The "In Soviet Russia" joke has already been inserted, so I'll go on to the next step:
The technique described is independent of amplitude and frequency in that it is based on polarization. Circular (clockwise and counter clockwise) polarization was used in Soviet and early post-CCCP Russian satellite communications. I had an article from ~25 years ago that showed how to alter a US type vertical/horizontal polarization low noise amplifier on a satellite receiving dish to pick up clock/counter signals. (The trick was to insert a teflon plate at a 45 degree angle to the vert/horiz signal; I tried it, it picked up the signals but I couldn't decode them with a US commercial receiver). One may feel free to speculate on the history of Sweden vs. Russia/CCCP and this claim by Swedish scientists to have 'discovered' this technique. There's no reason why satellites couldn't have had both kinds of polarization on board, except that each required its own transceiver. Todays' larger birds could carry both and help alleviate the Clarke orbit traffic jam. The same concept can be applied to terrestrial equipment, and in fact could have been used for years.
The Economist has its annual Innovation Awards (since 2002). Besides listing the several categories it gives selection criteria. What's not directly applicable to answering the question should at least serve as a parallel example. The recipients are to be individuals rather than corporate, even though the innovation from those individuals may result in a corporate entity.
A court has determined there is no causal link between vaccinations and MMR.
In other news the National Institutes of Health has decided that when both civil and criminal charges are simultaneously brought on a case, if one is in federal court and the other in a state court, it does not constitute double jeapordy.
That would be relevant irony (OK, it's sarcasm) if the title (as in the original) were accurate. It's not. The court was a compensation court. They did not rule there was no causal link, they ruled that one could not be shown conclusively enough to award compensation.
The statements made by Paul Aiken as quoted are factual. The statements made in the remainder of the summary are unsupported assertions and demonstrably false and/or irrelevant.
Audio rights and other derivations are clearly defined under copyright law. Enunciation is irrelevant. Reading something out loud is pretty much the definition of performance, and if done for an unspecified number greater than 1, is public in aggregate (multiple single readings) if not immediate fact (multiple person audience). A performance is a copy, albeit one with no long term existence. The definition of copy does not specify duration of existence.
The fact that various situations exist which seem to contradict Aiken's assertions do not invalidate his assertions, they merely are manifestations of present day technology colliding (yet again) with yesterday's definitions which couldn't presage the technology. Resolving such issues are a function of the same law. If already built into the definitions, ie. "public", "performance" "derivative" etc., the law stands. When the law doesn't cover, the courts serve to redefine. In this case the law at least nearly, if not completely, serves as it stands.
Someone should ask the FAA how they managed to get an entire network (see: article title) onto one server (see: article summary). Was it a server, or a single work station? A server can dispense data, but dispensing data does not make it a server. Servers tend to act as the dispenser for data bearing machines, no?
What's the matter, wouldn't an article that said "One FAA Computer Hacked - Employee Data Stolen" be sexy enough? Probably not. The title as is misleads people into wondering if the ATC network was implicated.
Don't get me wrong, I have all respect and admiration for St. Woz. But this is a guy who converted his basement to a cave, complete with stalactites and stalagmites, and when hunkered down amidst them looked every bit a Neanderthal in t-shirt and jeans. He doesn't look much different now than he did in the picture in TIME the above came from. I hope they intend for his appearance to be comic relief because that's what I think it'll end up being.
...would such a billboard produce if it were confronted with a few dozen people wearing Richard Nixon masks? Better, wearing some rubber butts over their faces. Or even just shining mirrors.
I use both open and proprietary software in neuroscience, including more generalized signal analysis and statistics including some far left field non-linear non-integer stuff. Proprietary is far more likely to have the advantage of having a history of validation. If you can address validity yourself, use OSS. If you haven't approached calculation validity yet, look into it before you decide whether to attempt it. Statisticians and experimental mathematicians (yes, there are such beasts) relish arguing about the finer points of calculative validity to a point that makes engineers' arguments about the relative merits and draw backs of various filters sound like arguments over the rules of whack-a-mole. Proprietary software generates income which can be used to pay the long, laborious process of validation.
Error in principle vs. calculation have been central to the philosophy of science and the origin of statistics for centuries. The only things new here is applying it to LHC data and having the balls to think that they hype so generated for mask the fact that there's nothing new here.
Those unable to produce useful material w.r.t LHC have taken to producing such as this diatribe. Corrtadicting their own assertions they fail to note major failings in the papers containing warnings, such as the recent one that such "mini-black-holes" could persist for seconds of minutes. Calculations repeated by dozens independently have shown that (1) "mini" is misleading -- the size is far less than that of an electron, and (2) at that size it can circle a nucleus for years before having a 50% chance of running into a particle which it can absorb and so grow. Of course (3) (per Hawking) says it can't last near long enough for that to happen.
These flag wavers fall prey to what they accuse of in others and fail to note the long history they subsume unacknowledged or that calculations done without that errors they claim might possibly occur in some instances but don't claim actually did in any particular instance.
I'm saddened this made it this high in the pubs. My undergrads -- psychology, not physics -- have to absorb and report on alpha and beta type errors based on both theory and data analysis. I can only hope this pub made it this far based on the FUD factor and not because such calculations usually are ignored by those in this field, making this actually noteworthy.
The object in TFA poses no significant danger. More accurately, "posed". It's closest approach (691,200 km) was the day before the article.
No presently tracked NEO poses more than about a 0.13% cumulative impact probability for all its projected passes over the next century (2000 SG344).
But as more objects are located, and their individual cumulative impact probabilities are calculated, they're compiled into pages such as at http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/risk/ . These objects don't care about each other and their impact risks are independent. Taken together, they sum. Individual target estimates don't change, but the total impact risk does.
