Recent Posts

2426

Living Room / Re: silly humor - post 'em here! [warning some NSFW and adult content]

« Last post by IainB on February 13, 2015, 10:49 AM »

If you think lawyers don't  have hearts, read the best lawyer story of our time:

The Salvation Army realized that it had never received a donation from the city's most successful lawyer.  So a United Way volunteer paid the lawyer a visit at his lavish office.

The volunteer opened the meeting by saying, 'Our research shows that even though your annual income is over two million dollars, you don't give a penny to charity.  Wouldn't you like to give something back to your community through the Sally Ann?'

The lawyer thinks for a minute and says, 'First, did your research also show you that my mother is dying after a long, painful illness and she has huge medical bills that are far beyond her ability to pay?'

Embarrassed, the Sally rep mumbles, 'Uh... no, I didn't know that.'

'Secondly,' says the lawyer, 'did it show that my brother, a disabled veteran, is blind and confined to a wheelchair and is unable to support his wife and six children?
 
The stricken Sally rep begins to stammer an apology, but is cut off again.

'Thirdly, did your research also show you that my sister's husband died in a dreadful car accident, leaving her penniless with a mortgage and three children, one of whom is disabled and another that has learning disabilities requiring an array of private tutors?'
The humiliated Sally rep, completely beaten, says, 'I'm so sorry. I had no idea.'

And the lawyer says, 'So, if I didn't give any money to them, what makes you think I'd give any to you?'

2427

Living Room / Re: silly humor - post 'em here! [warning some NSFW and adult content]

« Last post by IainB on February 13, 2015, 10:42 AM »

Something old, something new:

A dwarf goes to a very good but very busy doctor and asks "I know you are busy but do you treat dwarves?"
The doctor replies "Yes, but you will have to be a little patient".
------------------------------------------
A man has been accused of shoplifting a kitchen utensil from Tesco.
He said it was a whisk he was prepared to take.
----------------------------------------
Paddy says to Mick, "Christmas is on Friday this year".
Mick said, "Let's hope it's not the 13th then."
---------------------------------------------
My mate just hired an Eastern European cleaner. It took her 15 hours to hoover the house!
Turns out she was a Slovak.
--------------------------------------------------------
Since the snow came, all my husband has done is look through the window.
If it gets any worse, I'll have to let him in.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A man was charged with murder for killing a man with sandpaper.
In his defence, he said he only intended to rough him up a bit.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Two women called at my door and asked what bread I ate.  When I said white, they gave me a lecture on the benefits of brown bread for 30 minutes.
I think they were those Hovis Witnesses.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A mummy covered in chocolate and nuts has been discovered in Egypt .
Archaeologists believe it may be Pharaoh Rocher.......
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Just a reminder to those who stole electrical goods in last year's riots......
Your manufacturer's warranty runs out soon.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A boy asks his granny, 'Have you seen my pills? They were labelled LSD'
Granny replies, "Bugger the pills, have you seen the dragons in the kitchen?"
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A woman standing nude in front of a mirror says to her husband: 'I look horrible. I feel fat and ugly. Pay me a compliment.'
He replies, 'Your eyesight is perfect.'
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
An elderly couple are in church.  About halfway through the service, the husband leans over and says to his wife, 'I just let out a silent fart; what do you think I should do?'
She replies, 'Put a new battery in your hearing aid.'
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

2428

Living Room / Get 2GB extra storage on Google Drive $FREE - just by running a security check.

« Last post by IainB on February 13, 2015, 06:14 AM »

Has to be actioned by Feb. 17, 2015.
I thought I'd just elevate this post to it's own topic so that people didn't miss the brief window of opportunity.

...
(see attachment in previous post)
Google hands out free Drive space for running quick security checklist

-Arizona Hot (February 10, 2015, 06:13 PM)

Also: How to get 2GB free on Google Drive - CNET

2429

Living Room / Re: Interesting "stuff"

« Last post by IainB on February 12, 2015, 07:11 PM »

@Gwen7: Just for the record, as regards possible gender implications on the subject of toxophily, there would seem to be an early precedent that it was very much a female's domain - as per the ancient myth of Diana (The Archer).
She became a firm favourite of mine when I was about 10 y/o, when I - as a budding archer and environmentalist - discovered in the Enc. Brit. that she was a goddess associated with wild animals and woodland, as well as being an archetypical archer. Some years later, I noticed that in SE Asia some wag had named an over-the-counter hormonal contraceptive pill after her, though she was also the virgin goddess of childbirth and women. I couldn't figure that one out.   

