1. Listen to the music live as it's being recorded. 2. Encode the recording different ways. 2a. Be fair. If you use FLAC, use 320K MP3, not 128K. 3. Listen to the recordings without knowing which recording is which encoding. 4. Guess right which is which.
To be rigorous, the encoder, the person selecting the playback and the listener should all be different, and the playback person should not know which encoding is which either.
Almost everyone will fail blind comparison as long as the recording qualities are good enough. A good MP3 is good enough quality to fool them. A VERY few people will be able to tell the difference. They will almost certainly have very good extremely high frequency hearing (20 to 22 kHz) and if they aren't very accomplished musicians and/or recording engineers, they should be. Most people don't even have good xHF hearing. If you can't tell there's a TV with no audio output running somewhere else in the house, you don't. If you can tell because it plugs up your ears, you do. If you think the TV is screaming, you have excellent xHF. Up in that hertz-stratosphere is where the difference is.
The article was written by a fairly amateurish journalist when it comes to selective quoting, editing and juxtaposition of assertions with authorities. I would trust him if he knew what he was talking about. He clearly started with a conclusion and set out to support it. He failed.
Get serious... "preferred by Grateful Dead fans"? What kind of journalist would try to make that assertion seriously as evidence of authority? A bad one from the San Francisco Chronicle. Read the by line rather than fault SeattlePI.
Immediately following the news release regarding the Mars rovers' longetivity, JPL announced its intention to replicate the rover design as an energy efficient and highly durable automobile. As a result, American, Japanese, American, that one German outfit, and American automobile manufacturers forced the entertainment branch of U-global-S business, the US government, to close JPL, claiming violations of monopoly, unintellectual property, lack of unrenewable energy usage, and for no good reason other than they can, Homeland Insecurity.
The unemployed JPL engineers and scientists then gathered their equipment at the Florida shore and launched a rover-based underwater probe to locate the cause of the Bermuda Triangle. Unfortunately the mission was a failure, as the Bermuda Triangle seems to have disappeared into the Bermuda Triangle. This important failure was discovered by the scientists who noted the rover's failure to fail to return. Hopefully the ex-JPL crew will turn their expertise to neuroscience in order to discover precisely why the previous sentence makes my brain hurt.
Finally, a public service announcement: Friends don't let friends post to/. after watching The Best of Spike Milligan.
No it won't. It's trivial at best, especially since the answer came with the question: more good stuff. It's an obvious choice that makes the question alone lame, and with the answer attached ridiculous.
If the universe had anything to say on that matter, that's what it'd be. The universe doesn't care. Nor does the planet, or nature. We anthromorphize these things because we care so much that we want everyone and everything else to care too.
If we stayed and altered the ecosphere to the point that we all died, it wouldn't ruin the planet, or even nature. These would continue. It's only us that would be gone and a number of species we wiped out with us. Nature has survived a sudden 95% reduction in species, and could probably survive more, since it started from none at least once. Nature would almost certainly survive, but either way it wouldn't "notice" anything.
All this anthromorphic crap is worse than useless, it's a load of bad excuses that will fail as real reasons necessary to accomplish the job. We should have the balls to admit we need to expand into space because it's our nature as a species. Even the presently sedentary, nominally indigenous populations got where they are due to exploration and expansion. Even some of those have retained the spirit of expansion and looked inwards, and in that way remained viable. Those that failed to explore in any sense became stagnant and simply existed rather than thrive, or else they died. Such is their right, though those whose continued existence without exploration is not the easy life some suggest. I doubt it's a coincidence that to the extent that cultures incorporate anthromorphizing of nature into their belief systems, they do not continue in their development but rather become entrenched at that stage.
My personal belief system includes a human spirit, the emotional and cognitive drive to survive as individuals and a species, and the result of attempting these things which provide us with the notions like courage, tenacity and a sense of worth. We provide ourselves with these and should own that fact rather than try to imagine inanimate or non-conscious constructs try to add to it. Once owned, we can continue under our own power, which has always been the only power that's ever driven us onward. Nature has given us many occasions to use that power, but we have either responded and explored, expanded and thrived, or remained and died.
Have the courage to own your future like your ancestors did. Have the courage to change your belief system as necessary to provide for greater accomplishment like your ancestors did. Their courage gave us the ability to have even more, and we can do the same for our descendants. My ancestors crossed glaciers, deserts and oceans to give me my home and they changed their belief systems because of it. I accept that as my heritage. Some of them changed their belief system to anthromorphize nature, to their detriment. I respect their right to that belief system but reject it for myself, and retain the ability to change mine as they once did to continue growing personally. I believe the same should be true for those of any culture who should choose it as a means to grow, because that provides the opportunity for the same growth to happen to the species. Anthromorphize only that which is anthromorphic. Change into human only that which through which humans change. It is only ourselves.
If you should choose to stay, fine. Nobody will force you. "And the meek shall inherit the earth. The rest of us will go to the stars." Yet still nature, the planet and the universe will neither know nor care. Only we will, and we're the only ones to which it will matter.
Since when did a corporation's behaviors earn them a monolithic opinion? MS does some things well. It does some things that deserve ridicule. Some of those happen to coincide, but that's not germane to the argument. The fact remains that they do many things, and those things each earn them what they deserve for those specific activities.
