The code has nothing to do with it. Right now Oracle could send its entire codebase to the university yet it would not serve them (they would have to hire people, train them, and do the project)
That said, having been in a lot of projects in public administration, I agree that involment is the key. A lots of higher-ups feel themselves "safe" and think that they have all the time of the world to make up his mind about what they want (and even better, many of them think that they know the entire university and fail to take input from other stakeholders). Off-the-shelf software/hardware is sheldom the culprit when IT project go south.
So because it MIGHT be beneficial for YOU to stop eating burgers for the current time, we should make it illegal for ALL people to EVER eat burgers?
-Rick
That is a very different issue to your original argument. First you said that given improved safety records, we should not make drastic changes. Now you are talking about the relationship between how much does the measure cost (in terms of loss of comfort, money, time or whatever) and how much benefits you get from implementing. In bussiness terminology, that would be ROI.
Do you want to make a point that ROI for the new measures are not enough? Fine, explain how banning cell phones would be worse than the car crashes it expects to prevent. I am always up to read some new arguments, as long as they are solid.
A few points that invalidate your previous post critic:
You are wrongly using my analogy (remember that analogies are valid to a certain point). My weight (as in the analogy) affects only me. Driving distracted and crashing into someone or driving over someone else affects that someone else. To see how twisted your logic is, one point: If your reasoning would be right, DUI would be legal.
Studies have been done over the general population. They are not talking that Mr. John Smith from Utah. They are talking about the general population. Maybe there are people who can safely drive while intoxicated or at 180Km/h, but we don't allow that because the general population can not and we can not find who qualifies and who does not (we can only find who does not, postumely).
I take it that you like being able to phone while driving and want to keep it legal. Fine, you can say so. But if you want to justify it, you should try to see if your reasoning is straight enough to be of value to someone who does not think like you (else, what is the meaning of it?). Just babbling incoherencies only makes it appear like there are no real reasons to support your opinions.
wouldn't that be an indicator that current advances are working and what should be done is minor incremental improvement as needed as opposed to sweeping huge changes?
In a word: NO
You ignore the possibility that drastic measures will provide better results. For example: I go into a diet and stop eating fries, and every week I lose 100gr. Does that mean that I should not try stopping eating burguers so I can lose 500 gr. instead?
People drive sport bikes without helmets all the time in states that don't require it. Nothing unusual there.
Just because you don't fear death, that doesn't mean you have a death wish, nor does it make you an less stable. If someone came to me and said, "I will pay off all your student loans and credit card debt, buy you a brand new house, a new car, and all you have to do is work in Iraq for a year"....well if I wasn't gainfully employed, I wouldn't be crazy for considering it.
There is certainly room on the spectrum for risk-takers who don't want to die outright; but there is a big difference on that spectrum between contemplating a lucrative job offer that involves risk, and saying "i am hard up for money so give me the riskiest thing possible". The latter kind is probably prone to unaccountably risky behavior when it comes to carrying out their job functions as well.
Maybe it is just optimism/lack of imagination about what may happen if things go wrong...
In fact this is what they are doing. They claim that the drone was in mission over Afghanistan and as a result of a failure it crashed across the border in Iran. So they are doing what they would do in that case.
Saying "well, when you fly drones over hostile countries these things happen, just write off the drone" would be acknowledging that it was over Iran deliberately.
So, someone burns your house because you are not of the right color of skin, or because your political ideas don't fit in your community. That man is arrested and judged, and the jury (made of pales of that buddy) use jury nullification to set him free. That would not be an injustice?
Also your second argument is rather absurd. You seem to think that everyone supporting a party has identical views. Do all dems think as Obama? And all reps as Bush? They never disagree internally? Not to mention, that 12 people elected at random are hardly more representative that a few hundred elected in base of the infor provided to us.
It seems to me that you have never been in the wrong side of a community. Good for you, but at least try to have a little more imagination and empathy.
You are violating the trust society put in you, and you're really not any better than a crooked cop.
