RC doctrine doesn't require you to fudge the data.
Who said anything about fudging data?
...the Catholics are pretty clear on this these days: if you think you see a conflict between the real world and the book, then you're just not understanding the book.
That's my point. If you believe the book, and you believe in good, objective science, any conflict between the two is a misunderstanding of the book because good, objective science is reliable and factual. So, assuming someone is a believer in both, they should encourage science in order to promote accuracy and objectivity. Then, if they see a discrepancy, it is a misinterpretation of the book, and if they line up, it only proves what the book taught them in the first place.
Of course, we have to ask ourselves how much of science is, in fact, good and objective. There are so many people out there who are either funding or conducting research who have so much personal investment in one side or the other of an issue it's hard to tell what is truth and what isn't. But that's a whole different can o' worms...
I'm glad to see there's some people out there that don't think religion and science are mutually exclusive ways of looking at the world. To each his own, but IHMO, both religion and science have productive places in society.
After all, a true person of faith would encourage science because it will only prove what he/she already believes to be true, right?
Wouldn't Google's search appliance also defeat this mission then?
Not really. As far as I see, search is Google's product and all else are either ways to support or enhance their search. So they're happy to sell a pretty yellow box o' search to you because that is their product. But you can think of GMail as R&D for search -- and most mega corps keep a tight lid on their R&D.
Google offers a search appliance, why not an email and/or web office equivalent? You buy the rack mount brains and hook up some hard drives, and you would stay in possesion of your data/email.
While to you and me, that would make sense, it defeats Google's mission: "...to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful." Part of that is to develop tools to analyze and 'understand' communication between people.
If you can give a chat log, a series of emails, etc' to a computer and have it distill all that banter down into concise, meaningful information, that's a big step to "organizing the world's information," and is precisely the goal of Google Talk and GMail. Keep in mind that Google isn't providing these services because they think we'll appreciate them. It's all so they can have more raw data to sift through in order to further hone the software that will ultimately make their search engine more useful.
>>...and will provide clean energy for the US military
>
>...how do such systems stand up to severe weather, particularly large hail?
This got me thinking. If a solar panel is damaged and needs replacing, where does the old one go? I have a feeling the materials used in photovoltaic cells aren't biodegradeable. I guess it should read "will provide cleaner energy."
This is cool that it may present better accuracy than traditional polygraph tests, but the whole concept of lie-detection remains flawed. If the subject truly believes the response to a question regardless of it's validity, there's much you can do in the way of physical monitoring.
Oh well, there's no such thing as a cheat-proof test.
Re:Microsoft to support file sharing?
on
Buy Vista or Else
·
· Score: 1
No, no. In this context "peer-to-peer" is Windows-Speak for "without a domain controller." WinXP (and every version since 3.11, for that matter) supports p2p networking -- just put two Windows boxes on a switch and in the same workgroup and you've got a p2p network. With Vista, however, you won't even have to do that. It'll use some discovery method to find other Vista machines on your segment (or segments if you have multiple NICs) and establish a p2p network between them. Can you share files with it? Sure, but it's vastly different from having, say, BitTorrent or eD2K capability out of the box.
"Fucking XP users are fucking pussies. I'm going to fucking bury them, I have done it before, and I will do it again...I'm going to fucking kill anybody that doesn't upgrade."
Hmm, that starts to make me wonder when you move nearly everything but the pretty case into another room (because doing it the 'Godzilla' way obviously doesn't scale well).For not much more cash you could take all the contents of this PVR, put it in a case that will let it breathe, and stick it in the office/basement/etc for it to make as much noise as it wants. You run a fiber to carry the audio/video output from the server to the viewing room. Then you build a cheap, slim, sexy, dumb terminal of an HTPC that sends commands to the server over a network. All the storage and encoding power you want with none of the bulk or noise in the viewing room.:-)
It is not the in destination, grasshoppa, but the journey that we discover fulfillment.
But in seriousness, you're right. DIY HTPCs aren't cheap, but for some people it's a "this way I know what I'm getting/how it works," sort of thing. A lot like commercial vs. home-build PCs. There are a number of other justifications one might make, but if all you're looking for is !/$, off the shelf is definitely the way to go.
Even better would be a mobile-ish setup with a Centrino or Turion. If you're looking for cool and quiet without sacrificing too much speed, that's really the way to go.
I remember seeing a photo-finish for one of the stages during the last Tour de France and they used a similar setup. The image was all normal-looking except for the spokes on the bicycles. Instead of radiating out from the hub to the rim in straight lines, they sort of bent upward. Like so. That's not the best example, but you get the idea.
