Actually, that last line is a little harsh.

Better would be:
Eagleworks is like a really boring X-Files version of scientific investigation. They investigate very fringe science, test it under controlled condition, but alas, it never turns out to be something extraordinary.

My issue with them isn't that they do bad science as much as that they keep releasing this crazy fringe stuff to the media before finalizing experimental testing/peer review. This gets the public all hot and bothered about how NASA is going to solve interstellar travel shortly...but then nothing.

Unfortunately, this also gets in the way of other scientific results as the media/public start seeing Science as the boy who cries wolf but never sees a wolf.

Yes, this probably has to do with continued funding / publicity / etc, but even so, I believe it does more harm than good. Publish actual results. Don't publish "we're not sure what this is (or even if it's not just experimental error), so it might be a warp drive!"

the first real space trial is likely coming soon.

No, it won't.

They haven't even completed the first round of formal experiments. You know, the kind with scientific write-ups and peer review of experimental setup and such.

So far there have been some tiny anomalous observations that may or may not be due to a force we don't understand. They are far more likely due to a force that we understand perfectly, but have failed to take into account while making the observations.

NASA hasn't published anything definitive on this. The have (quite stupidly, IMHO) given some of their initial results to the press, who (of course) blew the story up beyond any sensible measure.

The next thing we will likely see is a better experimental setup at higher power, which will likely explain the completely conventional reasons we see these results. These will be published, and not picked up by the press (cause it's "boring"), and in a few years people will wonder "whatever happened to that EmDrive thing?" Conspiracy nuts will claim government cover-up, illuminati, stolen by bigfoot, etc.

it's definitely premature to declare the device to not be a warp drive.

No it isn't premature. That's the null hypothesis.

Your argument is like saying "it's definitely premature to declare the pen sitting on my desk to not be a warp drive."

It is premature to declare that this device does anything. Once some good science has been done and shown some relevant results, then we can start thinking about changing our opinion of this device. So far, no good science has been done.

Eagleworks is hardly the bastion of scientific accuracy and non-hypebole. Wake me up when JPL duplicates their results.

You can only socialize production, which means the generation of value

By that argument, you can't socialize medicine either.

You could claim that medicine produces value by preventing disease, but someone could similarly claim that a strong military produces value by preventing foreign aggression.

I'm not saying I would argue that way, just that valid arguments exist in favor of that position.

Exactly right! The socialized heathcare of our more enlightened cousins in Europe and Canada don't have any private heathcare firms involved.

Oh, wait...

I'm from Canada...WTF is a private healthcare firm?

The Solar System is awash in water?!?!

That's the last straw. I'm gonna build an ark.

Anyone know where I can get a tape measure that measures in cubits?

Hypocrite.

You keep using that word.

I do not think it means what you think it means.

For Tim Cook she compares completely different circumstances (doing business with a company that has poor human rights vs enacting legislation to restrict human rights).

For Clinton, she gives no evidence whatsoever that receiving money from these countries has influenced the Clinton Foundation's policies in any detrimental way towards women.

This is just typical political grandstanding and nonsense.

So working for a regulatory agency is now a Men in Black sort of thing? "This is the last suit you'll ever wear"

So if they are ever laid off / fired / quit the regulatory job, then what? Go work flipping burgers?

IMHO, the heads of regulatory organizations should be elected officials with a minimum qualification requirement. That way they are more beholden to voters than to either government pressure or corporate lobbyists (in theory).

Humans have been phase-locked to the mean solar day for just over 200 out of the last 6 million years.

Given that human-like species only evolved ~3 million years ago, and modern homo sapiens ~100,000 years ago, your choice of timeline seems strange. Not that it has anything to do with DST, just sayin'

Majority of what population? People living north of the 49th? I doubt it.

I live in Canada, and most of the Canadians I know also think DST is a bad idea.

Unscientific, but still:
http://globalnews.ca/news/1868... - 79% of canadians against DST
https://www.onlineparty.ca/iss... - 60% of canadians against DST

Saskatchewan actually doesn't have DST anymore, they got rid of it in 1966, staying on Standard time year round.

