We have friends in Paris, and we have seen with our own eyes the difference high energy prices make. Most of the apartments in Paris have a mechanism to automatically turn off lights in the hallways between apartments. The lights come on automatically when someone is in the hallway, either through motion sensors, elevator switches, or glowing buttons on the walls. In North America, we just leave the hallway lights on 24/7. This is a small thing, but is emblematic of the types of changes that can occur when energy conservation becomes culturally engrained.
The article claims that the pipe diameter of the leaking pipe is five feet. I have trouble believing this. I haven't been able to find a good source for the actual pipe diameter, however. Anyone know a reliable source for this information?
I am literally (I mean literally), sick of people calling those frauds "our best and brightest". "Our best and brightest" could not see the crisis coming until it was too late. If they truly are our brightest we are in a very bad intellectual shape, no? Then again, perhaps they did see it coming but failed to alert us. What kind of "best" is this? Malicious more like it. Personally, I think it's a combination of stupidity and true malice.
Our true best and brightest are where they are belong. Toiling in academic obscurity for our common good.
Toiling is right: Itinerant lecturing PhD's with no job security, employed by ideological universities that are increasingly estranged from free rational enquiry; Professors who are so starved for funds that they are forced to sell themselves to climb the career ladder.
Getting a PhD used to be seen as a prestigious accomplishment. Our current educational and economic systems are making the choice to get a PhD increasingly against one's economic self-interest. Unless one gets a PhD in a field that produces substantial economic benefits for society, it is often a dead end career. I find that deeply saddening. It is something that we, the citizens in a democracy, should try to fix.
Perhaps, you mistake us geniuses as philanthropists. Why would be eschew the financial benefits that we receive? To take a researchers salary? "Pure" Research doesn't pay very well, and we like to eat, drive nice cars, have nice things, and be able to provide for our families. Who are you to criticize.
No, I wouldn't necessarily expect that. But I would argue that the system is corrupted and broken. It is perverse that our smartest citizens get paid more to game the financial system than they do to perform research to save lives. And since we live in a democracy, these are the types of things that we are supposed to be able to change.
Think of what's been done. Its the job of Wall Street institutions to direct (and re-direct) wealth to those who can use it. Farmers, food producers, manufactures, and start-ups are just a few of the industries that cannot exist without help from Wall Street. Like it or not, the American economy is directly dependent on having enough money at the right place and time.
I'm not arguing that we get rid of Wall Street. I agree it serves an important purpose. I believe however that Wall Street can and has become too powerful. I believe that Wall Street has gamed the system in favor of its own narrow interests, to the detriment of regular investors and consumers.
Your argument, such as it is, implicitly suggests a "you're either with us or you're against us" argument that does not reflect or acknowledge the reality of my arguments. Just because I criticize capitalism doesn't mean I want to get rid of it.
Who the hell are you to tell me that I should use my gifts to benefit society? I have a right to care or not care about whatever I want.
Well, first off, our entire economic system is supposed to be designed so that your career choice does serve the public interest. It's called capitalism. Supply and demand. The market is supposed to represent the public interest. If citizens demand, say potato chips, then the market is supposed to supply them, and in the least expensive fashion possible. The potato chip company borrows money from investors to build a factory, and to buy materials. They hire the best workers they can for the least amount of money they can. Ideally they won't be able to hire computer engineers to sweep the floors; to them, computer engineers would be too expensive. And the computer engineers wouldn't likely accept jobs sweeping floors, since they can earn more money designing computers or software. The potato chip company isn't thinking "we won't hire computer engineers to sweep our floors because that wouldn't serve the public interest". The system simply ensures that such a misallocation of labor is unlikely. In the end, the company makes the potato chips with the lowest possible cost and makes a profit. Thus the "interests" of the customer are served.
In other words, capitalism is supposed to be a tool to serve the public interest, by ensuring that labor and goods are efficiently distributed to members of society. And it is an excellent tool, that has given us a high standard of living. But capitalism was never supposed to be an end in and of itself. It is simply a tool. The problem I was referring to, namely that our most brilliant citizens are being pulled into corrupt careers, is that the incentive system that drew them to Wall Street in the first place is corrupted and broken. In this case, the profit motive is not, in my opinion serving the public interest.
As to your one line comment above, it belies a serious lack of ethics and a misguided sense of selfishness. We live in a democratic society. If enough citizens turn inward and ignore the broad interests of society, then our democracy will be in serious trouble. As a citizen of a democracy, it is your duty, my duty, everyone's duty to pay attention to important and serious issues that affect society. That you do not seem to care is not something to be proud of. It is shameful.
1. Because they love to do it - These individuals will achieve satisfaction from the fact that they have an exciting job in a field that they care about. Passion drives them...
I think you miss my point. You frame your argument around the interest of the person working in the field. Specifically, you say that people follow careers because they love their job, because they are made to do it, and because they are rewarded for it. Fair enough, but your argument is very narrow, focussed as it is on individuals and the choices they make.