Something tells me a 22TB MS Access table just wouldn't cut it.:-P
Re:Mining Moon not a good idea...
on
Return to the Moon
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Anyone who has seen the Time Machine would know that mining the moon is a really bad idea...
The thing to remember about H3 on the moon is that it's only in the soil. From Space.com:
"When the solar wind, the rapid stream of charged particles emitted by the sun, strikes the moon, helium 3 is deposited in the powdery soil. Over billions of years that adds up. Meteorite bombardment disperses the particles throughout the top several meters of the lunar surface."
The harvesting of H3 from the moon wouldn't anything like the mining of coal or diamonds here on Earth. Think of it more like raking, not mining:-P
Funnily enough I know good scientists who are former Christians...
Good for them.
...who were educated by people who dismissed evolution.
How unfortunate for them.
These are very smart people...
I'm sure they are.
...who are also now very bitter because thier[sic] time was wasted.
And they have a right to be.
I think your problem here is that you make the (incorrect) assumption that evolution and religion are mutually exclusive. Do said scientists have the right to be upset that they were deprived of good science? Sure. However, if a raised Atheist picks up religion later in life, does said person have the right to be upset that he/she was deprived of something as well? Absolutely. Funnily enough I know some good Christians who are also good scientists who were educated by people who dismissed religion. Just because a scientist believes that [insert 'intelligent designer' of choice here] put the universe here doesn't make him/her any less of a scientist. Nor does a strong scientific curiosity make a Rabbi any less a man of God. That being said, if ID were to make it into schools, it's not like libraries around the world would crumble. Do I think that the teaching of religion to the exclusion of science is a bad idea? Certainly. But is the inclusion of religion into the biology room (albeit a foolish idea) going to demolish science as we know it? Certainly not.
I think you are the one selling what I consider our best and brightest short by implying that anyone who is duped by adults they trust by convincing subtle but ultimately false arguements[sic] into believing something false somehow cannot be our best and brightest.
That's not what I said at all. My point is that the introduction of ID isn't something that would cause schools to turn out a bunch of mindless fundamentalists and to think they will is just foolish.
I can understand why you aren't worried, but I've seen the damage of a much more pleasant scenario (that is, of educators bad mouthing evolution even when they are not allowed to talk about fictional alternatives) than the one you describe, and if it significantly unpleasant for scientists who have grown up in that environment imagine what it would be like if pseudo-philosophy is introduced as an alternative to science in the science class room. It is not fair on our children, and it's takes considerable effort to undo the damage.
Eh, good teachers are good teachers; bad teachers are bad teachers. What goes on in each individual classroom is ultimately the responsibility of the teacher. In my high school biology class we were in the middle of discussing evolution and one of my classmates asked her if she "believed in evolution." She answered honestly saying she acknowledged that lifeforms have changed dramatically over a long time but she wasn't convinced that life just happened by accident. I'm pretty sure none of us are scared or bitter as a result. You're right that mandatory teaching of ID would be worse, but how I see it, that's not saying much.
IDist are fighting a culture war and it wont end with just changing school curriculums[sic]. The very survival of science in the US is at stake, and if we wish to protect science, then we must destroy these fundamentalist meddlers.
Wow. I'm all for keeping ID out of the classroom and all... but "destroy"? Regardless of their ideas, the "fundamentalist meddlers" are people too. I'd rather keep the destroying to a minimum.
If the IDist (and others who stand in the way of scientific reseach[sic])...
Since when did supporters of ID "stand in the way of scientific research"? Again, I think ID is one of the dumbest ideas of all time, but how do the ID'ers oppose scientific progress? Worst case scenario is ID gets accepted by most public schools and every kid gets a dose of ID somewhere in his/her biology class. So what? It's not like science teachers being required to say "...and there's this other 'theory' that says the universe is too complex for it to have happened by accident. Just so you know." is going to keep kids out of professions that will advance scientific knowledge. If someone is genuinely curious about the world, he/she won't be turned away by this ID crap, and to say so is selling our best and brightest far too short.
My sentiments exactly. I'm no defender of ID, but what the hell does understanding the world around us via good science have to do with Intelligent Design?!? Let's say the universe and the life therein was designed by some "intelligence." Does that diminish our ability as intelligences to understand the universe? Of course not.
Thanks corbettw. Brilliant job of turning an interesting discussion about a recent scientific discovery into an ID flamewar.
