Nice to make your acquaintance. It's good to know at least one forum member understood my rather lengthy complex post. Are you a mathematician? I'll be glad to have your input any time, pro or con.
lfe2211,
It is completely pointless to post publicly my qualifications, so check out your PM.
(BTW, have you figured out yet which Discover article is the traditional annual April "fake" entry? I'm on the road so I haven't seen my Discover copy yet).
While making coffee for breakfast a short while ago, it occurred to me what the April Fool's joke might be.
As I've never read a major article in Discover that was faked, I realised that it wasn't an article at all.
On page 76, under the 'Mind Games" heading, they have their puzzles. This month the feature is Fibonacci.
This puzzle is named "Area Paradox", in which a square is cut into peculiar portions, and then reassembled into different shapes, one of which is claimed to have slightly more area than the original, and another, less.
As that's patently false, I spent several minutes attempting to figure out why it wasn't. But, after deciding that my mathematical skills are no longer up to the task, I turned to the answers page, only to find out that they had cheated.
So far, that's all I've found, but I haven't read the entire issue.
Can't wait to get home and read my copy of Discover, one of my favorites science magazines for years. The April edition is always fun, trying to figure out the "fake" article.
It seems that you are missing the non-financial part in what lfe2211 said.
No, just objecting to the idea that it is a trivial matter in other domains. Easier, yes. Trivial? No. The reason that physics experiments are "a big mother f**ken deal" is driven in large part by the high cost of the major experiments. Hence the increased rigor to develop the justification for performing the experiment.
Financial is simply one aspect, yes. Physicists are top dog in science and arguably the hardest domain but Dr. Kornberg (Chemistry laurette) is no less brilliant than Drs. Smoot and Mather. While his research also spanned 20 years I doubt it cost as much as COBE and his X-ray crystallographic equipment isn't orbiting the earth with empty dewars. The number of significant experiments in other fields, due to smaller costs, likely outnumbers those of theoretical and astro physics.
Where lfe2211 seems to defend primarily physicists, I would say that applies to all sciences, hard or soft. Some easier perhaps. None trivial.
A flat out denial that a particular paper may be incorrect in its conclusions, or even its design, just because it has been published, particularly if it is in a more obscure journal, where publishing papers is the lifeblood of that journal, is not helpful. I'm not referring to you here ife2211. But, that is what started this.
There was never any flat out denial that a study could be incorrect in its conclusion. In fact the originial post indicated that the value of the conclusion is subject to the limitations common to any small study.
What started this is your cherry picking specific pieces of the presentation out of context to try to show it supported your assertion even though the conclusion were opposite.
If you had simply objected to the sample size I would have simply said "Yes, that's inherent in the kind of resources available to these kinds of study...12 is likely the bare minimum to have any statistical value whatsoever even with a single independent variable". This is EXACTLY what I said in another thread about the subject although we got slightly more technical (ie beyond my expertise in statistics).
However, I will not agree to the assertion that the study was poorly or incompetently designed as you suggest without having more information. And I will not agree that ancedotal experience has more validity than even limited studies.
While we seem to have gotten dragged far afield in a discussion about experimentation in physics, I can certainly agree that, today, most experiments in that field are so very costly, that this country has, almost criminally, destroyed the physics community here, by refusing to provide funding for the very expensive facilities required.
While the main facilities have either recently closed down, or will be doing so in the near future, other groups of countries continue to build. While we do take part in those works as well (the US will have the largest contingent when the new facility in Europe goes on line fairly shortly (fairly shortly means something different in the physics community than it does in other disciplines!)), we are subject to a dwindling base of resources here.
The same problem is seen relating to work in fusion.
Modern physics is also very different from most other sciences. Some theoretical advances (String Theories, anyone?) are proving difficult to design experiments around, though Dr. Randall is hopeful about some aspects of the new collider.
Fermi was being held to 2006 funding but congress came through with another $200M to DOE and eliminated some restrictions on how some of DOE's budget has to be spent. How much of that goes to Fermi I dunno but there should be no shutdowns or layoffs.
US expenditure is not stellar but not horrid.
I don't believe that the location for international collider has been determined. Fermi is, of course, the US DOE's choice.
CERN's large hadron collider is coming on line and CERN and Fermi are both searching for the Higgs' boson and presumably if Fermi has any money it will go toward that effort.
Brilliant. You weren't content flaunting your complete and utter ignorance of MultiTouch in just one topic, you wanted to cross-post it in two.
Here's another bit of news for you, Einstein: Nobody's forcing you to read these topics. If you don't like it, don't read it. Nobody died and made you king, so you can't tell people what they can or can't post.
I didn't make an official decree demanding that no one post about Multi-Touch; I simplify gave my opinion. So just because you don't agree with me, you assume by defacto that I have a God-complex? You're the one with the attitude problem -- you don't have to patronize me just because you don't agree with me. Real mature.
Quote:
Originally Posted by SpinDrift
You really have no vision do you? Or any real understanding of the practicalities of MT technology? A mouse or Wacom style pen may be precise, but there's only one point of contact with your onscreen objects, so you can only move one object or rotate one axis at a time. This may be fine in your little world, but to the design, music and film industry MT offers a huge advantage.
We don't have a click wheel on our desktops? Yes we do, it's called the scroll wheel on your mouse! That does exactly the same job and probably 90% of us use them.
If you knew me, you'd know that I have plenty of vision. Making qualitative statements solely based on one opinion of mine you don't happen to share isn't a great way to start your argument. And then than insulting my intelligence by implying that I don't agree with you because I'm too stupid to fully understand Multi-Touch technology? You're on a roll now, aren't you? And then you try to discredit me by trivializing my world as being small in insignificant? As it turns out, I spend a lot of time doing photography, designing web graphics, building websites, editing video... and get this -- I'm a student -- I have a huge scope of the world because I HAVE to.
The click wheel is not analogous to the mouse's scroll wheel because the mouse's scroll wheel couldn't function as a stand-alone, and there are considerable differences between a computer mouse UI and a click wheel GUI. A click-wheel interface on a computer would be disastrous. Scrolling of the wheel would represent the rotating through the selectable elements on the computer screen. On my visible computer screen right now, I can see a total of 131 selectable elements. What glorious fun it would be to scroll through all of those elements to get to the one I wanted to.
The mouse allows you to make small hand movements which translate to accurate larger movements. No improvement needed. Multi-touch allows you to make accurate movements over a SMALL surface area in a PORTABLE way. You don't need that for a desktop! Maybe for a tablet, but that's a whole other bag of issues there. For instance, what is the PURPOSE of the tablet? What interface do you NEED with that application of the tablet. If you're scribbling notes, a stylus is useful for handwriting-to-text recognition because some people can write faster than they type. Or if you have to draw something, again, a stylus would be more useful and accurate. For an iPhone, multi-touch is great because it's purpose doesn't require a stylus. And I'm sure the keyboard on an iPhone is a pleasure for the tips, but it will never be as accurate as a regular keyboard.
As far as vision, I have a lot of visionary projects going right now. A multi-million dollar development project, a national web site and service, and a revolutionary invention in a billion dollar industry.
