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Comment Re:The Science is settled! (Score 1) 330

But when the overwhelming majority of experts in any field are leaning in one direction

Is completely and utterly irrelevant to science and the scientific method.

It's also the most common argument presented by the faithful.

In other words. Grow the fuck up. The universe doesn't owe your ideology any favors.

Pot, meet Kettle.

And learn the consensus has nothing to do with science.

Comment Re:probabilities? (Score 1) 238

The one thing that Kieth is resisting is that the more educated people are, the better decsions people make. His basic flaw of his own logic is, "I have all the knowledge, I know best." As long as proud ignorence is promoted, it hard for usefull Solutions.

I think you're missing the point entirely. He understands very well more educated people make better decisions. Keeping "the people" ignorant is a big part of the solution from his perspective. What you're missing is his objective: Keeping the current power structure status quo.

Lets face it. Either people like Keith are idiots or their objective isn't stopping terrorism (or child porn or whatever the excuse is). Most intelligent informed people are going to recognize that what they're doing isn't focused on that. The only way they hide that is by keeping people ignorant.

Comment Re:So a bicyclist is safer..... (Score 1) 490

By riding in the gaps and not amongst the hordes it is safer for me, so I imagine the "Idaho Stop" allows cyclist something similar.

Except for one little thing. On your motorcycle you're moving at the same speed as traffic. A bicyclist Is slowing down the same same wave of traffic that managed to maneuver around it before the traffic light. Basically they're just slowing down even more traffic clogging up the same cars more than once.

Comment Re:Yes.... (Score 1) 143

Humility in medical is a MUST.

I'd say it's not. At least that's not true of a good many of the practitioners.

Not knowing "everything" is a sign of stupidity.

Only stupid people would think that. To know "everything" in the technology field is at least on par with knowing "everything" in the medical field. Only an idiot would think anyone could even remotely come anywhere near knowing "everything" in either field.

As far as tech hiring people are concerned, all of us are stupid - and bring in the H1-bs.

Hmmm...been working in this field for 25 years now and rarely have I encountered that. The few occasions I did it was quickly evident the persons involved were idiots. Being willing to admit I didn't know something has almost always earned respect rather than contempt.

Comment Re:No. (Score 4, Insightful) 143

I won hands down - technology people are the arrogant asses.

The difference is technology people are typically arrogant about technology, what should be their area of expertise, whereas most of the arrogant ass doctors I've encountered are arrogant about everything. The technology guy isn't going to walk into the doctor's office and start telling him about how to do doctoring stuff. A great many people will tell tell technology people all about how to do their job.

In any field I usually take arrogance as a sign of incompetence. Typically smart people think they know less then they really do and stupid people usually think they know more. The caveat being perception of arrogance is somewhat relative also. Arrogant people usually perceive anyone who knows more about something then they do as arrogant. That being said though, there are definitely a lot of incompetent technology people, almost certainly a lot more then there are incompetent doctors.

Comment Re:It's Not Really Oracle (Score 1) 163

Modularity will not save you. If your site won't scale, then you are going to need a new design.

That's more a matter of a good approach and design when developing your modules. If you write crap modules you're right. If you're modules are designed and developed to be scalable it won't be an issue. In large projects modularity is almost always a better approach than monolithic. I have yet to come across a project where that wasn't the case. It's especially the case where scalability is an issue. It's much easier to develop and rag out scalability issues within each module then it is after you've developed a monstrosity.

This is also one of the key problems with Oracle and it's tools. Oracle's development ecosystem goes a long way towards discouraging modularity.

Comment Re:It's Not Really Oracle (Score 1) 163

The opposite end of the spectrum is Kentucky, which budgeted the least amount of money, and was thus forced to implement a streamlined site with a small lean team.

Amen to that. The larger the budget the greater the probability of failure. Software development has to be done by evolution not revolution. You start small and slowly add features in the form of modules with well defined interfaces. Any other approach most likely results in failure or if in any part successful, a monstrosity that is close to unsupportable.

Comment Re:A way to become competent? (Score 2) 405

Massive amounts of crime - both in quantity and quality. They do what they can. IMHO they need to quadruple the number of parole and investigation officers.

Bullshit. Crime, especially violent crime, has been on the steady decline for 40 or 50 years. Google it. And violence against police dropped significantly also. You're as full of shit as they are.

The organization is too big. That invites middle management with skewed goals and climbing the corporate ladder just like every other psychotic corporation.

