I saw a discovery channel special on the Piltdown Man, it was quite interesting. They had a very romantic story of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle striking back at the scientific community by way of this hoax as he wished to point out just how clueless they often were.
Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard met less fortunate timing, listing Piltdown Man as one of the ancestors of humanity in his book Scientology: A History of Man, and describing him as having "enormous" teeth and being "quite careless as to whom and what he bit." Piltdown Man would be exposed as a hoax just months after the publication of Hubbard's book.
I am not a historian but I find it hilarious that British, German and French scientists were rejecting claims of early human fossils in Indonesia or Africa on the grounds that their pride in being the origin of life. Instead they were pointing at anything and everything they could find on their own soil as the beginning of life. What made the Piltdown Man such a great hoax is that because of the mounting tension between European super powers leading up to World War I the British were grasping for anything to prove that humans originated in the UK (which, of course, is far from true). And here was this convenient find, an anomaly in the fossil record--but who cared? The British now had evidence of early humans on UK soil with large cranial regions (which they associated with intelligence). Prime minister, we must not allow an origins of our species gap!
All this stupid pride of who stood on the birthplace of humanity blinded so many intelligent people. If I recall correctly the Piltdown Man fragments were hilariously rudimentary painted lower jawbone of an orangutan combined with the skull of a fully developed, modern man. Let this be a lesson to anyone who lets emotions, national pride & religion get in the way of science.
It is thought that black holes of such size heat the surrounding gas to a temperature where the radiation pressure begins blowing outer layers into space.
Well, I'll admit this sounds intuitive with the Penrose-Hawking singularity theorems applied to the Big Bang. Now, I'm not a physicist either but I have read a lot that speculates the Big Bang was a singularity that created a hot unstable mess. All the mass of the universe in a singularity suddenly starts blowing out and producing massive heat. Although what was around this singularity is nothing--not even space.
As always, it brings up interesting questions about what was before that epoch since it is kind of clear that such a singularity could not be possibly be stable for any amount of time (as this research indicates).
** Someone should really make a joke out of LHC doomsday and how we're all saved. I couldn't come up with anything funny.
I was trying to relay what I had read about the micro black holes the LHC is trying to create to a female coworker. I failed. She told me someone in India committed suicide facing the LHC being turned on. All I could think of was that I really wish they called micro black holes that exist for minute fractions of a second something other than "black holes." It scares people unnaturally.
Thomas W. Swidarski
President and CEO of Diebold
1600 Styx River Rd
Hades, New Jersey 66666
October 27, 2008
Dear Voters,
I regret to inform you that the evil bit of the IPv4 packet header field was accidentally propagated to the display screen and--subsequently--would ensure that in the last femtosecond your vote was for evil as you were accepting your selection.
Who would have thought that Americans could see this near-planckian event on the screen... our technicians are even confused how the screen (with milliseconds of response time) managed to show it.
Regardless, we are sorry and promise that I will personally collect and publish information on these three voters although I heavily doubt that 3 votes will change the outcome of John McCain 100% Barak Obama 0% which is what the current count is at.
This may be merely be something we have to live with for now and is trivial. We will fix this when IPv6 is enforced and it is an entire "evil byte" in the packet header that will be much easier to spot and stop. This should not undermine your satisfaction with the democratic process in America--do not let the terrorists win! You must remain ever vigilant and patriotic!
I'm confused as to why the people voting weren't given access to an on site authority or technician that could verify this was occurring. I guess it's also possible this is something that will only happen once rarely but enough to do damage. It could also be attention seeking or insurance to claim fraud if the other side wins.
First, before anything even really started, The Semantic Web was merely a pipe dream.
But that was the long long ago, so let's fast forward a few years. When its future looked most bleak, Sir Tim (who can summon fire and explosions at will) told us what to expect.... twice. And we were happy.
Just when I was expecting Sir Tim to get underneath a blanket & release a sobbing YouTube video of everyone being bastards for attacking The Semantic Web right when she was going through really tough times and that we should all just leave her alone... the Semantic Web went mainstream and started getting real.
I've got no problem with people pushing technologies but this one sounds more like a soap opera than anything. Has the Semantic Web changed anything for anyone on Slashdot? I haven't seen anything directly if it has...
You don't even have to ask that question, this isn't even one of those interesting cases or gray areas. What you're planning to do is wrong--even though you could probably escape any legal ramifications. It sounds pretty clear that this site creates profit from these overly priced accounts for information that you obviously value at some amount. Getting it for free (regardless of the TOS) could put you at some risk for litigation. Using the term "load balancing" or even "distributed computing" is hilariously misplaced here.
