When Apple gets a 90% share of the browser market, and you routinely see sites telling users "You must be running Safari to access this site," let us know.
Hi, old punk here: what You Kids These Days call "circle pits" we used to call "mosh pits", and what you call "mosh pits" we used to call "a bunch of jackasses who need to be taken out back and taught the error of their ways."
The use of babble is a lame attempt at a joke and it indicates nothing. It truly shows your lack of arguments that you have to base your reply on that irrelevant detail.
nbauman's reply covered this nicely. "Lack of arguments," indeed.
I'm talking about diagnostic software based on expert systems applying deduction rules over noisy data. The doctor enters the data and the computer produces all possible matches with probabilities attached to them. They far outperform humans in finding the best, likeliest match given the current symptoms and the response to treatment so far.
For certain problems on certain data sets, yes. The hard work in medicine is built on exceptions to the rules, and these exceptions are many and various.
Seriously, think about it, who will be better: Dr. House trying to rake his brains for what you could possibly have or a computer with access to a complete database containing every possible disease with their typical AND atypical presentations?
Seriously, the answer is "both." Having extensive databases and efficient classification algorithms is a fine thing. Having educated and experienced humans who can interpret the output of these algorithms is indispensable. You may be better off with "physician + computer" than you are with "physician alone," but in either case you're be much better off than you would be with "computer alone." It is very easy to look at the more impressive AI achievements which take place with carefully chosen validation sets and assume that those achievements will translate into real-world applications. If they do, then bravo. When (not if) they don't... well, when Facebook or Google serves up a hilariously misaimed "targeted" ad, it's no big deal. When I'm bleeding on the table, it's a very big deal indeed.
Let's put it this way: suppose a call went out for volunteers for a clinical trial in which a third of the patients would be diagnosed and treated in entirely traditional ways by human medical staff, a third would be under the care of human medical staff with access to the latest and greatest diagnostic aids, and a third would simply enter their symptoms into a diagnostic program and follow the recommendations it gave. Would you volunteer for such a trial? And if so, which cohort would you hope to be in?
No, your medibabble indicates that you don't understand the subject. Doctors make jokes all the time. But a doctor's joke, like a programmer's joke or an engineer's joke, is based on an insight and understanding of the discipline. Your medibabble is based on ignorance.
I often see lame attempts at humor about science written by people who don't know anything about science. It comes off as really stupid. Their message is, "There's all this science stuff that none of us understands. It's OK to be ignorant. Nudge, nudge, wink, wink."
If you are not responding, doctors usually just carry on with more of the same treatment and hope for the best, while the computer would say "patient not responding to Randomicine? then check the zootocite count for possible inflammation of the hyperbolerium" and in that case one of two things happen: we discover it's the hyperbolerium and treat you for that or we determine it isn't that and continue the normal treatment on the basis of actual evidence instead of just a hunch.
You probably think you're being clever, but in fact your use of Hollywood-style medibabble indicates that you haven't really bothered to learn much about the subject. It's really sad, on a site like/., to see people who work in highly technical fields with lots of meaningful jargon show such contempt for other people's technical knowledge and terminology, but I guess it's not surprising.
I'm a bioinformaticist, which means I have a pretty good idea how hard it is to model living systems in silico. A long time ago I was a medic, which means I also have a pretty good idea how hard it is to keep severely sick and injured people alive. Trust me when I say that although computer-assisted diagnosis is making real contributions to patient care and will no doubt do more in the future, if you trust your health entirely to a diagnostic program, you might as well just put a gun to your head and pull the trigger and get things over with quickly.
It is at the very least a metric space; let all servers connected to the internet be elements of the set S, and you can define the distance measure d:SxS->R in a number of ways--physical distance is the obvious choice, but packet transmission time is probably more useful--and ta da! you have everything you need. In practice, of course, we define all sorts of other structures on S, which make it much more useful.
Anyone paying any attention to biomedical research knows that if some amazing cure is demonstrated in mice, it will likely never be heard of again since it didn't pan out.
OTOH, if it's not demonstrated in mice, it's even more likely never to be heard of again.;)
As a 13 year veteran of academic science, and a 3 year veteran of a pharmaceutical company, I can personally attest that scientists disagreeing on matters of great significance, difficulty publishing publishing what one believes to be important work, exasperation at peer review, and unending questions about the ability to translate findings in mice to humans are everyday concerns. I know of no scientist who has not faced criticism from their peers, despite how well respected they may be. I know of no scientist who has not had their papers rejected only to complain that the reviewers just didn't "get it." And contrary to what this article may assert, questions about how well mouse models recapitulate human disease are frequent topics of conversation. To read this article one would think that the scientific enterprise had never considered the notion that mice and humans are not equivalent. What a complete misdirection from reality.
