That doesn't work totally. It seems some RST packets work directly with the modem (at least with mine) and regardless of using iptables the modem itself will stop and reset.
Good to know. That's a buyer beware situation, although often the modem comes from the cable company so it's difficult to get your own modem. That's why I went with an alternate cable provider. They're not everywhere, but if you have the option, take it.
Blocking RST packets with iptables is trivial, but an ugly hack at best. It also won't stop more thorough blocking methods like corrupting BT traffic (so your machine eventually blacklists the sender), injecting fake data packets, or simply dropping traffic.
Is that what Comcast is doing? I was under the impression that their behavior was limited to the RST packets. I mean I realize that as people neutralize one method they will move on to another, but that is how the game is played.
How about if you set your iptables firewall to block the Comcast reset packet?
From: http://www.zeropaid.com/news/9608/GUIDE%3A+Using+Linux+to+Beat+Comcast's+BitTorrent+Throttling
If you are using Ubuntu or another non-Red Hat Linux derivative, then place the following in a file and execute that file as root.
#!/bin/sh
#Replace 6883 with you BT port
BT_PORT=6883
#Flush the filters
iptables -F
#Apply new filters
iptables -A INPUT -i lo -j ACCEPT
#Comcast BitTorrent seeding block workaround
iptables -A INPUT -p tcp --dport $BT_PORT --tcp-flags RST RST -j DROP
iptables -A INPUT -m state --state ESTABLISHED,RELATED -j ACCEPT
#BitTorrent
iptables -A INPUT -m state --state NEW -m tcp -p tcp --dport $BT_PORT -j ACCEPT
iptables -A INPUT -m state --state NEW -m udp -p udp --dport $BT_PORT -j ACCEPT
iptables -A INPUT -j REJECT --reject-with icmp-host-prohibited
Not so hard really. There's an iptables file on that page for the RedHat distros too.
I had a similar problem with the Creative Zen V (4GB). I grabbed the libmtp stuff from http://libmtp.sourceforge.net/ and can copy files over via the command line. mtp-sendtr works to send a track over to the player. I haven't had much luck getting Amarok to work with libmtp though. I recompiled it with what I thought were the proper options but no luck.
My wife has an iPod and either Amarok or Rhythmbox works great for it. A little trouble with playlists in Rhythmbox, but otherwise it's fine.
D.
Ah Slashdot. It's always the ignorant guy who has to get insulting. I take it from your simple setup of you and your buddies that you have never set up a scientific experiment. Or if you have you have let go of that training in this instance. Perhaps it's my fault and I should have been more clear. I will do so here.
Firstly, no experiment planned by the test subject would be considered valid. Nobody is going to let a supposed psychic set up the conditions for their own testing. James Randi has volumes to say on that matter so I refer you to him if you want more clarity. So in terms of the analogy, you and your buddies at a baseball diamond with a video camera proves nothing. Heck, I could go to a baseball diamond with a video camera and saw a lady in half. Have I proved that I'm magical?
Secondly, "proving" does not mean having evidence of something ever happening. Not in this case. If that were so then the argument for psychic functioning would have been resolved long ago. It happens. It happens under laboratory conditions too (see reference below). What has not yet been demonstrated under laboratory conditions is "does it happen in a statistically significant number?" (Actually, that's a debatable point depending on how you do the stats. Reference = An assessment of the evidence for psychic functioning) In other words, is a persons ability to know something greater than the chance of guessing. If it's not greater than chance than it's not a phenomena. It's just random luck.
Look at the baseball analogy in this light. With just current baseball statistics (where 0.30 is a great batting average) is the home run an actual phenomena or is it just chance? It all depends on how you do the stats. Over all pitches thrown home runs are statistically insignificant. It's just chance. But batter by batter there are those players who have a greater statistical likelihood to hit a home run. They get paid a lot more because of it.
Take one of those players (Sammy Sosa? Mark McGuire?) and put them in a laboratory with conditions arranged by the experimentors. Perhaps the first random factor that would need to be removed would be the pitcher. Too much variation. A machine would be designed that would throw a certain kind of pitch all the time. Or perhaps that is also too random. Maybe the ball should be attached to a high speed mounting that runs on a rail? This is where assumptions come in to play. Since we're all (relatively) familiar with baseball the odds are the the experimentor would choose some reasonable pitch, say a 70 mph fastball right in the strike zone. In the tests of psychic functioning we don't have this advantage. What if we set up the pitching machine to throw 160 mph curveballs? How about a 25 mph pitch at an elevation of 8 ft off the ground? We would call that a ball (an unreasonable pitch), but in an experiment to detect "mind reading" how would we know what constitutes an unreasonable condition? We're totally in the dark here. Already, in our baseball experiment, we see that the conditions can be set up where our subject can hit a home run every time or not at all. What if he was just "off his game" that day? I would actually be very curious to see if just the environment, not in a ball park but in a lab, would affect the psychology of the player enough that his home runs would become statistically insignificant, ie. no greater than chance. Neither Sammy nor Mark can hit a homer "at will". Not unless they set up the conditions themselves, which is not a valid test.
