ACHTUNG!
ALLES TURISTEN UND NONTEKNISCHEN LOOKENPEEPERS!
DAS KOMPUTERMASCHINE IST NICHT FÜR DER GEFINGERPOKEN UND MITTENGRABEN! ODERWISE IST EASY TO SCHNAPPEN DER SPRINGENWERK, BLOWENFUSEN UND POPPENCORKEN MIT SPITZENSPARKSEN.
IST NICHT FÜR GEWERKEN BEI DUMMKOPFEN. DER RUBBERNECKEN SIGHTSEEREN KEEPEN DAS COTTONPICKEN HÄNDER IN DAS POCKETS MUSS.
ZO RELAXEN UND WATSCHEN DER BLINKENLICHTEN.
It also saves me from going through the annoying ritual necessary to appease the grocery gods and get your stuff out of the store: "no, I don't want to donate", "no bags, thanks", "no, no bags", "no, not even for those", scan card, "credit", "no, I can handle it", "you too".
That is one of the reasons that I show at WinCo in northern Reno. It is a very no-nonsense kind of place, that does everything it can to keep things cheap. The only accept cash, checks, and debit cards (checks are annoying when people write them, but no one ever has to sign a receipt, and I haven't seen anyone write a check in years). You bag your own groceries, they never ask you to donate to anything, and the computer screen asks if you want cash back, not the checker. Moreover, each checker is running (more or less) two lanes at a time. He or she can scan one customer's items while another writes a check or pays. If I am in a bad mood, I can go in and pay for my groceries without ever talking to anyone, and it all happens quite quickly. I fucking love my ghetto food store.
You are either very fast on the self checkout, or don't generally buy very much. Even when the self checkout works perfectly, and there are no hiccups that require the assistance of an attendant, I don't necessarily know where all of the bar codes are, and I am not as fast as any of the checkers that I have ever met. I would much rather have someone else scan my shit. Bagging, on the other hand, is a toss-up. I can do that only marginally slower than the local bag boys, and wouldn't mind if I had to bag.
So, while you are happy with self checkout, I much prefer to keep the checkers around. As you say, the choice is nice to have.
Intelligence is approximately normal. In a normal distribution, the mean does, in fact, equal the median. Hence it is not incorrect to say "about half of the population is below average intelligence." The original poster was not incorrect, and by correcting him you showed yourself to be a misinformed pedant. This ignores the fact that "average" is an inexact term, and can refer to the mean or the median (and sometimes the mode).
The original post said average, not mean. Average is an inexact term, and can refer to the median, as well as the mean (and is sometimes used to refer to the mode, as well).
In the original context, the mean and median are very near to each other, if not identical. Every measure of intelligence that I have ever seen is approximately normal. Hence the median, mode, and mean are all about the same. It is not incorrect to state that "about half of the population is below the mean."
I really don't understand people like you who respond in the way in which you did. The original poster was clearly trying to make a joke. It was moderately funny---the joke has been made before, which is really the only thing that distracts from the humour content. Instead of trying to appreciate the joke, you decided to show off the knowledge you gained from the statistics unit in your high school algebra class, and pretend that it in some way mattered, or was significant.
In short, you tried to show off how very smart you are, and ended up looking like an ass.
I think it does. Myers whole argument is based upon Kurzweil's explanation of how we will reverse engineer the brain. The problem is he only talks about the genome part of the idea. AFAIK the only place Kurzweil mentions the genome in his lectures is when he's presenting an example of a situation we thought would take decades, and ended up being relatively quick due to the logarithmic increase in computing power. No where have I heard him speak about the genome being the key to reverse engineering the brain.
The amount of information in the genome (after lossless compression, which is feasible because of the massive redundancy in the genome) is about 50 million bytes (down from 800 million bytes in the uncompressed genome). It is true that the information in the genome goes through a complex route to create a brain, but the information in the genome constrains the amount of information in the brain prior to the brain's interaction with its environment.
...
To summarize, my discussion of the genome was one of several arguments for the information content of the brain prior to learning and adaptation, not a proposed method for reverse-engineering.
