"Not when you really think about what this is testing for."
Exoplanets.
That's exactly why when they first got the results they claimed "Hey! we found a lot of exoplanets".
"This is scanning the sky, looking for stars which exhibit a periodic dimming"
No. That was looking for exoplanets by scanning the sky for stars which exhibit a periodic dimming.
Your claim makes as much sense as if you said "oh, no! that's not a false positive in an HIV test, they were not looking for HIV, just for HIV-like antibodies!"
"If you build a mammal detector, and find a squirrel instead of a human, that's not a false positive."
Of course not, but that wasn't the case. If you build a human detector and find a squirrel instead of a human because in the end it happens the human detector is not so good at detecting humans and just humans, it's still a false positive. If after the fact you find that your device is not so good at detecting humans -and just humans, you ditch the device, you don't start going over there telling it wasn't a false positive after all.
"Dark Energy is an observed phenomenon for which we have no explanation. Aether was an explanation proposed for an observed phenomenon."
The box in front of the oxes. *Both* are explanations for observed phenomenons: you observe that light speed looks constant disregarding emiting object's speed and you propose aether. You observe that measured matter doesn't sum up measured gravity an propose dark matter/energy. By its very definition dark energy can NOT be observed, or else it wouldn't be dark: you observe some effects and propose it as a must for our current theories to remain valid.
"We can even calculate ho much energy would be needed to cause such an acceleration."...under current theories. As for now, either current theories are correct and there is some kind of dark matter/energy compatible with our current knowledge, or they aren't and what it's deem dark matter/energy ends up being something completely different. *EXACTLY* as what the case on newtonian dynamics and michelson-morley experiment before 1905.
"How you can compare those two is beyond me..."
How you can't see it's exactly the same thing is also beyond me.
"Finding a body which matches the criteria and then turns out to be either a pair of stars or a brown dwarf with a storm is NOT a false positive."
Are you kidding? That's the very definition of "false positive"!
"It means something was detected, and it turned out to be something else we hadn't planned for, but according to the parameters got looked at."
And that's -again, the very definition of "false positive".
You devise a test to find something (in this case exoplanets), the test rings the bell for that something, then you look more carefully and find that it's not that something. A false positive by the very book!
"The Japanese have a process called Kaizen - which is code for incremental improvement."
The Japanese also have a process called Kaikaku - which is code for breakthrough improvement.
"Herein lies the fundamental flaw with the scientific method in use today. It quite literally prevents major breakthroughs"
Only it is the same scientific method the one that makes the kaizen of refining a wel.-stablished theory and the kaikaku of going from Newton to Einstein.
All well and good (well, you don't understand the difference between theories and hypothesis but that's a minor flaw that doesn't impact the general outcome), except for one thing: what you call "scientific method" is not *the* scientific method but "popper's scientific method". The point here is if other things can be added to it that add positive value to the construction of Science.
And that point is trivial to demonstrate by Gedankenexperiment: just imagine you have two disconnected theories each of which provides 50 predictions that have indeed been tested positively. Then imagine somebody else comes with another theory, decoupled from the two previous ones that makes no new predictions but that perfectly predicts the same 100 of the older ones. Imagine that not only does this but it also does it in a more elegant and simpler way than the other two. Ask yourself which one of these two sets would you consider "truer".
Now imagine that this new theory covers those 100 experiments but also comes with some undemonstrable concepts, which are what glue everything together. Ask again yourself which one would you consider "truer".
Now think about how much mumble-jumble would you accept into the new theory before starting to consider it unworthy. Ask yourself why is that the case and how could you make a general claim about what is and is not acceptable in these cases...
Now you are in line with this debate and you can consider yourself a philosopher. Congratulations.
"I believe you are confused about what it means to "observe" something."
Or is it you?
"The observational support for Dark Matter is staggering. "
As it was the case for Aether before 1905.
"There is simply not enough matter of any of the types that we have in the Standard Model to explain the directly observable effect of gravity"
As there were nothing to explain i.e. Michelson-Morley experiment but an inelastic aether compressing everything as it speeds up.