That's the state of psychic research today. It's very statistically oriented and some researchers claim that it has been proven (repeatedly) while others disagree with their statistical method or experimental arrangement and say nothing was proven. Both sides agree that the subject got the right answer sometimes - a home run. The question is do we have any McGuires or Sosas. Until we can say that the phenomena is proven it is near impossible to have a conversation about about how it works. This apparatus is an attempt to gather enough data to say one way or the other.
I will agree that in most cases psychology is the more likely case. What I was getting at with the baseball analogy is that in this field there is always the statistical factor. A person may get the correct answer but did they do so with a statistical liklihood greater than chance. In total volume of all pitches thrown home runs are statistically insignificant. When we focus in on some players they are able to hit home runs with a likelihood that is greater than chance, and they have salaries that reflect this. My question is, would those numbers hold up in the lab? I think it would depend on the design of the experiment. Given that there is familiarity with the mechanics of baseball we could easily design an experiment that would increase or decrease the likelihood of successs, depending on what the researcher wanted to show. We don't have that advantage with so-called psychic phenomena. We're totally in the dark. According to some researchers (Jessica Utts) there is already solid statistical evidence for psychic functioning. Others disagree with her methods and thus claim there is no evidence. (I stole the baseball analogy from her An assessment of the evidence for psychic functioning )
The overall point I was getting at is that there are very few human activities that have been replicated in the lab. I would actually be surprised if most major league hitters could replicate their batting averages under laboratory conditions, but nobody is claiming they can't hit. Yes, I know that claims of telepathy require greater proof than claims of hitting a ball, but how is such proof to be gathered?
Why is anyone who defends telepathy "desparately trying" while those who reject it aren't? Aren't you desparately trying to maintain your belief in a world that is ordered according to rules you understand?
Consider, perhaps all psychic phenomena are like other human activities. Like baseball. Now we know of baseball players who have hit home runs, but have any of them ever done so under laboratory conditions? Since I have never read or heard of such an experiment I will refuse to believe in the existence of these so-called "home runs" until a scientifically rigorous experiment proves that they can be performed on demand. Then, obviously, the experiment has to replicated with randomized subjects.
I'm not really desparately trying anything here. I think the jury is still out on the whole psychic thing. I'm not banking on it. But I don't think I can rule it out either.
How do you know time is unidirectional? We perceive it that way, but then our senses are no testament of truth. If you have some form of physics that actually describes time I would love to see it. My understanding is that time is a conundrum of physics.
Well, yes. Exactly. Gravity is still a theory and is subject to alteration. Actually it already has been modified once (Einstein modified Newtonian gravity to explain the orbit of Mercury). However, when dealing with a debate on global warming it gets very awkward in that predictions made won't come to pass for decades if not centuries later. So it is difficult to motivate policy makers to make changes now if they are waiting to see if your predictions come to pass. By then it will be too late. Also, climate and weather are very non-linear systems so the predictions that can be made are quite vague, such as a 2 degree global temperature increase over the next 100 years. It will take some time to falsify or verify such a prediction. In this case scientists really have to go with their best guess.
You're right in that the examples I gave are mostly not proper scientific hypotheses. The one possible exception being the Dark Matter theory, but I would hold that it isn't a proper theory either. If you know of any testable predictions for Cold Dark Matter please let me know about them. But the phrase "proving a negative" is a statement of formal Logic and is not limitted to the confines of science. It is also one of the foundations of Law, at least those systems of law where the rule "innocent until proven guilty" prevails. Most arguments for Intelligent Design rely on getting the opposition to have to prove a negative (the non-existence of a designer) which they can't. So the I.D. people call that a victory. You can go far with poor logic.
Anyways, I'm just a stickler for logic and wanted to illustrate that falsifying a theory is not the same thing as proving a negative. When Mercury's orbit was shown to be non-Newtonian scientists did not throw out Newton even though, strictly speaking, it had been falsified. They made excuses for it, suggesting that there was a hidden variable somewhere. They just dealt with it as an exception to the rule until Einstein came along and solved the riddle (no hidden variable, Newton was flawed). In the global warming argument (and in the I.D. vs. Evolution arguments) any exception to the rule is used as justification for throwing out the whole theory. This has more to do with politics really, but the arguments hinge on what qualifies as proof.