At what point does the total cumulative impact risk (copy both recent and non-recent tables, paste into a spreadsheet, and sum down all impact probabilities in column D) become significant enough to merit serious attention?
2009 BD made the press but 2009 BE didn't. The latter was only 110,000 km farther, but 2.5 times the diameter, and passed by 2 days before 2009 BD. Recent and upcoming flybys are listed at http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/ca/
I suspect Homeland Gestapory won't much care about this guy's model except for the bad press he generated. Doing something bad? No big deal. Making the gooberment look bad? Big deal.
Want to give them more signal with their noise? Here's a good start:
Set of five (5) individual blueprints of early atomic weapons. These were copied from the original government drawings on to bright white paper, and are bound for you in a "contractor's pack."
Each page measures 16" X 22". Included are dimensional drawings of Fat Man (2), Little Boy (1), and the Mark IV Missile (2).
I highly recommend "The Holographic Universe" by Michael Talbot, which talks a great deal on the topic. It takes the work of physicist David Bohm and neurophysiologist Karl Pribram, and goes on to explain how the holographic model can easily explain paranormal and psychic phenomenon. I've studied mysticism, spirituality, physics, and neuroscience for ten years, and the holographic model fits perfectly with what people experience during waking life, in dreams, at near-death, and during other mystical experiences.
I realize that most Slashdot readers will look upon this with skepticism, but after all these years of research and study, I can honestly say that if this isn't the way the universe works, it's the way it should work.
I highly recommend anyone suggesting a derivative work at least make an attempt to understand the originals to find out if the comparison is valid. Pribram's work with Bohm (continued with Bohm's partner, Basil Hiley, as well as Kunio Yasue and Mari Jibu) says nothing like the claims made by those who conduct journalism via buzzwords (Talbot being only one of many) who count on their readers being as clueless as themselves.
To begin with the title of Pribram's major work on the subject is "Brain and Perception: Holonomy and Structure in Figural Processing". The definition of holonomy from Wikipedia says "In differential geometry, the holonomy of a connection on a smooth manifold is a general geometrical consequence of the curvature of the connection measuring the extent to which parallel transport around closed loops fails to preserve the geometrical data being transported." Of course if one takes the supporting evidence from the book and inserts "holography" instead, one is free to make all kinds of wild, unsupportable assertions, banking on appeal to an authority they can't understand. And if one is unlucky enough to make such an assertion in Karl's presence they'll be treated to a top-of-the-lungs tirade about the sin of stealing half an idea, muddying it up with imaginary material, and trying to credit someone with 60 years of serious work in the field with the utter bullshit.
Pribram does make an analogy between his proposed theory of inter-neuronal computation via interference of the varying electrical fields surrounding dendrites, and holography as an interference pattern, because both can contain far more information than non-interference based phenomena. He also states that one can use Denis Gabor's maths describing holography to describe this neural processing model (in principle only; computing billions of simultaneous dynamic interference patterns each with components progressing at a range of speeds covering several orders of magnitude is beyond foreseeable computational ability). But analogy is not equivalence, and being able to use a single mathematical system to describe two things does not make them similar any more than writing about both of them in the same language does.
If anyone is interested in Pribram's descriptions, his book is ISBN 0898599954, and you'll only need the first 3/4 of it. If you want to actually understand it, you'll need the last quarter -- the appendices -- which contains the combined efforts of Pribram, Bohm, Hiley, Yasue and Jibu. If anyone does manage to understand it from the appendices, please do let me know. If took me 2 years studying under Pribram to grasp it, including sitting in on a workshop with him, Hiley, Yasue and Jibu as they worked up update and expand on the material in the appendices.
If what Talbot says "fits perfectly with what people experience during waking life, in dreams, at near-death, and during other mystical experiences" but is as wrong as a football bat, I submit one is not "studying" mysticism. spirituality, physics and neuroscience -- rather one is simply believing things, which can be done with science as well as non-science, and when done with science is a far more egregious error.
There are two companies that refuse to die despite the fact the the original concept failed miserably almost 50 years ago. Trisenxâ(TM)s scent dome and DigiScents' iSmell both have been promising to produce "smell-o-vision" for computers for years. I'm not sure whether they're actually this clueless themselves, or whether they're hoping to latch onto an even more clueless venture capitalist. Either way, here's hoping those involved suffer a Blinding Glimpse of the Obvious and let the poor crippled idea die.
Just because a fun game has X learning curve doesn't mean games with X learning curve are fun. The learning curve maintains attention, necessary for the game to be fun. The same learning curve in another situation may maintain attention to something droll. And something fun may have no learning curve at all. I suggest you're not looking at fun, you're looking at ability to maintain engagement. I also suggest fun does not have a single definition, or else everyone would play the same game.
If someone wants you to take a personality test, ask for their credentials. Virtually no one who knows enough about such testing would use it for employment testing. If you ask, they won't hire you, and you should be glad. You should insist on that person's name anyway and turn it and the company into the APA.
The main finding of personality psychology is that there are 5 factors to personality. If the person giving the test can tell you what they are, which ones are relevant for the position, and if they'll notify you of your score compared to their hiring criteria, take it. Otherwise, run away. Sure they'll hire someone else. Let that poor bastard suffer under pseudo-scientific adminstraional amateurs. You'll be glad you didn't.
It'd ADD, not ADHD. ADD has +H (with hyperactivity) and -H (without) variants.
Neurofeedback, like any other form of biofeedback, is a form of operant conditioning. It does not rewire anything beyond the obvious changes in strengths of synaptic associations within Hebbian cellular assemblies.
There's a fatal flaw in using games-like neurofeedback software to treat ADD. If you really have it (as about 5% of those diagnosed do) then you can't sit still to play. Being able to play shows you don't have it.