Precisely what should we expect from MS if we continue to ridicule it? Precisely the same that we've gotten so far. They haven't done anything significant because of ridicule. There have been some employees that responded to it, but that's not what drives corporate policy. They have actively campaigned against Linux, but only because it captures market share, not because of ridicule.
Try an analogy on for size: Microsoft is to George W. Bush what Linux is to Jon Stewart. What has Bush done differently as a result of Stewart's ridicule? Nothing significant. He may have alluded to (a polite way to say stole from) some of Stewart's material for self-deprecating humor at the annual press dinner. That indicates he noticed it. It does not indicate it caused him to change his behavior towards Stewart or anything else. On the other hand, Stewart has made quite a name for himself for ridiculing Bush (and his entire administration). What does Linux as a community have to gain from ridiculing Microsoft? For one, rightly calling them on improper behavior. For another, increasing their own visibility. Again, some of these overlap, and again, that doesn't matter. What does Linux et al have to lose by ridiculing Microsoft? The respect of people whom they wouldn't want as part of the Linux community anyway. And when those people make their opinion known publicly Linux again stands to gain from the publicity that will attract more of the kind of people they do want to be part of the community.
Linux will never unseat Microsoft. It is an alternative. To make it clear that's it's an alternative it should differentiate itself. Ridicule is a viable means. But when used it should be true, and there are ample instances of this. It's not the only means, and others should be used when they're more effective.
The worst case scenario is that MS does pay attention to the ridicule, alters its corporate policy, gets its shit together and produces products that make Linux no longer a viable alternative. Linux would get owned. They have the resources. But figure the odds.
I will give Microsoft their due. They will determine whether their due is good or bad. And I will give it according to its individual actions and products. I will not offer them a monolithic opinion because they do not act in a monolithic manner. More than anything else, I will never hold an opinion because I'm told to. That's no longer an opinion, it's dogma, and that's the last thing I'd ever hope to see from the Linux community.
Finally, because I can't be so pedantic for so long without breaking, Microsoft is poopy heads.
That's the act of analyzing collections of studies and their results on a particular subject. Many such meta-analyses have been done on various kinds of climatological studies. They all come to the conclusion that global warming is happening. These include papers that show the opposite. No results from science are absolute. They are statistically acceptable (or not). Just as we accept a certain probability of a false result from a single study, we expect a percentage of studies to come to erroneous conclusions because of the statistical probability involved. And when the vast majority say one thing, and very few say something different, we go with the vast majority. If one paper from one particular kind of study switches sides, it makes very little difference to the overall conclusions. In fact, since there's already one major error in the study, there's a chance there's more, and it should be given less weight in meta-analysis no matter what it says.
About 1970, I was advised not to take any more math courses because my grades were too low and they'd prevent me from getting into college (where I should study something that requires no math).
I took some math courses in college, but studied it a lot more on my own. By the time I finished my studies I'd developed multidimensional statistics based on continuous wavelet transform. I take pleasure in proving the counselor wrong who told me not to take math, but I take even more pleasure in knowing he doesn't have anywhere near the mathematical knowledge to understand how much more I know than he does.
Would you go to a doctor to find out what that noise is under your car's hood? Why listen to someone from outside of a field as to whether you should pursue it? Had a mathematician told me, I'd have been more likely to listen. But knowing me, not enough to do what he said.
I don't recall where I first heard it, but "I learned more in spite of school than I did from it."
To speak to some mistaken assumptions used as analogy:
This is not a coincidence any more than the spacing of the planets. Those are spaced according to minima in gravitational disturbance from other planets. They 'fell' into these minima after wobbling around in other orbits.
This has nothing to do with the KT event or other impact or volcanic events, Subtract those from the history of extinction events and the 62 million year becomes evident.
That said, the predicted influx of cosmic rays would have two primary results, the first a hypothetical events untestable at the present level of incoming cosmic rays, the other one having two implications.
The first result would be an increase in cloud cover. Cosmic rays were hypothesized to contribute to cloud formation. Measurements have since shown that this is not occurring, or at least not enough to be statistically significantly detectable among the other causes of cloud cover. Lab experiments show it can happen. It remains to be seen how much this would occur given the amount of cosmic rays expected from the galactic bow shock.
The second would be a large increase in changes in DNA. This would cause many mutations, including cancers. Many species would succumb to the changes and die off. The few of such species to survive might be too isolated from each other to mate and produce offspring also resistant. The second implication that among the DNA changes, while most would be harmful, some would produce chancges that would benefit the organism/species, and increase its survivability. This is why mosy species die off, but a few survive. Also, among those that survive, there is an explosion of diversity, possibly due to the increased survivability.
We've got about 12 million dollars to the peak of the effect. We don't know when it would start, or increase enough to start having an effect.
Patent music made by coutning how many petals are left on a flower after removing one, chanting for each in turn "she loves me not, she loves me".
The first attempt at this was done by a classically trained opera signer turned radio astronomer. She was on Letterman many years ago.
Since the DNA sequences are owned by the people, via the government, they cannot patent or copyright the sequence. They can, however, copyright the collected works based on any sort of production method they wish. But patent it? Not bloddy likely, given prior art that does the same regardless of the source of the numbers.
We do get along. People on all sides of the arguments are doing it for the same reason, to get the most bang for the buck. No matter what program we champion in planning and design, everyone stands and cheers when the selected program flies.
