Right. Because after all, everyone knows that the cause of one fire can't also cause another fire. For instance, when Oklahoma and Texas had all those summer grass fires a couple years ago, since there were actually multiple fires, they were definitely caused by somebody setting them deliberately.
Fact is, if conditions are right for a forest or grass fire to start spontaneously, they are typically so over a fairly large area, and typically a whole lot of fires will start by the time the conditions go back to normal again.
Even if villages were the only thing burned, that wouldn't be sufficient evidence for anyone who really thinks about it. Villages tend to change the landscape of their immediate vicinity some. If nothing else, people walking around compresses the ground, making it more difficult for most plants to grow. The botanic makeup of the area immediately around a village is usually slightly different than in unpopulated areas. Perhaps it is different in such a way that fires are more likely to start in the village area.
For instance, fewer plants means fewer roots in the soil, which usually means poorer quality soil, which usually means drier land. It is not at all inconceivable that drier land would lead to more fires, many of which might not spread to areas further from the village which have more plants, better soil, and therefore more water.
I'm all for the book indexing, but still, you can't put a robots.txt on a book. This is an important difference which allows website operators to opt out of web indexing. Book copyright owners are apparently being denied the privilege of opting out of having their books indexed. Of course, the fact that most website operators don't opt out is salient as well...
I believe that what you speak of (inability to distinguish foreground from background sound) is actually a common symptom of typical hearing loss. IANA doctor, but this is what I remember.
I am a native speaker of English, grew up in Dallas, TX. I am quite capable of writing perfectly well (both in precise and conversational modes), and in fact I at one point wondered if, from your insistence upon overly-precise word usage even in normal conversational English (which is far from customary), you were not a native English speaker yourself. It is more common for a non-native speaker to be unable to use conversational language, yet able to use precise language, than vice versa. I have written a thesis, as well as a number of papers (all internal to my undergraduate university, not published), and given a talk at the 2006 APS April Meeting (in addition to a number of internal talks at my university). Nobody who has read my papers or attended my talks has mistaken me, to my knowledge, for a non-native speaker, although many people have mistaken me for British rather than Texan.
I meant exactly what I wrote, not anything less or anything more. I did not mean something other than what I wrote, nor did I intend to write something other than what I wrote. Please do not lecture me on what I need to do in order to succeed in science. I very nearly turned around and delivered a similar lecture to you, but I have deleted it now. If I am to succeed in science, then it will be by my own hand, and if I fail, then it will be on my own head. Your advice was not solicited nor is it welcome.
People that I have spoken to do "expect" to see SUSY, whether they are wrong to expect that or not, just as many people playing the lottery expect that since they have lost many times in a row, they are "due" for a win. People can and do expect things quite irrationally very often. I do not mean that they "hope" to see SUSY (although they do also do that), nor that they "guess" that we will see SUSY (although they do also do that), but that they actually believe that we will see SUSY. This certainly sounds like expectation rather than hope to me. You may take the issue of whether or not they ought to expect SUSY up with them, not with me. I am in agreement with you there. SUSY might show up, and it might not.
Furthermore, "predict" is actually very commonly used in place of the more precise terms "postdict" and "retrodict", simply because the distinction is not important enough in context to use uncommon and unfamiliar words for the sake of precision. In some sense, I was using it thusly. Additionally, there is certainly a sense in which "predict", in its precise sense, absolutely applies here. If I go and build an accelerator experiment of my own, and, before I start running it, I want to know how often certain processes will take place according to, say, the standard model, then, even though these cross sections have been observed previously, the SM will predict that the same cross sections will be observed at my new experiment. This is not postdiction, nor retrodiction, but prediction, in a very strict and precise sense, because it is the production of definite statements about future happenings. Now of course, it is not truly necessary for me to construct a new HEP experiment, because fundamental physics goes on all over the universe all the time, and it will (I predict!) continue going on in the future. So, any theory of fundamental physics must not only agree with the past history of the universe, but correctly predict the future of the universe, including the continued existence of previously observed particles. (I don't mean predict the future in a deterministic Laplacian sense, but merely predict how fundamental physics will continue to work, of course)
I did not cite wikipedia as an authoritative source on the definition of the word "predict", but as an indicator of common usage of the word. After all, wikipedia tends to reflect common word usage quite well. I'm sure that without much trouble, you could find plenty of other attestations of the usage I am referring to, both on the Internet, and in other modern corpora. I think that we can all agree t
So now we are reduced to quibbling over word definitions. Grand. You understand now what I meant by the word "expect", yes? Perhaps you think I used the word incorrectly, but I don't really care at this point. As long as you grasp what I meant, that is sufficient at this point, as I clearly cannot (nor am I willing to) go back in time to change my diction to suit your whim.