No, I'm sorry that's hogwash. A model can be falsified if it conflicts with data or predicts things that don't occur, but usually the model is simply replaced by a better one with better supporting evidence. But falsifying a model is not proving a negative.
If I maintain that there is a little man inside my refrigerator who turns off the light when I shut the door it is very hard to disprove the existence of this little man so long as I avail myself of ad hoc theorizing.
Dialogue:
X: The little man turns off the light.
Z: Nobody has ever seen this little man.
X: Oh sure. He's invisible.
Z: Wouldn't he die of thirst?
X: No. He's able to draw moisture from the ice cubes in the freezer sublimating. ... etc. For every doubt an answer.
This is how the scientific theory of the epicycles was able to endure so long prior to Kepler's reorganization of the solar system model. You cannot conclusively prove they don't exist. Kepler was able to deliver a much simpler model that did not need the epicycles, which was really what people wanted in the first place, but he made no proof of their absence. The Dark Matter theory is like that today. Someday it will be replaced by a better theory but until then scientists will stake their reputations on it. Really, how do you disprove something observationally that is by definition invisible?
A scientist cannot reasonably take a position of "I'm going to state this without proof until proven wrong." The burden of proof is on the one stating the existence of something. Another example would be somebody stating that weapons of mass destruction are in Iraq and providing a list of excuses as to why they haven't been found. Seriously, try to prove they don't exist to a person who has an excuse for every answer. Better by far to state that until you have evidence for their existence you have nothing.
Science does make use of the logical "process of elimination", but that isn't really the same thing. That's just narrowing possibilities where constained by known facts. For example we know the planet wasn't created 5000 years ago because we have evidence to the contrary. But that doesn't actually prove it. It's just the best theory supported by the most data. Supernatural intervention can alter any given piece of data. How do you prove that God didn't alter the speed of light and change nuclear decay rates so as to falsify the evidence? You can't. But until someone can prove God did do it I'll continue to call it bullshit.
Understand, I'm not coming out against your global warming position, I don't actually know what that is (I didn't follow the thread). Your "prove a negative" comment had been modded up and it jumped out at me requiring a response. This aspect of science has been hammered into me.
I mean it's just a flash of light right? Maybe it's an object being launched. From the magnitude of the light they can estimate the power of the "impact". Could we use the same info to calculate the payload of a rocket being launched?
Don't you all realize that this means the Martians have colonized our moon?!? The invasion has begun!
;->
Those aren't the ONLY solutions. I'll tell you what to do with it, and this isn't my idea, it's been floated around before. You take one standard issue ocean oil drilling platform and you postition it at an Atlantic subduction zone. Using its ability to drill down up to 30 miles deep you create a 30 mile deep hole. Then ships bring the nuclear waste material to the platform where it is then packed into the hole. It may be a good idea to leave the top 5 miles or so empty or just stuffed with sand just to prevent morons from tampering with it. When the hole is full move 200 yards to the left and repeat the process. Over the next thousand years geological forces will pull the nuclear material down below the crust of planet Earth.
At this point the problem is effectively gone. There is an outside chance that the material may come back up in a volcano in a billion years or so, but that is well past the half-life of our material and really a volcano is a much bigger issue. Actually, the mantle is higher in radioactive content then the crust anyways. I think this would provide permanent disposal.
Just so that searches pick up on this, that's "Cringely" not "Cingely". And yes, I think he totally called it on this one. The companies are getting money out of the blue because they have to spend it or return it.
Unless of course the password / passphrase that you enter in is still held in the pagefile in some obtainable manner. Anyone want to take a guess as to whether Windows Vista keeps your passphrase in the pagefile? Anyone want to further bet that the Fed already knows this?
D.
--
The history of science resembles a collection of ghosts remembering that
once they too were gods.
-- David Berlinsky, theoretical mathematician
I understand your point about credibility but I've been going over the lectures he put up and I'm not seeing the flaws. Now perhaps that's due to my lack of ability but it might also be that the argument itself is fairly solid. That argument is now no longer available to be seen. (but I have a copy if you like.)
MIT has no record of him, but as of now Stanford doesn't either. The ADS Abstract service that contains the articles listed above gives him an email address at alum.mit.edu.
So what gives? Maybe, and this gets ugly, his thesis was about the very same topic that we see before us today. I wonder how a thesis advisor would react to a candidate whose submission claimed to disprove the Big Bang. I could easily see a scenario where politics came to play and the approval of his thesis got held up. Would you attach your name to it? Would you risk your career on approving this work from a student of yours?
