tire-slashing deserves any less jail time than those that are behind the the robocalls.
I have the same, cheap, [brand of] Heath-Zenith lights and they work fine. I suspect that the environment that your lights are set within are the problem. If you have trees with branches in sight of the passive system, the wind will blow and set off the lights. That may be the only difference between houses: environmental variation. I have noticed that they are more sensitive in colder months than warmer months. This may be the temperature interacting with the sensors, or it could be other changes to the environment. I have not tried to systematically tease these things apart.
The article does not tell us anything about the survey methods that they used. Did they use the same survey as reported from earlier data? Differences in survey design can have huge consequences on the outcome and may make comparisons moot.
Also, people might be more likely to say they are not downloading music when, in fact, they are downloading as much or more. The fear of recrimination for admitting to downloading may be pushing people to simply be dishonest when surveyed.
The 160 GB drive is the Hitachi Travelstar 5k160. This disk uses perpendicular recording technology which claims to produce 30% improved performance over older technology. According to one source, this technology increases both storage capacity (data density per unit area on a platter) and subsequent performance because more data can be moved within a given area no the platter. So, a 30% boost to a 5400 rpm system, all else being equal, would be about like having a 7020 rpm drive. This is pretty close to 7200 rpm if this logic holds.
Additionally, these drives consume less energy and run cooler. These are two other, very important to consider with a laptop. It will be interesting to see how the performance figures (including thermal performance and battery life) compare between these drive options on otherwise identical machines.
So on top of worrying about global warming, it seems we should also worry about the physics that govern the orbit of Earth around the sun.
Too bad this flippant remark had to be added to this otherwise interesting post. We really should not try to equate past mass extinctions of species with the current, clearly human-caused die-off. Statements such as the one quoted dilute the impact of current abuse of the biosphere by modern man, and it tacitly supports the ignorant arguments against concerns over losses in biodiversity and global warming. I will save the spiel about the importance of ecosystem services for another occasion.
This is an interesting anecdote, but bears little or no merit as science. Having a single individual treated, then reporting that 57% of the cells showed improvement is non-informative. How do we know that 57% of the cells would not have improved in the absence of the treatment?
To merit a scientific breakthrough, this needs to be properly designed and researched. You would need to have a sample of individuals that are treated, and another sample of individuals that serve as controls. They would all need to be similarly afflicted with the defect, of similar age, ethnicity, nutritional status, etc. After measuring progress and properly analyzing the data from a well-designed study, perhaps it will be found that this form of treatment is viable.
Until then, this is mere conjecture... Wishful thinking, perhaps. I hope that the report is valid, but would not put any credence in such a one-off claim as this.
Slashdot Mirror
I will admit that I am late to the party and have not read all of the posts on this yet. Regardless, does this matter at all? Does this change the historical fact that Lincoln did die from the wound of an assassin? How does this advance our current knowledge or adapt the interpretation of the recorded events?
Of course it does not affect any of this. There is really no scientific merit to this at all. Perhaps the tag should be "what if" rather than "science."
Let me be noted as the first person to state that my death could have been prevented with the technological advances available in 140 years from now! I will gladly accept my great posthumous honors in advance for this amazing "discovery."
I bought a pair of expensive polarized glass lens sunglasses from a Maui Jim reseller some years ago. One of the screws was constantly coming loose and falling out. I considered this a defect, so I sent them in and they were replaced. The replacement pair had lenses that were not properly fit in the frame, thus allowing light to come through the edges of the lens where there were no coatings. This irked my pretty bad, so I began the customer service nightmare that we are all familiar with. After mailing those in and having them returned with a proclamation that they were normal, I wrote a letter to the CEO sending a copy to the crappy support manager. To Maui Jim's credit (or the CEO), he sent me a new pair, a t-shirt, and a hat. I still use the glasses daily.