Many people have an attentional strategy that's been forced into inclusion in the diagnosis, who do not have a disorder, in that it does not cause significant life problems. Having teachers complain that certain children do not adhere to the enforced learning reinforcement processes is a teacher's problem. Teachers who insist on doping kids for their learning style should be investigated for child abuse, as should parents who fall for having an educator diagnose and prescribe.
"When Children Don't Learn", Dianne McGuinness, chapters 9 and 10, sets forth the single most accurate history of ADD and the most damning evidence against those who seek to usurp psychiatric medicine for their own ends. When the APA was devising the DSM IV, they took the unheard of step of asking Dr. McGuinness to write an 'opposing opinion' addendum to the ADD entry.
There's major flaw in the idea of using neurofeedback. if it can be used to treat in a matter of weeks in the few who really have it and would benefit, then just living with it over a matter of years one would happen upon instances which offered similar opportunities for practicing overcoming, and they should train themselves right out of it. My research turned up individuals who still exhibited some outward symptoms but under go-nogo-reaction time testing showed fewer errors than non-ADD people and showed reaction times to rival fighter pilots.
Through my research I turned up many times what I've come to believe is the one best treatment for ADD: Montessori schools. It does nothing to inhibit the beneficial aspects of the common attentional condition that's been forced under the ADD umbrella. For that matter neurofeedback does nothing to inhibit those either, so at least it does no harm. For that matter, anyone who gets neurofeedback is less likely to take addictive and brain altering drugs for years, and that's a good thing too.
I cannot find a reason why TFA is noteworthy. It is one of many review articles on the subject produced over the last two decades. It is just like the others in that it comes to the same conclusions yet fails to address the internal logical flaw of 'those that can don't need it' or the external evidence that those that it would change would change anyway.
The Apollo sites have all been (re)mapped many times. The sites for Apollo 11, 14 and 15 (sites for Lunar Laser Ranging Experiment reflectors) have been mapped to an accuracy of a few meters, from Earth (a distance of 400,000 km), and that's been going on since Apollos were still going there. Since Chandrayaan is only 100 km from the moon, its ability to replicate the oft replicated deserves a resounding "I should hope so". Now when the Terrain (you use aposelene and periselene for orbital components but stick with 'terrain' for the surface?) Mapping Camera and Lunar Laser Ranging Instrument are working together and producing 3D surface maps with 5 to 10 m voxels, then you'll have something worth reporting. A hint: if the story requires a conspiracy theory or sci-fi reference to carry it, it's either not worth being carried or being carried in the wrong place; if it doesn't require them, it makes as much sense to insert this week's test match scores. Stop it. You're not required to submit to the lowest common/. denominator.
The idea was never meant to be accurate, science, or anything similar. It was meant to be a PR balloon sent up to distract people in the very least, and if it was successfully pushed past the sheeple, a way for companies to make it look like they cared and/or were trying to do something. "Companies" should be the hint. Those animals don't do anything that doesn't make them money unless forced to, and the administration that floated the idea has done everything it could at every turn to make sure the only thing they were forced to do was make more money.
"In short, the Academies are asking why the nation has a civil space program"
Asking what the future short and long term goals should be assumes the answer to be "to accomplish the goals chosen as most desirable" and assumes there will be such goals set. The last item ("how can") even more clearly assumes it exists to accomplish them and seeks to examine by what means it can best do so.
The inclusion of "civil" is misleading because it's superfluous. They are asking about the program administered by NASA, but they are not asking about it comparison to any alternative. The recent news about Obama's transition team questioning whether to cancel the Ares program in favor of using "military" (read: already developed, tested and available, regardless of original customer; that story was badly flawed too) has nothing to do with the Academies' efforts. The latter had to have been in effect well before Obama's people raised the question.
[from the site]:
The committee will, inter alia â"
â review the history of U.S. space policy and propose a broad policy basis for 21st century leadership in space;
â examine the balance and interfaces between fundamental scientific research in space, human space exploration, robotic exploration, earth observations, and applications of space technology and civil space systems for societal benefits;
â assess the role that commercial space companies could play in fulfilling national space goals and the role of the government in facilitating the emergence and success of commercial space companies; and
â highlight options for government attention to address and potentially resolve problems that might prevent achieving key national goals.
Illustrative examples of potential topics for the committee's consideration in the study include the following:
â Near-term and long-term human spaceflight program goals and options for fulfilling them;
â Utility of satellites in understanding global climate change and in advancing geophysical sciences (physical oceanography, solid earth sciences, etc.), and roles and responsibilities of government agencies in such Earth observations;
â Potential opportunities in various space sciences, including planetary missions, space-based astronomy, astrophysical observations, extraterrestrial life searches, assessing planetary bodies in other solar systems, etc.
â Reconciling total program content and total program resources for the civil space program;
â Strength of the U.S. space industrial base;
â Developing advanced technologies for applications in remote sensing and other areas;
â Access to space, availability and cost of U.S. launch vehicles, use of foreign launch capabilities; and
â International cooperation and competition in space programs.
National security space issues will not be a main focus of the report, but may be addressed to the extent that they interact with or impact the civil space program.
[and]
The committee invites you to comment on this study by filling out a questionnaire. Questions you might consider when framing your input to the committee:
â What should be the rationale and goals for the civil space program?
â How can the civil space program address key national issues?
No way will money pumped into "health IT" result in significant jobs increase. Money thrown into this ring will get snapped up and swallowed whole by the medical industry. We're talking about an industry here that grew to be larger than the previously decried defense industry including all governmental support, without producing any significant increases in quality of care or patient satisfaction, or differences in these measures as compared to other countries. The IT infrastructure used has grown more than patient care. During its explosive growth, millions of jobs were created. At its (sustained) peak, every patient supported 4.5 employees through the charges which increased well more than an order of magnitude. But the growth has plateued so that the companies involved can continue to increase profits and stock prices without losing capital to supporting themselves.