2430

Living Room / Re: Peer Review and the Scientific Process

« Last post by IainB on February 11, 2015, 06:29 AM »

Huh  ?  That logic would imply that it's ok for other kids to get vaccine - in order to protect mine?!? - but not mine.  So I'd be anti-vaccine only for my child?  Something out of kilter there. ...

-barney (February 11, 2015, 05:08 AM)

In the cases I knew of, the way I understood it was that the logic would probably have been pretty calculated and more along the lines of anarchy/freedom of self-determination, as in:

"I'm not going to let anything unnatural or potentially harmful be done to my kids. Other people can vaccinate their children if they wish, but I am not going to be forced to have mine vaccinated, because of what I see as the potential risks of toxic vaccines made using unnatural/animal cultures, though indirect/cross-infection will probably not be harmful and could be potentially beneficial as it would be through a natural human vector/medium of exchange."

So I think it would have been the uncertainty, you see. The expectation was that the vaccination programme would be successful (and it clearly was), and there was thus a de facto reliance on that leading to a greatly reduced risk that your unvaccinated child in that environment would be infected with the virulent strain of the pathogen. It wasn't an argument about the vaccines being bad/ineffective per se, but that we didn't have enough knowledge to be certain that all these unnatural things we were doing wouldn't be harmful. That of course could still generally be true today, though the probabilities/risks might be so small as to be statistically insignificant. Pretty bad luck though if your kid is the one who gets damaged by one of those "improbabilities", so you would still be taking a risk, however small, if you did have them vaccinated.

It's rather the opposite of the case (above) where the Alsatian police dogs killed the child of their human pack that they lived with. Anyone who knows anything about dog-breeding and statistics would be able to figure out fairly swiftly that the odds of that happening were relatively a great deal higher for some breeds and relatively a great deal lower or non-existant for others, and that Alsatians fell into the high risk group. It's not a good recipe for survival. You'd need rocks in your head to expose your child to such risks, but there you are, and so that DNA does not get passed on.

2431

Living Room / Re: Peer Review and the Scientific Process

« Last post by IainB on February 11, 2015, 04:39 AM »

@Renegade and @40hz: Why kick them out? There is an argument for not vaccinating your kids, but hoping/expecting that they will get indirect immunisation (from cross-infection) from the newly-vaccinated children they go to school with.
If you were independently minded and strict about it, you could do that with a child, and deliberately avoid having them directly exposed to any vaccinations (e.g., mumps. measles, rubella, diptheria, smallpox, TB, polio, tetanus), or X-radiation, or any injections at all. I know of cases where that has happened.

Not sure what any of this has to do with peer review and the scientific process though...

2432

General Software Discussion / Re: Microsoft OneNote - some experiential Tips & Tricks

« Last post by IainB on February 11, 2015, 04:24 AM »

To be frank, I'm not sure whether integrating the two (Evernote and OneNote) would have much added value at this point, EN having arguably been locked into a developmental dead-end for some time now, and ON being quite the opposite of that - e.g., now fully integrated with MS Office, and including things such as, for example, OLE (Object Linking and Embedding) and wiki hyperlinking, etc..
The Evernote2Onenote thing looks like it could be a good one-way migration tool though.

It would have been good if EN had stayed on the path it was on with the excellent client software of evernote_2.2.1.386.exe, but that seems to have been deliberately canned, presumably because the EN market direction was decided as being towards Cloud lock-in, or something.
In any event, when they canned it, disgusted EN users such as myself left the camp in droves. You can still get that version as a stand-alone (PC or portable) client, but it doesn't integrate with the EN Cloud service and it is by now somewhat outdated.
I reckon WizNote could have the potential to disrupt this sort of PIM market if the developers wanted to do that.

A bit of a rant:
I find the ergonomics of fast 2 or 3-pane navigation in a PIM make for really efficient and pleasant use in the GUI. I'm not sure whether EN offers this, but ON does, though it is (in my view) a bit kludgy. The best I have used was in InfoSelect v8, which also offered vertical categorisation (tagging) tabs so you got fast 2-dimentional display across multiple subject categories within a 2-pane display. However, IS8 is looking pretty dated by now, and the latest version (IS10) doesn't seem up to much by comparison.
Interestingly Clipboard Help & Spell has a pretty efficient 2 or 3-pane display (if you want it), though in terms of responsiveness the navigation seems a bit sluggish.
EDIT 2017-08-08 0228hrs: Since writing the above, the sluggishness in CHS (Clipboard Help & Spell) has been fixed and the software has been further improved. It now seems to be blazingly fast, so I would recommend it highly to other users.
___________________________
Cross-posted from: Re: Problem: CHS consistently very slow to display clips. Need workaround or fix.

