When you're working with liquid nitrogen and liquid helium (as coolants for superconducting magnets) it's easy to assume they're harmless because they're chemically inert. However a small volume of liquid boils into a huge volume of gas, which will exclude the air - and precious oxygen - from the vicinity. A big helium leak is no laughing matter because of the asphyxiation risk.
I'll have to dig out my law notes and read up on that, we were informed on the situation in England but I never revised it (ho-ho!). It's certainly a complex topic.
I can't stand ASBOs. Simple explaination: they allow you to make any act of your choice a custodial offense for a particular individual. Regardless of what the law says, and regardless of what the rest of the population are allowed to do. So judges now have the power to set laws at the per-individual level, with little or no oversight. If they decided that I was complaining about ASBOs online too much, they'd be entirely in their power to ban me from discussing them. Extreme example, but it's a terrifying concept.
Actually, consent is a suitable defense to assault under Scots law, although I'm not sure about England. You definitely couldn't get convicted if your friend agreed to fight you (assuming nobody died, that's the exception) although whether you could get arrested for disturbing the peace is another question. Believe it or not, this "consent" defense arose as a result of BDSM.
I recall seeing an image search a little while back where people tagged images manually, building up a weighted list of tags. It might be a good idea to use a system like that, to train a system like this. Like the spam filters we all know and love.
Ah, well there's been a rash of notebooks advertised here in the UK just now with AMD Sempron 3400s (or something equally disturbing) and 1GB of RAM, which currently mark out the entry level at about £400. Even Dell are doing laptops at about that spec right now. I would've called this reasonable for XP but I suspect it's a stock-clearing exercise now.
Indeedy. I got a mid-range priced laptop back when XP was just coming out (I was going to uni and there wasn't much choice regarding OS, naturally), and while it was presentable, a 1.1GHz Celeron and 256MB of RAM gave a noticably low-end experience. So I'm not eager to make the same mistake again. I'm holding off on buying a new laptop (I prefer to roll my own with desktops) until Core Duo and at least 2GB of RAM is the "entry level" spec. And perhaps even longer: all of the "bells and whistles" features of Vista wrt. laptops (ReadyDrive, Sideshow) are AWOL.
That goes without saying, of course. Basically I'm on a mission here because it looks like a variation of the equally tiresome "half of Americans have below average intelligence" urban myth. Frankly I'm not sure either version is actually true.
Well, I don't know what to say. I've always been presented with IQ tests as normal distributions. I'm not sure how you go from that (and a bunch of tests with various different standard deviations) and get a non-100 average IQ for each country.
To elaborate, in essence an IQ score when combined with the standard distribution of the test tells you what percentile you've fallen into. Therefore the idea that anything but half of the population could fall into the 50th percentile is absurd by definition.
I know you don't use the median score to figure out the average. That's just common sense. However on top of this by definition the score distribution has to be a normal distribution. Therefore you get 50% scoring above the 100 mark, and 50% scoring below.
You say that as though all sheep have shepherds. However, as you say, we run on autopilot most of the time: we have no pilot, or shepherd, or whatever. It's rather patronising to assume we each follow a single leader in making our decisions.
Half of every population's IQ is below 100! By definition, 100 is the average IQ score, with half the people taking the test scoring above 100 and the other half scoring below 100.
IIRC the "stances" are actually the creation of Daniel Dennett, and came out of his study of the development and structure of consciousness. Not that Dawkins would've raised them without crediting Dennett, of course. Incidentially he wrote "Darwin's Dangerous Idea": like everyone studying the hard problems in biology and anthropology, evolution is central to his work.
Somehow it makes sense that S&M would be considered "more sophisticated" than regular porn. I have no idea how that works, but it has a ring of truth about it. And now I have a horrible set of mental images involving men with waxed moustaches and PVC smoking jackets. "I say!"
I read about a fascinating experiment recently which attempts to test whether the laws of physics are invariant with your frame of reference, by comparing the enthalpy of crystallisation of the two enantiomers (mirror images) of a chiral compound. If the laws of physics vary with space (i.e. there's a slight energetic preference to certain orientations in a universal "ether"), then the enthalpies of crystallisation will be different for each enantiomer as your orientation in space changes (achieved by performing the experiment at different times of day, so your orientation changes as the Earth rotates).
