Did I fall asleep for 20 years, or are Inktomi's claims about its search software a little inflated? They stop just short of claiming to read my mind and provide the doc I want as soon as I open the browser.
Someone please tell me if I'm missing some great coolness here. After all, I haven't used anything other than Google for months.
I think the net's propensity to get ugly keeps conversation honest and open -- no one is speaking diplomatically, so everyone feels free to tell it like it is.
This makes the net a welcome antidote to the PC/Esteem/Language Cops orthodoxy. And a good reminder that the school of hard knocks is the most effective teacher.
Not that I consider flaming effective discourse, just real discourse.
Re:Slashdot Mozilla FAC - Read Before You Post!
on
Mozilla Status Update
·
· Score: 1
Perhaps Microsoft should explain it. The window title and the icon on the Programs menu says "MS-DOS Prompt" in Win9x.
Which brings me to an OT rant about small ISV's and (wait for it) open source:
The consulting company I work for (and many others) makes a lot of money fixing problems created by some dork who was too stupid to realize you can't start your own software company.;) Usually, the story goes like this:
Dork writes app with some puny but vital business purpose (If unethical dork, insert "on customer's time" here.), invariably in a lame-ass tool that really should only be used to handle smallish recipe files.
Dork manages to sell to one big client where an in-law works.
Dork makes major release and generates marketing pamphlets for distro at industry trade shows, which promise that the app will have user docs and a real-database port Real Soon Now.
Meanwhile, the app really hasn't progressed beyond "almost alpha" at the one big client who is paying for "integration services".
Hapless company (my future client!) correctly decides that buy is better than build, but incorrectly assumes that there must be a decent package out there for this. Someone at hapless company randomly stumbles upon dork's marketing pamphlet or web site, and buys in.
Hapless company is promised by dork that software is ready to go, and the "integration services" should only last a month or so.
Fast forward six to eighteen months (depending on client IQ)...
Client has no system, or worse, has a crippled system and turned off or stopped paying for the old one, has spent hundreds of thousands on dork hours alone, has no docs on how to install, operate, or fix, has no source to allow me to fix or diagnose it for them, has no database schema (and often a dork-encrypted/proprietary database), is paying more thousands for staff to babysit and undo the misdeeds of the app, has dork saying that he can't spend any more time with them (assuming his number is still listed), etc.
Basically, the only good news is that hapless company didn't bring Andersen Consulting in to do the app:-)
So, how would this have improved with Open Source?
Well, dork could have:
Had input on his app from client or consultant help, Started a bit smaller before hapless company showed up, Made continuous improvement to his app based on experiences at first big client, Gotten paid the honest way, for development services, rather than for vaporware, And eventually have built a user base big enough to handle the Hapless account smoothly.
Meanwhile (and, per RMS, more importantly), the client could have:
reviewed dork's code before betting the company on it, brought in extra help that would really fix problems, not just clean up after them, been assured that they could still improve the app after dork fled the country, had a consultant provide necessary docs and schema, and been part of a community of users that would work together to improve the app, whether dork was there to help or not.
Or, at least I've heard it could work this way...
This book affected me deeply
on
Childhood's End
·
· Score: 2
I apologize if I give anything away.
I read this book as a junior-high kid, and it had a few profound impacts on me:
The simplicity with which the various human evils were eliminated by the Overlords sent the message that so much of our suffering is caused by irrational traditions and shallow beliefs, and
The picture of the Overmind at the end depressed me so greatly (and, I think, was meant to -- that's why we had the astronaut's perspective?) that I have since always carried around the idea that the Christian depiction of Heaven really isn't that appealing -- a life of struggle and torment is far more appealing than "paradise", because it brings real meaning to whatever joy and discovery might be experienced.
One last thing: if you've read Rendezvous with Rama, you must conclude that Clarke intended the second lesson in Childhood's End, as Rama is a celebration of the wonder of an accidental experience that vanishes without impact, and a warning of the danger of focusing on the destination to the exclusion of noticing the journey (after all, the aliens came all that way, and never imagined or noticed the puny Earthlings).
Thanks for the review. This book deserves to be read and remembered.
Another helpful rule, IMO: more segments (them's the words between the dots) in a group name is better, as exemplified by the poster's 3 5-segment examples. Two segments is a recipe for trouble.
