Domain: amazon.com
Stories and comments across the archive that link to amazon.com.
Comments · 40,271
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2014 scholarly book on language
Read David Braine's Language and Human Understanding: The Roots of Creativity in Speech and Thought[1]. Unless you think programming languages have anything to do with creativity and especially, in breaking wholes into parts (fun quotations of Bertrand Russell and Aristotle in the first two pages of de Koninck's "The Unity and Diversity of Natural Science"[2]), you need a whole different kind of language. The difference is between a structurally closed language which is 'dead' (Interpretive Social Science: A Second Look[3], 12; Conflict of Interpretations: Essays in Hermeneutics[4], 79), and a structurally open language, which has that critical informality that allows one to explore new territory that the language was not 'designed' to address. Finally, from Jacques Ellul's The Humiliation of the Word[5]:
Meaning is uncertain; therefore I must constantly fine-tune my language and work at reinterpreting the words I hear. I try to understand what the other person says to me. All language is more or less a riddle to be figured out; it is like interpreting a text that has many possible meanings. In my effort at understanding and interpretation, I establish definitions, and finally, a meaning. The thick haze of discourse produces meaning.
All of intellectual life (and I use the word "all" advisedly), even that of specialists in the most exact sciences, is based on these instabilities, failures to understand, and errors in interpretation, which we must find a way to go beyond and overcome. Mistaking a person's language keeps me from "taking" the person—from taking him prisoner. (19)
Anyone who tries to circumvent the above (eliminating all ambiguity everywhere) is doing violence to creativity and humanity.
[1] http://www.amazon.com/Language...
[2] http://www.u.arizona.edu/~aver...
[3] http://www.amazon.com/Interpre...
[4] http://www.amazon.com/Interpre...
[5] http://www.amazon.com/The-Humi... -
2014 scholarly book on language
Read David Braine's Language and Human Understanding: The Roots of Creativity in Speech and Thought[1]. Unless you think programming languages have anything to do with creativity and especially, in breaking wholes into parts (fun quotations of Bertrand Russell and Aristotle in the first two pages of de Koninck's "The Unity and Diversity of Natural Science"[2]), you need a whole different kind of language. The difference is between a structurally closed language which is 'dead' (Interpretive Social Science: A Second Look[3], 12; Conflict of Interpretations: Essays in Hermeneutics[4], 79), and a structurally open language, which has that critical informality that allows one to explore new territory that the language was not 'designed' to address. Finally, from Jacques Ellul's The Humiliation of the Word[5]:
Meaning is uncertain; therefore I must constantly fine-tune my language and work at reinterpreting the words I hear. I try to understand what the other person says to me. All language is more or less a riddle to be figured out; it is like interpreting a text that has many possible meanings. In my effort at understanding and interpretation, I establish definitions, and finally, a meaning. The thick haze of discourse produces meaning.
All of intellectual life (and I use the word "all" advisedly), even that of specialists in the most exact sciences, is based on these instabilities, failures to understand, and errors in interpretation, which we must find a way to go beyond and overcome. Mistaking a person's language keeps me from "taking" the person—from taking him prisoner. (19)
Anyone who tries to circumvent the above (eliminating all ambiguity everywhere) is doing violence to creativity and humanity.
[1] http://www.amazon.com/Language...
[2] http://www.u.arizona.edu/~aver...
[3] http://www.amazon.com/Interpre...
[4] http://www.amazon.com/Interpre...