It's one of these experiments which can't absolutely disprove the effect it's looking for (in this case, the idea of a universal reference frame) and instead aims to set an increasingly minute upper bound on the magnitude of that effect. My hat goes off to the people who keep performing such demanding, yet thankless, work.
I don't want to derail the comments so feel free to mark this down as "Off Topic" but the discussion here reminds me of moving out of university into the world of "real" chemistry, and the basic principle may apply in all fields. When everything's working fine, you don't need to remember the fundimental stuff and can treat it like a black box. However when things begin to behave strangely, you have to know what's inside the box or you're never going to be able to solve the problem. The obvious analogy is when your car breaks down
If I'm interpreting a simulation of a compound, even if I'm only interested in the structure, I need to know the nuts and bolts of the numerical methods used to predict that structure, so that I can choose the right approach. Even if the correct approach is obvious, in-depth knowledge is needed to avoid mistaking simulation artefacts for actual information.
Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against platform superiority arguments, they remind me of my school days trying to convince people that the Amiga was better than the Atari ST. However it's jarring when intelligent, adult discourse on market statistics suddenly slides off into adolescent my-computer-is-better-than-yours posturing.
If he was just spouting gibberish, that wouldn't be a problem. However he says plenty of intelligent things and then mid-stride decides he's going to start rambling on like it's the NES versus the Master System all over again. It's annoying that someone can come so close to good journalism but then decide to torpedo himself.
The developer has announced that God of War 3 on the PS3 will support Rumble. Will Sony be offering a trade-in scheme for owners of the original, rumble-less Sixaxis?
It's nice to be reassured that the titles on the list are games we'll want to play, but I'm aware of quite a few people who are avoiding making a PS3 purchase until the back compatability list is up. They want to make sure that the titles they want to play are on the list before trading in their PS2s. You already know which games work and which don't, so why has Sony decided to wait until the unit is on the shelves before revealing the list to customers?
Slashdot Mirror
When you're working with liquid nitrogen and liquid helium (as coolants for superconducting magnets) it's easy to assume they're harmless because they're chemically inert. However a small volume of liquid boils into a huge volume of gas, which will exclude the air - and precious oxygen - from the vicinity. A big helium leak is no laughing matter because of the asphyxiation risk.
I'll have to dig out my law notes and read up on that, we were informed on the situation in England but I never revised it (ho-ho!). It's certainly a complex topic.
I can't stand ASBOs. Simple explaination: they allow you to make any act of your choice a custodial offense for a particular individual. Regardless of what the law says, and regardless of what the rest of the population are allowed to do. So judges now have the power to set laws at the per-individual level, with little or no oversight. If they decided that I was complaining about ASBOs online too much, they'd be entirely in their power to ban me from discussing them. Extreme example, but it's a terrifying concept.
Actually, consent is a suitable defense to assault under Scots law, although I'm not sure about England. You definitely couldn't get convicted if your friend agreed to fight you (assuming nobody died, that's the exception) although whether you could get arrested for disturbing the peace is another question. Believe it or not, this "consent" defense arose as a result of BDSM.
I recall seeing an image search a little while back where people tagged images manually, building up a weighted list of tags. It might be a good idea to use a system like that, to train a system like this. Like the spam filters we all know and love.
Ah, well there's been a rash of notebooks advertised here in the UK just now with AMD Sempron 3400s (or something equally disturbing) and 1GB of RAM, which currently mark out the entry level at about £400. Even Dell are doing laptops at about that spec right now. I would've called this reasonable for XP but I suspect it's a stock-clearing exercise now.
It's about time! Teh woots, etc. etc.
Indeedy. I got a mid-range priced laptop back when XP was just coming out (I was going to uni and there wasn't much choice regarding OS, naturally), and while it was presentable, a 1.1GHz Celeron and 256MB of RAM gave a noticably low-end experience. So I'm not eager to make the same mistake again. I'm holding off on buying a new laptop (I prefer to roll my own with desktops) until Core Duo and at least 2GB of RAM is the "entry level" spec. And perhaps even longer: all of the "bells and whistles" features of Vista wrt. laptops (ReadyDrive, Sideshow) are AWOL.
That goes without saying, of course. Basically I'm on a mission here because it looks like a variation of the equally tiresome "half of Americans have below average intelligence" urban myth. Frankly I'm not sure either version is actually true.
