> "Should companies be able to require employees..."
Yes. It's called at will employment. They can set any requirements they want. You can work there or not.
It might be instructive to engage in a little etymology (origin of words, not study of bugs, which starts eNty...)
A 'professional' is someone who professes to BE something, as opposed to an employee, worker or similar, who simply does something. A professional would seek training for their own betterment, company assistance aside. Even in cases where such training is not required, companies are usually also made up of professionals who respond to like behavior and reimburse, credit or promote those who act professionally. When they don't, other companies often will.
A major failing of many companies is in forcing other kinds of workers to go to training. Not being professional, they can sit for days to fulfill that obligation but fail to learn anything useful. But they keep sending these people anyway. Optimism, perhaps.
Decide if you want to be something or just do something and act accordingly. A professional wouldn't have asked such a question, so the question may be moot. But then, anyone can change. Optimism, perhaps.
If not, hey, the professionals always need drones, droids and gofers. Just not always the same ones in the same jobs.
> a supermassive black hole quickly devours gas and dust, it can generate enough > radiation to abort all the embryonic stars in the surrounding galaxy. It's not > clear what this means for life's ability to take hold in such a bleak environment,
For life that can exist in space without matter (gas, dust, stars, etc.) but with a large dose of radiation, it wouldn't mean much at all. Except that life is made of matter and thus it would get sucked in too.
I would imagine that a supermassive black hole "can" do anything it wants. Let's see you try to stop it, you silly baryonic, self-organizing, endothermic, negentropic bipeds.
... that LiveScience has a two bit limit for understanding what they publish and so can get correct. These are the people that produced the 'top 10 mysteries of the brain' some of which had nothing to do with the brain. If they understood what they read, they'd not reprint such drivel laden press release pubs.
I don't expect them to know about the study that found human facial recognition in the brains of dead salmon. That was a real study and required some actual background knowledge. But you have to wonder why they persist in reprinting fMRI stories that fail to show all the relevant parts of the brain operating rather than just the one that controls one function involved. (In TFA frinstance, switching tasks means switching attention which means anterior cingulate. So where is it?) It's probably because the articles have those pretty pictures of colored lights in the brain -- which they fail to include in their reprintings.
So of the two 'things', what's a thing? Per their example, cooking takes at least two tasks (recipe/memory and mixing/motor) and switching between them requires attentional control which is a third. Add the phone and you get a second attentional control function as well as language comprehension and language production. So there's six. Now what happens if you drop the phone into the cake batter? An executive function has to monitor constantly in case novel response is required. Seven. An emergency motor function kicks in that lets you try to catch it. Eight, if called upon.
As for the relationship between TFA and decision making, it is certainly worthwhile to read such scientific wisdom as 'might' 'seem' 'don't appear' and 'perhaps'. Which suggests the question, 'how many "things" is a hypothetical'? One question? One for each possibility? In any case, considering the hypothetical connection between TFA and decisions is a complex collection of interacting items to compare and contrast. Despite the fact that they are unaware they're doing it, the "science" "writers" and LiveScience juggle a fair amount of items in the last section. But just so we don't overtax them, let's let them continue to think they're comparing 'one science thingy' (that's one!) with 'another science thingy' (oh, wait. that's um... there's one and then.... darn, this thingy and thingy stuff is hard).
I can think of no better way to develop the sort of relationship you want with these people than to give them some assistance. A new web site offering credit card numbers, pr0n of various disgusting kinds and passwords to similar sites, "secrets of hacking [x]'s government sites", an enormous list of movies and such available for download, an international banking concern planned to assist others in recovering funds from dead relatives' accounts, and as many similar offering as you can imagine, is just what's needed. Of course the contact information should be theirs (even if it had been yours previously). Advertising it on usenet should help spread the word. Whatever you can do to send them/.'ing levels of traffic of all kinds will help make your point. Also, publicizing their contact info on multilevel marketing sites/newsgroups and Chinese manufacturer/wholesalers sites will get them more offers than it would take to please any such assholes. Devote some thought and time to it and I'll bet you can cause them far more trouble than they've caused you. And your old clients? Let them know that as the new owners of your old service, they'd be glad to service pets and farm animals on webcam and/or DVDs sent free for the asking. Currency exchange by email at 1:1,000 rates. Sex tour vacations for $200 including airfare. Official funds collection point for unspecified non-governmental armed freedom fighter organizations world wide. Recovered/liberated fissionables, pure plant extracts direct from South American mountains and middle eastern flower fields, all for pennies a day!
And of course if any of these attract enough public attention and appear to be illegal, law enforcement at the cloner's location as well as elsewhere would almost certainly want to know.
> "The Washington Post reports that the Obama administration is abandoning its policy of using nationality alone to determine which US-bound international air travelers should be subject to additional screening...."
"Here comes one. It looks like this one has a nationality. We'd better 'randomly' screen them."
After all, they use nationality, not any particular nationality. For instance I have a friend that was injured and medically retired as a SEAL team commander. He's 'randomly' selected at international connection, US outbound or inbound. He's also stopped at every gate on a US only trip, including transfer points. He must be very national looking. Or maybe it's his tendency to say things like "Officers retire, but rarely resign. When we promise to defend against enemies, foreign AND DOMESTIC, it's for life."
"What we need are a few good old fashioned hangings." -- FTC commissioner Orson Swindell at the first FTC spam conference. I'm looking forward to hearing about one of the organized crime associated bots getting whacked by one of the competition, and so the owners of the former return the favor to the author of the (temporary) victor. I suspect it's happened already, but not publicized. Sooner or later one will. Then we'll see some real cyberwarefare. You think the US government has got some cyberwarriors lined up? Fugidaboudit.
