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Good book that deals with complex systems etc. by muonzoo · 2003-02-10 14:33 · Score: 2, Interesting · on Why Alien Species Thrive

There is a really good book that addressing this, along with lots of other geek interesting things. I read it a few years ago, but it is equally interesting today as it was then.

If you have a favorite book search engine, then you might only want the details:
ISBN number: 0679425632
Title: Why things bite back: Technology and the Revenge of Unintended Consequences
Author: Edward Tenner
Publisher: Random House Canada
Published: May 1996

If you want, you can see it at Amazon, Barnes and Noble and Indigo.
Go read it. It's interesting.

Re:AS long as thay have anonomous cash by MillionthMonkey · 2003-02-09 13:53 · Score: 4, Insightful · on The Future of Money

You'd have to be out of your mind to buy a copy of 2600 with a credit card. Are you oblivious to the digital slime trail that your daily activities are leaving behind you? How many lists do you think you're on?

Some idiots in the government recently examined all of Safeway's California customer relations management files and compiled a list of people in California who had bought hummus of all things. You think they won't ask Barnes and Noble for a list of people who have purchased copies of 2600? The goons who are searching for hummus eaters will certainly find you. Think you have nothing to hide? Then you'll have no problem with letting them in when they show up at your door after the 4th Amendment has been legislated away!

You've probably got a big red flag next to your name in a number of databases. But maybe you can repair the damage. I suggest you get your CC out right now and use it to buy 50 copies of "A Charge To Keep". This will prove to the Attorney General that you're one of the sheep who won't cause any trouble and who deserves to keep his citizenship after PATRIOT II passes.

Next time you buy 2600, make sure you've got your tinfoil hat on first!

rules of acquisition by bluethundr · 2003-02-07 07:08 · Score: 2, Interesting · on Sun Releases Solaris 9 for Intel

Install Sunx86
???
Profit!

Actually, I think I know what the "???" may be in this case. That would be: build your SUN chops with a copy of said on one of these nice ch33p b0x0rz and grab hold of some dead trees and with some perserverance and love of knowledge you will get to 3.

Re:Put me down for the space elevator. by DuckDuckBOOM! · 2003-02-05 09:22 · Score: 1 · on Where Should Space Exploration Go From Here?

ummmm how about getting the damn ribbon long enough and getting into orbit in the first place ? We going to have a swammi play a flute to lift it ?

Firstly: you don't lift the cable, you drop it. Start from synchronous orbit. Pay out the cable both toward and away from Earth, keeping the deployed masses equal so you don't drift. (The cable leading away from Earth is shorter and heavier.) Tidal forces orient the cable vertically as you deploy. Eventually you'll reach the ground. Note that, until you anchor, the tension at each end of the cable is zero - the weight of the cable below geosync is balanced by that of the cable above geosync. (The cable tension at geosync is rather insane, as an earlier poster put it.) Guide a small asteroid to the high end of the cable, and anchor it. At the same time, anchor the low end to bedrock. One orbital elevator, ready for use.

Secondly: you don't ship the cable up from Earth, you manufacture it in place. If you're smart, you bring the raw material down from the Moon via linear accelerator. If you're really smart, you choose a carbonaceous asteroid as your anchor weight, and mine that for material as you move it into place.

If you want a good tutorial on the practical aspects of space elevator construction, check out Arthur C. Clarke's The Fountains of Paradise. Decent read, and the depiction, given the body of knowledge in 1979, is dead on.

He's already answered my question. by erik_fredricks · 2003-02-03 13:32 · Score: 1 · on Ask Internet Expert Dave Barry

From Dave Barry in Cyberspace :

"Who really runs the internet?"

"A 13-year-old boy named Kevin."

Stephenson's first, again... by TheSHAD0W · 2003-02-01 05:52 · Score: 1 · on Science Fiction and Smart Mobs

I'm afraid Neal Stephenson beat this guy to it, a long time ago; he detailed the behavior of a "smart mob" in his book The Diamond Age (or,

A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer

).

Welcome to the Information age! by Dolemite_the_Wiz · 2003-01-31 15:07 · Score: 2, Insightful · on Giant Sucking Noise

Do you want to get a sacry glimpse of where this economy is heading in, say, 25 or more years?

Read this book.

Buckle your seatbelts kids, it's going to be a gnarly ride!

P.S. I though the sucking sound was Anna Nicole Smith at an all you can eat restaraunt.

Dolemite

Re:Gutenberg by MrOrn · 2003-01-29 17:08 · Score: 1 · on Why Project Gutenberg Isn't There Yet

Actually, yes, I will correct you and give a reference. :-)

My previous comment was from memory but after your comment, I did go check my books. The source is McMurtrie, Douglas. C. The Book: The Story of Printing & Bookmaking, New York: Oxford University Press, 1943. Third Ed. (rev.).