I don't know about you, but it seems to me that Kurzweil is arguing that the information content of the genome sets an upper boundary on the information needed to simulate or reconstruct the brain. Now can you please tell me how I am misinterpreting what Kurzweil is saying? Or are you just going to call me a liar?
Myers may be wrong. He may be misinterpreting Kurzweil's writing. Personally, I don't think he is, but perhaps Kurzweil is not being terribly clear. If he is wrong, then he is ignorant, not a liar. There is a huge difference. Lying is a serious accusation, and if you are going to level it at someone, you should probably be prepared to back up your claims.
Partisan pundit sissy fight? No, this is somebody defending his research after somebody essentially lied to make him look bad and got press from it.
I cannot, for the life of me, determine who it is that you think "essentially lied." Lying requires an intent to deceive; i.e. in order to lie, you have to know the truth, and intentionally communicate in a manner that is contrary to that truth, either by creating facts from whole cloth, or by omitting certain pieces of information in order to get your audience to come to the wrong conclusion. It seems to me that there are basically two men in this discussion: Kurzweil and Myers. So, you must be accusing one of them of lying.
Kurzweil is making bold claims about the future. Is he wrong? Perhaps. Is he lying? No. Kurzweil is not in possession of a complete picture of the "truth," because the "truth" is in some far off future, and while he may be wrong, there is no good way for him to be right, and he is certainly not attempting to deceive anyone. Of course, I don't think that you are accusing him of lying. I just want to make sure to cover my bases.
Myers then stated that Kurzweil's claims were not only wrong, but that they belied a fundamental misunderstanding of biology and the human brain. From my reading of his blog, this may be because Myers read a summary of Kurzweil's lecture that perhaps characterized what was said. So Myers was responding to an imperfect report of Kurzweil's ideas. Does this imply that Myers could be wrong? Certainly. Is he lying? No. Myers was in possession of an incomplete picture of the "truth," because the "truth" was misreported to him. He is not attempting to deceive anyone.
Either of the men could be wrong. Shit, they could both be wrong. That is no reason to accuse either of them of lying, which is a fairly profound accusation, especially within the world of academia.
I also am a little bit annoyed that we complain about the RIAA and MPAA as clinging to an old business model and then as book publishers and retailers try something new (or are even rumored to try something new) we hop all over it and denounce it as a crime against humanity.
I'm not even sure that the idea is all that new. I mean, just about every paperback book that I buy has advertisements. Granted, these are usually at the back of the book, and are specifically for other books published by the publisher or author, but the advertisements are there, none the less.
Or, in an even more relevant example, I have a 100 year old copy of The Settlement Cook Book (subtitled "The Way to a Man's Heart", to give some idea of the intended audience). The first 15 or so pages beyond the table of contents are nothing but advertisements, and there are another dozen or so pages of ads at the back of the book.
So, in that regard, I don't even see the addition of advertisements as a new or novel idea. And with digital books there is at least the possibility of paying a premium to get no ads (compare to paperbacks, where it is unlikely that an ad-free version would be published).
Or one could ask for more specificity. Many of the claims made by acupuncturists are clearly woo--for instance, the claim that acupuncture somehow alters the flow of a mystical energy ("chi") in order heal wounds, relive pain, or cure cancer. Might some of the claims made by acupuncturists be true? Possibly---it probably bears some well controlled study. But given the claims made by many acupuncturists, I don't think that it is unfair to dismiss most of it as woo.
I think that we may have to agree to disagree on this one---to shoot first could also mean to shoot before taking any other action, or before an enemy can take an action. For instance, "Greedo was about to kill Han, but Han shot first." That is, Han shot before Greedo could take any action.
Those are great arguments for someone who claims that the current patent system is perfect, or even that it is good enough. That was not my argument, and they don't address my point. Why would no patent system be better than granting inventors a limited monopoly? Yes, the patent system is broken. This does not mean that we should get rid of it entirely. By that logic, the US should cease to be democratic republic and return to being a monarchy, because democracy clearly has some flaws. Reform the system; don't scrap it.