If I do need to walk how best can I handle it without damaging my reputation and future employment opportunities?
Look, I understand what's it like to be looking for a job when the economy is bad. If there are forces keeping you pinned to this employer, I don't know of them. What I would retort with is "How can you keep working this job without damaging your reputation and future employment?" I mean are you going to put in your resume that you coded a technically innovative but bandwidth stealing parasitic botnet to duplicate content from a website that asks for a monthly payment to normally access it at that volume?
I would suggest you propose the $2k/month route and if your boss balks at it, start interviewing with other companies. If you have to leave and you're worried about being blacklisted as a 'whistleblower' (and your boss just might be that kind of guy) then tell him it's for monetary reasons that you're leaving and wish him the best of luck in his future scams.
What exactly is "cloud computing"?
I've read several articles and websites and still don't understand what the hell this mysterious new "cloud computing" thing is.
It can't just be me, can it?
Yeah, well, why don't you watch some of the most qualified people reveal just how absolutely no one knows... or really agrees for that matter.
It's really interesting seeing how differently this idea is portrayed by CEOs, developers & people who just love to hear themselves talk and be the center of attention.
This is borderline "Web 2.0" abstractness where people think there's a need to call it something new but it's really just an improvement on an old idea now that the technology is available.
Though I've long admired Amazon's EC2 platform, Spamhaus evidentally considers it a hive of spammers.
Well, of course, haven't you read the terms of use. They've got this great section on indemnification where they wash their hands of any responsibilities from their users.
I could see a really bad pattern of someone approaching Amazon with claims of spamming and Amazon saying that they notified the user of improper behavior and that they are not liable for it.
Thank god they claim you shouldn't be able to do this though:
4.2. Restricted Uses Generally.
4.2.1. You may not interfere or attempt to interfere in any manner with the functionality or proper working of the Services. 4.2.2. You may not compile or use the Amazon Properties or any other information obtained through the Services for the purpose of direct marketing, spamming, unsolicited contacting of sellers or customers, or other impermissible advertising, marketing or other activities, including, without limitation, any activities that violate anti-spamming laws and regulations. 4.2.3. You may not remove, obscure, or alter any notice of any Mark, or other intellectual property or proprietary right designation appearing on or contained within the Services or on any Amazon Properties. 4.2.4. Subject to the terms and conditions of this Agreement, you may generally publicize your use of the Services; however, you may not issue any press release with respect to the Services or this Agreement without our prior written consent.
So really you should see these things get fixed ASAP. Should. I bet spammers are just as good as avoiding being shutdown at EC2 as they are anywhere else.
Aside from a few odd reportings (and maybe a few religions) the above holds true.
We are human beings, we have awesome imaginations and a multitude of chemicals that effect them. I don't know what it's like to be coked out in an opium den or suffering from carbon monoxide poisoning but I think a lot of UFO stuff is pretty much a direct result of the human psyche, not extraterrestrials.
I am, but you know what would be even more fun? An official wiki that tells me how combat works. Yeah, I know there's some pretty complicated formulas for combat dealing with stats and attack power and dodge and chance to hit... but come on, there have been some serious moments in the game where I cannot tell which piece of armor is better! Is there some reason that players have to reverse engineer the formulas for combat instead of you guys hosting official formulas so that avid fans can fool around with different armor sets and stats?
I live in Virginia in the Washington D.C. metro area. I've been exposed to avid fans from both sides and have decided I won't be voting for McCain. Why? Read the fifth paragraph down in this article to get an idea of what one sometimes has to deal with. And all I need to do is peruse factcheck.org to see who's lying about what.
Call me stupid & naive for desiring a non-manipulative president but I've been nonplussed with the McCain campaign (and Fox News for that matter). Both candidates twisted each others words but I haven't been exposed to many negative ads against McCain. I wish I didn't have to vote for either of them, we'll still be at war four years from now regardless of who wins--it's probably just a matter of how many countries we'll be at war with.
Is it wrong for me to hope that the same thing happens to Obama so that when either of them win, they remember the idiocy that is the DMCA and reform it?
publishers as bidders at an auction, authors as sellers, and the community at large as consumers
Hmmm, there's some term I'm thinking of that deals with people in the middle of the source and the destination that take money for acting as men in the middle when they're not doing anything or providing any service except being in the middle of the transaction. Also, it's beneficial to the sellers & the consumers to eliminate these people. I think they're called 'rich greedy bastards.'