Consider this an expert opinion. I was trained to be one of 'them'. I got an MHA (master's in health care administration, an MBA for the health care industry). I specialized in medical informatics and telemedicine. When I saw the massive fiscal irresponsibility and rampant greed, I refused to be part of it and gave up on the field. I still watch it. It hasn't changed.
The admirers of Apple's cult of personality forget how it was created: Jobs drove away those who didn't fit his whims. He had the first Mac designed around his choices for the Apple II that Woz over ruled. The very act of creating it was purposely divisive, with a skull and crossbones flag flying over the Mac building, and non-Mac people barred from entry except by invitation. Rather than complimentary lines, the Mac was intended to supplant the very successful and projected to be long-lived Apple II (16 bit version in production, 32 bit processor, machine and OS in design phase). After Woz got fed up and left*, Jobs shut down the Apple II line. At every step people who'd been loyal employees, customers, third party manufacturers or fans fell away -- literally by the millions. More than once, to a lesser but significant extent, severe and abrupt changes to the Mac line instigated repeat performances of the II exodus. "Love it or leave it" seemed to be the corporate motto.
Jobs' cantankerous ways with the remaining employees, manufacturers and fans drove away so many, including major players and stock holders, that he was taken out of the spotlight and replaced by John Scully. It took a decade for him to grow up enough to be given back the reins.
Those remaining fans view Jobs as charismatic. Ex-fans remember him as anti-charismatic, and view him that way still if they even bother to think about him at all.
I've recounted these and similar details before, and gotten modded down as flamebait and troll. I expect the same to happen now, despite the fact that while it may be in somewhat negative phrasing, it's accurate and verifiable in media archives and others' writings. In the spirit of full disclosure, I was an Apple II fan in the extreme, was senior/technical editor of an Apple II fan-zine (The Road Apple; the first computer media source published simultaneously in the US and USSR), and said much these same things back then. But I'm not the only one who said them. I'm just one of the very few who still bothers to recount the history that most have ceased to care about.
* Woz left Apple primarily due to a re-examination of his life following a private plane accident. However, his displeasure at the direction of things was no secret, nor was Jobs' efforts to marginalize him. Between those, had he not had the accident, he'd almost certainly have left anyway.
I've seen the same thing demonstrated on a flat surface using a paint shaker moving a weight at a 45 degree angle. It was in Popular Science in the 60s. Rather than angled bristles or what not, it used differential friction, but the principle is the same.
It will not work on a space elevator. The ribbon will have some degree of elasticity. The 'shaker' will induce waves into the ribbon. As it moves the period of oscillation in the ribbon will change and eventually find resonance with its period, and amplify itself to destruction.
It's not unheard of for an undergrad to come up with a good idea. I had two instances of such ideas getting taken to international conferences for presentation. But such instances are harder to find than hens' teeth (to find those, look behind their lips).
If you did come up with a patentable idea, and your university chose to use it, just because they got a chunk doesn't mean you'd get nothing. You'd know what was going on because it's an ethics violation that can cost someone their job, including tenure, to steal it outright and not give you credit (and a cut, if applicable). If that happened you could sue, and the publicity of that would cost them a lot more than the cut (and credit, which costs them nothing).
Openness is the best protection. If you think you have a good idea, show it off. Going public assures witnesses. But guess what? You're far more likely to be laughed at. Really. You don't know enough yet to know whether something is a good idea. If you think so, you're probably wrong. Maybe not, but probably. And on the off chance it is worth something, you're going to need help in learning what to do to develop it. And THAT is worth the cut they'd take.
> a new academic and professional discipline > known as "computational journalism."
Differing only in complexity but not principle from the same sort of search engine journalism that's resulted in decline of both accountability and accuracy of news over the past decade. Perhaps some investigative journalism into the lack of actual investigation into investigation is in order. "Hits" != veracity.
The Dine' (Navajo) and Dene' (northern Canada branch of Navajo) had been here 10,000 years before this occurred. Linguistic and archeological evidence supports a 20 to 22K year period of divergence in language post separation. The Hopi were also here and still are. They have written of the meeting between the Dine'/Dene' and themselves near the Bering land bridge (the Dine'/Dene' crossed it; the Hopi were already here). From the time of that meeting, the Najavo name for the Hopi is "Ancient Ones" or Anasazi. They still call the Hopi that, not that they share the Four Corners region. The Hopi/Anasazi have written evidence corroborated by earthen works, showing they've been here since before the last ice age. So we have 3 groups that were here before 12,900 years ago and still are. They were not wiped out. I have no doubt that the people who were at Clovis left, but I believe that no adequate effort has been made to determine what group they came from, and to what group they went. Such things get recorded in their histories. Unfortunately science is far more interested in dead pottery shards than in living words. They claim words can evolve and become mythology and so they discredit them even when there's adequate evidnce to support it. Yet they claim to be able to tell a story (ie. make one up) starting from abandon detritus and evidence of astronomical events.
If the Clovis were killed, why weren't the other groups near and far? More likely the Clovis did what was normal for them, and took the dying of the local region to be cause to move on once again. There is no conclusive evidence that the Clovis or Mississipppian or other "disappeared" groups actually ceased to exist. There is simply evidence that they were there followed by no evidence that they were there.
Far be it from the dirt diggers to actually stand up and talk to the descendants of the old ones and listen to their stories, and find out what happened. Of course the stories prove nothing. But they do give a far better framrwork for hypothesis since the stories often contain mention of physical structures, both man made and natural.
