The mars rovers know how far apart their cameras area and their relative positioning.
OK, true enough. MER also does long-baseline stereo imaging (where we take an image, move the rover, and take another image). But we don't do this every day.
Also, it's not really a 3D terrain model as it doesn't really know what's on the other side of that dune or rock.
If this guy has a 3D reconstruction algorithm that can show that's on the side of an object that the camera didn't see, now that really would be impressive.
I saw the first line and though, Wow! Chinese web addicts are being given boot camp-- great move, now they'll be able to run their Windows applicatons on Apple machines!
"that is not the way it works. If you had done your homework (or even watched the YouTube videos I posted above), you would know..."
Yes, that summarizes it in a nutshell. The real scientists, and people interested in learning about real science, cite work published in scientific journals. The fringe cite YouTube videos.
When your robot can navigate any foreign environment or your Natal 2 can work without a time-of-flight sensor remember its because of the work on "Structure and Motion" by guys like this (and me).
The Mars Exploration Rovers convert stereo-pair photographs into 3-D terrain models every day, and have been doing this for five years. It's not at all clear what this guy is doing that's new, although I expect if I had the time to drill down through the popularizations to the actual technology, it would be clear.
Now, having a robot that understands what it's seeing, without human input, is much harder.
"If that correlation were indeed true, then the recent solar minimum would have been correlated with low temperatures, and hence would have been masking some of the effect of global warming-- in other words, that greenhouse-effect warming is actually occurring to a greater extent than the data shows."
If that correlation were indeed true (and it is being tested by CERN as we speak), then it is NOT true to say that it would have been 'masking Global Warming'. The correlation would have been the main CAUSE of global warming, and CO2 would have been comparatively insignificant.
The sun is slightly brighter when it is active. More sunspots would mean higher temperatures, and hence the recent low solar activity would have meant slightly decreases in average temperature. This would mask an increase due to other causes.
If you're proposing that the Maunder minimum correlates with the "little ice age," by the way, you have to be proposing low sunspots correlates with low temperature. If you suddenly start proposing the opposite, in order to explain recent high temperatures, then you have to come up with yetanotherad hoc explanation, on top of that, to explain why low solar activity didn't cause a "little hot age" during the Maunder minimum.
Why is that that true believers in AGW caused by CO2 always take it as proven that CO2 is the 'cause of all our ills'
Don't be silly. Anthropogenic CO2 is the cause of a small, but measurable, increase in average global temperature. This temperature increase is a detectable deviation away from the statistical variations due to natural causes, and is now quite well understood.
It is most certainly not "the cause of all our ills". It is, however, a real effect, and if we continue to add CO2 to the atmosphere, the amount of warming will increase. This is physics.
when in reality that has never been proven, and is now looking increasingly unlikely?
Why is it that AGW deniers will support any theory no matter how wacky if it supports their pre-existing beliefs, but have no interest in paying attention to actual science?
Anyone who questions the validity of a theory should be heard.
Anyone who offers valid criticisms of your theory with data to back them up should be heard..
I'll have to agree with eln. There's somebody out there who's going to be questioning anything you can think of. There just isn't time to pay attention to everybody, no matter how wacky.
Re:Well, now we'll know.
on
Sunspots Return
·
· Score: 4, Informative
I saw the tag but haven't seen this explicitly mentioned yet: one theory is that lack of sunspots causes Earth to warm up. (There is a very strong negative correlation between sunspot activity and temperature on Earth.
Nope. People have been looking for correlations between sunspots and weather for years, but never found much. If there's a correlation, it's weak. http://www.crh.noaa.gov/fsd/astro/sunspots.php
To the extent that there's any correlation, however, it tends to the the opposite of what you said-- positive correlation between sunspots and temperature, not negative. The "Maunder Minimum" period of very few or no sunspots occurred about the same time as the "Little Ice Age" of cold temperatures. (But note that a single period of low temperatures ocurring during a period of low sunspots, however extended, does not mean statistically significance).
If that correlation were indeed true, then the recent solar minimum would have been correlated with low temperatures, and hence would have been masking some of the effect of global warming-- in other words, that greenhouse-effect warming is actually occurring to a greater extent than the data shows.
Anyone who offers valid criticisms of your theory with data to back them up should be heard.
Tell that to Pons and Fleischmann.
They might get a Nobel yet.
Probably not.
If cold fusion turns out to be, as it looks, a combination of erroneous measurements and wishful thinking, then they will be ignored and eventually forgotten.
On the other hand, if cold fusion turns out to have been a real effect after all, then somebody should hunt them down and shoot them, because by their actions, they made it look like bad measurements, chicanery, and hype, and thus made sure nobody would take it seriously. If there really was something there, their actions set science back significantly.