This article takes the tone of a courageous and noble researcher struggling valiantly against an entrenched evil empire intent on stifling dissent. While this may be a good approach for a movie, it should have no place in serious discourse from a reputable organization like the NYT. A pragmatic discussion of the research and implications are in order, not the quasi-sensationalist man vs empire approach taken here.
It's really important to remember this, because people just eat the "courageous and noble researcher struggling valiantly against an entrenched evil empire intent on stifling dissent" narrative up, and it's hardly ever the way things actually work. Most important discoveries in science, positive or negative, have been building for years in the field--with many, many people on both (or all, as the case may be) sides of the debate--before they ever reach the public eye.
... scientists recognized an environmental problem and demonstrated a clear link to human activity, the scientists told the politicians about it, the politicians acted, and now the problem's going away.
My God, this is terrible! We must ensure that no such thing ever happens again!
Capitalism is at least, not a political dogma. Capitalism is "how money works" All the things you hate about it, are not a part of it. Kickbacks, loopholes, all that sort of shit are people gaming the system and are actually more socialist in nature than anything else.
Amusingly, just a couple of comments down the thread from yours is someone explaining to us how "true Marxism has never been tried," which of course is the communist's classic excuse when the failings of communism in the real world are pointed out. Fundamentalists of all sorts never seem to realize how much they sound like each other.
Communism in the real world is brutal and corrupt. Capitalism in the real world is brutal and corrupt. You can talk all day about they way you think things ought to work, but in every case you need to take into account that people, not abstract principles, are the ones making the decisions, and those people will not always (or even usually) behave the way your ideology says they should.
Just to be clear: I am not saying, by any stretch, that all believers are creationists. I am saying that all creationists are believers, and that all IDers are creationists--and that honest believers, of all sorts, are infinitely preferable to those who hide their sincerely held beliefs behind mealy-mouthed deceptions.
And by "creator," you mean God. Yahweh. El. The Alpha and Omega. The God who made Adam and Eve. The God of Abraham, and of Isaac, and of Jacob. The God who so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
Go ahead, try to claim otherwise. If you do, you're lying through your teeth. Bearing false witness, one might say, but to believers like you, lying to the heathen is always the most forgivable of sins.
Really, it's easier to deal with the young-Earth Bible-thumpers. At least they're honest.
Intelligent Design, contrary to your statement does NOT posit any form of God of gods.
You are a liar.
Every single ID advocate believes that the "intelligent designer" is God, specifically the God of the Abrahamic religions. Every. Single. One. And if they claim otherwise, they're lying.
Go tell yourself some more comforting lies. Just remember that we're onto you, liar.
You're trying to bring facts and logic into the narrative of "1337 h4x0rz are sooo much smarter than those hidebound academic 'scientists' with their fancy 'degrees' and expensive Big Science labs!" that we're all supposed to love so much. Stop that.
The founders recognized that a nation is partially defined by how much control it has over its borders.... Go write your congress critters that a border that is 100 miles wide makes a mockery of the spirit of the law, while still obeying the letter of the law.
You know, I've read over the Bill of Rights many times, and I've never seen a part that says, "These rights shall not apply within an arbitrary distance of the borders of the United States." So your "letter of the law" claim seems a bit questionable. If the founders recognized the need for an exemption in border areas (however defined) they could have written it in there.
If the Earth, the Moon, and the asteroids were the only objects in the universe, the capture would still happen the way it does. If Earth, the asteroids, and the rest of the universe were still present but the Moon wasn't there, it wouldn't. (The asteroids might still be captured by Earth's gravity, of course, but not in the way they are now.) So I think you don't really understand OP's point.
... Finland was seen as the world leader in free and open internet communication? This would be bad news anywhere, but coming from.fi it's particularly sad.
Some of us want our kids to grow up in a world where only healthy behaviors exist.
Indeed. And I find your willingness to arbitrarily define things as "not speech" to be deeply unhealthy. For my children's sake, please go offline immediately.
Slashdot Mirror
The language was named after Monty Python. Whether that was a good idea or not (take it up with Guido van Rossum) is irrrelevant at this point.
When Apple gets a 90% share of the browser market, and you routinely see sites telling users "You must be running Safari to access this site," let us know.
Hi, old punk here: what You Kids These Days call "circle pits" we used to call "mosh pits", and what you call "mosh pits" we used to call "a bunch of jackasses who need to be taken out back and taught the error of their ways."
