Posts by Turtle

@asdf

"Noble stand but unless it directly benefits Wall St. financially (actually does but they won't see it) its not going to get passed."

They see it perfectly well. You have maybe missed the various articles on this site about cloud service providers complaining that the Snowden leaks have damaged their business? Or that various countries are passing laws that their citizens' data must be stored in country and not abroad?

Did you miss that stuff?

And considering that this is Ron Wyden, a Google hireling, be sure that his essay and remarks were cleared with Google before being made public. Irrespective of what you think about what he is saying, the *reason* he is saying it, is that it will benefit Google.

"Bets here in the next six months poor Ron Wyden is going to find himself in some type of an embarrassing scandal?"

I will take any odds that nothing of the sort will happen. Unless you want to give me some real life examples...

@Codysydney

"I'd watch it for the gay elf orgy. Unless my friend at work was lying."

If I were you, I wouldn't be quite so sure that he's actually your "friend".

@Trevor_Pott - Questions And Statements, Valid And Otherwise

Look at my original question: "I wonder how sure they are that the sediments could only have been formed by liquid water and not some other liquid."

Now let's look at your post. First you state "there are plenty of geochemical signatures that - to our current knowledge at least - can only occur with Mars having had a thicker atmosphere." And then - just a few words later - you state "This means that we no longer need to prove that it occurred; there is so much evidence that it did we can simply take it for granted.

So in the span of a few short words you've managed to go from the correct idea that scientific theories are provisional and subject to change (in consequence of the acquisition of better data, different interpretations of the data or of the pre-existing theories on which the theory under discussion is built, or simply in consequence of someone having newer and maybe better ideas), to the completely erroneous idea that science has arrived at something which you seem to think is very, very close to an incontrovertible truth.

That you think that we have arrived at a state where we are able to reveal the ultimate truth in this matter is laughable; I would be very surprised if any scientist actually involved in these matters would take the same view.

What you seem to be unaware of, is that a theory built on a series of high-probability statements becomes a lower-probability theory the more higher-probability statements it includes. Here: calculate the probability of a theory being correct if it is based on FIVE statements each with a 90% probability of being correct. Hint: the probability of five statements, each having a 90% probability of being true, all being true is a somewhat underwhelming 59%.

By the way, that's one of the reasons why astrophysicists, astrobiologists, xenobiologists, and their ilk, want more scientific space missions: because the certitude that you have is something that they don't have. You seem to think that "our current knowledge" has enabled us to arrive at The Truth.

To sum up: your vacuous post and pompous disquisition on how science operates (in your limited understanding) really don't answer the question of "how sure they are that the sediments could only have been formed by liquid water and not some other liquid" Some essentially empty babble about "geochemical signatures" and "evidence stacking up" is empty handwaving. And although the earth might indeed be "one hell of a lab" it is not "one hell of a lab" for absolutely whatever needs to be found out - and it might not all that effective for finding out the natural history of Mars. It's possible that extrapolating from the earth to Mars might actually mislead us. This is what needs to be actually be discovered, not merely surmised.

Furthermore, asking how sure scientists really are of their theories is not - as you seem to think - some form of lese majesty against science. What is actually is, is a very valid question.

@Def: A good example of the misuse of statistics

" In fact the number of unemployed people in the US is more than triple the entire population of Norway. "

A good example of the misuse of statistics. As you yourself noted, the population of the US is 61.5 times greater than the population of Norway. Your comparison proves nothing. You can compare total population to total population - as you did earlier - or you can compare percent of unemployed to percent of unemployed, but a comparison of two completely different and unrelated metrics, total unemployed and total population, is simply disingenuous and misleading if not outright dishonest.

Numbers.

"pictures of house numbers were obviously being used to improve google maps..."

Google can give me a house number if they want but they *never* get a right answer from me. I will *always* sabotage the answer, either by leaving out or, conversely, inserting a digit, or interchanging 1's and 7's, 0's and 8's, 9's and 4's, etc. The important thing is that the number they get is as different as possible from the actual number in the image. For example, changing 7038 to 7036 is not really worthwhile, but changing it to 138 is very satisfying indeed.

In fact.

"If you change the base to 8 you can calculate pie as 3.1recurring alot easier to use"

As easy as pie, in fact.

@cambsukguy

"I did say I was tolerant of dodgy plots. At least lots more people have now heard of Turing and mostly a positive viewpoint, hell, if Keira Knightly would marry him, he must be okay."

The Imitation Game is pretty nearly 100% bullshit. I doubt there are really all that many people who haven't heard of Turing as he's been the poster child for gay rights for quite a long time now. This movie is not about Turing to any significant degree, it's about a nearly completely fictional character who happens to have Turing's name.And there is nothing positive about the chief character first uncovering and then abetting a spy in Bletchley Park. Difficult to believe that the real Turing would have done that.

