*Sigh* A former cold warrior you may be, but all you do is give proof to what I've long said - a worm's eye view doesn't make you an expert. Or even knowledgeable. (And yeah, the view of a launch control officer is pretty low level). Having been an SSBN weapons tech (and FTB to be precise), I'm quite aware of just how little can be seen from the operating level.

America's nuclear strategy isn't MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction), and hasn't been for a couple of decades now. The strategy we're working towards now is Minimal Deterrence - the smallest number of weapons needed for deterrence.

Since Apple reports sales to end users, approximately 0 and 10,000,000, respectively.

Substitute "correct explanation of the universe" for "Truth" if you prefer. I think they're the same thing.

It might be unknowable, but (a) there's no indication of that (no, I don't think our failure to find a unified theory in a few generations is an indication; that just means understanding reality is hard, which we already knew) and (b) it's not clear how we could even know that it's unknowable. As we devise ever better explanations for the workings of the universe it's possible that we're not obtaining a true knowledge of what's "really" there, but if not, then what we are obtaining is completely indistinguishable from said knowledge.

What's very interesting to contemplate is how we could arrive at the knowledge that the structure of reality is unknowable. The only way I can think of is if we were to determine at some point that below (or above?) a certain scale interactions and processes become truly random, not in the sense of Quantum Mechanical randomness, which still appears to obey clear and fairly simple probabilistic rules (and which can be explained by the many-worlds hypothesis, if you want), but random in the sense of being completely without observable order.

But, even if we did achieve that knowledge, would that not, itself be Truth with a capital T? It would not be at all useful, but it would be an accurate description of reality. It would, perhaps, be the clearest example of pure science, since it would have no possible engineering applications.

Oh, one more point: Note that I'm not claiming that science ever achieves "Truth". It is and always will be an asymptotically-approaching approximation to a completely correct explanation. That doesn't change the fact that correct explanations are what science is seeking.

Person is dead, with a big hole in his stomach. No one around who could have done it, the prime suspect has an alibi, having been no where near the place in months. The only suspicious items are a half eaten box of cookies that came in the mail, and a missing robot.

Exactly. Pay for the conference, get training, get to know people, and find a job where they will pay for your desire to travel on the companies dime. Not every firm will do this, but they are plenty who do.

You do know that there is fair amount of evidence that Tylenol causes liver damage and has other side effects that makes it counter-indicated for many people. This has nothing to do with internet trolls because the company has been dressing up doctors with high airs of gravitas to give terrible medical advice and prevent the drug to become widely known as the health risk it is.

In fact I am sure that when people post such things about the danger of Tylenol on boards, those people are considered trolls and maybe even modded down or kicked off.This is the problem with complaining and trying to ban trolls. Trolls are often simply people you disagree with, or simply people who bring up facts you don't want to deal with.

Not to defend trolls, but only to say this is not an internet problem, people should be able to make critical judgements of what they here. For instance, television is full of statements that make no sense. Infomercials, opinion shows masquerading as news, daytime talk shows. Dr. Oz makes false claims, has even been called in front of congress, almost every week. I don't see how rational people are going to believe that gold is long term investment strategy for the small investor. At least with commercials most people know they are being lied to.

Trolls may in fact make the discourse of the internet less enjoyable, but it also has a built in bullshit detector called everyone else. And each of us adults has a responsibility to think critically about statements that are made.

For instance, when I first heard this I immediately asked how could a software update effect the charging hardware. How could a software update effect the ability of the hardware to handle hard radiation. And by what mechanism could the battery be charged.

Of course some of these questions come from a hard science background, not something everyone has. But still isn't the problem that so many in the population just believe and repeat whatever they are told by authority figures. Is the problem really trolls, or that a certain subgroup of people just want to believe in the magical solutions promoted by their revered charlatans.

Most likely, sure. But again, that's not what conferences do best anyway.

This service has to be really cheap and fast to succeed. Iridium and GlobalStar already offer a satellite-based service. Iridium really does cover the entire planetary surface; GlobalStar has most of the planet, but not the polar areas. So it's all about being price-competitive.

You're going to the wrong conferences and for the wrong reasons. I go to a pretty well known one each year that I can and my employer gets huge returns on it. The value isn't from going to the training seminars - honestly, I know more about the subject than most of the presenters. The huge win is in identifying ecosystem trends ("oh, I guess we've collectively decided to follow this path now") and rubbing elbows with peers from other companies ("we had that problem, too, and this is how we solved it").

