User talk:Linas/Archive8

Squid

The image Image:Squid.jpg is copyrighted, and as such, should not appear on user pages. There is a rule about that, and I just thought I would let you know. Cheers, Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 02:13, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

?? In what way? He appears on other objects around my house! No one is suffering loss of revenue from such a display; on the contrary, its free advertising. Last I looked, fan usage of copyrighted materials was legal here in the US. Or did the Republicans take away another one of my civil liberties? linas 14:35, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

That's per Wikipedia policy. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 21:12, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia is taking away your civil liberties, homie. Let's rebel. The Psycho 20:54, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

SPR

Thanks for the encouragement. I will hopefully, however, add no more to the debate. It is very likely that those who feel the same way I do will simply ignore this project, leaving only those who want to institute a hierarchy of reviewers to, well, institute a hierarchy of reviewers. I probably should have just stayed out of it and spent the 15 minutes or so editing some badly put together geochronology articles (or writing up some data!). On an unrelated note, you have an amusing user page. Cheers Rickert 17:40, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

Particle-Wave Duality

Continuing our discussion, which you made disappear via archive: how dare you have such a cavalier attitude about other's (correct) contributions (Paraphrase: If you don't know quantum mechanics don't make contributions) but then suddenly become the most sensitive person when someone else points out your (incorrect) contributions (ie, your remarkable inability to understand the difference between z^2 and |z|^2).

It is YOU who should not be making edits. --Jpawloski 20:26, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

Associated Legendre polynomials

I've answered your comments on Talk:Associated Legendre polynomials. Thanks for clarification!

Bios

I've created an option 3 in the poll, and ventured to move your comment into it, along with my agreement. Hope thats OK, revert if not William M. Connolley 16:19, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

I got a good chuckle from that .. :-) linas 21:26, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

Ernst Kretschmann => Erich Kretschmann

Hi,

where did you find the reference to Ernst K.? It had spread quite wide over Wikipedia, but I think it should be "Erich" instead. I corrected this on some pages, hopefully I found all of them... — MFH:Talk 18:22, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

I have no idea. Possibly a bad google search, or maybe I was interrupted while typing, and resumed with the wrong name in mind ... Sorry, it was a simple error. I'm sorry it spread. linas 21:28, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

Peer review

I have replied on my User page. Let us keep the discussion in one place. I hate reading just one side of a discussion! Regards, --Bduke 02:51, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

Wikiproject Physics reference

Thanks, Linas. I keep meaning to assimilate what is going on, but haven't yet gotten around to it. I'll have a look over the weekend. zowie 18:30, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

Squidward

lol, there's a squidward tentacles picture on your page! lol

Controversy over Cantor's theory

I saw your latest comment over at this pages talk page and I agreed with the point it made. I was wondering in your opinion what parts of the article are still biased? and whether you think the article should be merged into some other article (as I have seen discussed)? Do you like the introduction as it currently stands? Barnaby dawson 17:31, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

I'll need to take a look. linas 00:30, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Lie groups

Yes I was unsure about deleating. I'm not quite sure why homogeneous space is particulary relavant to Lie group, is there some special connection? Apologies for ignorance, I probably should have discussed this first. --Salix alba (talk) 16:42, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

Its relevent in the sense that its one of the things tha a Lie group can act on it. Put that way, it almost deserves a full mention, along the lines of "Lie groups can act on homogenous spaces (and what else?) besides just acting on themselves". linas 00:27, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Sorry for this, read it as homogenuous coordinates

Bios

p.s. Bios, I did spend some time looking into Bios theory a while back and skimmed one of the papers. One well know contributor Kauffman see Knot polynomial and www.math.uic.edu/~kauffman/, page is more or less an acurate representation of the papers published. I'd probably expand it to cover biotic patterns in general if I had any time. --Salix alba (talk) 17:05, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

So are you saying that Bios theory is not utter quackery? That article is so poorly written that I was not motivated to dig deep into the referenced papers. I looked at one, but it was as bad as the article; I assumed the rest were quackery as well.

Not utter quackery, utter quackery does not get papers published in refereed journals and books published by respected publishers. (Sabellis been published in Nature, and Science, not sure if this is Bios relate work or not). As to the importance of the work I'm not sure, it seems like quite early research work to me. Sabelli et al are trying to find way to distinguish between the types of signals in pure chaotic systems and those observed heart. They are experimenting with a number of different metrics to try to pin point the differences. Seems like quite a valid program to me, not far removed in character (but not details) from the type of research I was doing when doing a post doc in statistics - get your dataset, throw everything you've got at it to identify patterns.

