I much prefer the Kantian approach, which, simplified, is that space and time are the forms of human intuition, and it is these forms of intuition that lead to us understanding things the way we do (spacially and temporally, whose relationships are mathematical). "Things in themselves" are unknowable, and can only be approached through some set of references, whether it be through the space and time we perceive, other possible ways time and space could work (non-Euclidian geometries?), or ways we can't even imagine. Unlike Plato's idea, which is that mathematics involves universal truths we discover, Kant's "Copernican turn" puts the subject as the one who projects mathematics onto everything it experiences. Arguably, this is the idea that has lead to the "modern era".
This makes mathematics the study of these forms of intuition, so unlike Plato's approach, we're not "discovering" universal ideas, but rather coming to understand the way we interpret the world (and by "we", I mean me, the beings who do science that makes sense to me, and probably most beings on earth whose methods of sensation resemble that of humans).
To answer the question of discovery or invention from this perspective, we can invent ways to do mathematics, but the relationships themselves are a discovery of the way we intuit anything we can sense.
What is on the agenda for the Cleveland party that'll change my mind?
The idea is that, as people who frequently read and interact with Slashdot and the myriad and diverse topics it covers, we'll have a huge domain of common interests to talk about. I'm sure most of us work with or spend a good amount of time on hobbies that relate to Slashdot, so there's a ton of interesting conversation right there that you probably couldn't have with the typical person you don't know. Someone suggested printing out a list of people's comments and discussing them. There's no formal agenda (yet, at least) but if you have any ideas, please, let us know. We could extend the party into earlier in the day doing something else if there's enough interest.
I hope it'll be more than sitting around making Soviet Russia, Naked and Petrified, and Profit!!! jokes.
Of course there's going to be a certain amount of that, but there is in reading Slashdot, too. I doubt anyone reads Slashdot just for the joke memes. It's mostly for discussing niche nerdy interests with other people who care about them. I'd imagine it would be the same at a party, if people actually talk...
I really hate being around alcohol and people I don't know...
Alcohol can make people stupid(er), but it's also a great social lubricant. I don't know any of the people who will be showing up either, but I imagine we'll have some interesting conversations we probably wouldn't have had otherwise. Many of us probably don't get the opportunity to talk about these things in a group setting frequently, so at the very least it will be an interesting experience that doesn't happen often.
In short, I don't know what to expect, but it should be fun.
I'm going to miss how light the sixaxis is right now.
I won't. The current SIXAXIS feels cheap. The first generation of DUALSHOCK 2s felt great--they felt like they had a good build quality and were more than a couple of pieces of cheap plastic. Even the later DUALSHOCKs lost some weight and some of that "quality" feeling. I'm not saying that the build quality has actually gone down. I wouldn't know. Holding the SIXAXIS just doesn't give me the same warm fuzzies that the heavier, more substantial DUALSHOCKs did.
Apple just gave a lot of people much more incentive to install a new OS on their iPod.
They've also made it currently impossible to use alternate OSes on the iPod by encrypting the firmware on the 2nd gen Nano and all subsequent iPods, which is a much more difficult obstacle to overcome. I'm surprised there isn't as much of an uproar about this on Slashdot.
I'm predicting the zapper will work with virtual console titles that used the light gun.
The "zapper" is nothing more than a piece of plastic that holds the Wiimote and Nunchuk together. For those who considered the above interesting, consider that the zapper couldn't possibly have functionally in Virtual Console games beyond that of a Wiimote other than its gun-like shape. Additionally, if Nintendo decides to add light gun titles to Virtual Console, they will have to add some type of on-screen crosshair to aid in aim; while the light gun actually processed an image of the screen area directly in front of it, the Wii Remote uses the sensor bar for calibration, meaning that the cursor on the screen isn't exactly where you're pointing; it's somewhat offset, which is why you don't see Wii titles without some type of on-screen aim indication.