I would ask you this: Are the three reasons you give the only reasons for an individual to choose a particular career path? For the sake of argument, lets assume that there is an "or" between each of your three reasons. Then, I will choose item (1) as the reason for one individual choosing a particular career, namely that they "love doing what they do". This seems like a very good reason to choose a career. Money would be nice too, so perhaps (3) would be part of this person's choice as well.
However, let us imagine that this particular person "loves" burgling houses. Or cooking meth. Or stealing money from rich old ladies. Wouldn't that be an acceptable career under your criteria? You might of course argue that the person may go to jail for these acts. But what if they could get away with it? Would it these "careers" be acceptable then? They could, after all satisfy the requirements you have lain out.
If you answer that these are not acceptable careers, then I believe that you are implicitly acknowledging that there are other criteria to picking a career. Perhaps we could add another reason for choosing a career, something like:
4. The career must improve the public good in some way.
However, if you add this condition, or something similar, then I would argue that you are acknowledging that the career of a Wall Street quant is not acceptable, since I would argue that Wall Street quants are not serving the public good. I believe instead that Wall Street quants are in effect stealing from rich old ladies who lack investment expertise.
Well, in any society there is a certain portion of persons who are intellectually gifted. Before widespread public education, many of these persons likely wallowed in obscurity from a lack of education. Universal education and social mobility has given many of these gifted persons the ability to use their gifts for the betterment of society. They have been responsible moving our society forward, technically and socially.
The problem with quants is that, in my opinion, they are using their great intellectual gifts in a way that does not create significant benefits for society. I believe that the main purpose of their careers is to extract money from other less astute investors and put it into the pockets of their masters. I believe that most of the supposed economic benefits to society of the implementations of their elegant mathematical models are illusory. Quants were supposed to produce economic stability. The current world situation suggests that they have failed.
But I would take this even further. I would argue that the migration of many of our intellectual elite to Wall Street is a symptom of a creeping corruption of our intellectual class. Since the Renaissance, universities have been places where the rational search for Truth was paramount. The university system was modelled after the ancient Greek academies. Initially, the only subjects studied at universities were classical Greek and Roman history and philosophy. Again, the primary purpose of university study was the discovery of Truth, about the world and about life.
Fast forward to today, and we find universities that are beginning to assume roles of revenue generation machines. They are beginning to frame their purpose in society around the revenue that their students generate in their careers. Instead of being places of free rational enquiry, they are becoming cogs in a huge amoral corporate machine. I believe that this shift of purpose corrupts the search for truth. I believe that members of institutions such as the University of Chicago school of economics have fooled themselves into believing in economic models that are not as certain as claimed. Specifically, the "Efficient Market Hypothesis", which is the foundation of much of modern economic thought, rests upon an assumption that market actors are rational. This assumption is not, in my opinion borne out by evidence, recent or otherwise. To ignore the existence of economic bubbles, and other evidence of market irrationality is in itself profoundly irrational, and I believe is evidence of a corrupted search for truth.
I understand that there are profound economic pressures on smart people to follow careers in high finance. The rewards are immense. However, a system that rewards what amounts to theft from the poorer and enrichment of the richer is perverse and immoral. I would argue that such an economic system must be defined as being broken.
Fund managers who literally do nothing but piss away money are making $1,000 an hour, and the people who educate our children are making less than $20 an hour. Something is seriously wrong with this picture.
Yes. And further, consider how Wall Street has attracted the best and the brightest of all of our people, math PhD's, engineers, those with an excellent ability to see the broad patterns in society. Our most brilliant citizens are pulled into Wall Street as "quants" or traders or corporate lawyers, and are often paid six and seven figure remuneration per year. And to do what? To game the system in favor of their wealthy masters at the expense of the middle classes. Do they create wealth, or are they merely helping to transfer it from the hands of the many to the hands of the few who can afford their services. Wall Street quants were supposed to make recessions a thing of the past. We all know how that turned out.
Meanwhile fields like science, engineering and medicine lose the most brilliant individuals. Citizens who would formerly have become professors, providing independent analysis of society's problems instead become selfish multimillionaires, who then retire at 40 to a life unproductive leisure. Think of what these brilliant people could have done if their abilities were harnessed in the right fields and with the right motivation. Think of the problems that could have been solved. Think of the knowledge that could have been gained. Think of the lives that could be saved by new medical discoveries. Think of the new technologies that could have been developed for the common good. Wall Street's co-opting of so many of the geniuses in our society will have profound consequences for our civilization. I can only hope that we can undo much of the damage been done by this corruption.
After reading Steve Job's very logical list of reasons for not supporting Flash, and the tit for tat response of the Adobe executive, I suspect that Adobe is trying to create an astroturfing campaign to "refute" Steve Job's claims. I found the Adobe executive's points were similar to the Monty Python "Argument Sketch", in that they were mostly just contradiction, with little evidence or logic provided.
On my mac, Flash just sucks. It is plain awful. I use ClickToFlash to avoid flash applets, so I am very aware of the effect of opening Flash. When I open a Flash web video, after a short period of time my CPU cooling fan comes on, and gets faster and louder. Even after the video is finished, my CPU fan continues and continues. Only after quitting the browser does the CPU cool back down and the fan stop. My laptop is almost always nearly completely silent. The only other apps that rev my CPU fan up are video editing programs such as Final Cut Pro. And even then, this only happens when I am rendering movies.