Of course, the GPL only works because copyrights exist, and the terms of the GPL are designed to give away some of the original author's rights, without giving away all of their rights, within the framework of existing copyright law. Without enforceable copyrights (which are different from patents, but you brought up the GPL), there is no reason to expect that Apple, for instance, would ever have published any of their modifications to the FOSS code that is used in their OS. Without licensing or copyright, the BSD kernel would either never have made it into OS X, or it would have, and Apple could have kept all of their modifications secret.
So, even in that situation, a limited monopoly granted to the original author/innovator turns out to be a net good for those involved.
As I said initially, I do not believe that the patent system is perfect. Your example, while a bit extreme, certainly can (and does) happen. However, there are other ways to solve the problem.
First off, I would suggest that a patent that lasts 10 years is probably unreasonable. Five to seven years might be more reasonable. An even shorter period may be workable.
Second, if I want to bring a product to market, and I do my due diligence and determine that I am not infringing on any patents, then I should be given a limited shield against patent suits. Off the top of my head, we could limit the time period for which a person could collect royalties (i.e. the patent holder cannot receive royalties on products that were sold more than three months after the suit was filed, thus encouraging patent holders to file as quickly as possible).
Third, your example relies upon someone thinking up something "obvious," and managing to be first to the patent office. If it really is obvious, then it should not be patentable. Patents are supposed to be awarded for innovation, which generally implies creativity and novelty. This implies that greater oversight is needed by the patent office---they should not be awarding trivial patents.
Finally, the problem that you present does not address my initial argument. I argued that getting rid of all patents would stifle innovation, because no one would be willing to risk creating anything new for fear that someone else would copy their product, and reap the rewards. Patents are intended to give creators of novel ideas a limited period of time during which they have a monopoly on their idea. This lowers the risk of marketing new ideas, and gives creative people or companies a chance to recoup some of their R&D costs so that they can continue innovating. Without some kind of limited monopoly, it is just too risky.
Here's a better idea: no patents. I don't see any downside.
Here's the downside: suppose you own a small business that has created a remarkable new widget. People like your widget, and you are happy to sell them widgets for a small profit. However, a very large company reverse engineers your widget, and sells it for less. Suddenly, you can't make any money any longer. If you know that anything you invent can be copied by someone else, why bother inventing anything at all? Patents are meant to spur innovation by providing inventors an opportunity to make a profit from their innovations for a limited period of time without competition.
Is the patent system perfect? No. But the solution is not to entirely eliminate it.
Yes, but neither the article nor the post that you responded to have anything to do with Stone Age people who are nearly identical to modern humans on a genetic level. Rather, the article refers to tool use by A. afarensis ("Lucy's" species). This is a rather extraordinary find, as not only was Lucy very different from modern humans (smaller, more gracile in general, smaller brain, &c.), but if Lucy was using tools, then the first evidence of any human ancestor using tools gets pushed back almost a million years.
As to more primitive peoples having more know-how than modern societies, that depends upon what you mean by "know-how." A primitive hunter-gatherer would have to know how to do everything required by his or her society: hunt for game, gather wild resources, make tools from stone, wood, and other materials, preserve food, &c. They were generalists. Modern societies trade breadth of knowledge for depth of knowledge. Rather than working as jacks-of-all-trades, modern people specialize. They may not have the same breadth of knowledge or ability, but they are able to understand a narrower range of ideas or skills much more deeply. I see this as a qualitative difference in "know-how," rather than a quantitative difference.
Actually, a drunk man who has sex with a sober woman could press rape charges. However, this assumes that (a) upon waking, the man feels that he has been wronged and (b) the man actually chooses to press rape charges. We live in a society that assumes that men want to have sex with women, no matter their state of mind, and that further presumes that a man cannot be raped by a woman, and any man that does make such a claim is a pussy. So it is understandable that so few cases are prosecuted.
Such as? Plants are very promiscuous. They swap genes around much more than animals (though not as much as bacteria or viruses). How would you suggest that the plants be made infertile when cross-breeding?