"Dark Matter out-masses all of the types of matter we understand"
Aether compresses all the types of matter we know too. Yes, just like Dark Matter has its oddities, like being able to penetrate all solids (but we know "solids" are basically vacuum with small "grains" of atoms here and there, so no problem) or not producing trails when a solid mass travels through it but, how else could you explain that light's speed doesn't change despite the emiting object's speed!?
"The discovery of cosmic acceleration similarly is direct observational evidence of the existence of Dark Energy."
The discovery of the speed of light being the same in the Earth's axis of movement around the Sun and perpendicular to it, is also observational evidence of the existence of Aether. You can ask Ernst Match if you don't believe me.
Of course, by 1905 came some Einstein telling us a different story, you know.
"These two physical realities are so different from the hypothesized "ether" of pre-modern physics that it is clear you do not understand any of this."
"Science existed before Philosophy. Science is learning."
Only if you game "science" to mean what you want to mean.
"Science is learning."
That's exactly what I mean. Do you know what the ethymology of the word "philosophy" is? It comes from the Greek "philos sophia" which means "knowledge's friend". It is philosophy which is learning, not science. What ancient Greeks did was not science, it was philosophy. And because what they did was philosophy, not science, they put in the same ground the guy that said the Sun was in the middle of the Universe with the one that said it was the Earth, or that's why they didn't see any gross difference between talking about shadows casted by the sun over a pole and those casted by a fire within a cave.
And it was because science was not "invented" by an Eureka! moment but developed through quite a long time starting more or less on Galileo, that Newton still shared his time between apples falling from trees and angels blowing planets around.
"but the "scientific method" that is entirely dependent on philosophy"
Exactly the opposite is true: Newton, or Einstein for that matter, developed their theories giving a damn on pesky philosophers. In this regard, epistemology was alike naturalists: they don't invent butterflies but catalogue them, and it is naturalists the ones dependant on butterflies, not the other way around.
"At some point it makes sense to say cars are safe enough that, barring an order-of-magnitude improvement, we should stop adding ever more expensive measures for ever diminishing returns in safety."
We? I assure you *I* don't add any safety measure to *any* car.
And why do you think you are more clever than the whole market? As long as they are not mandatory (you can reserve that for those "order-of-magnitude" improvements), market will decide. The important part would be to properly signal the advantages: what's the problem in having a 17-star system instead of the current five-based where 17 stars means "capable to stand a 10Mt blast" or something like that and then make 4-star (or whatever make sense) mandatory? As the article say, now most cars aggregate on the 4-star rating which means competition between them on security a non-concern: while legislation probably shouldn't mandate any more than needed, it surely can incentivice a desired behaviour.
"When travelling currency conversion fees are annoying. Even when using a debit card or credit card. It's all a huge pain in the ass."
And you think it comes from the fact of currencies not being somehow "digital"?
"I can't wait for a single universal internet currency you can use everywhere"
Yes, you do. I have news for you: that's not because of currency not being "digital" but because currency is strictly controlled by governments. You already have "borders-free" money (i.e.: dollars and, to a less extent, euros) but only on depressed countries with weak governments and it is not because of the nature of money but because of the nature of governments. Any change will need to come on the latter, not the former.
"Oh, and gun control won't help. Unless you're got the kind of magic that can make 300+ million firearms just poof out of existence."
Just "poof"? Certainly not. It would take years, if not decades, for it to get full effect. So your answer is "since it can't be done overnight, don't do anything about it" instead of "the sooner we start, the sooner we'll finish".
"would require a budget in the $500B range"
Let's assume that's right. That's a lot of money, but how much exactly? About one Zumwalt-class destroyer? If that investment lowered gun-related deaths to, say, France level, it would mean about 20.000 USA people not killed *per year*. Will a single Zumwalt-class destroyer reach an equivalent record?
"So, a mass shooting that has now been labeled as terrorism happens in the state with the strictest gun control laws available in the US, and the answer is... more gun control laws?"
I don't know if that's true but even without that knowledge is pretty obvious that more gun controls is indeed the solution. You could have a State *completely* banning guns (and I mean 100%, even those carried by police) and you still would need more control laws since there's no working State borders.