OK, maybe there's a few like Bob Park (http://www.bobpark.org/) that rants on and on about robots even when people fly, but he's not a space nerd, he's a politics nerd who thinks too much that the space program applies to him personally. Other than those few, the idea what we bicker bitterly is once again a media construct -- they have to make news where none exists to fill the white space. That's why when they need filler, they go to those few, if anyone at all.
> Ouch. On the groanometer, your title registers a solid 7/10. It would be better if "writes the dust" was a meaningful expression, but as is it's too much of a stretch.
Well, it'd be more meaningful if one read TFA and found out his thesis was on observations of the zodiacal dust. But from now on the groaners stay in the article, not in the headline.
> Take the atom bomb as an example. Once you know its possible to build one you are halfway there.
I bought the plans for Fat Man and Little Boy from the National Atomic Museum (http://www.atomicmuseum.com/). I understand the design. Even if I could do the metal work, I'd have to get the HE for the trigger and work that. Then I'd need either a batch of U235 or Pu239, and I'd have to put it together without blowing myself up with HE or blowing up a county if I did manage to put the pieces together. Something tells me that knowing it's possible to build it doesn't put me quite half way there.
Yeah, I know, you were probably speaking rhetorically. But I don't know that language. I've never even been to Rhetoria.
Actually the point is that the public having access to plans for the Saturn isn't an issue. Nobody would want to try to build one. Unless you happen to be a major aerospace contractor and NASA says they'll fill your plate to develop it all over again. Then you wouldn't want people knowing just how much work you did as opposed to how much you copied from grandpa's work, so you could charge for it all over again.
... the same Saturn V that they said they couldn't build again even if they wanted to because the plans were lost? At least they were "in a cellar, with the light broken, behind a door marked 'Beware Of The Tigers'" when John Lewis went looking for them while researching for "Mining The Sky". After the book came out the NASA inspector general's office decided that sounded too sToOpId and said they were in fact in storage.
I've no doubt they'd destroy the lot of it. Look what the US made Canada do about the Avro Arrow when they wanted Canada to buy the BOMARC instead of sell great jets. This is what happens when corporate welfare reaches into the billions of dollars. NASA has to feed the hand that, um, that they feed.
Nothing for it but to buy as many of the data sets from that private site as possible, and if they make him shut down, keep sending them out to as many people and places as possible. It wouldn't even be copyright violation, because the plans weren't his. They belong to the people of the US, since they, via their whole owned subsidiaries NASA and the US government, paid for them.
We're supposed to have a law that says what's copyrighted by the government goes to the public. Everything we were doing at NIH came under that, and full text of all the research was to be made available for free through PubMed. These plans would fall under the same law.
I wonder what'll happen when they try to make the National Association of Rocketry stop selling the blueprints (http://www.nar.org/NARTS/NARTScatalog.pdf). The ATFE, waving the PATRIOT act came and tried to shove new laws down our throats, and so far we (with our sister organization Tripoli Rocketry Association) have held them off in federal court. Not too shabby for a bunch of old farts that can't give up their childhood hobby and have taken it to some truly awesome proportions. We don't take kindly to the government telling us to stop doing what we know good and well we have a right to do. Comes from working successfully with some of the most nit picky government agencies through the years. And this is just about the Saturn. We sell blueprints for some weapon system missiles. If they don't raise a stick about those, but do about the Saturn, you'll know this is about protecting their contract-children.
I fully expect them to try to push through paying the aerospace companies to develop what they developed 40 years ago. I expect them to announce building their new lifters based on the Saturn designs.
Another One Writes The Dust Friday July 13, @02:52PM Rejected
Given the subject of his thesis, my title was better.
That aside, I'm proud to share space with Dr. May on the first page of the Annals of Improbable Research's Luxurious Flowing Hair Club for Scientists (http://www.improb.com/projects/hair/hair-club001. html). I look forward to his entry being updated with "Ph.D".
the 8 ball of the masses. Religion may be the opiate, but Fox News combines the cocaine of emotionally charged "reports" with the mind numbing heroin of constant bombardment, and self-inducing insistence that the user continue using. I quit watching them when the 14 year old stole a Cessna and ran it into a Florida building, and they used a graphic of a 747 as seen from just below the belly, like it was about to fall on you, in a fit of 9/11 fear mongering.
Recall the Daily Show commercial when Jon Stewart claims that 30% of people get their news from The Daily Show and then yells "DON'T DO THAT. WE MAKE IT UP."? I want to yell back "WE KNOW THAT. SO DO THEY. YOURS IS BETTER."
Cheap, disposable, puncture resistant gloves for short term handling of biohazardous materials, particularly used syringe needles. Those would better protect health care workers from things like hepatitis C. Latex protects against the virus, but needles go right through it. Hep C treatment is painful, nauseating, fatiguing, causes depression and rage outbursts, makes your hair fall out, is very expensive (alpha interferon + ribavirin; around US$10,000: http://www.hepnet.com/hepc/DDW99/HCVSGP/wong.html) and is depressingly ineffective against the primary genome of that virus that's found in the US. Since hep C usually has few symptoms if any outwardly until very advanced, infected health care workers can spread the disease unknowingly. One layer of this with latex coating would save some lives, not to mention a lot of money for treatment. That savings would make up for the development costs.
> It's possible that it could be impregnated with some sort of resin, making it more of a carbon fiber, just a ton stronger .