A crooked cop gets paid in return for looking the other way. Jury nullification is more like a cop saying: "Well, the law says that I should arrest you for driving with your left indicator broken: but since you're on your way to have it repaired, I'm going to let you off with a warning.". The cop, or the juror, makes a judgement that a literal enforcement of the law in this case is not in the best interests of justice.
Which justice? As others have posted out, jury nullification has been massively used to give a free pass for lynching black people or harassing those who do not fit in a community.
The question is not if in your particular case the jury was competent, the question is if you are in risk of being judged by someone who is not...
I would go for judge trial everytime. Not that I believe that anyone of them is a beacon of insight, impartiality and love for justice... but at least they may be held accountable to some degree.
You are wrong. The point of a jury is to decide if the action of the defendant was something that should be punished, even if it violates the letter of the law. If the jury does not believe that the defendant's action should be illegal, it is intended that they find the defendant "not guilty". There is a valid reason that jury nullification is not talked about, if jury nullification was brought up more there would be cases where the jury found the defendant "not guilty" because he was "such a nice guy." Jury nullification is only to be used when the jury does not believe that the action in question should be a crime. Jury nullification should not be used when the jury thinks, "Yes, he did what they said he did. And, yes, that definitely should be a crime. But this guy should not be punished because I like him." The latter is too close to, "No, he did not do what they said he did, but this guy should be punished because I don't like him."
The question is: how do you allow jury nullification with your first meaning without opening the door to the second one?
Also, in democratic countries, even the first meaning implies a small group of a few men overturning the law passed by the representatives of all the people... creepy. Every group of twelve people have the right to decide which laws are right and which laws must not be obeyed?
Especially on an issue like jury nullification, there are MASSIVE reasons why sometimes it should be used and sometimes it should not be. If your police are being abusive or your prosecutors are prosecuting people they have no business prosecuting or your legislature is passing unjust laws or your judge is not giving someone a fair trial, it may be that jury nullification is your best option as a juror.
IMO jury nullification is wrong because it breaks one of the basic tenets of Western democracies: separation of powers. The Government or the Legislative can't jail you (at least could not before 9/11), but the judiciary can't make laws.
Now to your points, which are not very precise:
police being abusive: I do not get what you mean. Are you talking about profiling, or about obtaining evidence illegally?
If it is the first meaning, do you mean that you would free someone who is culpable because he was being watched more closely than someone else?
If it is illegally obtained evidence, it is the judge who should decide about it. If the judge finds that a registry was legal, who are you to decide that it was not?
prosecutors are prosecuting people they have no business prosecuting: So, you think that drug traffic should be more thorougly investigated than, say, prostitution. Then you have to be jury for someone in a prostitution crime, and you free him because you feel like so? Does that even make sense? If you want prostitution to not be treated as a crime, vote someone who proposes it, create a grassroots movements, whatever. It is a political issue. But a jury is not where you should show your political sympathies.
your legislature is passing unjust laws: the democratic process may not be perfect, but if you consider yourself free to apply or not laws at your discretion while on jury duty.... why should not I do the same while I am outside your hourse?.
your judge is not giving someone a fair trial: that's what retrials and appeals are for. And (unlike the jurors) a judge has no immunity, if he clearly is altering the course of justice he may find himself in a lot of trouble.
Jury nullification means "fuck the democratic process from where our laws come from, we (a bunch of people in a room) will make the laws based in our sympathies/prejudices". It is not strange than most of the time it serves to protect hate crimes.
IMO jury nullification is wrong because it breaks one of the basic tenets of Western democracies: separation of powers. The Government or the Legislative can't jail you (at least could not before 9/11), but the judiciary can't make laws.
Jury nullification means "fuck the democratic process from where our laws come from, we (a bunch of people in a room) will make the laws based in our sympathies/prejudices"
The only "fundament" to jury nullification is that, in order to grant that the jury can not be pressed into a veredict, it effectively has immunity. That means that no matter how misguided the veredict is, the jurors can not be prosecuted by that. Claiming that there is a right to jury nullification is like claiming that if you find a wallet in the street and nobody is watching you, you can keep it for yourself.