So you're saying institutional incompetence justifies violating the Constitution and the rights of the enemies of the police which from the police departments view is anyone not a cop.

Misinfotainment reporting varies from half truths to outright lies.

Yeah you're sure right there is a lot of that. But it isn't coming from where you seem to think it is and it certainly has you brainwashed.

Comment Re:Complex != Impossible (Score 1) 497

And the very assumption that complexity = difficulty is unrealistic as well.

That has got to be one of the stupidest things I have ever seen written. So your claim is complexity makes things easier? Wow. But I'm the ignorant one. Do you even know what the word means?

See, we have these great things called tools. And tools let us do things we couldnt normally do. Things like lift things heavier that we could normally lift, or see things we couldnt normally see.

So we have these tools which means at this moment in time we understand everything there is to know about the universe. Ok, now you're making sense. I get it.

And it is the science you trust that takes your voice into a little hand-held box and teleports it hundreds of miles away so you can talk to your mom once a day.

Once again the level of ignorance is astounding. You seem to have no concept of what science is even about. Here is a hint. It has absolutely nothing to do with trust. Amazingly it has nothing to do with how often I talk to my mother either.

Anyway, we absolutely have the means to experiment on climate. It is very easy to fill a clear conatiner with methane and another with air, put it in the sun for an hour and see what happens.

No, we absolutely do not. Your experiment is so lacking as to be pointless. Climate is literally billions of types of interactions each of which has a significant affect on the overall system. What happens in a couple containers filled with gasses is about as significant as the affect of my pissing in the ocean would be. We don't even know what we don't know. The complexity of what we do know is way beyond our ability to model. Hell we can't even measure much of it to any degree of accuracy. They take a core sample from one or 2 spots and then try to conjecture the entire worldwide atmospheric conditions going back 100,000 years from that. We have too little information and there is so much more we have no information about because we don't even know what to look for or measure. Add to that the period of time we have any kind of accurate data for is extremely limited. Going back more then 50 years is all pretty much conjecture. Also no where did I say anything is impossible. I said we don't know nearly enough right now.

I am going to publish my data and see if else sees the same data" -that was just my made-up scenario. But that is exactly what you want from the scientific community.

No, it absolutely is not. Nor is is it scientific method. Scientific method requires that you actively try and find faults with your law or theory. Climate science seems to have turned into science by consensus. It's settled. Anything contrary to the conventional wisdom is looked upon as either something to disprove or twisted to fit current theory.

And lastly, if all you see is scientific studies reinforcing the theory that mankind is affecting the climate, why is it so hard to beleive? Scientists were right about alot of other things right?

The problem is no one seems to be actively trying to disprove it. That is the whole of scientific method, actively looking for things that don't fit your theory. Science is far more often wrong than right. Hell, it seems they don't even have gravity figured out yet and that's something we can do quantitative experiments with.

Just the idea that anyone can think any science is settled shows an absolute ignorance of what science is.

Comment Re:settled != True (Score 1) 497

Nope, that's a misunderstanding of reality based on at best a schoolboy level of science. Basically, you dismiss all the ovservational sciences because you can't do experiments.

Did you read the link I provided? So I you're claiming Feynman only has a schoolboy's level of science.

You basically selected one sentence of what I wrote, took it out of context and then used it to dismiss everything I wrote. You provided a perfect example of the point I was trying to make.

Yes some things aren't experimentally testable. Note in the rest of what wrote I make comments like "science looking for evidence" and similar. Observational areas of science are the ones with the least level of detail reliability. Today you can experimentally prove one star exists. And observationally it's a pretty safe conjecture that others do also. But how a star forms is another thing all together. As far as I know pretty much every theory of star formation has encountered some observational evidence that doesn't fit.

It's the same with climate science. Empirical data strongly suggests the climate has been warming. Our ability to fairly accurately measure the temperature of the entire planet has only existed for some 50 years. 50 years isn't even the blink of an eye in terms of planetary climate. Our understanding of the entirety of the climate system on this planet and all the interactions involved is infinitesimal.

People claiming that anthropogenic global warming is settle science is where the problem lies. First off It's counter to scientific method to consider something settled science. Scientific method dictates looking for experiments and/or observations (I added that explicitly this time so you can't take it out of context) that disprove accepted theories and laws. That's the part that looks to be missing in climate science today. The vast majority of science looks to be directed towards finding observations that support anthropogenic global warming rather than observations that are counter to it. It looks to me when ever the later are brought to light the effort is towards making them fit the current conventional wisdom rather than looking at how they may require changing it.