That's the usual practice for making composites for structures and vehicles. Epoxy is the resin of choice. Using epoxy with this material as opposed to woven carbon material will result in very little weight difference, but if this stuff will be that much cheaper, great. Here's my source for making rocket parts; check the prices per yard: http://www.aerosleeves.com/Carbon_Fiber_Biaxial_Sl eeving_p/cf-slv.htm There's also a recurring shortage andd thus price fluctuations due to supply problems with the raw fiber. A new material with roughly the same characteristics but without the supply problems would be very nice too.
Epoxy would also make them fairly water resistant after curing. Topping that with acrylic completes that job and makes for a pretty finish too. That doesn't solve the manufacturing problem. I hope they come up with a solution (har...) that's not an environment unfriendly solvent.
> No offense but those other posters are probably correct. Usually when an accident like this happens, it's a preventable cause. Keep in mind that people have handled N2O for a long time (someone here said about a century), and the Scaled Composites crew had done this before (numerous times with Spaceship One). It's not like sitting in an experimental craft that has flown maybe a few times. You can do this pretty safely.
1. It's always preventable in retrospect, and many times that's the only way it's found. It's definitely the only way it's found the first time for a given set of circumstances.
2. You cannot handle the amount of NO2 at the pressures they were safely. Those amounts and those pressures are dangerous. You can handle it successfully, without mishap, but there's nothing safe about it. I handled LOX, ammonia, RFNA and other fuels for the Air Force. I was never safe when I was doing so, and wouldn't be so flippant as to think I was, because that can cause accidents. I've got a high powered rocketry certification so I can legally fly hybrid rocket motors. The motors are relatively safe, but the ground equipment isn't. That's why it takes certification to use them. That certification process is either reviewed and approved by the FAA, ATFE, and NFPA, or built around their regulations to start with. If it were safe, it wouldn't need to have them involved. And, if it were safe, a large part of my annual recertification fees wouldn't be going to a million dollars worth of liability insurance.
> Lets hope that if people try this on a real brain with Epilepsy they read The Terminal Man first.
Sure, and Johnny Mnemonic, and Jake 2.0, and of course The Matrix. Oh, and hey, what about that SG1 episode with the fat bald guy in their heads that made all the food taste really good?
There's never going to be a/. article on neural implants without people spouting science fiction at it like it's relevant, is there? You'd think that getting The Terminal Man from the fiction section as opposed to getting science articles from journals or books from the non-fiction section would tip people off.
This isn't just self-righteous anger. The problem is that if people only think in terms of what fiction writers write, they're getting a very inaccurate and restricted view of the possible real consequences. The few things in fiction stories probably won't happen. There are many, many more things that could, far too many and some far too complex for most fiction writers to come up with. Believe me, brain scientists don't give a rosy rat's ass for what fiction says, but most are thinking way beyond any fiction.
OK, some self-righteous anger too. I have to think about this stuff hard, and I hate it when people pretend bringing up science fiction does anything like approach the subject of implications. It's lazy.
> What can Wikipedia do about those who would use it for their own purposes?"
Carry on exactly as they are, because that is precisely what every contributor is doing. Their purpose may be an attempt at the truth, which is noble, but also subjective, and some will disagree. They too will contribute if they care enough. With enough of that, any other "purposes" will be, if not buried, then at least illuminated. Where that could fail is if there are not enough who care enough to contribute.
> Look, this sort of thing happens every day in the private sector. Fisherman drown, taxi drivers get shot, construction workers die in falls, and life goes on, with hardly missing a beat. If you want space to be really privatized, the right way to look at this whole accident is to say, yeah, it sucks that they died, but, back to work people.
I got some nice comments for saying much the same thing in more polite terms.
You had the balls to say more directly what I sugar coated. Good for you.
Burt was crying when he saw the accident scene. When he gets over it, he'll probably say pretty much what I did in public, but pretty much what you did to his employees, and they're the ones who'll need to heed his words and carry on. And I have no doubt they will.
Those people were professionals. They knew what they were doing and they knew the risks. That's not to be cold hearted, but the opposite. They did their jobs despite the risks and suffered for it. That's the price of pioneering. They're not heroes for suffering, they were heroes before, for living and working on the edge. Heroes will replace them. Some of those will get hurt, and so on.
The first thing that occurred to me was whether Rutan was there. He wasn't, but he could have been. It's his way to keep his hands in things. That would have been an enormous loss to aero- and space development. He's one of the all time geniuses of all things flyable. Any really good aerospace engineer could write a definitive book on composite construction. It took genius to do so in 28 pages. It'd be damn hard for Scaled to go on without him, even with Northrup buying them out.
The second that occurred to me was that it'll put a damper on hybrid motor development and use. The motors are much safer than solid or liquid, but the handling equipment isn't safe by any stretch. Amateur rocketry has been using them for years, but nobody is willing to break the high-power certification barrier and make them available to low and mid-power rockters due to the liability factor from the ground equipment. It may come to nothing more than headlines for the media and PR for some politicians, but I expect a call for the FAA's Office of Space Transportation to rethink certifying of hybrid powered human rated craft.
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1. Listen to the music live as it's being recorded.
2. Encode the recording different ways.
2a. Be fair. If you use FLAC, use 320K MP3, not 128K.
3. Listen to the recordings without knowing which recording is which encoding.
4. Guess right which is which.
To be rigorous, the encoder, the person selecting the playback and the listener should all be different, and the playback person should not know which encoding is which either.