@bazza Re: Irony

"Their own staff are a valuable beta testing resource, yet they're not using them for this purpose"

Of course not. Their staff has *real* work to do.

Re: Thicker ice is a sign of increased temps

"'Get Ready for some tin pot science' I prefer 'pot still' science. Let me explain...."

*I* think it's "pot head" science and I don't think that there's any need to explain.

Meanwhile...

"The biggest corporate tax evader in the history of the United States should not only be dissolved, but all those founders and board members, whether knowingly or not, be placed in prison for no less then twenty years for their crimes. The IRS will be closing the doors on this company soon!"

Meanwhile, back on Planet Earth...

Re: Vocabulary.

Irony Alert: note that I used the same spelling that's in the article (in spite of that fact that it was changed after I posted my comment.)

@Coen Dijkgraaf

"<joke>The only way to be sure is to nuke them from orbit</joke>"

Or, let's say, confiscate the proceeds of the swindle and put the perpetrators in prison for a long, long time.

Re: 1, 2, 3, 4

"The shield code is 1, 2, 3, 4. That's the same code I have on my luggage"

I actually laughed when I read this.

Thanks!

: )

Re: Tim Cook...

"Tim Cook... morphing into Bill Gates right before our eyes..."

You know, I'm trying to think of anything Microsoft has ever done that's similar to this and I can't. Could you refresh my memory?

While I agree with your post...

"So CERN found a particle and it behaves as they expected a Higgs Boson should. Now a bunch of Danes are saying it's not the Higgs Boson, it's some mystery particle... that also happens to behave exactly like you'd expect the Higgs Boson to."

While I agree with your post, you have not paid sufficient attention to a particular (see what I did there?) statement in the article: "One way, they say, would be for CERN to build an even larger collider to better observe the particles and provide more evidence as to the existence of the theorized techni-quarks."

In a word: "funding-drive".

@Ketlan

"'Most of the crowd seemed to be the usual rent-a-mob of left-wing sympathisers.' So, no bias there then."

It's not "bias" if it's true. Unless of course you subscribe to Socialist Realism, in which case it's only true if it's politically and propagandistically advantageous.

Re: Mmm...

" a human should be free to put whatever substance they choose into their own bodies. "

Lemme tell you what the problem with that is. People often become addicted to substances to which they can not afford to be addicted. I haven't heard of a lot of junkies being able to support their habits for long out of their own savings and incomes, y'know? And since society at large is going to have to clean up the mess eventually, it's their prerogative to outlaw addictive drugs if they want to.

Now, I might be in favor of letting people use whatever drugs they want if they first agreed to surrender their civil rights, and if they show that they can afford to finance their drug addictions without resorting to crime, and, furthermore, not only should there be no obligations for the government or society to deliver any medical care (or any other care of any kind) to such people but that any charity given to junkies be not only not tax-deductible, but heavily taxed.

@Graham Dawson

"The sort of sick fuck who would murder someone for internet fame, perhaps."

How did you manage to get that from the story? 'Cause it wasn't there. To me, the fact that he wrote "She killed me first" on the wall kind of makes his "reasons" pretty clear. So your explanation could be very interesting.

Re: Cool times ahead for scientists

"You can just imagine this becoming widespread, and scientists, even normal ones, having a second, evening job in show business, advising film-makers, TV production companies, theatre impresarios, writers...it would be cool to be a scientist and loads of kids would want to get into it...instead of studying things like Media and Marketing studies*...that would be good for the kids, for the films / TV shows, and for the world as a whole!"

You couldn't be more wrong. "Scientists in showbiz" portends nothing good for science. Unless your idea of "cool" is watching Michio Kaku spout his bullshit on tv. And if you think that competition for fame and the wealth that is often attached to it somehow breeds anything useful other than venal people.

@_RCH_

I also downvoted it. Because of the very first line which if you have forgotten was "Desperate attention-seeking behavior by the Sams..."

@razorfishsl Re: Is Old English The Only Real English?

Here's another point (which I neglected to put in my previous post):

"The true 'written form' has evolved over thousands of years..." (Emphasis added.)

And so Simplified Chinese is not a "true written form" of Mandarin because you don't consider orthographic reforms - whether Mao claimed credit for them or not is irrelevant - to be part of a language's evolution.

That's certainly a very original point of view. It's also a very wrong point of view.

@Dan 55

"Then again it also takes a certain mindset to plough absolutely everything back into the business."

Don't discount the money he gets in salary, expense accounts, stock options, and other assorted benefits. They are not negligible. Amazon as a corporation might not be making a profit but don't think that Bezos is anything other than very well compensated.

Re: Who the hell????

"Keeps clicking on these things??? Just stop. You havent won a prize in a lottery you never entered. There can't be a problem with a ticket for a journey you booked. YOU COLOSSAL IDIOTS."

Call me cynical, but a solution which depends on people ceasing to be stupid is doomed to failure.