Of course, this excludes the made-up group names: alt.slashdot.die.die.die or whatever:)
The part about these being useful when it's not possible to carry along one of each tool would be a big help to soldiers on the move, and they do make the point that they could be macro-sized for bridges, shelters, etc.
Imagine your platoon being able to combine their bots into a temporary shelter, or a raft, or an observation platform. Then along comes a whole company, and now you've got enough for a pontoon bridge, an HQ, a barricade, etc.
Of course, these bots would be even more useful on spacecraft, but, since NASA's broke, let's get the Pentagon to spend the money on development, eh?
"It is not uncommon to see some stars get 1 million dollars per episode. At a minimum, to break even, the network needs to sell 1 million in advertising."
But the stars wouldn't be worth $1M per episode if not for the ability to sell ad space.
Also, I think the internet is a demonstration that it's possible to have a non-advertised mass media (remember, banners are a recent phenomenon), provided the production costs are low enough.
Read "All Consuming Images" by Stuart Ewen. What he and the poster are saying is that no one is above influence. Hell, there's even a marketing segment for those who like to think of themselves as too cynical for ads, or too unswayable. If an ad needs to create an iconoclastic message for you to relate to, they can do that.
As for bad Sunny Delight ads, there's a good chance that they weren't meant to persuade *you*, but maybe some June Cleaver wannabe (of which there are plenty, and all of whom were more likely to buy an orange-juice-like drink than you anyway).
Another point is that ads very often (and these days usually) aren't really looking for the "I'm going to go right out and buy that now" reaction. Rather, they are trying to get you to make positive associations with that brand, to legitimize the brand, or even just to "innoculate" the brand so that it's almost impossible to have negative feelings about it, regardless of what horrible things you might hear. Or, as in the case of the 10-10 services, there simply is no other "shelf" on which to display the product.
Back to the original post, IIRC, advertising allows for tax deductions, so your tax dollars are helping to make your life uglier and noisier. Yay.
Moral Dilemma Aside: do I give the fellow slashdotter who put me onto the Ewen book credit, or would I be exposing him to the Effect?
The theory of relativity hinges on the assumption that an event occurs regardless of the frame of reference of the observers: if I see two cars crash in an intersection, then any observer in any reference frame will also see the cars crash.
The upshot of this is the idea of simultaneity: regardless of the various measurements of space and time by the cars and any other observers, any proper explanation of space and time must conclude that the cars were in the same place at the same time, in order to cause the crash.
Interestingly, (and, IMHO, incorrectly) one of the interpretations of quantum mechanics (Many Worlds), posits that all possible scenarios actually occur, i.e. that there is a "parallel universe" in which the cars' particles' locations resolve in such a way that they do not crash!
To be even more clear, viewing the light from a star 10 light years away tells us what the star *might* look like right now to some alien who is also 10 light years from the star (and up to 20 light years from us) but that doesn't mean that we are communicating with that alien.
While not yet a fully-developed crackpot theory, there's a connection I often make, and I wonder if it has any validity:
It seems to me that the probabilistic behavior observed at the quantum level may be an artifact of complex interactions occuring at an even smaller scale, that are unobservable due to the uncertainty principle, much like non-linear "chaotic" systems involving huge numbers of particles yield behavior that is non-deterministic, but has observable "patterns" on a large scale.
That is, are our observations of quantum systems like someone listening to the chaotic rhythms of dripping faucets, without the means to learn about water, viscosity, surface tension -- the underlying causes of the dripping?
I am aware that the "quantum chaos" field looks to apply quantum mechanical analytic techniques to chaotic systems, and while my question turns that on its head, is there possibly something to it?
Open source software has, for the first time, given me the belief that I could actually invent something useful, and have people use it before someone with more $ beats me to market. Of course, it decreases the likelihood I'll be the next Bill Gates, but on the other hand, some Gates wannabe won't be able to cash in and leave me high-and-dry, either.
Also, we should not forget the effect that competition and "wasted" energy by dozens of companies has on hardware. (We all believe in the power of a naturally evolving technology here in open-source land, right?)
Although Apple and other envelope-pushers are essential, one could argue that a closed hardware standard would never have given us $1 per MB memory or $10 per GB storage or $.2 per MHz processors as we have today, as there wouldn't be the same competitive pressure and the certainty of market acceptance as with open, commodity hardware.