Almost everyone will fail blind comparison as long as the recording qualities are good enough. A good MP3 is good enough quality to fool them. A VERY few people will be able to tell the difference. They will almost certainly have very good extremely high frequency hearing (20 to 22 kHz) and if they aren't very accomplished musicians and/or recording engineers, they should be. Most people don't even have good xHF hearing. If you can't tell there's a TV with no audio output running somewhere else in the house, you don't. If you can tell because it plugs up your ears, you do. If you think the TV is screaming, you have excellent xHF. Up in that hertz-stratosphere is where the difference is.
The article was written by a fairly amateurish journalist when it comes to selective quoting, editing and juxtaposition of assertions with authorities. I would trust him if he knew what he was talking about. He clearly started with a conclusion and set out to support it. He failed.
Get serious... "preferred by Grateful Dead fans"? What kind of journalist would try to make that assertion seriously as evidence of authority? A bad one from the San Francisco Chronicle. Read the by line rather than fault SeattlePI.
tftp (111690) sez:
... ... which would certainly account for my ability to move a large amount of hot air. Better that than RAW air.
>> Finally, finally: I have no friends.
> But you have 23 fans
Immediately following the news release regarding the Mars rovers' longetivity, JPL announced its intention to replicate the rover design as an energy efficient and highly durable automobile. As a result, American, Japanese, American, that one German outfit, and American automobile manufacturers forced the entertainment branch of U-global-S business, the US government, to close JPL, claiming violations of monopoly, unintellectual property, lack of unrenewable energy usage, and for no good reason other than they can, Homeland Insecurity.
/. after watching The Best of Spike Milligan.
The unemployed JPL engineers and scientists then gathered their equipment at the Florida shore and launched a rover-based underwater probe to locate the cause of the Bermuda Triangle. Unfortunately the mission was a failure, as the Bermuda Triangle seems to have disappeared into the Bermuda Triangle. This important failure was discovered by the scientists who noted the rover's failure to fail to return. Hopefully the ex-JPL crew will turn their expertise to neuroscience in order to discover precisely why the previous sentence makes my brain hurt.
Finally, a public service announcement: Friends don't let friends post to
Finally, finally: I have no friends.
No it won't. It's trivial at best, especially since the answer came with the question: more good stuff. It's an obvious choice that makes the question alone lame, and with the answer attached ridiculous.
Slow news day?
If the universe had anything to say on that matter, that's what it'd be. The universe doesn't care. Nor does the planet, or nature. We anthromorphize these things because we care so much that we want everyone and everything else to care too.
If we stayed and altered the ecosphere to the point that we all died, it wouldn't ruin the planet, or even nature. These would continue. It's only us that would be gone and a number of species we wiped out with us. Nature has survived a sudden 95% reduction in species, and could probably survive more, since it started from none at least once. Nature would almost certainly survive, but either way it wouldn't "notice" anything.
All this anthromorphic crap is worse than useless, it's a load of bad excuses that will fail as real reasons necessary to accomplish the job. We should have the balls to admit we need to expand into space because it's our nature as a species. Even the presently sedentary, nominally indigenous populations got where they are due to exploration and expansion. Even some of those have retained the spirit of expansion and looked inwards, and in that way remained viable. Those that failed to explore in any sense became stagnant and simply existed rather than thrive, or else they died. Such is their right, though those whose continued existence without exploration is not the easy life some suggest. I doubt it's a coincidence that to the extent that cultures incorporate anthromorphizing of nature into their belief systems, they do not continue in their development but rather become entrenched at that stage.
My personal belief system includes a human spirit, the emotional and cognitive drive to survive as individuals and a species, and the result of attempting these things which provide us with the notions like courage, tenacity and a sense of worth. We provide ourselves with these and should own that fact rather than try to imagine inanimate or non-conscious constructs try to add to it. Once owned, we can continue under our own power, which has always been the only power that's ever driven us onward. Nature has given us many occasions to use that power, but we have either responded and explored, expanded and thrived, or remained and died.
Have the courage to own your future like your ancestors did. Have the courage to change your belief system as necessary to provide for greater accomplishment like your ancestors did. Their courage gave us the ability to have even more, and we can do the same for our descendants. My ancestors crossed glaciers, deserts and oceans to give me my home and they changed their belief systems because of it. I accept that as my heritage. Some of them changed their belief system to anthromorphize nature, to their detriment. I respect their right to that belief system but reject it for myself, and retain the ability to change mine as they once did to continue growing personally. I believe the same should be true for those of any culture who should choose it as a means to grow, because that provides the opportunity for the same growth to happen to the species. Anthromorphize only that which is anthromorphic. Change into human only that which through which humans change. It is only ourselves.
If you should choose to stay, fine. Nobody will force you. "And the meek shall inherit the earth.
The rest of us will go to the stars." Yet still nature, the planet and the universe will neither know nor care. Only we will, and we're the only ones to which it will matter.
Since when did a corporation's behaviors earn them a monolithic opinion? MS does some things well. It does some things that deserve ridicule. Some of those happen to coincide, but that's not germane to the argument. The fact remains that they do many things, and those things each earn them what they deserve for those specific activities.
Precisely what should we expect from MS if we continue to ridicule it? Precisely the same that we've gotten so far. They haven't done anything significant because of ridicule. There have been some employees that responded to it, but that's not what drives corporate policy. They have actively campaigned against Linux, but only because it captures market share, not because of ridicule.
