People looking for a connection between something they suspect to be dangerous and any potential health issues
Wrong, there is no connection initially, just headaches once in a while. After years on end a pattern will emerge -- "Aha I get headaches after chewing sugar-free gum or drinking diet soda." That's the process. The way you describe it, is that someone already believes that aspartame or whatever chemical is bad for them then they start looking for a correlation between any body response (headaches/cramps/diarrhea) and that chemical.
Well it takes one stupid commander to order the "full-time professional army" to jump off of a cliff and you don't have a "full-time professional army" anymore. It's just like saying, "Yu have the latest and fastest CPU. So =hHow come the software you write is so slow and full of bugs!?"
Besides, since Vietnam we already have a problem with sadistic sickos who join just to kill, and if you stop paying soldiers you'll be left with perhaps one half honest patriots and another good half of crazy people who love to blow up anything that moves. Look at Abu Ghraib, I think those people would have joined just to have a chance to torture someone, the pay was just 'extra' for them.
And at what point does the parent rain brimstone upon the child?
Hmm... maybe the point when the child kills someone? A little brimstone would be too bad...
Or let me guess, you are the parent who tells their children they are grounded for 2 days if they happen to kill someone?
-- Billy, no more decapitating your friends! You are grounded young man, no Playstation for you this evening!
Pop and junk food or ... human fat !
on
Driving on Starch
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
How about pop and junk food? One Twinkie for me -- one for my horse...er my Honda.
That should curb obesity in this country. But then we have all this energy already stored as fat on our bodies. Well, we'll just have to design a car that runs on human fat. Just cut that love handle, toss it in a gas/fat tank and there you go, drive to the store and buy more Twinkies to put that lost chunk of fat back and keep going...
That was a really good analogy! It is hard for us humans with our limited minds to understand and comprehend certain things. Especially when confronted with such seemingly conflicting characteristics of God as Him being 'just' and 'loving'.
I too, find it better to think in terms of a parent-child analogy. A parent wants their child to do the right thing, which means sometimes (or rather, quite often) not letting the child do the thing she or he wants and thus making the child upset and hearing stuff from them like "I hate you daddy!". The child does not realize their limitation and cannot predict the outcome of their actions but a parent can.
You might be joking but that is actually a very good way to hide something -- just cover it with lots and lots of noise. I do that with our beloved friend -- Google. You see, it likes very much to gather my browsing history so in case of a court order it can quickly give it to any lawyer out there, so what do I do? I run the TrackMeNot Firefox extension. It sends a fake query to Google about once in 5 or so seconds. Let Google figure out which one is me browsing and which queries are submitted by TMN. TMN is actually pretty smart while I was typing this it asked Google for such things like "describe dept that", "Chinchilla Farm Investigation", "officials representing diverse views" and "each selective router" -- not bad, just as crazy and random as my own queries would be...
Yes. But that wasn't the main point. You missed the other point, the one about obsolescence where the company that made the proprietary drive and format going belly-up next year. And then those who backed up their data on these disks not being able to get it back.
Aren't you glad though you didn't spend tens of thousands paying someone to back-up your old family movies on it, or some valuable data. If you had to read that data now, it won't be as easy as going to the store and buying a player.
And with this you spend $18k for a new drive, an expensive media and they are both proprietary. If the company goes belly up next year, your cat pisses on your $18k drive how do you get your data back? It is not smart to adopt a new and bleeding edge technology to such areas as long term data backup!
Toss an autoloading platter jukebox onto the front of this and you can start long term archival recording of business documents (mortgage documents > 30 years).
You obviously responded without reading my whole comment (tsk...tsk!).
Alright, so say you buy the $18,000 drive and 200 discs as $180 a piece. You spend a couple of months saving all your highly valuable data, put it in a vault and wait a 30 years. BUT, the next year, the company that created the $18,000 and their proprietary storage goes belly up because there aren't enough fools to spend so much on a new technology without having any guarantee that it will last when the purpose of the backups it to last . By last I mean there being way to get the data back. In 5 years the $18k drive gets full of dust and dies and 20 years down the road you want to access your document -- what do you do?
Yes, if you had knowledge of the future and knew that the technology was going to stay unlike say Laserdisc and others that came and went before they became widespread...
With 1TB hard drives hitting the market, is it really worth spending $180 for 1 (!) optical disk and a $18k for the drive? For that money one can buy a lot of 1TB hard drives and build a RAID 0/1/5... array and have more capacity and reliability. Besides, I don't see museums or even companies running to get that drive, because if the standard goes the way of the Laserdisc then they are stuck with some exotic technology experiment and when their drive breaks there they will not be able to easily get their data back.