>>Just because the simplest explanation tends to be the best doesn't mean it is always the best
Uh... were in my post did I write that text? Why are you quoting me falsely (and falsifying my argumentation)? Are you answering to the voices in your head?
Normally I would have stopped answering you after that, but it is so easy and funny that I will proceed anyway.
That's something I can address. You can't fight my balanced approach with unbalance and rebrand it as 'the balanced approach'...
No! YOU can't fight my balanced approach with unbalance and rebrand it as 'the balanced approach'! Now repeat.:-p
you are advocating going against confirmed observations. That's progress, of course, but it must be accurate, precise, falsifiable, and verifyable (among other things...ethics...)
Just because you can make a spreadsheet and modeling software output the result you want doesn't mean you get to turn science on its head in an instant.
Let me be clear: Dark Matter research is interesting and helpful, but its significance is out of proportion to the level of scientific rigor relative to other science that it contradicts.
Read carefully. I did not say DM was right or wrong. I am not advocating anything, because I know nothing to advocate anything. I just made fun of some know-it-all who just take a position without knowing anything at all. Again, you are not answering to my post but to something else.
So that's balance. My approach is skeptical yet open and optimistic and its the right approach.
Can you cite any reference that qualifies you as the best judge of your opinions? The thing is, no matter how wrong your oppinions are, you'll find them good enough (because they are yours, of course). Same to everyone, of course.
Dark Matter researchers or researchers intersted in Dark Matter, or whoever should do all the research you want and I will look at it with interest. BUT I DECIDE when it is the best option on the table.
The only thing I am 'afraid' of is that your perspective might be the prevailing perspective in many academic and research institutions.
You can too DECIDE what will be the numbers winning your local lotto, or the value of the C constant. What I say is that id DOES NOT MATTER at all what you DECIDE.
The only thing I am 'afraid' of is that your perspective might be the prevailing perspective in many academic and research institutions.
Bad news: The prevailing perspective in many academic and research institutions IS NOT asking your opinion. They observe measurements, propose theories and perform experiments. When it comes to peer reviewing their work, they don't ask you or me but generally ask to people who know the issue at hand. OH NO WE ARE DOOMED!
Hey, to write "I am right because I say so" you did not need so many words...
"this guy's explanation can't explain things like X, nor can they explain Y which, **in the field**, are considered much stronger constraints."
I dont want to squabble about X & Y...but ask you if X & Y were re-examined in a context that was absent a need for Dark Matter of any kind, is it possible that the researchers of X & Y would find another way to explain the observations?
So, you get one model that explains X & Y & Z, and when a paper tries to explain Z differently you think the new model is better? And that you need another models for X & Y (and that don't affect Z, either).
Listen, I know the idea that there are things "out there" that don't work like they do "down here" is scaring. Every time some of these theories appear, there is always the crowd of "but there has to be a simpler explanation" (astronomers tried for long time to fit orbits in circles until they had to admit defeat). But that should not mean that people should embrace every faint possible alternative as a life-saving opportunity. Ok, you can do, but in the end it won't mean a thing.
OTOH, I realize that the scientifics are partly to blame for this, and I am very serious about that. I mean, "dark matter" sounds menacing and strange. Had they called it "candy matter"(*1), there would be less people stressed about scientific data that they don't understand.
DISCLAIMER: I am not an scientific and I know nothing more than a few paragraphs about dark matter and all those others things. Maybe it is a valid theory, maybe future observations will discredit it. I don't give a shit about it, because it is scientifics work to find out. But I find very laughable how uninformed people are so capable of dis/liking theories they don't know about.
*1: In case the change of name sticks, I hereby reclaim royalties for the use of the "candy matter" term.
DISCLAIMER: I am not a astrophysic, and I have the good sense to not to claim that the new theory looks like better (fits observations better) than dark matter. The scientific process will eventually sort it out (and not through an/. poll). This post is not about the theory but about the posts on it.
