Me and a bunch of geeky friends do powerlifting competatively. Hell, I just benched 365. Other geeks I know do martial arts or bike regularly. I don't really see any difference between geeks and people doing other kinds of jobs. Now if you isolate your study to just workaholic geeks, yeah it is probably true. But that is true of any workaholic, their lives are unbalnced and they often don't have time to do physical and recreational activities. Just another dumbass sterotype.
A priniciple part of any good scientific study is the use of controlled experiments. How do you setup a control group here? You can't expect people not to pray for someone, and you certainly can't be sure they are not. Even if you contact everyone that knows this person (or at least knows their sick), find out they are atheists or get them to sign a contract not to pray, that doesn't exclude the effects of indirect and general prayers for the well-being of others. People pray for groups or people they don't know all the time. There is simply know way to create a real control group for this study.
Now personally, I am an atheist (simply meaning not a theist) and am highly skeptical of anything effect of prayer beyond a social/psychological effect, but it just doesn't seem to be something you can falsify with science; just as you cannot falsify the existance of a god. Even if you get past all of these problems, the believer can just say, "It wasn't the will of god, and that 'he' knew what was best". They certainly can't prove that since no one can know the will of "god", but you can't really disprove such an ad hoc hypothesis either.
Prayer simply becomes a matter of faith. To skeptics, this study shouldn't really matter because it is absurd and a type of question that rationalit cannot really answer. To true believers, it shouldn't really matter because prayer is a matter of faith, and it doesn't matter what anyone else says.
Our ear-marked money for a security research center was cut in half this year. From what I understand a lot of projects were cut across the board, though not eliminated. And ours is a little more relevant to security than spray paint simulations (www.ncassr.org).
however, it's much better than stop-motion animation
What are you talking about. Gumby kicks ass! In fact, I didn't realize it was fake until last year. Alas, I will never get Gumby's autograph.
Several apps have little problems if you move them into a subfolder of the App directory. (Dictionary, iCal, MS AutoUpdate, JumpDrive Secure, Zinio Reader). Plus any app that loads on startup is messed up when you move it because tha path isn't automatically fixed. I have iTunes under the "Multimedia" subfolder. With every update, I must move the new version to that folder and manually add the login item so it points right location. I even found strange problems when moving Adobe Acrobat out of that folder.
I doubt that mach 7.6 jets will make it to commercial airlines. We have been able to go at super sonic speeds Mach 3+ for decades. The only supersonic jet to go commercial was a failure largley because of the issues of noise pollution at traveling super sonic speeds. Very few airports could handle the Concorde, and fewer populations wanted them to land in their backyard. They were a nuissance.
But maybe if they are fast enough, they can make up enough time by flying supersonic only over open waters. Then they could drop to subsonic over land (relegating them mostly to coastal airports most likely). Even more of a problem than supersonic flight over land will likely be economics. They will have to get prices lower than the $10,000 per seat for the Concorde.
You make it sound like it is easy to get things fixed this way. But I went back and worth between the credit bureau and HSBC several times over 9 months with each of them telling me to talk to the other. I had to finally get a lawyer involved (credit bureau will only verify 3 times). In the end HSBC made the mistake, but the mistake was not visible to customer service phone operators. It was more than a little annoying trying to get this mistake fixed.
Didn't realize you could trademark compound nouns that make it into common language. I am going to started on my list of trademarked words right now! Word of warning, anyone who uses dillhole on slashdot, expect a letter from my lawyer.
I still have my first DVD player. It was from SOny's first line of players. THere was one for $700 that had a Dolby digital decoder built-in, and a $500 one that just had the digital out with out a built-in decoder to separate the channels.
Anyway, this DVD player plays perfectly still, almost 10 years later. In fact, it will play more scratched disks than any other player I have had. My only complaint is it is a little bulky. I have seen many later models come and go (out to the trash can) since I bought this one. But maybe I shouldn't be that surprised. Paying $500 for a DVD player, I should hope they didn't go cheap on the electrical components.
The Big Bang theory isn't what is under question. It is a pretty solid theory, and very well accepted in the scientific community. It isn't exactly fringe science anymore. (Funny, though to think at one time the Catholic church was rooting for it because the alternative theory was of an eternal universe. They liked the universe having a beginning even if it was 15 billion years ago).
The part that they are reaffirming is the theory of an infaltionary period post Big Bang that says most of the growth in space-time occured early in the history of the universe.
For lay people interested in a good read about the history of the Big Bang Theory, I suggest a read of Simon Singh's book "Big Bang". It is almost as good as the "Code Book".