This can definitely be flagged as "FIXED" now!
I have downloaded CHS v2.38 BETA Portable.zip and installed it, from
CLIPBOARD HELP+SPELL LATEST VERSION INFO THREAD - v2.38.0 BETA - Dec 16, 2016

Thanks a lot for doing this speed-up. Nice work. You raised the bar of CHS' performance.   
 CHS v2.38 BETA is blazingly fast - just like it should be. Out of interest, I was just comparing it side-by-side with CHS v2.36 BETA on another laptop. No contest!
And thanks also for improving the functional ergonomics of the Home/End keys. It's only a small ergonomic improvement, but, when one uses those keys as frequently as I tend do on a daily basis, then it can all add up so that even a small ergonomic improvement like that can make for a vast improvement over time, in terms of time saved.

By contrast, the speed-up is also an ergonomic improvement, but it's a big deal (massive) improvement for this user, and it changes one's whole perception of the ease-of-use of CHS. After this fix, one can now better use CHS for the sorts of things it should and could have been useful for, by design, but which one had avoided using it for, because it was effectively crippled by such a proverbial PITB. (Because of my critical view and high expectations, I am usually extremely impatient with computer software and can't abide "laggy" functionality in a GUI that I need to use.)

A much happier user now!   

-IainB (December 16, 2016, 10:25 PM)

2433

Living Room / Re: Interesting "stuff"

« Last post by IainB on February 10, 2015, 08:26 AM »

My 4 ½ y/o son just found this game, which he asked me to play with him - which I did.
WARNING: It's a potentially addictive time bandit: http://tangerinetycoon.com/

2434

General Software Discussion / Re: publishing notes to the net

« Last post by IainB on February 10, 2015, 06:52 AM »

What I have occasionally done for this sort of thing is to publish the notes as HTML pages hosted on Google Drive, and given the client a shared link to it (anyone with the link can view/download). You could give them edit/write access too, if you wanted.
I am not sure as I have not tried it, but I guess you could do this using other Cloud Storage Services too - e.g., such as OneDrive.

2435

Living Room / Re: Interesting "stuff"

« Last post by IainB on February 10, 2015, 01:47 AM »

@40hz: I found that video of Anna Maltese's which debunks misleading claims made by one Lars Andersen was rather interesting, if only because it showed the propensity of fakers to make the most outlandish claims and still apparently expect not to get caught out. I didn't bother watching the Lars Andersen video.
Sorry I don't have time to write more, but I am about to go out with a torch tonight to look for those fairies that I have been told one can see in the shrubbery at the back of our apartment block. So amazing, eh?   

2436

Living Room / Put a sock in it.

« Last post by IainB on February 09, 2015, 10:36 PM »

Just to be pedantic: a good deal of the foregoing comments over the last day or so seem to be related to WHO (some pundit or other) said WHAT (POV or argument) about something scientific or pseudo-scientific. I could be wrong, of course, but in some of those comments, and in some of the linked articles, what seems to be important is proving one's position (bias) as being closer to the "truth" than someone else's position/bias.
That does not necessarily seem to be entirely relevant to adding to our understanding of Peer Review and the Scientific Process.

I would suggest that what is relevant is the observational data and results of experiments/trials and the falsifiability of those experiments/trials - be it wind speeds, global temps, numbers of infections/vaccinations, the incidence of caries in certain age groups, or something else.