What I learned is that when your small, not terribly dangerous character happens to be the only one standing up on the ridgeline this turn taking a shot at that humongous monster (while everybody else is recharging their spells or reloading their weapons)... you die.
Just put a tax on gasoline. Cars that use more fossil fuel and polute more will pay more. Simple.
At the moment, federal gas taxes don't even pay for the highway subsidies, much less paying for oil infrastructure and other things-- income taxes are subsidizing our roads.
Teetotalers were on average somewhat more likely to die than people who had a few drinks each week. Sounds like the same thing. Until someone realized that there were two subgroups of teetotalers: lifetime teetotalers and former alcoholics. The former alcoholics had a history of drinking a lot, but currently drank nothing. When they split those two groups apart, the lifetime teetotalers were the healthiest group.
That's a nice anecdote. Too bad it isn't true.
There has, recently been some criticism of the correlation between moderate drinking and reduced mortality on the basis of the "correlation does not prove causation" argument. There may be some other lifestyle or health activity which moderate drinkers do, but teetotalers don't do, which benefits health. But, even if you control for former drinkers, the correlation between moderate drinking and reduced mortality apparently holds up.
Again, you state "BMI is stupid," but what you appear to mean is, BMI is not the best measurement of whether a person is unhealthy.
These are two different statements
BMI is a measurement. You're proposing other measurements. Fine. Great. You have not shown me that these are better measurements, although they very well may be. You have asserted that BMI measurements may not be the best measurements, but offered no proof that other measurements correlate better to health. You have asserted that body fat measurement is "way more accurate" than BMI, although I'm not sure that you know what "accurate" means in context, and you've certainly offered no demonstration that it correlates better to health or mortality.
BMI is a thing that can be measured. Whether it is a useful thing to measure is a question for experimental data gathering, but BMI, in itself, is not "stupid;" that is like saying "temperature is stupid."
There's a big problem with the BMI. It's a quadratic aproximation to a cubic mesure. I.e. the body should be proportional to the cube of the height.
No, it most certainly shouldn't.
Cube square law.
Large humans cannot be scale models of small humans. Bone strength is proportional to the square of the linear dimension, not the cube. If you scale the skeleton up by a factor of X, the mass you hang on it had better scale up by no more than X^2. Check out Haldane's essay "On Being the Right Size"
BMI itself is not "stupid". It's simply a way of normalizing weight to height. They could have correlated mortality to weight, but that would have been stupid. A person weighing 200 pounds is overweight if they're 4 foot 6, but underweight if they're 6 foot 4.
What you mean to say, I assume, is that it is "stupid" to use BMI as the single parameter to judge health, or, that there is more to health than simply weight. Of course.
BMI has the advantage of being relatively easily measured. There is, in doing quantitative science, a significant advantage in studying things that can be measured. If it is a "stupid" measurement, then this will show up in the data, in the form of there not being a correlation between BMI and mortality.
And then you have to account for Cartman ("I'm not fat, I'm just big-boned").
I'd really like to see the curves, and not just the conclusions on this study.
This 1999 study by Calle et al. suggested that the optimum BMI is about 22-24. The new study summary says people with BMI 25 to 29.9 are less likely to die than people with B.M.I. 18.5 to 24.9.
The problem is that there's a huge difference between "18.5" (= way underweight) and "24.9" (around the optimum). That's just too large a data bin to be useful. It's too large to be able to tell if the new data contradicts the old data, or not.
I'll sign on to being one of those users who resist change.
some users will strongly resist change even if it is better.
And, even more so, some users will strongly resist change even if they're repeatedly told that it's better. Because, actually, we've heard it before. You know, everybody says that their changes are "better."
Whoever tagged this story as "humor" is, I think, missing the point...
Or else the tag as "humor" is an attempt at humor...
In which case, about all I can say is that tagging it "funny" isn't funny, but calling it funny to call it funny is funny.
You say that almost as if you think it's a criticism.
There's nothing more annoying than innovation that's implemented solely for the sake of innovation. There are places where you might enjoy that, sure, but for a machine that you use every day to get work done, you only want innovation that makes your work easier.
...while Apple is much better at finding good ideas to copy.
Slashdot Mirror
The mars rovers know how far apart their cameras area and their relative positioning.
OK, true enough. MER also does long-baseline stereo imaging (where we take an image, move the rover, and take another image). But we don't do this every day.
Also, it's not really a 3D terrain model as it doesn't really know what's on the other side of that dune or rock.
If this guy has a 3D reconstruction algorithm that can show that's on the side of an object that the camera didn't see, now that really would be impressive.
I saw the first line and though, Wow! Chinese web addicts are being given boot camp-- great move, now they'll be able to run their Windows applicatons on Apple machines!