Not quite right, but close. Light always appears to the observer to be moving at the same constant speed (assume it is moving through a vacuum of course). Even if it is emitted from an object moving at.6c. Of course, the light will have a huge red shift becuase of this.
It is this realization taht leads to all of the "strange" implications of the length and time dialation/contractions in special relativity.
And we know this anonymous coward is a "scientist" and consults for "Pfizer" because... Sounds an awful lot like a naturopath rhetoric coming from someone pretending to be in a position of authority.
Ah, if only every argument was a purely deductive proof that we could analyze as such. Then a person's bias would have little effect on the efficay of their arguments. However, there are 2 major problems.
First, most arguments only contain bits of induction in a much larger argument that has deductive and inductive parts (usually some crap too). Instead of "proving" anything, they person making the argument will supply a bunch of evidence. Bias often causes people to highlight the "evidence" in their favor, and brush aside evidence not in their favor. So when you hear an argument from a person with a strong agenda, you really should stop to think about what counter evidence has been overlooked or brushed aside.
The second problem affects even the purely deductive kind of argument that might bring Aristotle himself to orgasm. This is that we must still evaluate the premises of any argument, and decide if they are reasonable. Not knowing everything in the universe, people really on expert opinion in many cases to determine whether these premises are sound. So credability becomes very important. Thus, in addition to what is being said, who is saying it does matter. The court system certainly recognizes this with the use of "expert witnesses".
You can never logically just brush something off as false because it was said by a certain person, just as being hypocritical doesn't make you wrong. But unless the argument made is a 100% deductive proof with very simple assumptions, then the "who" as well as the "what" is important in evaluating the argument.
Federated identity systems have not been well accepted, and I don't expect to see any for quite a while. We have the MS Passport, which still placed too much trust in MS. We have the Liberty Alliance working group which has ahd lofty goals and major industry support, but it still hasn't produced much of value in years of work. I think individual identies and credential repositories and credential wallets are our best bet for a while.
Slashdot Mirror
You have to love anonym.OS http://kaos.to/cms/content/view/14/32/ in times like this.
Me and a bunch of geeky friends do powerlifting competatively. Hell, I just benched 365. Other geeks I know do martial arts or bike regularly. I don't really see any difference between geeks and people doing other kinds of jobs. Now if you isolate your study to just workaholic geeks, yeah it is probably true. But that is true of any workaholic, their lives are unbalnced and they often don't have time to do physical and recreational activities. Just another dumbass sterotype.
A priniciple part of any good scientific study is the use of controlled experiments. How do you setup a control group here? You can't expect people not to pray for someone, and you certainly can't be sure they are not. Even if you contact everyone that knows this person (or at least knows their sick), find out they are atheists or get them to sign a contract not to pray, that doesn't exclude the effects of indirect and general prayers for the well-being of others. People pray for groups or people they don't know all the time. There is simply know way to create a real control group for this study.
Now personally, I am an atheist (simply meaning not a theist) and am highly skeptical of anything effect of prayer beyond a social/psychological effect, but it just doesn't seem to be something you can falsify with science; just as you cannot falsify the existance of a god. Even if you get past all of these problems, the believer can just say, "It wasn't the will of god, and that 'he' knew what was best". They certainly can't prove that since no one can know the will of "god", but you can't really disprove such an ad hoc hypothesis either.
Prayer simply becomes a matter of faith. To skeptics, this study shouldn't really matter because it is absurd and a type of question that rationalit cannot really answer. To true believers, it shouldn't really matter because prayer is a matter of faith, and it doesn't matter what anyone else says.
Our ear-marked money for a security research center was cut in half this year. From what I understand a lot of projects were cut across the board, though not eliminated. And ours is a little more relevant to security than spray paint simulations (www.ncassr.org).
however, it's much better than stop-motion animation What are you talking about. Gumby kicks ass! In fact, I didn't realize it was fake until last year. Alas, I will never get Gumby's autograph.
THe summary says free accounts, but I have to buy more if 10 isn't enough. Multi-tiered beta testing sucks. :-(
Several apps have little problems if you move them into a subfolder of the App directory. (Dictionary, iCal, MS AutoUpdate, JumpDrive Secure, Zinio Reader). Plus any app that loads on startup is messed up when you move it because tha path isn't automatically fixed. I have iTunes under the "Multimedia" subfolder. With every update, I must move the new version to that folder and manually add the login item so it points right location. I even found strange problems when moving Adobe Acrobat out of that folder.