Well, I don't know what to say. I've always been presented with IQ tests as normal distributions. I'm not sure how you go from that (and a bunch of tests with various different standard deviations) and get a non-100 average IQ for each country.
To elaborate, in essence an IQ score when combined with the standard distribution of the test tells you what percentile you've fallen into. Therefore the idea that anything but half of the population could fall into the 50th percentile is absurd by definition.
I know you don't use the median score to figure out the average. That's just common sense. However on top of this by definition the score distribution has to be a normal distribution. Therefore you get 50% scoring above the 100 mark, and 50% scoring below.
Actually, scratch all but the final sentence of that. Don't drink and post, folks, you wind up with word salad.
You say that as though all sheep have shepherds. However, as you say, we run on autopilot most of the time: we have no pilot, or shepherd, or whatever. It's rather patronising to assume we each follow a single leader in making our decisions.
"Half of the US population has IQ's below 100."
Half of every population's IQ is below 100! By definition, 100 is the average IQ score, with half the people taking the test scoring above 100 and the other half scoring below 100.
IIRC the "stances" are actually the creation of Daniel Dennett, and came out of his study of the development and structure of consciousness. Not that Dawkins would've raised them without crediting Dennett, of course. Incidentially he wrote "Darwin's Dangerous Idea": like everyone studying the hard problems in biology and anthropology, evolution is central to his work.
Somehow it makes sense that S&M would be considered "more sophisticated" than regular porn. I have no idea how that works, but it has a ring of truth about it. And now I have a horrible set of mental images involving men with waxed moustaches and PVC smoking jackets. "I say!"
I read about a fascinating experiment recently which attempts to test whether the laws of physics are invariant with your frame of reference, by comparing the enthalpy of crystallisation of the two enantiomers (mirror images) of a chiral compound. If the laws of physics vary with space (i.e. there's a slight energetic preference to certain orientations in a universal "ether"), then the enthalpies of crystallisation will be different for each enantiomer as your orientation in space changes (achieved by performing the experiment at different times of day, so your orientation changes as the Earth rotates).
It's one of these experiments which can't absolutely disprove the effect it's looking for (in this case, the idea of a universal reference frame) and instead aims to set an increasingly minute upper bound on the magnitude of that effect. My hat goes off to the people who keep performing such demanding, yet thankless, work.
Okay, who tagged the article "yes"? Own up.
I don't want to derail the comments so feel free to mark this down as "Off Topic" but the discussion here reminds me of moving out of university into the world of "real" chemistry, and the basic principle may apply in all fields. When everything's working fine, you don't need to remember the fundimental stuff and can treat it like a black box. However when things begin to behave strangely, you have to know what's inside the box or you're never going to be able to solve the problem. The obvious analogy is when your car breaks down
If I'm interpreting a simulation of a compound, even if I'm only interested in the structure, I need to know the nuts and bolts of the numerical methods used to predict that structure, so that I can choose the right approach. Even if the correct approach is obvious, in-depth knowledge is needed to avoid mistaking simulation artefacts for actual information.
Any examples from other fields?
Last year, you (Phil Harrison) stated that regarding the Xbox 360's emulated back compatability, updated through firmware updates, you "don't believe that was backwards compatibility". Now the PS3 is being redesigned with emulated back compatability, which will be updated through firmware updates. What has changed Sony's attitude to software backwards compatability in the past year?
Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against platform superiority arguments, they remind me of my school days trying to convince people that the Amiga was better than the Atari ST. However it's jarring when intelligent, adult discourse on market statistics suddenly slides off into adolescent my-computer-is-better-than-yours posturing.
If he was just spouting gibberish, that wouldn't be a problem. However he says plenty of intelligent things and then mid-stride decides he's going to start rambling on like it's the NES versus the Master System all over again. It's annoying that someone can come so close to good journalism but then decide to torpedo himself.
The developer has announced that God of War 3 on the PS3 will support Rumble. Will Sony be offering a trade-in scheme for owners of the original, rumble-less Sixaxis?
It's nice to be reassured that the titles on the list are games we'll want to play, but I'm aware of quite a few people who are avoiding making a PS3 purchase until the back compatability list is up. They want to make sure that the titles they want to play are on the list before trading in their PS2s. You already know which games work and which don't, so why has Sony decided to wait until the unit is on the shelves before revealing the list to customers?