For example, let's take a case in point - vaccination:
Let me comment on the vaccination issue, drawn from my own experience. Some years back, the then NZ Director of Public Health (Dr. Colin Tukuitonga) sponsored a new project to set up a NIR (National Immunisation Register) database, to record and track all candidates for vaccinations, and I (as an external consultant) was appointed as project manager to set it all up and initiate the project, and then hand over to a yet-to-be-selected project manager for the duration of the rest of the project lifecycle. This was a big and important project within the Ministry of Health and critical to the objective of the MoH for maintaining/improving the public health and especially that section of it called "children".
In setting up the project, I focussed initially on the solidity of the business case and an analysis of the potential risks of failure of this project.
The business case was straightforward and compelling: Children were dying needlessly. The project had been given some urgency due to the increasing incidence of then epidemic proportions of a disease called "Meningococcal B".  This dreadful disease was killing mostly children, and was preventable. Vaccination trials and programmes showed that vaccination had sharply reduced the incidence of the meningococcal disease in other developed countries, and so a vaccine for the prevalent strain in NZ (pathogen type "B") was developed and scheduled to fit in with the NIR development project.
The NIR database enabled the potential candidates (children) to be tracked and monitored to ensure that all children were vaccinated. The target population data was built from birth records and doctors' records of their family/child patients, and updated by doctors who recorded children as they moved (with their families/guardians) into other geographic practice areas and registered with new GPs there.

My involvement with the project finished after handover, but about 2 years later I bumped into the project sponsor whilst waiting in a bank queue. I asked him how the project had gone. He said with some exasperation that it had run about 8 months over its planned 18 months (I think it was) due largely to risks which eventuated - some of which I had predicted, but some of which I would not have been able to anticipate at the time. He added that it was now successfully vaccinating/covering all the at risk target population and the disease statistics were in rapid decline - so it was a success.

A few years later, I took my then 8 y/o daughter to an appointment at our local doctor's surgery for her to have her scheduled vaccinations. My daughter has an irrational fear of needles/vaccinations, and had been dreading this visit, but she kept a brave face on things.
As we were sitting in the waiting area, I noticed a magazine (I think it may have been "North & South"). The magazine had a striking picture on the front cover: it was a photo of a little smiling blond girl aged about 5, sat on a chair, but she had no arms or legs (they terminated in stumps at her elbows and knees). I read the article inside. Apparently, her parents had moved from one area to another shortly before what would have been her scheduled meningococcal B vaccination, but had not thought it important to get around to registering with their new local GP, so the child's current whereabouts was not on the NIR database. Had they been, then she would have had her meningococcal B vaccination on schedule, but instead she fell foul of the statistical risks and caught meningococcal B, and would have died had not the doctors amputated her limbs in order to save her life - meningococcal B causes progressive massive internal haemorrhage and destroys the body parts.

I showed the story to my daughter, and pointed out that this was exactly what I had been telling her - that vaccinations reduced the risk of her dying or being disabled by some horrible but preventable disease. The bad luck of the little blond girl was a sobering and very real thing. You can't fight the statistical odds.
Yet I am amazed at the number of times I have read of or heard people saying "I'm not having my child vaccinated. It's too dangerous - just look at such-and-such" or "Just look at what [insert name of anti-vaccination pundit] says about vaccination risks".

It reminds me of a case in the UK where a highly experienced police dog handler had 2 superbly trained Alsatian police dogs, which lived at his home as much-loved and trusted members of the family. One day, he was out of the house and his wife was in an upstairs room or something, and their 5 y/o daughter was playing downstairs in the kitchen, where the dogs were. When the mother came downstairs, she found that the dogs had killed the child.
A newspaper reported the father as saying later that he couldn't understand why the dogs had killed her - he was absolutely sure that they would be safe with the child - he would have "staked his life on it".
Well, of course, he didn't stake his life on it at all. He all-too-easily staked her life on it, and without even asking her if that was OK.
If parents had to suffer punishment with the direct consequences of their irrational decisions made on behalf of their innocent and trusting children, then they might think twice about such things. Or then again, maybe not (say) if they believed "it was God's will" or something equally idiotic, thus enabling them to sublimate the blame into something else. Anything but my fault, please God.

I imagine how the parents of that little girl pictured in the magazine must shudder at what they have done, seeing every day the needlessly hacked-up body of their beautiful little girl as she grows up. Try living with the consequences of that.

2437

Living Room / Re: Interesting "stuff"

« Last post by IainB on February 09, 2015, 07:30 AM »

It's mosquito season in Auckland, New Zealand, and I got 3 of these devices. They are being very useful and are great fun and very satisfying to use - an electronic flying bug zapper ("electrocutioner"). NOT A TOY.



Features:

• Looks like a small tennis racquet.
• Is powered by 2 x AA 1.5V batteries.
• Power on and keep it on by holding down the press-button in the handgrip - a red LED shows when it is on.
• A little sparkle/flash of electricity, a slight "fizz" sound and an acrid smell tell you if you just zapped something small (e.g., like a mosquito), and the carcass of the victim can be seen trapped in the mesh.
• A bright flash and a loud "crack!" and an acrid smell tell you if you just zapped something large (e.g., like a common housefly).