[grumble]
The use of babble is a lame attempt at a joke and it indicates nothing. It truly shows your lack of arguments that you have to base your reply on that irrelevant detail.
nbauman's reply covered this nicely. "Lack of arguments," indeed.
I'm talking about diagnostic software based on expert systems applying deduction rules over noisy data. The doctor enters the data and the computer produces all possible matches with probabilities attached to them. They far outperform humans in finding the best, likeliest match given the current symptoms and the response to treatment so far.
For certain problems on certain data sets, yes. The hard work in medicine is built on exceptions to the rules, and these exceptions are many and various.
Seriously, think about it, who will be better: Dr. House trying to rake his brains for what you could possibly have or a computer with access to a complete database containing every possible disease with their typical AND atypical presentations?
Seriously, the answer is "both." Having extensive databases and efficient classification algorithms is a fine thing. Having educated and experienced humans who can interpret the output of these algorithms is indispensable. You may be better off with "physician + computer" than you are with "physician alone," but in either case you're be much better off than you would be with "computer alone." It is very easy to look at the more impressive AI achievements which take place with carefully chosen validation sets and assume that those achievements will translate into real-world applications. If they do, then bravo. When (not if) they don't ... well, when Facebook or Google serves up a hilariously misaimed "targeted" ad, it's no big deal. When I'm bleeding on the table, it's a very big deal indeed.
Let's put it this way: suppose a call went out for volunteers for a clinical trial in which a third of the patients would be diagnosed and treated in entirely traditional ways by human medical staff, a third would be under the care of human medical staff with access to the latest and greatest diagnostic aids, and a third would simply enter their symptoms into a diagnostic program and follow the recommendations it gave. Would you volunteer for such a trial? And if so, which cohort would you hope to be in?
No, your medibabble indicates that you don't understand the subject. Doctors make jokes all the time. But a doctor's joke, like a programmer's joke or an engineer's joke, is based on an insight and understanding of the discipline. Your medibabble is based on ignorance.
I often see lame attempts at humor about science written by people who don't know anything about science. It comes off as really stupid. Their message is, "There's all this science stuff that none of us understands. It's OK to be ignorant. Nudge, nudge, wink, wink."
Yes, this, exactly.
If you are not responding, doctors usually just carry on with more of the same treatment and hope for the best, while the computer would say "patient not responding to Randomicine? then check the zootocite count for possible inflammation of the hyperbolerium" and in that case one of two things happen: we discover it's the hyperbolerium and treat you for that or we determine it isn't that and continue the normal treatment on the basis of actual evidence instead of just a hunch.
You probably think you're being clever, but in fact your use of Hollywood-style medibabble indicates that you haven't really bothered to learn much about the subject. It's really sad, on a site like /., to see people who work in highly technical fields with lots of meaningful jargon show such contempt for other people's technical knowledge and terminology, but I guess it's not surprising.
I'm a bioinformaticist, which means I have a pretty good idea how hard it is to model living systems in silico. A long time ago I was a medic, which means I also have a pretty good idea how hard it is to keep severely sick and injured people alive. Trust me when I say that although computer-assisted diagnosis is making real contributions to patient care and will no doubt do more in the future, if you trust your health entirely to a diagnostic program, you might as well just put a gun to your head and pull the trigger and get things over with quickly.
It is at the very least a metric space; let all servers connected to the internet be elements of the set S, and you can define the distance measure d:SxS->R in a number of ways--physical distance is the obvious choice, but packet transmission time is probably more useful--and ta da! you have everything you need. In practice, of course, we define all sorts of other structures on S, which make it much more useful.
Your post implies that you've never been exposed to the concept of mathematical spaces, which is unfortunate.
Without this narrative, there wouldn't be hundreds of slashdotters reading this.
[sigh] You're probably right.
Anyone paying any attention to biomedical research knows that if some amazing cure is demonstrated in mice, it will likely never be heard of again since it didn't pan out.
OTOH, if it's not demonstrated in mice, it's even more likely never to be heard of again. ;)
As a 13 year veteran of academic science, and a 3 year veteran of a pharmaceutical company, I can personally attest that scientists disagreeing on matters of great significance, difficulty publishing publishing what one believes to be important work, exasperation at peer review, and unending questions about the ability to translate findings in mice to humans are everyday concerns. I know of no scientist who has not faced criticism from their peers, despite how well respected they may be. I know of no scientist who has not had their papers rejected only to complain that the reviewers just didn't "get it." And contrary to what this article may assert, questions about how well mouse models recapitulate human disease are frequent topics of conversation. To read this article one would think that the scientific enterprise had never considered the notion that mice and humans are not equivalent. What a complete misdirection from reality.
