Slashdot Mirror


User: Baldrson

Baldrson's activity in the archive.

Stories
0
Comments
2,926
First seen
Last seen
Profile
(view on slashdot.org)

Comments · 2,926

  1. Who are they kidding? on Researchers Say the Tech Worker Shortage Doesn't Really Exist · · Score: 1

    Oh good grief. 15 years after the DotCon implosion, when industry leaders and Congress responded to the collapse in tech employment by ramping up H-1b guest worker visas, we're supposed to believe this is news?

  2. Re:Back in the Day... on Education Chief Should Know About PLATO and the History of Online CS Education · · Score: 1

    I"m not sure I'd say TUTOR was an ok language for the day. It didn't even have local variables. Local variables were so controversial that I had to leave the University of Illinois and get a job as a system programmer with CDC to add local variables to TUTOR.

  3. And in other news, the virus purportedly renders people unable to think rationally about epidemiology. Scientists are baffled as to why a virus would do such a thing, although they professed a mysterious urge to share bodily fluids with those around them and denounce as "sciencephobic" those who shunned their advances.

  4. Model the Atmospheric Vortex Engine on Researchers Simulate Monster EF5 Tornado · · Score: 1

    You guys should contact Peter Thiel's Breakout Laboratories that funded a just-completed study of a physical model of a tornado with the potential of generating electricity -- baseload electricity at that -- from ambient heat.

    Here are the most recent photographs and short video of that scale model which, at full scale, would be called an Atmospheric Vortex Engine.

  5. Selecting for con artists on The Great IT Hiring He-Said / She-Said · · Score: 1

    While the public facing human resources people may be clueless, the hiring process is anything but clueless. The hiring process select for candidates that are con artists. At a fundamental level this is because the people who are creating the hiring process are con artists.

  6. I have just one question for Tim Cook on Tim Cook: "I'm Proud To Be Gay" · · Score: 1

    If a group of people wanted to exclude homosexuals from their territory, paying the relocation costs of anyone who wanted to emigrate, how big must that group be before you would permit them to have their own way of life?

  7. They Misspelled "Vectors" on NY Doctor Recently Back From West Africa Tests Positive For Ebola · · Score: 1

    CNN Reports: "A Vectors Without Borders physician back from West Africa tests positive for Ebola at a New York hospital."

  8. Re:Why Cold Fusion (or something like it) Is Real on The Physics of Why Cold Fusion Isn't Real · · Score: 1

    Khallow writes:

    And it's worth noting here that despite whatever the American Physical Society or the US Department of Energy has said about cold fusion in 1989, research continues.

    In the US it continues among professors emeritus that are dying off now at an epidemic rate.

    They aren't really in the way now. I don't expect conservative, perhaps hide-bound institutions to embrace every new concept that comes along, even if in theory, that's their job.

    A graduate student who attempts to so much as replicate an existing experiment is putting his entire career in jeopardy, starting with the Texas A&M fiasco where the APS took seriously allegations of fraud against such a graduate student's thesis of fraud. Those allegations were made by a "science journalist" whose main claim to fame is a diet book

    There is a huge distance between embracing speculative theories and blanket rejection of experimental results.

    It may well have been that no one ever actually refused to look through Galileo's telescope. But the behavior of the scientific establishment toward experimental results is clearly a pattern which, even if nothing of substance is behind cold fusion phenomena, is indictable. (Read "Excess Heat: Why Cold Fusion Research Prevailed" by Charles Beaudette for multiple examples of such behavior.)

    Theories are not experiments. Popperian falsification applies to experimental falsification of theory -- not theoretic falsification of experiment, which is impossible. Indeed, even experiments do not falsify other experiments except to the extent that they demonstrate a hypothesized explanation of experimental error is true. Here again the pattern of behavior by the true believers in fashionable interpretation of physical theory demonstrate time and time again they have made errors reckless that they make the errors of Fleischmann and Pons in their neutron measurements look trivial.

    Where do you think, for example, the APS "embraced" experiments by Caltech et al sit on Fig. 3 of Storms's paper?

    Clue: They're so far outside anything remotely intellectually honest that they fall way off to the left of the figure -- and _this_ is what your estemed authorities used to claim Fleischmann and Pons were guilty of fraud, incompetence and/or delusion.

  9. Re:Voter Recruitment Commissioned by NPR on Developers, IT Still Racking Up (Mostly) High Salaries · · Score: 1

    High income college educated whites vote Republican.

    73% of Asian Americans voted for Obama in the last election.