Before Safari started separating the browser processes from the Flash processes, I used to have many browser crashes. When I explored the crash reports, I would inevitably see that Flash played a prominent role. And browsing crashes were the only crashes I was getting on my system. Thus Steve Job's assertion that Flash is the main cause of OS X crashes gybes with my personal experience.
For the Adobe executive to assert that Flash's poor performance is due to OS X is a patent absurdity worthy of a global warming denier. And I find it suspicious that after hearing the Adobe executive sound off on his opinions, that we are beginning to see blog postings suddenly appearing that support his assertions. The timing of this makes it seem that a corporate decision has been made to counter Apple by paying or influencing bloggers to tow the Adobe line.
Transitions should be made to other forms of power, but my Lord, what else is there to substitute for oil for transportation in the short-mid term? Nothing. We need to get more oil.
In the medium term, I suspect algae biofuel could supply many of our energy needs. Grow algae in large saltwater tanks. Refine it into oil and fuel. The potential is basically unlimited. Little fresh water required as the algae grows in salt water. Arable land is not required because the growth occurs in tanks. There are difficulties, but with a significant investment I see no reason why this can't be practical and efficient.
-the so called climate research data is corrupt and is a geopolitical hoax
Unsubstantiated ad hominem attack indirectly attacking the honesty of scientists.
-the perpetuation of this faux science was simply to perpetuate funding streams...
Ad hominem attack, questioning the motivations of scientists.
-the prime motivation is still what its always been, the create new financial "tools"
Again, an ad hominem attack, seemingly attacking the motivations of scientists.
Now as one measely volcano on the surface of a planet full of them spews ash into the sky and shuts down northern europe for a week with no ability to really know what the future brings in regard to more ash and sun blocking, volcanism and solar activity have become the obvious answers to climate drivers for even the most intellectually challenged on the street.
I'm not sure what a single volcano does to undermine the idea of greenhouse gas forcing. This statement is a muddled red herring.
All of course except for the so called "scientists" who are really nothing but massage artists and belong working in a brothel
Ad hominem attack on scientists. Working in a brothel??!!! WTF
What has been will always will be in human terms you fucking ninnies and I fucking told ya so.
Grammatically nonsensical sentence.
If this incoherent rant is what passes for a score 5 Interesting comment on Slashdot, I have something to say to the moderators. This is a troll comment.
Idiots will never go away. There have always been people with all the intellectual and spiritual inner life of a blueberry muffin. The difference is that today, these people have "self-esteem", and a platform to shout their ill-considered ramblings to the world.
I suspect I was thinking that there might be methods to isolate shock in a carbon fiber car to certain components. While those components might be destroyed in a crash, they would be replaceable. Again, this is a matter of good engineering. Obviously however at some point, the car will be totalled if a crash is serious enough. And I suspect you are correct in asserting that a carbon fiber car will be totalled more easily than a steel car. I am just not convinced that minor fender benders must result in devastating damage to cf cars. I suspect that economical and safe carbon fiber cars can be built using elegant engineering..
The trouble with carbon fiber is that the slightest bit of damage seriously reduces its structural integrity. Imagine dinging a concrete column in a parking garage and then having to replace major pieces of the frame.
Yes, there is likely some truth to that. However, I suspect that good engineering could minimize such things. As an example, I might point to the 7E7 Dreamliner, an airplane that is built largely from carbon fiber, and is presumably designed for a long service life. Modern fighter jets are built from composite material. Both of these vehicles can likely expect a fair number of bumps during lives, and they will likely have engineered lifetimes in the decades.
Yeah, uh, too bad such designs would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.
You want your next Honda Accord to cost $250,000? I don't know about you but I couldn't afford that.
I was going to say that your argument was fallacious, but then I realized that you weren't even making an argument, merely an assertion of your opinion. Here is my argument for why your opinion is likely wrong.
While it is true that F1 race cars are obscenely expensive, this does not mean that it is impossible to build an inexpensive carbon fiber car. To build such an inexpensive car, we will need to bring automation to carbon fiber construction. Currently, much of carbon fiber fabrication methods involve hand laying of carbon fibers in specific directions in specific layers in order to obtain an engineered strength pattern. This is hugely labor intensive, and is the main reason why carbon fiber parts are so expensive. I have seen automated carbon fiber production, where robots lay out the fibers in specific directions on a flat sheet, and then thermo-resin is placed over the fiber matrix. After the flat sheet is formed, heat and pressure are used to press the sheet into whatever shape is needed. The pressing of sheets into shapes is how many steel auto parts are formed. If this technology could be improved and refined, I see little reason why we cannot mass produce carbon fiber vehicles. It is simply a matter of investing in new technology. For an example of what can be done, google "Aptera". These cars are largely made of carbon fiber, and will likely cost between $25000 and $40000. Because they are so light and aerodynamic, they get the equivalent of 200mpg! This doesn't sound like $200000 to me.