[5] http://www.amazon.com/The-Humi... -
2014 scholarly book on language
Read David Braine's Language and Human Understanding: The Roots of Creativity in Speech and Thought[1]. Unless you think programming languages have anything to do with creativity and especially, in breaking wholes into parts (fun quotations of Bertrand Russell and Aristotle in the first two pages of de Koninck's "The Unity and Diversity of Natural Science"[2]), you need a whole different kind of language. The difference is between a structurally closed language which is 'dead' (Interpretive Social Science: A Second Look[3], 12; Conflict of Interpretations: Essays in Hermeneutics[4], 79), and a structurally open language, which has that critical informality that allows one to explore new territory that the language was not 'designed' to address. Finally, from Jacques Ellul's The Humiliation of the Word[5]:
Meaning is uncertain; therefore I must constantly fine-tune my language and work at reinterpreting the words I hear. I try to understand what the other person says to me. All language is more or less a riddle to be figured out; it is like interpreting a text that has many possible meanings. In my effort at understanding and interpretation, I establish definitions, and finally, a meaning. The thick haze of discourse produces meaning.
All of intellectual life (and I use the word "all" advisedly), even that of specialists in the most exact sciences, is based on these instabilities, failures to understand, and errors in interpretation, which we must find a way to go beyond and overcome. Mistaking a person's language keeps me from "taking" the person—from taking him prisoner. (19)
Anyone who tries to circumvent the above (eliminating all ambiguity everywhere) is doing violence to creativity and humanity.
[1] http://www.amazon.com/Language...
[2] http://www.u.arizona.edu/~aver...
[3] http://www.amazon.com/Interpre...
[4] http://www.amazon.com/Interpre...
[5] http://www.amazon.com/The-Humi... -
2014 scholarly book on language
Read David Braine's Language and Human Understanding: The Roots of Creativity in Speech and Thought[1]. Unless you think programming languages have anything to do with creativity and especially, in breaking wholes into parts (fun quotations of Bertrand Russell and Aristotle in the first two pages of de Koninck's "The Unity and Diversity of Natural Science"[2]), you need a whole different kind of language. The difference is between a structurally closed language which is 'dead' (Interpretive Social Science: A Second Look[3], 12; Conflict of Interpretations: Essays in Hermeneutics[4], 79), and a structurally open language, which has that critical informality that allows one to explore new territory that the language was not 'designed' to address. Finally, from Jacques Ellul's The Humiliation of the Word[5]:
Meaning is uncertain; therefore I must constantly fine-tune my language and work at reinterpreting the words I hear. I try to understand what the other person says to me. All language is more or less a riddle to be figured out; it is like interpreting a text that has many possible meanings. In my effort at understanding and interpretation, I establish definitions, and finally, a meaning. The thick haze of discourse produces meaning.
All of intellectual life (and I use the word "all" advisedly), even that of specialists in the most exact sciences, is based on these instabilities, failures to understand, and errors in interpretation, which we must find a way to go beyond and overcome. Mistaking a person's language keeps me from "taking" the person—from taking him prisoner. (19)
Anyone who tries to circumvent the above (eliminating all ambiguity everywhere) is doing violence to creativity and humanity.
[1] http://www.amazon.com/Language...
[2] http://www.u.arizona.edu/~aver...
[3] http://www.amazon.com/Interpre...
[4] http://www.amazon.com/Interpre...
[5] http://www.amazon.com/The-Humi... -
Re:Retarded reviews too
and the infamous 'steering wheel tray' with the great user submitted photos:
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Re:Retarded reviews too
You also get products for which satirical reviews are themselves a meme, such as Three Wolf Moon shirts.
(or are they fake?)
Are they going to start suing over that as well?
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Totally not fake.
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No more fake reviews?
Does that mean all 5000+ reviews for the Banana Slicer will soon disappear?
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Re:Slippery Slope.
Next Amazon will be suing people for their fantastic reviews of The Mountain Three Wolf Moon Short Sleeve Tee.
Fortunately, the three wolf moon t-shirt's power also indemnifies the wearer of any culpability. Truly the most amazing shirt ever made by man.
Shill!
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Slippery Slope.
Next Amazon will be suing people for their fantastic reviews of The Mountain Three Wolf Moon Short Sleeve Tee.
Fortunately, the three wolf moon t-shirt's power also indemnifies the wearer of any culpability. Truly the most amazing shirt ever made by man.
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Re:Simple answer ...