Since DS isn't a name that seems likely to be passed to the next generation Nintendo handheld device (which will most likely have some sort of other new feature differentiating it), I'd give it at least a 50/50 that Nintendo will bring the Game Boy moniker for the next generation handheld. I don't think most people at the moment even realize the Nintendo DS isn't named the Nintendo Game Boy DS. The brand is there in one's mind even if Nintendo isn't actually using it.
It was the same results with the same layout, only the logo at the top changed.
This is also how I interpreted the article. It doesn't seem like a good way to set up the experiment. Wouldn't anyone who actually used the search engines (the people that branding would mean something to) realize that the format of the search results didn't match what they normally see from that search engine? Or did the experimenters choose a neutral format that none of the search engines use, including the logos only as an identification of which search engine the results supposedly came from?
Scot makes some great points about the high end and even the mid-range, but suggesting that Apple is competitive on the low end is just ludicrous. I'd call the low end $500-$1000. Apple's not even in that market.
This isn't easy for the typical user to do with Vista (yet?), as far as I know. Even with XP and activation, there were VLKs. Doing a quick search, I don't see any easy-to-find Vista activation circumvention without drawbacks.
Maybe this has something to do with why Dell is finally selling PCs with a non-MS OS.
CAPTCHAs work because the computers sending them already know what the text says; they start with it in text form and change it into a hard-to-read image. In the system discussed in the article, how will the computer verify that the user response actually matches the text? Sure, it could compare the response to its best guess, but if a program trying to guess the text was equally as sophisicated as the guessing computer, the guess would match.
I imagine the computer sending the picture of the image of hard-to-read text will further obfuscate the image in a way that makes it even more difficult for the computer on the receiving end to decipher, but the article doesn't acknowledge that this is one of the first logical questions in conceiving of / implementing this system in a functional way. The article really should cover this...
No offense, but you are missing something quite subtle yet extremely profound.
Your response was exactly what I was asking for - of course no offense.
Dell is embracing what it sees as the shape of things to come for computers, which is that most people will buy cheap ones that are disposable. As this is becoming more and more the norm, selling these low-level products direct isn't the best way to go. Who's going to mail order a $150 TV? People in the market for something like this go to Wal-Mart.
Like you said, it's also a very telling statement about Dell's continuing philosophy concerning the (low) quality level PC makers should target to stay in the market.
Any more than a PLAYSTATION 3 video game console is perceived as the "cheap Wal-Mart console"?
A PlayStation 3 is a single item with a single manufacturer that doesn't vary in price or quality depending on where you get it. No matter where you buy, you get the same PS3. Do you really think the same is true with computers for someone who doesn't know much about them? I'm going to leave the burden of proof with you, as this doesn't seem worth writing an argument for.
As opposed to a portion of the purchase price going to DHL (or whatever shipping company Dell uses)?
It's clearly cheaper for Dell to pay their super cut-rate DHL shipping than to give Wal-Mart a portion of the profit and to ship to their DCs. If it weren't, how would Dell be saving money by only selling direct for so long?
You're missing the minor point that HP is killing Dell lately, and HP sells most of their computers through traditional brick&mortar channels. Dell is trying to get back in the game.
No, that was the point of my post, which I stated pretty clearly:
This screams "We want to be the #1 North American computer seller again and we'll just have to deal with the negative effects of that on margins and brand perception"
What puzzles me is that it seems like a bad move in the long run. While selling through Wal-Mart will probably accomplish their sales goals, the damage to their brand could easily hurt worse than the lost sales.
This screams "We want to be the #1 North American computer seller again and we'll just have to deal with the negative effects of that on margins and brand perception".
I'm sure they'll sell a ton of these because of the nature of Wal-Mart, but this seems like a horrible move in terms of the perception it will create about the Dell brand. I can see those who know little about computers who are looking for quality rather than bargain basement pricing steering away from Dell because they will be the new "cheap Wal-Mart computers". Dell will surely be offering low-end models and will make even less on them because a portion of the purchase price goes to Wal-Mart.