At around US$6 or $7, the quality control of these devices leaves a lot to be desired. I found 2 out of 5 to be defective.
Sometimes, you think they are working (the light comes on), but they don't seem to zap anything. Someone with a good range of hearing (typically under age 30) can usually hear the whine/whistle of the capacitor being charged up, which is a sure sign that it is working. Otherwise you can test it with a small spitball of tissue paper dropped onto the mesh - the spitball should smoke/flash.

2438

Living Room / Re: Peer Review and the Scientific Process

« Last post by IainB on February 08, 2015, 06:43 AM »

Never mind the New Age movement, astrology, or ectoplasmic production, peer review of alchemy gets you no further, even if Sir Isaac Newton is doing the review. Peer review of Isaac Newton’s physics was rather hard as he was, and remains, peerless in that field.

2439

Living Room / Re: Peer Review and the Scientific Process

« Last post by IainB on February 06, 2015, 12:24 PM »

I've actually tried to apply Benford's law on an exercise in accountancy forensic auditing a while back, just out of interest. It did not add any/much value to the exercise at the time, as I recall, as it was not really applicable.
Was interesting though, as it could maybe detect the smoke, if not the gun.

2440

Living Room / Re: Peer Review and the Scientific Process

« Last post by IainB on February 05, 2015, 08:37 PM »

...It is that bit of corruption that is a serious issue for those that claim "peer review" is some kind of holy cow in science.

-Renegade (February 05, 2015, 06:49 PM)

Yes, that seems quite true - and of course there should be no "holy cows" in science. As Feynman and other scientists have pointed out, there should be just science that is transparent and open to the ultimate test of falsifiability, so that anyone can repeat the experiments with a view to seeing whether they can get the same consistently repeatable results. If they can't, then it is falsifiable, and the hypothesis is invalidated, so we have learned something that we might not have known before - it's a step forwards, not backwards. This is what Thomas Edison referred to regarding all his failures before he finally arrived at a working concept of the light bulb.

Though there is nothing in the scientific process itself that mentions or necessitates something called "peer review", I have occasionally read about people (who are presumably unfamiliar with the scientific process) saying dismissively about some scientific paper or other "Oh yes, that's all very well, but has it been peer reviewed? - because it's not scientifically verified until it has been.". That of course is quite incorrect.

My view is that, whereas peer review could be expected to be a process of considerable use in potentially improving the quality of science papers, it has unfortunately been so much abused (by now), and by so many unscrupulous individuals/groups, as a handy device to cover up the falsity of their preferred science outcomes (QED) - so as to substantiate some ulterior purpose or other - that one can no longer safely assume to have trust in either the peer review process or the scientists (where they are scientists) employing the process to verify some piece of science. You are obliged to to check it for yourself - "Nullius in verba". The reality is that you can't take someone's word for anything if you want to get at the uncorrupted truth (and that goes double for irrational pronouncements coming out of the mouths of ostensible representatives of the Royal Society).

As a case in point, I have coincidentally only just today posted this (below) about the apparently deliberate falsification of scientific data on what looks like a wholesale basis: Forensic analysis of stochastic chicanery in climate temp time series data

...Things are not always as people would have you see.
One of the greatest pleasures and what I have always enjoyed about statistics is that the data doesn't lie - it just is  - and I find that it is invariably "trying to tell us something". That is, there is some truth for us to discover.
I was making notes on an interesting report posted - what looks like genuine investigative journalism - on the Daily Telegraph website, about data tampering. Because the report provides quite a good summation of the scale of the apparent fraud(s), I have copied my notes below as an image, and copied the raw text to a spoiler below the image.
Everything in the article checks with "peer reviewed" research and can be independently verified (however, being skeptical, I have verified it myself anyway - "Nullius in verba").
What concerns me greatly about this is that, not only has this this scientific data fraud apparently been quite extensive and going on for years, peer reviewed and approved, but it has been done quite deliberately - and undisclosed/concealed.

The DT post URL is: http://www.telegraph...-global-warming.html

The DT post makes reference to the source of analysis of where some pretty significant data tampering has been going on which has only recently been discovered by forensic statistical analysis.
The source is Notalotofpeopleknowthat ( http://notalotofpeop...owthat.wordpress.com )
The specific source article and URL is:
Massive Tampering With Temperatures In South America
https://notalotofpeo...es-in-south-america/
...