I agree strongly with the parent. Light weight carbon fiber cars can have extremely high crash safety if they are engineered intelligently. Indeed, my suspicion is that they can be more safe than steel cars. It is all a matter of engineering structures that will efficiently absorb shocks. I can imagine structures that would have carbon fiber parts that would come under tension in impact situations, and would fail in a cascading fashion throughout an impact event, thus absorbing and perhaps isolating the shock from a crash. I suspect that the crash behavior of carbon fiber cars could be "fine tuned" far more than steel structures. We can see the potential safety of carbon fiber structures carried out in Formula 1 race cars, that absorb crash impacts that are at least an order of magnitude more severe than anything a regular driver would ever experience.
I suspect this was one of the main reasons why Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. The word in diplomatic circles is that this move towards nuclear disarmament originated directly from Obama himself, and not from staffers. I heard that from a very reliable source, ie. someone in diplomatic circles.
Mac comes with the Preview program which is in my opinion is far superior to Adobe's free viewer. Preview allows you to annotate pdf files and to select a rectangle and copy/paste it. It can be pasted into any software that supports smart vector objects (the iWork suite for one). The copied snippet is an exact rendering of the original.
Another feature of Preview that I love is the ability to make a new pdf file from a selection on the clipboard. Thus, you can select a graph on a scientific paper, put it on the clipboard with ctrl-C, and then choose "New pdf from Selection" in the menu. Up pops a brand new pdf file, an exact copy of the selected graph, including dimensions. This can then easily be included in other documents. I use LaTeX, so I just use the "includegraphics" command.
Another great feature of Preview is the way it selects multi-column text. On other pdf viewers, when you try to select text in a paper that has two columns, the selection spans the entire page, covering both columns at once. Preview on the other hand selects downwards through the column. It even spans the selection over multiple columns.
I do not have Adobe Acrobat installed, either the reader or the full package. And I don't want them installed. Acrobat Reader is an atrocious piece of nagware that relentlessly updates itself.
I realize you can probably do many of these things on Windows, but you will likely have to pay lots of money for the full version of Acrobat. And I doubt this solution would be as smooth or as easy to use as it is on a Mac.
I really don't understand why the parent is modded as troll, as he seems to simply be expressing his opinion that he likes aspects of the health care bill.
One of the features that worked so well for me on OS X was the multiple desktop setup, combined with the ability to quickly shrink and choose windows, and the ability to instantly search any pdf on my system via a pre-indexed search system. This allowed me to work more effectively than if if I had thirty printed papers strewn on my desk.
The other thing that I have found rather more difficult on Windows systems is copying snippets from pdf files as vector objects. I know this is possible on Windows, but on a Mac, you just press control-C and control-V. On windows, when I did it this way I got an ugly screenshot version of the page whose resolution depended on the zoom level of the window. Macs generally play very nicely with pdf, because NeXT, the predecessor of OS X used post-script to display everything on the screen. Pdf was built into the system from day 1.
Recently I had an opportunity to write two research papers, and to be different I did it without printing out anything but the final drafts. All in all it was a successful experience. Here is how I did it.
First off, I used a Mac. This is important, because (a) OS X support for the PDF format is far superior to the support on Windows; and (b) because the Spaces virtual desktop and Expose window viewing make dealing with thirty open windows at once practical.
My research paper was a moderately short (4000 words), but had about twenty five source papers from various scientific journals. I downloaded the source papers in pdf form and gave them names similar to their citation name (e.g. Smith et al (2002)). I then opened the papers and distributed them around nine virtual desktops. Each virtual desktop represented a different type of paper, a different topic or a different side to the argument at hand. I then read each paper on screen and highlighted key passages (the Preview function on OS X has this feature built in, along with annotated notes). I also added notes to important passages, noting how I might use the particular passage in my essay. Again, on a Mac, annotating pdf's is very easy.
Once I finished reading and annotating, I began to write. I would drag the essay window around the desktops so I could view my essay alongside pertinent scientific papers. If I remembered a passage, but couldn't remember which paper it was in, I could just search the computer, as all pdf files are indexed word for word. Also, I was able to copy and paste full scalable vector graphics from the pdf files. If I saw a graph I wished to use, I just copied it and placed it in my document. In the final output, the graph was an exact copy, not an anti-aliased pixelated screenshot. I actually used LaTeX for this, and created new pdf versions of the graphs which I added to the source code.
The end result of this was a very nice looking final paper, with beautiful graphs and typography. I believe that not printing out the source papers was actually more efficient because it was so easy to navigate between them, and because I could search them. I have written many other papers in the past, and had previously always printed the journals out. The result was usually a sprawling and chaotic mess, where papers disappeared and where it was difficult to keep straight what was said in different papers. Using the Mac's amazing window and desktop management system made this not only possible, but advantageous. I didn't print out anything but the final version. Proof-reading the pdf files was good enough for me.
As to the topic at hand, I think one of the key factors that has prevented the paperless office is poor user interface design. With the right user interface, ditching paper becomes a possibility.
Slashdot Mirror
We have friends in Paris, and we have seen with our own eyes the difference high energy prices make. Most of the apartments in Paris have a mechanism to automatically turn off lights in the hallways between apartments. The lights come on automatically when someone is in the hallway, either through motion sensors, elevator switches, or glowing buttons on the walls. In North America, we just leave the hallway lights on 24/7. This is a small thing, but is emblematic of the types of changes that can occur when energy conservation becomes culturally engrained.