Try an analogy on for size: Microsoft is to George W. Bush what Linux is to Jon Stewart. What has Bush done differently as a result of Stewart's ridicule? Nothing significant. He may have alluded to (a polite way to say stole from) some of Stewart's material for self-deprecating humor at the annual press dinner. That indicates he noticed it. It does not indicate it caused him to change his behavior towards Stewart or anything else. On the other hand, Stewart has made quite a name for himself for ridiculing Bush (and his entire administration). What does Linux as a community have to gain from ridiculing Microsoft? For one, rightly calling them on improper behavior. For another, increasing their own visibility. Again, some of these overlap, and again, that doesn't matter. What does Linux et al have to lose by ridiculing Microsoft? The respect of people whom they wouldn't want as part of the Linux community anyway. And when those people make their opinion known publicly Linux again stands to gain from the publicity that will attract more of the kind of people they do want to be part of the community.
Linux will never unseat Microsoft. It is an alternative. To make it clear that's it's an alternative it should differentiate itself. Ridicule is a viable means. But when used it should be true, and there are ample instances of this. It's not the only means, and others should be used when they're more effective.
The worst case scenario is that MS does pay attention to the ridicule, alters its corporate policy, gets its shit together and produces products that make Linux no longer a viable alternative. Linux would get owned. They have the resources. But figure the odds.
I will give Microsoft their due. They will determine whether their due is good or bad. And I will give it according to its individual actions and products. I will not offer them a monolithic opinion because they do not act in a monolithic manner. More than anything else, I will never hold an opinion because I'm told to. That's no longer an opinion, it's dogma, and that's the last thing I'd ever hope to see from the Linux community.
Finally, because I can't be so pedantic for so long without breaking, Microsoft is poopy heads.
Has your Linux stopped booting? Mine either.
That's the act of analyzing collections of studies and their results on a particular subject. Many such meta-analyses have been done on various kinds of climatological studies. They all come to the conclusion that global warming is happening. These include papers that show the opposite. No results from science are absolute. They are statistically acceptable (or not). Just as we accept a certain probability of a false result from a single study, we expect a percentage of studies to come to erroneous conclusions because of the statistical probability involved. And when the vast majority say one thing, and very few say something different, we go with the vast majority. If one paper from one particular kind of study switches sides, it makes very little difference to the overall conclusions. In fact, since there's already one major error in the study, there's a chance there's more, and it should be given less weight in meta-analysis no matter what it says.
About 1970, I was advised not to take any more math courses because my grades were too low and they'd prevent me from getting into college (where I should study something that requires no math).
I took some math courses in college, but studied it a lot more on my own. By the time I finished my studies I'd developed multidimensional statistics based on continuous wavelet transform. I take pleasure in proving the counselor wrong who told me not to take math, but I take even more pleasure in knowing he doesn't have anywhere near the mathematical knowledge to understand how much more I know than he does.
Would you go to a doctor to find out what that noise is under your car's hood? Why listen to someone from outside of a field as to whether you should pursue it? Had a mathematician told me, I'd have been more likely to listen. But knowing me, not enough to do what he said.
I don't recall where I first heard it, but "I learned more in spite of school than I did from it."
It's not over yet. Almost, but not quite.
When it is, I intend to dance around the dead body of SCO and beat it to a pulp with a stick.
Anyone care to join me?
To speak to some mistaken assumptions used as analogy:
This is not a coincidence any more than the spacing of the planets. Those are spaced according to minima in gravitational disturbance from other planets. They 'fell' into these minima after wobbling around in other orbits.
This has nothing to do with the KT event or other impact or volcanic events, Subtract those from the history of extinction events and the 62 million year becomes evident.
That said, the predicted influx of cosmic rays would have two primary results, the first a hypothetical events untestable at the present level of incoming cosmic rays, the other one having two implications.
The first result would be an increase in cloud cover. Cosmic rays were hypothesized to contribute to cloud formation. Measurements have since shown that this is not occurring, or at least not enough to be statistically significantly detectable among the other causes of cloud cover. Lab experiments show it can happen. It remains to be seen how much this would occur given the amount of cosmic rays expected from the galactic bow shock.
The second would be a large increase in changes in DNA. This would cause many mutations, including cancers. Many species would succumb to the changes and die off. The few of such species to survive might be too isolated from each other to mate and produce offspring also resistant. The second implication that among the DNA changes, while most would be harmful, some would produce chancges that would benefit the organism/species, and increase its survivability. This is why mosy species die off, but a few survive. Also, among those that survive, there is an explosion of diversity, possibly due to the increased survivability.
We've got about 12 million dollars to the peak of the effect. We don't know when it would start, or increase enough to start having an effect.
Patent music made by coutning how many petals are left on a flower after removing one, chanting for each in turn "she loves me not, she loves me".
The first attempt at this was done by a classically trained opera signer turned radio astronomer. She was on Letterman many years ago.
Since the DNA sequences are owned by the people, via the government, they cannot patent or copyright the sequence. They can, however, copyright the collected works based on any sort of production method they wish. But patent it? Not bloddy likely, given prior art that does the same regardless of the source of the numbers.
We do get along. People on all sides of the arguments are doing it for the same reason, to get the most bang for the buck. No matter what program we champion in planning and design, everyone stands and cheers when the selected program flies.