There's no point in strongly controlling guns in one State if you can freely buy them in the State next to it and freely carry them into -it surely would just make things *worse*, not better, for the restricting State. You need global USA control, both in production and gun ownership to get any significant effect.
"But exactly HOW is anyone going to "shut down", or even "monitor", the Internet, particularly without also affecting the MONEY that depends on the Internet every day?"
You don't know so well how the Internet works, do you?
Sadly it is perfectly possible and even more sadly, he probably would gain a lot of support from the corps and media that depend and produce the MONEY: they'd salivate about a one-way broadcast-only "Internet" where only big corps have a saying.
"We have to go see Bill Gates," Trump said, to better understand the Internet and then possibly "close it up.""
Why Bill Gates? We all know he has nothing to do with the internets and it was Al Gore the one who invented it. But, of course, Trump wouldn't engage a dem even to save the country of those pesky... well, everybodies.
"If it hits something armored like a gun turret, ammunition magazine, or some heavy machinery. But normal decks and equipment and the hull won't offer that much resistance so you are not going to get the energy release you are imagining."
Just below those decks and hulls there is water, a lot of it, that would gladly take all that energy and transform it into a big boom.
A rod from space would sink that boat even without touching it.
"The capitalists already have a solution for that problem, as it comes up very often, for instance, when picking investments based on information that is little more than current stock price, recent earnings, and historical dividend.
The answer has been to distribute your investment"
As you say, distribution comes into the equation when it's known to be holes in information. Sorrily this is not the case: the farmer knows pretty well which crop will render him the higher profit. Even worse, due to network effects, it's not only that one exact crop will render the highest profit but that the second one will probably be an order of magnitude below. In other words, it's a "the winner takes all" scenario.
This case has also been "solved" by capitalism, only in a way is probably not amenable to consumers (since we are talking here about first necessity goods): you stick with the best performer till it stops being the best performer and then move to the next best performer: in other words: you plant potatoes till the potato blight comes; after that, you move to USA, thousands of died by famine be damned.
"one wonders what we have the USDA for, anyway."
USDA is -among other things, paying a lot of money for farmers to at least be tied to the land so in case of an emergency local production can be pushed forward in a (more or less) quickly way. Yes, the kind of money true capitalists will always argue about: "why are we paying that lazy lobby of farmers for their corn/grain...? If they cannot compete they should look for a different trade instead of asking for dad government's money". As I already said, you'll solve monocultures the day you solve capitalism, not a single day before.
"Free is irrelevant in this case, as is who introduced the bugs."
Free is as irrelevant in this case as in the one above. Who introduced the bugs is not at all irrelevant. Someone can either be proud of his trade and then not allow software oneself produced having bugs or someone can indulge himself and say "you know what? I consider this to be deprecated".
"In fact this might be a problem if the authors have not announced deprecation"
In my book, deprecated means "no more features will be added to this branch". Also in my book, bugs should be fixed for as long as they appear and you are still on the trade on *any* version you deemed to be public: if you had the time to introduce the bugs, you should have time to repair them.
It is easy to ask "them" to resolve a problem but, what would *you* do?
Let's say you can choose between two cultures: one renders you X$ per investment unit while other renders your X+Y$ per unit. You are not stupid so you choose the one that produces you the more. Who could blame you for that? And then, everybody else do the same and we end up with a monoculture.
"So don't disable strict mode then! Why configure your db to allow errenous data and then complain that it did exactly that?"
Because that's exactly why MySQL was chosen to start with: because it allows an easier head start for people that don't exactly know what they are doing.
Slashdot Mirror
"Not when you really think about what this is testing for."
Exoplanets.
That's exactly why when they first got the results they claimed "Hey! we found a lot of exoplanets".
"This is scanning the sky, looking for stars which exhibit a periodic dimming"
No. That was looking for exoplanets by scanning the sky for stars which exhibit a periodic dimming.
Your claim makes as much sense as if you said "oh, no! that's not a false positive in an HIV test, they were not looking for HIV, just for HIV-like antibodies!"
"If you build a mammal detector, and find a squirrel instead of a human, that's not a false positive."