Personally I don't really care where he went to school. I care whether or not his theory is correct. If a patent clerk published something ground breaking then I say give him a scholarship. Maybe he's faking the credentials so he can be heard. He may be a complete con-artist. I really wouldn't care, although I would certainly understand why they would take the website down at that point.
Let those who have the credentials show how the theory falls apart under analysis. If it doesn't, if it holds up under scrutiny, are we then going to discount the theory because he doesn't have enough letters after his name?
For the record, we do not know that he isn't a PhD. We just know that several very respectable institutions apparently want nothing to do with him. The reason for that is unclear.
Alexander Mayer's website at Stanford has been administratively locked. Also, his email address has been suspended.
I've read through both lectures now and I think Mayer may actually have a strong case. With the empirical tests he offers I think he has to be taken seriously.
Ah, OK. That clears a lot up for me. I still don't think I agree with your conclusion though. The clocks at A and B perceive each other as slow while under acceleration due to the transverse redshift. The time dilation is the result of the light being "streched" across increasing distance. Without acceleration, back in an inertial frame, this perceived delay would go away. Nobody is looking at the clocks in terms of previous recorded times. The question is only whether or not they have identical rates. Under inertial motion they do, under acceleration they each perceive a decrease in the rate of the other.
In fact when deaccelerating, as the distance covered along the ship's axis is constantly decreasing over time, there would be a blue shift and the clocks would see each other as too fast. Again, only during the reverse acceleration.
Since Einstein's Equivalence Principal (EEP) equates the effects of a gravitational field with the experience of acceleration we would expect to see some sign of this behavior if we have sensitive enough instruments. Mayer points out that we actually do have such instruments. Slide #50 of Lecture-1 shows the situation with two atomic clocks, one in Paris (the BIPM) and the other in Washington, DC (the USNO). To quote, "Therefore, after correcting for known effects, a clock ensemble at the BIPM in Paris is found to record time somewhat slower in direct comparison to a clock ensemble at the USNO in Washington, DC. However, the opposite is also true; the USNO clock ensemble is found to record time somewhat slower in direct comparison to a clock ensemble in Paris. This seemingly paradoxical empirical fact is a reflection of the geometric properties of time." (italics mine)
So, it is paradoxical, but it is also empirically observable. Actually the only reason to take this at all seriously is the large number of empirical tests and supporting data he offers.
He may be wrong, but he has put up a plausible theory that must be dealt with.
OK, so what was the flaw? You never mention that. I'm looking at the thought experiment as detailed on page 6 of the first lecture set. Where is the flaw?
Actually I don't think that's correct. Firstly I'm unclear as to where "O" comes from and where that is located. You say it is "at rest" and "between A and B" but I'm having a hard time reconciling that. If "O" is at rest then are you saying it is a clock not aboard the spaceship or are you using the words "at rest" to imply inertial motion. I don't think the phrase "at rest" really has any meaning in a relativistic thought experiment.
Then the whole "moving the observers and clocks from A and B to O, doing so completely symetrically". The verbage is unclear. Actually I don't think you're doing the same experiment.
What I read was that "A" would see "B" as lagging under acceleration and that "B" would see "A" as lagging while under acceleration. There was nothing about the clocks continuing to see each other as slow once acceleration was turned off and inertial motion was reestablished. That doesn't follow. The point was that "A" and "B" are not moving in respects to each other. They are at fixed positions relative to each other, "A" is not accelerating away from "B" nor vise versa. The acceleration is transverse to both of them.
The question is whether or not the clocks would actually measure the difference. If so then the argument for a transverse redshift has legs. He states (in slide 7) that "Numerous empirical observations imply that this effect does, of course, occur". So if he has empirical proof (although he doesn't state the nature of said proof) then it would seem difficult to declare that proof to be paradoxical and impossible. I mean if he has empirical evidence for this "thought experiment" then he's solid.
The question I'm left with is "what are those 'numerous empirical observations'?". In slide 8 he says that the transverse effect is too small to be measured in the laboratory. So if he can give the detail to the fourth bullet point on slide 7, then he's got something real here.
Actually I'd be relieved. Cosmology really hasn't made any sense in years.
Slashdot Mirror
That doesn't work totally. It seems some RST packets work directly with the modem (at least with mine) and regardless of using iptables the modem itself will stop and reset.
Good to know. That's a buyer beware situation, although often the modem comes from the cable company so it's difficult to get your own modem. That's why I went with an alternate cable provider. They're not everywhere, but if you have the option, take it.