Out of print but should be used copies around, it is (or was) a standard reference in printing history. Check B&N

From p. 95ff.: Not only block printing but also movable types originated in China. The Chinese invention of separate types antedated the experiments of Gutenberg by more than four hundred years. The inventor was Pi Sheng, and his types were made of baked clay and not of metal. As the event is of major importance in cultural history, I am quoting the original record in full, as translated from the essays of Shen Kua, a Chinese writer who was contemporary with the invention and possibly a personal friend of the inventor...[here follows a very long quotation from Shen Kua.]

Other Chinese historians confirm the record of Pi Sheng's invention. Types are also reported to have been made of tin, but these, as well as the earthenware types, did not work well with the watercolour ink. So wooden types were made, in spite of the objections which Pi Sheng had raised against them. There is a record of the making of wooden types in 1314 by Wang Cheng, who first cut the characters on a block of wood and then sawed them apart. Wang is said to have arranged his types in a case in the form of a revolving table and to have provided something over sixty thousand types for the printing of a book on agriculture, and other works.

There is quite a bit more on earlier use of type in Asia, including Korea, but I won't quote it entirely as there is 15-pages-worth.

So you stand corrected and so do I. I had forgotten this, so thanks for making me look it up.

The Pragmaic Programmer by Hirofyre · 2003-01-29 08:18 · Score: 5, Interesting · on How to be a Programmer

Another good reference for this type of info is The Pragmatic Programmer. It lays out how to write flexible, dynamic, and adaptable code, as well avoiding traps that a lot of new programmers fall into. It takes the time to explain the "why's" behind a lot of the engineering approaches advanced programmers take. It is definitely aimed at "junior" programmers, though. Usually when we get someone just out of collage, I point them to this book.

This is the problem with hierarchical systems by benzapp · 2003-01-29 06:47 · Score: 1 · on Grade Inflation in Higher Education

This is not really a problem any more or less in the sciences than any other study. The reason is that grades as we know them were created to foster a hierarchical caste system loosely organized as a meritocracy. From Indiana University to Columbia Teachers College, philosopher kings of the late 19th century planned a social system for the future, with funding from the industrial captains and financiers of the age.

Indiana University focused more on pure scientific eugenics, ie sterilization, breeding plans. Hitler referred to his own national sterilization plan as the "Indiana Plan". Schools like the Univeristy of Chicago and Columbia Teachers College focused on the Brave New World stuff, ie psychological manipulation and organizational conditioning. It was during this era that forced schooling began a national obsession and studies like psychology, sociology, and education were born. The funny thing about these new masters of society was their pseudoscientific outlook on their essentially baseless studies. Sociologists today still have a hard time admitting their discipline was created to CONTROL the masses, not help them.

In any event, scientific folks hold true to these arbitrary guidelines, and will apply the system of measure without giving any thought at all. Humanities folks grasp slightly that the need to grade people is inherently flawed, so they bend the rules as much as they need.

I know this will come as quite a shock to most people here, and I might even get some flames. But suffice it to say, the evidence is overwhelming that despite whatever benefits school MIGHT have, it was created to foster submissive behavior, conformity, respect for managerial authority, acquiesence to bureauocracy, and ultimately to inhibit the sense of wonder which is at the heart of true learning, creativity, and entrepreneurship.

It was believed that technology would make most humans irrelevant for productive purposes and it would better serve society to make them as stupid and dependant as possible.

Anyway, grades are not the problem. SCHOOL is the problem. School is working AS DESIGNED. All the original proponents of modern schooling would be quite pleased with the system we have in place. Even grade inflation is irrelevant. Grades were never intended to truly determine who was "best". They are there merely to induce competitive behavior and condition free men to crave meaningless accolades rather than true purpose in their lives. If you are really interested in the history of schooling, an excellent book can be found here. I guarantee it will be an eye opening experience.

Diets by John+Bayko · 2003-01-29 02:54 · Score: 1 · on Test-Driven Development by Example

There is no magic formula for producing quality software in a reasonable amount of time yet, but XP is another step in the right direction.

Programming methodologies are like diets. The fundamentals are always the same - eat better, exercize more. Diet/fitness plans are just methodologies for keeping track of that, and making sure you get around to doing what you know you should anyway - using food points, tracking calories burned, whatever. All have trade-offs and different emphasis, and some are more suitable for some people than others. Of course, if you have enough self-discipline and aren't distracted by other things in your life, you don't need a diet plan, you can simply keep yourself healthy on your own.

Programming methodologies are the same thing. I haven't seen anything in XP that I haven't seen elsewhere, using different words (for example, Steve McConnel's excellent Code Complete). Again, all methodologies have trade-offs and different emphasis, and some are more suitable for some projects than others, and again if your developers have enough self discipline they know how to do a project properly and don't need a set of rules to follow.

