User talk:Dan100/Archive/1

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Pseudoscience
Hi Dan. I reverted your edit to pseudoscience because I think it was wrong: exobiology is listed as being considered by some as a protoscience, and I think that's not an incorrect statement (i.e. that some consider it that). I also think it is safe to say that quite a few, both inside and outside the scientific and academic communities, are fairly suspicious that things of that nature (i.e. SETI) truly meet all of the requirements to be considered "science" (or, phrased alternatively, that they are difficult to distinguish methodologically/practically from things which are considered pseudoscience, such as cryptozoology). (I don't weigh in either way, personally) Anyway, I thought I would just let you know why I changed it back. --Fastfission 23:39, 12 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Along those lines, one thing which would easily boost exobiology from a protoscience to the level of science would be someone somewhere actually studying a sample of extraterrestrial life. (be it bacteria or a "Grey") This is not to say that the current work in exobiology is not important or worthwhile. In fact, in my opinion, the theoretical work currently being done on the exact conditions necessary for life as we know it to exist has valuable ramifications in many areas of "legitimate" science. I can understand the desire not to have the baggage associated with the term pseudoscience applied to this field of inquiry. I also understand the reluctance to accept the term protoscience since many would focus on the conotation that those engaged in such a field are not involved in science or using the scientific method. As with so many things in this world, politics often have more to do with the words we use than unbiased classification does. People do not like the label of "proto" becaues it threatens funding (not that it should, but it does), and because it lowers the "standing" of those in the field (agin, not that it should, but it does.) Since the primary meaning of "pseudo" is false, that label should be used with great care and those whose fields are in this category are the most likely to be resitant to it. COMPATT 15:18, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Charles Darwin
Hi. User:Fastfission and others have been on a crusade to delete the mention of Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln sharing a birthday. I have remained civil but others have been flaming. FastFission posted a biased comment on RfC which I have made neutral (I hope). Would you be interested in supporting my side? If so, please start at Talk:Charles_Darwin. Of course, that's my side, but the other side is strongly represented in the rest of the Talk page.Thanks Vincent 04:35, 19 Dec 2004 (UTC)

What Wikipedia is not
Hi Dan, you may have noticed that I reverted one of your changes to said page - please see its talk page for explanation. I would be happy to discuss this further, preferably on that talk page. Best, Kosebamse 21:07, 20 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Nick Holmes
Thanks for taking a look at Nick Holmes. --fvw *  01:28, 2004 Dec 23 (UTC)

Hi Den Please see an intresting comment for delete supporters
Hi Den, Please see an intresting comment for delete supporters. Please see it on their talk page. It is Wikipedia talk:Extreme article deletion.

Zain 04:02, 25 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads-up about the vote. -- llywrch 19:15, 26 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Atkins Nutritional Approach
Dan,

I believe your statement on low carb diets for athletes is an overstatement that goes beyond the evidence. The "not good" judgement would preclude any role for it in weight or aerobic training regimens where it is currently used. In bodybuilding, it is used to achieve that "cut" look before competitions, in aerobic training it is used early in the week to enhance a later carbohydrate load. The higher VO2 demands probably indicate a role in aerobic training that has not been explored yet. So how can carbohydrates be "required" for athletes?--Silverback 09:10, 28 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Free content
Elaborate on Talk:Free_content. -- Ævar Arnfjörð [ Bjarmason]   10:24, 2005 Jan 2 (UTC)

WP:3RR
Just a warning, you've broken the Three Revert Rule on Norway Scholarship, you might want to be careful with that. --fvw *  19:36, 2005 Jan 2 (UTC)

I thought you'd fall for that one. I edited the article into a different one; I did not revert. Dan100 19:48, Jan 2, 2005 (UTC)

1965, not 1949
If you google "1965 tsunami warning", you'll find a number of references to the modern Pacific warning system being put in place in 1965 after the Good Friday Earthquake. The fact that the PTWC was founded in 1949 is not related to this; I'm not sure what they did between 1949 and 1965. -- Curps 22:05, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

OK, I noticed your embedded comment about upgrades in 1965. Can you describe these? Technology in 1949 was much less advanced than in 1965, and wasn't the 1949 system local only to Hawaii? The 1965 system was supposed to be the first global system, as I understand it. -- Curps 22:10, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Actually, it was you who reverted my original wording.

I don't believe there's duplication. I'll explain why in a few minutes...