As for "predict", I think that you also understand what I mean. When I say "it must predict all of the particles that we have already seen", I mean that it must be consistent with experimental observations to date. "Predict" here is used to refer to the output of theoretical calculations, whether those calculations have been checked experimentally yet or not. This is a common enough usage of the word, but even if it is not a usage previously known to you, you now understand what I meant. Additionally, we are going to do more experiments, and so our theories are perfectly capable of predicting that we will continue to see the same particles as we have seen in the past. Please review the usage of (various forms of) the word "prediction" in the wikipedia article titled "retrodiction", as it matches my own. "Retrodiction" and "postdiction" are offered as more specific words, but the word "prediction" is used as well. If you are concerned that I might have edited the article to support my own argument, check the history and set your mind at ease. I am looking at a page that has not been changed since May. Are we good? Or do you have any more useless nitpicks to make?
So you'd rather not have the fixes, add-ons, improvements, and optimizations that others make, instead of having them and being able to use them for anything not closed-source? After all, by BSD licensing your code, you're depending upon the goodwill of others to give back their contributions (which even if they do give them back, their contributions might be under a different license). The BSD license in no way guarantees an improvement to your situation.
Perhaps in practice the BSD license does result in a better situation, but it could very easily result in a worse situation. Since I don't write any closed source code, the GPL doesn't harm me at all, and it guarantees something that the BSD license cannot.
Well, perhaps then we could simply install a set of filters for what tags will be seen by ACs. This might even reduce the incidence of such tags (which I'd guess come from ACs more than from registered users). Probably a lot of people wouldn't use them, because for most people, it isn't such a big deal. But I think that it is a better proposition than just having the slashcoders unilaterally decide which tags each of us can see and which tags we can't see. Perhaps the default set of filters would be those from the slashcoders, and would be identical to the AC filters. Then, only if you were concerned with seeing tags that were excluded would you bother changing the filters. As is, most people are fine with the slashcoders' filters, but a few are not.
Yes, I do comprehend the difference. My original post was a little bit blurry because I was trying to get the basic point at hand across to laypeople, but even then, if you really consider the particular language that I used, I think it is clear that I do understand the difference. Furthermore, I do know that QFT does not predict really much of anything. Which is why I said "a Quantum Field Theory"... As in, QFT with a sufficiently large number of constraints/specificities applied in order to actually get it to predict something. Also, hopefully you would understand that any ambiguities in an original post can be clarified in later posts. I suspect that I have adequately clarified the point about SUSY Higgs by now.
Take QFT. Add these two constraints: Your model must be a supersymmetric model, and your model must predict all of the particles we have already seen. Naturally, if you consider the generally understood meaning of this statement, you can see that you are most definitely not restricting your QFT model to only predicting particles already observed; it may predict other particles, but it must predict all of the particles that we have already seen at a minimum. This is the minimum qualification needed to have a SUSY extension to the SM. Most likely (and here is where I have holes in my understanding of theory, I freely admit), you will also require other constraints in order to actually obtain a real model, but any model with these constraints is a SUSY extension to the SM. Furthermore, any model with these constraints (a SUSY extension to the SM), will have in fact 5 particles which are Higgs bosons. These 5 particles are collectively referred to as SUSY Higgs. Thus, we have now seen an expanded form of my original statement, which hopefully clarifies any remaining confusion you might have about what I meant:
Supersymmetric Higgs is the equivalent particle (actually 5 particles, IIRC) to the Standard Model's Higgs boson which is predicted by a Quantum Field Theory which includes supersymmetry and predicts all of the particles that we have already seen.
From a common speech standpoint, hope and expectation are virtually indistinguishable. Clearly, I made a distinction between theoretical expectation and human expectation, thus distinguishing between a precise and a fuzzy sense of the word. Furthermore, I am not lying or mistaken when I say that the buzz I have picked up is that the hep-ex community expects to see SUSY. I have had several people (CDF, CMS, ATLAS) say as much, straight out, to me. You might say that they are wrong to expect to see SUSY, and you would probably be right, but nonetheless, the buzz I have picked up is that they do expect to see SUSY, wrongheadedly or not! People do sit down and think "hmmmm, if I had to guess, I'd say that we will see SUSY". You can tell me and them that that is a wrong thing to think, but it doesn't matter. They have thought it already. So, I stand by my statement.
It is one thing to nitpick somebody's posts when you are right about both what that person said, and about whatever points you are nitpicking. It is another thing entirely to nitpick somebody's posts when you are quite wrong about what that person said! Now, bug off!
I think that throughout history, it is actually always the winners who win..... If they then choose to paint themselves as rebels later, then they are rebels to future generations, whether or not they actually were. And besides, anyone fighting for any cause can be construed as rebels against whatever they are opposing. Oh yeah, and Godwin's Law.