Amen. Basically all the basic steps that the coffee gets to your cup are important:
1. Bean species and location (arabica vs. robusta for ex.).
2. Roast. How it was roasted. I like the Espresso roast -- very sweet, not bitter, but after so much roasting, it is the bean's origin or location is really hard to detect, it just all tastes very "roasted", which I like.
3. The freshness. How long ago it was picked and roasted.
4. The grinding. I like a special grinder that lets one select the grind size. I like "fine", for an espresso.
5. The brewing. I like the pump-powered espresso as well -- it will set you back some hundreds of dollars. You need a special puck that will allow you to pack the coffee at just the right density as well
MMM...gotta make myself another one, I feel the C.H. (coffee headache) setting in.
Yes I read it. I was one of the suckers who paid money for it before it was available online.
There are some severe flaws with NKS.
You bet!
The fundamental philosophical claims are highly doubtful
Check.
...the "new science" mentioned in its title does not live to its name
Check
the egomaniacal tone
Also "Check"
the passing off of other people's hard work as Wolfram's own, the revisionist history
One more big "Check". -- This is what did it for me. I wish he made the appendix section the main part of the book. That's where he actually mentioned who did what before him and I found the examples there more interesting than Wolfram's prose + pictures. Yes, as scientist I am very sensitive and biased when it comes to passing someone's work as your own, that is very much a "no-no" in the scientific community. The only time the rest of the world hears about the scientists is when they discover something really amazing or plagiarize.
Overall, was the reading insteresting?, -- it was alright for me. I learned some new things as well (but mostly things others did that W. re-did in Mathematica) about CA, tag systems, fractals and such. But it was anything but a "New Kind Of Science". It wasn't "New" (just re-packaged) and it wasn't a "Science" it was just prose. Apart from few examples, W.'s "proofs" consist of phrases like "I strongly believe X", "I am quite confident that Y" and "Look at the pretty picture I generated!".
Trust me I tried to like it: I paid money for the book and spent time reading it, I didn't want o believe that I somehow 'wasted' it, but in the end I have to be honest to myself and say 'no' it isn't what it claims to be and 'yes' I wish I hadn't spent the time and money buying it.
But you'd have to look through his book. It's not just about mathematics. Don't for get it's a "OMG! New Kind Of Teh Scienz" He claims to revolutionize: biology, physics (at least fluid dynamics, material science, and of course fundamental physics), computer science (new compression methods using CA @@LOOK WOW!@@@) and so on. So yeah, assuming that he did create a 1) New 2) Better 3) Universal 4) Fundamental science he would have had any imaginable prize by now. But he just ended up with a bunch of silly followers who cheer each other on as they play with pretty pictures.
Let's see what Wolfram's NKS and Scientology have in common.
1. Both closed self-contained, self-referencial systems.... "This is the new kind of science, old science is obsolete"
2. Both venerate a person: Wolfram and L. Ron Hubbard.
3. Both have this "us" versus "them" mentality.
4. Both have their beliefs and ideas disregarded and ridiculed by the most sane individuals (this just reinforces the cult group cohesion).
5. Both have exclusive facilities & training (NKS Summer School), special meetings and conferences for the members.
I don't know...looks like a cult to me...;-)
If it can emulate a known tag system proven to be a UTM then it is also a UTM. But of course, if you show that it can emulate your typical basic CPU you can also claim it's a UTM. The tag system is easier... I think.
But the larger question is "so what?". So what if it is? When he found the (2,5) system to be, I don't recall the scientific comunity awarding him a Nobel Prize. No matter how much he can run his rule 110 he will not come up with animals, humans or planets. But the whole implication is that that's how "it" happened.
I'll admit, I was one of the suckers who bought NKS before it was put online for free. I read it all -- it reads like bedtime story book. Wolframs "proofs" are mostly just statements like I strongly believe..., I am quite convinced... and look at the pretty pattern I just made! and so on. The most interesting thing was the appendix where he lists some the results and publications of actual scientists (you know the ones that don't define their own "new science" and then by definition become "scientists"...). I whish he would have made the appendix the main part of his book and added his "beliefs" as an appendix.
Of course, he has loads of cash to just sit around and create "cool" patterns and then have a bunch of followers cheering each other on as they play with CA -- it's like they have their own little world, their contests, conferences, classes and so on. Can you say the word "cult" ?