Slashdot Mirror
The "In Soviet Russia" joke has already been inserted, so I'll go on to the next step:
The technique described is independent of amplitude and frequency in that it is based on polarization. Circular (clockwise and counter clockwise) polarization was used in Soviet and early post-CCCP Russian satellite communications. I had an article from ~25 years ago that showed how to alter a US type vertical/horizontal polarization low noise amplifier on a satellite receiving dish to pick up clock/counter signals. (The trick was to insert a teflon plate at a 45 degree angle to the vert/horiz signal; I tried it, it picked up the signals but I couldn't decode them with a US commercial receiver). One may feel free to speculate on the history of Sweden vs. Russia/CCCP and this claim by Swedish scientists to have 'discovered' this technique. There's no reason why satellites couldn't have had both kinds of polarization on board, except that each required its own transceiver. Todays' larger birds could carry both and help alleviate the Clarke orbit traffic jam. The same concept can be applied to terrestrial equipment, and in fact could have been used for years.
The Economist has its annual Innovation Awards (since 2002). Besides listing the several categories it gives selection criteria. What's not directly applicable to answering the question should at least serve as a parallel example. The recipients are to be individuals rather than corporate, even though the innovation from those individuals may result in a corporate entity.
http://www.economist.com/science/tq/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10676339
A court has determined there is no causal link between vaccinations and MMR.
In other news the National Institutes of Health has decided that when both civil and criminal charges are simultaneously brought on a case, if one is in federal court and the other in a state court, it does not constitute double jeapordy.
That would be relevant irony (OK, it's sarcasm) if the title (as in the original) were accurate. It's not. The court was a compensation court. They did not rule there was no causal link, they ruled that one could not be shown conclusively enough to award compensation.
The statements made by Paul Aiken as quoted are factual. The statements made in the remainder of the summary are unsupported assertions and demonstrably false and/or irrelevant.
Audio rights and other derivations are clearly defined under copyright law. Enunciation is irrelevant. Reading something out loud is pretty much the definition of performance, and if done for an unspecified number greater than 1, is public in aggregate (multiple single readings) if not immediate fact (multiple person audience). A performance is a copy, albeit one with no long term existence. The definition of copy does not specify duration of existence.
The fact that various situations exist which seem to contradict Aiken's assertions do not invalidate his assertions, they merely are manifestations of present day technology colliding (yet again) with yesterday's definitions which couldn't presage the technology. Resolving such issues are a function of the same law. If already built into the definitions, ie. "public", "performance" "derivative" etc., the law stands. When the law doesn't cover, the courts serve to redefine. In this case the law at least nearly, if not completely, serves as it stands.
Someone should ask the FAA how they managed to get an entire network (see: article title) onto one server (see: article summary). Was it a server, or a single work station? A server can dispense data, but dispensing data does not make it a server. Servers tend to act as the dispenser for data bearing machines, no?
What's the matter, wouldn't an article that said "One FAA Computer Hacked - Employee Data Stolen" be sexy enough? Probably not. The title as is misleads people into wondering if the ATC network was implicated.
Don't get me wrong, I have all respect and admiration for St. Woz. But this is a guy who converted his basement to a cave, complete with stalactites and stalagmites, and when hunkered down amidst them looked every bit a Neanderthal in t-shirt and jeans. He doesn't look much different now than he did in the picture in TIME the above came from. I hope they intend for his appearance to be comic relief because that's what I think it'll end up being.
...would such a billboard produce if it were confronted with a few dozen people wearing Richard Nixon masks? Better, wearing some rubber butts over their faces. Or even just shining mirrors.
I can hardly wait to participate in a beta test.
I use both open and proprietary software in neuroscience, including more generalized signal analysis and statistics including some far left field non-linear non-integer stuff. Proprietary is far more likely to have the advantage of having a history of validation. If you can address validity yourself, use OSS. If you haven't approached calculation validity yet, look into it before you decide whether to attempt it. Statisticians and experimental mathematicians (yes, there are such beasts) relish arguing about the finer points of calculative validity to a point that makes engineers' arguments about the relative merits and draw backs of various filters sound like arguments over the rules of whack-a-mole. Proprietary software generates income which can be used to pay the long, laborious process of validation.
Error in principle vs. calculation have been central to the philosophy of science and the origin of statistics for centuries. The only things new here is applying it to LHC data and having the balls to think that they hype so generated for mask the fact that there's nothing new here.
Those unable to produce useful material w.r.t LHC have taken to producing such as this diatribe. Corrtadicting their own assertions they fail to note major failings in the papers containing warnings, such as the recent one that such "mini-black-holes" could persist for seconds of minutes. Calculations repeated by dozens independently have shown that (1) "mini" is misleading -- the size is far less than that of an electron, and (2) at that size it can circle a nucleus for years before having a 50% chance of running into a particle which it can absorb and so grow. Of course (3) (per Hawking) says it can't last near long enough for that to happen.
These flag wavers fall prey to what they accuse of in others and fail to note the long history they subsume unacknowledged or that calculations done without that errors they claim might possibly occur in some instances but don't claim actually did in any particular instance.
I'm saddened this made it this high in the pubs. My undergrads -- psychology, not physics -- have to absorb and report on alpha and beta type errors based on both theory and data analysis. I can only hope this pub made it this far based on the FUD factor and not because such calculations usually are ignored by those in this field, making this actually noteworthy.
The object in TFA poses no significant danger. More accurately, "posed". It's closest approach (691,200 km) was the day before the article.
No presently tracked NEO poses more than about a 0.13% cumulative impact probability for all its projected passes over the next century (2000 SG344).
But as more objects are located, and their individual cumulative impact probabilities are calculated, they're compiled into pages such as at http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/risk/ . These objects don't care about each other and their impact risks are independent. Taken together, they sum. Individual target estimates don't change, but the total impact risk does.