You're right there is -- to you and I. This is the sort of thing that I can very easily picture Joe Sixpack conflating, though. Kind of like thinking that the monitor is the computer (shut up, iMac!).
I did not say that ALL that SUSY is is the addition of four Higgs! I merely said that SUSY extensions to SM have 5 Higgs particles. Do you comprehend the difference? You want me to have said that adding four Higgs gives you SUSY. I did not. Never have and never will. I did say that adding SUSY gives you four more Higgs. Big difference. Huge difference. Nothing that you have said contradicts what I actually said.
From a theoretical standpoint, no, we should not expect to see SUSY. You are correct. However, the vibe that I have picked up is that the hep-ex community does rather expect to see SUSY. You can tell them they should not, but the fact remains that AFAICT, they do. Part of the reason for the "not at all" alternative is that another vibe I've gotten is that if we don't see SUSY at the LHC, there won't be another generation of accelerators at which to see it! This might be also a wrong-headed notion, but it is an extant notion nonetheless.
I have a Dapper CD from shipit. I have used Dapper, Edgy, and now Feisty. Upgrade has always worked just fine and dandy for me. So, we have a counterexample to your "ALWAYS". Now, it might still be "ALMOST ALWAYS", that is, my case might be very very rare, but I don't get that impression at all. It seems that if that were the case, we'd hear a lot more complaints about the upgrade system than we do. In fact, when an upgrade broke X a good while back, the serious outcry that resulted makes me think that problems like that are very rare. When an app upgrade breaks something on Windows, after all, nobody fusses that much about it, because it happens all the time. AFAICT, the upgrade system actually works just about perfectly in nearly all cases.
I am running a desktop, not a laptop, so that might have something to do with it, but nonetheless, my upgrades have always worked just fine. I usually install whatever new upgrades are available each and every day, with no trouble whatsoever.
So, whoever will see first the Higgs will go straight in the history (of science) books. Period.
This is true. However, the nature of HEP is such that enormous collaborations of people are the only way to get anything done. My experience of the HEP community has been that even across the boundaries of collaborations and accelerators, people really do work together with the end goal in sight of just getting things done.
Switching teams is so easily done that rather than stick with one team and try to beat out the other team, everybody just works with the team that looks like it is going to be the most successful. People employed by Fermilab work for and with the CERN experiments. If Higgs is found at CERN, then the people from Fermilab who worked on it will really get just as much credit as the people from CERN who worked on it. Most universities with decent HEP groups work both at Fermilab and at CERN. Many of them even work at both ATLAS and CMS, or at both CDF and D0.
Furthermore, there really is virtually no competition between Fermilab and CERN. The two labs are working on different things. The CERN people are perfectly happy for Fermilab to have done some great work, and the Fermilab people recognize that nearly everything that will be done at CERN would be impossible at Fermilab right now.
There is competition in science, yes. But the scientist's loyalties lie with himself, not with his lab or experiment. And since in HEP you really can't do anything at all by yourself, everybody just moves to where they think the best work will be done. Take your battleground analogy. Except, in this battle, everyone is solely concerned with looking out for their own neck, which means that they will change into a dead man's uniform in order to put themselves on the winning side. If everyone is constantly looking to switch to the winning side, rather than to make their current side win, how much of a battle will actually take place?
What I meant was that the simplest SUSY extensions to the SM include five particles which are all Higgs bosons. You did not contradict that. Yes, you can have 5 Higgs without SUSY, but SUSY predicts 5 Higgs.
The buzz around the experimental community that I have picked up is that we should see SUSY quite quickly at the LHC, or else not at all. Yes I realize that SUSY could be completely wrong, and yes, I realize that the mass scale for SUSY could be quite high. However, as you say, there is some reason to expect a "low" energy SUSY. As a beginning grad student (who worked all the way through undergrad at CDF), I am pretty well up on the experimental side of things, but haven't had the classes yet to be well up on the theoretical side.
I believe that you have hit the nail on the head. SUSY extensions of the standard model predict that the Lightest Supersymmetric Partner should have a mass easily within the reach of the LHC. It could very well be wrong, but there is a strong feeling in the HEP community that we will see SUSY right away. Unfortunately, since I am not a theorist, and haven't gotten far enough in my classes to really completely grasp the theories yet, I can't give you more than that. I've done quite a bit of experimental work, but not much theory:( I'm basically going off of the buzz that I have picked up in the community for my confidence here.
Maybe rather than the slashcoders filtering tags, they should install user defined filters. That way, if you never wanted to see "haha" listed as a story's tag on the home page, you could filter that tag out. Then, the top 5 tags which are not "haha" would be displayed.
It could even get more sophisticated than that. You could say that you only want to see the tag "haha" if more than 30% of the users who tagged the story included "haha", or something like that.