Don't get yourself into a valium deficiency. Those unfamiliar with the language often use can't (usually meaning can not, unable to, not having the capability) when they should use "has decided not to do yet again because the money's needed to do other things that haven't been yet."
This is a good example of horseshit. No science is bad unless it persists in promoting a point that it has already discredited. Examining prima facie unlikely hypotheses is as necessary and expected as examining hypotheses that are 'obviously true by common sense'. It is also perfectly good science to publish observations rather than experiments, particularly when it is impossible to catalog the entirety of the environment as well as impossible to enforce controls, both of these being the case when observing animal behaviors in the natural habitat. Being a seismologist you'd think she would be used to the facts of naturalistic observation and lack of control. Unless they've managed to produce a set of standardized earthquakes to use as a control group for doing seismology experiments. No? No wonder then the apparent lack of grasp on what's acceptable methodology.
"This is not good statistics."
'This' are singular. 'Statistics' are plural. Grammar are as necessary for good science as am methodology, controls and inferential statistics when it an be applied, or descriptive statistics when simply observing.
"In this case, there's no way to know what kind of fluctuations are normally seen in toad activity"
Only if you can show that observations stretching back probably centuries by locals, as well as relevant publications by herpitologists, are invalid. I suspect she has no idea whether any of either exist. TFA had no mention of any, but to assume this absence represents a lack is worse.
Being a scientist does not qualify one to be a critic of other fields, and sometimes even of one's own. Whose idea was it to ask a seismologist to critique a paper on animal behavior?
"Garfield has never replicated Escalante's success with math students, and Reason Magazine reported on the shameful way in which others tore down what Escalante and his teachers worked so hard to build."
No, but I can tell you with absolute certainty that at least one grad student took Escalante's message and intentions to heart (along with those of Al Martin, founder of the goal based rather than years based Alpha School near Portland OR), and was so inspired that when he was tasked with teaching, he earned the highest student evaluations of any member of his department (6 out of 14 evaluations being perfect 5 of 5), and his students earned (not bought, not jumped through hoops, earned) 1 full GPA point higher average grade than any taking those same classes for 10 years previous. His students also produced valid, reliable, replicable original results which they took to international conferences, as well as replicating work by big names and showing where the errors lie that invalidated those accepted works. 10 years on and medically retired, and he still gets contacted by a few more of them every year to let him know it worked. Blacksburg VA isn't easy L.A., but that doesn't mean it's not useful and needed outside the poverty stricken areas.
Since this appears to be real, it's a darn good thing the article was posted today. Had it come out 1 day later, nobody would believe the story was anything but an excuse for the headline.
"To be able to apply (a magnetic field) to a specific brain region and change people's moral judgments is really astonishing."
1. TMS is not a magnetic field. It is a strobing of a field building up then collapsing, essentially it is Z number of magnetic fields, each lasting a few milliseconds, where Z equals X seconds times Y pulses per second. The collapsing fields dump energy into the neurons' axons. This has the effect of electroshock, except the target is a small area, not the whole brain.
2. If a magnetic field applies to a specific brain region did something, a magnetic field applied to the whole head would also. There is nothing in the brain that can tell when a part of the brain is being stimulated vs. the whole thing. Thus, someone in an MRI would have the same reaction. OTOH, they'd have a reaction to everything it were possible to instigate via external stimulation.
3. TMS doesn't change anything to anything else. It disrupts the region it is focused on, and sends it into a seizure state to where it cannot function. Thus TFA is not about changing someone's morals, it is about incapacitating the brain region with which a person makes such decisions, eliminating that part from the overall process. The result is amoral, not different morals. This far more trivial effect has been shown many times by applying TMS to various frontal areas, most notably the orbitofrontal.
Anything the brain can do, TMS can make it unable to do for a few seconds to minutes. TMS is focal electroshock. But not so focal that it can differentiate between small neighboring areas. Thus if you zapped the motor strip to incapacitate the thumb, the very near by region controlling the neck would likely get hit, and they'd lose the ability to keep their head upright.
"The military is facing a number of challenges, including training, accessing national air space and improving aircraft communications systems..."
And rehabilitation. For reasons not yet understood UAV remote pilots are suffering more burnout than most others, as well as PTSD to an extent that mystifies.
Any off the wall collection of data up through true random can be used to "make" a pretty pictur, since the picture is actually made by people and therefore made pretty by them. This does nothing but make eye candy.
What's the results? What's the implications? Where does this put the current pro/con dark energy argument, not to mention the recent 'discovery' of 10 times more baryonic matter than we had seen previously? Nobody has yet satisfactorily explained how that other matter was already known about since to know it in the absence of EM detection meant gravity detection, and you can't tell "dark" baryonic gravity from dark matter gravity from dark energy gravity.
All pretty pictures, more questions and fewer answers. This is not what we're paying them for.
"Are we trying to 'normalize' humans to a threshold of experience?"
We who? Implying that the listener is involved is a simplistic means to maintain their attention. The listener certainly has nothing to do with the project.
Are the researchers doing these things? No, they're only trying to solve an interesting problem. They're not trying to do anything to anyone. They're only trying to make this available.
Only the potential recipient has the responsibility. Nobody else matters.