OK, maybe there's a few like Bob Park (http://www.bobpark.org/) that rants on and on about robots even when people fly, but he's not a space nerd, he's a politics nerd who thinks too much that the space program applies to him personally. Other than those few, the idea what we bicker bitterly is once again a media construct -- they have to make news where none exists to fill the white space. That's why when they need filler, they go to those few, if anyone at all.
> Ouch. On the groanometer, your title registers a solid 7/10. It would be better if "writes the dust" was a meaningful expression, but as is it's too much of a stretch.
Well, it'd be more meaningful if one read TFA and found out his thesis was on observations of the zodiacal dust. But from now on the groaners stay in the article, not in the headline.
> Take the atom bomb as an example. Once you know its possible to build one you are halfway there.
I bought the plans for Fat Man and Little Boy from the National Atomic Museum (http://www.atomicmuseum.com/). I understand the design. Even if I could do the metal work, I'd have to get the HE for the trigger and work that. Then I'd need either a batch of U235 or Pu239, and I'd have to put it together without blowing myself up with HE or blowing up a county if I did manage to put the pieces together. Something tells me that knowing it's possible to build it doesn't put me quite half way there.
Yeah, I know, you were probably speaking rhetorically. But I don't know that language. I've never even been to Rhetoria.
Actually the point is that the public having access to plans for the Saturn isn't an issue. Nobody would want to try to build one. Unless you happen to be a major aerospace contractor and NASA says they'll fill your plate to develop it all over again. Then you wouldn't want people knowing just how much work you did as opposed to how much you copied from grandpa's work, so you could charge for it all over again.
... the same Saturn V that they said they couldn't build again even if they wanted to because the plans were lost? At least they were "in a cellar, with the light broken, behind a door marked 'Beware Of The Tigers'" when John Lewis went looking for them while researching for "Mining The Sky". After the book came out the NASA inspector general's office decided that sounded too sToOpId and said they were in fact in storage.
I've no doubt they'd destroy the lot of it. Look what the US made Canada do about the Avro Arrow when they wanted Canada to buy the BOMARC instead of sell great jets. This is what happens when corporate welfare reaches into the billions of dollars. NASA has to feed the hand that, um, that they feed.
Nothing for it but to buy as many of the data sets from that private site as possible, and if they make him shut down, keep sending them out to as many people and places as possible. It wouldn't even be copyright violation, because the plans weren't his. They belong to the people of the US, since they, via their whole owned subsidiaries NASA and the US government, paid for them.
We're supposed to have a law that says what's copyrighted by the government goes to the public. Everything we were doing at NIH came under that, and full text of all the research was to be made available for free through PubMed. These plans would fall under the same law.
I wonder what'll happen when they try to make the National Association of Rocketry stop selling the blueprints (http://www.nar.org/NARTS/NARTScatalog.pdf). The ATFE, waving the PATRIOT act came and tried to shove new laws down our throats, and so far we (with our sister organization Tripoli Rocketry Association) have held them off in federal court. Not too shabby for a bunch of old farts that can't give up their childhood hobby and have taken it to some truly awesome proportions. We don't take kindly to the government telling us to stop doing what we know good and well we have a right to do. Comes from working successfully with some of the most nit picky government agencies through the years. And this is just about the Saturn. We sell blueprints for some weapon system missiles. If they don't raise a stick about those, but do about the Saturn, you'll know this is about protecting their contract-children.
I fully expect them to try to push through paying the aerospace companies to develop what they developed 40 years ago. I expect them to announce building their new lifters based on the Saturn designs.
Yeah, it says don't harp on it, but:
. html). I look forward to his entry being updated with "Ph.D".
Submissions
Another One Writes The Dust Friday July 13, @02:52PM Rejected
Given the subject of his thesis, my title was better.
That aside, I'm proud to share space with Dr. May on the first page of the Annals of Improbable Research's Luxurious Flowing Hair Club for Scientists (http://www.improb.com/projects/hair/hair-club001
the 8 ball of the masses. Religion may be the opiate, but Fox News combines the cocaine of emotionally charged "reports" with the mind numbing heroin of constant bombardment, and self-inducing insistence that the user continue using. I quit watching them when the 14 year old stole a Cessna and ran it into a Florida building, and they used a graphic of a 747 as seen from just below the belly, like it was about to fall on you, in a fit of 9/11 fear mongering.
Recall the Daily Show commercial when Jon Stewart claims that 30% of people get their news from The Daily Show and then yells "DON'T DO THAT. WE MAKE IT UP."? I want to yell back "WE KNOW THAT. SO DO THEY. YOURS IS BETTER."
Cheap, disposable, puncture resistant gloves for short term handling of biohazardous materials, particularly used syringe needles. Those would better protect health care workers from things like hepatitis C. Latex protects against the virus, but needles go right through it. Hep C treatment is painful, nauseating, fatiguing, causes depression and rage outbursts, makes your hair fall out, is very expensive (alpha interferon + ribavirin; around US$10,000: http://www.hepnet.com/hepc/DDW99/HCVSGP/wong.html) and is depressingly ineffective against the primary genome of that virus that's found in the US. Since hep C usually has few symptoms if any outwardly until very advanced, infected health care workers can spread the disease unknowingly. One layer of this with latex coating would save some lives, not to mention a lot of money for treatment. That savings would make up for the development costs.