When Wegener postulated its theory, even if the underlying details were not fully understood, it was a scientific one because it answered to observation (size of continents, identical fossils found at different continents, etc.).
Fortunately, there was no internet then, because there would be a deluge of posts by uninformed people who didn't knew shit of what they were talking about, but felt that theory too "radical" and that they had to restore order (go read the GGP talking about "totally divorce the mathematics from natural philosophy").
The most funny things about those guys is that they would look at the abstract of a full scientific study and counter it with and abstract... "similar fossils? they have been spread by African swallows. Hey, that solves it, I am so sure that I won't ever check if this can be possible."
Nowadays, we have some amateurs who take several years of observations, heavy mathematical work and just threw out of their asses "I'd look at friction of intestellar gasses around the ejection plumes from black holes". Where is your data? Your correlation of the expected results with observations? Your predictions and/or experiments?If you have some of it, don't send it to me, publish the paper to help science, please.
Don't get my wrong, I am not annoyed by it. It could be annoying if those people were wasting someones time for this, but no scientific is going to come to/. searching for theories, so it is mostly harmless entertainment that brings a smile to my face:-)
The funny thing is that those nutjobs always leer in the same direction, opposing the "unnatural" posibilities. Are they afraid that the world is becoming too complicated? I feel there are too many camouflaged ludites out there.
So, you read an article about scientific medical research pointing that long pointed knives are very dangerous and that asks for pointed knives to be short (equally useful, in the opinion of chefs, and less dangerous in a crime). The article also tells that the government does not plan on changing any law based in that study.
Your conclussion: "They attempt to ban all pointy knives"
Now my question... why did you write what you did? Poor reading skills? Karma-whoring using the "Evil government" motto? Monomania? Directly flamebait? Just curious about it.
Nonsense. Tap water is (like in every european country) controlled and potabilized. We drink it regularly, and there are no news about intoxications (either from nationals or foreigners).
The only thing to note is that in certains regions that are more sunny (== less rain), it can be harder(more dissolved salts) than the water english or swedes are used to (we even note differences while moving through the country) and it has a different aftertaste. Nothing to be worried about, thought.
I bet your friend was just making up an excuse for drinking so much wine...
The EU parliament can call for policies that make sense... because they know nobody is listening to them.
"EU parliament" sounds great, but in reality countries have not ceded sovereignity to it. What really counts are the agreements between the presidents and PM, who are the ones that can push the agreements into their countries. The EU parliament is some sort of golden elephany graveyard (no longer popular politics are sent there to keep them happy and quiet).
I mean, this is just opening Siri's servers open to a DDOS when everyone downloads "Siri for Android" and "Siri for PC" and the server load multiplies manyfold...
Even if you rant about "Everything should be free", this is not a case of this... it could be if the hack allowed you to create the complete system (including servers), this only allows people to leech into someone else's server. It is not even a particularly complex hack that shows the mastery of the cracker.
In essence, IMO this thing will have some positive effect for people who will sell/use applications connecting to a system they don't support, and a lot of negative effect for the user who really support the system. I don't think it is a good thing, even if that puts me as a minority in/.
Disclaimer: Before you begin with it, I am not and I will not be an Apple user. Also, as my native language is not English, it is uncertain that I will find Siri useful anytime in the future.
If Apple is learning anything from Google, it's that customer info is valuable. Siri could easily become an advertising platform that rivals Google. Targeted advertising, where companies pay Apple for premium listings ( eg Asking Siri about a Pizza place returns Pizza Hut who paid the most for that key word).
If that's their angle, they might welcome more traffic to Siri.
<sarcasm>Yes, they are so thrilled by it. They wanted that everyone could connect to their servers, but they did not know how to make their protocols public. Being hacked has solved that problem!...</sarcasm>
What this crack means (unless has additional security measures) is that Siri will need a lot more of processing power and, what is worse, there is no way to predict how much power it will need now. Without getting to dip into related profits (selling of hardware / associated programs / etc). I bet they are doing a party right now just to celebrate!
