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The First Steps Towards Asimov's Psychohistory?

lawrencekhoo writes "The Chronicle of Higher Education has an interesting article about the Gottman Institute's (a.k.a. the love lab) work on modeling the dynamics of marital conversations. These models are described in John Gottman et. al.'s recent book The Mathematics of Marriage: Dynamic Nonlinear Models (MIT Press). Should be an interesting read for anyone who ever wondered if human interactions could be mathematically modeled."

8 of 293 comments (clear)

  1. toeuch my butt!!!1134efgdftgqe4tdf by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    because the cum on my face is tasty!

  2. I don't have money by benna · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    This sounds interesting but I can't afford a subscription to that site. :(

    --
    "It is not how things are in the world that is mystical, but that it exists." -Ludwig Wittgenstein
  3. *BSD is dying by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic
    It is official; Netcraft now confirms: *BSD is dying

    One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered *BSD community when IDC confirmed that *BSD market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that *BSD has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. *BSD is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.

    You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict *BSD's future. The hand writing is on the wall: *BSD faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for *BSD because *BSD is dying. Things are looking very bad for *BSD. As many of us are already aware, *BSD continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.

    FreeBSD is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time FreeBSD developers Jordan Hubbard and Mike Smith only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: FreeBSD is dying.

    Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.

    OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of NetBSD are there? Let's see. The number of OpenBSD versus NetBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 NetBSD users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetBSD posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put FreeBSD at about 80 percent of the *BSD market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeBSD users. This is consistent with the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts.

    Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD went out of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled OS. Now BSDI is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.

    All major surveys show that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *BSD is to survive at all it will be among OS dilettante dabblers. *BSD continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, *BSD is dead.

    Fact: *BSD is dying

  4. Re:movie ever in the making for the Foundation Ser by anagama · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Absolutely - it could be incredible. On the other hand, the movie version of Nightfall (an Asimov collaboration with Robert Silverberg) was just dreadful. I'd be especially interested in the Mule - that would be a really neat character if done right.

    --
    What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
  5. You left out the ending by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    After he thanked me, I stood up to leave. Then Gottman said "your fly is open". As I looked down, he pulled my waistband and poured a bowl of HOT GRITS down the front of my pants. It was sticky and warm...

  6. Re:Useless...WHY EDITORS WHY! by I-R-Baboon · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    I gotta put this on the floor...

    Why the HELL do /. editors combing through stories post a story with a freaking link to register to read a story?!?!?!!!

    SCROO THAT!

    Now...mod this into the background

    --
    -1 Overrated (Too many big words for me to comprehend)
  7. best model to date by BigBir3d · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    -0

    - 0

    where

    - is a penis

    and

    0 is a hole

    oscillate whenever possible

  8. Speaking of Salad Tossing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    Cause when you lickin' ass, you know you lickin' ass!