Seriously, hosting a document for me to view doesn't cost $100/mo. so why are you trying to charge me that? I know it's primarily physics but if any other field wanted to pull their heads out of their asses, they would leave the journals to the professors and start up something like arxiv for the rest of humanity that can't afford an outrageous premium!
A recent examination of current scientific publishing methods show that it is problematic at best. Treating the entire process like an economic system, with publishers as bidders at an auction, authors as sellers, and the community at large as consumers.
Agreed. I think we need to switch this whole process to Vickrey Auctions. Then you can explain to the authors of the papers that they will receive $75 for their paper instead of $100 because whoever bid $100 was gaming the system. Why is it suddenly so popular to turn everything possible into an auction system with 75 different flavors of said auction system?
Wuoldt'n yuo tihnk a sereis of smiple tpyos that a hmn cuold undrstnd wuold fool thm? (Note that Firefox returned the first correct spelling for all but three of those words on spell check... so maybe that's not a good example)
Or, you know, thinking up some open space game to play that is well known like truth or dare, alphabet games, association games, etc?
Or asking them open ended questions or asking them to describe love, hate--emotions that are not dictionary/wiki friendly? One would think that continually prying for personal experiences would reveal a flaw. Or perhaps simple things like "when were you born?" Followed by "how did you feel when JFK was assassinated?" if they weren't born before 1963.
I would think it quite hard to be duped into believing a program is a human.
'Some of its conversational partners confide in it every day; one conversation, with a teenaged girl, lasted 11 hours.'
That's not fair, she was feeling vulnerable as she had just broken up with her N'Sync wallposter--which she had been romantically involved with for several deep & very meaningful years. Things fell apart after she saw Tropic Thunder and came to the harsh realization that an astonishing percentage of N'Sync is homosexual.
Those soulless bots were simply preying on her emotions as they coldly recited word for word the Wikipedia entry on the band over and over.
But it also threatens permanent hearing loss for as many as 10 million Europeans who use them, according to a scientific study for the European Union that will be published Monday.
I don't know if this is the report but the Scientific Committee on Emerging and Newly Identified Health Risks (SCENIHR) released a report on this in June [PDF Warning!]. It's not as long as it looks, about a quarter of the pages are citations to other studies. It looks quite comprehensive. It's important to note that this is not a simple thing to study. The report points out several times that your age and daily exposure and anatomical structure all play an important role in what you can tolerate before experiencing hearing loss.
The abstract from that report:
Exposure to excessive noise is a major cause of hearing disorders worldwide. It is attributed to occupational noise. Besides noise at workplaces, which may contribute to 16% of the disabling hearing loss in adults, loud sounds at leisure times may reach excessive levels for instance in discos and personal music players (PMPs). It is estimated that over two decades the numbers of young people with social noise exposure has tripled (to around 19%) since the early 1980s, whilst occupational noise had decreased. The increase in unit sales of portable audio devices including MP3 has been phenomenal in the EU over the last four years. Estimated units sales ranged between 184-246 million
for all portable audio devices and between 124-165 million for MP3 players.
Noise-induced hearing loss is the product of sound level by duration of exposure. In order to counteract noise-induced hearing loss more effectively, a European directive "Noise at Work Regulations" taking effect starting February 2006, established the minimal security level at the equivalent noise exposure limit to 80 dB(A) for an 8 hour working day (or 40 hour working week), assuming that below this level the risk to hearing is negligible. The 8-hour equivalent level (Lequ,8h) is a widely used measure for the risk of hearing damage in industry, and can equally be applied to leisure noise exposures. The free-field equivalent sound pressure levels measured at maximum volume control setting of PMPs range around 80-115 dB(A) across different devices, and differences between different types of ear-phones may modify this level by up to 7-9 dB. The mean time of exposure ranges from below 1 hour to 14 hours a week.
Considering the daily (or weekly) time spent on listening to music through PMPs and typical volume control settings it has been estimated that the average, A-weighted, eight hour equivalent sound exposures levels (referred to "Noise at Work Regulations") from PMPs typically range from 75 to 85 dB(A). Such levels produce minimal risk of hearing impairment for the majority of PMP users. However, approximately 5% - 10% of the listeners are at high risk due to the levels patterns and duration of their listening preferences. The best estimate from the limited data we have available suggests that this maybe between 2.5 and 10m people in EU. Those are the individuals listening to music over 1 hour a day at high volume control setting.