The guy in TFA is a developmental psychologist. He's saying a little, but not much, more than Jean Piaget, the patron saint of "child" psychology. Piaget http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Piaget posited there are 4 stages to cognitive development. The 4th stage ('formal') starts at age 11 to 13 (or adolescence depending on who you read) and is when the mind acquires the ability to abstract, hypothesize and deduce. Both these guys are right, before this kids can play around with numbers and can be taught to jump through hoops that appear as if they're understanding abstract maths, but they can't really. There are concrete maths they can learn, essentially a single equation at a time using +, -, * and/. A kid can help mom making cakes by getting out two eggs until she says 'I think I'll make two cakes' and the kid gets two eggs and two eggs. The 'three R's' remain intact, as long as the third is 'rithmatic and not that poorly conceived and terribly executed attempt to teach arithmetic by using algebra as the vehicle, known as "new math". You can make kids do stuff (hell, you can make chickens play basketball, right Dr. Skinner?), but you can't make them understand stuff until they're able, so you might as well make better use of the time than to try.
Had he not been so taken with observing so many different things and not theorizing too in depth about most of them, a contemporary of Piaget's who also used his own children as his "lab", came to some of the same conclusions and would probably have done far more. Unfortunately, when it came time for him to make his mark, those around him saw to it that he penned his treatise on evolution rather than developmental psychology. Though not particularly directly related, at least Darwin got to make him mark on psychology by being credited for the essential ideas which got built up into evolutionary psychology. Darwin did in fact note that his children could use but could not understand certain abstract concepts before a certain age, years before Piaget observed and wrote on the same thing. They said these about 120 and 80 years respectively before the guy in TFA said pretty much the same with the additional "so stop it". Brave man. I wonder if the parents of any school children know where he lives? They're the ones that won't be convinced.
there are statistically two popes per square kilometer in the vatican.
One does not do statistics on single data points. Statistics are for estimating results in large numbers of cases using smaller numbers of cases. When there is only one case, we use an entirely different means of reporting data. It is called a measurement. There is one vatican. Results would be reported as X per vatican. By direct measure, the answer is one pope per vatican. Your own result reflects your incorrect thinking. There is no square kilometer in one vatican. One does not use a unit of measure of area for a target smaller than that unit.
I was specializing in methodology during my doctorate work and so had to not only have a good grasp on stats as performed but also able to at least estimate how well the analyses I was developing worked. We had a top notch stats professor who'd started in psychology and so ended up not only teaching all graduate courses for our department but also served as top level consultant for any and all of our projects. Since some of my work was in nonlinear phenomena and therefore stats, I spent many an hour trying to absorb everything he could offer.
When I'd gotten on top of the material, some of what I saw going on made me disturbed, angry and/or disgusted.
In EEG research it was common to go through an analysis system wherein one first does a test on all electrodes together to determine if there's a difference between conditions. Fine. But then to localize, one first divided the electrodes in half and tested left vs. right. Then one tested both left and right according to front and rear. And so on, until individual electrodes are compared. I as told this reduced false positives and retained power. I was told to do it in my dissertation. I was told who started this process. I wasn't told it was bullshit; I figured that out on my own. I looked up the reference. There was no mention of this process in the article. As is common when I tracked down such rituals, the article said to do what you could justify doing but to know what you could and could not justify due to your own ability. I also found an article that said such processes did not retain power nor reduce errors.
The stats prof pointed out that each collection of electrodes in each test was arbitrary. There was no reason that every possible combination should not be included in their ritual. A "real" result from the process should require that. I pointed out that our software localized electrical sources in the brain down to 1mm voxels (to work with fMRI data) making surface electrode analysis extraneous. I took these points and the articles back to the department and was told finally to "do what I had to" for my diss. I ended up using a nonlinear running t-test to analyze time series of signals in 2 msec windows and produced a 'movie' of dopamine effects on the frontal lobe across the first 20 msec post stimulus. Nobody on my committee could understand the analysis, but they all loved the movie. I didn't tell them I'd adapted the analysis technique used in fMRI because some of them had done fMRI research and thought they knew what they were doing. Had I had to explain my workings I'd have had to tell them they didn't understand what they were doing, and at that point I wanted to get done and get to my first job offer. NIH. Invited and non-competitive. They understood my work. Besides, by this time I'd already studied at Santa Fe Institute and had learned the difference between learning from people who knew more than I likely ever would and jumping through hoops for people who I'd already passed in ability.
I also saw colleagues doing fMRI work who had no clue they were pushing statistical testing so hard that due to the necessary correction factor they were trying to find individual data points with p values with up to 22 zeroes between dot and data, a certainty they could never realistically achieve, and a cut off level they'd never even consider trying to look at in any study where they knew at least some of what was going on. I've seen entire poster sessions at conferences on brain mapping where maybe 2 out of 200 could accurately and factually explain how their analysis worked (typically they worked with a biophysicist who could, but none of which understood the phenomenon under test well enough to describe it, meaning together they could produce results but not knowledge as they couldn't pass the latter back and forth between them).
And I've seen researchers who did understand fMRI and SPS (statistical probability mapping, the analysis technique used for fMRI). And they refused to use the technique for the reasons given. My boss at
Get over the human-centric thinking such as displayed in TFA, or your result criteria will be so restricted that you'd never find anything other than your selves.
SETI is searching for intelligent life on stellar systems other than this one. So why is an arbitrary number of revolutions of one planet around its star, presented as a number in an arbitrary number base (in this case, base ten; and not truly arbitrary since it is used because it matches the number of manual digits on the hands on the beings doing the searching), significant? It's not.
Nor is it directly relevant to SETI. It's the kind of thinking that makes "50 years" significant that restricts the thinking that will make it possible to detect extra-terrestrial intelligence. Once that thinking understands why it has to specifically give up concepts like "50" and "years" when thinking about this subject, it will begin to make itself able to expand its thinking outside the restrictions of its own nature and able to think in terms of all possible natures.
