Nothing is more instructive about modern times than the idea that a scientific question could meaningfully be addressed by an adversarial system like tort law. The best science is created without passion or controversy, but tort law is passion and controversy — it's intrinsic.
The climate change question will ultimately be decided — not by a group of scientists, not by objective evidence where that exists, and not by a court of law — but by individual couples worldwide who will ponder whether they should have more children. Evolution (a topic about which there is no serious debate) says they will decide to have as many children as they can manage, and they will rationalize their decision in ways that make up in ingenuity what they lack in reason. They will do this because they're the surviving offspring of people who were equally adept at rationalization (the reasonable ones died out long ago).
Think this is too extreme? Okay — imagine confronting someone who looks like Jessica Biel, thinks like Marilyn Vos Savant and has the fertility of Nadya Suleman (a.k.a. Octomom) — imagine trying to persuade her that three children is too many. And good luck.
Regardless of the truth or falsehood of anthropogenic global warming, there is nothing we can do about it without addressing global population, a topic that is much clearer in its causes and effects and yet entirely outside anyone's control without resort to totalitarianism (or universal education).
In other words, global warming is either a myth or a symptom, but world population is the disease.
Having read the comments and having given this issue much thought over the years, I have to say that only useful ideas will be preserved, and no one has 500GB of useful ideas. My point is that the fate of one's personal data archive is ultimately in the hands of others, and they decide what's important.
It could be worse. In the pre-technological era, apart from a small handful of writers, the closest thing to a persistent data archive was a gravestone encryption. On that basis, and with an appropriately skeptical view of the durability of storage media, choose a small handful of critical data items and engrave them onto a stone. This actually works -- there's a beach in Wrangell, Alaska that archives messages from a prehistoric native culture, engraved into stones. The messages make up with persistence what they lack in depth:
The Nevada Lightning Lab article says, "Far fields are mostly radiative, and drop off linearly with distance." This isn't true. Once the radiator's size becomes small compared to the distance (the definition of "far field"), an electromagnetic field's intensity declines proportional to the square of distance. I bring this up because there are some very basic physical rules that affect all radiation-coupled energy systems, and it's misleading for people to make these kinds of claims, especially for a new technology likely to be marketed.
The 1/r^2 rule applies to nearly all fields -- electromagnetic, gravitational, even sound in air. People who makes these kinds of claims are either ignorant or are intent on selling you something that doesn't exist. Or both.
It's too bad the narrator tried to demonstrate his circuit-design skills. Near the end of the video he powers an LED by connecting it directly across a disc battery. The only reason he didn't burn up his LED is because the voltages and temperatures were just right, but even that lucky break might have evaporated over a matter of minutes as the LED warmed up. When operating LEDs, you always want to have a current-limiting resistor or circuit in place -- always. The reason is that an LED's voltage/current/temperature relationship contradicts naive assumptions about electrical conductors.
To say this concisely, unless you have an unlimited semiconductor budget, "boys and girls, don't try this at home!"
Here are some of the reasons you might be tested and another person might not be:
1. A business school graduate is part of a comparatively unchanging field, one in which a past performance record is likely to be repeated in a new job.
2. A lawyer is normally a member of a professional guild (the local bar association), and law is also a relatively unchanging field.
3. Technical/computer work is in rapid flux, today's marketable skills are not yesterday's or tomorrow's, also because of its esoteric nature it's likely that no one in the business will be able to interview you in any meaningful way. A test relieves the personnel department of any direct evaluation responsibilities.
But... The more IT professionals there are in a particular business, the less likely that you will be treated like an alien insect. Do you suppose Google makes you submit to a boilerplate written exam? They do scout for talent using interesting published questions, but that is a different strategy with a different purpose.
I am annoyed when I see someone confuse scientists with science. The author in this piece says "by linking cause and effect -- often falsely -- science is simply a dogmatic form of superstition". But science doesn't do that, scientists do. Scientists don't define science, it's the other way around.
Such remarks play into the hands of religious fundamentalists, who would like nothing better than to judge science on the basis of individual behaviors. That would be like judging religion on the same basis, something that's obviously unfair.
Science is something more than the actions of individual scientists, and those actions don't turn science into a superstition.
So Wikipedia might want to sell advertising to erase the problem of funding and exploit its present perceived market value. The problems:
1. This policy would have the effect of juxtaposing editorial content, which is assumed to be true, with advertising, which is false by design.