I didn't make an official decree demanding that no one post about Multi-Touch; I simplify gave my opinion. So just because you don't agree with me, you assume by defacto that I have a God-complex? You're the one with the attitude problem -- you don't have to patronize me just because you don't agree with me. Real mature.
Well, excuuuuuse me if I get the wrong impression when somebody says "Stop with the posts!" That doesn't seem like an opinion. That's an imperial edict. You want to know why you got slapped down? It's because you don't know anything about MultiTouch yet decided you were an expert. "Invented for the iPhone." You haven't done any research at all about MultiTouch other than reading about the iPhone. You don't know the first thing about it, have never touched a Fingerworks product, but consider yourself completely authoritative in saying it's worthless. You're as bad as the buggy whip manufacturers who claimed that that new-fangled horseless carriage would never amount to anything.
Here's another bit of news for you: Any time somebody brags they're working on visionary multimillion dollar projects, everybody knows they actually mean "visionary" as in only existing in their own minds. National website? I've got several of those, too. Actually, mine are international, like every other website out there. Revolutionary billion dollar invention? You have no idea how delusional you sound, do you? You sound like that guy on "American Inventor" who wasted 20 years of his life, tossed away his career and his marriage and was living out of his car, all for "Bullet Ball."
Fermi was being held to 2006 funding but congress came through with another $200M to DOE and eliminated some restrictions on how some of DOE's budget has to be spent. How much of that goes to Fermi I dunno but there should be no shutdowns or layoffs.
US expenditure is not stellar but not horrid.
I don't believe that the location for international collider has been determined. Fermi is, of course, the US DOE's choice.
CERN's large hadron collider is coming on line and CERN and Fermi are both searching for the Higgs' boson and presumably if Fermi has any money it will go toward that effort.
Vinea
Unfortunately, I can't simply direct you to an article in Science, as it is restricted to members, but I can provide some quotes. From this article:
Quote:
Science 5 January 2007:
Vol. 315. no. 5808, pp. 56 - 58
DOI: 10.1126/science.315.5808.56
News
Stalking Discovery From the Infinitesimal to the Infinite
Adrian Cho
Quote:
But even as particle astrophysics blossoms, some researchers worry about its future. Steven Ritz, a particle physicist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and project scientist for GLAST, fears that the rise of particle astrophysics could undermine accelerator-based research. "Sometimes the movement is interpreted to mean that there's no need to build accelerators anymore, that you can do it all from space," he says, "and that's just not right." Even so, the number of colliders is falling, especially in the United States. SLAC will shutter its PEP-II collider in 2008, and a year later Fermilab will unplug the Tevatron, leaving the United States with no colliders for particle physics.
From this article:
Quote:
Science 2 March 2007:
Vol. 315. no. 5816, p. 1203
DOI: 10.1126/science.315.5816.1203
News of the Week
PARTICLE PHYSICS:
Dreams Collide With Reality for International Experiment
Adrian Cho*
Quote:
U.S. high-energy physicists are scrambling to plug a hole in the long-range plans of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) for their field after the department's top scientist warned them that they may have to wait years longer than they'd hoped for their dream machine.
Three weeks ago, an international team released a design and cost estimate for the International Linear Collider (ILC) (Science, 9 February, p. 746). American physicists want to build the ILC at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) in Batavia, Illinois, and researchers had hoped to break ground in 2012 and fire up the ILC's beams of electrons and positrons in 2019. But last week, DOE Under Secretary for Science Raymond Orbach told the government's High Energy Physics Advisory Panel to add 5 years or more to that timeline, extending a projected gap during which the United States will not have a particle smasher (see table). Orbach asked the panel to bridge the gap with smaller-scale projects, a request that vexes researchers whose experiments were canceled in part to free up resources for the ILC.
"Even assuming a positive decision to build an ILC, the schedules will almost certainly be lengthier than the optimistic projections," Orbach told the panel at its meeting in Washington, D.C. "Completing the R&D and engineering design, negotiating an international structure, selecting a site, obtaining firm financial commitments, and building a machine could take us well into the mid-2020s, if not later," he added.
In addition to PEP-II closing down, and the Tevatron closing down, there is also the CESR at Cornell that has closed down mostly already, and will finish shortly.
Quote:
Meanwhile, Orbach's call for a program of smaller projects evoked jeers from researchers whose experiments had been cut. "This is really stupid and very frustrating because we had a program," says Sheldon Stone, a physicist at Syracuse University in New York who worked on an experiment called BTeV that would have run at the Tevatron collider at Fermilab.
On the basketball court, when you dunk exceptionally hard in the face of your defender, it's called a "facial". I do believe you have just delivered one hellacious facial on Mr. icfireball.
Well, excuuuuuse me if I get the wrong impression when somebody says "Stop with the posts!" That doesn't seem like an opinion. That's an imperial edict. You want to know why you got slapped down? It's because you don't know anything about MultiTouch yet decided you were an expert. "Invented for the iPhone." You haven't done any research at all about MultiTouch other than reading about the iPhone. You don't know the first thing about it, have never touched a Fingerworks product, but consider yourself completely authoritative in saying it's worthless. You're as bad as the buggy whip manufacturers who claimed that that new-fangled horseless carriage would never amount to anything.
Here's another bit of news for you: Any time somebody brags they're working on visionary multimillion dollar projects, everybody knows they actually mean "visionary" as in only existing in their own minds. National website? I've got several of those, too. Actually, mine are international, like every other website out there. Revolutionary billion dollar invention? You have no idea how delusional you sound, do you? You sound like that guy on "American Inventor" who wasted 20 years of his life, tossed away his career and his marriage and was living out of his car, all for "Bullet Ball."
And now try doing all that when you're 15. So much for your whole "wasted 20 years of his life" theory.
I'm not arrogant, I'm just motivated.
But my whole point of my argument was that this has NOTHING to do with me. Attack ideas, not people.
You also assume that I don't know ANYTHING about Multi-Touch. I know as much as you know, so what makes you think that you're more qualified to say that Multi-Touch IS viable for other devices? And to be honest, Multi-Touch is not this abstract concept that's hard to get. So you touch the screen, and the computer recognizes gestures and acts accordingly. Revolutionary in practice yes (Kudos to Apple), but certainly not revolution in theory.
And one of my projects specifically deals with a touch screen interface by the way.
One last thing: while I am serious that I'm sick and tired of people over-hyping multi-touch, I was also partially joking as evident by my choice of words. Lighten up.
Quote:
Originally Posted by lfe2211
Kolchak,
On the basketball court, when you dunk exceptionally hard in the face of your defender, it's called a "facial". I do believe you have just delivered one hellacious facial on Mr. icfireball.
I believe the term these days is "TREATED"
And Kolchak is certainly treated.
But P.S. lfe2211, I've got to give you credit for humour. There are two things I hate in the world: boring people and pushovers. Closely correlated but not quite the same.
If you knew me, you'd know that I have plenty of vision. Making qualitative statements solely based on one opinion of mine you don't happen to share isn't a great way to start your argument. And then than insulting my intelligence by implying that I don't agree with you because I'm too stupid to fully understand Multi-Touch technology? You're on a roll now, aren't you? And then you try to discredit me by trivializing my world as being small in insignificant? As it turns out, I spend a lot of time doing photography, designing web graphics, building websites, editing video... and get this -- I'm a student -- I have a huge scope of the world because I HAVE to.