Then, of course, it should be set up so that users could also filter stories based on tags (or any number of other things). Thus, you could filter out all stories tagged "microsoft", if you so desired, or all stories tagged "slashvertisement". Or perhaps most useful, filter out all stories tagged "dupe"...
Supersymmetric Higgs is the equivalent particle (actually 5 particles, IIRC) to the Standard Model's Higgs boson which is predicted by a Quantum Field Theory which includes supersymmetry and predicts all of the particles that we have already seen.
IIRC, the standard model Higgs has not been excluded yet. But a whole lot of people are expecting to see SUSY (supersymmetry) at the LHC, so those same people also expect to see a SUSY Higgs rather than a standard model Higgs.
The Tevatron is still running, and running better than it ever has been before (higher luminousity). Well over 2 fb^-1 of data have been taken so far, and by the end in 2009, about 8 fb^-1 are expected. A few months ago, CDF published a new measurement of the W boson mass, which is coupled to the Higgs mass, which suggested that the Higgs mass ought to be fairly low. A fairly low mass Higgs might be observable at the Tevatron, so a whole lot more people than before are looking for the Higgs a whole lot harder than before. This W mass measurement is probably the "rumor" referred to in TFSummary.
Of course, we can't just look at one event and say "Oh look! I saw the Higgs boson!" There are a lot of other processes that have signatures very similar to the Higgs signature (I've worked on measuring one of those processes, Z + b jet), so we need to have a lot of Higgs events in order to distinguish them from background events. The top quark discovery was announced with, IIRC, 22 top pair events. I'd guess that we'll need even more than that number of Higgs events to have a decent Higgs discovery measurement.
Even if the Tevatron does discover the Higgs, don't worry, there will still be plenty for the LHC to do. Measure the properties of the Higgs, for one. But more importantly, within a few months of LHC startup, we should see SUSY.
Also, I've said it before, and I'll say it again, Fermilab and CERN are not in competition. CDF and D0 might be considered to be in competition, as might ATLAS and CMS. But not really even with those pairs. It is science, and it is scientists. We are concerned with getting science done, wherever it is done. An enormous number of the people at Fermilab now are either already also working at CERN or are planning to start CERN work soon. The fact that a Fermilab designed system failed is not indicative that Fermilab is trying to sabotage CERN, but rather just that people make mistakes. Fermilab has no incentive to sabotage CERN.
The same tests to determine nutritional content can be done on GM tomatoes as have been done on unmodified tomatoes to determine the nutritional content of a tomato in the first place.
Well, let's see, perhaps because it is the right thing to do. Of course, that's mod personal beliefs. But we could also try "it makes society work so much better when everyone is a good guy" on for size. That one turns right back around and benefits you for being a good guy, provided everybody else plays along.
This doesn't quite make sense. Suppose that Congress has a list of priorties for funding, with buying better body armor etc for the military at 10th on the list. Well, any additional billions that come in will naturally go to priority 1 first. Once priority 1 is fully paid for, then any more funds will go to priority 2. In this way, buying better body armor will only be funded if a sufficiently large amount of extra cash comes in. Perhaps you think that priorities 1-9 are a squandering of money, but that doesn't mean that, with enough money, Congress would never fund the particular military things that you want.
There's more than enough money to buy food to feed, clothe, and house every person on Earth. There's more than enough money to put a colony on Mars. There's more than enough money to cure cancer. There's more than enough money to make me a very very rich man. But, there is not enough money to do all of these things at once. If we were to devote all of our funds to one thing, then sure, we'd have a lot of success with that, but so many other important things would fall by the wayside. Then, people would raise exactly the complaints that you are raising. The problem is not that either there is insufficient money or that military spending is a low priority. The problem is that there are a great many things which are just as high of a priority (and rightly so in many cases), so that there is not enough money to fund all of them.
You might have enough money to pay rent, and enough money to pay the electric bill, and enough money to buy food, and enough money to pay car insurance, and yet not have enough money to do all of these things at once. This is known as the problem of scarcity, and it is the fundamental fact which leads to economics.
I am not trying to claim that none of the government's money is squandered. I do think that a lot of it is. But I also think that your arguments are pretty poor.
most everybody democrat today is to the right of the bulk of the American people on the Iraq War and several other issues.
Really? You've asked the American people? All of them? Or perhaps you mean the bulk of the subset of the American people who are known by you? This is a quite common typo. People who live in cities think that most of America is pretty liberal. People who live in the country think that most of America is pretty conservative. Funny, ain't it?
Well, atheism is really more about believing that a particular abstract philosophical construct does not exist, quite independent of the existence of any books, beliefs, or people describing exemplars of said construct. So don't get your panties in a wad in quite the way that you have been. Get them in a wad if you must, but make sure your reasons for doing so are sensible.