Comment Re:settled != True (Score 3) 497

AGW is very likely true, but not at the same level. It is not nearly as well defined: "warming" - is that water temperature, air temperature, total heat content, sea level etc. There is no question that human activity has *some* impact on climate, but that impact is not completely understood and predictable.

Nor is tested or even really testable for that matter. There's no way you can do an experiment that even remotely tests man's impact on climate. The systematic interactions of a planet's climate are beyond what we can conceive of, much less understand, right now. The whole of scientific method is positing an idea and then doing experiments that prove and experiments that fail to disprove. Note the later. The scientific method demands attempting to disprove what you posit. Anything less is Cargo Cult Science rather than scientific method. This is the problem I see with current climate science. Everything I read is about is science looking for evidence that it's happening and man made. I don't read much of anything about science looking for evidence that it either isn't happening or isn't caused by man.

Comment Re:Bill specifically about Glass is a bad idea... (Score 1) 226

The issue here, as always, is training people to use new technology properly.

No it's not. That's just idiotic. The issue is the driving not any technology. How about training the idiots to drive instead?. Force people to treat driving like the exceedingly dangerous activity it is and any problems with distracted driving goes away. It's completely asinine to try to legislate control of each and every activity a person can partake in while driving and even stupider to think that you can effectively enforce such laws.

I will never understand what it is about getting in the driver's seat of a car that turns about 90% of the population into egomaniacal aggressive idiots. Make people drive safely or take their driving privileges away.

Comment Re:Change (Score 1) 742

Before it was MS vs. the world. And we thought it was bad. But right now it is effectively MS vs. Google

Bullshit. I use a number of Google products at the moment. There isn't any kind of lock in to any of them. Nor does Google appear to be trying to establish any form of lock in. Whether Google is deemed good or bad there is little or no cost for switching to something else. The reason I keep using them is because they keep their tools relevant. The day they don't I'll switch.

Contrast that with Microsoft. They make almost no effort towards keeping there products relevant. They spend all their time and money on ways to keep people locked into their products. If that weren't the case Microsoft Office would support ODF.

Comment Re:What could go wrong? (Score 1) 341

Complicated, time-consuming, and inaccurate: How will the cops know "protester" from "person walking down the sidewalk on the way to work"?

If the person walking down the sidewalk is mixed in with the protesters they may not. But shutting down cell towers effects everyone in the area not just a few people who may be innocently mixed in with the protesters. Add the fact that most people not involved are going to avoid protest area and your argument is fallacious.

Or, more accurately, how will they know once the list of "protester phones" is compiled that the protesters won't whip out cash-bought drop-phones that aren't associated with their names?

As phone location information gets more accurate they just have to identify them by geographic location. Even with current technology this is going to cause far less collateral damage than shutting down whole cell towers. And I never said anything about only affecting the protestors. It's simple a case of limiting collateral damage.

Frequently we hear about police dragnets grabbing up hundreds of people at a time, a significant portion of whom (predictably) weren't protesting and were simply walking down the sidewalk to go to work, school, or someplace else non-interesting.

But they don't sweep up everyone in a square mile of the protests which is the effect of shutting down cell towers. You seem to think if you can't completely eliminate collateral damage it's pointless to even try to limit it.

The purpose is to stifle dissent, and in doing so, the police-state doesn't care if somebody who "hasn't done anything wrong" gets their rights trampled on. Indeed, such "even" applications of violence to everyone in the area are still useful as intimidation tactics aimed at people who "might" be willing to protest, but who have reservations.

This is where you're really off base. Trampling on the rights of people who haven't done anything wrong engenders dissent. It certainly doesn't stifle it. At best it may limit people acting on their dissension out of fear but it certainly isn't going to endear them to the state more. The idea that abusing people will make them like you more is idiotic. Past police states worked through fear of voicing dissension. Any attempts at actually stifling it were laughable at best.

Comment Re:COST (Score 2) 473

if you're flying around i a dangerous machine and put people at risk no reason why you shouldn't have to live up to some standards

Surely you have to recognize the shear stupidity of that statement. Between 30,000 and 40,000 people are slaughtered yearly by morans driving cars like complete idiots yet you don't see why pilots "shouldn't have to live up to some standards". You realize that's far more people than are killed by guns? But those pilots...

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