I would imagine that most of us here are, or have been students. What is that comment supposed to mean! I also know plenty of students who have very little understanding of Real World application and implementation. We study because we have to learn! I have completed my current desired level of education and also have several years of real world experience on top of that, as well as experience in between previous stages of learning. Being a student by no means gives you a huge scope of the world as you put it. That my friend is pure arrogance.
Quote:
The click wheel is not analogous to the mouse's scroll wheel because the mouse's scroll wheel couldn't function as a stand-alone, and there are considerable differences between a computer mouse UI and a click wheel GUI. A click-wheel interface on a computer would be disastrous. Scrolling of the wheel would represent the rotating through the selectable elements on the computer screen. On my visible computer screen right now, I can see a total of 131 selectable elements. What glorious fun it would be to scroll through all of those elements to get to the one I wanted to.
I don't think you quite grasped the example I was trying to give here. You mentioned in a previous post that, in fact I quote:
Quote:
Think about why we don't have the click wheel as a computer interface for a moment and it might dawn on you why we don't need the multi-touch over what we have now.
The click wheel is analogous to the jog wheel, they function in very much the same way. As for their graphical user interfaces, well almost every modern OS supports them. Why you assume that the click wheel would be used as a primary input device here I really don't know, after all, we're talking about multitouch!
There are countless applications that rely heavily on a click/jog wheel as a primary input device, in fact who doesn't use their jog wheel to scroll through documents these days? I also have a click wheel on my keyboard and I use it a lot!
These are used in abundance in the music, 3D design and movie industries already. If you had done any studio video editing, you would be more than familiar with these. Below are some examples for every day use (none application specific):
You see people do actually want these kinds of input devices. A mouse just isn't enough these days, we are doing far more with computers and we need to find ways to make them more versatile, intuitive and immersive. I think multitouch is an inevitable component in doing just that.
Quote:
The mouse allows you to make small hand movements which translate to accurate larger movements. No improvement needed.
Yes this is true, although with a mouse, as I have pointed out before, you only have one point of contact with your GUI. In design, music and film, it is often desirable to have more.
Quote:
Multi-touch allows you to make accurate movements over a SMALL surface area in a PORTABLE way.
Why you assume this I have no idea. Multitouch would actually be far more accurate over a larger surface area.
Quote:
You don't need that for a desktop! Maybe for a tablet, but that's a whole other bag of issues there. For instance, what is the PURPOSE of the tablet? What interface do you NEED with that application of the tablet. If you're scribbling notes, a stylus is useful for handwriting-to-text recognition because some people can write faster than they type. Or if you have to draw something, again, a stylus would be more useful and accurate. For an iPhone, multi-touch is great because it's purpose doesn't require a stylus. And I'm sure the keyboard on an iPhone is a pleasure for the tips, but it will never be as accurate as a regular keyboard.
I can't help thinking that you're just not looking forward here, you're trying to apply multitouch to what we know and do now. Perhaps you see no need for multitouch in what you currently do, that may be the case. But I would almost be happy to lay down cash to say you'll be using it within the next few years.
Quote:
As far as vision, I have a lot of visionary projects going right now. A multi-million dollar development project, a national web site and service, and a revolutionary invention in a billion dollar industry.
As I do not doubt what you say, I'm sure many of us could lay down similar claims including myself.
And now try doing all that when you're 15. So much for your whole "wasted 20 years of his life" theory.
I'm not arrogant, I'm just motivated.
It wasn't a theory. It was a simile. They do still teach about similes in school, don't they? That guy was "motivated," too, but it got him nowhere except on a road to ruin. You're still young. In years to come, you will come to realize just how silly your claims to future fame and fortune were. Those who can, do. Those who can't, boast on the 'net. I'll tell you now, admitting you're 15 yet claiming to be working on "multimillion dollar projects" has pretty much destroyed your credibility on this forum, even if others won't come out and say so out of politeness.
Having dreams isn't all bad. We all have them, and every last adult here can tell you of dreams that never came true no matter how much we wished and tried. Believe me, we've all been where you are. But what's really bad is when you lose touch with reality as that man on American Inventor did. He steadfastly insisted his Bullet Ball game would become an Olympic sport, despite four very successful businesspeople telling him it's nothing, pleading for him to get his life back and looking at him with more than a little pity in their eyes. Maybe you think you're going to make the next big computer game. I know somebody who has the same dream. He's sure he's going to make it big. I've told him 3D first person shooters and RPGs cost a fortune to develop and another fortune to market nowadays, and a one-man operation on a shoestring budget isn't going to blow the industry away. He's very intelligent, but just turned 41, hasn't held a job in five years and doesn't have much working code after ten years. Don't be like them.
Quote:
You also assume that I don't know ANYTHING about Multi-Touch. I know as much as you know, so what makes you think that you're more qualified to say that Multi-Touch IS viable for other devices?
Um, because I've been using it for years? I use MultiTouch, the real deal, every day. I have a FingerWorks iGesture pad that specifically says MultiTouch on it right next to my keyboard as I type. Do you want a picture of it? Are you sure you know as much as I do about it considering you've never seen MultiTouch in action in person, much less laid hands on it? You're making bad assumptions based on misinterpretations of secondhand reports of a device not even on the market yet. I'm telling you you're dead wrong based on over a thousand days of hands-on experience with MultiTouch. I'm not assuming anything. You demonstrate every time that you really don't know about it by making statements that are contrary to the reality I experience at my fingertips. You assume MultiTouch needs two hands. You assume Apple created MultiTouch. You assume it was created for the iPhone. You assume nobody outside of Apple has used MultiTouch extensively. You assume it can't work better than a mouse. You assume MultiTouch=touchscreen. Every last point wrong.
Quote:
And to be honest, Multi-Touch is not this abstract concept that's hard to get. So you touch the screen, and the computer recognizes gestures and acts accordingly. Revolutionary in practice yes (Kudos to Apple), but certainly not revolution in theory.
There you go again. Every time you put fingers to keyboard, you betray your ignorance, just like when you claimed people would have to use two hands to zoom with MultiTouch.
I'll try to make it easy for you to understand: Apple did not invent MultiTouch and deserves no kudos for that. FingerWorks invented MultiTouch years ago and they had the patents to prove it. Not a MultiTouch-like technology, but THE actual, original MultiTouch technology. Apple bought FingerWorks' patents after they went out of business and is adapting MultiTouch to the iPhone. Google "apple fingerworks." Here, do a little reading: FingerWorks' website. Learn a little about the gestures with their user guides for products thousands of people have bought and used. You will find not one, solitary two-handed gesture of the type that you ridiculed in an earlier post based on false assumptions.
You're going to find that a lot of things are easy in theory but difficult in practice. Ask any artificial intelligence researcher the difference between theory and practice. Or heck, go watch any episode of Mythbusters. Read the argument between Melgross and Vinea in this very thread about how often theories (I'm referring to your certainty of success) turn out to be wrong. There's a quote from Thomas Edison that you'll find quite true if you intend to keep experimenting. As he struggled to develop the first working light bulb, somebody had asked him if he had any results to show for years of research, to which he said something like, "Results? Why, yes, man, I have a lot of results. I know of several thousand things that will not work!"