If the kid likes it, why not? I got introduced to programming also at age 7, though mostly by watching my brother do programming on the computer that my dad had available at work. Yet drawing flashing rectangles on a 286 PC with BASIC was more entertaining to me than watching cartoons. This was back in 1995.
The best talents are developed early in life. If his kid has an interest in logic and computers, why suppress it? No need to worry about his social skills (he'll go to school, join clubs etc. right?). There will be plenty of outdoor play and socializing in his life. Yet when it's cold, or rainy, he will be making something with his own hands and braincells instead of mindlessly watching TV or playing console games. If he keeps nurturing his talent, there's no limit to what he'll be able to do later in life. Suppressing it will just make him average, just like most of us.
The best racecar drivers, pilots and scientists, all started at a very young age. Starting early in life is the difference that makes stars out of regular people.
Nowadays I am a successful software developer. Maybe his kid will also be one, or even better. He won't regret it.
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Read my book -
Re:BASIC
You might try looking at some of these projects. They're fairly simple, but still are interesting enough. (Note: don't follow the text, it's somewhat unreadable, but the projects are interesting).
Also, always be on the lookout for simple effects that have visual interest. Maybe like flashing the entire screen in a single bright light, cycling through colors. When I think of how much entertainment I got from a simple 'goto' loop that filled the screen with text, it amazes me. -
Being anti-male makes women unhappy.
"misogynistic overgeneralization"
Here is a Google Image search: anti-male. Since 1953, there has been in the U.S. a huge amount of hostility aimed toward men.
Read the books by Warren Farrell. For example, Why Men Earn More: The Startling Truth Behind the Pay Gap -- and What Women Can Do About It or The Myth of Male Power.
"hyper aggressive alpha type" and "tend to view all interpersonal interactions as a contest that they need to win"
I agree exactly with that evaluation. The way to solve the problem of people like that is to do what you do: Recognize the problem and avoid recommending someone like that.
Read this comment below: How will you weed out sociopaths, when a sociopath is at the helm? -
Being anti-male makes women unhappy.
"misogynistic overgeneralization"
Here is a Google Image search: anti-male. Since 1953, there has been in the U.S. a huge amount of hostility aimed toward men.
Read the books by Warren Farrell. For example, Why Men Earn More: The Startling Truth Behind the Pay Gap -- and What Women Can Do About It or The Myth of Male Power.
"hyper aggressive alpha type" and "tend to view all interpersonal interactions as a contest that they need to win"
I agree exactly with that evaluation. The way to solve the problem of people like that is to do what you do: Recognize the problem and avoid recommending someone like that.
Read this comment below: How will you weed out sociopaths, when a sociopath is at the helm? -
Being anti-male makes women unhappy.
"misogynistic overgeneralization"
Here is a Google Image search: anti-male. Since 1953, there has been in the U.S. a huge amount of hostility aimed toward men.
Read the books by Warren Farrell. For example, Why Men Earn More: The Startling Truth Behind the Pay Gap -- and What Women Can Do About It or The Myth of Male Power.
"hyper aggressive alpha type" and "tend to view all interpersonal interactions as a contest that they need to win"
I agree exactly with that evaluation. The way to solve the problem of people like that is to do what you do: Recognize the problem and avoid recommending someone like that.
Read this comment below: How will you weed out sociopaths, when a sociopath is at the helm? -
Recommended reading
I highly recommend Anita Okrent's In the Land of Invented Languages, which is interesting to a sci-fi fan because it covers not only the obvious cases like Klingon, but serious attempts to create "philosophical" languages which are alluded to in Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle.
It was interesting to me as a long time database and system designer because the seriously undermines the impulse that arises once in every generation of system designers that systems can be integrated "merely" by adopting a common, standardized ontological model.
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Re:Powdered alcohol is stupid.
http://www.amazon.com/s?ie=UTF...
You're officially wasting oxygen. Do the planet a favor and free up your biomass for something more useful.