I imagine they're going with Wal-Mart because
Wal-Mart takes less of their profit margin than a Best Buy or Circuit City
it's a quick way to sell a lot of computers
pushing up sheer quantity of computer sales to achieve the highest number is their primary goal at the moment.
Either I'm missing something or this is a short-sighted move.
Professor Negroponte says Intel has distributed marketing literature to governments with titles such as "the shortcomings of the One Laptop per Child approach", which outline the supposedly stronger points of the Classmate.
I find it hard to believe that Intel is trying to undermine the OLPC project in this way. Yeah, there might be some money in it for them, but at the risk of undermining the entire enterprise of a set machine and experience for these countries. I'm not sure if the OLPC cost is just the hardware cost or whether it includes money to keep the organization running, but if it is funding development and Intel manages to take half the "market", then it won't be easy for the organization to stay afloat.
We did this for both 2004 and 2005 and will be doing it for the 2006 year financials (and then 2007 after that.) There is nothing secret here except the specific financial details that Google will not allow to be disclosed.
Could you provide a link that shows the depth of these financials? I don't think anything can prove your point better than the numbers themselves can.
Imagine the screaming hissy fits about conspiracy if Microsoft brokered a similar deal with Opera to default to whatever MS call their seach [sic] engine
I can't imagine the screaming hissy fits if Microsoft made this type of deal with Opera. I doubt there would be any. Opera has no more responsibility to its developers than any other for-profit corporation. And they're free to follow money wherever it may lead.
Mozilla deals are different because the Mozilla non-profit organization is a representation of the community that develops Gecko and the projects they base on it. When a for-profit company is founded with an ambiguous relationship with the original organization, the role of the development community comes into question. Sure, they're still be contributing to GPL code, but will the spirit of the project still inspire such developer devotion, with so much non-paid contribution? Could they?
Any time a project gets big and starts bringing in money, it gives up a certain amount of control that each person who works on it previously had. When I heard they were making a for-profit corporation to make secretive deals with massive corporations like Google, I initially thought things were worse than they are. But there's no question that there's a slippery slope in this deal where an open-source project that was previously fueled by the interest of developers could become entrenched and weighed down by the monetary and business aspects in the politics of a company.
The best way to keep things open and developers interested is to release all the information except that which Google requires be kept secret. It's already pretty clear the type of revenue that is coming from the Google. When things get this large, it's easy for those interested in developing to fall out of touch with something that resembles Microsoft a lot more than a community undertaking.
TFA mentions that many people stop using speech recognition software because of poor accuracy. I don't think that's the major reason. I think they start using it because it's a neat idea that seems to have a lot of promise, but quickly realize there are only a few situations where it's actually helpful. The end of the article mentions rough drafts; I'd also say it might be a decent choice
when you need to enter hand-written documents into a computer
for transcripts of a single speaker
informal free-thought when not surrounded by other people
when you have horrible typing skills
For the majority of office tasks, it just isn't a good fit.
So if the "good enough" is being useful in any way whatsoever, it sounds like we're almost there.
I think you underestimate the human desire for power, wealth, and a challenging task.
how many people would bite the hand that feeds them? That source of knowledge is their livelihood and a major interest for them.
Some people want to be the hand that feeds. They want to keep their access to the information, and in addition would like power over other people trying to get that information. Working for the right government, this could make you quite wealthy too. As a bonus, staying ahead of those that try to thwart your efforts to restrict seems like it could be fun game of cat-and-also-cat. It would be one of the most intensely challenging games one could find for a career.
It would be counter-productive towards their own interest.
Depends on what one's interest is. If it's making sure everyone has the same level of access and freedom, then yes. If it's getting ahead, positioning oneself in a place of power, having access to the information, and stopping others from becoming better in the field than one, it seems like the most productive move. Again, you're assuming people think that their own good and the good of others are related. I think they are, but there are an astounding number of people who just look out for various small circles around themselves, starting with friends and radiating out to family / political group / nation / species.
if they come up with a way to block all access to one piece of information, someone else can copy that and block THEM from accessing something they need.