Excessive noise can damage several cell types in the ear and lead to tinnitus, temporary or permanent hearing loss (deafness). Published data indicate that excessive acute exposures to PMPs music at maximal or near maximal output volume can produce temporary and reversible hearing impairment (tinnitus and slight deafness). Major discrepancies exist between the results of the studies on permanent noise-induced hearing loss in PMP users, with both, positive and negative studies published. Tinnitus and hearing fatigue may occur more frequently in teenagers chronically exposed to music, including PMP users, than in non-users.
In addition to auditory effects harmful, lasting and irreversible non-a
Second, I don't think the current financial problem world wide is the quants' fault. I think this credit crisis and market failure (although it might have a little to do with the quants) can be directly attributed to the world market investing heavily in the subprime mortgage bubble. Now, there's still software to blame, but it's not the quantitative analysis guys, it's the software in the hands of people who were in charge of buying bad loans and shipping them off to Wall Street to be sold to investors with a monthly mortgage check paying a huge return.
There was a This American Life episode on this sometime back that dealt with explaining the global subprime mortgage financial crisis (now known as a worldwide credit crisis). About 26 minutes into the first episode, you hear them talk about exactly this (you can stream the shows from these links or look at transcripts). Alex Blumberg & Adam Davidson are two producers of the show interviewing those involved. Enjoy this dialog from the show on the no doc loans these idiots were handing out like candy to anyone:
Alex Blumberg: But Glen didn't worry about whether the loans were good. That's
someone else's problem. And this way of thinking thrived at every step of this
mortgage security chain. A guy like Mike Francis, from Morgan Stanley, he told me
he bought loans, lots of loans, from Glen's company, and he knew in his gut they
were bad loans. Like these NINA loans.
Mike Francis: No income no asset loans. That's a liar's loan. We are telling
you to lie to us. We're hoping you don't lie. Tell us what you make, tell us
what you have in the bank, but we won't verify? Weâ(TM)re setting you up to lie.
Something about that feels very wrong. It felt wrong way back when and I
wish we had never done it. Unfortunately, what happened... we did it
because everyone else was doing it.
Alex Blumberg: It's easy to ignore your gut fear when you are making a fortune in
commissions. But Mike had other help in rationalizing what he was
doing. Technological help. Mike sat at a desk with six computer screens, connected
to millions of dollars worth of fancy analytic software designed by brilliant Ivy league
math geniuses hired by his firm, which analyzed all the loans in all the pools that he
bought and then sold. And the software, the data... didnâ(TM)t seem worried at all: Mike Francis: All the data that we had to review, to look at, on loans in
production that were years old, was positive. They performed very well. All
those factors, when you look at the pieces and parts. A 90% NINA loan from
3 years ago is performing amazingly well. Has a little bit of risk. Instead of
defaulting 1.5% of the time it defaults at 3.5% of the time. Thatâ(TM)s not so bad.
If Iâ(TM)m an investor buying that, if I get a little bit of return, Iâ(TM)m fine. Adam Davidson: Wait Alex. I want to step in for a moment because this is a very
important piece of tape. A big part of this story, of this whole crisis, is that a lot of
really smart people, people who knew better, fooled themselves with this data. It
was the triumph of data over common sense. Can you play that tape again? Mike Francis: All the data that we had to review to look at, on loans in
production, that were years old, was positive. Adam Davidson: As we now know, they were using the wrong data. They looked at
the recent history of mortgages and saw that foreclosure rate is generally below 2
percent. So they figured, absolute worst-case scenario, the foreclosure rate may go
to 8 or 10 or 12 percent. But the problem with is the
Slashdot Mirror
Hilariously enough, it bit L. Ron Hubbard in the ass too:
Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard met less fortunate timing, listing Piltdown Man as one of the ancestors of humanity in his book Scientology: A History of Man, and describing him as having "enormous" teeth and being "quite careless as to whom and what he bit." Piltdown Man would be exposed as a hoax just months after the publication of Hubbard's book.
I am not a historian but I find it hilarious that British, German and French scientists were rejecting claims of early human fossils in Indonesia or Africa on the grounds that their pride in being the origin of life. Instead they were pointing at anything and everything they could find on their own soil as the beginning of life. What made the Piltdown Man such a great hoax is that because of the mounting tension between European super powers leading up to World War I the British were grasping for anything to prove that humans originated in the UK (which, of course, is far from true). And here was this convenient find, an anomaly in the fossil record--but who cared? The British now had evidence of early humans on UK soil with large cranial regions (which they associated with intelligence). Prime minister, we must not allow an origins of our species gap!