I meant that matters of climate were outside the realm of economics. Economics can describe the effects of climate, but the effects of climate do not result in a change of climate (except global warming). Thus, the increase in the price of corn does not and will not cause corn to displace sugar cane, because the increase in the price of corn does not and will not cause the climate in the locales where sugar cane is grown to become amenable to corn production.
The corn price increase is driven by an oil price increase. The price of oil has for ages been one of the main drivers of inflation. So, if we were seeing solely an increase in the price of corn, no I would not expect that to drive inflation too much. But, since we are seeing an increase in the price of corn due to an ncrease in the price of oil, I would expect to see increased wage inflation which would roughly match the general price inflation.
I stand by what I said earlier: I am likely not completely right, but I am not as wrong as you seem to think I am.
Slashdot Mirror
Right. Because after all, everyone knows that the cause of one fire can't also cause another fire. For instance, when Oklahoma and Texas had all those summer grass fires a couple years ago, since there were actually multiple fires, they were definitely caused by somebody setting them deliberately.
Fact is, if conditions are right for a forest or grass fire to start spontaneously, they are typically so over a fairly large area, and typically a whole lot of fires will start by the time the conditions go back to normal again.
Even if villages were the only thing burned, that wouldn't be sufficient evidence for anyone who really thinks about it. Villages tend to change the landscape of their immediate vicinity some. If nothing else, people walking around compresses the ground, making it more difficult for most plants to grow. The botanic makeup of the area immediately around a village is usually slightly different than in unpopulated areas. Perhaps it is different in such a way that fires are more likely to start in the village area.
For instance, fewer plants means fewer roots in the soil, which usually means poorer quality soil, which usually means drier land. It is not at all inconceivable that drier land would lead to more fires, many of which might not spread to areas further from the village which have more plants, better soil, and therefore more water.
I'm all for the book indexing, but still, you can't put a robots.txt on a book. This is an important difference which allows website operators to opt out of web indexing. Book copyright owners are apparently being denied the privilege of opting out of having their books indexed. Of course, the fact that most website operators don't opt out is salient as well...
I believe that what you speak of (inability to distinguish foreground from background sound) is actually a common symptom of typical hearing loss. IANA doctor, but this is what I remember.
I am a native speaker of English, grew up in Dallas, TX. I am quite capable of writing perfectly well (both in precise and conversational modes), and in fact I at one point wondered if, from your insistence upon overly-precise word usage even in normal conversational English (which is far from customary), you were not a native English speaker yourself. It is more common for a non-native speaker to be unable to use conversational language, yet able to use precise language, than vice versa. I have written a thesis, as well as a number of papers (all internal to my undergraduate university, not published), and given a talk at the 2006 APS April Meeting (in addition to a number of internal talks at my university). Nobody who has read my papers or attended my talks has mistaken me, to my knowledge, for a non-native speaker, although many people have mistaken me for British rather than Texan.
I meant exactly what I wrote, not anything less or anything more. I did not mean something other than what I wrote, nor did I intend to write something other than what I wrote. Please do not lecture me on what I need to do in order to succeed in science. I very nearly turned around and delivered a similar lecture to you, but I have deleted it now. If I am to succeed in science, then it will be by my own hand, and if I fail, then it will be on my own head. Your advice was not solicited nor is it welcome.
People that I have spoken to do "expect" to see SUSY, whether they are wrong to expect that or not, just as many people playing the lottery expect that since they have lost many times in a row, they are "due" for a win. People can and do expect things quite irrationally very often. I do not mean that they "hope" to see SUSY (although they do also do that), nor that they "guess" that we will see SUSY (although they do also do that), but that they actually believe that we will see SUSY. This certainly sounds like expectation rather than hope to me. You may take the issue of whether or not they ought to expect SUSY up with them, not with me. I am in agreement with you there. SUSY might show up, and it might not.
Furthermore, "predict" is actually very commonly used in place of the more precise terms "postdict" and "retrodict", simply because the distinction is not important enough in context to use uncommon and unfamiliar words for the sake of precision. In some sense, I was using it thusly. Additionally, there is certainly a sense in which "predict", in its precise sense, absolutely applies here. If I go and build an accelerator experiment of my own, and, before I start running it, I want to know how often certain processes will take place according to, say, the standard model, then, even though these cross sections have been observed previously, the SM will predict that the same cross sections will be observed at my new experiment. This is not postdiction, nor retrodiction, but prediction, in a very strict and precise sense, because it is the production of definite statements about future happenings. Now of course, it is not truly necessary for me to construct a new HEP experiment, because fundamental physics goes on all over the universe all the time, and it will (I predict!) continue going on in the future. So, any theory of fundamental physics must not only agree with the past history of the universe, but correctly predict the future of the universe, including the continued existence of previously observed particles. (I don't mean predict the future in a deterministic Laplacian sense, but merely predict how fundamental physics will continue to work, of course)
I did not cite wikipedia as an authoritative source on the definition of the word "predict", but as an indicator of common usage of the word. After all, wikipedia tends to reflect common word usage quite well. I'm sure that without much trouble, you could find plenty of other attestations of the usage I am referring to, both on the Internet, and in other modern corpora. I think that we can all agree t
So now we are reduced to quibbling over word definitions. Grand. You understand now what I meant by the word "expect", yes? Perhaps you think I used the word incorrectly, but I don't really care at this point. As long as you grasp what I meant, that is sufficient at this point, as I clearly cannot (nor am I willing to) go back in time to change my diction to suit your whim.