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Re:The most likely end of the human race: Nuclear
Well certainly as far as European infantry platoon leader Paul Fussel is concerned!
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Re:Obvious bullshit statement
Amazon linking error there. I meant to link to the wired 360 controller for the first one.
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Re:Obvious bullshit statement
3. The different products are actually virtually equivalent except for the adapter, so it doesn't make sense to have two different lines. But if that was true, why wouldn't they just come out and say that?
They already do worse. Quick -- what's the difference between this XBox360 controller, compared to this XBox360 controller here?
Give up? NOTHING. They don't even need an adapter. I bought the 360 one for my PC and it's plug-n-play. They are literally the same product (actually I've heard some murmurings the components in the "Windows" one are inferior to the console one). The 360 one is normally cheaper, too (though not at this exact time I notice) because as a "console controller" it gets put on sale more.
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Re:Obvious bullshit statement
3. The different products are actually virtually equivalent except for the adapter, so it doesn't make sense to have two different lines. But if that was true, why wouldn't they just come out and say that?
They already do worse. Quick -- what's the difference between this XBox360 controller, compared to this XBox360 controller here?
Give up? NOTHING. They don't even need an adapter. I bought the 360 one for my PC and it's plug-n-play. They are literally the same product (actually I've heard some murmurings the components in the "Windows" one are inferior to the console one). The 360 one is normally cheaper, too (though not at this exact time I notice) because as a "console controller" it gets put on sale more.
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Amazon
Available on Amazon
... http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb... -
Don't use that book anyway, very bad advice
The Anarchists Cookbook is simply a very bad book. Not bad because of the motives of those reading (generally), but bad because much of the instructions given in there are bad, sometimes dangerously so...
Back when I was a kid, lets say "thinking" about playing around with this stuff, I quickly realized that things it were saying to do were really bad ideas. At the time I remember actually thinking it must have been put out by the CIA in an effort to thwart potential bombers, either by making devices that were as harmless as a bucket of water ranging up to self-selecting out of the gene pool very rapidly.
So out of concern for others, I have to say there are way better sources of info if you look around.
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Re:Yes.
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Re:Would like it if I could pick the product
The same-day Amazon Fresh service seems to have such thing (I found it when searching to see if this new product was a joke).
https://fresh.amazon.com/dash/ -
Re:Um... How will it change society?
Things may go further than that. There will not be any ownership of private cars. The autonomous car fleet will be offered as a utility, allowing anyone to use them for transportation. Everything will be on-demand, and you'll no longer need to maintain it. However, what would be the implications that a large organization, or even a government, has such control over the freedom to travel? To know how society will change with autonomous cars we have to keep in mind the parallel progress of other technologies, such as wearable electronics (love em or hate em) and the rest.
I even wrote a book about it.
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Re:What an Embarrassingly Vapid Article
Things may go further than that. There will not be any ownership of private cars. The autonomous car fleet will be offered as a utility, allowing anyone to use them for transportation. Everything will be on-demand, and you'll no longer need to maintain it. However, what would be the implications that a large organization, or even a government, has such control over the freedom to travel? To know how society will change with autonomous cars we have to keep in mind the parallel progress of other technologies, such as wearable electronics (love em or hate em) and the rest.
I even wrote a book about it.
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Re:MOOG = massive open online synthesis
Frankly, I had to look up MOOC online too because it wasn't in my 1938 Webster or Corey Ford's Guide To Thimking [1961, Doubleday] , the computer reference I most often consult.
[...] some people started GOOgling it,
not knowing what it was,
and they'll continue GOOging it forever
just because This is the trend that never ends,
only the name does change my friend, [...]It means eLearning or iBrainPodPeople or LearningMOO/MUD. It also means Learn-A-TRON or Learn-O-Matic. As you see on the oldest revisions of the Wiki, it was "founded on the theory of connectivism and an open pedagogy based on networked learning." From these huble 2011 origins it has gone on to have been founded on other things too. TIL In MOOC "every letter is negotiable," which means the shortest possible variant of it is "" the null set...