This article takes the tone of a courageous and noble researcher struggling valiantly against an entrenched evil empire intent on stifling dissent. While this may be a good approach for a movie, it should have no place in serious discourse from a reputable organization like the NYT. A pragmatic discussion of the research and implications are in order, not the quasi-sensationalist man vs empire approach taken here.
It's really important to remember this, because people just eat the "courageous and noble researcher struggling valiantly against an entrenched evil empire intent on stifling dissent" narrative up, and it's hardly ever the way things actually work. Most important discoveries in science, positive or negative, have been building for years in the field--with many, many people on both (or all, as the case may be) sides of the debate--before they ever reach the public eye.
... scientists recognized an environmental problem and demonstrated a clear link to human activity, the scientists told the politicians about it, the politicians acted, and now the problem's going away.
My God, this is terrible! We must ensure that no such thing ever happens again!
Capitalism is at least, not a political dogma. Capitalism is "how money works" All the things you hate about it, are not a part of it. Kickbacks, loopholes, all that sort of shit are people gaming the system and are actually more socialist in nature than anything else.
Amusingly, just a couple of comments down the thread from yours is someone explaining to us how "true Marxism has never been tried," which of course is the communist's classic excuse when the failings of communism in the real world are pointed out. Fundamentalists of all sorts never seem to realize how much they sound like each other.
Communism in the real world is brutal and corrupt. Capitalism in the real world is brutal and corrupt. You can talk all day about they way you think things ought to work, but in every case you need to take into account that people, not abstract principles, are the ones making the decisions, and those people will not always (or even usually) behave the way your ideology says they should.
Just to be clear: I am not saying, by any stretch, that all believers are creationists. I am saying that all creationists are believers, and that all IDers are creationists--and that honest believers, of all sorts, are infinitely preferable to those who hide their sincerely held beliefs behind mealy-mouthed deceptions.
I stated "creator" very intentionally.
And by "creator," you mean God. Yahweh. El. The Alpha and Omega. The God who made Adam and Eve. The God of Abraham, and of Isaac, and of Jacob. The God who so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
Go ahead, try to claim otherwise. If you do, you're lying through your teeth. Bearing false witness, one might say, but to believers like you, lying to the heathen is always the most forgivable of sins.
Really, it's easier to deal with the young-Earth Bible-thumpers. At least they're honest.
Intelligent Design, contrary to your statement does NOT posit any form of God of gods.
You are a liar.
Every single ID advocate believes that the "intelligent designer" is God, specifically the God of the Abrahamic religions. Every. Single. One. And if they claim otherwise, they're lying.
Go tell yourself some more comforting lies. Just remember that we're onto you, liar.
Significant contributions to history.
So ... what significant contributions has not collecting stamps made? And what contributions would you expect?
You're trying to bring facts and logic into the narrative of "1337 h4x0rz are sooo much smarter than those hidebound academic 'scientists' with their fancy 'degrees' and expensive Big Science labs!" that we're all supposed to love so much. Stop that.
"If everything people say de Tocqueville said that he didn't actually say were put into a single book, I'll bet it would be longer than Democracy in America."
-- Julius Caesar
The founders recognized that a nation is partially defined by how much control it has over its borders. ... Go write your congress critters that a border that is 100 miles wide makes a mockery of the spirit of the law, while still obeying the letter of the law.
You know, I've read over the Bill of Rights many times, and I've never seen a part that says, "These rights shall not apply within an arbitrary distance of the borders of the United States." So your "letter of the law" claim seems a bit questionable. If the founders recognized the need for an exemption in border areas (however defined) they could have written it in there.
Thanks, AC. It warms my heart to know that no matter what anyone else in the world does, I can always rely on you.
If the Earth, the Moon, and the asteroids were the only objects in the universe, the capture would still happen the way it does. If Earth, the asteroids, and the rest of the universe were still present but the Moon wasn't there, it wouldn't. (The asteroids might still be captured by Earth's gravity, of course, but not in the way they are now.) So I think you don't really understand OP's point.
No more Anonymous Coward posts? Whatever shall we do?
... Finland was seen as the world leader in free and open internet communication? This would be bad news anywhere, but coming from .fi it's particularly sad.
Some of us want our kids to grow up in a world where only healthy behaviors exist.
Indeed. And I find your willingness to arbitrarily define things as "not speech" to be deeply unhealthy. For my children's sake, please go offline immediately.