That was kind of a weird comment. Nobody knows exactly what's going to happen because this hasn't happened in living memory. What would you have to gain with a "nothing to see here"?
Clearly, you have never seen how much excitement a candy bar in a swimming pool actually causes. Think about it for a minute. It will come to you. If it doesn't, what else might one find in a swimming pool that is about the same size, shape, and color as a candy bar?
Perhaps I reacted more to the fact that you presented this advice without any commentary on that situation at all.
Please check the IDs of the posters. I did not originally present the advice. I agree with it, but I did not present it.
I think it's one of the fundamental problems of urban living... the lack of community. When Mr Teacher was seen by every student when he visisted the barber and the butcher and the blacksmith, it would be absurd to say "don't fraternize with students", but today that seems reasonable because we live in these huge anonymous conglomerations.
There is a difference between fraternizing with students, and being a member of their community. I see students all the time at the grocery store. I will say hello, perhaps give them a hard time about getting homework in, and, if their parents are there, take a moment to check in with them. This is very different from going to a party with the students---it is far more public, and avoids the he said/she said problem, because there are a lot of unbiased witnesses.
I also make a fair number of home visits each year, especially with students whose parents habitually fail to make it to conferences at the school, but I try to get to the homes of most of my students over the year, just to check in and introduce myself to the parents. Again, this is different from fraternization.
Slashdot Mirror
You know, I picked up a 50g a while back. The enter key is in the wrong place. 48gx for ever, baby!
That is one of the reasons that I show at WinCo in northern Reno. It is a very no-nonsense kind of place, that does everything it can to keep things cheap. The only accept cash, checks, and debit cards (checks are annoying when people write them, but no one ever has to sign a receipt, and I haven't seen anyone write a check in years). You bag your own groceries, they never ask you to donate to anything, and the computer screen asks if you want cash back, not the checker. Moreover, each checker is running (more or less) two lanes at a time. He or she can scan one customer's items while another writes a check or pays. If I am in a bad mood, I can go in and pay for my groceries without ever talking to anyone, and it all happens quite quickly. I fucking love my ghetto food store.
You are either very fast on the self checkout, or don't generally buy very much. Even when the self checkout works perfectly, and there are no hiccups that require the assistance of an attendant, I don't necessarily know where all of the bar codes are, and I am not as fast as any of the checkers that I have ever met. I would much rather have someone else scan my shit. Bagging, on the other hand, is a toss-up. I can do that only marginally slower than the local bag boys, and wouldn't mind if I had to bag.
So, while you are happy with self checkout, I much prefer to keep the checkers around. As you say, the choice is nice to have.
Best. Car analogy. Ever.
Perhaps it is a reference to Eedoo Technology, the Lenovo subsidiary that is creating this device?
Intelligence is approximately normal. In a normal distribution, the mean does, in fact, equal the median. Hence it is not incorrect to say "about half of the population is below average intelligence." The original poster was not incorrect, and by correcting him you showed yourself to be a misinformed pedant. This ignores the fact that "average" is an inexact term, and can refer to the mean or the median (and sometimes the mode).
I really don't understand people like you who respond in the way in which you did. The original poster was clearly trying to make a joke. It was moderately funny---the joke has been made before, which is really the only thing that distracts from the humour content. Instead of trying to appreciate the joke, you decided to show off the knowledge you gained from the statistics unit in your high school algebra class, and pretend that it in some way mattered, or was significant.
In short, you tried to show off how very smart you are, and ended up looking like an ass.
From Kurzweil's response to Myers (note the 's' at the end of the name):
I don't know about you, but it seems to me that Kurzweil is arguing that the information content of the genome sets an upper boundary on the information needed to simulate or reconstruct the brain. Now can you please tell me how I am misinterpreting what Kurzweil is saying? Or are you just going to call me a liar?
Myers may be wrong. He may be misinterpreting Kurzweil's writing. Personally, I don't think he is, but perhaps Kurzweil is not being terribly clear. If he is wrong, then he is ignorant, not a liar. There is a huge difference. Lying is a serious accusation, and if you are going to level it at someone, you should probably be prepared to back up your claims.