I think anyone vying for power has to worry that the methods they put in place might be used against them. Obviously people get beyond this fear (or stop themselves from thinking about it) because seeking power is still something people do.
Some people want power. Some people hate other people. Technical people may be less likely to seek power than others, which is what you are suggesting. I think that hypothesis would require a good deal of research. But I would venture to guess that someone with great technical aptitude and a knowledge of networking would want power as much as any other type of person. They are just not as often in a position to grab it.
Slashdot Mirror
I much prefer the Kantian approach, which, simplified, is that space and time are the forms of human intuition, and it is these forms of intuition that lead to us understanding things the way we do (spacially and temporally, whose relationships are mathematical). "Things in themselves" are unknowable, and can only be approached through some set of references, whether it be through the space and time we perceive, other possible ways time and space could work (non-Euclidian geometries?), or ways we can't even imagine. Unlike Plato's idea, which is that mathematics involves universal truths we discover, Kant's "Copernican turn" puts the subject as the one who projects mathematics onto everything it experiences. Arguably, this is the idea that has lead to the "modern era".
This makes mathematics the study of these forms of intuition, so unlike Plato's approach, we're not "discovering" universal ideas, but rather coming to understand the way we interpret the world (and by "we", I mean me, the beings who do science that makes sense to me, and probably most beings on earth whose methods of sensation resemble that of humans).
To answer the question of discovery or invention from this perspective, we can invent ways to do mathematics, but the relationships themselves are a discovery of the way we intuit anything we can sense.
"We have nothing to fear except Fear Itself®"
You'd almost think that after declaring a war on terror an organization wouldn't use terror against enemies in the most literal way possible...
The idea is that, as people who frequently read and interact with Slashdot and the myriad and diverse topics it covers, we'll have a huge domain of common interests to talk about. I'm sure most of us work with or spend a good amount of time on hobbies that relate to Slashdot, so there's a ton of interesting conversation right there that you probably couldn't have with the typical person you don't know. Someone suggested printing out a list of people's comments and discussing them. There's no formal agenda (yet, at least) but if you have any ideas, please, let us know. We could extend the party into earlier in the day doing something else if there's enough interest.
I hope it'll be more than sitting around making Soviet Russia, Naked and Petrified, and Profit!!! jokes.Of course there's going to be a certain amount of that, but there is in reading Slashdot, too. I doubt anyone reads Slashdot just for the joke memes. It's mostly for discussing niche nerdy interests with other people who care about them. I'd imagine it would be the same at a party, if people actually talk...
I really hate being around alcohol and people I don't know...Alcohol can make people stupid(er), but it's also a great social lubricant. I don't know any of the people who will be showing up either, but I imagine we'll have some interesting conversations we probably wouldn't have had otherwise. Many of us probably don't get the opportunity to talk about these things in a group setting frequently, so at the very least it will be an interesting experience that doesn't happen often.
In short, I don't know what to expect, but it should be fun.
Just a shameless plug for the Cleveland party on October 20th. Come drink (or not drink) at the Bier Markt on W. 25th with us!
I won't. The current SIXAXIS feels cheap. The first generation of DUALSHOCK 2s felt great--they felt like they had a good build quality and were more than a couple of pieces of cheap plastic. Even the later DUALSHOCKs lost some weight and some of that "quality" feeling. I'm not saying that the build quality has actually gone down. I wouldn't know. Holding the SIXAXIS just doesn't give me the same warm fuzzies that the heavier, more substantial DUALSHOCKs did.
They've also made it currently impossible to use alternate OSes on the iPod by encrypting the firmware on the 2nd gen Nano and all subsequent iPods, which is a much more difficult obstacle to overcome. I'm surprised there isn't as much of an uproar about this on Slashdot.