As for "predict", I think that you also understand what I mean. When I say "it must predict all of the particles that we have already seen", I mean that it must be consistent with experimental observations to date. "Predict" here is used to refer to the output of theoretical calculations, whether those calculations have been checked experimentally yet or not. This is a common enough usage of the word, but even if it is not a usage previously known to you, you now understand what I meant. Additionally, we are going to do more experiments, and so our theories are perfectly capable of predicting that we will continue to see the same particles as we have seen in the past. Please review the usage of (various forms of) the word "prediction" in the wikipedia article titled "retrodiction", as it matches my own. "Retrodiction" and "postdiction" are offered as more specific words, but the word "prediction" is used as well. If you are concerned that I might have edited the article to support my own argument, check the history and set your mind at ease. I am looking at a page that has not been changed since May. Are we good? Or do you have any more useless nitpicks to make?
So you'd rather not have the fixes, add-ons, improvements, and optimizations that others make, instead of having them and being able to use them for anything not closed-source? After all, by BSD licensing your code, you're depending upon the goodwill of others to give back their contributions (which even if they do give them back, their contributions might be under a different license). The BSD license in no way guarantees an improvement to your situation.
Perhaps in practice the BSD license does result in a better situation, but it could very easily result in a worse situation. Since I don't write any closed source code, the GPL doesn't harm me at all, and it guarantees something that the BSD license cannot.
Well, perhaps then we could simply install a set of filters for what tags will be seen by ACs. This might even reduce the incidence of such tags (which I'd guess come from ACs more than from registered users). Probably a lot of people wouldn't use them, because for most people, it isn't such a big deal. But I think that it is a better proposition than just having the slashcoders unilaterally decide which tags each of us can see and which tags we can't see. Perhaps the default set of filters would be those from the slashcoders, and would be identical to the AC filters. Then, only if you were concerned with seeing tags that were excluded would you bother changing the filters. As is, most people are fine with the slashcoders' filters, but a few are not.
Take QFT. Add these two constraints: Your model must be a supersymmetric model, and your model must predict all of the particles we have already seen. Naturally, if you consider the generally understood meaning of this statement, you can see that you are most definitely not restricting your QFT model to only predicting particles already observed; it may predict other particles, but it must predict all of the particles that we have already seen at a minimum. This is the minimum qualification needed to have a SUSY extension to the SM. Most likely (and here is where I have holes in my understanding of theory, I freely admit), you will also require other constraints in order to actually obtain a real model, but any model with these constraints is a SUSY extension to the SM. Furthermore, any model with these constraints (a SUSY extension to the SM), will have in fact 5 particles which are Higgs bosons. These 5 particles are collectively referred to as SUSY Higgs. Thus, we have now seen an expanded form of my original statement, which hopefully clarifies any remaining confusion you might have about what I meant:
From a common speech standpoint, hope and expectation are virtually indistinguishable. Clearly, I made a distinction between theoretical expectation and human expectation, thus distinguishing between a precise and a fuzzy sense of the word. Furthermore, I am not lying or mistaken when I say that the buzz I have picked up is that the hep-ex community expects to see SUSY. I have had several people (CDF, CMS, ATLAS) say as much, straight out, to me. You might say that they are wrong to expect to see SUSY, and you would probably be right, but nonetheless, the buzz I have picked up is that they do expect to see SUSY, wrongheadedly or not! People do sit down and think "hmmmm, if I had to guess, I'd say that we will see SUSY". You can tell me and them that that is a wrong thing to think, but it doesn't matter. They have thought it already. So, I stand by my statement.
It is one thing to nitpick somebody's posts when you are right about both what that person said, and about whatever points you are nitpicking. It is another thing entirely to nitpick somebody's posts when you are quite wrong about what that person said! Now, bug off!
I think that throughout history, it is actually always the winners who win..... If they then choose to paint themselves as rebels later, then they are rebels to future generations, whether or not they actually were. And besides, anyone fighting for any cause can be construed as rebels against whatever they are opposing. Oh yeah, and Godwin's Law.
You're right there is -- to you and I. This is the sort of thing that I can very easily picture Joe Sixpack conflating, though. Kind of like thinking that the monitor is the computer (shut up, iMac!).