> It's possible that it could be impregnated with some sort of resin, making it more of a carbon fiber, just a ton stronger .
l eeving_p/cf-slv.htm
That's the usual practice for making composites for structures and vehicles. Epoxy is the resin of choice. Using epoxy with this material as opposed to woven carbon material will result in very little weight difference, but if this stuff will be that much cheaper, great. Here's my source for making rocket parts; check the prices per yard: http://www.aerosleeves.com/Carbon_Fiber_Biaxial_S
There's also a recurring shortage andd thus price fluctuations due to supply problems with the raw fiber. A new material with roughly the same characteristics but without the supply problems would be very nice too.
Epoxy would also make them fairly water resistant after curing. Topping that with acrylic completes that job and makes for a pretty finish too. That doesn't solve the manufacturing problem. I hope they come up with a solution (har...) that's not an environment unfriendly solvent.
> No offense but those other posters are probably correct. Usually when an accident like this happens, it's a preventable cause. Keep in mind that people have handled N2O for a long time (someone here said about a century), and the Scaled Composites crew had done this before (numerous times with Spaceship One). It's not like sitting in an experimental craft that has flown maybe a few times. You can do this pretty safely.
1. It's always preventable in retrospect, and many times that's the only way it's found. It's definitely the only way it's found the first time for a given set of circumstances.
2. You cannot handle the amount of NO2 at the pressures they were safely. Those amounts and those pressures are dangerous. You can handle it successfully, without mishap, but there's nothing safe about it. I handled LOX, ammonia, RFNA and other fuels for the Air Force. I was never safe when I was doing so, and wouldn't be so flippant as to think I was, because that can cause accidents. I've got a high powered rocketry certification so I can legally fly hybrid rocket motors. The motors are relatively safe, but the ground equipment isn't. That's why it takes certification to use them. That certification process is either reviewed and approved by the FAA, ATFE, and NFPA, or built around their regulations to start with. If it were safe, it wouldn't need to have them involved. And, if it were safe, a large part of my annual recertification fees wouldn't be going to a million dollars worth of liability insurance.
> Lets hope that if people try this on a real brain with Epilepsy they read The Terminal Man first.
/. article on neural implants without people spouting science fiction at it like it's relevant, is there? You'd think that getting The Terminal Man from the fiction section as opposed to getting science articles from journals or books from the non-fiction section would tip people off.
Sure, and Johnny Mnemonic, and Jake 2.0, and of course The Matrix. Oh, and hey, what about that SG1 episode with the fat bald guy in their heads that made all the food taste really good?
There's never going to be a
This isn't just self-righteous anger. The problem is that if people only think in terms of what fiction writers write, they're getting a very inaccurate and restricted view of the possible real consequences. The few things in fiction stories probably won't happen. There are many, many more things that could, far too many and some far too complex for most fiction writers to come up with. Believe me, brain scientists don't give a rosy rat's ass for what fiction says, but most are thinking way beyond any fiction.
OK, some self-righteous anger too. I have to think about this stuff hard, and I hate it when people pretend bringing up science fiction does anything like approach the subject of implications. It's lazy.
> What can Wikipedia do about those who would use it for their own purposes?"
Carry on exactly as they are, because that is precisely what every contributor is doing. Their purpose may be an attempt at the truth, which is noble, but also subjective, and some will disagree. They too will contribute if they care enough. With enough of that, any other "purposes" will be, if not buried, then at least illuminated. Where that could fail is if there are not enough who care enough to contribute.
So what are you still here for?
> Look, this sort of thing happens every day in the private sector. Fisherman drown, taxi drivers get shot, construction workers die in falls, and life goes on, with hardly missing a beat. If you want space to be really privatized, the right way to look at this whole accident is to say, yeah, it sucks that they died, but, back to work people.
I got some nice comments for saying much the same thing in more polite terms.
You had the balls to say more directly what I sugar coated. Good for you.
Burt was crying when he saw the accident scene. When he gets over it, he'll probably say pretty much what I did in public, but pretty much what you did to his employees, and they're the ones who'll need to heed his words and carry on. And I have no doubt they will.
Those people were professionals. They knew what they were doing and they knew the risks. That's not to be cold hearted, but the opposite. They did their jobs despite the risks and suffered for it. That's the price of pioneering. They're not heroes for suffering, they were heroes before, for living and working on the edge. Heroes will replace them. Some of those will get hurt, and so on.
The first thing that occurred to me was whether Rutan was there. He wasn't, but he could have been. It's his way to keep his hands in things. That would have been an enormous loss to aero- and space development. He's one of the all time geniuses of all things flyable. Any really good aerospace engineer could write a definitive book on composite construction. It took genius to do so in 28 pages. It'd be damn hard for Scaled to go on without him, even with Northrup buying them out.
The second that occurred to me was that it'll put a damper on hybrid motor development and use. The motors are much safer than solid or liquid, but the handling equipment isn't safe by any stretch. Amateur rocketry has been using them for years, but nobody is willing to break the high-power certification barrier and make them available to low and mid-power rockters due to the liability factor from the ground equipment. It may come to nothing more than headlines for the media and PR for some politicians, but I expect a call for the FAA's Office of Space Transportation to rethink certifying of hybrid powered human rated craft.
It was Scaled Composites' facility. Rutan wasn't there.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19983814/