Quote:
And one of my projects specifically deals with a touch screen interface by the way.
And there again, you prove you know almost nothing about MultiTouch. It does NOT need to be a touchscreen, although obviously on a small device like the iPhone, a touchscreen is essential to save space. And you will not find a touchscreen that will accept input from multiple contact points for your project.
Quote:
The mouse allows you to make small hand movements which translate to accurate larger movements. No improvement needed.
Again, bad assumption. I can and do exactly the same thing with my iGesture pad. A single flick of my fingers can get my cursor from one edge of my 20" display to the opposite edge of my 19" display. Yet, I can do a lot of work in Fireworks or Photoshop accurate down to a single pixel, limited only by the steadiness of my hand and the sharpness of my vision, the same as working with a mouse. And in fact, your assumption on this is completely wrong. Think about it. If you want precision, you want gross hand movements to scale down to fine cursor movements, not vice versa. Would you get precision if every 0.001" of hand motion translated to 1" of on-screen cursor motion? A slight hand tremor would send your cursor halfway across the screen! It's the principle behind the pantograph. A principle behind the surgical robotics systems. Also the same principle behind increasing the magnification in Photoshop so you can more easily pick out single pixels. Much easier working at 400% than 100% because less precise hand movements are needed.
It wasn't a theory. It was a simile. They do still teach about similes in school, don't they? That guy was "motivated," too, but it got him nowhere except on a road to ruin. You're still young. In years to come, you will come to realize just how silly your claims to future fame and fortune were. Those who can, do. Those who can't, boast on the 'net. I'll tell you now, admitting you're 15 yet claiming to be working on "multimillion dollar projects" has pretty much destroyed your credibility on this forum, even if others won't come out and say so out of politeness.
Having dreams isn't all bad. We all have them, and every last adult here can tell you of dreams that never came true no matter how much we wished and tried. Believe me, we've all been where you are. But what's really bad is when you lose touch with reality as that man on American Inventor did. He steadfastly insisted his Bullet Ball game would become an Olympic sport, despite four very successful businesspeople telling him it's nothing, pleading for him to get his life back and looking at him with more than a little pity in their eyes. Maybe you think you're going to make the next big computer game. I know somebody who has the same dream. He's sure he's going to make it big. I've told him 3D first person shooters and RPGs cost a fortune to develop and another fortune to market nowadays, and a one-man operation on a shoestring budget isn't going to blow the industry away. He's very intelligent, but just turned 41, hasn't held a job in five years and doesn't have much working code after ten years. Don't be like them.
Again, don't assume. Youth are just as, if not sometimes more, capable of great things. Many adults are very arrogant about this. Anyways, I have a track record at any rate. These aren't empty boasts. I'll have to get the building project done or I'll fail my independent study. We (we being me and a group of several other students) might be getting a grant for this invention project, and this website idea I have it something no other website does.
Again as I said, Multi-touch is revolutionary in IMPLEMENTATION, but not in theory. It's a simple theory, but complex and scarcely used in practice. And that's why I said Kudos to Apple...for IMPLEMENTING it. I was already aware FingerWorks invented it.
Give me specifically examples of things that NEED multiple contact points. Again, like I said already, don't start a pissfest. Attack ideas, not people.
No, just objecting to the idea that it is a trivial matter in other domains. Easier, yes. Trivial? No. The reason that physics experiments are "a big mother f**ken deal" is driven in large part by the high cost of the major experiments. Hence the increased rigor to develop the justification for performing the experiment.
Financial is simply one aspect, yes. Physicists are top dog in science and arguably the hardest domain but Dr. Kornberg (Chemistry laurette) is no less brilliant than Drs. Smoot and Mather. While his research also spanned 20 years I doubt it cost as much as COBE and his X-ray crystallographic equipment isn't orbiting the earth with empty dewars. The number of significant experiments in other fields, due to smaller costs, likely outnumbers those of theoretical and astro physics.
Where lfe2211 seems to defend primarily physicists, I would say that applies to all sciences, hard or soft. Some easier perhaps. None trivial.
Vinea
"
Vinea old chap, I think you missed many of the points in my rather lengthy post. I am a practicing immunologist/biochemist. I do not think that work/ideas/concepts/rigor in my field or any of the other biological/chemical sciences is "trivial" , absolutely or relatively, compared to work/ideas/concepts/rigor in theoretical physics. I said as much in lauding the great achievements in medicine, immunology, genomic science, etc. What I did say was that in my field, testing an hypothesis is far easier on a practical level compared to theoretical physics wherein one is dependent on a very few high priced mega-structures called particle colliders to test hypotheses. The queue to use such structures is, as you know, quite restricted and quite selective. Hence, the theoretical physicist is very limited in his ability to, for example, test the validity of an hypothesized property of a particular subatomic particle (take yout pick) or , Holy Einstein , demonstrate that different subatomic particles correspond to different vibrations of strings (as predicted by string theorists).
But again, alas, I digress from the intent of this Mac Future Hardware forum.
May I suggest that before you become the next Bill Gates, you improve your written communication and listening skills. I think that might help you immensely in achieving your rather. dare I say it, lofty goals.
May I suggest that before you become the next Bill Gates, you improve your written communication and listening skills. I think that might help you immensely in achieving your rather. dare I say it, lofty goals.
lfe2211, my good chap, methinks you are, perhaps, somewhat verbose, but as the great philosopher Spinoza didn't say, lofty language, a thesaurus, and an appeal to your profession and education do not a solid logical argument make.
In addition to PEP-II closing down, and the Tevatron closing down, there is also the CESR at Cornell that has closed down mostly already, and will finish shortly.
There's much more, but this should do it.
If the ILC won't be available then Tevatron will likely be kept alive. In 2009 we'll have another administration, possibly from another party and Congress has been realtively more supportive than this admistration has been. Given that DOE has said no ILC likely for an extra 5 years my guess is congress will keep the Tevatron longer rather than have a 15 year gap even if the Tevatron will be outclassed by the LHC.
SLAC is getting the LCLS in 2009 which is an exciting instrument although not for high energy physicists. Losing the PEP-II is a shame but I believe that the LCLS is a good trade. Its also not like the US is starving the scientific community or even the high-energy/nuclear physicsts given the $500M spent at CERN. The priority has shifted in favor of other research areas but DOE has $4B alone.
If we don't get the ILC then you can close the chapter on US HEP.
Vinea
PS As an aside...one GLAST instrument was built at SLAC and NSF is funding particle and nuclear astrophysics at $16M a year. Source? Your Science article. Why assume I don't have access? Provide link then excerpt.
Vinea old chap, I think you missed many of the points in my rather lengthy post. I am a practicing immunologist/biochemist. I do not think that work/ideas/concepts/rigor in my field or any of the other biological/chemical sciences is "trivial" , absolutely or relatively, compared to work/ideas/concepts/rigor in theoretical physics.
I didn't disagree with your sentiment, just the wording. Look up pedantic in Google and you get to see my picture...