I did not say that ALL that SUSY is is the addition of four Higgs! I merely said that SUSY extensions to SM have 5 Higgs particles. Do you comprehend the difference? You want me to have said that adding four Higgs gives you SUSY. I did not. Never have and never will. I did say that adding SUSY gives you four more Higgs. Big difference. Huge difference. Nothing that you have said contradicts what I actually said.
From a theoretical standpoint, no, we should not expect to see SUSY. You are correct. However, the vibe that I have picked up is that the hep-ex community does rather expect to see SUSY. You can tell them they should not, but the fact remains that AFAICT, they do. Part of the reason for the "not at all" alternative is that another vibe I've gotten is that if we don't see SUSY at the LHC, there won't be another generation of accelerators at which to see it! This might be also a wrong-headed notion, but it is an extant notion nonetheless.
I have a Dapper CD from shipit. I have used Dapper, Edgy, and now Feisty. Upgrade has always worked just fine and dandy for me. So, we have a counterexample to your "ALWAYS". Now, it might still be "ALMOST ALWAYS", that is, my case might be very very rare, but I don't get that impression at all. It seems that if that were the case, we'd hear a lot more complaints about the upgrade system than we do. In fact, when an upgrade broke X a good while back, the serious outcry that resulted makes me think that problems like that are very rare. When an app upgrade breaks something on Windows, after all, nobody fusses that much about it, because it happens all the time. AFAICT, the upgrade system actually works just about perfectly in nearly all cases.
I am running a desktop, not a laptop, so that might have something to do with it, but nonetheless, my upgrades have always worked just fine. I usually install whatever new upgrades are available each and every day, with no trouble whatsoever.
Switching teams is so easily done that rather than stick with one team and try to beat out the other team, everybody just works with the team that looks like it is going to be the most successful. People employed by Fermilab work for and with the CERN experiments. If Higgs is found at CERN, then the people from Fermilab who worked on it will really get just as much credit as the people from CERN who worked on it. Most universities with decent HEP groups work both at Fermilab and at CERN. Many of them even work at both ATLAS and CMS, or at both CDF and D0.
Furthermore, there really is virtually no competition between Fermilab and CERN. The two labs are working on different things. The CERN people are perfectly happy for Fermilab to have done some great work, and the Fermilab people recognize that nearly everything that will be done at CERN would be impossible at Fermilab right now.
There is competition in science, yes. But the scientist's loyalties lie with himself, not with his lab or experiment. And since in HEP you really can't do anything at all by yourself, everybody just moves to where they think the best work will be done. Take your battleground analogy. Except, in this battle, everyone is solely concerned with looking out for their own neck, which means that they will change into a dead man's uniform in order to put themselves on the winning side. If everyone is constantly looking to switch to the winning side, rather than to make their current side win, how much of a battle will actually take place?
What I meant was that the simplest SUSY extensions to the SM include five particles which are all Higgs bosons. You did not contradict that. Yes, you can have 5 Higgs without SUSY, but SUSY predicts 5 Higgs.
The buzz around the experimental community that I have picked up is that we should see SUSY quite quickly at the LHC, or else not at all. Yes I realize that SUSY could be completely wrong, and yes, I realize that the mass scale for SUSY could be quite high. However, as you say, there is some reason to expect a "low" energy SUSY. As a beginning grad student (who worked all the way through undergrad at CDF), I am pretty well up on the experimental side of things, but haven't had the classes yet to be well up on the theoretical side.
I believe that you have hit the nail on the head. SUSY extensions of the standard model predict that the Lightest Supersymmetric Partner should have a mass easily within the reach of the LHC. It could very well be wrong, but there is a strong feeling in the HEP community that we will see SUSY right away. Unfortunately, since I am not a theorist, and haven't gotten far enough in my classes to really completely grasp the theories yet, I can't give you more than that. I've done quite a bit of experimental work, but not much theory :( I'm basically going off of the buzz that I have picked up in the community for my confidence here.
Maybe rather than the slashcoders filtering tags, they should install user defined filters. That way, if you never wanted to see "haha" listed as a story's tag on the home page, you could filter that tag out. Then, the top 5 tags which are not "haha" would be displayed.
It could even get more sophisticated than that. You could say that you only want to see the tag "haha" if more than 30% of the users who tagged the story included "haha", or something like that.
Then, of course, it should be set up so that users could also filter stories based on tags (or any number of other things). Thus, you could filter out all stories tagged "microsoft", if you so desired, or all stories tagged "slashvertisement". Or perhaps most useful, filter out all stories tagged "dupe"...
Supersymmetric Higgs is the equivalent particle (actually 5 particles, IIRC) to the Standard Model's Higgs boson which is predicted by a Quantum Field Theory which includes supersymmetry and predicts all of the particles that we have already seen.