    If NPR can put even more college educated white techies out of work by importing even more Asian techies, they'll get more of existing whites voting Democrat and more immigrants who are known to vote Democrat even at high income levels.

  10. Voter Recruitment Commissioned by NPR on Developers, IT Still Racking Up (Mostly) High Salaries · · Score: 0

    Ever looked at the way former H-1b visa holders vote once they traverse "the path to citizenship"?

    I'll put it this way: They certainly aren't going to vote for a candidate who will cut funds to NPR.

  11. Re:Why Cold Fusion (or something like it) Is Real on The Physics of Why Cold Fusion Isn't Real · · Score: 1

    See Los Alamos nuclear chemist Ed Storms's peer reviewed paper published in the German counterpart of the British "Nature":

    Status of Cold-Fusion (2010)

  12. Re:Here are your odds on The Physics of Why Cold Fusion Isn't Real · · Score: 1

    You're on.

  13. Re:Why Cold Fusion (or something like it) Is Real on The Physics of Why Cold Fusion Isn't Real · · Score: 1

    Storms claims that there is no good theory to explain the excess heat measurements. He does not deny that the experiments he surveys are overwhelming evidence for the fulfillment of Ramsey's criterion.

  14. Re:Why Cold Fusion (or something like it) Is Real on The Physics of Why Cold Fusion Isn't Real · · Score: -1

    The prediction market Intrade judged cold fusion to be replicated.

    One might argue that because Intrade is a real-money prediction market, that it is less valid than Ideosphere.

    However, what is going to happen to Ideosphere's reputation if it judges cold fusion to be false and, later, the NYT, WSJ, WashPo and the Secretary of Energy along with all of its national labs is saying it is true -- when a real money exchange had it right years before?

  15. Re:Why Cold Fusion (or something like it) Is Real on The Physics of Why Cold Fusion Isn't Real · · Score: 0

    The paper is a statistical survey of experiments reporting excess heat.

    What's "nutty" is claiming that Popper's fasifiability criterion pertains to experiments rather than theories. Experiments that are not reproduced successfully by some others merely evidences the incompetence of those others relative to those who have reproduced.

    However, it is not clear that what is being falsified by experiment here is the current physical theory, rather than merely the currently fashionable interpretation of physical theory.

  16. Re:Why Cold Fusion (or something like it) Is Real on The Physics of Why Cold Fusion Isn't Real · · Score: 1

    Wikipedia on Naturwissenschaften:

    Naturwissenschaften, The Science of Nature is a monthly peer-reviewed scientific journal published by Springer Science+Business Media covering all aspects of the natural sciences relating to questions of biological significance.

  17. Re:Why Cold Fusion (or something like it) Is Real on The Physics of Why Cold Fusion Isn't Real · · Score: 1

    Argument by assertion doesn't make it with me Karl.

    Read the Naturwissenschaften article by Ed Storms to which I linked to justify my claim.

  18. Why Cold Fusion (or something like it) Is Real on The Physics of Why Cold Fusion Isn't Real · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    Ethan Siegel writes: "All good science is repeatable: set up an experiment, tell me how you did it, report your results, and with the proper equipment, I should be able to set up a similar experiment, do the same things you did and get the same results. If I can’t, and others can’t, you didn’t do good science."

    Oh yeah?

    The preamble to the DoE's 1989 cold fusion review panel's report reads:

    "Ordinarily, new scientific discoveries are claimed to be consistent and reproducible; as a result, if the experiments are not complicated, the discovery can usually be confirmed or disproved in a few months. The claims of cold fusion, however, are unusual in that even the strongest proponents of cold fusion assert that the experiments, for unknown reasons, are not consistent and reproducible at the present time. However, even a single short but valid cold fusion period would be revolutionary." --Norman Ramsey

    Dr. Norman Ramsey Jr., Nobel laureate and professor of physics at Harvard University was the only person on the the 1989 Department of Energy cold fusion review panel to voice a dissenting opinion. Ramsey insisted on the inclusion of this preamble as an alternative to his resignation from the panel. The committee acquiesed because he was its co-chair and the only Nobel laureate on the committee.

    Dr. Ramsey's condition has been fulfilled hundreds of times over the last quarter century and there has been absolutely no acknowledgement by the APS of its crime.