I hope you mean 7Mb. A 7MBps = 56Mbps, which is better than a 51.844Mbps OC-1 (A/K/A: T3) line. Otherwise you must crap $100-bills or you live upstairs from an ISP with an unsecured, channel bonding 802.11g network. (Both of which would be pretty sweet.) </nitpick>
Eh, but your UID is almost half mine, so I'll give you the benefit of the doubt that you know what your talking about.:-P
Seriously though, is that a symmetric 7Mbps? I mean, it's easy to find relatively cheap access to the Internet with downstream speeds around 7Mbps. Getting upstream speeds like that is another story, which is what someone would need for a decent hosting service.
I just crossed from office-geek into "don't stare and walk away slowly" dude.
But the question is: was it worth it? ^_^
p.s. - I really am sorry if you don't have any friends now. If they couldn't accept our new use of earbuds, they were never your friends in the first place.
p.p.s. - Just so you guys know, I only did it once -- just to be silly -- and I by no means seriously recommend doing it on a regular basis (I mean, it is your nose...). But then again, whatever floats your boat is fine by me.:-P
Sweet, I have a pair of those too! You don't need to turn them up nearly as much as a pair of earbuds to get the same quality of sound, but yeah, I agree that turning it up just to block out background noise isn't just anti-social, it's unhealthy.
Those that say it's necessary in some situations (on a bus/train/etc) should really reconsider where and how they listen to music. Truly, the most enjoyable and healthy way to listen to music is with a quality stereo system in your living room, but if you must take your tunes to go, may I suggest this: use a pair of earbuds in your nose.
No, seriously. Place each earbud in your nostrils, close your lips but leave your jaw open. Then plug your ears and enjoy -- just remember to breathe every once in a while. Not only does this produce a really cool voice-in-your-head effect, you can crank your player to the max, and cut out the background noise without fear of hearing loss because it's resonating in your sinuses and mouth instead of your ear canals.
The downside: it diminishes the stereo effect some and people tend to look at you funny -- a small price to pay. ;-)
Slashdot Mirror
Not to flame or anything (seriously), but what's your point?
RC doctrine doesn't require you to fudge the data.
...the Catholics are pretty clear on this these days: if you think you see a conflict between the real world and the book, then you're just not understanding the book.
Who said anything about fudging data?
That's my point. If you believe the book, and you believe in good, objective science, any conflict between the two is a misunderstanding of the book because good, objective science is reliable and factual. So, assuming someone is a believer in both, they should encourage science in order to promote accuracy and objectivity. Then, if they see a discrepancy, it is a misinterpretation of the book, and if they line up, it only proves what the book taught them in the first place.
Of course, we have to ask ourselves how much of science is, in fact, good and objective. There are so many people out there who are either funding or conducting research who have so much personal investment in one side or the other of an issue it's hard to tell what is truth and what isn't. But that's a whole different can o' worms...
I'm glad to see there's some people out there that don't think religion and science are mutually exclusive ways of looking at the world. To each his own, but IHMO, both religion and science have productive places in society.
After all, a true person of faith would encourage science because it will only prove what he/she already believes to be true, right?
Wouldn't Google's search appliance also defeat this mission then?
Not really. As far as I see, search is Google's product and all else are either ways to support or enhance their search. So they're happy to sell a pretty yellow box o' search to you because that is their product. But you can think of GMail as R&D for search -- and most mega corps keep a tight lid on their R&D.
Google offers a search appliance, why not an email and/or web office equivalent? You buy the rack mount brains and hook up some hard drives, and you would stay in possesion of your data/email.
While to you and me, that would make sense, it defeats Google's mission: "...to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful." Part of that is to develop tools to analyze and 'understand' communication between people.
If you can give a chat log, a series of emails, etc' to a computer and have it distill all that banter down into concise, meaningful information, that's a big step to "organizing the world's information," and is precisely the goal of Google Talk and GMail. Keep in mind that Google isn't providing these services because they think we'll appreciate them. It's all so they can have more raw data to sift through in order to further hone the software that will ultimately make their search engine more useful.
>> ...and will provide clean energy for the US military ...how do such systems stand up to severe weather, particularly large hail?
>
>
This got me thinking. If a solar panel is damaged and needs replacing, where does the old one go? I have a feeling the materials used in photovoltaic cells aren't biodegradeable. I guess it should read "will provide cleaner energy."
Hehe, reminds me of the Cyrix Hotplate from a while back.
