There's also hope that to keep the impression of working towards a real colony, they might sponsor some space-related research & development. And there is some value even in simply making the colonization idea more popular and raising discussion about it. Now, for example, whoever plans a Mars colony, will know he has to address some points mentioned in this MIT study.
Instead of wasting time and money on attacking straw men based on your assumptions, how about taking a part of the problem that you fully understand, and spending the same time and money on working out a solution?
Anyway, this might be a useful way to troll Mars One for adding more essence to their plans. Given that "the team is willing to update their analysis if more information becomes available", this could become a nice opportunity for Mars One if they use it wisely.
"If an elderly but distinguished scientist says that something is possible, he is almost certainly right; but if he says that it is impossible, he is very probably wrong."
Granted, this study is supposedly more than a one man's rant, but I'm afraid that the room for assumptions is too big to guarantee an unbiased conclusion.
It is now Mars One team's move to provide a good rebuttal. So far, Bas Lansdorp's response is inadequate:
...while he welcomed the students' analysis, his company does not have time to respond to all the questions it receives from students and "the lack of time for support from us combined with their limited experience results in incorrect conclusions."
Indeed; a decent education for a web designer, for example, is hard to come by. People with CS and print design backgrounds are filling it. For mobile design it's even worse. The education system simply cannot keep up.
You had me until the cruise ships and the international travel ban. Now I'm scratching my had about whether the rest of your post is just as groundless, and if I should review my own wishful thinking that prevented me from filtering it earlier.
The Pirate Bay definitely deserves praise for staying up, despite being famous and constantly attacked by the media mafia. They bring hope that one day we may live in a world where sharing of knowledge, art and data is encouraged rather that prosecuted, and that some of today's files will survive until then, as well.
It will require a lot of work until we get there in the social realm (fighting the abusive law). It may help if technical solutions exist (decentralization, anonymity, security) that allow everyone to ignore the nonsensical law, to make the case even more obvious and to get by with our files in the meanwhile.
True. Finding interesting destinations and developing new propulsion methods are mutually complementary tasks. Both are important and can be done in parallel by people with different talents and interests.
No matter whether it is Google or Amazon who gets this technology running first, and whether it is banned in America for a while, but this is our sci-fi future happening now, and it is amazingly cool to watch.
“To put this in perspective with p53, there are over 70,000 papers published on this protein. Even if I’m reading five papers a day, it could take me nearly 38 years to completely understand all of the research already available today on this protein. Watson has demonstrated the potential to accelerate the rate and the quality of breakthrough discoveries."
Using [Watson], Lichtarge’s team identified proteins that modify p53, which is a key protein related to many cancers. Cancer researchers usually only find around one new protein to work on a year, but the Watson collaboration discovered six potential proteins to target for new research, according to IBM.
That's why Facebook, for example, needs a more explicit and prominent "dislike" / vote down button, so that people would not feed the trolls in comments, thus increasing their EdgeRank.
The problem discussed was not the bad code in general. My only point was that you cannot easily avoid the language features you don't understand or like by "just using your subset of language" in many real-life projects.
That's a funny question. In order to make real-time decisions in a life-critical task like driving, you have to understand the requirements (written traffic rules, conventions and real-world limitations), stay aware of the current road situation and weather conditions, guess the intentions of the other traffic participants, and keep your concentration for long periods of time. Most people with their meatputers are not capable of this (see traffic incidents and deaths statistics). Given that they have no hope, how is an AI supposed to do anything?
I agree, there's always new things to learn; in some languages more than in others. Some people find it exciting, others find it annoying. I currently don't use C++ daily, so I am not frustrated with it. In fact, I like many of the new features. But I can understand why some people complain.
Just to make it clear, I was not judging the design of C++. I only made a counter-point to the "use your own subset" argument. I agree that coding standards reduce this problem, but they also cannot solve it completely.
Agreed, I was also considering this when I was asking this question. Perhaps I should have elaborated further.