All this stupid pride of who stood on the birthplace of humanity blinded so many intelligent people. If I recall correctly the Piltdown Man fragments were hilariously rudimentary painted lower jawbone of an orangutan combined with the skull of a fully developed, modern man. Let this be a lesson to anyone who lets emotions, national pride & religion get in the way of science.
What massive scientific hoaxes/jokes have other people witnessed?
E-meter comes to mind.
Fictional Town "Eureka" to Becomes Real?
They forgot to link to the image for this story.
When your national debt is in the tens of trillions
Stop spreading FUD, it's only a single ten of trillion.
It is thought that black holes of such size heat the surrounding gas to a temperature where the radiation pressure begins blowing outer layers into space.
Well, I'll admit this sounds intuitive with the Penrose-Hawking singularity theorems applied to the Big Bang. Now, I'm not a physicist either but I have read a lot that speculates the Big Bang was a singularity that created a hot unstable mess. All the mass of the universe in a singularity suddenly starts blowing out and producing massive heat. Although what was around this singularity is nothing--not even space.
As always, it brings up interesting questions about what was before that epoch since it is kind of clear that such a singularity could not be possibly be stable for any amount of time (as this research indicates).
** Someone should really make a joke out of LHC doomsday and how we're all saved. I couldn't come up with anything funny.
I was trying to relay what I had read about the micro black holes the LHC is trying to create to a female coworker. I failed. She told me someone in India committed suicide facing the LHC being turned on. All I could think of was that I really wish they called micro black holes that exist for minute fractions of a second something other than "black holes." It scares people unnaturally.
Thomas W. Swidarski
... our technicians are even confused how the screen (with milliseconds of response time) managed to show it.
President and CEO of Diebold
1600 Styx River Rd
Hades, New Jersey 66666
October 27, 2008
Dear Voters,
I regret to inform you that the evil bit of the IPv4 packet header field was accidentally propagated to the display screen and--subsequently--would ensure that in the last femtosecond your vote was for evil as you were accepting your selection.
Who would have thought that Americans could see this near-planckian event on the screen
Regardless, we are sorry and promise that I will personally collect and publish information on these three voters although I heavily doubt that 3 votes will change the outcome of John McCain 100% Barak Obama 0% which is what the current count is at.
This may be merely be something we have to live with for now and is trivial. We will fix this when IPv6 is enforced and it is an entire "evil byte" in the packet header that will be much easier to spot and stop. This should not undermine your satisfaction with the democratic process in America--do not let the terrorists win! You must remain ever vigilant and patriotic!
Sincerely,
Thomas W. Swidarski
BlackBoxVoting has been doing some really thorough coverage on these occurrences and I would like to point out that in North Carolina & Tennessee, people are complaining about votes flipping from McCain to Obama. Some are saying this is a serious issue and not just isolated incidents of entropy.
I'm confused as to why the people voting weren't given access to an on site authority or technician that could verify this was occurring. I guess it's also possible this is something that will only happen once rarely but enough to do damage. It could also be attention seeking or insurance to claim fraud if the other side wins.
First, before anything even really started, The Semantic Web was merely a pipe dream.
.... twice. And we were happy.
... the Semantic Web went mainstream and started getting real.
...
But that was the long long ago, so let's fast forward a few years. When its future looked most bleak, Sir Tim (who can summon fire and explosions at will) told us what to expect
Then a few years passed and nothing.
Until the 2006 World Wide Web conference made us suspicious of the Semantic Web. We spread rumors about the Semantic Web and told all the cooler technologies that the Semantic Web was just out to rape our privacy. So we challenged the Semantic Web. And claimed it would fail.
Just when I was expecting Sir Tim to get underneath a blanket & release a sobbing YouTube video of everyone being bastards for attacking The Semantic Web right when she was going through really tough times and that we should all just leave her alone
I've got no problem with people pushing technologies but this one sounds more like a soap opera than anything. Has the Semantic Web changed anything for anyone on Slashdot? I haven't seen anything directly if it has
My question is am I wrong about the ethics?
You don't even have to ask that question, this isn't even one of those interesting cases or gray areas. What you're planning to do is wrong--even though you could probably escape any legal ramifications. It sounds pretty clear that this site creates profit from these overly priced accounts for information that you obviously value at some amount. Getting it for free (regardless of the TOS) could put you at some risk for litigation. Using the term "load balancing" or even "distributed computing" is hilariously misplaced here.
If I do need to walk how best can I handle it without damaging my reputation and future employment opportunities?