Conferences are probably inefficient at training, but that's not really what you'd want to attend one.

Regular finance account reporting of how the money is being used should be required. If you can't handle it, don't ask for money.

Such production of reporting and auditing of reports has costs and could consume significant amount of project funds.

Nonsense. If it's a serious project, they should already have an accountant or at least some form of accounting software - once you have that, it's pretty simple to produce a basic cash flow report. Regardless of what your business is, tracking the financials is basic to it. If not just to know whether or not you can afford that widget or software package, because come the end of the year you have to let the IRS know. If the project doesn't have financial tracking, it's a sign to run - far and fast.
 

It should be up to the backers and an agreement with the backers made in advance, regarding what will be required, not up to some random third party to decide what reporting will be imposed on them both.

Kickstarter isn't a random third party. As the great-grandparent said, they're essentially assuming the role of the stock exchange - as the middleman and facilitator of the process. Thus they have an interest in seeing that the process is transparent and to some degree regulated. Even for private investment, sans the market, the SEC has rules separating investors into two classes based on their ability to determine and withstand risk. As the arbiter of the market, Kickstarter has similar motivations to protect investors.

Now this being Slashdot, there will be a chorus of people insisting we don't need a middleman or and arbiter... to which I say, go try and raise significant funds on your own sans such a middleman. Then you'll understand why a central marketplace with at least some level of consumer (investor) protection is an idea that has recurred throughout human history. It's a win-win situation for all parties. (And before you rant and froth about Wall Street - I'll point out the problems there are implementation and QA errors, not specification errors.)

Still, with mass at a premium it would be more efficient to send up a stockpile of raw plastic rather than many combinations of different spare parts.

For the relatively small fraction of parts that will break that are printable plastics - that's a great thing. (At least with anything resembling current technology.) For everything else, especially the electronics parts that will represent the greatest proportion of the failures... not so much.

Why do you want to attend the conference?

If your goal is to be able to do a better job for your current employer, then the employer should pay.

If your goal is to become better at the kind of thing you do, then ideally your employer should recognize that value to them and pay, but if they don't recognize it, then you have to decide whether the personal growth is worth it for the personal cost... and perhaps seriously think about finding an employer who is less short-sighted.

If your goal is to have a bit of a vacation, save your money and go on vacation some place that's interesting to you. Perhaps even Las Vegas (though that wouldn't be my choice).

Science is the best method of obtaining Truth that we have yet discovered, namely: conjecture and criticism, with a willingness to discard ideas which fail, and no interest in ideas which are so disconnected from reality as to be impossible to test via criticism. As such, useful philosophy is a branch of science, even though it's not often viewed that way.

There's also much philosophy which doesn't allow itself to be subjected to criticism, but that's useless because without criticism it's impossible to separate error from truth. Such philosophy not only isn't the pursuit of Truth, it's completely unable ever to say anything objective about Truth.

Yes. That quote describes the philosophy known as "empiricism", which asserts that the epistemological purpose and process of science is to derive methods for prediction, as opposed to creating explanations. The modern, Popperian and post-Popperian, understanding of science is that it is based on the philosophy of falsifiability, and is a process of conjecture and criticism, with the goal of creating expanations for how the world works. The explanations do enable prediction, but they're deeper than that, because rules of thumb that provide accurate predictions can exist without explanations of the underlying phenomena, and such rules of thumb are strictly less valuable and less useful than explanations. The most essential difference, though there are many, is that explanations explain their own "reach", making clear the set of phenomena to which they apply, while rules of thumb don't, regardless of their accuracy.

Also, some of the criticism takes the form of experiment, but not all, and in fact not even most. Most conjectured explanations are discarded after only a little analysis, because that's all it takes to show them to be inconsistent with what's already known, or to show them to be bad or shallow explanations for other reasons. Controlled experimentation, per se, isn't even necessary. This is a good thing because in some areas of science, for example, astrophysics, we don't have the ability to experiment on the objects of study. Yet we can still theorize, criticize, examine evidence and move gradually towards ever more accurate and deeper explanations.

The explanations provided by science are, as you say, what make engineering possible, but science is the process of creating ever-better explanations of the universe, not merely of producing reliable predictive rules.