As a Kentuckian, I have to say using anything other than Maker's Mark or Wild Turkey would just be sacrilage. Nonetheless, a cool mod. =)
This is cool that it may present better accuracy than traditional polygraph tests, but the whole concept of lie-detection remains flawed. If the subject truly believes the response to a question regardless of it's validity, there's much you can do in the way of physical monitoring.
Oh well, there's no such thing as a cheat-proof test.
No, no. In this context "peer-to-peer" is Windows-Speak for "without a domain controller." WinXP (and every version since 3.11, for that matter) supports p2p networking -- just put two Windows boxes on a switch and in the same workgroup and you've got a p2p network. With Vista, however, you won't even have to do that. It'll use some discovery method to find other Vista machines on your segment (or segments if you have multiple NICs) and establish a p2p network between them. Can you share files with it? Sure, but it's vastly different from having, say, BitTorrent or eD2K capability out of the box.
...Ballmer.
"Fucking XP users are fucking pussies. I'm going to fucking bury them, I have done it before, and I will do it again...I'm going to fucking kill anybody that doesn't upgrade."
...white goo jokes...
Hmm, that starts to make me wonder when you move nearly everything but the pretty case into another room (because doing it the 'Godzilla' way obviously doesn't scale well).For not much more cash you could take all the contents of this PVR, put it in a case that will let it breathe, and stick it in the office/basement/etc for it to make as much noise as it wants. You run a fiber to carry the audio/video output from the server to the viewing room. Then you build a cheap, slim, sexy, dumb terminal of an HTPC that sends commands to the server over a network. All the storage and encoding power you want with none of the bulk or noise in the viewing room. :-)
Do I just not watch enough TV or do these people watch WAY to much?
:-P
No, they probably don't watch much more than you.
They just have small penises, that's all.
It is not the in destination, grasshoppa, but the journey that we discover fulfillment.
But in seriousness, you're right. DIY HTPCs aren't cheap, but for some people it's a "this way I know what I'm getting/how it works," sort of thing. A lot like commercial vs. home-build PCs. There are a number of other justifications one might make, but if all you're looking for is !/$, off the shelf is definitely the way to go.
Even better would be a mobile-ish setup with a Centrino or Turion. If you're looking for cool and quiet without sacrificing too much speed, that's really the way to go.
Just my $2.0e-2.
I remember seeing a photo-finish for one of the stages during the last Tour de France and they used a similar setup. The image was all normal-looking except for the spokes on the bicycles. Instead of radiating out from the hub to the rim in straight lines, they sort of bent upward. Like so. That's not the best example, but you get the idea.
Something tells me a 22TB MS Access table just wouldn't cut it. :-P
Anyone who has seen the Time Machine would know that mining the moon is a really bad idea...
:-P
The thing to remember about H3 on the moon is that it's only in the soil. From Space.com:
"When the solar wind, the rapid stream of charged particles emitted by the sun, strikes the moon, helium 3 is deposited in the powdery soil. Over billions of years that adds up. Meteorite bombardment disperses the particles throughout the top several meters of the lunar surface."
The harvesting of H3 from the moon wouldn't anything like the mining of coal or diamonds here on Earth. Think of it more like raking, not mining
Funnily enough I know good scientists who are former Christians...
...who were educated by people who dismissed evolution.
...who are also now very bitter because thier[sic] time was wasted.
Good for them.
How unfortunate for them.
These are very smart people...
I'm sure they are.
And they have a right to be.
I think your problem here is that you make the (incorrect) assumption that evolution and religion are mutually exclusive. Do said scientists have the right to be upset that they were deprived of good science? Sure. However, if a raised Atheist picks up religion later in life, does said person have the right to be upset that he/she was deprived of something as well? Absolutely. Funnily enough I know some good Christians who are also good scientists who were educated by people who dismissed religion. Just because a scientist believes that [insert 'intelligent designer' of choice here] put the universe here doesn't make him/her any less of a scientist. Nor does a strong scientific curiosity make a Rabbi any less a man of God. That being said, if ID were to make it into schools, it's not like libraries around the world would crumble. Do I think that the teaching of religion to the exclusion of science is a bad idea? Certainly. But is the inclusion of religion into the biology room (albeit a foolish idea) going to demolish science as we know it? Certainly not.
I think you are the one selling what I consider our best and brightest short by implying that anyone who is duped by adults they trust by convincing subtle but ultimately false arguements[sic] into believing something false somehow cannot be our best and brightest.