Seriously, WTF? The crack does not give anything interesting/new away, just puts a third party in a position where it can be abused. If the people behind Siri wanted everyone to connect, they could have stated that themselves. Those are two very simple thoughts that everyone in/. could understand, yet they instead just follow the most retorted logic to justify it.
At least we are not discussing crimes here. If talking about murders, I bet some of you would posts things like "Thanks to the serial killer that murdered his wife and children, now he can chose a new wife and have more kids!"
Slashdot Mirror
The code has nothing to do with it. Right now Oracle could send its entire codebase to the university yet it would not serve them (they would have to hire people, train them, and do the project)
That said, having been in a lot of projects in public administration, I agree that involment is the key. A lots of higher-ups feel themselves "safe" and think that they have all the time of the world to make up his mind about what they want (and even better, many of them think that they know the entire university and fail to take input from other stakeholders). Off-the-shelf software/hardware is sheldom the culprit when IT project go south.
Ok my bad, I mixed the meanings of "government" and "executive" since in Spanish "Gobierno" is broadly used as "Ejecutivo".
The judges are NOT part of the government
So because it MIGHT be beneficial for YOU to stop eating burgers for the current time, we should make it illegal for ALL people to EVER eat burgers?
-Rick
That is a very different issue to your original argument. First you said that given improved safety records, we should not make drastic changes. Now you are talking about the relationship between how much does the measure cost (in terms of loss of comfort, money, time or whatever) and how much benefits you get from implementing. In bussiness terminology, that would be ROI.
Do you want to make a point that ROI for the new measures are not enough? Fine, explain how banning cell phones would be worse than the car crashes it expects to prevent. I am always up to read some new arguments, as long as they are solid.
A few points that invalidate your previous post critic:
I take it that you like being able to phone while driving and want to keep it legal. Fine, you can say so. But if you want to justify it, you should try to see if your reasoning is straight enough to be of value to someone who does not think like you (else, what is the meaning of it?). Just babbling incoherencies only makes it appear like there are no real reasons to support your opinions.
wouldn't that be an indicator that current advances are working and what should be done is minor incremental improvement as needed as opposed to sweeping huge changes?
In a word: NO
You ignore the possibility that drastic measures will provide better results. For example: I go into a diet and stop eating fries, and every week I lose 100gr. Does that mean that I should not try stopping eating burguers so I can lose 500 gr. instead?
Life is a risk, death is always a risk, and the statistics about risk are often pretty far off what people estimate in their gut.
I would say that death is more of a certainty than a risk...
People drive sport bikes without helmets all the time in states that don't require it. Nothing unusual there.
Just because you don't fear death, that doesn't mean you have a death wish, nor does it make you an less stable. If someone came to me and said, "I will pay off all your student loans and credit card debt, buy you a brand new house, a new car, and all you have to do is work in Iraq for a year"....well if I wasn't gainfully employed, I wouldn't be crazy for considering it.
There is certainly room on the spectrum for risk-takers who don't want to die outright; but there is a big difference on that spectrum between contemplating a lucrative job offer that involves risk, and saying "i am hard up for money so give me the riskiest thing possible". The latter kind is probably prone to unaccountably risky behavior when it comes to carrying out their job functions as well.
Maybe it is just optimism/lack of imagination about what may happen if things go wrong...
You don't acknowledge that you're spying?
In fact this is what they are doing. They claim that the drone was in mission over Afghanistan and as a result of a failure it crashed across the border in Iran. So they are doing what they would do in that case.
Saying "well, when you fly drones over hostile countries these things happen, just write off the drone" would be acknowledging that it was over Iran deliberately.
So, someone burns your house because you are not of the right color of skin, or because your political ideas don't fit in your community. That man is arrested and judged, and the jury (made of pales of that buddy) use jury nullification to set him free. That would not be an injustice?
Also your second argument is rather absurd. You seem to think that everyone supporting a party has identical views. Do all dems think as Obama? And all reps as Bush? They never disagree internally? Not to mention, that 12 people elected at random are hardly more representative that a few hundred elected in base of the infor provided to us.