Sure thing, but can you do it on the article talk page? Dan100 22:27, Jan 3, 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia slowness
Hi Dan, you seem to know what you're talking about on this page. I was wondering if you'd mind explaining what's going on, because no one seems to give any information on that page, so it's not clear why it exists. Someone has changed something about the Wikipedia within the last 7-10 days, because these problems are different in kind, not degree. It's not bandwidth and it's not extra users attracted by media attention. The slowness is phenomenal but it's not the only problem. Edits are not being saved. Sometimes not at all; sometimes partially. Sometimes the editor's name is in the edit history; sometimes not. Sometimes it'll create a new page; sometimes not. Sometimes it tells you it can't save (page can't load or whatever); then when you look later, your edit is there, timed at the first time you clicked on Save page!

It seems to me that whoever made the change that has caused this chaos must know what they did, so why don't they undo it? Or am I being simplistic and unfair? It's very frustrating because this is a disaster for the Wikipedia, yet no one will tell us anything, or at least nothing that makes sense or is truly informative. Can you enlighten me at all? I would feel less frustrated if I had just a tiny bit of knowledge. It took me over five minutes to load your Talk page, and it may be another five before it saves, if it saves. Best, SlimVirgin 21:58, Jan 9, 2005 (UTC)


 * Here's the bit of knowledge that made my wikipedia life easier last week, hope it does the same to you. With this, you can notice of the cyclic nature and the exceptions. --Godric 22:30, Jan 9, 2005 (UTC)

All I did was carefully read Jamesday's comments - he's 'the man who knows'!. The current crap-out is because were being spidered by some nasty robot - check out this and look for the cliffs. That's when we're being hit. If we're not being hammered at requests per second are below 1,000 wiki runs sweet! The thing about the edits seems to be the slave database servers not keeping up with the changes on the master. Mediawiki 1.4 accesses the master a lot less, so I'm guessing the slaves aren't being updated as frequently, so even if your change is saved on the master, if you next get a page served by a slave it can be out of date. Possibly!I know for a FACT that this is behind the difficulties in creating new pages - the slaves aren't asking the master when they should. Maybe they should've beta tested 1.4 for longer, but I guess they felt that if they'd stayed with 1.3 the master would've died under the load of the continuing natural site growth. Dan100 22:57, Jan 9, 2005 (UTC)

Policy
Do not go around declaring pages "official policy". -- Netoholic @ 07:40, 2005 Jan 13 (UTC)


 * lol why not?! Who put you in charge? Policy is consensus. I widely advertised that I would be making such changes and no-one objected. Dan100 16:45, Jan 13, 2005 (UTC)

Every time you change a policy page, it has been reverted. Do not engage in revert wars over something that has not been shown to have even majority support. Also, please use Edit summaries - it looks to me like you are hiding your edits by not using them. -- Netoholic @ 19:13, 2005 Jan 16 (UTC)

Requests per second
Dan, thanks for providing the information about why Wikipedia slowed down. Can I ask you to explain something? I sort of know what requests per second means, but I'm still not certain. Can you translate it into other terms? For example, do you know how many pages on average are requested each day, or week? Or are pages and requests the same thing? SlimVirgin 04:23, Jan 15, 2005 (UTC)

It's the number of request made to the servers, eg when you click a wikilink. That results in a page being returned, but as Wikipedia is a database that actually means a lot of work for the servers to put the page together and send it. The blue line on the graph is the requests handled by the Squids, which already have saved copies of pages in their memory - when they handle a request they don't load the other servers, as all the database querying has already been done to make the saved copy. Because when you're logged in you have your personal links across the top, your page requests have to go to the main servers and they make a new (personalised) page for you. Anon users tend to get Squid pages, so if there's something wrong with the main servers anon users often get better performance as they're only reaching the Squids. Dan100 08:01, Jan 15, 2005 (UTC)
 * Hmmm . . . I'm sort of understanding this. Are the Squids the slaves? I don't understand why logged in users couldn't look at cached pages the same as anon users. And an anon who wants to edit a page: that request would have to go to the main servers, is that right? Because otherwise they might not be editing the most recent version? Thanks for educating me, by the way. Or trying to. If I don't get something, I can assure you it's not your fault. :-) SlimVirgin 00:47, Jan 16, 2005 (UTC)

Tsunami warning systems
Dan, You and I seem to be moving this article title back and forth between the singular and the plural.