At what point does the total cumulative impact risk (copy both recent and non-recent tables, paste into a spreadsheet, and sum down all impact probabilities in column D) become significant enough to merit serious attention?
2009 BD made the press but 2009 BE didn't. The latter was only 110,000 km farther, but 2.5 times the diameter, and passed by 2 days before 2009 BD. Recent and upcoming flybys are listed at http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/ca/
I suspect Homeland Gestapory won't much care about this guy's model except for the bad press he generated. Doing something bad? No big deal. Making the gooberment look bad? Big deal.
Want to give them more signal with their noise? Here's a good start:
http://www.atomicmuseum.com/store/enterquantity.cfm?ItemID=255&Category=179
Historic Atomic Bomb Blueprints
Set of five (5) individual blueprints of early atomic weapons. These were copied from the original government drawings on to bright white paper, and are bound for you in a "contractor's pack."
Each page measures 16" X 22". Included are dimensional drawings of Fat Man (2), Little Boy (1), and the Mark IV Missile (2).
Set of Five $15.00
I highly recommend "The Holographic Universe" by Michael Talbot, which talks a great deal on the topic. It takes the work of physicist David Bohm and neurophysiologist Karl Pribram, and goes on to explain how the holographic model can easily explain paranormal and psychic phenomenon. I've studied mysticism, spirituality, physics, and neuroscience for ten years, and the holographic model fits perfectly with what people experience during waking life, in dreams, at near-death, and during other mystical experiences.
I realize that most Slashdot readers will look upon this with skepticism, but after all these years of research and study, I can honestly say that if this isn't the way the universe works, it's the way it should work.
I highly recommend anyone suggesting a derivative work at least make an attempt to understand the originals to find out if the comparison is valid. Pribram's work with Bohm (continued with Bohm's partner, Basil Hiley, as well as Kunio Yasue and Mari Jibu) says nothing like the claims made by those who conduct journalism via buzzwords (Talbot being only one of many) who count on their readers being as clueless as themselves.
To begin with the title of Pribram's major work on the subject is "Brain and Perception: Holonomy and Structure in Figural Processing". The definition of holonomy from Wikipedia says "In differential geometry, the holonomy of a connection on a smooth manifold is a general geometrical consequence of the curvature of the connection measuring the extent to which parallel transport around closed loops fails to preserve the geometrical data being transported." Of course if one takes the supporting evidence from the book and inserts "holography" instead, one is free to make all kinds of wild, unsupportable assertions, banking on appeal to an authority they can't understand. And if one is unlucky enough to make such an assertion in Karl's presence they'll be treated to a top-of-the-lungs tirade about the sin of stealing half an idea, muddying it up with imaginary material, and trying to credit someone with 60 years of serious work in the field with the utter bullshit.
Pribram does make an analogy between his proposed theory of inter-neuronal computation via interference of the varying electrical fields surrounding dendrites, and holography as an interference pattern, because both can contain far more information than non-interference based phenomena. He also states that one can use Denis Gabor's maths describing holography to describe this neural processing model (in principle only; computing billions of simultaneous dynamic interference patterns each with components progressing at a range of speeds covering several orders of magnitude is beyond foreseeable computational ability). But analogy is not equivalence, and being able to use a single mathematical system to describe two things does not make them similar any more than writing about both of them in the same language does.
If anyone is interested in Pribram's descriptions, his book is ISBN 0898599954, and you'll only need the first 3/4 of it. If you want to actually understand it, you'll need the last quarter -- the appendices -- which contains the combined efforts of Pribram, Bohm, Hiley, Yasue and Jibu. If anyone does manage to understand it from the appendices, please do let me know. If took me 2 years studying under Pribram to grasp it, including sitting in on a workshop with him, Hiley, Yasue and Jibu as they worked up update and expand on the material in the appendices.
If what Talbot says "fits perfectly with what people experience during waking life, in dreams, at near-death, and during other mystical experiences" but is as wrong as a football bat, I submit one is not "studying" mysticism. spirituality, physics and neuroscience -- rather one is simply believing things, which can be done with science as well as non-science, and when done with science is a far more egregious error.
There are two companies that refuse to die despite the fact the the original concept failed miserably almost 50 years ago. Trisenxâ(TM)s scent dome and DigiScents' iSmell both have been promising to produce "smell-o-vision" for computers for years. I'm not sure whether they're actually this clueless themselves, or whether they're hoping to latch onto an even more clueless venture capitalist. Either way, here's hoping those involved suffer a Blinding Glimpse of the Obvious and let the poor crippled idea die.
Just because a fun game has X learning curve doesn't mean games with X learning curve are fun. The learning curve maintains attention, necessary for the game to be fun. The same learning curve in another situation may maintain attention to something droll. And something fun may have no learning curve at all. I suggest you're not looking at fun, you're looking at ability to maintain engagement. I also suggest fun does not have a single definition, or else everyone would play the same game.
If someone wants you to take a personality test, ask for their credentials. Virtually no one who knows enough about such testing would use it for employment testing. If you ask, they won't hire you, and you should be glad. You should insist on that person's name anyway and turn it and the company into the APA.
The main finding of personality psychology is that there are 5 factors to personality. If the person giving the test can tell you what they are, which ones are relevant for the position, and if they'll notify you of your score compared to their hiring criteria, take it. Otherwise, run away. Sure they'll hire someone else. Let that poor bastard suffer under pseudo-scientific adminstraional amateurs. You'll be glad you didn't.
It'd ADD, not ADHD. ADD has +H (with hyperactivity) and -H (without) variants.
Neurofeedback, like any other form of biofeedback, is a form of operant conditioning. It does not rewire anything beyond the obvious changes in strengths of synaptic associations within Hebbian cellular assemblies.