Comments
PB,
Nice to make your acquaintance. It's good to know at least one forum member understood my rather lengthy complex post. Are you a mathematician? I'll be glad to have your input any time, pro or con.
lfe2211,
It is completely pointless to post publicly my qualifications, so check out your PM.
Mel,
(BTW, have you figured out yet which Discover article is the traditional annual April "fake" entry? I'm on the road so I haven't seen my Discover copy yet).
While making coffee for breakfast a short while ago, it occurred to me what the April Fool's joke might be.
As I've never read a major article in Discover that was faked, I realised that it wasn't an article at all.
On page 76, under the 'Mind Games" heading, they have their puzzles. This month the feature is Fibonacci.
This puzzle is named "Area Paradox", in which a square is cut into peculiar portions, and then reassembled into different shapes, one of which is claimed to have slightly more area than the original, and another, less.
As that's patently false, I spent several minutes attempting to figure out why it wasn't. But, after deciding that my mathematical skills are no longer up to the task, I turned to the answers page, only to find out that they had cheated.
So far, that's all I've found, but I haven't read the entire issue.
It seems that you are missing the non-financial part in what lfe2211 said.
No, just objecting to the idea that it is a trivial matter in other domains. Easier, yes. Trivial? No. The reason that physics experiments are "a big mother f**ken deal" is driven in large part by the high cost of the major experiments. Hence the increased rigor to develop the justification for performing the experiment.
Financial is simply one aspect, yes. Physicists are top dog in science and arguably the hardest domain but Dr. Kornberg (Chemistry laurette) is no less brilliant than Drs. Smoot and Mather. While his research also spanned 20 years I doubt it cost as much as COBE and his X-ray crystallographic equipment isn't orbiting the earth with empty dewars. The number of significant experiments in other fields, due to smaller costs, likely outnumbers those of theoretical and astro physics.
Where lfe2211 seems to defend primarily physicists, I would say that applies to all sciences, hard or soft. Some easier perhaps. None trivial.
Vinea
A flat out denial that a particular paper may be incorrect in its conclusions, or even its design, just because it has been published, particularly if it is in a more obscure journal, where publishing papers is the lifeblood of that journal, is not helpful. I'm not referring to you here ife2211. But, that is what started this.
There was never any flat out denial that a study could be incorrect in its conclusion. In fact the originial post indicated that the value of the conclusion is subject to the limitations common to any small study.
What started this is your cherry picking specific pieces of the presentation out of context to try to show it supported your assertion even though the conclusion were opposite.
If you had simply objected to the sample size I would have simply said "Yes, that's inherent in the kind of resources available to these kinds of study...12 is likely the bare minimum to have any statistical value whatsoever even with a single independent variable". This is EXACTLY what I said in another thread about the subject although we got slightly more technical (ie beyond my expertise in statistics).
However, I will not agree to the assertion that the study was poorly or incompetently designed as you suggest without having more information. And I will not agree that ancedotal experience has more validity than even limited studies.
Vinea
While we seem to have gotten dragged far afield in a discussion about experimentation in physics, I can certainly agree that, today, most experiments in that field are so very costly, that this country has, almost criminally, destroyed the physics community here, by refusing to provide funding for the very expensive facilities required.
While the main facilities have either recently closed down, or will be doing so in the near future, other groups of countries continue to build. While we do take part in those works as well (the US will have the largest contingent when the new facility in Europe goes on line fairly shortly (fairly shortly means something different in the physics community than it does in other disciplines!)), we are subject to a dwindling base of resources here.
The same problem is seen relating to work in fusion.
Modern physics is also very different from most other sciences. Some theoretical advances (String Theories, anyone?) are proving difficult to design experiments around, though Dr. Randall is hopeful about some aspects of the new collider.
Fermi was being held to 2006 funding but congress came through with another $200M to DOE and eliminated some restrictions on how some of DOE's budget has to be spent. How much of that goes to Fermi I dunno but there should be no shutdowns or layoffs.
US expenditure is not stellar but not horrid.
I don't believe that the location for international collider has been determined. Fermi is, of course, the US DOE's choice.
CERN's large hadron collider is coming on line and CERN and Fermi are both searching for the Higgs' boson and presumably if Fermi has any money it will go toward that effort.
Vinea
icfireball I completely agree with you 100%
High-five!
Brilliant. You weren't content flaunting your complete and utter ignorance of MultiTouch in just one topic, you wanted to cross-post it in two.
Here's another bit of news for you, Einstein: Nobody's forcing you to read these topics. If you don't like it, don't read it. Nobody died and made you king, so you can't tell people what they can or can't post.
I didn't make an official decree demanding that no one post about Multi-Touch; I simplify gave my opinion. So just because you don't agree with me, you assume by defacto that I have a God-complex? You're the one with the attitude problem -- you don't have to patronize me just because you don't agree with me. Real mature.
You really have no vision do you? Or any real understanding of the practicalities of MT technology? A mouse or Wacom style pen may be precise, but there's only one point of contact with your onscreen objects, so you can only move one object or rotate one axis at a time. This may be fine in your little world, but to the design, music and film industry MT offers a huge advantage.
We don't have a click wheel on our desktops? Yes we do, it's called the scroll wheel on your mouse! That does exactly the same job and probably 90% of us use them.
If you knew me, you'd know that I have plenty of vision. Making qualitative statements solely based on one opinion of mine you don't happen to share isn't a great way to start your argument. And then than insulting my intelligence by implying that I don't agree with you because I'm too stupid to fully understand Multi-Touch technology? You're on a roll now, aren't you? And then you try to discredit me by trivializing my world as being small in insignificant? As it turns out, I spend a lot of time doing photography, designing web graphics, building websites, editing video... and get this -- I'm a student -- I have a huge scope of the world because I HAVE to.
The click wheel is not analogous to the mouse's scroll wheel because the mouse's scroll wheel couldn't function as a stand-alone, and there are considerable differences between a computer mouse UI and a click wheel GUI. A click-wheel interface on a computer would be disastrous. Scrolling of the wheel would represent the rotating through the selectable elements on the computer screen. On my visible computer screen right now, I can see a total of 131 selectable elements. What glorious fun it would be to scroll through all of those elements to get to the one I wanted to.
The mouse allows you to make small hand movements which translate to accurate larger movements. No improvement needed. Multi-touch allows you to make accurate movements over a SMALL surface area in a PORTABLE way. You don't need that for a desktop! Maybe for a tablet, but that's a whole other bag of issues there. For instance, what is the PURPOSE of the tablet? What interface do you NEED with that application of the tablet. If you're scribbling notes, a stylus is useful for handwriting-to-text recognition because some people can write faster than they type. Or if you have to draw something, again, a stylus would be more useful and accurate. For an iPhone, multi-touch is great because it's purpose doesn't require a stylus. And I'm sure the keyboard on an iPhone is a pleasure for the tips, but it will never be as accurate as a regular keyboard.
As far as vision, I have a lot of visionary projects going right now. A multi-million dollar development project, a national web site and service, and a revolutionary invention in a billion dollar industry.