Even that's a tough one. I think the biggest poluters are probably the big industry along with coal burning power stations. A significant reduction might occur if say a whole city like (LA) would implement awesome incentives for electric-only cars. However given the already strained power grid during the summer months, that will not be easy. Also, if electric cars would be as cheap or cheaper than gasoline cars, if I would get a pretty hefty tax break from the (fed/state/local govt.) for keeping the streets pollution free and my car would actually be safe and look good, I can see the switch taking place. Can you imagine cars with almost 0 engine noise and 0 polution, the cities will be much, much quiter and cleaner! But that is a lot of 'but's.
And whatever happened to that ultra-dense capacitor company called EEStor that was comming out with cars that could just store an insane amount of electricity -- that sounded like a hoax to get some stupid investor's money and now their domain www.eestor.com is for sale..hehe..
A System and Method for Selecting Options from a List
All those poor people, for thousands of years, just sat there looking at a set of items and couldn't select any of them. I can see the cave men, looking at a pile of bones and trying to select one of them, but of course, Microsoft wasn't around so there was nobody to help them...how sad.
Slashdot Mirror
Wrong, there is no connection initially, just headaches once in a while. After years on end a pattern will emerge -- "Aha I get headaches after chewing sugar-free gum or drinking diet soda." That's the process. The way you describe it, is that someone already believes that aspartame or whatever chemical is bad for them then they start looking for a correlation between any body response (headaches/cramps/diarrhea) and that chemical.
Well it takes one stupid commander to order the "full-time professional army" to jump off of a cliff and you don't have a "full-time professional army" anymore. It's just like saying, "Yu have the latest and fastest CPU. So =hHow come the software you write is so slow and full of bugs!?"
And at what point does the parent rain brimstone upon the child?
Hmm... maybe the point when the child kills someone? A little brimstone would be too bad...Or let me guess, you are the parent who tells their children they are grounded for 2 days if they happen to kill someone?
-- Billy, no more decapitating your friends! You are grounded young man, no Playstation for you this evening!
That should curb obesity in this country. But then we have all this energy already stored as fat on our bodies. Well, we'll just have to design a car that runs on human fat. Just cut that love handle, toss it in a gas/fat tank and there you go, drive to the store and buy more Twinkies to put that lost chunk of fat back and keep going...
I too, find it better to think in terms of a parent-child analogy. A parent wants their child to do the right thing, which means sometimes (or rather, quite often) not letting the child do the thing she or he wants and thus making the child upset and hearing stuff from them like "I hate you daddy!". The child does not realize their limitation and cannot predict the outcome of their actions but a parent can.
teh FAQ
You might be joking but that is actually a very good way to hide something -- just cover it with lots and lots of noise. I do that with our beloved friend -- Google. You see, it likes very much to gather my browsing history so in case of a court order it can quickly give it to any lawyer out there, so what do I do? I run the TrackMeNot Firefox extension. It sends a fake query to Google about once in 5 or so seconds. Let Google figure out which one is me browsing and which queries are submitted by TMN. TMN is actually pretty smart while I was typing this it asked Google for such things like "describe dept that", "Chinchilla Farm Investigation", "officials representing diverse views" and "each selective router" -- not bad, just as crazy and random as my own queries would be...
No they are not...wait someone's at the doorAKKDfpadmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm mmmmmm
Yes. But that wasn't the main point. You missed the other point, the one about obsolescence where the company that made the proprietary drive and format going belly-up next year. And then those who backed up their data on these disks not being able to get it back.
And with this you spend $18k for a new drive, an expensive media and they are both proprietary. If the company goes belly up next year, your cat pisses on your $18k drive how do you get your data back? It is not smart to adopt a new and bleeding edge technology to such areas as long term data backup!
You obviously responded without reading my whole comment (tsk...tsk!).
Alright, so say you buy the $18,000 drive and 200 discs as $180 a piece. You spend a couple of months saving all your highly valuable data, put it in a vault and wait a 30 years. BUT, the next year, the company that created the $18,000 and their proprietary storage goes belly up because there aren't enough fools to spend so much on a new technology without having any guarantee that it will last when the purpose of the backups it to last . By last I mean there being way to get the data back. In 5 years the $18k drive gets full of dust and dies and 20 years down the road you want to access your document -- what do you do?
Yes, if you had knowledge of the future and knew that the technology was going to stay unlike say Laserdisc and others that came and went before they became widespread...
Also, let's hope that nobody has any emergencies while they wait for Bush to pass by...
