There were forest fires before humans existed. Does that mean all forest fires are natural?
The way you answer the question is to look for forest fires that were caused by people. One way would be to use induction to imagine a scenario where huamns start fires, which would leave distinctive evidence that wouldn't happen in natural fires, then look for that, and follow-up. (e.g. fire starts near a campground, evidence of runaway campfire, progression of fire is away from campground, guy who camped there admits "okay, okay, yes, we fell asleep and when we woke up the trees were on fire, and we got scared and ran").
Okay, so, one forest fire, is that a big deal?
The way you answer that question is to become more familiar with forests and forest fires. Maybe a lot of them start near campgrounds? If you investigate and study and learn, maybe you get a sense of how many are caused by people, what the historical record shows about fire rates and scales in the past, etc. Computers might not tell you exactly which trees are going to burn in a new fire you've just discovered, but maybe you can refine the model enough that it can provide a good sense of where it's going to go, how quickly it might expand, where are sparks going to cause new fires, which of these 10 spots should we drop crews, etc.
The Great Filter hides a lot in "step 8". It sounds like the only remaining challenge is the physical difficultly of traveling interstellar distances. But consider the variable 'L', in the Drake equation. Maybe civilizations akin to ours evolve relatively frequently, but almost immediately go silent because they've gone the way of yeast. In fact, evolution is predicated on competition, which implies (as Darwin pointed out, after reading Malthus) that there must be an excess of generation, so to speak, which in turn implies that a "successful" species is an overpopulated one. The fact that we think interstellar colonization is the obvious next step isn't encouraging, in that regard.
What would it feel like, if the first words we hear from an extraterrestrial civilization are "Help! We live in an overpopulated world with a collapsing ecosystem! What can we do?"
The 3% figure is a canard. (Doesn't help to have a brain if you don't use your reference materials.) This figure pertains to an *annual* contribution, which is cumulative. We add 2ppm of unreabsorbed CO2 every year.
That's why, by now, the correct figure for human contribution to CO2 in the atmosphere is about 43%.
You're missing the optimization! "How about we cut $50 off your bill if you let us watch your biometrics while you surf the web or TV, including some ads?" "Did you hear about the guy whose life was saved because his diabetes app called 911?" "How about $100 off your insurance if you run an app to let your doctor collect heart data periodically?"
Someone is destroying your entire ecosystem, and telling you "we can't stop doing that, because we would lose money." And someone else says, "well, maybe if we cause a corresponding rapid radical transformation in ocean ecology it will offset the other catastrophe". And your answer is "hmm, yeah, that might work."
Free will and self-awareness are unrelated concepts. The soul is a myth.
You are confusing "soul" with popular myths about freedom of will. The soul, as a concept, doesn't depend on freedom from determinism. As with self-awareness, the two are unrelated concepts. There is no reason to presume that a deterministic universe can't include consciousness. (In fact, there's a pretty good reason to suppose that it can.)
I can avoid cars and car insurance entirely if I so choose.
This would be relevant if you could also choose to avoid needing healthcare.
The individual mandate is the second best approach to the problem, but it's the best one that gives money to insurance companies. That was the only way the GOP would get behind it. It's why they originally conceived of the idea. The better approach, single payer, would've been too good. "If you're going to try to fix healthcare, we insist on a method that will syphon money to some greedy industry that pays for our campaigns." Okay, okay... how about that individual mandate thing you designed?
I see what you mean. For example, when the Texas GOP platform supports "protection from extreme environmentalists" they just mean the liberal so-called "consensus" wackos that want to "purposefully" disrupt the oil and gas industry with their crazy global warming claptrap, when you and I can easily tune into Fox news and discover that there is no warming, and, besides, people couldn't have caused it.
When they oppose federal ID, but demand the ability to disenfranchise convicted felons, supported by requiring voter identification, they just mean the commonsense local measures that prevent undesirables from soiling our elections, things like having uniformed officers loitering at polling places to make sure you don't try to vote without whatever ID they have lawfully decided you should have. Undesirables could easily get a fake national ID, obviously.
Even more obviously, you can't require religious organizations to violate their own principles just because they are providing a public service to the general public. That's why the GOP demands the right to have public displays of the decalogue in public places, and "in god we trust" protected, so that everyone can know what religious people believe. They add a few details about what God believes, in case you didn't already know that. It's just common sense, really. But for you critical thinkers out there, it's easy to follow-up by checking your bible. That's why the GOP supports praying in school. How else would you learn about stuff like that?