Consider beings with fluid bodies similar to amoeba. They will have no set number of digits, and so may use different number bases for different measures. "50" and the thinking that understands such numbers ceases to mean anything. And consider that rather than counting stellar revolutions, they instead measure time according to a variable standard, with "years" ceasing to be useful as a concept. And consider that beings 'out there' discovered very early the chaotic nature of most physical phenomena, and so when presenting numbers relating to dimensions or numbers of variables that best describes something, they give a non-integer number. Given just these few differences, it may not be possible to decode any signal relating numerical data, and it's certainly unlikely that any who maintain a "50 years" mentality would agree that the decoding is meaningful. That point may not pertain to SETI researchers, but may petain to the far larger number of scientists that must agree with the presented information in order for it to be considered accepted as scientifically accurate and a true signal indicating intelligence.
> but what happens if a person breaks their nose?"
Segmented curvilinear correction. A broken nose only changes shape in the broken spot, almost always the bridge. The majority is intact. The database results will have those hits that match, say, 5 of the 6 measures. Those will then be subjected to 'morphing' within the constraints of the average (more likely within the standard deviation) of how bridges that most often fit with that nose type are bent and in what way. The Segment that doesn't fit will have the bent or Curved piece 'unbent' or made to fit a Linear model by a Correction algorithm. The result will be a correlation measure for that sixth piece to go along with the five segments already matched. It's not a certain measure, but it'll give a smaller number of likely possibles to start with, and if there's no positives, lesser correlations to look at.
What makes this article bogus (I won't call Bullshit because it looks like they really believe this will work) is variants on Groucho nose glasses. A simple fake nose will fool it. It doesn't even have to be a complete fake nose; flesh colored putty packed on to certain areas will make it a different nose.
> Some cool pictures make this worth a click
Cool my ass. I've worked with police sketch artists. They have a book with all the examples in their software of all the parts of the face used as variables. Noses sans face are some of the ugliest pieces of human anatomy.
The "leaked" document is OPSEC propoganda http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operations_security , a primary tool of psychological operations. It was made available so that it could be seen to fail, making Wikileaks and its supporters think they were getting away with something. They're not. They're being used. Psyops teams always seek to obtain a reliable source with which to feed misinformation. They do not make such sources stop. They give them reason to think they're safe so that they'll continue to publicize the "leaks" that the psyops teams want them to. A source like this is worth far more as a means to feed credible false intel than it is as a trophy marker in some administrator's resume'.
Besides, if they wanted Wikileaks to close shop, they wouldn't make it disappear. Instead they'd snatch people like Julian Assange and give them reasons why they should just drop out of sight. The reasons are typically measured in 'caliber'. Once such individuals are 'convinced', the other members start finding reasons why they should cease operations before becoming 'convinced'.
Yeah, I know it sounds more like a movie script than a government/military action. It actually sounds more like something from Dr. Paul "E.E. 'Doc' Smith" Linebarger's book "Psychological Operations". Read it before you try to say otherwise. And realize that this book is still the primary text book on the subject for the thousands of military and civilian (military psyops specialists are not allowed to operate within the United States) workers in the field.
This ex-Yale medical school staff member proposes instead that Michael Seringhaus, Yale Law School student, attempt to collect samples from those who disagree with his proposal. Personally. By hand. And no, those of us who don't want this done will not have our arms tied down. Right about the time he gets in phlebotomy range he'll also be in manua-cranial impact range. I want to go first.
I'm making book on how many he'll attempt before he changes his mind. My money is in "one".
"Herschel Space Observatory Finds Precursors of Life In Orion"
I called Orion and let him know about this. He said he was well aware he had precursors of life inside, but failed to see how a telescope could be used in place of a microscope and an, um, sample to make this determination. When he asked where I got this from I told him. My son thanks you all for your concern, and promises to take due care when handling his precursors and resulting cursors, as long as you'll promise to point your telescope at someone else.
I don't care if he predicted Nostradamus and first described self-sustaining fusion. The points and problems brought up are in large part already known and understood in other terms, with many of them dismissed by those who understand the problems in the terms commonly used.
6. The internet does not create information overload. It doesn't create information, or anything for that matter. It is constructed and filled by people who either handle the information load well or do not (hence over-load). The number of sources and amount received from them is under the control of the receiver. This is only a problem if the person does not develop a suitable technique for handling the flow, or is prevented from using it. Simultaneity is not a way to handle a large flow except in unprocessed pass-though. Regardless of the technologies that might be employed for any of this, sucessful collection of new material requires serial reception with the majority of attention focused on the item is interest.
Far more useful in developing the ability to absorb more information faster is the concept of 'media richness'. Plain text is just that, very plain, while human behavior is very rich (language plus nonverbals, etc.). Most of the net is low richness. It could be made more dense, but to be richer would then also have to be made cleaner, with less noise within the signal.
14. Creating your own new ideas and presenting them as validated concepts by comparing them with existing concepts is a technique well used in fiction writing. In non-fiction people expect to be able to compare the old and new and see justification for why the latter is useful before they should be expected to see arguments as to why one is better. Nobody can agree with what they can't understand. You can't even say to understand it if you can't explain it, you can only say you know what you mean.
I strongly recommend getting a job selling, installing and supporting a large installation so you can see just how much thought and work goes into making the internet happen. It has never just happened on its own.
Slashdot Mirror
> "Should companies be able to require employees..."
Yes. It's called at will employment. They can set any requirements they want. You can work there or not.
It might be instructive to engage in a little etymology (origin of words, not study of bugs, which starts eNty...)