Blocking RST packets with iptables is trivial, but an ugly hack at best. It also won't stop more thorough blocking methods like corrupting BT traffic (so your machine eventually blacklists the sender), injecting fake data packets, or simply dropping traffic.
Is that what Comcast is doing? I was under the impression that their behavior was limited to the RST packets. I mean I realize that as people neutralize one method they will move on to another, but that is how the game is played.
http://www.zeropaid.com/news/9608/GUIDE%3A+Using+Linux+to+Beat+Comcast's+BitTorrent+Throttling
How about if you set your iptables firewall to block the Comcast reset packet? From: http://www.zeropaid.com/news/9608/GUIDE%3A+Using+Linux+to+Beat+Comcast's+BitTorrent+Throttling If you are using Ubuntu or another non-Red Hat Linux derivative, then place the following in a file and execute that file as root. #!/bin/sh #Replace 6883 with you BT port BT_PORT=6883 #Flush the filters iptables -F #Apply new filters iptables -A INPUT -i lo -j ACCEPT #Comcast BitTorrent seeding block workaround iptables -A INPUT -p tcp --dport $BT_PORT --tcp-flags RST RST -j DROP iptables -A INPUT -m state --state ESTABLISHED,RELATED -j ACCEPT #BitTorrent iptables -A INPUT -m state --state NEW -m tcp -p tcp --dport $BT_PORT -j ACCEPT iptables -A INPUT -m state --state NEW -m udp -p udp --dport $BT_PORT -j ACCEPT iptables -A INPUT -j REJECT --reject-with icmp-host-prohibited Not so hard really. There's an iptables file on that page for the RedHat distros too.
I had a similar problem with the Creative Zen V (4GB). I grabbed the libmtp stuff from http://libmtp.sourceforge.net/ and can copy files over via the command line. mtp-sendtr works to send a track over to the player. I haven't had much luck getting Amarok to work with libmtp though. I recompiled it with what I thought were the proper options but no luck. My wife has an iPod and either Amarok or Rhythmbox works great for it. A little trouble with playlists in Rhythmbox, but otherwise it's fine. D.
Ah Slashdot. It's always the ignorant guy who has to get insulting. I take it from your simple setup of you and your buddies that you have never set up a scientific experiment. Or if you have you have let go of that training in this instance. Perhaps it's my fault and I should have been more clear. I will do so here.
Firstly, no experiment planned by the test subject would be considered valid. Nobody is going to let a supposed psychic set up the conditions for their own testing. James Randi has volumes to say on that matter so I refer you to him if you want more clarity. So in terms of the analogy, you and your buddies at a baseball diamond with a video camera proves nothing. Heck, I could go to a baseball diamond with a video camera and saw a lady in half. Have I proved that I'm magical?
Secondly, "proving" does not mean having evidence of something ever happening. Not in this case. If that were so then the argument for psychic functioning would have been resolved long ago. It happens. It happens under laboratory conditions too (see reference below). What has not yet been demonstrated under laboratory conditions is "does it happen in a statistically significant number?" (Actually, that's a debatable point depending on how you do the stats. Reference = An assessment of the evidence for psychic functioning) In other words, is a persons ability to know something greater than the chance of guessing. If it's not greater than chance than it's not a phenomena. It's just random luck.
Look at the baseball analogy in this light. With just current baseball statistics (where 0.30 is a great batting average) is the home run an actual phenomena or is it just chance? It all depends on how you do the stats. Over all pitches thrown home runs are statistically insignificant. It's just chance. But batter by batter there are those players who have a greater statistical likelihood to hit a home run. They get paid a lot more because of it.
Take one of those players (Sammy Sosa? Mark McGuire?) and put them in a laboratory with conditions arranged by the experimentors. Perhaps the first random factor that would need to be removed would be the pitcher. Too much variation. A machine would be designed that would throw a certain kind of pitch all the time. Or perhaps that is also too random. Maybe the ball should be attached to a high speed mounting that runs on a rail? This is where assumptions come in to play. Since we're all (relatively) familiar with baseball the odds are the the experimentor would choose some reasonable pitch, say a 70 mph fastball right in the strike zone. In the tests of psychic functioning we don't have this advantage. What if we set up the pitching machine to throw 160 mph curveballs? How about a 25 mph pitch at an elevation of 8 ft off the ground? We would call that a ball (an unreasonable pitch), but in an experiment to detect "mind reading" how would we know what constitutes an unreasonable condition? We're totally in the dark here. Already, in our baseball experiment, we see that the conditions can be set up where our subject can hit a home run every time or not at all. What if he was just "off his game" that day? I would actually be very curious to see if just the environment, not in a ball park but in a lab, would affect the psychology of the player enough that his home runs would become statistically insignificant, ie. no greater than chance. Neither Sammy nor Mark can hit a homer "at will". Not unless they set up the conditions themselves, which is not a valid test.
