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Comment: Re:Storm chasers say they have as much right to wa (Score 1) 402

by Warped-Reality (#32630144) Attached to: Tornado Scientists Butt Heads With Storm Chasers

The probability of someone with a PhD in meteorology (or something similar) knowing what they are doing with a storm is quite a bit higher than some random guy who thinks storms are neat.

Are there amateurs who know a lot about what they are doing and their hobby is contributing in some way to society / our knowledge base? I'm sure there are, but very few compared to the "random yokel who wants to video tape the storm because he watched Twister last weekend"


by Warped-Reality (#32630132) Attached to: Tornado Scientists Butt Heads With Storm Chasers

Yup. Clearly if money is the prime goal one wants to spend 4 years in a tough undergrad program becfore moving on to a 6 year (on average) graduate program and probably a post-doc or 2, vs. getting a degree in marketing and having your company pay for your MBA and rolling in 6 figures.


Geologists Might Be Charged For Not Predicting Quake 375

Posted by timothy


by Warped-Reality (#31238658) Attached to: New Method for Random Number Generation Developed

This is called "almost surely" or "almost never" in probability theory.


While the probability of getting an infinite number on 1's is 0, it's still in the sample space, therefore can still happen (in fact, with an infinte number of coin tosses, any particular sequence has a probability of zero of occurring)


How a Team of Geeks Cracked the Spy Trade 187

Posted by kdawson
from the connecting-the-dots dept.
drunken_boxer777 sends us to The Wall Street Journal for a lengthy article on a small tech company, Palantir Technologies, that is making the CIA, Pentagon, and FBI take notice. The submitter adds, "And yes, their company name is a reference to what you think it is." "One of the latest entrants into the government spy-services marketplace, Palantir Technologies has designed what many intelligence analysts say is the most effective tool to date to investigate terrorist networks. The software's main advance is a user-friendly search tool that can scan multiple data sources at once, something previous search tools couldn't do. That means an analyst who is following a tip about a planned terror attack, for example, can more quickly and easily unearth connections among suspects, money transfers, phone calls and previous attacks around the globe. ... With Palantir's software 'you can actually point to examples where it was pretty clear that lives were saved.'"

Why IT Won't Power Down PCs 576

Posted by timothy
from the sheer-cussedness dept.

Columnist Fired For Reviewing Pirated Movie 466

Posted by CmdrTaco
from the don't-mess-with-rupert dept.
