Any sceners in CERN ?
category: offtopic [glöplog]
Gargaj: omg. geez, i must be getting old. :D
I worked in CERN in 1991... :)
Well, it was a 1 month student summer job, doing close to nothing (modifying shell scripts because they were changing their printing systems), and got it because my father used to work there... But i spent some time on the net at that time, it was cool! :) And also decided that i would NOT spend the rest of my life behind a computer!
Asking questions about our world (matter structure here) and trying to answer them *might* lead to an increase in mankind's knowledge, and when mankind will be wise enough we will understand that money/benefit (which seems a primary concern of yours and can lead to aberrations such as micr$oft leading the O$ world) is not the only way to motivate people (eg: look at motivations in demos, in chess problems...).
Well, it was a 1 month student summer job, doing close to nothing (modifying shell scripts because they were changing their printing systems), and got it because my father used to work there... But i spent some time on the net at that time, it was cool! :) And also decided that i would NOT spend the rest of my life behind a computer!
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well, that sure sounds like a waste of a whole lot of money to me then... unless there's real scientific benefit somewhere in the future of course. until now i always get the feeling of "why do we do it? because we can!".
Asking questions about our world (matter structure here) and trying to answer them *might* lead to an increase in mankind's knowledge, and when mankind will be wise enough we will understand that money/benefit (which seems a primary concern of yours and can lead to aberrations such as micr$oft leading the O$ world) is not the only way to motivate people (eg: look at motivations in demos, in chess problems...).
so many sceners worked at CERN, no wonder that bloody thing never works!
it is only a gay when particles touch!
Atomic playboys at work.
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First, there are many secondary results that may find real world applications. The most prominent example here is probably the WWW.
Yeah really, who use that stuff anyway?
Truth be told is that WWW was an accident, and according to the people that have been here at the time, it wasn't really considered usefull by the brass here. A wasted oportunity for CERN. And it wasn't the first/last time when something usefull from IT was discovered and the brass said "How does this benefit our physics dept? In no way? It's useless then". People pushed for having a IT *research* dept, but the brass is decidedly physics oriented, and won't let other projects get in the way of physics funding.
kbi : like i told you all those years ago : you *need* to stop drinking ;)
I did some minor simulations regarding the LHC (not at the LHC, but at one of the workgroups responsible for the Atlas detector at the TU München). What I did was I simulated how one of the detectors misinterprets one particular type of particle event - with the goal of getting information on how to tweak the algorithms used for interpreting the raw data from the LHC to get more reliable result, particularly to get an estimate on the number of false positives on certain rare events (including the Higgs boson).
Unfortunately, that kind of work is quite boring (at least it was for me...), so I decided particle physics wasn't for me, and I am in a different field now - but of course I am still very curious about whatever Higgs bosons the LHC may or may not detect!
Unfortunately, that kind of work is quite boring (at least it was for me...), so I decided particle physics wasn't for me, and I am in a different field now - but of course I am still very curious about whatever Higgs bosons the LHC may or may not detect!
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Asking questions about our world (matter structure here) and trying to answer them *might* lead to an increase in mankind's knowledge, and when mankind will be wise enough we will understand that money/benefit (which seems a primary concern of yours and can lead to aberrations such as micr$oft leading the O$ world) is not the only way to motivate people (eg: look at motivations in demos, in chess problems...).
see, i've got nothing against raising our wisdom-bar at all. and money is all but a primary concern for me. i'm just a "should we really spend all the money we have, or is there a way to save some?" guy. i'm as excited as everyone else as to what comes out of this huge experiment. but i will also be one of the first to complain when it turns out to be a major disappointment ;-)
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But you don't get to be that guy - nobody does. You cannot be okay with spending money on scientific research ONLY if the outcome is somehow measurable in your own terms. Either you can support the research, or you can be against it - you don't get to do both.i'm as excited as everyone else as to what comes out of this huge experiment. but i will also be one of the first to complain when it turns out to be a major disappointment ;-)
"LHC - THE WORLD WILL GET SUCKED INTO A BLACK HOLE OR YOUR MONEY BACK!"
@gloom: okay, point taken. i see how your argument is valid and i just should shut the hell up.
btw: if it's only that choice i clearly am supporting!
btw: if it's only that choice i clearly am supporting!
when people refer to the invention of WWW do they mean the invention of HyperText Markup Language or the basic infrastructure? I always thought that the infrastructure came from 1970s Arpanet and that HyperText Markup Language was a cheap copy of all existing "hypermedia" systems at the time. (Cheap as in easy for developers to grasp and thus adopt to their own projects)
i believe it was mostly the combination of a simple hypertext system with, most importantly, globally uniquely identifyable systems (URIs). especially the URI part is what made the web world-wide, and that's the big new thing in it.
i still hate it that email addresses aren't decent URIs.