It seems to me that you have never been in the wrong side of a community. Good for you, but at least try to have a little more imagination and empathy.
You are violating the trust society put in you, and you're really not any better than a crooked cop.
A crooked cop gets paid in return for looking the other way. Jury nullification is more like a cop saying: "Well, the law says that I should arrest you for driving with your left indicator broken: but since you're on your way to have it repaired, I'm going to let you off with a warning.". The cop, or the juror, makes a judgement that a literal enforcement of the law in this case is not in the best interests of justice.
Which justice? As others have posted out, jury nullification has been massively used to give a free pass for lynching black people or harassing those who do not fit in a community.
Not that I believe that *everyone* of them is ....
The question is not if in your particular case the jury was competent, the question is if you are in risk of being judged by someone who is not...
I would go for judge trial everytime. Not that I believe that anyone of them is a beacon of insight, impartiality and love for justice... but at least they may be held accountable to some degree.
You are wrong. The point of a jury is to decide if the action of the defendant was something that should be punished, even if it violates the letter of the law. If the jury does not believe that the defendant's action should be illegal, it is intended that they find the defendant "not guilty". There is a valid reason that jury nullification is not talked about, if jury nullification was brought up more there would be cases where the jury found the defendant "not guilty" because he was "such a nice guy." Jury nullification is only to be used when the jury does not believe that the action in question should be a crime. Jury nullification should not be used when the jury thinks, "Yes, he did what they said he did. And, yes, that definitely should be a crime. But this guy should not be punished because I like him." The latter is too close to, "No, he did not do what they said he did, but this guy should be punished because I don't like him."
The question is: how do you allow jury nullification with your first meaning without opening the door to the second one?
Also, in democratic countries, even the first meaning implies a small group of a few men overturning the law passed by the representatives of all the people... creepy. Every group of twelve people have the right to decide which laws are right and which laws must not be obeyed?
Especially on an issue like jury nullification, there are MASSIVE reasons why sometimes it should be used and sometimes it should not be. If your police are being abusive or your prosecutors are prosecuting people they have no business prosecuting or your legislature is passing unjust laws or your judge is not giving someone a fair trial, it may be that jury nullification is your best option as a juror.
IMO jury nullification is wrong because it breaks one of the basic tenets of Western democracies: separation of powers. The Government or the Legislative can't jail you (at least could not before 9/11), but the judiciary can't make laws.
Now to your points, which are not very precise:
Jury nullification means "fuck the democratic process from where our laws come from, we (a bunch of people in a room) will make the laws based in our sympathies/prejudices". It is not strange than most of the time it serves to protect hate crimes.
IMO jury nullification is wrong because it breaks one of the basic tenets of Western democracies: separation of powers. The Government or the Legislative can't jail you (at least could not before 9/11), but the judiciary can't make laws.
Jury nullification means "fuck the democratic process from where our laws come from, we (a bunch of people in a room) will make the laws based in our sympathies/prejudices"
The only "fundament" to jury nullification is that, in order to grant that the jury can not be pressed into a veredict, it effectively has immunity. That means that no matter how misguided the veredict is, the jurors can not be prosecuted by that. Claiming that there is a right to jury nullification is like claiming that if you find a wallet in the street and nobody is watching you, you can keep it for yourself.
>>Just because the simplest explanation tends to be the best doesn't mean it is always the best
Uh... were in my post did I write that text? Why are you quoting me falsely (and falsifying my argumentation)? Are you answering to the voices in your head?
Normally I would have stopped answering you after that, but it is so easy and funny that I will proceed anyway.
That's something I can address. You can't fight my balanced approach with unbalance and rebrand it as 'the balanced approach'...
No! YOU can't fight my balanced approach with unbalance and rebrand it as 'the balanced approach'! Now repeat. :-p
you are advocating going against confirmed observations. That's progress, of course, but it must be accurate, precise, falsifiable, and verifyable (among other things...ethics...)
Just because you can make a spreadsheet and modeling software output the result you want doesn't mean you get to turn science on its head in an instant.