Well, during the various conversations, I became concerned with a lack of aquantance with the Circle map, and so I slapped together that article. That article has a 1983 reference (and the paper is even online) connecting the circle map with cardiac rhythms. I was somewhat scandalized by the idea that this newcomer "bios theory" seemed to be trumpeting "cardiac rhythms" while being simulataneously unaware of some of the early work in applying chaos theory to the same topic. I am rather very far from being a chaos expert, so if *I'm* aware of it, surely everyone else must be. So this helped cement my suspicions. No matter, I'll dig around some more and soften my stance. linas 00:45, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

Knot theory is a respectable topic. I just looked at http://www.math.uic.edu/~kauffman/ and I don't see the word "Bios" appearing there at all. Maybe there is a diferent Kauffman? linas 00:27, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Yep same Kauffman, there is a joint paper with Sabelle mentioned in his CV http://www.math.uic.edu/~kauffman/LKVita.ps.

I think wikipedia article needs a lot of work. Sabelli should be mentioned in line one, so its not presented as a well established theory. Probably should be trimmed down a lot so it just focuses on what is specific to the theory. Seems like it was written by someone who knew a bit of bios but not much of the grander chaos theory picture. --Salix alba (talk) 01:32, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Squidward Image

I'm not exactly sure if it qualifies as fair use on a user page, might be a copyright issue and something to take a look at. Cheers! -- Tawker 07:59, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Uncertainty principle

I had given up that page. When I get enough encourage maybe I'll try to reclaim it for sanity.--CSTAR 02:05, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

My current strategy is to invite anyone who looks like they are competent in physics to participate in Wikiproject physics. I am hoping that this will eventually result in more people keeping an eye on these articles. I encourage you to recruit and encourage the same ... sow the seeds. linas 02:36, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

UO3

Since you have chosen to enter this fray here are some places you want to visit to get up to speed:

• Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Depleted uranium
• Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Depleted uranium/Evidence
• Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Depleted uranium/Workshop
• Wikipedia:Requests for mediation/Depleted uranium and related articles
• Wikipedia:Requests for mediation/Depleted uranium and related articles/UO3 vapor

You will note that the arbitration case was brought forward by the mediator from the mediation pages. --DV8 2XL 11:43, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

Esperanza Newsletter, Issue #1

Reach out Reach out is a program aimed at allowing users to bring issues that they have had in Wikipedia to a listening, sympathetic and caring audience: "No one can know how we feel if we do not say. We cannot expect to get understanding if we do not ask for it. No one will dispute that sometimes life's issues are too much for one person. It is fair to say that sometimes Wikipedia's problems fall under the same heading. This is a place where you can bring the bruises that can sometimes be got on this project for attention." Stress Alerts The Stress alerts program aims at identifying users who are stressed, alerting the community of thier stress and works in tandem with the Stressbusters at trying to identify causes of stress and eliminating them. Note from the editor Welcome to this new format of the Esperanza Newsletter, which came about during the last Advisory Council meeting - we hope you like it! The major changes are that each month, right after the Council meeting, this will be sent out and will include two featured programs and a sum up of the meeting. Also, it will be signed by all of the Advisory Council members, not just Celestianpower. Have an Esperanzial end of March, everyone!

The last AC meeting (full log) Future meetings are to be held monthly, not fortnightly as before. Bans and Access level changes (apart from autovoice) in the IRC channel are to be reported at the new log. In the IRC channel, there is going to be only one bot at a time. The charter requires members to have 150 edits and 2 weeks editing. Why this is the case will be clarified. A new Code of Conduct will be drafted by JoanneB and proposed to the Esperanza community. The NPA reform idea is to be dropped officially. Charter ammendments are to be discussed in future, not voted on. The Advisory Council is not going to be proposed to be expanded by the Advisory Council themselves, if others want to propose it, they will listen. Signed... Celestianpower, JoanneB, Titoxd, KnowledgeOfSelf and FireFox 17:47, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

de Rham Curve

I wonder if I could ask you to review de Rham curve and add or fix any errors. It's not a lengthy article! Thanks. Mirasmus 02:35, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

I expanded the article. linas 17:18, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

You certainly did. It is an excellent article now. Thank you very much. Mirasmus 01:56, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

thanks for the greeting, linas...