A 'professional' is someone who professes to BE something, as opposed to an employee, worker or similar, who simply does something. A professional would seek training for their own betterment, company assistance aside. Even in cases where such training is not required, companies are usually also made up of professionals who respond to like behavior and reimburse, credit or promote those who act professionally. When they don't, other companies often will.
A major failing of many companies is in forcing other kinds of workers to go to training. Not being professional, they can sit for days to fulfill that obligation but fail to learn anything useful. But they keep sending these people anyway. Optimism, perhaps.
Decide if you want to be something or just do something and act accordingly. A professional wouldn't have asked such a question, so the question may be moot. But then, anyone can change. Optimism, perhaps.
If not, hey, the professionals always need drones, droids and gofers. Just not always the same ones in the same jobs.
> a supermassive black hole quickly devours gas and dust, it can generate enough
> radiation to abort all the embryonic stars in the surrounding galaxy. It's not
> clear what this means for life's ability to take hold in such a bleak environment,
For life that can exist in space without matter (gas, dust, stars, etc.) but with a large dose of radiation, it wouldn't mean much at all. Except that life is made of matter and thus it would get sucked in too.
I would imagine that a supermassive black hole "can" do anything it wants. Let's see you try to stop it, you silly baryonic, self-organizing, endothermic, negentropic bipeds.
... that LiveScience has a two bit limit for understanding what they publish and so can get correct. These are the people that produced the 'top 10 mysteries of the brain' some of which had nothing to do with the brain. If they understood what they read, they'd not reprint such drivel laden press release pubs.
I don't expect them to know about the study that found human facial recognition in the brains of dead salmon. That was a real study and required some actual background knowledge. But you have to wonder why they persist in reprinting fMRI stories that fail to show all the relevant parts of the brain operating rather than just the one that controls one function involved. (In TFA frinstance, switching tasks means switching attention which means anterior cingulate. So where is it?) It's probably because the articles have those pretty pictures of colored lights in the brain -- which they fail to include in their reprintings.
So of the two 'things', what's a thing? Per their example, cooking takes at least two tasks (recipe/memory and mixing/motor) and switching between them requires attentional control which is a third. Add the phone and you get a second attentional control function as well as language comprehension and language production. So there's six. Now what happens if you drop the phone into the cake batter? An executive function has to monitor constantly in case novel response is required. Seven. An emergency motor function kicks in that lets you try to catch it. Eight, if called upon.
As for the relationship between TFA and decision making, it is certainly worthwhile to read such scientific wisdom as 'might' 'seem' 'don't appear' and 'perhaps'. Which suggests the question, 'how many "things" is a hypothetical'? One question? One for each possibility? In any case, considering the hypothetical connection between TFA and decisions is a complex collection of interacting items to compare and contrast. Despite the fact that they are unaware they're doing it, the "science" "writers" and LiveScience juggle a fair amount of items in the last section. But just so we don't overtax them, let's let them continue to think they're comparing 'one science thingy' (that's one!) with 'another science thingy' (oh, wait. that's um... there's one and then.... darn, this thingy and thingy stuff is hard).
I can think of no better way to develop the sort of relationship you want with these people than to give them some assistance. A new web site offering credit card numbers, pr0n of various disgusting kinds and passwords to similar sites, "secrets of hacking [x]'s government sites", an enormous list of movies and such available for download, an international banking concern planned to assist others in recovering funds from dead relatives' accounts, and as many similar offering as you can imagine, is just what's needed. Of course the contact information should be theirs (even if it had been yours previously). Advertising it on usenet should help spread the word. Whatever you can do to send them /.'ing levels of traffic of all kinds will help make your point. Also, publicizing their contact info on multilevel marketing sites/newsgroups and Chinese manufacturer/wholesalers sites will get them more offers than it would take to please any such assholes. Devote some thought and time to it and I'll bet you can cause them far more trouble than they've caused you. And your old clients? Let them know that as the new owners of your old service, they'd be glad to service pets and farm animals on webcam and/or DVDs sent free for the asking. Currency exchange by email at 1:1,000 rates. Sex tour vacations for $200 including airfare. Official funds collection point for unspecified non-governmental armed freedom fighter organizations world wide. Recovered/liberated fissionables, pure plant extracts direct from South American mountains and middle eastern flower fields, all for pennies a day!
And of course if any of these attract enough public attention and appear to be illegal, law enforcement at the cloner's location as well as elsewhere would almost certainly want to know.
> "The Washington Post reports that the Obama administration is abandoning its policy of using nationality alone to determine which US-bound international air travelers should be subject to additional screening...."
"Here comes one. It looks like this one has a nationality. We'd better 'randomly' screen them."
After all, they use nationality, not any particular nationality. For instance I have a friend that was injured and medically retired as a SEAL team commander. He's 'randomly' selected at international connection, US outbound or inbound. He's also stopped at every gate on a US only trip, including transfer points. He must be very national looking. Or maybe it's his tendency to say things like "Officers retire, but rarely resign. When we promise to defend against enemies, foreign AND DOMESTIC, it's for life."
"What we need are a few good old fashioned hangings." -- FTC commissioner Orson Swindell at the first FTC spam conference. I'm looking forward to hearing about one of the organized crime associated bots getting whacked by one of the competition, and so the owners of the former return the favor to the author of the (temporary) victor. I suspect it's happened already, but not publicized. Sooner or later one will. Then we'll see some real cyberwarefare. You think the US government has got some cyberwarriors lined up? Fugidaboudit.
Don't get yourself into a valium deficiency. Those unfamiliar with the language often use can't (usually meaning can not, unable to, not having the capability) when they should use "has decided not to do yet again because the money's needed to do other things that haven't been yet."