I didn't make an official decree demanding that no one post about Multi-Touch; I simplify gave my opinion. So just because you don't agree with me, you assume by defacto that I have a God-complex? You're the one with the attitude problem -- you don't have to patronize me just because you don't agree with me. Real mature.
Well, excuuuuuse me if I get the wrong impression when somebody says "Stop with the posts!" That doesn't seem like an opinion. That's an imperial edict. You want to know why you got slapped down? It's because you don't know anything about MultiTouch yet decided you were an expert. "Invented for the iPhone." You haven't done any research at all about MultiTouch other than reading about the iPhone. You don't know the first thing about it, have never touched a Fingerworks product, but consider yourself completely authoritative in saying it's worthless. You're as bad as the buggy whip manufacturers who claimed that that new-fangled horseless carriage would never amount to anything.
Here's another bit of news for you: Any time somebody brags they're working on visionary multimillion dollar projects, everybody knows they actually mean "visionary" as in only existing in their own minds. National website? I've got several of those, too. Actually, mine are international, like every other website out there. Revolutionary billion dollar invention? You have no idea how delusional you sound, do you? You sound like that guy on "American Inventor" who wasted 20 years of his life, tossed away his career and his marriage and was living out of his car, all for "Bullet Ball."
Fermi was being held to 2006 funding but congress came through with another $200M to DOE and eliminated some restrictions on how some of DOE's budget has to be spent. How much of that goes to Fermi I dunno but there should be no shutdowns or layoffs.
US expenditure is not stellar but not horrid.
I don't believe that the location for international collider has been determined. Fermi is, of course, the US DOE's choice.
CERN's large hadron collider is coming on line and CERN and Fermi are both searching for the Higgs' boson and presumably if Fermi has any money it will go toward that effort.
Vinea
Unfortunately, I can't simply direct you to an article in Science, as it is restricted to members, but I can provide some quotes. From this article:
Science 5 January 2007:
Vol. 315. no. 5808, pp. 56 - 58
DOI: 10.1126/science.315.5808.56
News
Stalking Discovery From the Infinitesimal to the Infinite
Adrian Cho
But even as particle astrophysics blossoms, some researchers worry about its future. Steven Ritz, a particle physicist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and project scientist for GLAST, fears that the rise of particle astrophysics could undermine accelerator-based research. "Sometimes the movement is interpreted to mean that there's no need to build accelerators anymore, that you can do it all from space," he says, "and that's just not right." Even so, the number of colliders is falling, especially in the United States. SLAC will shutter its PEP-II collider in 2008, and a year later Fermilab will unplug the Tevatron, leaving the United States with no colliders for particle physics.
From this article:
Science 2 March 2007:
Vol. 315. no. 5816, p. 1203
DOI: 10.1126/science.315.5816.1203
News of the Week
PARTICLE PHYSICS:
Dreams Collide With Reality for International Experiment
Adrian Cho*
U.S. high-energy physicists are scrambling to plug a hole in the long-range plans of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) for their field after the department's top scientist warned them that they may have to wait years longer than they'd hoped for their dream machine.
Three weeks ago, an international team released a design and cost estimate for the International Linear Collider (ILC) (Science, 9 February, p. 746). American physicists want to build the ILC at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) in Batavia, Illinois, and researchers had hoped to break ground in 2012 and fire up the ILC's beams of electrons and positrons in 2019. But last week, DOE Under Secretary for Science Raymond Orbach told the government's High Energy Physics Advisory Panel to add 5 years or more to that timeline, extending a projected gap during which the United States will not have a particle smasher (see table). Orbach asked the panel to bridge the gap with smaller-scale projects, a request that vexes researchers whose experiments were canceled in part to free up resources for the ILC.
"Even assuming a positive decision to build an ILC, the schedules will almost certainly be lengthier than the optimistic projections," Orbach told the panel at its meeting in Washington, D.C. "Completing the R&D and engineering design, negotiating an international structure, selecting a site, obtaining firm financial commitments, and building a machine could take us well into the mid-2020s, if not later," he added.
In addition to PEP-II closing down, and the Tevatron closing down, there is also the CESR at Cornell that has closed down mostly already, and will finish shortly.
Meanwhile, Orbach's call for a program of smaller projects evoked jeers from researchers whose experiments had been cut. "This is really stupid and very frustrating because we had a program," says Sheldon Stone, a physicist at Syracuse University in New York who worked on an experiment called BTeV that would have run at the Tevatron collider at Fermilab.
There's much more, but this should do it.
On the basketball court, when you dunk exceptionally hard in the face of your defender, it's called a "facial". I do believe you have just delivered one hellacious facial on Mr. icfireball.
Well, excuuuuuse me if I get the wrong impression when somebody says "Stop with the posts!" That doesn't seem like an opinion. That's an imperial edict. You want to know why you got slapped down? It's because you don't know anything about MultiTouch yet decided you were an expert. "Invented for the iPhone." You haven't done any research at all about MultiTouch other than reading about the iPhone. You don't know the first thing about it, have never touched a Fingerworks product, but consider yourself completely authoritative in saying it's worthless. You're as bad as the buggy whip manufacturers who claimed that that new-fangled horseless carriage would never amount to anything.
Here's another bit of news for you: Any time somebody brags they're working on visionary multimillion dollar projects, everybody knows they actually mean "visionary" as in only existing in their own minds. National website? I've got several of those, too. Actually, mine are international, like every other website out there. Revolutionary billion dollar invention? You have no idea how delusional you sound, do you? You sound like that guy on "American Inventor" who wasted 20 years of his life, tossed away his career and his marriage and was living out of his car, all for "Bullet Ball."
And now try doing all that when you're 15. So much for your whole "wasted 20 years of his life" theory.
I'm not arrogant, I'm just motivated.
But my whole point of my argument was that this has NOTHING to do with me. Attack ideas, not people.
You also assume that I don't know ANYTHING about Multi-Touch. I know as much as you know, so what makes you think that you're more qualified to say that Multi-Touch IS viable for other devices? And to be honest, Multi-Touch is not this abstract concept that's hard to get. So you touch the screen, and the computer recognizes gestures and acts accordingly. Revolutionary in practice yes (Kudos to Apple), but certainly not revolution in theory.
And one of my projects specifically deals with a touch screen interface by the way.
One last thing: while I am serious that I'm sick and tired of people over-hyping multi-touch, I was also partially joking as evident by my choice of words. Lighten up.
Kolchak,
On the basketball court, when you dunk exceptionally hard in the face of your defender, it's called a "facial". I do believe you have just delivered one hellacious facial on Mr. icfireball.
I believe the term these days is "TREATED"
And Kolchak is certainly treated.
But P.S. lfe2211, I've got to give you credit for humour. There are two things I hate in the world: boring people and pushovers. Closely correlated but not quite the same.
If you knew me, you'd know that I have plenty of vision. Making qualitative statements solely based on one opinion of mine you don't happen to share isn't a great way to start your argument. And then than insulting my intelligence by implying that I don't agree with you because I'm too stupid to fully understand Multi-Touch technology? You're on a roll now, aren't you? And then you try to discredit me by trivializing my world as being small in insignificant? As it turns out, I spend a lot of time doing photography, designing web graphics, building websites, editing video... and get this -- I'm a student -- I have a huge scope of the world because I HAVE to.