Look, I understand what's it like to be looking for a job when the economy is bad. If there are forces keeping you pinned to this employer, I don't know of them. What I would retort with is "How can you keep working this job without damaging your reputation and future employment?" I mean are you going to put in your resume that you coded a technically innovative but bandwidth stealing parasitic botnet to duplicate content from a website that asks for a monthly payment to normally access it at that volume?
I would suggest you propose the $2k/month route and if your boss balks at it, start interviewing with other companies. If you have to leave and you're worried about being blacklisted as a 'whistleblower' (and your boss just might be that kind of guy) then tell him it's for monetary reasons that you're leaving and wish him the best of luck in his future scams.
What exactly is "cloud computing"? I've read several articles and websites and still don't understand what the hell this mysterious new "cloud computing" thing is. It can't just be me, can it?
Yeah, well, why don't you watch some of the most qualified people reveal just how absolutely no one knows ... or really agrees for that matter.
It's really interesting seeing how differently this idea is portrayed by CEOs, developers & people who just love to hear themselves talk and be the center of attention.
This is borderline "Web 2.0" abstractness where people think there's a need to call it something new but it's really just an improvement on an old idea now that the technology is available.
Though I've long admired Amazon's EC2 platform, Spamhaus evidentally considers it a hive of spammers.
Well, of course, haven't you read the terms of use. They've got this great section on indemnification where they wash their hands of any responsibilities from their users.
I could see a really bad pattern of someone approaching Amazon with claims of spamming and Amazon saying that they notified the user of improper behavior and that they are not liable for it.
Thank god they claim you shouldn't be able to do this though:
4.2. Restricted Uses Generally.
4.2.1. You may not interfere or attempt to interfere in any manner with the functionality or proper working of the Services.
4.2.2. You may not compile or use the Amazon Properties or any other information obtained through the Services for the purpose of direct marketing, spamming, unsolicited contacting of sellers or customers, or other impermissible advertising, marketing or other activities, including, without limitation, any activities that violate anti-spamming laws and regulations.
4.2.3. You may not remove, obscure, or alter any notice of any Mark, or other intellectual property or proprietary right designation appearing on or contained within the Services or on any Amazon Properties.
4.2.4. Subject to the terms and conditions of this Agreement, you may generally publicize your use of the Services; however, you may not issue any press release with respect to the Services or this Agreement without our prior written consent.
So really you should see these things get fixed ASAP. Should. I bet spammers are just as good as avoiding being shutdown at EC2 as they are anywhere else.
What about the auto insurance scammers that hit me 10x/week?
You can't reason with scammers, they use playground logic. Scam 'em back with a not so new gadget.
it is career suicide to have your name associated with UFOs
Not career suicide, just a hilariously pointless hobby like squirrel eating ... or Warcraft.
Something that's always bothered me about Alien sightings and 'abductions' is that the sightings really didn't kick off until 1897 which coincides closely with the release of the War of the Worlds. And, interestingly enough, alien abductions didn't really take off until the 1960s when movies about abductions had been in circulation since the 50s (as any devout MST3K fan knows).
Aside from a few odd reportings (and maybe a few religions) the above holds true.
We are human beings, we have awesome imaginations and a multitude of chemicals that effect them. I don't know what it's like to be coked out in an opium den or suffering from carbon monoxide poisoning but I think a lot of UFO stuff is pretty much a direct result of the human psyche, not extraterrestrials.
W3C's validation tools
Normally I'd go on my own rant but I'm feeling lazy today and recently I read a good article at A List Apart that sums it up. As for the W3C, I like this list they compile:
W3C's Pros & Cons
Pros:
Cons:
You should read that article, it's pretty spot on for this subject.
"Hey, are you still having fun?"
I am, but you know what would be even more fun? An official wiki that tells me how combat works. Yeah, I know there's some pretty complicated formulas for combat dealing with stats and attack power and dodge and chance to hit ... but come on, there have been some serious moments in the game where I cannot tell which piece of armor is better! Is there some reason that players have to reverse engineer the formulas for combat instead of you guys hosting official formulas so that avid fans can fool around with different armor sets and stats?
I live in Virginia in the Washington D.C. metro area. I've been exposed to avid fans from both sides and have decided I won't be voting for McCain. Why? Read the fifth paragraph down in this article to get an idea of what one sometimes has to deal with. And all I need to do is peruse factcheck.org to see who's lying about what.
Call me stupid & naive for desiring a non-manipulative president but I've been nonplussed with the McCain campaign (and Fox News for that matter). Both candidates twisted each others words but I haven't been exposed to many negative ads against McCain. I wish I didn't have to vote for either of them, we'll still be at war four years from now regardless of who wins--it's probably just a matter of how many countries we'll be at war with.