2. Wikipedia's perceived value would plummet as soon as the new policy took effect, which might increase pressure to compromise further.
3. Wikipedia's competitors, some of which rely on a subscription model, would exploit the change of status in the ongoing "credibility wars."
4. It would only be a matter of time for the first scandal in which someone soft-pedals a critical piece on an advertiser, or an advertiser's (or product's) description is discovered to have been edited under pressure.
I suspect the people responsible for Wikipedia understand these issues. It doesn't make the problem any less acute.
"It's peculiar that neither of you 'neuroscientists' took the opportunity to point out that neural signals are not electrical impulses--they're electrochemical state changes that propagate along nerve axons at a pretty sedate speed (measured in feet per seconds),"
They are in essence electrical impulses, transmitted by way of a complex system involving ions rather than electrons. The essential idea is the same -- an electrical signaling system.
"... and not any form of electrical current akin to what flows through a wire when you connect it across the poles of a battery (or pass the wire through a magnetic field, or whatever). The current in the wire travels quite a bit faster than 60 fps..."
On the contrary, electrons move along a wire at a rate measured in millimeters per second. But this misses the point that it is the rate of change in current flow that transmits information (and that propagates at high speed), not the current flow itself. This is true for both biological nerve impulses and electrical flow in a conductor.
Is this really true?... "it [ e.g. MS Office ] was a requirement of the last class she needs for her first degree"
I find it hard to believe that a university would require students to own MS Office. Maybe they actually require word processing submissions in Word format, and spreadsheets in Excel format, in which case (Open Office components) oowriter can export Word documents and oocalc can export Excel documents.
Having read a sampling of the posts so far, I think there's something odd here. Either the author of the original post isn't accurately computing what a "95% discount" represents, or (based on the listed price of AUS$75) the full retail for Office 2007 is AUS$1500.
What is a 100% discount? Doesn't that mean "free"? Therefore a 95% discount represents 1/20 of the normal retail price.
Unless, of course, Office 2007 Ultimate really is AUS$1500, in which case I strongly recommend that students look at Open Office, which really is offered at a 100% discount, for any price you care to name.
Slashdot Mirror
Nothing is more instructive about modern times than the idea that a scientific question could meaningfully be addressed by an adversarial system like tort law. The best science is created without passion or controversy, but tort law is passion and controversy — it's intrinsic.
The climate change question will ultimately be decided — not by a group of scientists, not by objective evidence where that exists, and not by a court of law — but by individual couples worldwide who will ponder whether they should have more children. Evolution (a topic about which there is no serious debate) says they will decide to have as many children as they can manage, and they will rationalize their decision in ways that make up in ingenuity what they lack in reason. They will do this because they're the surviving offspring of people who were equally adept at rationalization (the reasonable ones died out long ago).
Think this is too extreme? Okay — imagine confronting someone who looks like Jessica Biel, thinks like Marilyn Vos Savant and has the fertility of Nadya Suleman (a.k.a. Octomom) — imagine trying to persuade her that three children is too many. And good luck.
Regardless of the truth or falsehood of anthropogenic global warming, there is nothing we can do about it without addressing global population, a topic that is much clearer in its causes and effects and yet entirely outside anyone's control without resort to totalitarianism (or universal education).
In other words, global warming is either a myth or a symptom, but world population is the disease.
Having read the comments and having given this issue much thought over the years, I have to say that only useful ideas will be preserved, and no one has 500GB of useful ideas. My point is that the fate of one's personal data archive is ultimately in the hands of others, and they decide what's important.
It could be worse. In the pre-technological era, apart from a small handful of writers, the closest thing to a persistent data archive was a gravestone encryption. On that basis, and with an appropriately skeptical view of the durability of storage media, choose a small handful of critical data items and engrave them onto a stone. This actually works -- there's a beach in Wrangell, Alaska that archives messages from a prehistoric native culture, engraved into stones. The messages make up with persistence what they lack in depth:
http://www.wrangell.com/visitors/attractions/history/petroglyph/index.html
The Nevada Lightning Lab article says, "Far fields are mostly radiative, and drop off linearly with distance." This isn't true. Once the radiator's size becomes small compared to the distance (the definition of "far field"), an electromagnetic field's intensity declines proportional to the square of distance. I bring this up because there are some very basic physical rules that affect all radiation-coupled energy systems, and it's misleading for people to make these kinds of claims, especially for a new technology likely to be marketed.