The article claims that the pipe diameter of the leaking pipe is five feet. I have trouble believing this. I haven't been able to find a good source for the actual pipe diameter, however. Anyone know a reliable source for this information?
I am literally (I mean literally), sick of people calling those frauds "our best and brightest". "Our best and brightest" could not see the crisis coming until it was too late. If they truly are our brightest we are in a very bad intellectual shape, no? Then again, perhaps they did see it coming but failed to alert us. What kind of "best" is this? Malicious more like it. Personally, I think it's a combination of stupidity and true malice.
Our true best and brightest are where they are belong. Toiling in academic obscurity for our common good.
Toiling is right: Itinerant lecturing PhD's with no job security, employed by ideological universities that are increasingly estranged from free rational enquiry; Professors who are so starved for funds that they are forced to sell themselves to climb the career ladder.
Getting a PhD used to be seen as a prestigious accomplishment. Our current educational and economic systems are making the choice to get a PhD increasingly against one's economic self-interest. Unless one gets a PhD in a field that produces substantial economic benefits for society, it is often a dead end career. I find that deeply saddening. It is something that we, the citizens in a democracy, should try to fix.
Perhaps, you mistake us geniuses as philanthropists. Why would be eschew the financial benefits that we receive? To take a researchers salary? "Pure" Research doesn't pay very well, and we like to eat, drive nice cars, have nice things, and be able to provide for our families. Who are you to criticize.
No, I wouldn't necessarily expect that. But I would argue that the system is corrupted and broken. It is perverse that our smartest citizens get paid more to game the financial system than they do to perform research to save lives. And since we live in a democracy, these are the types of things that we are supposed to be able to change.
Think of what's been done. Its the job of Wall Street institutions to direct (and re-direct) wealth to those who can use it. Farmers, food producers, manufactures, and start-ups are just a few of the industries that cannot exist without help from Wall Street. Like it or not, the American economy is directly dependent on having enough money at the right place and time.
I'm not arguing that we get rid of Wall Street. I agree it serves an important purpose. I believe however that Wall Street can and has become too powerful. I believe that Wall Street has gamed the system in favor of its own narrow interests, to the detriment of regular investors and consumers.
Your argument, such as it is, implicitly suggests a "you're either with us or you're against us" argument that does not reflect or acknowledge the reality of my arguments. Just because I criticize capitalism doesn't mean I want to get rid of it.
Who the hell are you to tell me that I should use my gifts to benefit society? I have a right to care or not care about whatever I want.
Well, first off, our entire economic system is supposed to be designed so that your career choice does serve the public interest. It's called capitalism. Supply and demand. The market is supposed to represent the public interest. If citizens demand, say potato chips, then the market is supposed to supply them, and in the least expensive fashion possible. The potato chip company borrows money from investors to build a factory, and to buy materials. They hire the best workers they can for the least amount of money they can. Ideally they won't be able to hire computer engineers to sweep the floors; to them, computer engineers would be too expensive. And the computer engineers wouldn't likely accept jobs sweeping floors, since they can earn more money designing computers or software. The potato chip company isn't thinking "we won't hire computer engineers to sweep our floors because that wouldn't serve the public interest". The system simply ensures that such a misallocation of labor is unlikely. In the end, the company makes the potato chips with the lowest possible cost and makes a profit. Thus the "interests" of the customer are served.
In other words, capitalism is supposed to be a tool to serve the public interest, by ensuring that labor and goods are efficiently distributed to members of society. And it is an excellent tool, that has given us a high standard of living. But capitalism was never supposed to be an end in and of itself. It is simply a tool. The problem I was referring to, namely that our most brilliant citizens are being pulled into corrupt careers, is that the incentive system that drew them to Wall Street in the first place is corrupted and broken. In this case, the profit motive is not, in my opinion serving the public interest.
As to your one line comment above, it belies a serious lack of ethics and a misguided sense of selfishness. We live in a democratic society. If enough citizens turn inward and ignore the broad interests of society, then our democracy will be in serious trouble. As a citizen of a democracy, it is your duty, my duty, everyone's duty to pay attention to important and serious issues that affect society. That you do not seem to care is not something to be proud of. It is shameful.
1. Because they love to do it - These individuals will achieve satisfaction from the fact that they have an exciting job in a field that they care about. Passion drives them...
I think you miss my point. You frame your argument around the interest of the person working in the field. Specifically, you say that people follow careers because they love their job, because they are made to do it, and because they are rewarded for it. Fair enough, but your argument is very narrow, focussed as it is on individuals and the choices they make.
I would ask you this: Are the three reasons you give the only reasons for an individual to choose a particular career path? For the sake of argument, lets assume that there is an "or" between each of your three reasons. Then, I will choose item (1) as the reason for one individual choosing a particular career, namely that they "love doing what they do". This seems like a very good reason to choose a career. Money would be nice too, so perhaps (3) would be part of this person's choice as well.