1. Bean species and location (arabica vs. robusta for ex.).
2. Roast. How it was roasted. I like the Espresso roast -- very sweet, not bitter, but after so much roasting, it is the bean's origin or location is really hard to detect, it just all tastes very "roasted", which I like.
3. The freshness. How long ago it was picked and roasted.
4. The grinding. I like a special grinder that lets one select the grind size. I like "fine", for an espresso.
5. The brewing. I like the pump-powered espresso as well -- it will set you back some hundreds of dollars. You need a special puck that will allow you to pack the coffee at just the right density as well
MMM...gotta make myself another one, I feel the C.H. (coffee headache) setting in.
There are some severe flaws with NKS.
You bet!
The fundamental philosophical claims are highly doubtful
Check.
Check
the egomaniacal tone
Also "Check"
the passing off of other people's hard work as Wolfram's own, the revisionist history
One more big "Check". -- This is what did it for me. I wish he made the appendix section the main part of the book. That's where he actually mentioned who did what before him and I found the examples there more interesting than Wolfram's prose + pictures. Yes, as scientist I am very sensitive and biased when it comes to passing someone's work as your own, that is very much a "no-no" in the scientific community. The only time the rest of the world hears about the scientists is when they discover something really amazing or plagiarize.
Overall, was the reading insteresting?, -- it was alright for me. I learned some new things as well (but mostly things others did that W. re-did in Mathematica) about CA, tag systems, fractals and such. But it was anything but a "New Kind Of Science". It wasn't "New" (just re-packaged) and it wasn't a "Science" it was just prose. Apart from few examples, W.'s "proofs" consist of phrases like "I strongly believe X", "I am quite confident that Y" and "Look at the pretty picture I generated!".
Trust me I tried to like it: I paid money for the book and spent time reading it, I didn't want o believe that I somehow 'wasted' it, but in the end I have to be honest to myself and say 'no' it isn't what it claims to be and 'yes' I wish I hadn't spent the time and money buying it.
Crazy NKS "goodness" for your reading "pleasure": here .
Trust me, even if it is free, after reading it, you'll want your "free" back.
1. Both closed self-contained, self-referencial systems. ... "This is the new kind of science, old science is obsolete"
2. Both venerate a person: Wolfram and L. Ron Hubbard.
3. Both have this "us" versus "them" mentality.
4. Both have their beliefs and ideas disregarded and ridiculed by the most sane individuals (this just reinforces the cult group cohesion).
5. Both have exclusive facilities & training (NKS Summer School), special meetings and conferences for the members. I don't know...looks like a cult to me... ;-)
But the larger question is "so what?". So what if it is? When he found the (2,5) system to be, I don't recall the scientific comunity awarding him a Nobel Prize. No matter how much he can run his rule 110 he will not come up with animals, humans or planets. But the whole implication is that that's how "it" happened.
I'll admit, I was one of the suckers who bought NKS before it was put online for free. I read it all -- it reads like bedtime story book. Wolframs "proofs" are mostly just statements like I strongly believe..., I am quite convinced... and look at the pretty pattern I just made! and so on. The most interesting thing was the appendix where he lists some the results and publications of actual scientists (you know the ones that don't define their own "new science" and then by definition become "scientists"...). I whish he would have made the appendix the main part of his book and added his "beliefs" as an appendix.
Of course, he has loads of cash to just sit around and create "cool" patterns and then have a bunch of followers cheering each other on as they play with CA -- it's like they have their own little world, their contests, conferences, classes and so on. Can you say the word "cult" ?
Even that's a tough one. I think the biggest poluters are probably the big industry along with coal burning power stations. A significant reduction might occur if say a whole city like (LA) would implement awesome incentives for electric-only cars. However given the already strained power grid during the summer months, that will not be easy. Also, if electric cars would be as cheap or cheaper than gasoline cars, if I would get a pretty hefty tax break from the (fed/state/local govt.) for keeping the streets pollution free and my car would actually be safe and look good, I can see the switch taking place. Can you imagine cars with almost 0 engine noise and 0 polution, the cities will be much, much quiter and cleaner! But that is a lot of 'but's.
And whatever happened to that ultra-dense capacitor company called EEStor that was comming out with cars that could just store an insane amount of electricity -- that sounded like a hoax to get some stupid investor's money and now their domain www.eestor.com is for sale..hehe..
Are you driving a locomotive up the highway?
All those poor people, for thousands of years, just sat there looking at a set of items and couldn't select any of them. I can see the cave men, looking at a pile of bones and trying to select one of them, but of course, Microsoft wasn't around so there was nobody to help them...how sad.