The 1/r^2 rule applies to nearly all fields -- electromagnetic, gravitational, even sound in air. People who makes these kinds of claims are either ignorant or are intent on selling you something that doesn't exist. Or both.
It's too bad the narrator tried to demonstrate his circuit-design skills. Near the end of the video he powers an LED by connecting it directly across a disc battery. The only reason he didn't burn up his LED is because the voltages and temperatures were just right, but even that lucky break might have evaporated over a matter of minutes as the LED warmed up. When operating LEDs, you always want to have a current-limiting resistor or circuit in place -- always. The reason is that an LED's voltage/current/temperature relationship contradicts naive assumptions about electrical conductors.
To say this concisely, unless you have an unlimited semiconductor budget, "boys and girls, don't try this at home!"
Here are some of the reasons you might be tested and another person might not be:
1. A business school graduate is part of a comparatively unchanging field, one in which a past performance record is likely to be repeated in a new job.
2. A lawyer is normally a member of a professional guild (the local bar association), and law is also a relatively unchanging field.
3. Technical/computer work is in rapid flux, today's marketable skills are not yesterday's or tomorrow's, also because of its esoteric nature it's likely that no one in the business will be able to interview you in any meaningful way. A test relieves the personnel department of any direct evaluation responsibilities.
But ... The more IT professionals there are in a particular business, the less likely that you will be treated like an alien insect. Do you suppose Google makes you submit to a boilerplate written exam? They do scout for talent using interesting published questions, but that is a different strategy with a different purpose.
I am annoyed when I see someone confuse scientists with science. The author in this piece says "by linking cause and effect -- often falsely -- science is simply a dogmatic form of superstition". But science doesn't do that, scientists do. Scientists don't define science, it's the other way around.
Such remarks play into the hands of religious fundamentalists, who would like nothing better than to judge science on the basis of individual behaviors. That would be like judging religion on the same basis, something that's obviously unfair.
Science is something more than the actions of individual scientists, and those actions don't turn science into a superstition.
So Wikipedia might want to sell advertising to erase the problem of funding and exploit its present perceived market value. The problems:
1. This policy would have the effect of juxtaposing editorial content, which is assumed to be true, with advertising, which is false by design.
2. Wikipedia's perceived value would plummet as soon as the new policy took effect, which might increase pressure to compromise further.
3. Wikipedia's competitors, some of which rely on a subscription model, would exploit the change of status in the ongoing "credibility wars."
4. It would only be a matter of time for the first scandal in which someone soft-pedals a critical piece on an advertiser, or an advertiser's (or product's) description is discovered to have been edited under pressure.
I suspect the people responsible for Wikipedia understand these issues. It doesn't make the problem any less acute.
"It's peculiar that neither of you 'neuroscientists' took the opportunity to point out that neural signals are not electrical impulses--they're electrochemical state changes that propagate along nerve axons at a pretty sedate speed (measured in feet per seconds)," They are in essence electrical impulses, transmitted by way of a complex system involving ions rather than electrons. The essential idea is the same -- an electrical signaling system. " ... and not any form of electrical current akin to what flows through a wire when you connect it across the poles of a battery (or pass the wire through a magnetic field, or whatever). The current in the wire travels quite a bit faster than 60 fps..."
On the contrary, electrons move along a wire at a rate measured in millimeters per second. But this misses the point that it is the rate of change in current flow that transmits information (and that propagates at high speed), not the current flow itself. This is true for both biological nerve impulses and electrical flow in a conductor.
Is this really true? ... "it [ e.g. MS Office ] was a requirement of the last class she needs for her first degree"
I find it hard to believe that a university would require students to own MS Office. Maybe they actually require word processing submissions in Word format, and spreadsheets in Excel format, in which case (Open Office components) oowriter can export Word documents and oocalc can export Excel documents.
Having read a sampling of the posts so far, I think there's something odd here. Either the author of the original post isn't accurately computing what a "95% discount" represents, or (based on the listed price of AUS$75) the full retail for Office 2007 is AUS$1500.
What is a 100% discount? Doesn't that mean "free"? Therefore a 95% discount represents 1/20 of the normal retail price.
Unless, of course, Office 2007 Ultimate really is AUS$1500, in which case I strongly recommend that students look at Open Office, which really is offered at a 100% discount, for any price you care to name.