However, let us imagine that this particular person "loves" burgling houses. Or cooking meth. Or stealing money from rich old ladies. Wouldn't that be an acceptable career under your criteria? You might of course argue that the person may go to jail for these acts. But what if they could get away with it? Would it these "careers" be acceptable then? They could, after all satisfy the requirements you have lain out.
If you answer that these are not acceptable careers, then I believe that you are implicitly acknowledging that there are other criteria to picking a career. Perhaps we could add another reason for choosing a career, something like:
4. The career must improve the public good in some way.
However, if you add this condition, or something similar, then I would argue that you are acknowledging that the career of a Wall Street quant is not acceptable, since I would argue that Wall Street quants are not serving the public good. I believe instead that Wall Street quants are in effect stealing from rich old ladies who lack investment expertise.
Hey! What do you have against quants!
Well, in any society there is a certain portion of persons who are intellectually gifted. Before widespread public education, many of these persons likely wallowed in obscurity from a lack of education. Universal education and social mobility has given many of these gifted persons the ability to use their gifts for the betterment of society. They have been responsible moving our society forward, technically and socially.
The problem with quants is that, in my opinion, they are using their great intellectual gifts in a way that does not create significant benefits for society. I believe that the main purpose of their careers is to extract money from other less astute investors and put it into the pockets of their masters. I believe that most of the supposed economic benefits to society of the implementations of their elegant mathematical models are illusory. Quants were supposed to produce economic stability. The current world situation suggests that they have failed.
But I would take this even further. I would argue that the migration of many of our intellectual elite to Wall Street is a symptom of a creeping corruption of our intellectual class. Since the Renaissance, universities have been places where the rational search for Truth was paramount. The university system was modelled after the ancient Greek academies. Initially, the only subjects studied at universities were classical Greek and Roman history and philosophy. Again, the primary purpose of university study was the discovery of Truth, about the world and about life.
Fast forward to today, and we find universities that are beginning to assume roles of revenue generation machines. They are beginning to frame their purpose in society around the revenue that their students generate in their careers. Instead of being places of free rational enquiry, they are becoming cogs in a huge amoral corporate machine. I believe that this shift of purpose corrupts the search for truth. I believe that members of institutions such as the University of Chicago school of economics have fooled themselves into believing in economic models that are not as certain as claimed. Specifically, the "Efficient Market Hypothesis", which is the foundation of much of modern economic thought, rests upon an assumption that market actors are rational. This assumption is not, in my opinion borne out by evidence, recent or otherwise. To ignore the existence of economic bubbles, and other evidence of market irrationality is in itself profoundly irrational, and I believe is evidence of a corrupted search for truth.
I understand that there are profound economic pressures on smart people to follow careers in high finance. The rewards are immense. However, a system that rewards what amounts to theft from the poorer and enrichment of the richer is perverse and immoral. I would argue that such an economic system must be defined as being broken.
Fund managers who literally do nothing but piss away money are making $1,000 an hour, and the people who educate our children are making less than $20 an hour. Something is seriously wrong with this picture.
Yes. And further, consider how Wall Street has attracted the best and the brightest of all of our people, math PhD's, engineers, those with an excellent ability to see the broad patterns in society. Our most brilliant citizens are pulled into Wall Street as "quants" or traders or corporate lawyers, and are often paid six and seven figure remuneration per year. And to do what? To game the system in favor of their wealthy masters at the expense of the middle classes. Do they create wealth, or are they merely helping to transfer it from the hands of the many to the hands of the few who can afford their services. Wall Street quants were supposed to make recessions a thing of the past. We all know how that turned out.
Meanwhile fields like science, engineering and medicine lose the most brilliant individuals. Citizens who would formerly have become professors, providing independent analysis of society's problems instead become selfish multimillionaires, who then retire at 40 to a life unproductive leisure. Think of what these brilliant people could have done if their abilities were harnessed in the right fields and with the right motivation. Think of the problems that could have been solved. Think of the knowledge that could have been gained. Think of the lives that could be saved by new medical discoveries. Think of the new technologies that could have been developed for the common good. Wall Street's co-opting of so many of the geniuses in our society will have profound consequences for our civilization. I can only hope that we can undo much of the damage been done by this corruption.
Also, have you used alternate browsers like Opera?
I used FIrefox and Safari. I had the same Flash crashes. And in looking at the trace files for the crashes, Flash was always the cause.
I uninstalled Apple, so to speak, and chose to gave up their slick interface, shiny new "toys", and the largest, well cultivated app garden.
I don't believe you.
Flash sucks.
The problem is, Steve Jobs could have stuck to the facts, rather than making stuff up to smear Adobe with, and there wouldn't have been this backlash.
Also, Adobe is improving Flash.
Ummmm...please be specific. What assertions are you referring to?
After reading Steve Job's very logical list of reasons for not supporting Flash, and the tit for tat response of the Adobe executive, I suspect that Adobe is trying to create an astroturfing campaign to "refute" Steve Job's claims. I found the Adobe executive's points were similar to the Monty Python "Argument Sketch", in that they were mostly just contradiction, with little evidence or logic provided.