Naturally you don't want judicial activists destroying the concept marriage for healthy people everywhere.
When it comes to the education of children, though, we need to understand what really works. For example, "corporal punishment is effective". Just ask a scientist (not a liberal whackjob scientist, though). This might be part of what was confusing people: "We believe theories such as life origins and environmental change should be taught as challengeable scientific theories subject to change as new data is produced." For example, if some leftist scientist has a "theory" that the earth is older than 8000 years, you shouldn't be spanked for asking him why the bible doesn't say that. If he's so smart, why can't he handle that new data? Huh? I heard it was actually getting colder. Volcanos spit out more soot than any coal plant. Water vapor is actually more of a greenhouse gas than CO2, and, anyhow, 95% of the CO2 is natural. If he's doesn't just have an agenda to destroy the oil and gas industry, and put people out of work, the scientist ought to care about these important facts, and go back and rework his theories. (And are you telling me that if you shake a box full of parts you can suddenly construct a functioning wristwatch? It's obviously absurd. So much for "theories".)
Speaking of theories, it's obvious that when the economy tanks, you have to tighten the belt. You can tell whether someone is capable of critical thinking by whether they can see this. Like liberals aren't. Some of them think you inject money into the economy, but that's just driving up debt. Ask any billionaire. They didn't get where they are by going into debt. Or by condoning a bunch of frivolous class action lawsuits. Those just hurt the economy, as the GOP points out.
Sorry, I got a little long-winded. Just wanted to help you folks understand how reasonable the GOP position really is. Not like you'd think if you just read the headlines in alarmist liberal rags.
Idiot Malthusians have predicted the imminent end of the world due to overpopulation for hundreds of years.
What's the name for the kind of idiot who thinks exponential growth can continue indefinitely in a closed system?
The essence of the Malthusian premise, you idiot, is that population tends to expand until limits are imposed on it. For instance, yeast in grape juice multiply until they choke in their own excrement. They destroy their environment, and themselves with it. What makes humans different from yeast in this regard? Well, some seem to think that our big brains allow us to choose to limit our numbers (because, of course, finding technological ways to discover/produce more resources doesn't solve the problem, it merely pushes the date out a little). So far, that thought has no actual, you know, data, to support it. Human population has doubled twice in my lifetime, and is not slowing down.
The result of the Malthusian premise is that there is a Struggle for Existence. That's why reading Malthus gave Darwin the idea that evolution could be a perpetual principle, based on a continuous struggle for existence.
Computer models were based on the data. Apparently, they were based on insufficient data.
Actually, no. The computer models are based on physics, and largely corroborate the data. There have been open questions in the physics, such as the effect of aerosols and particulates, as well as the amount and location of these things, and where they are being produced. One takes computer models with a grain of salt. But they, like the satellite data, the ground based temperature data, the ocean chemistry sampling data, the meteorological data, etc, make it pretty plain what is happening.
I have absolutely no sympathy for someone who works in a field as fast-changing as a computer-related field and refuses to learn new skills (including, *GASP*, on your OWN time).
That's not what the story is about. Let's suppose the coders in question *did* pursue knowledge of their craft, on their own time. They were good at it. Customer wanted something else. "We want mobile apps running everywhere!" Yes, sir! Throw some money, and get some of that mobile app goodness. One year later: "Oh crap! Our customers' phones are getting pwned! Why didn't you tell us! We want security everywhere!" Yes, sir! Get some of that security goodness. Six months later: "This is getting too expensive! We need a new business model!" Yes, sir! Get some business goodness...
Said another way: you want a surgeon fresh graduated at the top of his class, who has performed 10,000 surgeries, is willing to charge you nothing, has a great bedside manner, and wants to introduce you to his daughter.
The best coders aren't the best because of the techniques they learned in school (though they did learn techniques in school), but rather because they have intuition about how to invest their energy on a problem, they are curious and self-educating, they have innate language and problem-solving skills, and people like to work with them. It's worth some trouble to keep them in the stable. On the other hand, you have to keep bringing in new blood. But, if the attitude of the new blood looks like arrogant pomposity... send those ones to your competitors.