The advances in software engineering tools so far made programming more efficient and more accessible, so more people can do it now, and some people can achieve much more in small teams. But still, it is a skill that qualifies as a profession, and people who do it part-time also need a lot of learning.
The point of my question is, will it get to a degree when instructing the computers even for custom, unique tasks will no longer be a complex skill? Will we see a decline in the number of people specifically hired as programmers?
I understand we will not literally hire some Bender-like robot, or maybe even get any actual code. More likely, it's just that the generic software will become more interactive and functional. But still, it will displace some human labor. That's what I'm talking about, and I'm curious about other people's opinion when that turning point may come in this industry.
I appreciate the humor, but actually Siri is another example of a human job (personal assistant) going partially obsolete. Not that the current implementation is good enough to answer questions like this one.
Sometimes well-established languages keep adding new features and syntactic constructs until most developers are not even aware of all the possibilities, and use maybe 20% in their usual daily work. The old features and syntax are kept around for compatibility and to keep the old guard content, even if cutting them would lead to faster compilation, more elegant language and less confusion.
This may be part of the reason for the constant introduction of new trendy languages with radically simplified syntax and libraries... Which then follow the same pattern. Few languages are introducing new paradigms, many are trying to be a "better" C++, Java, LISP, JavaScript or Perl.
Do you think this cycle is inevitable, or could it be a good idea to sometimes clean up the syntax and the obscure features in new specification versions, to keep the established languages more competitive?
If it subtracts up to 30kg of every weight you have to lift, I would say it is very useful. I don't think it limits your maximum weight, so all superhuman slashdotters here can continue to regularly lift their 120kg, or maybe 150 now.
Slashdot Mirror
There's also hope that to keep the impression of working towards a real colony, they might sponsor some space-related research & development. And there is some value even in simply making the colonization idea more popular and raising discussion about it. Now, for example, whoever plans a Mars colony, will know he has to address some points mentioned in this MIT study.
Instead of wasting time and money on attacking straw men based on your assumptions, how about taking a part of the problem that you fully understand, and spending the same time and money on working out a solution?
Anyway, this might be a useful way to troll Mars One for adding more essence to their plans. Given that "the team is willing to update their analysis if more information becomes available", this could become a nice opportunity for Mars One if they use it wisely.
"If an elderly but distinguished scientist says that something is possible, he is almost certainly right; but if he says that it is impossible, he is very probably wrong."
Granted, this study is supposedly more than a one man's rant, but I'm afraid that the room for assumptions is too big to guarantee an unbiased conclusion.
It is now Mars One team's move to provide a good rebuttal. So far, Bas Lansdorp's response is inadequate:
...while he welcomed the students' analysis, his company does not have time to respond to all the questions it receives from students and "the lack of time for support from us combined with their limited experience results in incorrect conclusions."
Indeed; a decent education for a web designer, for example, is hard to come by. People with CS and print design backgrounds are filling it. For mobile design it's even worse. The education system simply cannot keep up.
You had me until the cruise ships and the international travel ban. Now I'm scratching my had about whether the rest of your post is just as groundless, and if I should review my own wishful thinking that prevented me from filtering it earlier.
The Pirate Bay definitely deserves praise for staying up, despite being famous and constantly attacked by the media mafia. They bring hope that one day we may live in a world where sharing of knowledge, art and data is encouraged rather that prosecuted, and that some of today's files will survive until then, as well.
It will require a lot of work until we get there in the social realm (fighting the abusive law). It may help if technical solutions exist (decentralization, anonymity, security) that allow everyone to ignore the nonsensical law, to make the case even more obvious and to get by with our files in the meanwhile.
"We've had to come to recognize, accept and even to some extent celebrate neuro-diversity..."
They should put this in Sheldon's script! It is pure beauty!
A brief summary of the winners is here.
Yes. More people should read "Elements of Style" and "On Writing Well".