On my mac, Flash just sucks. It is plain awful. I use ClickToFlash to avoid flash applets, so I am very aware of the effect of opening Flash. When I open a Flash web video, after a short period of time my CPU cooling fan comes on, and gets faster and louder. Even after the video is finished, my CPU fan continues and continues. Only after quitting the browser does the CPU cool back down and the fan stop. My laptop is almost always nearly completely silent. The only other apps that rev my CPU fan up are video editing programs such as Final Cut Pro. And even then, this only happens when I am rendering movies.
Before Safari started separating the browser processes from the Flash processes, I used to have many browser crashes. When I explored the crash reports, I would inevitably see that Flash played a prominent role. And browsing crashes were the only crashes I was getting on my system. Thus Steve Job's assertion that Flash is the main cause of OS X crashes gybes with my personal experience.
For the Adobe executive to assert that Flash's poor performance is due to OS X is a patent absurdity worthy of a global warming denier. And I find it suspicious that after hearing the Adobe executive sound off on his opinions, that we are beginning to see blog postings suddenly appearing that support his assertions. The timing of this makes it seem that a corporate decision has been made to counter Apple by paying or influencing bloggers to tow the Adobe line.
Transitions should be made to other forms of power, but my Lord, what else is there to substitute for oil for transportation in the short-mid term? Nothing. We need to get more oil.
In the medium term, I suspect algae biofuel could supply many of our energy needs. Grow algae in large saltwater tanks. Refine it into oil and fuel. The potential is basically unlimited. Little fresh water required as the algae grows in salt water. Arable land is not required because the growth occurs in tanks. There are difficulties, but with a significant investment I see no reason why this can't be practical and efficient.
...libtard slashdolts...
Ad hominem attack
-the so called climate research data is corrupt and is a geopolitical hoax
Unsubstantiated ad hominem attack indirectly attacking the honesty of scientists.
-the perpetuation of this faux science was simply to perpetuate funding streams...
Ad hominem attack, questioning the motivations of scientists.
-the prime motivation is still what its always been, the create new financial "tools"
Again, an ad hominem attack, seemingly attacking the motivations of scientists.
Now as one measely volcano on the surface of a planet full of them spews ash into the sky and shuts down northern europe for a week with no ability to really know what the future brings in regard to more ash and sun blocking, volcanism and solar activity have become the obvious answers to climate drivers for even the most intellectually challenged on the street.
I'm not sure what a single volcano does to undermine the idea of greenhouse gas forcing. This statement is a muddled red herring.
All of course except for the so called "scientists" who are really nothing but massage artists and belong working in a brothel
Ad hominem attack on scientists. Working in a brothel??!!! WTF
What has been will always will be in human terms you fucking ninnies and I fucking told ya so.
Grammatically nonsensical sentence.
If this incoherent rant is what passes for a score 5 Interesting comment on Slashdot, I have something to say to the moderators. This is a troll comment.
I found that this link provides access to several high quality movies that downloaded quite quickly. They are very interesting to watch.
Idiots will never go away. There have always been people with all the intellectual and spiritual inner life of a blueberry muffin. The difference is that today, these people have "self-esteem", and a platform to shout their ill-considered ramblings to the world.
I suspect I was thinking that there might be methods to isolate shock in a carbon fiber car to certain components. While those components might be destroyed in a crash, they would be replaceable. Again, this is a matter of good engineering. Obviously however at some point, the car will be totalled if a crash is serious enough. And I suspect you are correct in asserting that a carbon fiber car will be totalled more easily than a steel car. I am just not convinced that minor fender benders must result in devastating damage to cf cars. I suspect that economical and safe carbon fiber cars can be built using elegant engineering..
The trouble with carbon fiber is that the slightest bit of damage seriously reduces its structural integrity. Imagine dinging a concrete column in a parking garage and then having to replace major pieces of the frame.
Yes, there is likely some truth to that. However, I suspect that good engineering could minimize such things. As an example, I might point to the 7E7 Dreamliner, an airplane that is built largely from carbon fiber, and is presumably designed for a long service life. Modern fighter jets are built from composite material. Both of these vehicles can likely expect a fair number of bumps during lives, and they will likely have engineered lifetimes in the decades.
I was going to say that your argument was fallacious, but then I realized that you weren't even making an argument, merely an assertion of your opinion. Here is my argument for why your opinion is likely wrong.
While it is true that F1 race cars are obscenely expensive, this does not mean that it is impossible to build an inexpensive carbon fiber car. To build such an inexpensive car, we will need to bring automation to carbon fiber construction. Currently, much of carbon fiber fabrication methods involve hand laying of carbon fibers in specific directions in specific layers in order to obtain an engineered strength pattern. This is hugely labor intensive, and is the main reason why carbon fiber parts are so expensive. I have seen automated carbon fiber production, where robots lay out the fibers in specific directions on a flat sheet, and then thermo-resin is placed over the fiber matrix. After the flat sheet is formed, heat and pressure are used to press the sheet into whatever shape is needed. The pressing of sheets into shapes is how many steel auto parts are formed. If this technology could be improved and refined, I see little reason why we cannot mass produce carbon fiber vehicles. It is simply a matter of investing in new technology. For an example of what can be done, google "Aptera". These cars are largely made of carbon fiber, and will likely cost between $25000 and $40000. Because they are so light and aerodynamic, they get the equivalent of 200mpg! This doesn't sound like $200000 to me.