I would imagine that most of us here are, or have been students. What is that comment supposed to mean! I also know plenty of students who have very little understanding of Real World application and implementation. We study because we have to learn! I have completed my current desired level of education and also have several years of real world experience on top of that, as well as experience in between previous stages of learning. Being a student by no means gives you a huge scope of the world as you put it. That my friend is pure arrogance.
The click wheel is not analogous to the mouse's scroll wheel because the mouse's scroll wheel couldn't function as a stand-alone, and there are considerable differences between a computer mouse UI and a click wheel GUI. A click-wheel interface on a computer would be disastrous. Scrolling of the wheel would represent the rotating through the selectable elements on the computer screen. On my visible computer screen right now, I can see a total of 131 selectable elements. What glorious fun it would be to scroll through all of those elements to get to the one I wanted to.
I don't think you quite grasped the example I was trying to give here. You mentioned in a previous post that, in fact I quote:
Think about why we don't have the click wheel as a computer interface for a moment and it might dawn on you why we don't need the multi-touch over what we have now.
The click wheel is analogous to the jog wheel, they function in very much the same way. As for their graphical user interfaces, well almost every modern OS supports them. Why you assume that the click wheel would be used as a primary input device here I really don't know, after all, we're talking about multitouch!
There are countless applications that rely heavily on a click/jog wheel as a primary input device, in fact who doesn't use their jog wheel to scroll through documents these days? I also have a click wheel on my keyboard and I use it a lot!
These are used in abundance in the music, 3D design and movie industries already. If you had done any studio video editing, you would be more than familiar with these. Below are some examples for every day use (none application specific):
http://www.logitech.com/index.cfm/pr...B/EN,crid=1720
http://www.contourdesign.com/shuttlepro/
http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/periphera...eel-214750.php
http://www.trust.com/products/product.aspx?artnr=15036
You see people do actually want these kinds of input devices. A mouse just isn't enough these days, we are doing far more with computers and we need to find ways to make them more versatile, intuitive and immersive. I think multitouch is an inevitable component in doing just that.
The mouse allows you to make small hand movements which translate to accurate larger movements. No improvement needed.
Yes this is true, although with a mouse, as I have pointed out before, you only have one point of contact with your GUI. In design, music and film, it is often desirable to have more.
Multi-touch allows you to make accurate movements over a SMALL surface area in a PORTABLE way.
Why you assume this I have no idea. Multitouch would actually be far more accurate over a larger surface area.
You don't need that for a desktop! Maybe for a tablet, but that's a whole other bag of issues there. For instance, what is the PURPOSE of the tablet? What interface do you NEED with that application of the tablet. If you're scribbling notes, a stylus is useful for handwriting-to-text recognition because some people can write faster than they type. Or if you have to draw something, again, a stylus would be more useful and accurate. For an iPhone, multi-touch is great because it's purpose doesn't require a stylus. And I'm sure the keyboard on an iPhone is a pleasure for the tips, but it will never be as accurate as a regular keyboard.
I can't help thinking that you're just not looking forward here, you're trying to apply multitouch to what we know and do now. Perhaps you see no need for multitouch in what you currently do, that may be the case. But I would almost be happy to lay down cash to say you'll be using it within the next few years.
As far as vision, I have a lot of visionary projects going right now. A multi-million dollar development project, a national web site and service, and a revolutionary invention in a billion dollar industry.
As I do not doubt what you say, I'm sure many of us could lay down similar claims including myself.
And now try doing all that when you're 15. So much for your whole "wasted 20 years of his life" theory.
I'm not arrogant, I'm just motivated.
It wasn't a theory. It was a simile. They do still teach about similes in school, don't they? That guy was "motivated," too, but it got him nowhere except on a road to ruin. You're still young. In years to come, you will come to realize just how silly your claims to future fame and fortune were. Those who can, do. Those who can't, boast on the 'net. I'll tell you now, admitting you're 15 yet claiming to be working on "multimillion dollar projects" has pretty much destroyed your credibility on this forum, even if others won't come out and say so out of politeness.
Having dreams isn't all bad. We all have them, and every last adult here can tell you of dreams that never came true no matter how much we wished and tried. Believe me, we've all been where you are. But what's really bad is when you lose touch with reality as that man on American Inventor did. He steadfastly insisted his Bullet Ball game would become an Olympic sport, despite four very successful businesspeople telling him it's nothing, pleading for him to get his life back and looking at him with more than a little pity in their eyes. Maybe you think you're going to make the next big computer game. I know somebody who has the same dream. He's sure he's going to make it big. I've told him 3D first person shooters and RPGs cost a fortune to develop and another fortune to market nowadays, and a one-man operation on a shoestring budget isn't going to blow the industry away. He's very intelligent, but just turned 41, hasn't held a job in five years and doesn't have much working code after ten years. Don't be like them.
You also assume that I don't know ANYTHING about Multi-Touch. I know as much as you know, so what makes you think that you're more qualified to say that Multi-Touch IS viable for other devices?
Um, because I've been using it for years? I use MultiTouch, the real deal, every day. I have a FingerWorks iGesture pad that specifically says MultiTouch on it right next to my keyboard as I type. Do you want a picture of it? Are you sure you know as much as I do about it considering you've never seen MultiTouch in action in person, much less laid hands on it? You're making bad assumptions based on misinterpretations of secondhand reports of a device not even on the market yet. I'm telling you you're dead wrong based on over a thousand days of hands-on experience with MultiTouch. I'm not assuming anything. You demonstrate every time that you really don't know about it by making statements that are contrary to the reality I experience at my fingertips. You assume MultiTouch needs two hands. You assume Apple created MultiTouch. You assume it was created for the iPhone. You assume nobody outside of Apple has used MultiTouch extensively. You assume it can't work better than a mouse. You assume MultiTouch=touchscreen. Every last point wrong.
And to be honest, Multi-Touch is not this abstract concept that's hard to get. So you touch the screen, and the computer recognizes gestures and acts accordingly. Revolutionary in practice yes (Kudos to Apple), but certainly not revolution in theory.
There you go again. Every time you put fingers to keyboard, you betray your ignorance, just like when you claimed people would have to use two hands to zoom with MultiTouch.
I'll try to make it easy for you to understand: Apple did not invent MultiTouch and deserves no kudos for that. FingerWorks invented MultiTouch years ago and they had the patents to prove it. Not a MultiTouch-like technology, but THE actual, original MultiTouch technology. Apple bought FingerWorks' patents after they went out of business and is adapting MultiTouch to the iPhone. Google "apple fingerworks." Here, do a little reading: FingerWorks' website. Learn a little about the gestures with their user guides for products thousands of people have bought and used. You will find not one, solitary two-handed gesture of the type that you ridiculed in an earlier post based on false assumptions.
You're going to find that a lot of things are easy in theory but difficult in practice. Ask any artificial intelligence researcher the difference between theory and practice. Or heck, go watch any episode of Mythbusters. Read the argument between Melgross and Vinea in this very thread about how often theories (I'm referring to your certainty of success) turn out to be wrong. There's a quote from Thomas Edison that you'll find quite true if you intend to keep experimenting. As he struggled to develop the first working light bulb, somebody had asked him if he had any results to show for years of research, to which he said something like, "Results? Why, yes, man, I have a lot of results. I know of several thousand things that will not work!"