Of course not, but that wasn't the case. If you build a human detector and find a squirrel instead of a human because in the end it happens the human detector is not so good at detecting humans and just humans, it's still a false positive. If after the fact you find that your device is not so good at detecting humans -and just humans, you ditch the device, you don't start going over there telling it wasn't a false positive after all.
"Dark Energy is an observed phenomenon for which we have no explanation. Aether was an explanation proposed for an observed phenomenon."
The box in front of the oxes. *Both* are explanations for observed phenomenons: you observe that light speed looks constant disregarding emiting object's speed and you propose aether. You observe that measured matter doesn't sum up measured gravity an propose dark matter/energy. By its very definition dark energy can NOT be observed, or else it wouldn't be dark: you observe some effects and propose it as a must for our current theories to remain valid.
"We can even calculate ho much energy would be needed to cause such an acceleration." ...under current theories. As for now, either current theories are correct and there is some kind of dark matter/energy compatible with our current knowledge, or they aren't and what it's deem dark matter/energy ends up being something completely different. *EXACTLY* as what the case on newtonian dynamics and michelson-morley experiment before 1905.
"How you can compare those two is beyond me..."
How you can't see it's exactly the same thing is also beyond me.
"Finding a body which matches the criteria and then turns out to be either a pair of stars or a brown dwarf with a storm is NOT a false positive."
Are you kidding? That's the very definition of "false positive"!
"It means something was detected, and it turned out to be something else we hadn't planned for, but according to the parameters got looked at."
And that's -again, the very definition of "false positive".
You devise a test to find something (in this case exoplanets), the test rings the bell for that something, then you look more carefully and find that it's not that something. A false positive by the very book!
"The Japanese have a process called Kaizen - which is code for incremental improvement."
The Japanese also have a process called Kaikaku - which is code for breakthrough improvement.
"Herein lies the fundamental flaw with the scientific method in use today. It quite literally prevents major breakthroughs"
Only it is the same scientific method the one that makes the kaizen of refining a wel.-stablished theory and the kaikaku of going from Newton to Einstein.
All well and good (well, you don't understand the difference between theories and hypothesis but that's a minor flaw that doesn't impact the general outcome), except for one thing: what you call "scientific method" is not *the* scientific method but "popper's scientific method". The point here is if other things can be added to it that add positive value to the construction of Science.
And that point is trivial to demonstrate by Gedankenexperiment: just imagine you have two disconnected theories each of which provides 50 predictions that have indeed been tested positively. Then imagine somebody else comes with another theory, decoupled from the two previous ones that makes no new predictions but that perfectly predicts the same 100 of the older ones. Imagine that not only does this but it also does it in a more elegant and simpler way than the other two. Ask yourself which one of these two sets would you consider "truer".
Now imagine that this new theory covers those 100 experiments but also comes with some undemonstrable concepts, which are what glue everything together. Ask again yourself which one would you consider "truer".
Now think about how much mumble-jumble would you accept into the new theory before starting to consider it unworthy. Ask yourself why is that the case and how could you make a general claim about what is and is not acceptable in these cases...
Now you are in line with this debate and you can consider yourself a philosopher. Congratulations.
"I believe you are confused about what it means to "observe" something."
Or is it you?
"The observational support for Dark Matter is staggering. "
As it was the case for Aether before 1905.
"There is simply not enough matter of any of the types that we have in the Standard Model to explain the directly observable effect of gravity"
As there were nothing to explain i.e. Michelson-Morley experiment but an inelastic aether compressing everything as it speeds up.
"Dark Matter out-masses all of the types of matter we understand"
Aether compresses all the types of matter we know too. Yes, just like Dark Matter has its oddities, like being able to penetrate all solids (but we know "solids" are basically vacuum with small "grains" of atoms here and there, so no problem) or not producing trails when a solid mass travels through it but, how else could you explain that light's speed doesn't change despite the emiting object's speed!?
"The discovery of cosmic acceleration similarly is direct observational evidence of the existence of Dark Energy."
The discovery of the speed of light being the same in the Earth's axis of movement around the Sun and perpendicular to it, is also observational evidence of the existence of Aether. You can ask Ernst Match if you don't believe me.
Of course, by 1905 came some Einstein telling us a different story, you know.