Or maybe here's another way of saying it: I feel sorry for skillful developers who are only valued to the extent that they manage to stay abreast of the hottest buzzword-laden technologies. Sure, there are interesting technical challenges even in that, but let's hope that the industry is driven fundamentally by a thirst for innovation and clever efficient tricks that aren't taught in school *yet*, because they haven't yet been invented.
Herbert Hoover is largely considered an embarrassment these days, because his response to a depression was to try to reduce spending. These days, economists (you know, the people who study economic functioning in order to try and learn) -- economists understand that when some whack-ass Republican president crashes your economy, you've got to spend money to get yourself out of it.
In a way, though, such a crisis and the deficit-spending that it demands provides an opportunity, because as long as there's still a drop of money to be squeezed out of failing or counter-productive technologies, Corporations and their Republican Toadies will not want to rock the boat. But once the boat is already rocked, there's more willingness to invest in industries that have a chance of producing things of value in the deeper biological sense (which I would argue underlies any economy), strengthening the economy in the longer-term. We're talking new technologies like solar power, smart grids, etc, as well as basic R&D, not to mention developing a functional health care system, and getting a muzzle onto rabid investment houses and insurance companies. Luckily for the CaRTs, sucking money out of the economy can protect you from renovators.
That's the point of establishing a evidentiary foundation. You testify under oath as to: 1) Here's the process by how I acquired it; and 2) the printout is a fair and accurate representation of the data contained in my GPS log.
Maybe you could just guess what the GPS log would have contained...
The negative result could just as well imply that very few civilizations survive long enough to develop space travel. Whether that is because space travel is hard, or because survival is hard, is left as an exercise for the reader. Two useful data-points: (1) Human population has roughly doubled in the past half-century. (2) The excrement level has risen high enough to change the climate. Maybe it's like that on all planets where life evolves. Otherwise, wouldn't there be...
Meanwhile, it also seems likely that life elsewhere evolves in competition. One indicator of intelligence in such a universe might be *not* sending beacons out to places where you don't know what might be listening. Listen first, then talk. Maybe others see it that way, too.
Who said anything about business? There are other measures of success. One worthy goal to have for a new idea is to put it out a seminal paper that stimulates further research. Marketing and advertising would be totally irrelevant. Another idea is to develop a proof-of-concept, or to model a process in simulation. Again, no need for business types, who tend to f*ck things up by being plugged into existing markets, and short-term goals. Get an NDA. Find some friends you can trust who are subject matter experts. Comb through posted grants and CFPs.
The current competition is the Kindle, which is currently selling for $360. An open source tablet with a 12-inch screen that can display PDFs already sounds better, to me, even if it costs more than the kindle. The only problem (and it's a big one) is the convenient Amazon access to books and papers. Haven't bought a Kindle, yet, because it's just too small, and has (what seems to me to be) a crappy interface. One of these babies, though, yeah, I could do that. Just get me some wireless access to books and papers.
> We are seeing more and more about high dynamic range (HDR) images, > where the photographer brackets the exposures and then combines > the images to increase the dynamic range of the photo.
So instead of an image that goes from black to white, you have an image that goes from dark grey to light grey. Now you can see all the stuff that would've been hard to make out in a single photo. I think what has happened is that you've *decreased* the dynamic range in the photo (or, more properly speaking, you've used the fixed range better).
If a new camera provides pixels in the range [0,10] instead of the range [0,1] you can still have the same problem. It's where you map the values that come through the lens that makes the photo ledgible or not.
> How did you come up with the notion that the games are gonna be three times better?
I didn't. What I said was "if". If the games are three times as good, and the price is double, it's a bargain for those that can afford it. I suspect there will be some impressive games. The power is there, anyhow. The price of the console isn't excessive until you can compare what it does. See?
> Because something is more expensive does not make it better.
Slashdot Mirror
You can't fill the atmosphere with CO2 and have it not act as a greenhouse.
There were forest fires before humans existed. Does that mean all forest fires are natural?
The way you answer the question is to look for forest fires that were caused by people. One way would be to use induction to imagine a scenario where huamns start fires, which would leave distinctive evidence that wouldn't happen in natural fires, then look for that, and follow-up. (e.g. fire starts near a campground, evidence of runaway campfire, progression of fire is away from campground, guy who camped there admits "okay, okay, yes, we fell asleep and when we woke up the trees were on fire, and we got scared and ran").