That's not what I said at all. My point is that the introduction of ID isn't something that would cause schools to turn out a bunch of mindless fundamentalists and to think they will is just foolish.
I can understand why you aren't worried, but I've seen the damage of a much more pleasant scenario (that is, of educators bad mouthing evolution even when they are not allowed to talk about fictional alternatives) than the one you describe, and if it significantly unpleasant for scientists who have grown up in that environment imagine what it would be like if pseudo-philosophy is introduced as an alternative to science in the science class room. It is not fair on our children, and it's takes considerable effort to undo the damage.
Eh, good teachers are good teachers; bad teachers are bad teachers. What goes on in each individual classroom is ultimately the responsibility of the teacher. In my high school biology class we were in the middle of discussing evolution and one of my classmates asked her if she "believed in evolution." She answered honestly saying she acknowledged that lifeforms have changed dramatically over a long time but she wasn't convinced that life just happened by accident. I'm pretty sure none of us are scared or bitter as a result. You're right that mandatory teaching of ID would be worse, but how I see it, that's not saying much.
IDist are fighting a culture war and it wont end with just changing school curriculums[sic]. The very survival of science in the US is at stake, and if we wish to protect science, then we must destroy these fundamentalist meddlers.
Wow. I'm all for keeping ID out of the classroom and all... but "destroy"? Regardless of their ideas, the "fundamentalist meddlers" are people too. I'd rather keep the destroying to a minimum.
If the IDist (and others who stand in the way of scientific reseach[sic])...
Since when did supporters of ID "stand in the way of scientific research"? Again, I think ID is one of the dumbest ideas of all time, but how do the ID'ers oppose scientific progress? Worst case scenario is ID gets accepted by most public schools and every kid gets a dose of ID somewhere in his/her biology class. So what? It's not like science teachers being required to say "...and there's this other 'theory' that says the universe is too complex for it to have happened by accident. Just so you know." is going to keep kids out of professions that will advance scientific knowledge. If someone is genuinely curious about the world, he/she won't be turned away by this ID crap, and to say so is selling our best and brightest far too short.
My sentiments exactly. I'm no defender of ID, but what the hell does understanding the world around us via good science have to do with Intelligent Design?!? Let's say the universe and the life therein was designed by some "intelligence." Does that diminish our ability as intelligences to understand the universe? Of course not.
Thanks corbettw. Brilliant job of turning an interesting discussion about a recent scientific discovery into an ID flamewar.
Heck, I have a 7MB/sec connection to my house.
:-P
I hope you mean 7Mb. A 7MBps = 56Mbps, which is better than a 51.844Mbps OC-1 (A/K/A: T3) line. Otherwise you must crap $100-bills or you live upstairs from an ISP with an unsecured, channel bonding 802.11g network. (Both of which would be pretty sweet.) </nitpick>
Eh, but your UID is almost half mine, so I'll give you the benefit of the doubt that you know what your talking about.
Seriously though, is that a symmetric 7Mbps? I mean, it's easy to find relatively cheap access to the Internet with downstream speeds around 7Mbps. Getting upstream speeds like that is another story, which is what someone would need for a decent hosting service.
I just crossed from office-geek into "don't stare and walk away slowly" dude.
:-P
But the question is: was it worth it? ^_^
p.s. - I really am sorry if you don't have any friends now. If they couldn't accept our new use of earbuds, they were never your friends in the first place.
p.p.s. - Just so you guys know, I only did it once -- just to be silly -- and I by no means seriously recommend doing it on a regular basis (I mean, it is your nose...). But then again, whatever floats your boat is fine by me.
Sweet, I have a pair of those too! You don't need to turn them up nearly as much as a pair of earbuds to get the same quality of sound, but yeah, I agree that turning it up just to block out background noise isn't just anti-social, it's unhealthy.
;-)
Those that say it's necessary in some situations (on a bus/train/etc) should really reconsider where and how they listen to music. Truly, the most enjoyable and healthy way to listen to music is with a quality stereo system in your living room, but if you must take your tunes to go, may I suggest this: use a pair of earbuds in your nose.
No, seriously. Place each earbud in your nostrils, close your lips but leave your jaw open. Then plug your ears and enjoy -- just remember to breathe every once in a while. Not only does this produce a really cool voice-in-your-head effect, you can crank your player to the max, and cut out the background noise without fear of hearing loss because it's resonating in your sinuses and mouth instead of your ear canals.
The downside: it diminishes the stereo effect some and people tend to look at you funny -- a small price to pay.