-IainB (February 05, 2015, 06:49 PM)

2441

Living Room / Re: Interesting "stuff"

« Last post by IainB on February 04, 2015, 03:34 AM »

...didn't I see it in Cranioscopical's car thread?

-Target (February 02, 2015, 06:52 PM)

Har-de-har-har.

2442

Living Room / Re: silly humor - post 'em here! [warning some NSFW and adult content]

« Last post by IainB on February 03, 2015, 02:45 AM »

The little blizzard that couldn't...

2443

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Malwarebytes FREE and PRO/Premium - Mini-Review.

« Last post by IainB on February 02, 2015, 05:15 AM »

VERSION UPDATE to the Opening Post - 2015-02-03 (MBAM PRO/Premium is now v2.0.4.1028).

2444

Living Room / Re: Interview with John McAfee

« Last post by IainB on February 02, 2015, 02:01 AM »

Rather interesting vid interview, thanks for linking it.

2445

Living Room / Re: Memory lane for motorists

« Last post by IainB on February 01, 2015, 06:45 PM »

@mouser drives the point home...hur, hur hur.
I think the correct URL should probably be just up to the end of the string "history": http://www.carophile...nged-history/http://
(How did it get the "wrong" suffix?)

Looks like some fine cars on those pages, starting with one of my fav drool cars - the AC Cobra.   

2446

Living Room / Re: Interesting "stuff"

« Last post by IainB on February 01, 2015, 03:30 PM »

Computer Arithmetic Tragedies page of Kees Vuik
Some disasters caused by numerical errors

•    Patriot Missile Failure
•    Explosion of the Ariane 5
•    EURO page: Conversion Arithmetics
•    The Vancouver Stock Exchange
•    Rounding error changes Parliament makeup
•    The sinking of the Sleipner A offshore platform
•    Tacoma bridge failure (wrong design)
•    200 million dollar typing error (typing error)
•    What's 77.1 x 850? Don't ask Excel 2007
•    Collection of Software Bugs

(This is just some errors. Doesn't mention others - e.g., including the Mars lander crash, Treasury spreadsheet errors, the recent NY snowstorm estimates/forecasts.)

2447

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Malwarebytes FREE and PRO/Premium - Mini-Review.

« Last post by IainB on January 30, 2015, 07:10 PM »

The main flaw I find in MBAM now is if I right click a file or folder to scan it and get the Database is out of Date, it doesn't resume the job after I update.  Either that or I don't know how to get it to.  So I've taken to running it, click update if it needs it, close it, right click yadda yadda.  That kind of kills off the convenience factor. 

-MilesAhead (October 21, 2014, 11:06 AM)

I also had that problem at one point, but not any longer. It has "gone away". You will likely find that running the above FIX will restore MBAM to operating the way it should.

2448

Mini-Reviews by Members / FIXED: Malwarebytes permanently running at high (approx. 27%) CPU utilisation.

« Last post by IainB on January 30, 2015, 07:08 PM »

Just posting this as potentially useful information to others:

The Problem was with MBAM Premium/PRO:

• After boot-up, the MBAM.exe process would permanently sit at a high (about 27%) CPU utilisation, even though it was not running a scan or anything. This was on a Toshiba Satellite L855D laptop, with 8GB RAM and AMD A8 Vision and Quad Core. OS is Win8.1-64 PRO.
• Rebooting or tweaking the MBAM Dashboard/Settings seemed to have no effect, so stopping the process seemed to be the only way to stop the high CPU utilisation. Stopping it seemed to cause MBAM to return/respawn with 90% CPU utilisation.
• Uninstalling and then reinstalling MBAM had no effect on this behaviour.
• Stopping Chameleon seemed to have no effect either.

The Fix was:
After reading the MBAM User Forum and finding no post to help me in this, I decided that the best thing do do would probably be to use Malwarebytes' own MBAM Clean Removal Process.
Steps:

• 1. Download the MBAM Cleaner tool - mbam-clean-2.1.1.1001.exe from here.
• 2. Download the latest version of MBAM.
• 3. Go offline (just in case).
• 4. Execute the MBAM Cleaner tool. It will then Restart the PC. This also removes all logs, Registry entries, and other vestigial traces of MBAM.
• 5. Execute the install for the latest version of MBAM (downloaded at Step 2). Untick the "Trial" selector.
• 6. Enter your Malwarebytes Anti-Malware Consumer License ID and Key details.
• 7. Go online.
• 8. Set MBAM to update itself and its malware signature database.
• 9. When the update in Step 8 has completed, set MBAM to do a Threat Scan. This clears the Dashboard warning message - because the Cleaner tool also removes all logs, Registry entries, and other vestigial traces of MBAM, it gives a persistent warning message that it has never done a scan on that PC).