Let me be clear: Dark Matter research is interesting and helpful, but its significance is out of proportion to the level of scientific rigor relative to other science that it contradicts.
Read carefully. I did not say DM was right or wrong. I am not advocating anything, because I know nothing to advocate anything. I just made fun of some know-it-all who just take a position without knowing anything at all. Again, you are not answering to my post but to something else.
So that's balance. My approach is skeptical yet open and optimistic and its the right approach.
Can you cite any reference that qualifies you as the best judge of your opinions? The thing is, no matter how wrong your oppinions are, you'll find them good enough (because they are yours, of course). Same to everyone, of course.
Dark Matter researchers or researchers intersted in Dark Matter, or whoever should do all the research you want and I will look at it with interest. BUT I DECIDE when it is the best option on the table.
The only thing I am 'afraid' of is that your perspective might be the prevailing perspective in many academic and research institutions.
You can too DECIDE what will be the numbers winning your local lotto, or the value of the C constant. What I say is that id DOES NOT MATTER at all what you DECIDE.
The only thing I am 'afraid' of is that your perspective might be the prevailing perspective in many academic and research institutions.
Bad news: The prevailing perspective in many academic and research institutions IS NOT asking your opinion. They observe measurements, propose theories and perform experiments. When it comes to peer reviewing their work, they don't ask you or me but generally ask to people who know the issue at hand. OH NO WE ARE DOOMED!
Hey, to write "I am right because I say so" you did not need so many words...
"this guy's explanation can't explain things like X, nor can they explain Y which, **in the field**, are considered much stronger constraints."
I dont want to squabble about X & Y...but ask you if X & Y were re-examined in a context that was absent a need for Dark Matter of any kind, is it possible that the researchers of X & Y would find another way to explain the observations?
So, you get one model that explains X & Y & Z, and when a paper tries to explain Z differently you think the new model is better? And that you need another models for X & Y (and that don't affect Z, either).
Listen, I know the idea that there are things "out there" that don't work like they do "down here" is scaring. Every time some of these theories appear, there is always the crowd of "but there has to be a simpler explanation" (astronomers tried for long time to fit orbits in circles until they had to admit defeat). But that should not mean that people should embrace every faint possible alternative as a life-saving opportunity. Ok, you can do, but in the end it won't mean a thing.
OTOH, I realize that the scientifics are partly to blame for this, and I am very serious about that. I mean, "dark matter" sounds menacing and strange. Had they called it "candy matter"(*1), there would be less people stressed about scientific data that they don't understand.
DISCLAIMER: I am not an scientific and I know nothing more than a few paragraphs about dark matter and all those others things. Maybe it is a valid theory, maybe future observations will discredit it. I don't give a shit about it, because it is scientifics work to find out. But I find very laughable how uninformed people are so capable of dis/liking theories they don't know about.
*1: In case the change of name sticks, I hereby reclaim royalties for the use of the "candy matter" term.
DISCLAIMER: I am not a astrophysic, and I have the good sense to not to claim that the new theory looks like better (fits observations better) than dark matter. The scientific process will eventually sort it out (and not through an /. poll). This post is not about the theory but about the posts on it.
When Wegener postulated its theory, even if the underlying details were not fully understood, it was a scientific one because it answered to observation (size of continents, identical fossils found at different continents, etc.).
Fortunately, there was no internet then, because there would be a deluge of posts by uninformed people who didn't knew shit of what they were talking about, but felt that theory too "radical" and that they had to restore order (go read the GGP talking about "totally divorce the mathematics from natural philosophy").
The most funny things about those guys is that they would look at the abstract of a full scientific study and counter it with and abstract... "similar fossils? they have been spread by African swallows. Hey, that solves it, I am so sure that I won't ever check if this can be possible."
Nowadays, we have some amateurs who take several years of observations, heavy mathematical work and just threw out of their asses "I'd look at friction of intestellar gasses around the ejection plumes from black holes". Where is your data? Your correlation of the expected results with observations? Your predictions and/or experiments?If you have some of it, don't send it to me, publish the paper to help science, please.