"These two physical realities are so different from the hypothesized "ether" of pre-modern physics that it is clear you do not understand any of this."
Or maybe it's you the one that ignore the real history behind aether, that doesn't understand the real current state of modern cosmology or the really brilliant minds of the likes of Match, Poincaré or Lorentz before Einstein.
"Science existed before Philosophy. Science is learning."
Only if you game "science" to mean what you want to mean.
"Science is learning."
That's exactly what I mean. Do you know what the ethymology of the word "philosophy" is? It comes from the Greek "philos sophia" which means "knowledge's friend". It is philosophy which is learning, not science. What ancient Greeks did was not science, it was philosophy. And because what they did was philosophy, not science, they put in the same ground the guy that said the Sun was in the middle of the Universe with the one that said it was the Earth, or that's why they didn't see any gross difference between talking about shadows casted by the sun over a pole and those casted by a fire within a cave.
And it was because science was not "invented" by an Eureka! moment but developed through quite a long time starting more or less on Galileo, that Newton still shared his time between apples falling from trees and angels blowing planets around.
"but the "scientific method" that is entirely dependent on philosophy"
Exactly the opposite is true: Newton, or Einstein for that matter, developed their theories giving a damn on pesky philosophers. In this regard, epistemology was alike naturalists: they don't invent butterflies but catalogue them, and it is naturalists the ones dependant on butterflies, not the other way around.
"Guns are a net positive in society."
So much in fact that USA is, on average, a much better place to live than Norway or France because guns are not easily obtained there.
"At some point it makes sense to say cars are safe enough that, barring an order-of-magnitude improvement, we should stop adding ever more expensive measures for ever diminishing returns in safety."
We? I assure you *I* don't add any safety measure to *any* car.
And why do you think you are more clever than the whole market? As long as they are not mandatory (you can reserve that for those "order-of-magnitude" improvements), market will decide. The important part would be to properly signal the advantages: what's the problem in having a 17-star system instead of the current five-based where 17 stars means "capable to stand a 10Mt blast" or something like that and then make 4-star (or whatever make sense) mandatory? As the article say, now most cars aggregate on the 4-star rating which means competition between them on security a non-concern: while legislation probably shouldn't mandate any more than needed, it surely can incentivice a desired behaviour.
Yes. A lot of people.
There were 32,675 fatalities in 2014 due to cars.
And no less than 33,169 deaths related to firearms in 2013.
Given the pervasive use of cars one would consider that having more people killed by guns than by cars should be quite a concern.
"When travelling currency conversion fees are annoying. Even when using a debit card or credit card.
It's all a huge pain in the ass."
And you think it comes from the fact of currencies not being somehow "digital"?
"I can't wait for a single universal internet currency you can use everywhere"
Yes, you do. I have news for you: that's not because of currency not being "digital" but because currency is strictly controlled by governments. You already have "borders-free" money (i.e.: dollars and, to a less extent, euros) but only on depressed countries with weak governments and it is not because of the nature of money but because of the nature of governments. Any change will need to come on the latter, not the former.
" Except then there's zero reason to use the fucking thing. Once the utility of the internet is gone, why would I ever sign on again?"
It didn't stop TV rise, did it? And of course big corps would want the old happy days of TV coming back.
Besides, in order for the masses to align, they'd still have Facebook.
"Oh, and gun control won't help. Unless you're got the kind of magic that can make 300+ million firearms just poof out of existence."
Just "poof"? Certainly not. It would take years, if not decades, for it to get full effect. So your answer is "since it can't be done overnight, don't do anything about it" instead of "the sooner we start, the sooner we'll finish".
"would require a budget in the $500B range"
Let's assume that's right. That's a lot of money, but how much exactly? About one Zumwalt-class destroyer? If that investment lowered gun-related deaths to, say, France level, it would mean about 20.000 USA people not killed *per year*. Will a single Zumwalt-class destroyer reach an equivalent record?
"So, a mass shooting that has now been labeled as terrorism happens in the state with the strictest gun control laws available in the US, and the answer is... more gun control laws?"
I don't know if that's true but even without that knowledge is pretty obvious that more gun controls is indeed the solution. You could have a State *completely* banning guns (and I mean 100%, even those carried by police) and you still would need more control laws since there's no working State borders.