After the scan has completed, MBAM will typically tend to sit at around 0.25% CPU utilisation, which is normal.

2449

Living Room / Re: Peer Review and the Scientific Process

« Last post by IainB on January 30, 2015, 05:23 AM »

In this discussion thread, in a response to @xtabber here, I drew three conclusions:

Some conclusions we could arrive at here would include:

• A. Truth: You can't make something true out of a collection of logical fallacies. That would be an assault upon reason. Once you accept one invalid premise, you can accept infinitely more.
  However, the depressing reality seems too often to be that many people are so unable to think rationally for themselves that they seem gullible to this kind of barrage of logical fallacy. One's head would be full of a confusing and probably conflicting mass of invalid premises, with ergo no real knowledge or understanding of truth.
  
  
• B. Peer review per se is not crucial as it cannot and does not certainly establish truth: We have already seen, in this discussion thread and others - e.g., including, the thread on CAGW, Thermageddon? Postponed! - that there is plenty of evidence to demonstrate pretty conclusively that peer review is an unreliable instrument for determining truth, as it can be and has been, and probably will continue to be used/abused to rationalise whatever careless or unethical/misguided scientists might want, because they cannot otherwise scientifically prove a pet theory or preferred/biased conclusion.
  This is also well-documented in the literature - e.g., including as referred to in one of the spoilers above("…on broken trust in peer review and how to fix it").
  
  
• C. Falsifiability is crucial:
  

  Falsifiability or refutability is the property of a statement, hypothesis, or theory whereby it could be shown to be false if some conceivable observation were true. In this sense, falsify is synonymous with nullify, meaning not "to commit fraud" but "show to be false". Science must be falsifiable. - Wikipedia.
  

-IainB (October 05, 2013, 06:33 AM)

__________________________________

One of the things that often puzzles me is how easily we seem to be conned by false peer reviews and how we are seemingly so wilfully blind to the truth in things, and so I was very interested to read the lifehacker post Carl Sagan's Best Productivity Tricks, where it says:
(Copied below sans embedded hyperlinks/images.)

...Hone Your "Baloney Detection Kit"
Sagan was first and foremost a scientist, and that means he had a very specialized outlook on the world. In his book, The Demon Haunted World, he outlines what he calls his "baloney detection kit." The kit is essentially a means to test arguments and find fallacies. It's a great toolset for skeptical thinking. Here's part of his kit:

• Wherever possible there must be independent confirmation of the "facts."
• Encourage substantive debate on the evidence by knowledgeable proponents of all points of view.
• Arguments from authority carry little weight — "authorities" have made mistakes in the past. They will do so again in the future. Perhaps a better way to say it is that in science there are no authorities; at most, there are experts.
• Spin more than one hypothesis. If there's something to be explained, think of all the different ways in which it could be explained. Then think of tests by which you might systematically disprove each of the alternatives. What survives, the hypothesis that resists disproof in this Darwinian selection among "multiple working hypotheses," has a much better chance of being the right answer than if you had simply run with the first idea that caught your fancy.
• Try not to get overly attached to a hypothesis just because it's yours. It's only a way station in the pursuit of knowledge. Ask yourself why you like the idea. Compare it fairly with the alternatives. See if you can find reasons for rejecting it. If you don't, others will.
  

Sagan's kit here isn't just for science, of course. It's great for everything, from presidential debates to statistics. When you challenge those biases, you walk away with a better point of view. It's also a good toolset if you're making an argument at work, giving a presentation in school, or even just taking on a lively debate at the dinner table. The better you are at detecting baloney, the better your arguments will be in the long run. ...
(Read the rest at the link.)

It's all "habits of mind" really - thinking skills (De Bono).

2450

Clipboard Help+Spell / Feature request: select/display Grid column data > horizontal rows in Memo pane.

« Last post by IainB on January 28, 2015, 08:23 PM »

This feature could be very useful to not only myself but also other CHS users.
Thanks in advance for your consideration.

Please make sure to read the notes in the 3 rows on the lower RHS of the mock-up.