No biting satire intended, as one who never attended High School I welcome the advent of the online courses that can be realized for less than $100,000, whatever the cost. Along with Benny Hill I am learning all the time.
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Re:What Would be a Trivial Amount?
You laugh but this is actually a real thing. Personally I like the ones that connect to your wi-fi. That way I have to find my phone, unlock it, open the app then turn off the power bar from there. I find it far simpler than simply reaching over and moving the single switch to the "off" position.
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Re:MY data in AMAZON's cloud ??
I'm going to ignore your sarcasm since I believe that sarcasm invalidates your argument.
But, since you asked, AMZN has recently enhanced S3 with cross-region replication, not just cross-availability zone replication, per this announcement:
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Re:Chrome OS is a joke
In actual reality, I went to amazon.com, typed "Chromebook", selected OS: "Chrome OS", then sorted by price resulting in 14 models below the $200 mark
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Re:News fot nerds...from the 90's?
lol. Wow. This is *OLD* news. The military has been using this technology for over 20 years now.
And you can even buy it from Amazon.com
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okay, but LED bulbs are nowhere near $22/ea
Cree LED bulbs $53 for a 6 pack of a premium brand, so under $9/ea, not $22. Chinese knockoffs are much cheaper yet. They haven't been $22/ea for ages - prices have been coming down steadily.
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Re: FTA
It is what happened
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Re:I read that as "Nortel"
And I read it as "Portable DVD Player."
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Re:This could be interesting.
haircuts, gasoline, legal representation, prescription drugs (though sellers have been caught illegally selling prescription drugs through Amazon), etc.
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Re:Encrypt client side
I'm sure that they've given considerable thought to subtly discouraging very heavy use, and looked at how different users actually tend to use online storage space, along with how much opportunity for additional profit there might be(eg. a 'photo storage' user might be a good candidate for being sold prints or something, while a 'generic files' user might not); and I imagine that lack of block level control helps. It would be interesting to know what the number-crunching looked like to arrive at those price points; though I'm sure that those data are not going to be public anytime soon.
However, I suspect that it's also there, at least in part, because this service is a relatively thin skin of consumer-friendly abstraction layer on top of S3, which is also object based. Amazon does have a block storage offering; but they only seem particularly interested in people using block storage 'devices' as disks on EC2 instances, rather than on farming them out over the web.
There is nothing stopping you from configuring the OS on an EC2 instance to function as a file server and getting remote access to block storage that way; but it doesn't seem to be the encouraged use case.
I don't know nearly enough about large-scale storage to say why they prefer object based storage over block based storage; but my understanding is that, even in the paid seats, object based storage is very much what they are offering, for anything externally accessed, with their block-based offering more or less there to allow you to configure the 'disks' in your EC2 'server' with a bit more granularity. -
Re:Encrypt client side
Based on their API reference [amazon.com] 3rd-party apps that do whatever you want on the client side certainly look doable enough.
The downside is that it doesn't appear to support block-level file changes -- you can only create or overwrite an entire file at once. This means that storing something like a 50GB TrueCrypt volume isn't really feasible and you'd have to encrypt all your files individually. This is more difficult and more prone to mistakes.
Hopefully they expand the API at some point to allow binary delta updates of some kind, but their omission could have been a conscious decision to try and discourage people from storing huge files and big encrypted containers.
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And on Slashdot?
I've often wondered how much astroturfing goes on at Slashdot.
Certain news stories come up, and people make the most twisted arguments imaginable to deflect, downplay, or show shades of grey. Sometimes it's from long-term users with varied post histories - are these well-crafted astroturfers, carefully building up a false history to deflect suspicion?
My last remembered example was the one about home solar installations: The panels give unused power to the grid during the day, and the users take power from the grid at night.
The home-solar owner is using the grid as offline storage and not paying for it... and that's not fair.