The "zapper" is nothing more than a piece of plastic that holds the Wiimote and Nunchuk together. For those who considered the above interesting, consider that the zapper couldn't possibly have functionally in Virtual Console games beyond that of a Wiimote other than its gun-like shape. Additionally, if Nintendo decides to add light gun titles to Virtual Console, they will have to add some type of on-screen crosshair to aid in aim; while the light gun actually processed an image of the screen area directly in front of it, the Wii Remote uses the sensor bar for calibration, meaning that the cursor on the screen isn't exactly where you're pointing; it's somewhat offset, which is why you don't see Wii titles without some type of on-screen aim indication.
Since DS isn't a name that seems likely to be passed to the next generation Nintendo handheld device (which will most likely have some sort of other new feature differentiating it), I'd give it at least a 50/50 that Nintendo will bring the Game Boy moniker for the next generation handheld. I don't think most people at the moment even realize the Nintendo DS isn't named the Nintendo Game Boy DS. The brand is there in one's mind even if Nintendo isn't actually using it.
This is also how I interpreted the article. It doesn't seem like a good way to set up the experiment. Wouldn't anyone who actually used the search engines (the people that branding would mean something to) realize that the format of the search results didn't match what they normally see from that search engine? Or did the experimenters choose a neutral format that none of the search engines use, including the logos only as an identification of which search engine the results supposedly came from?
Scot makes some great points about the high end and even the mid-range, but suggesting that Apple is competitive on the low end is just ludicrous. I'd call the low end $500-$1000. Apple's not even in that market.
But we're talking about binary. That's only in hex!
This isn't easy for the typical user to do with Vista (yet?), as far as I know. Even with XP and activation, there were VLKs. Doing a quick search, I don't see any easy-to-find Vista activation circumvention without drawbacks.
Maybe this has something to do with why Dell is finally selling PCs with a non-MS OS.
I originally missed the link to the official site - D'oh. The article also doesn't mention that the system is already in use! http://recaptcha.net/
CAPTCHAs work because the computers sending them already know what the text says; they start with it in text form and change it into a hard-to-read image. In the system discussed in the article, how will the computer verify that the user response actually matches the text? Sure, it could compare the response to its best guess, but if a program trying to guess the text was equally as sophisicated as the guessing computer, the guess would match.
I imagine the computer sending the picture of the image of hard-to-read text will further obfuscate the image in a way that makes it even more difficult for the computer on the receiving end to decipher, but the article doesn't acknowledge that this is one of the first logical questions in conceiving of / implementing this system in a functional way. The article really should cover this...
Your response was exactly what I was asking for - of course no offense.
Dell is embracing what it sees as the shape of things to come for computers, which is that most people will buy cheap ones that are disposable. As this is becoming more and more the norm, selling these low-level products direct isn't the best way to go. Who's going to mail order a $150 TV? People in the market for something like this go to Wal-Mart.
Like you said, it's also a very telling statement about Dell's continuing philosophy concerning the (low) quality level PC makers should target to stay in the market.
A PlayStation 3 is a single item with a single manufacturer that doesn't vary in price or quality depending on where you get it. No matter where you buy, you get the same PS3. Do you really think the same is true with computers for someone who doesn't know much about them? I'm going to leave the burden of proof with you, as this doesn't seem worth writing an argument for.
As opposed to a portion of the purchase price going to DHL (or whatever shipping company Dell uses)?It's clearly cheaper for Dell to pay their super cut-rate DHL shipping than to give Wal-Mart a portion of the profit and to ship to their DCs. If it weren't, how would Dell be saving money by only selling direct for so long?
No, that was the point of my post, which I stated pretty clearly:
This screams "We want to be the #1 North American computer seller again and we'll just have to deal with the negative effects of that on margins and brand perception"What puzzles me is that it seems like a bad move in the long run. While selling through Wal-Mart will probably accomplish their sales goals, the damage to their brand could easily hurt worse than the lost sales.
This screams "We want to be the #1 North American computer seller again and we'll just have to deal with the negative effects of that on margins and brand perception".