"This is a good example of bad science."
This is a good example of horseshit. No science is bad unless it persists in promoting a point that it has already discredited. Examining prima facie unlikely hypotheses is as necessary and expected as examining hypotheses that are 'obviously true by common sense'. It is also perfectly good science to publish observations rather than experiments, particularly when it is impossible to catalog the entirety of the environment as well as impossible to enforce controls, both of these being the case when observing animal behaviors in the natural habitat. Being a seismologist you'd think she would be used to the facts of naturalistic observation and lack of control. Unless they've managed to produce a set of standardized earthquakes to use as a control group for doing seismology experiments. No? No wonder then the apparent lack of grasp on what's acceptable methodology.
"This is not good statistics."
'This' are singular. 'Statistics' are plural. Grammar are as necessary for good science as am methodology, controls and inferential statistics when it an be applied, or descriptive statistics when simply observing.
"In this case, there's no way to know what kind of fluctuations are normally seen in toad activity"
Only if you can show that observations stretching back probably centuries by locals, as well as relevant publications by herpitologists, are invalid. I suspect she has no idea whether any of either exist. TFA had no mention of any, but to assume this absence represents a lack is worse.
Being a scientist does not qualify one to be a critic of other fields, and sometimes even of one's own. Whose idea was it to ask a seismologist to critique a paper on animal behavior?
"Garfield has never replicated Escalante's success with math students, and Reason Magazine reported on the shameful way in which others tore down what Escalante and his teachers worked so hard to build."
No, but I can tell you with absolute certainty that at least one grad student took Escalante's message and intentions to heart (along with those of Al Martin, founder of the goal based rather than years based Alpha School near Portland OR), and was so inspired that when he was tasked with teaching, he earned the highest student evaluations of any member of his department (6 out of 14 evaluations being perfect 5 of 5), and his students earned (not bought, not jumped through hoops, earned) 1 full GPA point higher average grade than any taking those same classes for 10 years previous. His students also produced valid, reliable, replicable original results which they took to international conferences, as well as replicating work by big names and showing where the errors lie that invalidated those accepted works. 10 years on and medically retired, and he still gets contacted by a few more of them every year to let him know it worked. Blacksburg VA isn't easy L.A., but that doesn't mean it's not useful and needed outside the poverty stricken areas.
Since this appears to be real, it's a darn good thing the article was posted today. Had it come out 1 day later, nobody would believe the story was anything but an excuse for the headline.
"Reuters is reporting that Gonorrhea risks becoming a superbug"
Why would gonorrhea risk doing that? It must be a very good reason for it to undertake such a risk. Now if it were 'at risk of', TFA would make sense.
Yeah it's a cheap shot. But for fuck sake, Reuters?
... how many lies is there in three 1/4 truths?
"To be able to apply (a magnetic field) to a specific brain region and change people's moral judgments is really astonishing."
1. TMS is not a magnetic field. It is a strobing of a field building up then collapsing, essentially it is Z number of magnetic fields, each lasting a few milliseconds, where Z equals X seconds times Y pulses per second. The collapsing fields dump energy into the neurons' axons. This has the effect of electroshock, except the target is a small area, not the whole brain.
2. If a magnetic field applies to a specific brain region did something, a magnetic field applied to the whole head would also. There is nothing in the brain that can tell when a part of the brain is being stimulated vs. the whole thing. Thus, someone in an MRI would have the same reaction. OTOH, they'd have a reaction to everything it were possible to instigate via external stimulation.
3. TMS doesn't change anything to anything else. It disrupts the region it is focused on, and sends it into a seizure state to where it cannot function. Thus TFA is not about changing someone's morals, it is about incapacitating the brain region with which a person makes such decisions, eliminating that part from the overall process. The result is amoral, not different morals. This far more trivial effect has been shown many times by applying TMS to various frontal areas, most notably the orbitofrontal.
Anything the brain can do, TMS can make it unable to do for a few seconds to minutes. TMS is focal electroshock. But not so focal that it can differentiate between small neighboring areas. Thus if you zapped the motor strip to incapacitate the thumb, the very near by region controlling the neck would likely get hit, and they'd lose the ability to keep their head upright.
"The military is facing a number of challenges, including training, accessing national air space and improving aircraft communications systems..."
And rehabilitation. For reasons not yet understood UAV remote pilots are suffering more burnout than most others, as well as PTSD to an extent that mystifies.
Any off the wall collection of data up through true random can be used to "make" a pretty pictur, since the picture is actually made by people and therefore made pretty by them. This does nothing but make eye candy.
What's the results? What's the implications? Where does this put the current pro/con dark energy argument, not to mention the recent 'discovery' of 10 times more baryonic matter than we had seen previously? Nobody has yet satisfactorily explained how that other matter was already known about since to know it in the absence of EM detection meant gravity detection, and you can't tell "dark" baryonic gravity from dark matter gravity from dark energy gravity.
All pretty pictures, more questions and fewer answers. This is not what we're paying them for.
"Are we trying to 'normalize' humans to a threshold of experience?"
We who? Implying that the listener is involved is a simplistic means to maintain their attention. The listener certainly has nothing to do with the project.
Are the researchers doing these things? No, they're only trying to solve an interesting problem. They're not trying to do anything to anyone. They're only trying to make this available.
Only the potential recipient has the responsibility. Nobody else matters.
... patenting the business model of a patent troll?
If the right person pulled it off, they could use it to shut all the others down.