There's no point in strongly controlling guns in one State if you can freely buy them in the State next to it and freely carry them into -it surely would just make things *worse*, not better, for the restricting State. You need global USA control, both in production and gun ownership to get any significant effect.
"But exactly HOW is anyone going to "shut down", or even "monitor", the Internet, particularly without also affecting the MONEY that depends on the Internet every day?"
You don't know so well how the Internet works, do you?
Sadly it is perfectly possible and even more sadly, he probably would gain a lot of support from the corps and media that depend and produce the MONEY: they'd salivate about a one-way broadcast-only "Internet" where only big corps have a saying.
"We have to go see Bill Gates," Trump said, to better understand the Internet and then possibly "close it up.""
Why Bill Gates? We all know he has nothing to do with the internets and it was Al Gore the one who invented it. But, of course, Trump wouldn't engage a dem even to save the country of those pesky... well, everybodies.
"If it hits something armored like a gun turret, ammunition magazine, or some heavy machinery. But normal decks and equipment and the hull won't offer that much resistance so you are not going to get the energy release you are imagining."
Just below those decks and hulls there is water, a lot of it, that would gladly take all that energy and transform it into a big boom.
A rod from space would sink that boat even without touching it.
"It's another example of a US military branch aiming for the most expensive toy they can build"
Yes, it is an expensive toy. But who could resist? Read TFA: her skipper is nobody else but Capt. James Kirk!!!
"The capitalists already have a solution for that problem, as it comes up very often, for instance, when picking investments based on information that is little more than current stock price, recent earnings, and historical dividend.
The answer has been to distribute your investment"
As you say, distribution comes into the equation when it's known to be holes in information. Sorrily this is not the case: the farmer knows pretty well which crop will render him the higher profit. Even worse, due to network effects, it's not only that one exact crop will render the highest profit but that the second one will probably be an order of magnitude below. In other words, it's a "the winner takes all" scenario.
This case has also been "solved" by capitalism, only in a way is probably not amenable to consumers (since we are talking here about first necessity goods): you stick with the best performer till it stops being the best performer and then move to the next best performer: in other words: you plant potatoes till the potato blight comes; after that, you move to USA, thousands of died by famine be damned.
"one wonders what we have the USDA for, anyway."
USDA is -among other things, paying a lot of money for farmers to at least be tied to the land so in case of an emergency local production can be pushed forward in a (more or less) quickly way. Yes, the kind of money true capitalists will always argue about: "why are we paying that lazy lobby of farmers for their corn/grain...? If they cannot compete they should look for a different trade instead of asking for dad government's money". As I already said, you'll solve monocultures the day you solve capitalism, not a single day before.
"Free is irrelevant in this case, as is who introduced the bugs."
Free is as irrelevant in this case as in the one above. Who introduced the bugs is not at all irrelevant. Someone can either be proud of his trade and then not allow software oneself produced having bugs or someone can indulge himself and say "you know what? I consider this to be deprecated".
"In fact this might be a problem if the authors have not announced deprecation"
In my book, deprecated means "no more features will be added to this branch". Also in my book, bugs should be fixed for as long as they appear and you are still on the trade on *any* version you deemed to be public: if you had the time to introduce the bugs, you should have time to repair them.
"Who could blame you for that?"
"Me."
No: you do blame him. You can't blame him.
In other news: stupid Anonymous Cowards behave stupidly.
"And when will they do to resolve this?"
The day we resolve capitalism.
It is easy to ask "them" to resolve a problem but, what would *you* do?
Let's say you can choose between two cultures: one renders you X$ per investment unit while other renders your X+Y$ per unit. You are not stupid so you choose the one that produces you the more. Who could blame you for that? And then, everybody else do the same and we end up with a monoculture.
"Serious question - why should any software vendor have to support anything 8-10 years old for free"
Because they introduced the bugs for free to start with.
"So don't disable strict mode then! Why configure your db to allow errenous data and then complain that it did exactly that?"
Because that's exactly why MySQL was chosen to start with: because it allows an easier head start for people that don't exactly know what they are doing.