That's the state of psychic research today. It's very statistically oriented and some researchers claim that it has been proven (repeatedly) while others disagree with their statistical method or experimental arrangement and say nothing was proven. Both sides agree that the subject got the right answer sometimes - a home run. The question is do we have any McGuires or Sosas. Until we can say that the phenomena is proven it is near impossible to have a conversation about about how it works. This apparatus is an attempt to gather enough data to say one way or the other.
;->
I will agree that in most cases psychology is the more likely case. What I was getting at with the baseball analogy is that in this field there is always the statistical factor. A person may get the correct answer but did they do so with a statistical liklihood greater than chance. In total volume of all pitches thrown home runs are statistically insignificant. When we focus in on some players they are able to hit home runs with a likelihood that is greater than chance, and they have salaries that reflect this. My question is, would those numbers hold up in the lab? I think it would depend on the design of the experiment. Given that there is familiarity with the mechanics of baseball we could easily design an experiment that would increase or decrease the likelihood of successs, depending on what the researcher wanted to show. We don't have that advantage with so-called psychic phenomena. We're totally in the dark. According to some researchers (Jessica Utts) there is already solid statistical evidence for psychic functioning. Others disagree with her methods and thus claim there is no evidence. (I stole the baseball analogy from her An assessment of the evidence for psychic functioning )
The overall point I was getting at is that there are very few human activities that have been replicated in the lab. I would actually be surprised if most major league hitters could replicate their batting averages under laboratory conditions, but nobody is claiming they can't hit. Yes, I know that claims of telepathy require greater proof than claims of hitting a ball, but how is such proof to be gathered?
;->
Why is anyone who defends telepathy "desparately trying" while those who reject it aren't? Aren't you desparately trying to maintain your belief in a world that is ordered according to rules you understand?
Consider, perhaps all psychic phenomena are like other human activities. Like baseball. Now we know of baseball players who have hit home runs, but have any of them ever done so under laboratory conditions? Since I have never read or heard of such an experiment I will refuse to believe in the existence of these so-called "home runs" until a scientifically rigorous experiment proves that they can be performed on demand. Then, obviously, the experiment has to replicated with randomized subjects.
I'm not really desparately trying anything here. I think the jury is still out on the whole psychic thing. I'm not banking on it. But I don't think I can rule it out either.
How do you know time is unidirectional? We perceive it that way, but then our senses are no testament of truth. If you have some form of physics that actually describes time I would love to see it. My understanding is that time is a conundrum of physics.
Well, yes. Exactly. Gravity is still a theory and is subject to alteration. Actually it already has been modified once (Einstein modified Newtonian gravity to explain the orbit of Mercury). However, when dealing with a debate on global warming it gets very awkward in that predictions made won't come to pass for decades if not centuries later. So it is difficult to motivate policy makers to make changes now if they are waiting to see if your predictions come to pass. By then it will be too late. Also, climate and weather are very non-linear systems so the predictions that can be made are quite vague, such as a 2 degree global temperature increase over the next 100 years. It will take some time to falsify or verify such a prediction. In this case scientists really have to go with their best guess.
You're right in that the examples I gave are mostly not proper scientific hypotheses. The one possible exception being the Dark Matter theory, but I would hold that it isn't a proper theory either. If you know of any testable predictions for Cold Dark Matter please let me know about them. But the phrase "proving a negative" is a statement of formal Logic and is not limitted to the confines of science. It is also one of the foundations of Law, at least those systems of law where the rule "innocent until proven guilty" prevails. Most arguments for Intelligent Design rely on getting the opposition to have to prove a negative (the non-existence of a designer) which they can't. So the I.D. people call that a victory. You can go far with poor logic.
Anyways, I'm just a stickler for logic and wanted to illustrate that falsifying a theory is not the same thing as proving a negative. When Mercury's orbit was shown to be non-Newtonian scientists did not throw out Newton even though, strictly speaking, it had been falsified. They made excuses for it, suggesting that there was a hidden variable somewhere. They just dealt with it as an exception to the rule until Einstein came along and solved the riddle (no hidden variable, Newton was flawed). In the global warming argument (and in the I.D. vs. Evolution arguments) any exception to the rule is used as justification for throwing out the whole theory. This has more to do with politics really, but the arguments hinge on what qualifies as proof.