That does not constitute lying.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epigenetics
I cannot, for the life of me, determine who it is that you think "essentially lied." Lying requires an intent to deceive; i.e. in order to lie, you have to know the truth, and intentionally communicate in a manner that is contrary to that truth, either by creating facts from whole cloth, or by omitting certain pieces of information in order to get your audience to come to the wrong conclusion. It seems to me that there are basically two men in this discussion: Kurzweil and Myers. So, you must be accusing one of them of lying.
Kurzweil is making bold claims about the future. Is he wrong? Perhaps. Is he lying? No. Kurzweil is not in possession of a complete picture of the "truth," because the "truth" is in some far off future, and while he may be wrong, there is no good way for him to be right, and he is certainly not attempting to deceive anyone. Of course, I don't think that you are accusing him of lying. I just want to make sure to cover my bases.
Myers then stated that Kurzweil's claims were not only wrong, but that they belied a fundamental misunderstanding of biology and the human brain. From my reading of his blog, this may be because Myers read a summary of Kurzweil's lecture that perhaps characterized what was said. So Myers was responding to an imperfect report of Kurzweil's ideas. Does this imply that Myers could be wrong? Certainly. Is he lying? No. Myers was in possession of an incomplete picture of the "truth," because the "truth" was misreported to him. He is not attempting to deceive anyone.
Either of the men could be wrong. Shit, they could both be wrong. That is no reason to accuse either of them of lying, which is a fairly profound accusation, especially within the world of academia.
I'm not even sure that the idea is all that new. I mean, just about every paperback book that I buy has advertisements. Granted, these are usually at the back of the book, and are specifically for other books published by the publisher or author, but the advertisements are there, none the less.
Or, in an even more relevant example, I have a 100 year old copy of The Settlement Cook Book (subtitled "The Way to a Man's Heart", to give some idea of the intended audience). The first 15 or so pages beyond the table of contents are nothing but advertisements, and there are another dozen or so pages of ads at the back of the book.
So, in that regard, I don't even see the addition of advertisements as a new or novel idea. And with digital books there is at least the possibility of paying a premium to get no ads (compare to paperbacks, where it is unlikely that an ad-free version would be published).
Or one could ask for more specificity. Many of the claims made by acupuncturists are clearly woo--for instance, the claim that acupuncture somehow alters the flow of a mystical energy ("chi") in order heal wounds, relive pain, or cure cancer. Might some of the claims made by acupuncturists be true? Possibly---it probably bears some well controlled study. But given the claims made by many acupuncturists, I don't think that it is unfair to dismiss most of it as woo.
I think that we may have to agree to disagree on this one---to shoot first could also mean to shoot before taking any other action, or before an enemy can take an action. For instance, "Greedo was about to kill Han, but Han shot first." That is, Han shot before Greedo could take any action.
Is that not the very definition of shooting first?
Those are great arguments for someone who claims that the current patent system is perfect, or even that it is good enough. That was not my argument, and they don't address my point. Why would no patent system be better than granting inventors a limited monopoly? Yes, the patent system is broken. This does not mean that we should get rid of it entirely. By that logic, the US should cease to be democratic republic and return to being a monarchy, because democracy clearly has some flaws. Reform the system; don't scrap it.
Of course, the GPL only works because copyrights exist, and the terms of the GPL are designed to give away some of the original author's rights, without giving away all of their rights, within the framework of existing copyright law. Without enforceable copyrights (which are different from patents, but you brought up the GPL), there is no reason to expect that Apple, for instance, would ever have published any of their modifications to the FOSS code that is used in their OS. Without licensing or copyright, the BSD kernel would either never have made it into OS X, or it would have, and Apple could have kept all of their modifications secret.
So, even in that situation, a limited monopoly granted to the original author/innovator turns out to be a net good for those involved.
As I said initially, I do not believe that the patent system is perfect. Your example, while a bit extreme, certainly can (and does) happen. However, there are other ways to solve the problem.