And one of my projects specifically deals with a touch screen interface by the way.
And there again, you prove you know almost nothing about MultiTouch. It does NOT need to be a touchscreen, although obviously on a small device like the iPhone, a touchscreen is essential to save space. And you will not find a touchscreen that will accept input from multiple contact points for your project.
The mouse allows you to make small hand movements which translate to accurate larger movements. No improvement needed.
Again, bad assumption. I can and do exactly the same thing with my iGesture pad. A single flick of my fingers can get my cursor from one edge of my 20" display to the opposite edge of my 19" display. Yet, I can do a lot of work in Fireworks or Photoshop accurate down to a single pixel, limited only by the steadiness of my hand and the sharpness of my vision, the same as working with a mouse. And in fact, your assumption on this is completely wrong. Think about it. If you want precision, you want gross hand movements to scale down to fine cursor movements, not vice versa. Would you get precision if every 0.001" of hand motion translated to 1" of on-screen cursor motion? A slight hand tremor would send your cursor halfway across the screen! It's the principle behind the pantograph. A principle behind the surgical robotics systems. Also the same principle behind increasing the magnification in Photoshop so you can more easily pick out single pixels. Much easier working at 400% than 100% because less precise hand movements are needed.
It wasn't a theory. It was a simile. They do still teach about similes in school, don't they? That guy was "motivated," too, but it got him nowhere except on a road to ruin. You're still young. In years to come, you will come to realize just how silly your claims to future fame and fortune were. Those who can, do. Those who can't, boast on the 'net. I'll tell you now, admitting you're 15 yet claiming to be working on "multimillion dollar projects" has pretty much destroyed your credibility on this forum, even if others won't come out and say so out of politeness.
Having dreams isn't all bad. We all have them, and every last adult here can tell you of dreams that never came true no matter how much we wished and tried. Believe me, we've all been where you are. But what's really bad is when you lose touch with reality as that man on American Inventor did. He steadfastly insisted his Bullet Ball game would become an Olympic sport, despite four very successful businesspeople telling him it's nothing, pleading for him to get his life back and looking at him with more than a little pity in their eyes. Maybe you think you're going to make the next big computer game. I know somebody who has the same dream. He's sure he's going to make it big. I've told him 3D first person shooters and RPGs cost a fortune to develop and another fortune to market nowadays, and a one-man operation on a shoestring budget isn't going to blow the industry away. He's very intelligent, but just turned 41, hasn't held a job in five years and doesn't have much working code after ten years. Don't be like them.
Again, don't assume. Youth are just as, if not sometimes more, capable of great things. Many adults are very arrogant about this. Anyways, I have a track record at any rate. These aren't empty boasts. I'll have to get the building project done or I'll fail my independent study. We (we being me and a group of several other students) might be getting a grant for this invention project, and this website idea I have it something no other website does.
Again as I said, Multi-touch is revolutionary in IMPLEMENTATION, but not in theory. It's a simple theory, but complex and scarcely used in practice. And that's why I said Kudos to Apple...for IMPLEMENTING it. I was already aware FingerWorks invented it.
Give me specifically examples of things that NEED multiple contact points. Again, like I said already, don't start a pissfest. Attack ideas, not people.
No, just objecting to the idea that it is a trivial matter in other domains. Easier, yes. Trivial? No. The reason that physics experiments are "a big mother f**ken deal" is driven in large part by the high cost of the major experiments. Hence the increased rigor to develop the justification for performing the experiment.
Financial is simply one aspect, yes. Physicists are top dog in science and arguably the hardest domain but Dr. Kornberg (Chemistry laurette) is no less brilliant than Drs. Smoot and Mather. While his research also spanned 20 years I doubt it cost as much as COBE and his X-ray crystallographic equipment isn't orbiting the earth with empty dewars. The number of significant experiments in other fields, due to smaller costs, likely outnumbers those of theoretical and astro physics.
Where lfe2211 seems to defend primarily physicists, I would say that applies to all sciences, hard or soft. Some easier perhaps. None trivial.
Vinea
"
Vinea old chap, I think you missed many of the points in my rather lengthy post. I am a practicing immunologist/biochemist. I do not think that work/ideas/concepts/rigor in my field or any of the other biological/chemical sciences is "trivial" , absolutely or relatively, compared to work/ideas/concepts/rigor in theoretical physics. I said as much in lauding the great achievements in medicine, immunology, genomic science, etc. What I did say was that in my field, testing an hypothesis is far easier on a practical level compared to theoretical physics wherein one is dependent on a very few high priced mega-structures called particle colliders to test hypotheses. The queue to use such structures is, as you know, quite restricted and quite selective. Hence, the theoretical physicist is very limited in his ability to, for example, test the validity of an hypothesized property of a particular subatomic particle (take yout pick) or , Holy Einstein , demonstrate that different subatomic particles correspond to different vibrations of strings (as predicted by string theorists).
But again, alas, I digress from the intent of this Mac Future Hardware forum.
May I suggest that before you become the next Bill Gates, you improve your written communication and listening skills. I think that might help you immensely in achieving your rather. dare I say it, lofty goals.
Icfireball,
May I suggest that before you become the next Bill Gates, you improve your written communication and listening skills. I think that might help you immensely in achieving your rather. dare I say it, lofty goals.
lfe2211, my good chap, methinks you are, perhaps, somewhat verbose, but as the great philosopher Spinoza didn't say, lofty language, a thesaurus, and an appeal to your profession and education do not a solid logical argument make.
I do in fact agree with everything in your post.
In addition to PEP-II closing down, and the Tevatron closing down, there is also the CESR at Cornell that has closed down mostly already, and will finish shortly.
There's much more, but this should do it.
If the ILC won't be available then Tevatron will likely be kept alive. In 2009 we'll have another administration, possibly from another party and Congress has been realtively more supportive than this admistration has been. Given that DOE has said no ILC likely for an extra 5 years my guess is congress will keep the Tevatron longer rather than have a 15 year gap even if the Tevatron will be outclassed by the LHC.
SLAC is getting the LCLS in 2009 which is an exciting instrument although not for high energy physicists. Losing the PEP-II is a shame but I believe that the LCLS is a good trade. Its also not like the US is starving the scientific community or even the high-energy/nuclear physicsts given the $500M spent at CERN. The priority has shifted in favor of other research areas but DOE has $4B alone.
If we don't get the ILC then you can close the chapter on US HEP.
Vinea
PS As an aside...one GLAST instrument was built at SLAC and NSF is funding particle and nuclear astrophysics at $16M a year. Source? Your Science article. Why assume I don't have access? Provide link then excerpt.
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Vinea old chap, I think you missed many of the points in my rather lengthy post. I am a practicing immunologist/biochemist. I do not think that work/ideas/concepts/rigor in my field or any of the other biological/chemical sciences is "trivial" , absolutely or relatively, compared to work/ideas/concepts/rigor in theoretical physics.
I didn't disagree with your sentiment, just the wording. Look up pedantic in Google and you get to see my picture...
Vinea