More recently, I purchased a car from Hertz that had ~20,000 miles. It was a good deal compared to blue book, and the car came with a 3-day (or so, can't recall the specifics now) no-questions-asked refund. The problem was that the car I wanted was only available a long ways from where I live. So I made a road trip out of the purchase, and the guarantee refund was to expire between picking it up and driving to my home. Unfortunately, within 1 hour of leaving Tampa where the car was, and this was after the dealership had closed for the day, an air dam that was improperly secured after an oil change or some other service, came loose and got ripped off under the front wheel. The car was drivable, but I was obviously upset and a bit shaken (it was loud and seemed like a dramatic blowout). I called the salesman at the next phone (my Verizon was refusing to let me connect, but that's another story), and he agreed that they would cover the repair once I got the car to my destination. The car needed $1500 of repairs (new bumper skin, paint, air dam, etc.), and the Hertz service center was welching on the promise to cover the repair. The service manager in Oklahoma was essentially calling me a liar and saying there was no way that this could have been the result of their negligence. This escalated until I contacted, you guessed it, the CEO of Hertz North America. He personally called me and handled the situation. He agreed completely that they were responsible for the repairs, and he made good on it. So... Sometimes it does pay to be the squeaky wheel.
So this is a compelling reason to vote, not a reason to wuss out of the democratic process.
I suppose if you are into autoerotic asphyxiation (remember, she's not real), this might be a "good thing." Not my idea of a good time though.
How can anyone with the name 'Fuzzy' possible claim defamation of character as grounds for a lawsuit? I would have thought his parents would be the first target to go after.
Maybe there is a correlation between eating TV dinners and being lazy...
And I'm sure there are no sexual encounters in that all-male crew.
Damn those fools for not putting 'South Bay' on the list!
I always thought of firewalls as being some variation of a rectangle myself, so getting round firewalls would seem to make them easier to circumvent. But if the holes they are punching are round, wouldn't the round firewalls just plug the holes?
But you still have to consider the cumulative impact of all the packaging based on petro-chemicals. You reduce the amount of plastic, you reduce the amount of petroleum being used overall. Your line of thinking is overly simplistic.
I don't know which is the bigger statement from your post:
1) That peak oil predictions were ridiculously off-base,
or
2) That science education is so crappy that you were using a textbook that was at least 12 years old!
Seems like #2 to me. And we wonder why people have such a poor grasp of science issues.
This is not a useful comment in the light of the real issue being reported in the original post. You have picked a one-up, unique situation where a rogue individual serves as a bad example of how to conduct oneself during an election. The RNCC actions, on the other hand, are a disgraceful, and illegal action attempting to disenfranchise voters, or get them to think ill of the Democrat candidate at a grand scale (much more effect than a few slashed tires). This is so much more duplicitous and underhanded than one guy's son getting caught slashing tires of potential voters, not that the dumbass who did the tire-slashing deserves any less jail time than those that are behind the the robocalls.
I have the same, cheap, [brand of] Heath-Zenith lights and they work fine. I suspect that the environment that your lights are set within are the problem. If you have trees with branches in sight of the passive system, the wind will blow and set off the lights. That may be the only difference between houses: environmental variation. I have noticed that they are more sensitive in colder months than warmer months. This may be the temperature interacting with the sensors, or it could be other changes to the environment. I have not tried to systematically tease these things apart.
The article does not tell us anything about the survey methods that they used. Did they use the same survey as reported from earlier data? Differences in survey design can have huge consequences on the outcome and may make comparisons moot.
Also, people might be more likely to say they are not downloading music when, in fact, they are downloading as much or more. The fear of recrimination for admitting to downloading may be pushing people to simply be dishonest when surveyed.
The 160 GB drive is the Hitachi Travelstar 5k160. This disk uses perpendicular recording technology which claims to produce 30% improved performance over older technology. According to one source, this technology increases both storage capacity (data density per unit area on a platter) and subsequent performance because more data can be moved within a given area no the platter. So, a 30% boost to a 5400 rpm system, all else being equal, would be about like having a 7020 rpm drive. This is pretty close to 7200 rpm if this logic holds.
Additionally, these drives consume less energy and run cooler. These are two other, very important to consider with a laptop. It will be interesting to see how the performance figures (including thermal performance and battery life) compare between these drive options on otherwise identical machines.
This is an interesting anecdote, but bears little or no merit as science. Having a single individual treated, then reporting that 57% of the cells showed improvement is non-informative. How do we know that 57% of the cells would not have improved in the absence of the treatment?
To merit a scientific breakthrough, this needs to be properly designed and researched. You would need to have a sample of individuals that are treated, and another sample of individuals that serve as controls. They would all need to be similarly afflicted with the defect, of similar age, ethnicity, nutritional status, etc. After measuring progress and properly analyzing the data from a well-designed study, perhaps it will be found that this form of treatment is viable.
Until then, this is mere conjecture... Wishful thinking, perhaps. I hope that the report is valid, but would not put any credence in such a one-off claim as this.
Now, back to the polemics...