;->
Cheers,
No, I'm sorry that's hogwash. A model can be falsified if it conflicts with data or predicts things that don't occur, but usually the model is simply replaced by a better one with better supporting evidence. But falsifying a model is not proving a negative.
If I maintain that there is a little man inside my refrigerator who turns off the light when I shut the door it is very hard to disprove the existence of this little man so long as I avail myself of ad hoc theorizing.
... etc. For every doubt an answer.
Dialogue:
X: The little man turns off the light.
Z: Nobody has ever seen this little man.
X: Oh sure. He's invisible.
Z: Wouldn't he die of thirst?
X: No. He's able to draw moisture from the ice cubes in the freezer sublimating.
This is how the scientific theory of the epicycles was able to endure so long prior to Kepler's reorganization of the solar system model. You cannot conclusively prove they don't exist. Kepler was able to deliver a much simpler model that did not need the epicycles, which was really what people wanted in the first place, but he made no proof of their absence. The Dark Matter theory is like that today. Someday it will be replaced by a better theory but until then scientists will stake their reputations on it. Really, how do you disprove something observationally that is by definition invisible?
A scientist cannot reasonably take a position of "I'm going to state this without proof until proven wrong." The burden of proof is on the one stating the existence of something. Another example would be somebody stating that weapons of mass destruction are in Iraq and providing a list of excuses as to why they haven't been found. Seriously, try to prove they don't exist to a person who has an excuse for every answer. Better by far to state that until you have evidence for their existence you have nothing.
Science does make use of the logical "process of elimination", but that isn't really the same thing. That's just narrowing possibilities where constained by known facts. For example we know the planet wasn't created 5000 years ago because we have evidence to the contrary. But that doesn't actually prove it. It's just the best theory supported by the most data. Supernatural intervention can alter any given piece of data. How do you prove that God didn't alter the speed of light and change nuclear decay rates so as to falsify the evidence? You can't. But until someone can prove God did do it I'll continue to call it bullshit.
Understand, I'm not coming out against your global warming position, I don't actually know what that is (I didn't follow the thread). Your "prove a negative" comment had been modded up and it jumped out at me requiring a response. This aspect of science has been hammered into me.
;->
Regards,
I mean it's just a flash of light right? Maybe it's an object being launched. From the magnitude of the light they can estimate the power of the "impact". Could we use the same info to calculate the payload of a rocket being launched?
Don't you all realize that this means the Martians have colonized our moon?!? The invasion has begun!
;->
Those aren't the ONLY solutions. I'll tell you what to do with it, and this isn't my idea, it's been floated around before. You take one standard issue ocean oil drilling platform and you postition it at an Atlantic subduction zone. Using its ability to drill down up to 30 miles deep you create a 30 mile deep hole. Then ships bring the nuclear waste material to the platform where it is then packed into the hole. It may be a good idea to leave the top 5 miles or so empty or just stuffed with sand just to prevent morons from tampering with it. When the hole is full move 200 yards to the left and repeat the process. Over the next thousand years geological forces will pull the nuclear material down below the crust of planet Earth.
At this point the problem is effectively gone. There is an outside chance that the material may come back up in a volcano in a billion years or so, but that is well past the half-life of our material and really a volcano is a much bigger issue. Actually, the mantle is higher in radioactive content then the crust anyways. I think this would provide permanent disposal.
Just so that searches pick up on this, that's "Cringely" not "Cingely". And yes, I think he totally called it on this one. The companies are getting money out of the blue because they have to spend it or return it.
Unless of course the password / passphrase that you enter in is still held in the pagefile in some obtainable manner. Anyone want to take a guess as to whether Windows Vista keeps your passphrase in the pagefile? Anyone want to further bet that the Fed already knows this?
D.--
The history of science resembles a collection of ghosts remembering that once they too were gods.
-- David Berlinsky, theoretical mathematician
Found another article - sorta.
On the Cause of Geodetic Satellite Accelerations and Other Correlated Unmodeled PhenomenaIt appears to be more of a presentation at a Meeting
I was only able to find two papers from him.
1. Multidimensional Time Simplifies General Relativityand
2. On the Cause of Geodetic Satellite Accelerations and Other Correlated Unmodeled Phenomena
I understand your point about credibility but I've been going over the lectures he put up and I'm not seeing the flaws. Now perhaps that's due to my lack of ability but it might also be that the argument itself is fairly solid. That argument is now no longer available to be seen. (but I have a copy if you like.)
MIT has no record of him, but as of now Stanford doesn't either. The ADS Abstract service that contains the articles listed above gives him an email address at alum.mit.edu.