Okay, so, one forest fire, is that a big deal?
The way you answer that question is to become more familiar with forests and forest fires. Maybe a lot of them start near campgrounds? If you investigate and study and learn, maybe you get a sense of how many are caused by people, what the historical record shows about fire rates and scales in the past, etc. Computers might not tell you exactly which trees are going to burn in a new fire you've just discovered, but maybe you can refine the model enough that it can provide a good sense of where it's going to go, how quickly it might expand, where are sparks going to cause new fires, which of these 10 spots should we drop crews, etc.
The Great Filter hides a lot in "step 8". It sounds like the only remaining challenge is the physical difficultly of traveling interstellar distances. But consider the variable 'L', in the Drake equation. Maybe civilizations akin to ours evolve relatively frequently, but almost immediately go silent because they've gone the way of yeast. In fact, evolution is predicated on competition, which implies (as Darwin pointed out, after reading Malthus) that there must be an excess of generation, so to speak, which in turn implies that a "successful" species is an overpopulated one. The fact that we think interstellar colonization is the obvious next step isn't encouraging, in that regard.
What would it feel like, if the first words we hear from an extraterrestrial civilization are "Help! We live in an overpopulated world with a collapsing ecosystem! What can we do?"
The 3% figure is a canard. (Doesn't help to have a brain if you don't use your reference materials.) This figure pertains to an *annual* contribution, which is cumulative. We add 2ppm of unreabsorbed CO2 every year.
That's why, by now, the correct figure for human contribution to CO2 in the atmosphere is about 43%.
Ask not who the bullshit is called upon.
You're missing the optimization! "How about we cut $50 off your bill if you let us watch your biometrics while you surf the web or TV, including some ads?" "Did you hear about the guy whose life was saved because his diabetes app called 911?" "How about $100 off your insurance if you run an app to let your doctor collect heart data periodically?"
Active Directory [...] is nothing but a prepackaged LDAP database that is pretty much guaranteed to work.
works on any number of computers, up to one.
Yep, when you adjust your theories to match the data after the fact, you can hit the target every time.
I would never adjust *my* theories to fit the data.
Seriously?
Someone is destroying your entire ecosystem, and telling you "we can't stop doing that, because we would lose money." And someone else says, "well, maybe if we cause a corresponding rapid radical transformation in ocean ecology it will offset the other catastrophe". And your answer is "hmm, yeah, that might work."
Free will and self-awareness are unrelated concepts.
The soul is a myth.
You are confusing "soul" with popular myths about freedom of will. The soul, as a concept, doesn't depend on freedom from determinism. As with self-awareness, the two are unrelated concepts. There is no reason to presume that a deterministic universe can't include consciousness. (In fact, there's a pretty good reason to suppose that it can.)
Basically, the regular atomic structure of graphene means that you can create holes of any size
Any size you want ... as long as it's this one.
I can avoid cars and car insurance entirely if I so choose.
This would be relevant if you could also choose to avoid needing healthcare.
The individual mandate is the second best approach to the problem, but it's the best one that gives money to insurance companies. That was the only way the GOP would get behind it. It's why they originally conceived of the idea. The better approach, single payer, would've been too good. "If you're going to try to fix healthcare, we insist on a method that will syphon money to some greedy industry that pays for our campaigns." Okay, okay ... how about that individual mandate thing you designed?
I see what you mean. For example, when the Texas GOP platform supports "protection from extreme environmentalists" they just mean the liberal so-called "consensus" wackos that want to "purposefully" disrupt the oil and gas industry with their crazy global warming claptrap, when you and I can easily tune into Fox news and discover that there is no warming, and, besides, people couldn't have caused it.
When they oppose federal ID, but demand the ability to disenfranchise convicted felons, supported by requiring voter identification, they just mean the commonsense local measures that prevent undesirables from soiling our elections, things like having uniformed officers loitering at polling places to make sure you don't try to vote without whatever ID they have lawfully decided you should have. Undesirables could easily get a fake national ID, obviously.