First off, I would suggest that a patent that lasts 10 years is probably unreasonable. Five to seven years might be more reasonable. An even shorter period may be workable.
Second, if I want to bring a product to market, and I do my due diligence and determine that I am not infringing on any patents, then I should be given a limited shield against patent suits. Off the top of my head, we could limit the time period for which a person could collect royalties (i.e. the patent holder cannot receive royalties on products that were sold more than three months after the suit was filed, thus encouraging patent holders to file as quickly as possible).
Third, your example relies upon someone thinking up something "obvious," and managing to be first to the patent office. If it really is obvious, then it should not be patentable. Patents are supposed to be awarded for innovation, which generally implies creativity and novelty. This implies that greater oversight is needed by the patent office---they should not be awarding trivial patents.
Finally, the problem that you present does not address my initial argument. I argued that getting rid of all patents would stifle innovation, because no one would be willing to risk creating anything new for fear that someone else would copy their product, and reap the rewards. Patents are intended to give creators of novel ideas a limited period of time during which they have a monopoly on their idea. This lowers the risk of marketing new ideas, and gives creative people or companies a chance to recoup some of their R&D costs so that they can continue innovating. Without some kind of limited monopoly, it is just too risky.
Here's the downside: suppose you own a small business that has created a remarkable new widget. People like your widget, and you are happy to sell them widgets for a small profit. However, a very large company reverse engineers your widget, and sells it for less. Suddenly, you can't make any money any longer. If you know that anything you invent can be copied by someone else, why bother inventing anything at all? Patents are meant to spur innovation by providing inventors an opportunity to make a profit from their innovations for a limited period of time without competition.
Is the patent system perfect? No. But the solution is not to entirely eliminate it.
Yes, but neither the article nor the post that you responded to have anything to do with Stone Age people who are nearly identical to modern humans on a genetic level. Rather, the article refers to tool use by A. afarensis ("Lucy's" species). This is a rather extraordinary find, as not only was Lucy very different from modern humans (smaller, more gracile in general, smaller brain, &c.), but if Lucy was using tools, then the first evidence of any human ancestor using tools gets pushed back almost a million years.
As to more primitive peoples having more know-how than modern societies, that depends upon what you mean by "know-how." A primitive hunter-gatherer would have to know how to do everything required by his or her society: hunt for game, gather wild resources, make tools from stone, wood, and other materials, preserve food, &c. They were generalists. Modern societies trade breadth of knowledge for depth of knowledge. Rather than working as jacks-of-all-trades, modern people specialize. They may not have the same breadth of knowledge or ability, but they are able to understand a narrower range of ideas or skills much more deeply. I see this as a qualitative difference in "know-how," rather than a quantitative difference.
Actually, a drunk man who has sex with a sober woman could press rape charges. However, this assumes that (a) upon waking, the man feels that he has been wronged and (b) the man actually chooses to press rape charges. We live in a society that assumes that men want to have sex with women, no matter their state of mind, and that further presumes that a man cannot be raped by a woman, and any man that does make such a claim is a pussy. So it is understandable that so few cases are prosecuted.
Such as? Plants are very promiscuous. They swap genes around much more than animals (though not as much as bacteria or viruses). How would you suggest that the plants be made infertile when cross-breeding?
Clearly, you have never seen how much excitement a candy bar in a swimming pool actually causes. Think about it for a minute. It will come to you. If it doesn't, what else might one find in a swimming pool that is about the same size, shape, and color as a candy bar?
Please check the IDs of the posters. I did not originally present the advice. I agree with it, but I did not present it.
There is a difference between fraternizing with students, and being a member of their community. I see students all the time at the grocery store. I will say hello, perhaps give them a hard time about getting homework in, and, if their parents are there, take a moment to check in with them. This is very different from going to a party with the students---it is far more public, and avoids the he said/she said problem, because there are a lot of unbiased witnesses.
I also make a fair number of home visits each year, especially with students whose parents habitually fail to make it to conferences at the school, but I try to get to the homes of most of my students over the year, just to check in and introduce myself to the parents. Again, this is different from fraternization.