Re:Tests are only as good as your requirements�. by Lumpish+Scholar · 2003-01-28 04:50 · Score: 1 · on Test-Driven Development by Example

Requirements are the Achilles heel of XP.

Then user stories (what others call "use cases") must be the glass slipper. XP addresses this; read Planning Extreme Programming by Kent Beck and Martin Fowler (Amazon.com, BN.com).

XP also calls for "customer on site"; the theory is, it's far quicker to get answers in real time rather than waiting for someone to write a 600 page document.

THIS DOES NOT SCALE UP. You know it, I know it, Kent Beck probably knows it. Some of the other agile development methods try to address this.

Re:too many developers by Lumpish+Scholar · 2003-01-28 04:37 · Score: 1 · on Test-Driven Development by Example

it would be nice to have 2 developers for every problem

It would be even nicer if two developers working together were more than twice as productive as either of them working alone ... but that's pair programming, a different XP practice, and a whole different book (Amazon.com, BN.com).

Two Things by ziriyab · 2003-01-27 05:39 · Score: 5, Informative · on PHP and MySQL Web Development

1. Amazon has it cheaper than BN by $5.00. And they have free shipping (vs. $4.00 min for BN)
2. The second edition of the same book is coming in about 3 weeks (Feb 13), so you may want to wait for that.

next book review: Orwell's 1984 by dubiousmike · 2003-01-27 05:13 · Score: 0, Informative · on PHP and MySQL Web Development

PHP and MySQL Web Development

Luke Welling, Laura Thomson

Paperback, March 2001

How long does a book need to be out before it gets reviewed? Is it still viable after almost 2 years?

Re:before y'all laugh too much by bluethundr · 2003-01-23 14:23 · Score: 1 · on Elect Steve Jobs President of the United States

Not exactly. The Boucher Bill was passed in 1993; TBL invented the WWW in 1991 (the first work was in 1989; the publication of the CERN httpd was in 1991, though, and that publication - particularly these [w3.org] emails [w3.org], dated 9 Aug 1991, offering the code for free and providing the first public http links I know of - should constitute the birth of the WWW.

What the Boucher Bill did was provide a policy framework for the public Web/Internet as we know it. Still worthy of mention in the annals of history, regardless of how Algore might have [mis?]characterized it.

Yeah, yeah, blah blah, I read Tim's book too. But I read it when it came out in '99 so many of the details were a bit lost to the odd bong hit here and there. Thanks for refreshing my memory. But within about two or three years is what I had in mind with the phrase roughly contemperaneous. If I had meant at they happened simultaneously, I would have said as such!

Although in the span of those two years (91-93) I dated 3 women, I consider all of those relationships to have been roughly contemperaneous!!

Re:before y'all laugh too much by bluethundr · 2003-01-23 14:23 · Score: 1 · on Elect Steve Jobs President of the United States

Not exactly. The Boucher Bill was passed in 1993; TBL invented the WWW in 1991 (the first work was in 1989; the publication of the CERN httpd was in 1991, though, and that publication - particularly these [w3.org] emails [w3.org], dated 9 Aug 1991, offering the code for free and providing the first public http links I know of - should constitute the birth of the WWW.

What the Boucher Bill did was provide a policy framework for the public Web/Internet as we know it. Still worthy of mention in the annals of history, regardless of how Algore might have [mis?]characterized it.

Yeah, yeah, blah blah, I read Tim's book too. But I read it when it came out in '99 so many of the details were a bit lost to the odd bong hit here and there. Thanks for refreshing my memory. But within about two or three years is what I had in mind with the phrase roughly contemperaneous. If I had meant at they happened simultaneously, I would have said as such!

Although in the span of those two years (91-93) I dated 3 women, I consider all of those relationships to have been roughly contemperaneous!!

Re:Please do not mix sociopolitics with physics by SandsOfEarth · 2003-01-23 10:24 · Score: 1 · on Linked: The New Science of Networks

See also "The Winner-Take-All Society: Why the Few at the Top Get so Much More than the Rest of Us" by Robert H. Frank and Philip J. Cook. This is a great book explaining some of the forces that shape our society.

Re:why on earth would you expect a carbon copy ? by hawkestein · 2003-01-22 01:30 · Score: 1 · on Cloned Cat Not a 'Carbon Copy'

It's been established that nature plays a lesser role than nurture in the personality of a human.. obviously, the same must apply to animals as well..

Some have suggested that nature's role in human paersonality has been underestimated. Steven Pinker's recent book entitled The Blank Slate argues against the idea that nature plays (almost) no role in personality (i.e. theat we are born as blank slates).

Good reading for geeks... by otis+wildflower · 2003-01-20 10:47 · Score: 1 · on Top 10 New Sci-Fi/SF Authors?