I'm sure they'll sell a ton of these because of the nature of Wal-Mart, but this seems like a horrible move in terms of the perception it will create about the Dell brand. I can see those who know little about computers who are looking for quality rather than bargain basement pricing steering away from Dell because they will be the new "cheap Wal-Mart computers". Dell will surely be offering low-end models and will make even less on them because a portion of the purchase price goes to Wal-Mart.
I imagine they're going with Wal-Mart because
Either I'm missing something or this is a short-sighted move.
I find it hard to believe that Intel is trying to undermine the OLPC project in this way. Yeah, there might be some money in it for them, but at the risk of undermining the entire enterprise of a set machine and experience for these countries. I'm not sure if the OLPC cost is just the hardware cost or whether it includes money to keep the organization running, but if it is funding development and Intel manages to take half the "market", then it won't be easy for the organization to stay afloat.
Could you provide a link that shows the depth of these financials? I don't think anything can prove your point better than the numbers themselves can.
I can't imagine the screaming hissy fits if Microsoft made this type of deal with Opera. I doubt there would be any. Opera has no more responsibility to its developers than any other for-profit corporation. And they're free to follow money wherever it may lead.
Mozilla deals are different because the Mozilla non-profit organization is a representation of the community that develops Gecko and the projects they base on it. When a for-profit company is founded with an ambiguous relationship with the original organization, the role of the development community comes into question. Sure, they're still be contributing to GPL code, but will the spirit of the project still inspire such developer devotion, with so much non-paid contribution? Could they?
Any time a project gets big and starts bringing in money, it gives up a certain amount of control that each person who works on it previously had. When I heard they were making a for-profit corporation to make secretive deals with massive corporations like Google, I initially thought things were worse than they are. But there's no question that there's a slippery slope in this deal where an open-source project that was previously fueled by the interest of developers could become entrenched and weighed down by the monetary and business aspects in the politics of a company.
The best way to keep things open and developers interested is to release all the information except that which Google requires be kept secret. It's already pretty clear the type of revenue that is coming from the Google. When things get this large, it's easy for those interested in developing to fall out of touch with something that resembles Microsoft a lot more than a community undertaking.
TFA mentions that many people stop using speech recognition software because of poor accuracy. I don't think that's the major reason. I think they start using it because it's a neat idea that seems to have a lot of promise, but quickly realize there are only a few situations where it's actually helpful. The end of the article mentions rough drafts; I'd also say it might be a decent choice
For the majority of office tasks, it just isn't a good fit.
So if the "good enough" is being useful in any way whatsoever, it sounds like we're almost there.
I think you underestimate the human desire for power, wealth, and a challenging task.
how many people would bite the hand that feeds them? That source of knowledge is their livelihood and a major interest for them.Some people want to be the hand that feeds. They want to keep their access to the information, and in addition would like power over other people trying to get that information. Working for the right government, this could make you quite wealthy too. As a bonus, staying ahead of those that try to thwart your efforts to restrict seems like it could be fun game of cat-and-also-cat. It would be one of the most intensely challenging games one could find for a career.
It would be counter-productive towards their own interest.Depends on what one's interest is. If it's making sure everyone has the same level of access and freedom, then yes. If it's getting ahead, positioning oneself in a place of power, having access to the information, and stopping others from becoming better in the field than one, it seems like the most productive move. Again, you're assuming people think that their own good and the good of others are related. I think they are, but there are an astounding number of people who just look out for various small circles around themselves, starting with friends and radiating out to family / political group / nation / species.
if they come up with a way to block all access to one piece of information, someone else can copy that and block THEM from accessing something they need.I think anyone vying for power has to worry that the methods they put in place might be used against them. Obviously people get beyond this fear (or stop themselves from thinking about it) because seeking power is still something people do.
Some people want power. Some people hate other people. Technical people may be less likely to seek power than others, which is what you are suggesting. I think that hypothesis would require a good deal of research. But I would venture to guess that someone with great technical aptitude and a knowledge of networking would want power as much as any other type of person. They are just not as often in a position to grab it.