"that is not the way it works. If you had done your homework (or even watched the YouTube videos I posted above), you would know ..."
Yes, that summarizes it in a nutshell. The real scientists, and people interested in learning about real science, cite work published in scientific journals. The fringe cite YouTube videos.
When your robot can navigate any foreign environment or your Natal 2 can work without a time-of-flight sensor remember its because of the work on "Structure and Motion" by guys like this (and me).
The Mars Exploration Rovers convert stereo-pair photographs into 3-D terrain models every day, and have been doing this for five years. It's not at all clear what this guy is doing that's new, although I expect if I had the time to drill down through the popularizations to the actual technology, it would be clear.
Now, having a robot that understands what it's seeing, without human input, is much harder.
"If that correlation were indeed true, then the recent solar minimum would have been correlated with low temperatures, and hence would have been masking some of the effect of global warming-- in other words, that greenhouse-effect warming is actually occurring to a greater extent than the data shows."
If that correlation were indeed true (and it is being tested by CERN as we speak), then it is NOT true to say that it would have been 'masking Global Warming'. The correlation would have been the main CAUSE of global warming, and CO2 would have been comparatively insignificant.
The sun is slightly brighter when it is active. More sunspots would mean higher temperatures, and hence the recent low solar activity would have meant slightly decreases in average temperature. This would mask an increase due to other causes.
The correlation is, however, extremely weak, and not statistically significant. http://www.crh.noaa.gov/fsd/astro/sunspots.php
If you're proposing that the Maunder minimum correlates with the "little ice age," by the way, you have to be proposing low sunspots correlates with low temperature. If you suddenly start proposing the opposite, in order to explain recent high temperatures, then you have to come up with yetanotherad hoc explanation, on top of that, to explain why low solar activity didn't cause a "little hot age" during the Maunder minimum.
Why is that that true believers in AGW caused by CO2 always take it as proven that CO2 is the 'cause of all our ills'
Don't be silly. Anthropogenic CO2 is the cause of a small, but measurable, increase in average global temperature. This temperature increase is a detectable deviation away from the statistical variations due to natural causes, and is now quite well understood.
It is most certainly not "the cause of all our ills". It is, however, a real effect, and if we continue to add CO2 to the atmosphere, the amount of warming will increase. This is physics.
when in reality that has never been proven, and is now looking increasingly unlikely?
Why is it that AGW deniers will support any theory no matter how wacky if it supports their pre-existing beliefs, but have no interest in paying attention to actual science?
Anyone who questions the validity of a theory should be heard.
Anyone who offers valid criticisms of your theory with data to back them up should be heard..
I'll have to agree with eln. There's somebody out there who's going to be questioning anything you can think of. There just isn't time to pay attention to everybody, no matter how wacky.
I saw the tag but haven't seen this explicitly mentioned yet: one theory is that lack of sunspots causes Earth to warm up. (There is a very strong negative correlation between sunspot activity and temperature on Earth.
Nope. People have been looking for correlations between sunspots and weather for years, but never found much. If there's a correlation, it's weak. http://www.crh.noaa.gov/fsd/astro/sunspots.php
To the extent that there's any correlation, however, it tends to the the opposite of what you said-- positive correlation between sunspots and temperature, not negative. The "Maunder Minimum" period of very few or no sunspots occurred about the same time as the "Little Ice Age" of cold temperatures. (But note that a single period of low temperatures ocurring during a period of low sunspots, however extended, does not mean statistically significance).
If that correlation were indeed true, then the recent solar minimum would have been correlated with low temperatures, and hence would have been masking some of the effect of global warming-- in other words, that greenhouse-effect warming is actually occurring to a greater extent than the data shows.
Anyone who offers valid criticisms of your theory with data to back them up should be heard.
Tell that to Pons and Fleischmann.
They might get a Nobel yet.
Probably not.
If cold fusion turns out to be, as it looks, a combination of erroneous measurements and wishful thinking, then they will be ignored and eventually forgotten.
On the other hand, if cold fusion turns out to have been a real effect after all, then somebody should hunt them down and shoot them, because by their actions, they made it look like bad measurements, chicanery, and hype, and thus made sure nobody would take it seriously. If there really was something there, their actions set science back significantly.
These are pretty much general principles in life that apply everywhere....
Sure. Just like, "Everything I really needed to know about life I learned from playing Tetris"
What I learned is that when your small, not terribly dangerous character happens to be the only one standing up on the ridgeline this turn taking a shot at that humongous monster (while everybody else is recharging their spells or reloading their weapons)... you die.
Nanopillar Solar May Cost 10x Less Than Silicon
...and then, it may not.
With its "inprivate" browsing mode in IE8. Since it doesn't track your history, I'm assuming that it your "inprivate" history can't be "sniffed".