There's a fatal flaw in using games-like neurofeedback software to treat ADD. If you really have it (as about 5% of those diagnosed do) then you can't sit still to play. Being able to play shows you don't have it.
Many people have an attentional strategy that's been forced into inclusion in the diagnosis, who do not have a disorder, in that it does not cause significant life problems. Having teachers complain that certain children do not adhere to the enforced learning reinforcement processes is a teacher's problem. Teachers who insist on doping kids for their learning style should be investigated for child abuse, as should parents who fall for having an educator diagnose and prescribe.
"When Children Don't Learn", Dianne McGuinness, chapters 9 and 10, sets forth the single most accurate history of ADD and the most damning evidence against those who seek to usurp psychiatric medicine for their own ends. When the APA was devising the DSM IV, they took the unheard of step of asking Dr. McGuinness to write an 'opposing opinion' addendum to the ADD entry.
There's major flaw in the idea of using neurofeedback. if it can be used to treat in a matter of weeks in the few who really have it and would benefit, then just living with it over a matter of years one would happen upon instances which offered similar opportunities for practicing overcoming, and they should train themselves right out of it. My research turned up individuals who still exhibited some outward symptoms but under go-nogo-reaction time testing showed fewer errors than non-ADD people and showed reaction times to rival fighter pilots.
Through my research I turned up many times what I've come to believe is the one best treatment for ADD: Montessori schools. It does nothing to inhibit the beneficial aspects of the common attentional condition that's been forced under the ADD umbrella. For that matter neurofeedback does nothing to inhibit those either, so at least it does no harm. For that matter, anyone who gets neurofeedback is less likely to take addictive and brain altering drugs for years, and that's a good thing too.
I cannot find a reason why TFA is noteworthy. It is one of many review articles on the subject produced over the last two decades. It is just like the others in that it comes to the same conclusions yet fails to address the internal logical flaw of 'those that can don't need it' or the external evidence that those that it would change would change anyway.
The Apollo sites have all been (re)mapped many times. The sites for Apollo 11, 14 and 15 (sites for Lunar Laser Ranging Experiment reflectors) have been mapped to an accuracy of a few meters, from Earth (a distance of 400,000 km), and that's been going on since Apollos were still going there. Since Chandrayaan is only 100 km from the moon, its ability to replicate the oft replicated deserves a resounding "I should hope so". Now when the Terrain (you use aposelene and periselene for orbital components but stick with 'terrain' for the surface?) Mapping Camera and Lunar Laser Ranging Instrument are working together and producing 3D surface maps with 5 to 10 m voxels, then you'll have something worth reporting. A hint: if the story requires a conspiracy theory or sci-fi reference to carry it, it's either not worth being carried or being carried in the wrong place; if it doesn't require them, it makes as much sense to insert this week's test match scores. Stop it. You're not required to submit to the lowest common /. denominator.
The idea was never meant to be accurate, science, or anything similar. It was meant to be a PR balloon sent up to distract people in the very least, and if it was successfully pushed past the sheeple, a way for companies to make it look like they cared and/or were trying to do something. "Companies" should be the hint. Those animals don't do anything that doesn't make them money unless forced to, and the administration that floated the idea has done everything it could at every turn to make sure the only thing they were forced to do was make more money.
"In short, the Academies are asking why the nation has a civil space program"
Asking what the future short and long term goals should be assumes the answer to be "to accomplish the goals chosen as most desirable" and assumes there will be such goals set. The last item ("how can") even more clearly assumes it exists to accomplish them and seeks to examine by what means it can best do so.
The inclusion of "civil" is misleading because it's superfluous. They are asking about the program administered by NASA, but they are not asking about it comparison to any alternative. The recent news about Obama's transition team questioning whether to cancel the Ares program in favor of using "military" (read: already developed, tested and available, regardless of original customer; that story was badly flawed too) has nothing to do with the Academies' efforts. The latter had to have been in effect well before Obama's people raised the question.
[from the site]:
The committee will, inter alia â"
â review the history of U.S. space policy and propose a broad policy basis for 21st century leadership in space;
â examine the balance and interfaces between fundamental scientific research in space, human space exploration, robotic exploration, earth observations, and applications of space technology and civil space systems for societal benefits;
â assess the role that commercial space companies could play in fulfilling national space goals and the role of the government in facilitating the emergence and success of commercial space companies; and
â highlight options for government attention to address and potentially resolve problems that might prevent achieving key national goals.
Illustrative examples of potential topics for the committee's consideration in the study include the following:
â Near-term and long-term human spaceflight program goals and options for fulfilling them;
â Utility of satellites in understanding global climate change and in advancing geophysical sciences (physical oceanography, solid earth sciences, etc.), and roles and responsibilities of government agencies in such Earth observations;
â Potential opportunities in various space sciences, including planetary missions, space-based astronomy, astrophysical observations, extraterrestrial life searches, assessing planetary bodies in other solar systems, etc.
â Reconciling total program content and total program resources for the civil space program;
â Strength of the U.S. space industrial base;
â Developing advanced technologies for applications in remote sensing and other areas;
â Access to space, availability and cost of U.S. launch vehicles, use of foreign launch capabilities; and
â International cooperation and competition in space programs.
National security space issues will not be a main focus of the report, but may be addressed to the extent that they interact with or impact the civil space program.
[and]
The committee invites you to comment on this study by filling out a questionnaire. Questions you might consider when framing your input to the committee:
â What should be the rationale and goals for the civil space program?
â How can the civil space program address key national issues?
No way will money pumped into "health IT" result in significant jobs increase. Money thrown into this ring will get snapped up and swallowed whole by the medical industry. We're talking about an industry here that grew to be larger than the previously decried defense industry including all governmental support, without producing any significant increases in quality of care or patient satisfaction, or differences in these measures as compared to other countries. The IT infrastructure used has grown more than patient care. During its explosive growth, millions of jobs were created. At its (sustained) peak, every patient supported 4.5 employees through the charges which increased well more than an order of magnitude. But the growth has plateued so that the companies involved can continue to increase profits and stock prices without losing capital to supporting themselves.