"oh eh, send that one to mail.teeselink.nl/skrebbel/demoscene, please."
"oh eh, send that one to mail.teeselink.nl/skrebbel/demoscene, please."
go make an RFC about it.
that would have been useful if everybody had their own webspace, but with those online services, mail URI's would become very complicated.
skrebbel, what's wrong with URL's like http://mailto:foo@bar.com ?
-http://
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i'm just a "should we really spend all the money we have, or is there a way to save some?" guy.
So, I am always curious why would anyone want to save money on a global scale. It's not like there's a market in Mars and our governments are interested in it. What will you do with that money if you don't spend it on knowledge and science or for the good of people? Our money doesn't get out of this planet anyway and if you don't rotate it you know what happens. By saving money on a global scale, you aren't doing anything but stopping the money flow from one point to another. The whole point is: Money is meant to be spent, and from what it seems (think of Egyptian pharaohs) you certainly can't take it with you when you die. So, spending money on a global scale is actually a good thing. It really is.
When I was a student one day we were listening to someone talking about things I dont remember, and there came the subject of space exploration and such things, and some other student asked a question about how it was maybe kind of wrong to do such things when people are starving, etc.
I found it soo, so arrogant, inconsistent and stupid to dare say something like this while sitting on a chair in an computer science engineering school instead of going to Africa with a bunch of humanitarian people.
At another talk another man said, "yes, it's the way we humans are. it's like that, it's our madness."
I'd add, it's our strength, it's our beauty, it's our greatness.
Yes, "why do it?" - "Because we can!"
Somehow I find that this is the most beautiful answer.
We would be nowhere without great achievers.
I found it soo, so arrogant, inconsistent and stupid to dare say something like this while sitting on a chair in an computer science engineering school instead of going to Africa with a bunch of humanitarian people.
At another talk another man said, "yes, it's the way we humans are. it's like that, it's our madness."
I'd add, it's our strength, it's our beauty, it's our greatness.
Yes, "why do it?" - "Because we can!"
Somehow I find that this is the most beautiful answer.
We would be nowhere without great achievers.
@Decipher: i'm sorry, but you didn't get my point. (maybe it was made in a confusing way, i have to admit that)
i didn't say "don't spend money on science" or "spend less money on scientific research projects in general". what i meant was: spending money on people who barely do anything (like stated on page 1 of this thread) could be spent more wisely on the project itself or even saved.
very often in big projects - doesn't matter whether in research or the industry - there is a lot of money wasted in details nobody seems to care about. well, i do. i've seen a lot of waste of funds in bigger projects. i'm working in the industry, my girlfriend is a PhD student, we talk about that sometimes, comparing who is wasting more money on "needless" things.
i didn't say "don't spend money on science" or "spend less money on scientific research projects in general". what i meant was: spending money on people who barely do anything (like stated on page 1 of this thread) could be spent more wisely on the project itself or even saved.
very often in big projects - doesn't matter whether in research or the industry - there is a lot of money wasted in details nobody seems to care about. well, i do. i've seen a lot of waste of funds in bigger projects. i'm working in the industry, my girlfriend is a PhD student, we talk about that sometimes, comparing who is wasting more money on "needless" things.
Of course, even I still had a feeling of becoming insensitive when i began to not care the slightest bit about all the freshely printed papers going straight to the trash or the light staying on for plain nothing in my company, but hey. Thats the way it is.
In the end it's only YOU that you're hurting if you're feeling some guilt.
And I know what I'm talking about.
In the end it's only YOU that you're hurting if you're feeling some guilt.
And I know what I'm talking about.
hcdlt: sorry to have gone offtopic :)
I understand.
And I know things often are far from optimal.
Maybe it can be done better.
I guess it's the price to pay for the size of the mess, like the law of diminishing returnns when you add more processor cores to a so-called parallelizable task.
But sure if a better process can be found, why not use it.
I understand.
And I know things often are far from optimal.
Maybe it can be done better.
I guess it's the price to pay for the size of the mess, like the law of diminishing returnns when you add more processor cores to a so-called parallelizable task.
But sure if a better process can be found, why not use it.