The guy in TFA is a developmental psychologist. He's saying a little, but not much, more than Jean Piaget, the patron saint of "child" psychology. Piaget http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Piaget posited there are 4 stages to cognitive development. The 4th stage ('formal') starts at age 11 to 13 (or adolescence depending on who you read) and is when the mind acquires the ability to abstract, hypothesize and deduce. Both these guys are right, before this kids can play around with numbers and can be taught to jump through hoops that appear as if they're understanding abstract maths, but they can't really. There are concrete maths they can learn, essentially a single equation at a time using +, -, * and /. A kid can help mom making cakes by getting out two eggs until she says 'I think I'll make two cakes' and the kid gets two eggs and two eggs. The 'three R's' remain intact, as long as the third is 'rithmatic and not that poorly conceived and terribly executed attempt to teach arithmetic by using algebra as the vehicle, known as "new math". You can make kids do stuff (hell, you can make chickens play basketball, right Dr. Skinner?), but you can't make them understand stuff until they're able, so you might as well make better use of the time than to try.
Had he not been so taken with observing so many different things and not theorizing too in depth about most of them, a contemporary of Piaget's who also used his own children as his "lab", came to some of the same conclusions and would probably have done far more. Unfortunately, when it came time for him to make his mark, those around him saw to it that he penned his treatise on evolution rather than developmental psychology. Though not particularly directly related, at least Darwin got to make him mark on psychology by being credited for the essential ideas which got built up into evolutionary psychology. Darwin did in fact note that his children could use but could not understand certain abstract concepts before a certain age, years before Piaget observed and wrote on the same thing. They said these about 120 and 80 years respectively before the guy in TFA said pretty much the same with the additional "so stop it". Brave man. I wonder if the parents of any school children know where he lives? They're the ones that won't be convinced.
there are statistically two popes per square kilometer in the vatican.
One does not do statistics on single data points. Statistics are for estimating results in large numbers of cases using smaller numbers of cases. When there is only one case, we use an entirely different means of reporting data. It is called a measurement. There is one vatican. Results would be reported as X per vatican. By direct measure, the answer is one pope per vatican. Your own result reflects your incorrect thinking. There is no square kilometer in one vatican. One does not use a unit of measure of area for a target smaller than that unit.
I was specializing in methodology during my doctorate work and so had to not only have a good grasp on stats as performed but also able to at least estimate how well the analyses I was developing worked. We had a top notch stats professor who'd started in psychology and so ended up not only teaching all graduate courses for our department but also served as top level consultant for any and all of our projects. Since some of my work was in nonlinear phenomena and therefore stats, I spent many an hour trying to absorb everything he could offer.
When I'd gotten on top of the material, some of what I saw going on made me disturbed, angry and/or disgusted.
In EEG research it was common to go through an analysis system wherein one first does a test on all electrodes together to determine if there's a difference between conditions. Fine. But then to localize, one first divided the electrodes in half and tested left vs. right. Then one tested both left and right according to front and rear. And so on, until individual electrodes are compared. I as told this reduced false positives and retained power. I was told to do it in my dissertation. I was told who started this process. I wasn't told it was bullshit; I figured that out on my own. I looked up the reference. There was no mention of this process in the article. As is common when I tracked down such rituals, the article said to do what you could justify doing but to know what you could and could not justify due to your own ability. I also found an article that said such processes did not retain power nor reduce errors.
The stats prof pointed out that each collection of electrodes in each test was arbitrary. There was no reason that every possible combination should not be included in their ritual. A "real" result from the process should require that. I pointed out that our software localized electrical sources in the brain down to 1mm voxels (to work with fMRI data) making surface electrode analysis extraneous. I took these points and the articles back to the department and was told finally to "do what I had to" for my diss. I ended up using a nonlinear running t-test to analyze time series of signals in 2 msec windows and produced a 'movie' of dopamine effects on the frontal lobe across the first 20 msec post stimulus. Nobody on my committee could understand the analysis, but they all loved the movie. I didn't tell them I'd adapted the analysis technique used in fMRI because some of them had done fMRI research and thought they knew what they were doing. Had I had to explain my workings I'd have had to tell them they didn't understand what they were doing, and at that point I wanted to get done and get to my first job offer. NIH. Invited and non-competitive. They understood my work. Besides, by this time I'd already studied at Santa Fe Institute and had learned the difference between learning from people who knew more than I likely ever would and jumping through hoops for people who I'd already passed in ability.
I also saw colleagues doing fMRI work who had no clue they were pushing statistical testing so hard that due to the necessary correction factor they were trying to find individual data points with p values with up to 22 zeroes between dot and data, a certainty they could never realistically achieve, and a cut off level they'd never even consider trying to look at in any study where they knew at least some of what was going on. I've seen entire poster sessions at conferences on brain mapping where maybe 2 out of 200 could accurately and factually explain how their analysis worked (typically they worked with a biophysicist who could, but none of which understood the phenomenon under test well enough to describe it, meaning together they could produce results but not knowledge as they couldn't pass the latter back and forth between them).
And I've seen researchers who did understand fMRI and SPS (statistical probability mapping, the analysis technique used for fMRI). And they refused to use the technique for the reasons given. My boss at
Get over the human-centric thinking such as displayed in TFA, or your result criteria will be so restricted that you'd never find anything other than your selves.
SETI is searching for intelligent life on stellar systems other than this one. So why is an arbitrary number of revolutions of one planet around its star, presented as a number in an arbitrary number base (in this case, base ten; and not truly arbitrary since it is used because it matches the number of manual digits on the hands on the beings doing the searching), significant? It's not.