This is straight from Robert Cialdini's book Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion(*). "I'd like to get solar panels for my house, but oh! if I'm being unfair, then the answer's obvious! I can't be unfair now... can I?"
It's a well-crafted argument that halts rational thought by activating an automatic response on the part of the reader... by presenting a point of view that's not particularly obvious, and not something that is actually important to the issue.
(Consider: Do you really care about being unfair to the huge corporate energy conglomerate? And do you think that they would be fair to you in return? And looking forward 50 years, is the world populated by distributed home solar installations *better* than the world relying on monolithic energy production? And if so, won't "being unfair" now help to bring that about?)
This is only one example, I've noticed many sketchy arguments presented here - the Uber controversy seems to be particularly inflated.
We know that big corporate interests will astroturf politicians and regulators by faking letters of support &c (viz: the outpouring of support of the Comcast/TimeWarner merger).
We're a nexus (probably the biggest one) of smart people on the internet. Are there teams of astroturfers trying to shape public opinion?
Has anyone else noticed any particularly suspicious arguments?
(*) Chapter 3, "Commitment and Consistency"
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Link to the official announcement?
Why do people link to blog posts that neglect to link to the original source?
A little digging, and it seems on the surface to have similar restrictions as BackBlaze, as it's only for "for personal, non-commercial purposes".
So I can't store my ~3PB of telescope data on there, or even just the jpeg browse images.
The terms of use mention that you can share files
.. but do they charge you for downloads, as with their other cloud service offerings, or is that included in the 'unlimited'?(I might be an old fogey, but I remember when you used to link to a blog post to set context *and* link to the original source in the summary, rather than just some shallow 'I've cherry picked the info'. At least Roland and Coondoggie linked back to their original sources, even if Coondoggies were almost exclusively regurgitation of press releases + a links back to Network World))
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Re:Encrypt client side
Based on their API reference 3rd-party apps that do whatever you want on the client side certainly look doable enough.
Obviously, the various stuff about "Access your files on all your devices!" and "Build into all your Amazon devices!" and whatnot is going to be less useful, so they are clearly expecting most customers to not do that(and implicitly encouraging them not to); but the service itself doesn't appear to have any objections to you dropping encrypted blobs into it.
(Now, what Amazon would do if you were to use something like PNGdrive, to get the advantages of the rather more expensive 'unlimited files' tier using only the 'unlimited photos' tier, I don't know; but I suspect that they would be less happy...) -
Re:Tipping point?
A tiny board with 2-3 chips. Most of the inside of that 2.5" drive chassis is empty air.
That's because of the mSATA format. You can already buy a 1 TB mSATA drive. On raw size alone you can fit 7.1 of those into the same space as a 3.5" hard drive.
They just need to get the cost down. Storage solutions in the future will be trays of those chips in a 1U-4U form factor with fans in front and some CPU and networking connections. No more 'hot swap' hard drive 3.5" form factors, just swap an entire blade of SSD chips.
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Assuming fair dice
This procedure assumes fair, unbiased dice. For years, the NSA has required precise machining of dice to generate predictable rolls. Once someone cracks the code, Casinos will lose billions.
What, other than precision machining, would explain why plastic dice with a materials cost of pennies cost over $2/each?
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Science Says this Change is Overdue
Like many of you out there, I never personally experienced these issues (being a white male). And I actually like looking at pretty girls. But at what cost? Folks should recognize that there's a vast literature out there about the impacts of both conscious and unconscious bias in testing, hiring and performance of minorities and women in STEM fields. Things like Booth Babes drive people away. For those of you interested, it is illuminating to read about the weird ways in which the human brain internalizes various societal cues about how women and minorities fit into STEM. Anyone who wants to comment on this topic seriously should at least read through this research:
* Book - "Whistling Vivaldi," written by Claude Steele . Professor Steele isn't the best writer in the world, but the experiments he describes are just fascinating. I challenge anyone to look at his results and not refine their views on these issue. Nice mix of pop-psychology and scientific research. http://www.amazon.com/Whistlin...