The same as the Safari "private browsing" mode, I assume.
So what happens when just about everyone has an electric or super efficient hybrid?
I don't know about everybody else, but when that happens I'll personally be cheering.
That's idiotic.
Just put a tax on gasoline. Cars that use more fossil fuel and polute more will pay more. Simple.
At the moment, federal gas taxes don't even pay for the highway subsidies, much less paying for oil infrastructure and other things-- income taxes are subsidizing our roads.
Teetotalers were on average somewhat more likely to die than people who had a few drinks each week. Sounds like the same thing. Until someone realized that there were two subgroups of teetotalers: lifetime teetotalers and former alcoholics. The former alcoholics had a history of drinking a lot, but currently drank nothing. When they split those two groups apart, the lifetime teetotalers were the healthiest group.
That's a nice anecdote. Too bad it isn't true.
There has, recently been some criticism of the correlation between moderate drinking and reduced mortality on the basis of the "correlation does not prove causation" argument. There may be some other lifestyle or health activity which moderate drinkers do, but teetotalers don't do, which benefits health. But, even if you control for former drinkers, the correlation between moderate drinking and reduced mortality apparently holds up.
BMI is really stupid.
Again, you state "BMI is stupid," but what you appear to mean is, BMI is not the best measurement of whether a person is unhealthy.
These are two different statements
BMI is a measurement. You're proposing other measurements. Fine. Great. You have not shown me that these are better measurements, although they very well may be. You have asserted that BMI measurements may not be the best measurements, but offered no proof that other measurements correlate better to health. You have asserted that body fat measurement is "way more accurate" than BMI, although I'm not sure that you know what "accurate" means in context, and you've certainly offered no demonstration that it correlates better to health or mortality.
BMI is a thing that can be measured. Whether it is a useful thing to measure is a question for experimental data gathering, but BMI, in itself, is not "stupid;" that is like saying "temperature is stupid."
-- I'm just not sure he knew exactly how that would come out to be true!
And though HTC's Vineet Nayar's proclamation that American programmers are 'unemployable'...
Flamebait.
The next words in that quote you left unfinished were "is overblown."
There's a big problem with the BMI. It's a quadratic aproximation to a cubic mesure. I.e. the body should be proportional to the cube of the height.
No, it most certainly shouldn't.
Cube square law.
Large humans cannot be scale models of small humans. Bone strength is proportional to the square of the linear dimension, not the cube. If you scale the skeleton up by a factor of X, the mass you hang on it had better scale up by no more than X^2. Check out Haldane's essay "On Being the Right Size"
BMI itself is not "stupid". It's simply a way of normalizing weight to height. They could have correlated mortality to weight, but that would have been stupid. A person weighing 200 pounds is overweight if they're 4 foot 6, but underweight if they're 6 foot 4.
What you mean to say, I assume, is that it is "stupid" to use BMI as the single parameter to judge health, or, that there is more to health than simply weight. Of course.
BMI has the advantage of being relatively easily measured. There is, in doing quantitative science, a significant advantage in studying things that can be measured. If it is a "stupid" measurement, then this will show up in the data, in the form of there not being a correlation between BMI and mortality.
And then you have to account for Cartman ("I'm not fat, I'm just big-boned").
I'd really like to see the curves, and not just the conclusions on this study.
This 1999 study by Calle et al. suggested that the optimum BMI is about 22-24. The new study summary says people with BMI 25 to 29.9 are less likely to die than people with B.M.I. 18.5 to 24.9.
The problem is that there's a huge difference between "18.5" (= way underweight) and "24.9" (around the optimum). That's just too large a data bin to be useful. It's too large to be able to tell if the new data contradicts the old data, or not.
What does the mortality vs mass curve look like?
I'll sign on to being one of those users who resist change.
some users will strongly resist change even if it is better.
And, even more so, some users will strongly resist change even if they're repeatedly told that it's better. Because, actually, we've heard it before. You know, everybody says that their changes are "better."
... Open source doesn't suffer from a lack of innovative ideas, it suffers from an excess of copies of bad ideas.
--
sudo mod me up
OK, I'd mod that up.
Whoever tagged this story as "humor" is, I think, missing the point...
Or else the tag as "humor" is an attempt at humor... In which case, about all I can say is that tagging it "funny" isn't funny, but calling it funny to call it funny is funny.
Apple, also, don't innovate much....
You say that almost as if you think it's a criticism.
There's nothing more annoying than innovation that's implemented solely for the sake of innovation. There are places where you might enjoy that, sure, but for a machine that you use every day to get work done, you only want innovation that makes your work easier.
...while Apple is much better at finding good ideas to copy.
A desirable trait.