... but i am not as new to WP as you might have first thought (check my contribs). in fact, it was me that added the GEM equations to the article in the first place (that have now been edited a great deal). anyway, i was frustrated that the normal move did not work, that only because of User:Nixer's insistence (appealing to the popular usage as shown by Google, but no technical justification) a couple of months ago that this was titled Gravitomagnetism at all. It should be Gravitoelectromagnetism as the status quo and these guys should be the ones begging the admins to move it. in the past, moving an article to an existing one that is just a redirect worked fine. it simply swapped which one was the primary and which was the redirect. there is some real sickness here at WP (non-experts having too much influence and young, immature, and abusive admins although i know a few really good admins) and i think i'm gonna give up on it again. Rbj 05:34, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

I like it! The Psycho 07:43, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

dunno Psycho, but will remain open-minded. i used to have a userpage. i used to have a usertalk page. my name is Robert Bristow-Johnson and about 6 weeks ago i thought i was leaving WP for good and requested that they be deleted. the admins refused to delete the usertalk page, so i wrote to Jimbo and he did it for me. just FYI, i'm an electrical engineer whose expertise is in audio and music DSP. i'm pretty active on comp.dsp and have dabbled a little in the sci.physics.research newsgroup. i have a sorta interest in the most natural physical units (of which Planck units come awfully close, but i think $4\pi G\$ should be normalized instead of just $G\$. John Baez might remember me and i've had a few email conversations with Michael Duff as well as Okun and Veneziano about fundamental constants and the invariant scaling of nature. i wouldn't call myself an expert, but i think i can recognize the credible scholarship. anyway, i don't have the fire in the belly for anymore WP fights (i get in enough on comp.dsp regarding the inherent periodic nature of the Discrete Fourier Transform). once in a while i jump back in. but i'll leave the fight to someone else. last December i had a terrible fight with an abusive admin (no longer an admin) User:Karmafist and User:Phroziac. i think that Jimbo is finally getting some of the picture about abusive admins, but it was just too late for me. good luck. Rbj 07:42, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

Higgs boson consensus vote

There is currently a vote on the Higgs boson talk page over whether or not to merge the pop culture references article with the main article. I noticed you've previously contributed to the debate, so your vote would be helpful in establishing a consensus (or, perhaps, a vote of "no consensus", in which case the problem will be referred to AfD). Thanks! -DMurphy 21:36, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

Compass and straightedge

Please comment. John Reid 16:31, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

Objectivity

I saw u reverted the section in heim theory back to pseudoscience. I dunno whether you or someone else changed it backed, however i can reason that you have nowhere near the extensive knowledge such as Walter Dröscher, Illobrand von Ludwiger or Jochem Häuser. I would like to ask you to always maintain an objective view and not to write anything down where someone simply doesn't have enough knowledge to participate, though one features an entirely different POV. Best regardsSlicky 21:01, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

Hi Slicky,

I'm not sure that I understood what you are trying to say. To say that Heim theory is pseudiscience is not a POV, its a statement of fact. linas 21:38, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

you sure? Heim theory actully makes testable prediction, which makes it more scientific than String/M-theory. The Psycho 05:18, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

Uranium trioxide

Hello, this is about your statement on the arbitration case on "Depleted Uranium". You say that James is "polite" in his conversation and that his opponents are not and that you can't judge on the scientific merit of his contributions.

Well, my (129.215/16) perception is that the problem is twofold.

James misreads the literature. Right now there is a diagram in the uranium trioxide article taken from "Gmelin", a review collection, which is used there to illustrate the T-shaped structure of UO3 in the gas phase. Trouble is, when you read the review you'll find that that diagram is to illustrate the structure of (UO2)2+, the uranyl cation, which is a totally different species. Also, the paragraph on "combustion products of uranium" keeps cropping up when everyone else on the talk page tells him that UO3 is only a minor component in the mixture of oxides that one will end up with.

In a nutshell, trash presented in a socially appropiate way is still trash. The "social ineptness" of the UO3 crowd (the editors watching that are different from those watching Depleted uranium) may stem from the fact that people are heartily tired of James' cut-and-paste moves. Right now I see some stuff (on decorporation therapies) on the talk pages of both uranium and uranium trioxide.