Consider this an expert opinion. I was trained to be one of 'them'. I got an MHA (master's in health care administration, an MBA for the health care industry). I specialized in medical informatics and telemedicine. When I saw the massive fiscal irresponsibility and rampant greed, I refused to be part of it and gave up on the field. I still watch it. It hasn't changed.
The admirers of Apple's cult of personality forget how it was created: Jobs drove away those who didn't fit his whims. He had the first Mac designed around his choices for the Apple II that Woz over ruled. The very act of creating it was purposely divisive, with a skull and crossbones flag flying over the Mac building, and non-Mac people barred from entry except by invitation. Rather than complimentary lines, the Mac was intended to supplant the very successful and projected to be long-lived Apple II (16 bit version in production, 32 bit processor, machine and OS in design phase). After Woz got fed up and left*, Jobs shut down the Apple II line. At every step people who'd been loyal employees, customers, third party manufacturers or fans fell away -- literally by the millions. More than once, to a lesser but significant extent, severe and abrupt changes to the Mac line instigated repeat performances of the II exodus. "Love it or leave it" seemed to be the corporate motto.
Jobs' cantankerous ways with the remaining employees, manufacturers and fans drove away so many, including major players and stock holders, that he was taken out of the spotlight and replaced by John Scully. It took a decade for him to grow up enough to be given back the reins.
Those remaining fans view Jobs as charismatic. Ex-fans remember him as anti-charismatic, and view him that way still if they even bother to think about him at all.
I've recounted these and similar details before, and gotten modded down as flamebait and troll. I expect the same to happen now, despite the fact that while it may be in somewhat negative phrasing, it's accurate and verifiable in media archives and others' writings. In the spirit of full disclosure, I was an Apple II fan in the extreme, was senior/technical editor of an Apple II fan-zine (The Road Apple; the first computer media source published simultaneously in the US and USSR), and said much these same things back then. But I'm not the only one who said them. I'm just one of the very few who still bothers to recount the history that most have ceased to care about.
* Woz left Apple primarily due to a re-examination of his life following a private plane accident. However, his displeasure at the direction of things was no secret, nor was Jobs' efforts to marginalize him. Between those, had he not had the accident, he'd almost certainly have left anyway.
I've seen the same thing demonstrated on a flat surface using a paint shaker moving a weight at a 45 degree angle. It was in Popular Science in the 60s. Rather than angled bristles or what not, it used differential friction, but the principle is the same.
It will not work on a space elevator. The ribbon will have some degree of elasticity. The 'shaker' will induce waves into the ribbon. As it moves the period of oscillation in the ribbon will change and eventually find resonance with its period, and amplify itself to destruction.
It's not unheard of for an undergrad to come up with a good idea. I had two instances of such ideas getting taken to international conferences for presentation. But such instances are harder to find than hens' teeth (to find those, look behind their lips).
If you did come up with a patentable idea, and your university chose to use it, just because they got a chunk doesn't mean you'd get nothing. You'd know what was going on because it's an ethics violation that can cost someone their job, including tenure, to steal it outright and not give you credit (and a cut, if applicable). If that happened you could sue, and the publicity of that would cost them a lot more than the cut (and credit, which costs them nothing).
Openness is the best protection. If you think you have a good idea, show it off. Going public assures witnesses. But guess what? You're far more likely to be laughed at. Really. You don't know enough yet to know whether something is a good idea. If you think so, you're probably wrong. Maybe not, but probably. And on the off chance it is worth something, you're going to need help in learning what to do to develop it. And THAT is worth the cut they'd take.
> a new academic and professional discipline
> known as "computational journalism."
Differing only in complexity but not principle from the same sort of search engine journalism that's resulted in decline of both accountability and accuracy of news over the past decade. Perhaps some investigative journalism into the lack of actual investigation into investigation is in order. "Hits" != veracity.
The Dine' (Navajo) and Dene' (northern Canada branch of Navajo) had been here 10,000 years before this occurred. Linguistic and archeological evidence supports a 20 to 22K year period of divergence in language post separation. The Hopi were also here and still are. They have written of the meeting between the Dine'/Dene' and themselves near the Bering land bridge (the Dine'/Dene' crossed it; the Hopi were already here). From the time of that meeting, the Najavo name for the Hopi is "Ancient Ones" or Anasazi. They still call the Hopi that, not that they share the Four Corners region. The Hopi/Anasazi have written evidence corroborated by earthen works, showing they've been here since before the last ice age. So we have 3 groups that were here before 12,900 years ago and still are. They were not wiped out. I have no doubt that the people who were at Clovis left, but I believe that no adequate effort has been made to determine what group they came from, and to what group they went. Such things get recorded in their histories. Unfortunately science is far more interested in dead pottery shards than in living words. They claim words can evolve and become mythology and so they discredit them even when there's adequate evidnce to support it. Yet they claim to be able to tell a story (ie. make one up) starting from abandon detritus and evidence of astronomical events.
If the Clovis were killed, why weren't the other groups near and far? More likely the Clovis did what was normal for them, and took the dying of the local region to be cause to move on once again. There is no conclusive evidence that the Clovis or Mississipppian or other "disappeared" groups actually ceased to exist. There is simply evidence that they were there followed by no evidence that they were there.
Far be it from the dirt diggers to actually stand up and talk to the descendants of the old ones and listen to their stories, and find out what happened. Of course the stories prove nothing. But they do give a far better framrwork for hypothesis since the stories often contain mention of physical structures, both man made and natural.