Nor is it directly relevant to SETI. It's the kind of thinking that makes "50 years" significant that restricts the thinking that will make it possible to detect extra-terrestrial intelligence. Once that thinking understands why it has to specifically give up concepts like "50" and "years" when thinking about this subject, it will begin to make itself able to expand its thinking outside the restrictions of its own nature and able to think in terms of all possible natures.
Consider beings with fluid bodies similar to amoeba. They will have no set number of digits, and so may use different number bases for different measures. "50" and the thinking that understands such numbers ceases to mean anything. And consider that rather than counting stellar revolutions, they instead measure time according to a variable standard, with "years" ceasing to be useful as a concept. And consider that beings 'out there' discovered very early the chaotic nature of most physical phenomena, and so when presenting numbers relating to dimensions or numbers of variables that best describes something, they give a non-integer number. Given just these few differences, it may not be possible to decode any signal relating numerical data, and it's certainly unlikely that any who maintain a "50 years" mentality would agree that the decoding is meaningful. That point may not pertain to SETI researchers, but may petain to the far larger number of scientists that must agree with the presented information in order for it to be considered accepted as scientifically accurate and a true signal indicating intelligence.
> but what happens if a person breaks their nose?"
Segmented curvilinear correction. A broken nose only changes shape in the broken spot, almost always the bridge. The majority is intact. The database results will have those hits that match, say, 5 of the 6 measures. Those will then be subjected to 'morphing' within the constraints of the average (more likely within the standard deviation) of how bridges that most often fit with that nose type are bent and in what way. The Segment that doesn't fit will have the bent or Curved piece 'unbent' or made to fit a Linear model by a Correction algorithm. The result will be a correlation measure for that sixth piece to go along with the five segments already matched. It's not a certain measure, but it'll give a smaller number of likely possibles to start with, and if there's no positives, lesser correlations to look at.
What makes this article bogus (I won't call Bullshit because it looks like they really believe this will work) is variants on Groucho nose glasses. A simple fake nose will fool it. It doesn't even have to be a complete fake nose; flesh colored putty packed on to certain areas will make it a different nose.
> Some cool pictures make this worth a click
Cool my ass. I've worked with police sketch artists. They have a book with all the examples in their software of all the parts of the face used as variables. Noses sans face are some of the ugliest pieces of human anatomy.
The "leaked" document is OPSEC propoganda http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operations_security , a primary tool of psychological operations. It was made available so that it could be seen to fail, making Wikileaks and its supporters think they were getting away with something. They're not. They're being used. Psyops teams always seek to obtain a reliable source with which to feed misinformation. They do not make such sources stop. They give them reason to think they're safe so that they'll continue to publicize the "leaks" that the psyops teams want them to. A source like this is worth far more as a means to feed credible false intel than it is as a trophy marker in some administrator's resume'.
Besides, if they wanted Wikileaks to close shop, they wouldn't make it disappear. Instead they'd snatch people like Julian Assange and give them reasons why they should just drop out of sight. The reasons are typically measured in 'caliber'. Once such individuals are 'convinced', the other members start finding reasons why they should cease operations before becoming 'convinced'.
Yeah, I know it sounds more like a movie script than a government/military action. It actually sounds more like something from Dr. Paul "E.E. 'Doc' Smith" Linebarger's book "Psychological Operations". Read it before you try to say otherwise. And realize that this book is still the primary text book on the subject for the thousands of military and civilian (military psyops specialists are not allowed to operate within the United States) workers in the field.
This ex-Yale medical school staff member proposes instead that Michael Seringhaus, Yale Law School student, attempt to collect samples from those who disagree with his proposal. Personally. By hand. And no, those of us who don't want this done will not have our arms tied down. Right about the time he gets in phlebotomy range he'll also be in manua-cranial impact range. I want to go first.
I'm making book on how many he'll attempt before he changes his mind. My money is in "one".
"Herschel Space Observatory Finds Precursors of Life In Orion"
I called Orion and let him know about this. He said he was well aware he had precursors of life inside, but failed to see how a telescope could be used in place of a microscope and an, um, sample to make this determination. When he asked where I got this from I told him. My son thanks you all for your concern, and promises to take due care when handling his precursors and resulting cursors, as long as you'll promise to point your telescope at someone else.
I don't care if he predicted Nostradamus and first described self-sustaining fusion. The points and problems brought up are in large part already known and understood in other terms, with many of them dismissed by those who understand the problems in the terms commonly used.
6. The internet does not create information overload. It doesn't create information, or anything for that matter. It is constructed and filled by people who either handle the information load well or do not (hence over-load). The number of sources and amount received from them is under the control of the receiver. This is only a problem if the person does not develop a suitable technique for handling the flow, or is prevented from using it. Simultaneity is not a way to handle a large flow except in unprocessed pass-though. Regardless of the technologies that might be employed for any of this, sucessful collection of new material requires serial reception with the majority of attention focused on the item is interest.
Far more useful in developing the ability to absorb more information faster is the concept of 'media richness'. Plain text is just that, very plain, while human behavior is very rich (language plus nonverbals, etc.). Most of the net is low richness. It could be made more dense, but to be richer would then also have to be made cleaner, with less noise within the signal.
14. Creating your own new ideas and presenting them as validated concepts by comparing them with existing concepts is a technique well used in fiction writing. In non-fiction people expect to be able to compare the old and new and see justification for why the latter is useful before they should be expected to see arguments as to why one is better. Nobody can agree with what they can't understand. You can't even say to understand it if you can't explain it, you can only say you know what you mean.
I strongly recommend getting a job selling, installing and supporting a large installation so you can see just how much thought and work goes into making the internet happen. It has never just happened on its own.