The other, more serious problem is that James seems to believe that UO3 is a dangerous poison from the use of DU antitank ammunition that the world must be alerted to. No one of the UO3 crowd would disagree that the uranium oxide dust is dangerous, the problem is that there is good evidence THAT IT ISN'T UO3. 82.41.26.244 11:31, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

Hmm. OK. linas 14:01, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

Censorship

Some people are trying to censor an image, we must stop them! The Psycho 18:18, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

Jimbo Wales has drew first blood, we must attack!!!!!!!!!! The Psycho 22:51, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

Esperanza Newsletter, Issue #2

Barnstar Brigade The Barnstar Brigade is a new program aimed at giving more very deserving yet unappreciated users barnstars. It will officially start on 2006-04-09, but signing up is encouraged before this date: "Here in Wikipedia, there are hundreds of wikipedians whose work and efforts go un-appreciated. One occasionally comes across editors who have thousands of good edits, but because they may not get around as much as others, their contributions and hard work often go un-noticed. Sadly, these editors often leave the project. As Esperanzians, we can help to make people feel appreciated, be it by some kind words or the awarding of a Barnstar. A project the size of Wikipedia has thousands of editors, so there are plenty of people out there who deserve recognition, one just has to find them. The object of this program is not to flood editors with Barnstars, but to seek out people who deserve them, and make them feel appreciated." Stress Alerts The Stress alerts program aims at identifying users who are stressed, alerting the community of thier stress and works in tandem with the Stressbusters at trying to identify causes of stress and eliminating them. Information Welcome to the second issue of the new format Esperanza Newsletter - we hope you still like it! This week, it was delivered diligently by our new dogsbody. MiszaBot (run by Misza13): any execution complaints should go to him. Content comments should be directed at the Esperanza talkpage. Thanks!

The last AC meeting (full log) The next elections: Approval voting as before and, also as before, an previous leadership member can run. Please submit your name for voting in the relevant section of this page. Voting starts on 2006-04-23 and ends on 2006-04-30. There will be three places up for grabs as KnowledgeOfSelf is leaving Wikipedia. Please see the previously linked page for full details. The Code of Conduct is now ready for extensive discussion! Specific comments should go to the Code of Conduct talk page, discussion of having one at all should be directed to the main Esperanza talk page. The current process for accepting proposals for new programs has been deemed fine. All Advisory Council members and the Admin Gen are to endevour to be bold when viewing discussion. If they feel that consensus has been reached, they will act accordingly. A plea from the editor... The propsed programs page is terribly underused! Please leave any comments, good or bad, on the page, to help us determine the membership's thoughts on the ideas there. Signed... Celestianpower, JoanneB, Titoxd, KnowledgeOfSelf and FireFox 19:53, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

Horseshoe lemma

Horseshoe lemma - thought you might find this interesting...another Wikipedian wrote it a while ago. --HappyCamper 12:44, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

Hmm. yes. I saw snake lemma earlier. Don't know much about homology, I'm afraid; its on my to-do list of "things to understand better". linas 15:19, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

knot theory and knots

Hi Linas,

I don't think category:knot theory should be a subcat of category:knots. The latter, as I understand it, is for real-world knots that you tie in a line. The two subject matters are for practical purposes disjoint. --Trovatore 05:45, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

Yes, that is a persuasive argument, which is why I presume they weren't linked in the first place. And yet it seemed odd to me that the one subject didn't seem to acknowledge the other, so I linked them. You may unlink them, although, a remark: isn't there at least one corner of knot theory that is recreational math of the Martin Gardner variety, that might be appealing to non-mathematicians? (There's also another side, the engineering side which asks why some knots are grippy and others slippy, but I don't know if WP has any articles on that). linas 14:22, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

Speaking of that, it looks pretty weird to see knot theory listed as a subcategory of algebraic topology. --C S (Talk) 07:25, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

I didn't put it there, and I'm not fit to argue one way or the other. Although I don't know why you'd think its "weird": the first time I'd heard of knots, they were constructed as the complement of gluing 3-D hyperbolic spaces together in novel ways. Glueing == algebraic topology, in my mind. linas 14:22, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

Old Skool Esperanzial note

Since this isn't the result of an AC meeting, I have decided to go Old Skool. This note is to remind you that the elections are taking place now and will end at 23:50 UTC on 2006-04-29. Please vote here. Thanks. --Celestianpower ^háblame 20:42, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

Re: GMP special fuctions

I'm absolutely interested. Isn't MPFR doing this, though? Fredrik Johansson 09:45, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

Regarding correct rounding, it's the kind of code I love to use, but hate to write myself :-) I think the MPFR people are doing the right thing, but there is certainly a fundamental difference between evaluation of specific functions and general numerical algorithms. A correctly rounded exponential function, sure. But there's no way to secure a numerical integrator (for example) against pathological input, so MPFR would have to cope if it ever were to include one. Perhaps the question is whether they'd be willing to include code that probably gives the right result, as placeholder until someone comes a long and does it entirely rigorously. An interesting question is also whether large amounts of experimental testing would be considered an adequate replacement for analysis. I could post to the mailing list, but you're probably better qualified and I don't know the specifics of your code anyway. Fredrik Johansson 23:05, 30 April 2006 (UTC)