True. Finding interesting destinations and developing new propulsion methods are mutually complementary tasks. Both are important and can be done in parallel by people with different talents and interests.
No matter whether it is Google or Amazon who gets this technology running first, and whether it is banned in America for a while, but this is our sci-fi future happening now, and it is amazingly cool to watch.
In related news:
“To put this in perspective with p53, there are over 70,000 papers published on this protein. Even if I’m reading five papers a day, it could take me nearly 38 years to completely understand all of the research already available today on this protein. Watson has demonstrated the potential to accelerate the rate and the quality of breakthrough discoveries."
Using [Watson], Lichtarge’s team identified proteins that modify p53, which is a key protein related to many cancers. Cancer researchers usually only find around one new protein to work on a year, but the Watson collaboration discovered six potential proteins to target for new research, according to IBM.
Africa, unite!
That's why Facebook, for example, needs a more explicit and prominent "dislike" / vote down button, so that people would not feed the trolls in comments, thus increasing their EdgeRank.
With the word "fizzbuzz".
The problem discussed was not the bad code in general. My only point was that you cannot easily avoid the language features you don't understand or like by "just using your subset of language" in many real-life projects.
That's a funny question. In order to make real-time decisions in a life-critical task like driving, you have to understand the requirements (written traffic rules, conventions and real-world limitations), stay aware of the current road situation and weather conditions, guess the intentions of the other traffic participants, and keep your concentration for long periods of time. Most people with their meatputers are not capable of this (see traffic incidents and deaths statistics). Given that they have no hope, how is an AI supposed to do anything?
I agree, there's always new things to learn; in some languages more than in others. Some people find it exciting, others find it annoying. I currently don't use C++ daily, so I am not frustrated with it. In fact, I like many of the new features. But I can understand why some people complain.
Just to make it clear, I was not judging the design of C++. I only made a counter-point to the "use your own subset" argument. I agree that coding standards reduce this problem, but they also cannot solve it completely.
Agreed, I was also considering this when I was asking this question. Perhaps I should have elaborated further.
The advances in software engineering tools so far made programming more efficient and more accessible, so more people can do it now, and some people can achieve much more in small teams. But still, it is a skill that qualifies as a profession, and people who do it part-time also need a lot of learning.
The point of my question is, will it get to a degree when instructing the computers even for custom, unique tasks will no longer be a complex skill? Will we see a decline in the number of people specifically hired as programmers?
I understand we will not literally hire some Bender-like robot, or maybe even get any actual code. More likely, it's just that the generic software will become more interactive and functional. But still, it will displace some human labor. That's what I'm talking about, and I'm curious about other people's opinion when that turning point may come in this industry.
I appreciate the humor, but actually Siri is another example of a human job (personal assistant) going partially obsolete. Not that the current implementation is good enough to answer questions like this one.
it's OK to use only what you're comfortable with
...until you have to read, debug, maintain and extend someone else's code.
Do you think AI will start replacing junior programmers in the foreseeable future, similar to car drivers and call center operators?
Sometimes well-established languages keep adding new features and syntactic constructs until most developers are not even aware of all the possibilities, and use maybe 20% in their usual daily work. The old features and syntax are kept around for compatibility and to keep the old guard content, even if cutting them would lead to faster compilation, more elegant language and less confusion.
This may be part of the reason for the constant introduction of new trendy languages with radically simplified syntax and libraries... Which then follow the same pattern. Few languages are introducing new paradigms, many are trying to be a "better" C++, Java, LISP, JavaScript or Perl.
Do you think this cycle is inevitable, or could it be a good idea to sometimes clean up the syntax and the obscure features in new specification versions, to keep the established languages more competitive?
If it subtracts up to 30kg of every weight you have to lift, I would say it is very useful. I don't think it limits your maximum weight, so all superhuman slashdotters here can continue to regularly lift their 120kg, or maybe 150 now.