Don't get my wrong, I am not annoyed by it. It could be annoying if those people were wasting someones time for this, but no scientific is going to come to /. searching for theories, so it is mostly harmless entertainment that brings a smile to my face :-)
The funny thing is that those nutjobs always leer in the same direction, opposing the "unnatural" posibilities. Are they afraid that the world is becoming too complicated? I feel there are too many camouflaged ludites out there.
And, finally, my goodbye present.
I really hope we find the Earth evil twin. Surely it will be a world swamped by corruption, hunger, war and incompetence.
Oh wait....
So, you read an article about scientific medical research pointing that long pointed knives are very dangerous and that asks for pointed knives to be short (equally useful, in the opinion of chefs, and less dangerous in a crime). The article also tells that the government does not plan on changing any law based in that study.
Your conclussion: "They attempt to ban all pointy knives"
Now my question... why did you write what you did? Poor reading skills? Karma-whoring using the "Evil government" motto? Monomania? Directly flamebait? Just curious about it.
Nonsense. Tap water is (like in every european country) controlled and potabilized. We drink it regularly, and there are no news about intoxications (either from nationals or foreigners).
The only thing to note is that in certains regions that are more sunny (== less rain), it can be harder(more dissolved salts) than the water english or swedes are used to (we even note differences while moving through the country) and it has a different aftertaste. Nothing to be worried about, thought.
I bet your friend was just making up an excuse for drinking so much wine...
The EU parliament can call for policies that make sense... because they know nobody is listening to them.
"EU parliament" sounds great, but in reality countries have not ceded sovereignity to it. What really counts are the agreements between the presidents and PM, who are the ones that can push the agreements into their countries. The EU parliament is some sort of golden elephany graveyard (no longer popular politics are sent there to keep them happy and quiet).
Hey, it's a month's wage in some poor countries, start building a document rebuilding plant somewhere in backwater Africa.
Sorry to mix actual data in your First World prejudices, but the GDP per capita of the poorest country is over $300, so monthly it would be around US 18$.
There are only 15 countries with a GDP per capita inferior to 100$ month
I mean, this is just opening Siri's servers open to a DDOS when everyone downloads "Siri for Android" and "Siri for PC" and the server load multiplies manyfold...
Even if you rant about "Everything should be free", this is not a case of this... it could be if the hack allowed you to create the complete system (including servers), this only allows people to leech into someone else's server. It is not even a particularly complex hack that shows the mastery of the cracker.
In essence, IMO this thing will have some positive effect for people who will sell/use applications connecting to a system they don't support, and a lot of negative effect for the user who really support the system. I don't think it is a good thing, even if that puts me as a minority in /.
Disclaimer: Before you begin with it, I am not and I will not be an Apple user. Also, as my native language is not English, it is uncertain that I will find Siri useful anytime in the future.
If Apple is learning anything from Google, it's that customer info is valuable. Siri could easily become an advertising platform that rivals Google. Targeted advertising, where companies pay Apple for premium listings ( eg Asking Siri about a Pizza place returns Pizza Hut who paid the most for that key word).
If that's their angle, they might welcome more traffic to Siri.
<sarcasm>Yes, they are so thrilled by it. They wanted that everyone could connect to their servers, but they did not know how to make their protocols public. Being hacked has solved that problem!...</sarcasm>
What this crack means (unless has additional security measures) is that Siri will need a lot more of processing power and, what is worse, there is no way to predict how much power it will need now. Without getting to dip into related profits (selling of hardware / associated programs / etc). I bet they are doing a party right now just to celebrate!
Seriously, WTF? The crack does not give anything interesting/new away, just puts a third party in a position where it can be abused. If the people behind Siri wanted everyone to connect, they could have stated that themselves. Those are two very simple thoughts that everyone in /. could understand, yet they instead just follow the most retorted logic to justify it.
At least we are not discussing crimes here. If talking about murders, I bet some of you would posts things like "Thanks to the serial killer that murdered his wife and children, now he can chose a new wife and have more kids!"