IIRC, the standard model Higgs has not been excluded yet. But a whole lot of people are expecting to see SUSY (supersymmetry) at the LHC, so those same people also expect to see a SUSY Higgs rather than a standard model Higgs.
The Tevatron is still running, and running better than it ever has been before (higher luminousity). Well over 2 fb^-1 of data have been taken so far, and by the end in 2009, about 8 fb^-1 are expected. A few months ago, CDF published a new measurement of the W boson mass, which is coupled to the Higgs mass, which suggested that the Higgs mass ought to be fairly low. A fairly low mass Higgs might be observable at the Tevatron, so a whole lot more people than before are looking for the Higgs a whole lot harder than before. This W mass measurement is probably the "rumor" referred to in TFSummary.
Of course, we can't just look at one event and say "Oh look! I saw the Higgs boson!" There are a lot of other processes that have signatures very similar to the Higgs signature (I've worked on measuring one of those processes, Z + b jet), so we need to have a lot of Higgs events in order to distinguish them from background events. The top quark discovery was announced with, IIRC, 22 top pair events. I'd guess that we'll need even more than that number of Higgs events to have a decent Higgs discovery measurement.
Even if the Tevatron does discover the Higgs, don't worry, there will still be plenty for the LHC to do. Measure the properties of the Higgs, for one. But more importantly, within a few months of LHC startup, we should see SUSY.
Also, I've said it before, and I'll say it again, Fermilab and CERN are not in competition. CDF and D0 might be considered to be in competition, as might ATLAS and CMS. But not really even with those pairs. It is science, and it is scientists. We are concerned with getting science done, wherever it is done. An enormous number of the people at Fermilab now are either already also working at CERN or are planning to start CERN work soon. The fact that a Fermilab designed system failed is not indicative that Fermilab is trying to sabotage CERN, but rather just that people make mistakes. Fermilab has no incentive to sabotage CERN.
The same tests to determine nutritional content can be done on GM tomatoes as have been done on unmodified tomatoes to determine the nutritional content of a tomato in the first place.
Well, let's see, perhaps because it is the right thing to do. Of course, that's mod personal beliefs. But we could also try "it makes society work so much better when everyone is a good guy" on for size. That one turns right back around and benefits you for being a good guy, provided everybody else plays along.
That's two reasons just off the top of my head.
You think Steve Ballmer is hot? Ewwww
This doesn't quite make sense. Suppose that Congress has a list of priorties for funding, with buying better body armor etc for the military at 10th on the list. Well, any additional billions that come in will naturally go to priority 1 first. Once priority 1 is fully paid for, then any more funds will go to priority 2. In this way, buying better body armor will only be funded if a sufficiently large amount of extra cash comes in. Perhaps you think that priorities 1-9 are a squandering of money, but that doesn't mean that, with enough money, Congress would never fund the particular military things that you want.
There's more than enough money to buy food to feed, clothe, and house every person on Earth. There's more than enough money to put a colony on Mars. There's more than enough money to cure cancer. There's more than enough money to make me a very very rich man. But, there is not enough money to do all of these things at once. If we were to devote all of our funds to one thing, then sure, we'd have a lot of success with that, but so many other important things would fall by the wayside. Then, people would raise exactly the complaints that you are raising. The problem is not that either there is insufficient money or that military spending is a low priority. The problem is that there are a great many things which are just as high of a priority (and rightly so in many cases), so that there is not enough money to fund all of them.
You might have enough money to pay rent, and enough money to pay the electric bill, and enough money to buy food, and enough money to pay car insurance, and yet not have enough money to do all of these things at once. This is known as the problem of scarcity, and it is the fundamental fact which leads to economics.
I am not trying to claim that none of the government's money is squandered. I do think that a lot of it is. But I also think that your arguments are pretty poor.
Well, atheism is really more about believing that a particular abstract philosophical construct does not exist, quite independent of the existence of any books, beliefs, or people describing exemplars of said construct. So don't get your panties in a wad in quite the way that you have been. Get them in a wad if you must, but make sure your reasons for doing so are sensible.
Correction: s/the effects of climate do not/the effects of economics do not/
I meant that matters of climate were outside the realm of economics. Economics can describe the effects of climate, but the effects of climate do not result in a change of climate (except global warming). Thus, the increase in the price of corn does not and will not cause corn to displace sugar cane, because the increase in the price of corn does not and will not cause the climate in the locales where sugar cane is grown to become amenable to corn production.
The corn price increase is driven by an oil price increase. The price of oil has for ages been one of the main drivers of inflation. So, if we were seeing solely an increase in the price of corn, no I would not expect that to drive inflation too much. But, since we are seeing an increase in the price of corn due to an ncrease in the price of oil, I would expect to see increased wage inflation which would roughly match the general price inflation.
I stand by what I said earlier: I am likely not completely right, but I am not as wrong as you seem to think I am.