Even more obviously, you can't require religious organizations to violate their own principles just because they are providing a public service to the general public. That's why the GOP demands the right to have public displays of the decalogue in public places, and "in god we trust" protected, so that everyone can know what religious people believe. They add a few details about what God believes, in case you didn't already know that. It's just common sense, really. But for you critical thinkers out there, it's easy to follow-up by checking your bible. That's why the GOP supports praying in school. How else would you learn about stuff like that?
Naturally you don't want judicial activists destroying the concept marriage for healthy people everywhere.
When it comes to the education of children, though, we need to understand what really works. For example, "corporal punishment is effective". Just ask a scientist (not a liberal whackjob scientist, though). This might be part of what was confusing people: "We believe theories such as life origins and environmental change should be taught as challengeable scientific theories subject to change as new data is produced." For example, if some leftist scientist has a "theory" that the earth is older than 8000 years, you shouldn't be spanked for asking him why the bible doesn't say that. If he's so smart, why can't he handle that new data? Huh? I heard it was actually getting colder. Volcanos spit out more soot than any coal plant. Water vapor is actually more of a greenhouse gas than CO2, and, anyhow, 95% of the CO2 is natural. If he's doesn't just have an agenda to destroy the oil and gas industry, and put people out of work, the scientist ought to care about these important facts, and go back and rework his theories. (And are you telling me that if you shake a box full of parts you can suddenly construct a functioning wristwatch? It's obviously absurd. So much for "theories".)
Speaking of theories, it's obvious that when the economy tanks, you have to tighten the belt. You can tell whether someone is capable of critical thinking by whether they can see this. Like liberals aren't. Some of them think you inject money into the economy, but that's just driving up debt. Ask any billionaire. They didn't get where they are by going into debt. Or by condoning a bunch of frivolous class action lawsuits. Those just hurt the economy, as the GOP points out.
Sorry, I got a little long-winded. Just wanted to help you folks understand how reasonable the GOP position really is. Not like you'd think if you just read the headlines in alarmist liberal rags.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2F-DItXtZs
You do understand the difference between climate and weather, right? Oh, wait, no, I guess you don't.
Idiot Malthusians have predicted the imminent end of the world due to overpopulation for hundreds of years.
What's the name for the kind of idiot who thinks exponential growth can continue indefinitely in a closed system?
The essence of the Malthusian premise, you idiot, is that population tends to expand until limits are imposed on it. For instance, yeast in grape juice multiply until they choke in their own excrement. They destroy their environment, and themselves with it. What makes humans different from yeast in this regard? Well, some seem to think that our big brains allow us to choose to limit our numbers (because, of course, finding technological ways to discover/produce more resources doesn't solve the problem, it merely pushes the date out a little). So far, that thought has no actual, you know, data, to support it. Human population has doubled twice in my lifetime, and is not slowing down.
The result of the Malthusian premise is that there is a Struggle for Existence. That's why reading Malthus gave Darwin the idea that evolution could be a perpetual principle, based on a continuous struggle for existence.
Computer models were based on the data. Apparently, they were based on insufficient data.
Actually, no. The computer models are based on physics, and largely corroborate the data. There have been open questions in the physics, such as the effect of aerosols and particulates, as well as the amount and location of these things, and where they are being produced. One takes computer models with a grain of salt. But they, like the satellite data, the ground based temperature data, the ocean chemistry sampling data, the meteorological data, etc, make it pretty plain what is happening.
I have absolutely no sympathy for someone who works in a field as fast-changing as a computer-related field and refuses to learn new skills (including, *GASP*, on your OWN time).
That's not what the story is about. Let's suppose the coders in question *did* pursue knowledge of their craft, on their own time. They were good at it. Customer wanted something else. "We want mobile apps running everywhere!" Yes, sir! Throw some money, and get some of that mobile app goodness. One year later: "Oh crap! Our customers' phones are getting pwned! Why didn't you tell us! We want security everywhere!" Yes, sir! Get some of that security goodness. Six months later: "This is getting too expensive! We need a new business model!" Yes, sir! Get some business goodness ...
... send those ones to your competitors.
Said another way: you want a surgeon fresh graduated at the top of his class, who has performed 10,000 surgeries, is willing to charge you nothing, has a great bedside manner, and wants to introduce you to his daughter.