Is it wrong for me to hope that the same thing happens to Obama so that when either of them win, they remember the idiocy that is the DMCA and reform it?
the Windows 7 kernel is version 6.1
Perhaps they simply wanted to avoid the inevitable Windows 6, SP 6, Revision 6 ... of the beast?
publishers as bidders at an auction, authors as sellers, and the community at large as consumers
Hmmm, there's some term I'm thinking of that deals with people in the middle of the source and the destination that take money for acting as men in the middle when they're not doing anything or providing any service except being in the middle of the transaction. Also, it's beneficial to the sellers & the consumers to eliminate these people. I think they're called 'rich greedy bastards.'
Seriously, hosting a document for me to view doesn't cost $100/mo. so why are you trying to charge me that? I know it's primarily physics but if any other field wanted to pull their heads out of their asses, they would leave the journals to the professors and start up something like arxiv for the rest of humanity that can't afford an outrageous premium!
A recent examination of current scientific publishing methods show that it is problematic at best. Treating the entire process like an economic system, with publishers as bidders at an auction, authors as sellers, and the community at large as consumers.
Agreed. I think we need to switch this whole process to Vickrey Auctions. Then you can explain to the authors of the papers that they will receive $75 for their paper instead of $100 because whoever bid $100 was gaming the system. Why is it suddenly so popular to turn everything possible into an auction system with 75 different flavors of said auction system?
That's not fair, she was feeling vulnerable as she had just broken up with her N'Sync wallposter
Do you have to periodically replace the onion on your belt?
Yes, yes I do. What's in style these days? Vidalias? Although I'm thinking about going with leeks because--let's face it--retro is so in ...
Wuoldt'n yuo tihnk a sereis of smiple tpyos that a hmn cuold undrstnd wuold fool thm? (Note that Firefox returned the first correct spelling for all but three of those words on spell check ... so maybe that's not a good example)
Or, you know, thinking up some open space game to play that is well known like truth or dare, alphabet games, association games, etc?
Or asking them open ended questions or asking them to describe love, hate--emotions that are not dictionary/wiki friendly? One would think that continually prying for personal experiences would reveal a flaw. Or perhaps simple things like "when were you born?" Followed by "how did you feel when JFK was assassinated?" if they weren't born before 1963.
I would think it quite hard to be duped into believing a program is a human.
'Some of its conversational partners confide in it every day; one conversation, with a teenaged girl, lasted 11 hours.'
That's not fair, she was feeling vulnerable as she had just broken up with her N'Sync wallposter--which she had been romantically involved with for several deep & very meaningful years. Things fell apart after she saw Tropic Thunder and came to the harsh realization that an astonishing percentage of N'Sync is homosexual.
Those soulless bots were simply preying on her emotions as they coldly recited word for word the Wikipedia entry on the band over and over.
But it also threatens permanent hearing loss for as many as 10 million Europeans who use them, according to a scientific study for the European Union that will be published Monday.
I don't know if this is the report but the Scientific Committee on Emerging and Newly Identified Health Risks (SCENIHR) released a report on this in June [PDF Warning!]. It's not as long as it looks, about a quarter of the pages are citations to other studies. It looks quite comprehensive. It's important to note that this is not a simple thing to study. The report points out several times that your age and daily exposure and anatomical structure all play an important role in what you can tolerate before experiencing hearing loss.
The abstract from that report:
Exposure to excessive noise is a major cause of hearing disorders worldwide. It is attributed to occupational noise. Besides noise at workplaces, which may contribute to 16% of the disabling hearing loss in adults, loud sounds at leisure times may reach excessive levels for instance in discos and personal music players (PMPs). It is estimated that over two decades the numbers of young people with social noise exposure has tripled (to around 19%) since the early 1980s, whilst occupational noise had decreased. The increase in unit sales of portable audio devices including MP3 has been phenomenal in the EU over the last four years. Estimated units sales ranged between 184-246 million for all portable audio devices and between 124-165 million for MP3 players.
Noise-induced hearing loss is the product of sound level by duration of exposure. In order to counteract noise-induced hearing loss more effectively, a European directive "Noise at Work Regulations" taking effect starting February 2006, established the minimal security level at the equivalent noise exposure limit to 80 dB(A) for an 8 hour working day (or 40 hour working week), assuming that below this level the risk to hearing is negligible. The 8-hour equivalent level (Lequ,8h) is a widely used measure for the risk of hearing damage in industry, and can equally be applied to leisure noise exposures. The free-field equivalent sound pressure levels measured at maximum volume control setting of PMPs range around 80-115 dB(A) across different devices, and differences between different types of ear-phones may modify this level by up to 7-9 dB. The mean time of exposure ranges from below 1 hour to 14 hours a week.