    Los Alamos nuclear chemist Ed Storms's peer reviewed paper published in the German counterpart of the British "Nature":

    Status of Cold-Fusion (2010)

  19. Re:The Real Criminals: The APS on Independent Researchers Test Rossi's Alleged Cold Fusion Device For 32 Days · · Score: 1

    F&P clearly did not have an adequate theory and even they admitted as much. Even with an adequate theory, development is orders of magnitude more expensive than research. WIthout an adequate theory, you have to have an industrial laboratory the size of GE running in an Edisonian mode of scattershot trial and error.

  20. Re:The Real Criminals: The APS on Independent Researchers Test Rossi's Alleged Cold Fusion Device For 32 Days · · Score: 2

    It could be demonstrated to be fusion by either producing enough heat that it couldn't possibly be a chemical reaction (which didn't happen), or observing neutrons (which were not being generated).

    There are lots of peer reviewed papers reporting excess heat well in excess of chemical levels -- papers that have not been even so much as criticized by the true believers in current interpretation of physical theory. See http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/S...

    Once we realize that, we realize that Oriani was claiming to violate a whole lot of physical theory with scanty evidence. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and Oriani apparently didn't provide that.

    You can't have it both ways. You either can have scientific method where experiment is permitted to be published that falsifies currently fashionable interpretation of physical theory, or you can have theocracy. Its that simple. Oriani's experimental evidence was sufficient for Nature's own peer reviewers. It was not a peer-review rejection. It was an editor veto of Nature's own peer reviewers. This is scientific misconduct, pure and simple.

    Nature could indeed publish a "cold fusion" paper if somebody definitely had cold fusion going and had good evidence for it.

    Nature then proceeded to block additional empirical-only papers from Oriani on the grounds that he offered no theory to explain the results -- results that falsified currently fashionable interpretation of physical theory. Science starts with observation and theory ends with observation that fasifies theory. Nature is engaging in gross scientific misconduct and it is a pattern of behavior.

  21. Re:Not Just Ebola on Who's In Charge During the Ebola Crisis? · · Score: 1

    Yeah you know what's _really_ outmoded?

    Control groups as a means of teasing causation out of correlation.

    I mean, just think what would happen if *shudder* there were 50 different governments each controlling their own borders, testing out different social theories?

    People with bad social theories might leave you and those that agree with your good social theory to benefit only yourselves, while they would go off and form another experimental group providing additional human ecology data for the social sciences.

    They might figure out that you are the slimy parasite you are and that would be bad .

  22. Re:Ebola Victims Died To Pay the Wages of Your Rac on Who's In Charge During the Ebola Crisis? · · Score: 1

    Is sleep deprivation an early stage symptom?

  23. Ebola Victims Died To Pay the Wages of Your Racism on Who's In Charge During the Ebola Crisis? · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    A clear example of why the a strong Federal government is necessary is the case of Louisiana's attorney general telling Texas authorities not to bring Ebola victim waste to a disposal site in Louisiana.

    Of course, State sovereignty is the moral equivalent of slavery so it is essential that the racists in Louisiana be taught a lesson by Obama commandeering the Louisiana National Guard to air drop waste from Texas Ebola victims on racist Louisiana with its badges of slavery -- especially the waste of Ebola victims that died for your racism -- sorta like Jesus or something. And if you think that's insane or horrifying or something, it just means you're in need of a "teachable moment" yourself before you start bull-whip crackin' that black man whose been comin' roun' to see hair-of-golden-brown, Lilly Belle you Southern Man you.

  24. Re:The Real Criminals: The APS on Independent Researchers Test Rossi's Alleged Cold Fusion Device For 32 Days · · Score: 1

    So Mr. Anonymous doesn't like the fact that I started with the earliest example of scientific misconduct of the authorities. Most likely he dislikes it because it is so damning of his theocracy. I could provide a list of peer reviewed papers, none of which have had even the slightest criticism raised against them in any specific way -- just the blanket condemnation of the rioting mob calling itself the APS.

    However, it's probably better to have Los Alamos nuclear chemist Ed Storms's peer reviewed paper published in the German counterpart of the British "Nature" (since, as we have already seen "Nature" is corrupt):

    Status of Cold-Fusion (2010)

  25. Re:The Real Criminals: The APS on Independent Researchers Test Rossi's Alleged Cold Fusion Device For 32 Days · · Score: 2

    Good grief. Absence of assertion isn't assertion of absence. More importantly, if you aren't allowed to publish experiments that falsify theory -- in this case the theory that excess heat in nuclear quantities cannot be produced in the absence of so-called "nuclear manifestations" -- then what's the point of pretending to have a scientific method?