The best coders aren't the best because of the techniques they learned in school (though they did learn techniques in school), but rather because they have intuition about how to invest their energy on a problem, they are curious and self-educating, they have innate language and problem-solving skills, and people like to work with them. It's worth some trouble to keep them in the stable. On the other hand, you have to keep bringing in new blood. But, if the attitude of the new blood looks like arrogant pomposity
Or maybe here's another way of saying it: I feel sorry for skillful developers who are only valued to the extent that they manage to stay abreast of the hottest buzzword-laden technologies. Sure, there are interesting technical challenges even in that, but let's hope that the industry is driven fundamentally by a thirst for innovation and clever efficient tricks that aren't taught in school *yet*, because they haven't yet been invented.
From a distance, it's hard to tell the difference between humans and yeast, except that yeasts shit alcohol. What can YOUR shit do? ... Nothing.
Herbert Hoover is largely considered an embarrassment these days, because his response to a depression was to try to reduce spending. These days, economists (you know, the people who study economic functioning in order to try and learn) -- economists understand that when some whack-ass Republican president crashes your economy, you've got to spend money to get yourself out of it.
In a way, though, such a crisis and the deficit-spending that it demands provides an opportunity, because as long as there's still a drop of money to be squeezed out of failing or counter-productive technologies, Corporations and their Republican Toadies will not want to rock the boat. But once the boat is already rocked, there's more willingness to invest in industries that have a chance of producing things of value in the deeper biological sense (which I would argue underlies any economy), strengthening the economy in the longer-term. We're talking new technologies like solar power, smart grids, etc, as well as basic R&D, not to mention developing a functional health care system, and getting a muzzle onto rabid investment houses and insurance companies. Luckily for the CaRTs, sucking money out of the economy can protect you from renovators.
That's the point of establishing a evidentiary foundation. You testify under oath as to: 1) Here's the process by how I acquired it; and 2) the printout is a fair and accurate representation of the data contained in my GPS log.
Maybe you could just guess what the GPS log would have contained ...
The negative result could just as well imply that very few civilizations survive long enough to develop space travel. Whether that is because space travel is hard, or because survival is hard, is left as an exercise for the reader. Two useful data-points: (1) Human population has roughly doubled in the past half-century. (2) The excrement level has risen high enough to change the climate. Maybe it's like that on all planets where life evolves. Otherwise, wouldn't there be ...
Meanwhile, it also seems likely that life elsewhere evolves in competition. One indicator of intelligence in such a universe might be *not* sending beacons out to places where you don't know what might be listening. Listen first, then talk. Maybe others see it that way, too.
Who said anything about business? There are other measures of success. One worthy goal to have for a new idea is to put it out a seminal paper that stimulates further research. Marketing and advertising would be totally irrelevant. Another idea is to develop a proof-of-concept, or to model a process in simulation. Again, no need for business types, who tend to f*ck things up by being plugged into existing markets, and short-term goals. Get an NDA. Find some friends you can trust who are subject matter experts. Comb through posted grants and CFPs.
The current competition is the Kindle, which is currently selling for $360. An open source tablet with a 12-inch screen that can display PDFs already sounds better, to me, even if it costs more than the kindle. The only problem (and it's a big one) is the convenient Amazon access to books and papers. Haven't bought a Kindle, yet, because it's just too small, and has (what seems to me to be) a crappy interface. One of these babies, though, yeah, I could do that. Just get me some wireless access to books and papers.
> We are seeing more and more about high dynamic range (HDR) images,
> where the photographer brackets the exposures and then combines
> the images to increase the dynamic range of the photo.
So instead of an image that goes from black to white, you have an image
that goes from dark grey to light grey. Now you can see all the stuff
that would've been hard to make out in a single photo. I think what has
happened is that you've *decreased* the dynamic range in the photo (or,
more properly speaking, you've used the fixed range better).
If a new camera provides pixels in the range [0,10] instead of the range
[0,1] you can still have the same problem. It's where you map the values
that come through the lens that makes the photo ledgible or not.
Or maybe I'm missing something.
> How did you come up with the notion that the games are gonna be three times better?
I didn't. What I said was "if". If the games are three times as good, and the price is double, it's a bargain for those that can afford it. I suspect there will be some impressive games. The power is there, anyhow. The price of the console isn't excessive until you can compare what it does. See?
> Because something is more expensive does not make it better.
Wow, it's like you read what I wrote.