Considering the daily (or weekly) time spent on listening to music through PMPs and typical volume control settings it has been estimated that the average, A-weighted, eight hour equivalent sound exposures levels (referred to "Noise at Work Regulations") from PMPs typically range from 75 to 85 dB(A). Such levels produce minimal risk of hearing impairment for the majority of PMP users. However, approximately 5% - 10% of the listeners are at high risk due to the levels patterns and duration of their listening preferences. The best estimate from the limited data we have available suggests that this maybe between 2.5 and 10m people in EU. Those are the individuals listening to music over 1 hour a day at high volume control setting.
Excessive noise can damage several cell types in the ear and lead to tinnitus, temporary or permanent hearing loss (deafness). Published data indicate that excessive acute exposures to PMPs music at maximal or near maximal output volume can produce temporary and reversible hearing impairment (tinnitus and slight deafness). Major discrepancies exist between the results of the studies on permanent noise-induced hearing loss in PMP users, with both, positive and negative studies published. Tinnitus and hearing fatigue may occur more frequently in teenagers chronically exposed to music, including PMP users, than in non-users.
In addition to auditory effects harmful, lasting and irreversible non-a
Second, I don't think the current financial problem world wide is the quants' fault. I think this credit crisis and market failure (although it might have a little to do with the quants) can be directly attributed to the world market investing heavily in the subprime mortgage bubble. Now, there's still software to blame, but it's not the quantitative analysis guys, it's the software in the hands of people who were in charge of buying bad loans and shipping them off to Wall Street to be sold to investors with a monthly mortgage check paying a huge return.
There was a This American Life episode on this sometime back that dealt with explaining the global subprime mortgage financial crisis (now known as a worldwide credit crisis). About 26 minutes into the first episode, you hear them talk about exactly this (you can stream the shows from these links or look at transcripts). Alex Blumberg & Adam Davidson are two producers of the show interviewing those involved. Enjoy this dialog from the show on the no doc loans these idiots were handing out like candy to anyone:
Alex Blumberg: But Glen didn't worry about whether the loans were good. That's someone else's problem. And this way of thinking thrived at every step of this mortgage security chain. A guy like Mike Francis, from Morgan Stanley, he told me he bought loans, lots of loans, from Glen's company, and he knew in his gut they were bad loans. Like these NINA loans. ... we did it
because everyone else was doing it.
... didnâ(TM)t seem worried at all:
Mike Francis: No income no asset loans. That's a liar's loan. We are telling you to lie to us. We're hoping you don't lie. Tell us what you make, tell us what you have in the bank, but we won't verify? Weâ(TM)re setting you up to lie. Something about that feels very wrong. It felt wrong way back when and I wish we had never done it. Unfortunately, what happened
Alex Blumberg: It's easy to ignore your gut fear when you are making a fortune in commissions. But Mike had other help in rationalizing what he was doing. Technological help. Mike sat at a desk with six computer screens, connected to millions of dollars worth of fancy analytic software designed by brilliant Ivy league math geniuses hired by his firm, which analyzed all the loans in all the pools that he bought and then sold. And the software, the data
Mike Francis: All the data that we had to review, to look at, on loans in production that were years old, was positive. They performed very well. All those factors, when you look at the pieces and parts. A 90% NINA loan from 3 years ago is performing amazingly well. Has a little bit of risk. Instead of defaulting 1.5% of the time it defaults at 3.5% of the time. Thatâ(TM)s not so bad. If Iâ(TM)m an investor buying that, if I get a little bit of return, Iâ(TM)m fine.
Adam Davidson: Wait Alex. I want to step in for a moment because this is a very important piece of tape. A big part of this story, of this whole crisis, is that a lot of really smart people, people who knew better, fooled themselves with this data. It was the triumph of data over common sense. Can you play that tape again?
Mike Francis: All the data that we had to review to look at, on loans in production, that were years old, was positive.
Adam Davidson: As we now know, they were using the wrong data. They looked at the recent history of mortgages and saw that foreclosure rate is generally below 2 percent. So they figured, absolute worst-case scenario, the foreclosure rate may go to 8 or 10 or 12 percent. But the problem with is the