So what gives? Maybe, and this gets ugly, his thesis was about the very same topic that we see before us today. I wonder how a thesis advisor would react to a candidate whose submission claimed to disprove the Big Bang. I could easily see a scenario where politics came to play and the approval of his thesis got held up. Would you attach your name to it? Would you risk your career on approving this work from a student of yours?
Personally I don't really care where he went to school. I care whether or not his theory is correct. If a patent clerk published something ground breaking then I say give him a scholarship. Maybe he's faking the credentials so he can be heard. He may be a complete con-artist. I really wouldn't care, although I would certainly understand why they would take the website down at that point.
Let those who have the credentials show how the theory falls apart under analysis. If it doesn't, if it holds up under scrutiny, are we then going to discount the theory because he doesn't have enough letters after his name?
For the record, we do not know that he isn't a PhD. We just know that several very respectable institutions apparently want nothing to do with him. The reason for that is unclear.
Alexander Mayer's website at Stanford has been administratively locked. Also, his email address has been suspended.
I've read through both lectures now and I think Mayer may actually have a strong case. With the empirical tests he offers I think he has to be taken seriously.
Or, in the case of Stanford, muzzled.
Ah, OK. That clears a lot up for me. I still don't think I agree with your conclusion though. The clocks at A and B perceive each other as slow while under acceleration due to the transverse redshift. The time dilation is the result of the light being "streched" across increasing distance. Without acceleration, back in an inertial frame, this perceived delay would go away. Nobody is looking at the clocks in terms of previous recorded times. The question is only whether or not they have identical rates. Under inertial motion they do, under acceleration they each perceive a decrease in the rate of the other.
In fact when deaccelerating, as the distance covered along the ship's axis is constantly decreasing over time, there would be a blue shift and the clocks would see each other as too fast. Again, only during the reverse acceleration.
Since Einstein's Equivalence Principal (EEP) equates the effects of a gravitational field with the experience of acceleration we would expect to see some sign of this behavior if we have sensitive enough instruments. Mayer points out that we actually do have such instruments. Slide #50 of Lecture-1 shows the situation with two atomic clocks, one in Paris (the BIPM) and the other in Washington, DC (the USNO). To quote, "Therefore, after correcting for known effects, a clock ensemble at the BIPM in Paris is found to record time somewhat slower in direct comparison to a clock ensemble at the USNO in Washington, DC. However, the opposite is also true; the USNO clock ensemble is found to record time somewhat slower in direct comparison to a clock ensemble in Paris. This seemingly paradoxical empirical fact is a reflection of the geometric properties of time." (italics mine)
So, it is paradoxical, but it is also empirically observable. Actually the only reason to take this at all seriously is the large number of empirical tests and supporting data he offers.
He may be wrong, but he has put up a plausible theory that must be dealt with.
Sinusoidal orbit drift? Of every GPS satellite? Of the Pioneer probe?
OK, so what was the flaw? You never mention that. I'm looking at the thought experiment as detailed on page 6 of the first lecture set. Where is the flaw?
Actually I don't think that's correct. Firstly I'm unclear as to where "O" comes from and where that is located. You say it is "at rest" and "between A and B" but I'm having a hard time reconciling that. If "O" is at rest then are you saying it is a clock not aboard the spaceship or are you using the words "at rest" to imply inertial motion. I don't think the phrase "at rest" really has any meaning in a relativistic thought experiment.
Then the whole "moving the observers and clocks from A and B to O, doing so completely symetrically". The verbage is unclear. Actually I don't think you're doing the same experiment.
What I read was that "A" would see "B" as lagging under acceleration and that "B" would see "A" as lagging while under acceleration. There was nothing about the clocks continuing to see each other as slow once acceleration was turned off and inertial motion was reestablished. That doesn't follow. The point was that "A" and "B" are not moving in respects to each other. They are at fixed positions relative to each other, "A" is not accelerating away from "B" nor vise versa. The acceleration is transverse to both of them.
The question is whether or not the clocks would actually measure the difference. If so then the argument for a transverse redshift has legs. He states (in slide 7) that "Numerous empirical observations imply that this effect does, of course, occur". So if he has empirical proof (although he doesn't state the nature of said proof) then it would seem difficult to declare that proof to be paradoxical and impossible. I mean if he has empirical evidence for this "thought experiment" then he's solid.
The question I'm left with is "what are those 'numerous empirical observations'?". In slide 8 he says that the transverse effect is too small to be measured in the laboratory. So if he can give the detail to the fourth bullet point on slide 7, then he's got something real here.
Actually I'd be relieved. Cosmology really hasn't made any sense in years.