Bruce's thesis is that if spy agencies deliberately allow for weakened security infrastructure so they can monitor communications, then the enemy can make use of those weak points. That there is no way to just let the "good guys hack".

"the NSA has two missions...To secure the computing infrastructure of the US against foreign espionage, and to provide espionage on foreign communication."
If they allow hacks to propagate so they can spy, then communication is not secure. (i.e. they fail the first part of their mission)
If communication is secure, then they cannot spy (i.e. they fail the second part of their mission)

The difference between this issue and military/sports metaphors is that in this case both sides make use of the exact same defensive tools, and those tools could be perfected such that it becomes unreasonably difficult to mount any sort of offense.

There is so much wrong with the study, I can hardly decide where to begin...

1) They used a single project of 4500 lines of code. That's quite small. The project may have been fairly easy to analyze/debug/maintain even if the code quality is crap.

2) No objective measure was given of the "bad code smells" identified in the selected project.

3) It is possible they did a very bad job refactoring the code base. In addition to refactoring, they should have had other software professionals evaluate whether the "refactored" code was more maintainable in order to control for this.

4) There is no indication that they controlled for variability in the student's skill sets. The students who worked on the original code may have been much better students than those that worked on the refactored code.

5) The student group sizes were far too small to get meaningful results.

6) The "quiz" to determine analyzability consisted of 15 questions. This is far too small a size to determine how analyzable the code is.

7) The mean analyzability scores were 7 vs 6.63. This suggests the student's in both sets may have poor understanding of the code bases.

8) 10 refactoring techniques were not chosen based on applicability to the system in question, but were instead chosen based on previous studies that ranked the impact of refactoring on code quality. i.e. they treated refactoring as a "silver bullet" rather than deciding what types of refactoring were most applicable to the project in question.

There are so many flaws in the methodology that the results are meaningless. The only reason to waste time with this sort of nonsense is publicity.

vive la revolution

(sorry, I couldn't help myself

Why are they not allowed to charge for their work when the baker can?

Nobody is saying they shouldn't be allowed to. Heck, the licensing of most open source stuff explicitly allows you to charge for distribution.

What people are saying is they are being hypocrites for doing so.

Basically, to use your analogy:
The coal miner mined the coal for free
The generator generated electricity for free
The water gatherer filtered the water for free
The farmer grew the grain for free
The baker baked the bread for free
The waiter served the bread for free

Now these asshats spread a bit of butter on the bread and feel they should be compensated for their efforts, even though everyone else did most of the work for free. They don't seem to have felt any There is also no indication that the Elementary OS group intend to share any funds they receive with the people who did most of the work to provide their product.

Yes, they are within their rights to ask for money. They are still blatant hypocrites for doing so.

Interesting that "Starting a War" does not appear in that section.

That's just a perk of the $1000 reward level:

"Get all of the previous rewards and we will give you the opportunity to choose a payload to put in the drone as well (as long as the weight and size fit the constraints)!"

Just cough up $1000, and ask they drop off a copy of "The Interview" in Pyongyang. That will likely start a war.

Not because it was disrespectful towards Kim Jong Un, but because it was such a godawful terrible movie.

Showing these murders serves as a gut punch to the free world. It enables us to have a visceral reaction to this brutality,

And this is exactly why the video should not be shown or viewed. Our reaction to terrorism should NOT be an emotional one, for a number of reasons:

1) It screws with our understanding of how likely a situation is to occur. People "feel" that their children are more in danger of being abducted now than 20 years ago precisely be because there is more graphic reporting of abductions, not because more abductions occur. Similarly, graphic evidence of violence influences our perception of how likely that violence is to occur.

2) It's screws with how we respond to such incidents. Juries that are presented graphic imagery of a murder are far more likely to convict than those who are not, even if the crimes are identical. Citation

3) It gives our government far too much power. The reason so many draconian measures were easily passed post-9/11 is EXACTLY because it had a massive emotional reaction from the people. Our reaction should be based on reason, not a our "visceral reaction to brutality".

I'm not worried about Fox doing ISIS's work for them. I'm worried about them influencing the militant "let's glass the whole middle east" segment of America.