In nearly all cases, an encyclopedia article title should be in the singular form, unless no suitable singular exists ("scissors") or whatever. See the talk page. -- Curps 22:53, 16 Jan 2005 (UTC)
 * Thanks for putting me straight on this one! Dan100 18:08, Jan 20, 2005 (UTC)

Wikinews
Hi Dan! I have checked out Wikinews quite frequently in the past weeks. Indeed, it has improved quite significantly recently. The only problem is that it remains fairly disorganised (but much better organised than before) and I find it hard to find news. I think they should be using the sort-by-continent feature more, like the BBC News does. Anyway, it's still at its beginnings, and I think it's doing much, much better than Wiktionary, Wikibooks or even Wikipedia did in its first few months. It's great to see the new logo selection also - hopefully that will kickstart a new development in it and also make way for the new language versions of Wikinews. Cheers, Ronline 03:49, 17 Jan 2005 (UTC)
 * Yeah, there are big problems with the category system. The main problem seems to be the fact that there's no way to make automatically updating latest-news by category (eg by continent), and no-one is really willing to do it manually. Your best bet is just to keep an eye on the Latest news on the Main page, and use the search function to find older stuff. Not ideal, I admit. Dan100 22:27, Jan 17, 2005 (UTC)

LIDO reply
Thanks for note re: LIDO reactor, found it on some obscure source when I was trying to expand listings for UK in List of nuclear reactors. BTW, take a look at North Sea Flood of 1953. --mervyn 09:22, 20 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Fusion
Rgarding your edits to fusion power..... Care to comment?--Deglr6328 19:29, 22 Jan 2005 (UTC)
 * I'd like to re-add some of the things you removed here if you don't mind....--Deglr6328 05:33, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Sorry not had much time recently. I'll take a look. Dan100 07:33, Jan 26, 2005 (UTC)
 * no prob. My replies are there. I do still have that one last question I was wondering if you could clarify:

"Anyway, perhaps you can clear something up for me. Just what is a "vertical displacement event"? I have heard of these happening in the early days of JET and stories that they are events where for some reason the plasma magnetic field "bucks" against the field of the external coils and has lifted the whole lot up in the air a couple inches!! On the other hand, from what I've read myself, all I can tell it may be is a displacement of the high density plasma in the vessel with no real notable movement events at all really."--Deglr6328 17:52, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Certainly. The vacuum vessel really does move (I've forgotten the amount, it's over a year since I read the original engineering report, but an inch or two sounds about right) when the field destabilises. There's an enormous amount of energy contained within the magnetic fields and when they collapse that energy has to go somewhere, and a large amount goes into kinetic energy, lifting the vessel. However the vessel is held in place by dampers which safely absorb that energy. The torus hall is outfitted with microphones (often the first sign of equipment failure is a funny noise), and it makes an appreciable 'bang'. (The effect was unexpected, and delayed experiments in the early 1980s while an assesment and modifications were made). At the same time, the thermal energy of the plasma needs to go somewhere too when containment fails. The portion of the inner wall of the vacuum vessel the plasma contacts can be subject to intense heating and parts often melt. These days, carbon fibre composite tiles (similar to the ones used on the Space Shuttle) are used in particulary vulnerable areas. Dan100 18:06, Jan 26, 2005 (UTC)

wow, fascinating. I would love to hear a recording of one of these events!--Deglr6328 00:36, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)

The General Electric Company
Hi Dan. Just a quick note to advise that your edits to The General Electric Company page were not correct.

GEC spun off Marconi Electronic Systems (MES) in 1999 and merged that with BAe to form BAE Systems. This ended its participation in the defence industry; it is now a radio, telecommunication, and internet equipment equipment/services company.

It then renamed itself Marconi plc but didn't become part of Matra BAe Dynamics nor MBDA. The British participation in Matra BAe Dynamics was entirely through BAe and then BAE. (i.e. never GEC/Marconi plc). The link with MBDA doesn't come from Matra BAe Dynamics but from Alenia Marconi Systems (AMS). GEC's MES set up AMS with Finmeccanica in 1998 shortly prior to its merger with BAe, thus ending GEC/Marconi plc's link with that company too.

Just letting you know in case you think someone has vandalised your contribution. Mark 01:43, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)

No that's fine. I had a feeling I was wrong. I was just getting confused over the name 'Marconi'! Dan100 17:55, Jan 24, 2005 (UTC)

Wikinews logo
I left a comment for you on your Wikinews user talk page. &mdash; DV 08:50, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)