I doubt that mach 7.6 jets will make it to commercial airlines. We have been able to go at super sonic speeds Mach 3+ for decades. The only supersonic jet to go commercial was a failure largley because of the issues of noise pollution at traveling super sonic speeds. Very few airports could handle the Concorde, and fewer populations wanted them to land in their backyard. They were a nuissance.
But maybe if they are fast enough, they can make up enough time by flying supersonic only over open waters. Then they could drop to subsonic over land (relegating them mostly to coastal airports most likely). Even more of a problem than supersonic flight over land will likely be economics. They will have to get prices lower than the $10,000 per seat for the Concorde.
If only something like this were free.
Oh, wait Xgrid.
You make it sound like it is easy to get things fixed this way. But I went back and worth between the credit bureau and HSBC several times over 9 months with each of them telling me to talk to the other. I had to finally get a lawyer involved (credit bureau will only verify 3 times). In the end HSBC made the mistake, but the mistake was not visible to customer service phone operators. It was more than a little annoying trying to get this mistake fixed.
Didn't realize you could trademark compound nouns that make it into common language. I am going to started on my list of trademarked words right now! Word of warning, anyone who uses dillhole on slashdot, expect a letter from my lawyer.
I still have my first DVD player. It was from SOny's first line of players. THere was one for $700 that had a Dolby digital decoder built-in, and a $500 one that just had the digital out with out a built-in decoder to separate the channels.
Anyway, this DVD player plays perfectly still, almost 10 years later. In fact, it will play more scratched disks than any other player I have had. My only complaint is it is a little bulky. I have seen many later models come and go (out to the trash can) since I bought this one. But maybe I shouldn't be that surprised. Paying $500 for a DVD player, I should hope they didn't go cheap on the electrical components.
The Big Bang theory isn't what is under question. It is a pretty solid theory, and very well accepted in the scientific community. It isn't exactly fringe science anymore. (Funny, though to think at one time the Catholic church was rooting for it because the alternative theory was of an eternal universe. They liked the universe having a beginning even if it was 15 billion years ago).
The part that they are reaffirming is the theory of an infaltionary period post Big Bang that says most of the growth in space-time occured early in the history of the universe.
For lay people interested in a good read about the history of the Big Bang Theory, I suggest a read of Simon Singh's book "Big Bang". It is almost as good as the "Code Book".
Not quite right, but close. Light always appears to the observer to be moving at the same constant speed (assume it is moving through a vacuum of course). Even if it is emitted from an object moving at .6c. Of course, the light will have a huge red shift becuase of this.
It is this realization taht leads to all of the "strange" implications of the length and time dialation/contractions in special relativity.
This reminds me a lot of the dead parrot an the petshop skit.
And we know this anonymous coward is a "scientist" and consults for "Pfizer" because...
Sounds an awful lot like a naturopath rhetoric coming from someone pretending to be in a position of authority.
I am watching B5 with Firefox now. Just install a plugin and an Active X control (gives me shivers) from AOL.
I went to Nazca, Peru last year, and some of those runways for alien spacecraft are way longer! Don't any of you watch the X-files!
I meant to say "bits of deduction in a larger argument that includes deductive and inductive parts". Oops.
Ah, if only every argument was a purely deductive proof that we could analyze as such. Then a person's bias would have little effect on the efficay of their arguments. However, there are 2 major problems. First, most arguments only contain bits of induction in a much larger argument that has deductive and inductive parts (usually some crap too). Instead of "proving" anything, they person making the argument will supply a bunch of evidence. Bias often causes people to highlight the "evidence" in their favor, and brush aside evidence not in their favor. So when you hear an argument from a person with a strong agenda, you really should stop to think about what counter evidence has been overlooked or brushed aside. The second problem affects even the purely deductive kind of argument that might bring Aristotle himself to orgasm. This is that we must still evaluate the premises of any argument, and decide if they are reasonable. Not knowing everything in the universe, people really on expert opinion in many cases to determine whether these premises are sound. So credability becomes very important. Thus, in addition to what is being said, who is saying it does matter. The court system certainly recognizes this with the use of "expert witnesses". You can never logically just brush something off as false because it was said by a certain person, just as being hypocritical doesn't make you wrong. But unless the argument made is a 100% deductive proof with very simple assumptions, then the "who" as well as the "what" is important in evaluating the argument.
Federated identity systems have not been well accepted, and I don't expect to see any for quite a while. We have the MS Passport, which still placed too much trust in MS. We have the Liberty Alliance working group which has ahd lofty goals and major industry support, but it still hasn't produced much of value in years of work. I think individual identies and credential repositories and credential wallets are our best bet for a while.