I agree strongly with the parent. Light weight carbon fiber cars can have extremely high crash safety if they are engineered intelligently. Indeed, my suspicion is that they can be more safe than steel cars. It is all a matter of engineering structures that will efficiently absorb shocks. I can imagine structures that would have carbon fiber parts that would come under tension in impact situations, and would fail in a cascading fashion throughout an impact event, thus absorbing and perhaps isolating the shock from a crash. I suspect that the crash behavior of carbon fiber cars could be "fine tuned" far more than steel structures. We can see the potential safety of carbon fiber structures carried out in Formula 1 race cars, that absorb crash impacts that are at least an order of magnitude more severe than anything a regular driver would ever experience.
I suspect this was one of the main reasons why Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. The word in diplomatic circles is that this move towards nuclear disarmament originated directly from Obama himself, and not from staffers. I heard that from a very reliable source, ie. someone in diplomatic circles.
Mac comes with the Preview program which is in my opinion is far superior to Adobe's free viewer. Preview allows you to annotate pdf files and to select a rectangle and copy/paste it. It can be pasted into any software that supports smart vector objects (the iWork suite for one). The copied snippet is an exact rendering of the original.
Another feature of Preview that I love is the ability to make a new pdf file from a selection on the clipboard. Thus, you can select a graph on a scientific paper, put it on the clipboard with ctrl-C, and then choose "New pdf from Selection" in the menu. Up pops a brand new pdf file, an exact copy of the selected graph, including dimensions. This can then easily be included in other documents. I use LaTeX, so I just use the "includegraphics" command.
Another great feature of Preview is the way it selects multi-column text. On other pdf viewers, when you try to select text in a paper that has two columns, the selection spans the entire page, covering both columns at once. Preview on the other hand selects downwards through the column. It even spans the selection over multiple columns.
I do not have Adobe Acrobat installed, either the reader or the full package. And I don't want them installed. Acrobat Reader is an atrocious piece of nagware that relentlessly updates itself.
I realize you can probably do many of these things on Windows, but you will likely have to pay lots of money for the full version of Acrobat. And I doubt this solution would be as smooth or as easy to use as it is on a Mac.
I really don't understand why the parent is modded as troll, as he seems to simply be expressing his opinion that he likes aspects of the health care bill.
One of the features that worked so well for me on OS X was the multiple desktop setup, combined with the ability to quickly shrink and choose windows, and the ability to instantly search any pdf on my system via a pre-indexed search system. This allowed me to work more effectively than if if I had thirty printed papers strewn on my desk.
The other thing that I have found rather more difficult on Windows systems is copying snippets from pdf files as vector objects. I know this is possible on Windows, but on a Mac, you just press control-C and control-V. On windows, when I did it this way I got an ugly screenshot version of the page whose resolution depended on the zoom level of the window. Macs generally play very nicely with pdf, because NeXT, the predecessor of OS X used post-script to display everything on the screen. Pdf was built into the system from day 1.
Recently I had an opportunity to write two research papers, and to be different I did it without printing out anything but the final drafts. All in all it was a successful experience. Here is how I did it.
First off, I used a Mac. This is important, because (a) OS X support for the PDF format is far superior to the support on Windows; and (b) because the Spaces virtual desktop and Expose window viewing make dealing with thirty open windows at once practical.
My research paper was a moderately short (4000 words), but had about twenty five source papers from various scientific journals. I downloaded the source papers in pdf form and gave them names similar to their citation name (e.g. Smith et al (2002)). I then opened the papers and distributed them around nine virtual desktops. Each virtual desktop represented a different type of paper, a different topic or a different side to the argument at hand. I then read each paper on screen and highlighted key passages (the Preview function on OS X has this feature built in, along with annotated notes). I also added notes to important passages, noting how I might use the particular passage in my essay. Again, on a Mac, annotating pdf's is very easy.
Once I finished reading and annotating, I began to write. I would drag the essay window around the desktops so I could view my essay alongside pertinent scientific papers. If I remembered a passage, but couldn't remember which paper it was in, I could just search the computer, as all pdf files are indexed word for word. Also, I was able to copy and paste full scalable vector graphics from the pdf files. If I saw a graph I wished to use, I just copied it and placed it in my document. In the final output, the graph was an exact copy, not an anti-aliased pixelated screenshot. I actually used LaTeX for this, and created new pdf versions of the graphs which I added to the source code.
The end result of this was a very nice looking final paper, with beautiful graphs and typography. I believe that not printing out the source papers was actually more efficient because it was so easy to navigate between them, and because I could search them. I have written many other papers in the past, and had previously always printed the journals out. The result was usually a sprawling and chaotic mess, where papers disappeared and where it was difficult to keep straight what was said in different papers. Using the Mac's amazing window and desktop management system made this not only possible, but advantageous. I didn't print out anything but the final version. Proof-reading the pdf files was good enough for me.
As to the topic at hand, I think one of the key factors that has prevented the paperless office is poor user interface design. With the right user interface, ditching paper becomes a possibility.