* Planet Money Podcast - "When Women Stopped Coding", very much pop-psychology, but thoroughly entertaining and I certainly found some basic truth in their theory. http://www.npr.org/blogs/money...
* Article in the journal "Nature" on what the GRE test actually measures, http://www.nature.com/naturejo... Also see a partial refutation of the initial (which I found less convincing, but I put it out there anyway): http://www.nature.com/nature/j...
* Recent pop-science article citing a meta-analysis about "Genius" in male and female professors (interesting, if somewhat anecdotal): http://www.vox.com/2015/2/12/8...
Reading this research (even at the cursory level pop-science perspective) certainly got me thinking about women (and minorities) in STEM. Personally, it turned me from a skeptic of the type of program Intel is purposing into
.... well, I'm not entirely sure. Read the research and I think you'll see what I mean.Apologies for bringing actual science to what I'm sure will turn into a flame war..... (Complete disclosure: I posed something similar a few weeks ago, but it's such interesting stuff, I posted it again!)
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Re:Next prize for: robots to fix the robots
They do have yellowcake.
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Re:it always amazes me
> Remember, these guys
Which guys?
> get about one shot to get their test explosion right
Bomb design isn't just hammering a bunch of parts together. Every nation that has developed nukes has done so with the help of computer-aided design (yes, even in the 1950's). These days you can literally simulate a thermonuclear weapon on your laptop, if you have enough knowledge of the physics. And the physics knowledge you need isn't exactly secret either: http://www.amazon.com/Physics-...
> Maybe there's a paper that theorized that you could set a Dewar's flask of liquid hydrogen next to an A-bomb to get an H-bomb.
That's hilarious. You're *seriously* underestimating other countries if you think they'd have to rely on leaked information from US sources to build a thermonuclear bomb, and couldn't do it themselves. Russia did it themselves, and so did China. During the 80's, a number of US scientists visited China under the pretense of a 'scientific conference' on nuclear energy (their real reason was to suss out how far China was in their nuclear knowledge). The scientists reported being amazed by the level of scientific competence of the Chinese as relating to nuclear weapons. The US government had previously assumed that Chinese weapons technology was mostly a result of espionage. The results of the conferences proved otherwise.
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Other great novels
Read Diaspora by Greg Egan. http://www.amazon.com/Diaspora...
Or Smith's Autonomy http://autonomyseries.com/
Or Rajaniemi's Jean le Flambeur series. http://www.goodreads.com/serie...All excellent novels.
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Re:Just eat well
STOP EATING PROCESSED "food". Start with completely cutting out junk, no cookies, cake, donuts, candy, nothing from a box.
You should eat right anyway for good health, but if your goal is simply to lose weight, you don't have to give up processed junk food.
"No such discussion is complete without a link to the Twinkie Diet."
There really is no such thing as a "bad food," it's all about getting the essential nutrients and keeping calories in check. Read Dr. Saltman's University of California San Diego Nutrition Book, it cuts through the misconceptions and mythology and covers the science behind each essential nutrient from knowledge gained by developing total parenteral nutrition (intravenous feeding).
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Re:AI isn't taking over
Read Diaspora by Greg Egan. http://www.amazon.com/Diaspora...
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Re:When did Slashdot become a press agent?
This is nothing more than a press release for some software. It's literally an ad for something made by Pixar published on Pixar's website.
Then what would you like to talk about that doesn't involve mentioning any products at all? If you go to a website that talks about "News for nerds, stuff that matters" then you are going to find that the stuff that matters to nerds will often be products that people sell (or in this case, give away). We can't all be MacGyver building our own supercomputers from coconut shells and earwax.
If a story doesn't interest you, or you think that it is just blatant consumerism, then feel free to go do something else like watch another inspirational episode of MacGyver from the MacGyver Complete Series box set, available at a cheap price and with free shipping at Amazon.