First, a quick snipe: but reading books, which have strictly 2-d information, would have the same effect then, no?
But seriously, I'd like to reiterate another poster's point elsewhere: the computer has the great potential to do the boring stuff in a more interesting way, and to allow teachers time to really teach the more interesting/difficult stuff.
In addition, just as with books, papers, and pencils, students should be exposed to the basic tools that they will use in adult life, and there's no question that means computers.
Don't forget, however, that the ability to develop a culture is the result of our biological evolution, and medicine is a result of evolution of culture (which happens more quickly and deliberately). So, it's all part of the same game -- all's fair in natural selection.
This one has been confirmed, and I'm not sure who did it either, although it may have been the NIST folks in Boulder who have been doing the super-cold atom work.
The idea is that they created a situation in which an atom (Rubidium?) was superimposed in two quantum states, then they manipulated it (do NOT ask me how) so that the states had a large separation in space, and so that the apparatus could measure the separation. Then they smacked the space representing one state of the atom with a laser, thus causing the atom to fall into that state, and "instantaneously" eliminate the other state.
This supposedly violates faster-than-light information transmission, as the visit of the laser to one part of space changed the state of the atom in a distant part of space, faster than a photon could have gone from one to the other.
I'm sure I've horribly botched the details, but anyway, you're not crazy for thinking that this experiment had been done. (I'll leave disproving other evidence of your insanity as an exercise for the reader:-).
"Scientists don't just believe anything that somebody says, no matter who that is, they need to convince themselves that it's true, no matter if it's Hawking or Einstein or Homer Simpson."
I'm of two minds on this. While I despise celebrity-gazing, which was definitely the tone of most of the article, and while I feel that the public fascination with Hawking is mostly at the carnival-sideshow level, I feel that the details covered provide an interesting context for Hawking's thoughts and works.
I'm reminded of an old Nova on Feynman that talks about his flighty interest in visiting Tuva (in/near Mongolia), and ends with one of his colleagues disappointed that he wasn't able to surprise Feynman with the Tuva trip before his death. Definitely memorable, and to some extent insightful into how someone like that operates. In that sense, viewing this article as biography lends it some value.
On the other hand, the author's pretense, to both Hawking and us, that this interview was meant to probe his profound thoughts on the future, is quite insulting. The author doesn't even comment on Hawking's responses, and doesn't tie any of it back to the biographical context provided.
IIRC, Celera is using a different process than HGP, that Celera believes would result in a MUCH faster mapping of the genome. Further, Celera has tried in vain to get the government to fund their approach, and so have whipped out the "we'll patent everything we find first" threat.
Now, whether or not Celera's claims are true, this opens up a whole can of worms:
If discoveries yield patents (either directly or by patenting the means of discovery or means of use), is publicly-funded research competing with potential commercial enterprise? Or are commercial enterprises using public research to gain exclusive advantage? (Note that researchers/universities can obtain patents for the fruits of publicly-funded work.)
Is market incentive or public policy the best way to determine how research is funded? Both have their faults, and both can be biased.
Are patents that claim rights to future/unproven technologies (e.g. cancer cure based on a discovered gene) invalid on the basis of being obvious? (After all, the applicant came up with the idea without even having the expertise or providing the details to make it work). Is the PTO also failing to enforce the necessary level of detail in such patents?
If Celera could really use the discovered genes to cure cancer, doesn't that provide a likely monetary reward, regardless of exclusivity?
Do Celera's tactics demonstrate that patents are only useful as a weapon to keep others away from an innovation? Or are patents the best protection for a small player versus the government or a large player?
A bigger difference is that Linus hasn't jailed anyone for failing to contribute to his Great Project -- although slackers have been punished by lack of IPO participation.
Seriously, I wonder if (truly) free software in China might not have a subversive influence. It would certainly make it possible for people to roll their own internet access (assuming they have phone lines!)
Slashdot Mirror
Did I fall asleep for 20 years, or are Inktomi's claims about its search software a little inflated? They stop just short of claiming to read my mind and provide the doc I want as soon as I open the browser.
Someone please tell me if I'm missing some great coolness here. After all, I haven't used anything other than Google for months.
From their "more info" link, they counted more than 700,000 "unreachable" sites, vs. more than 4 million "reachable" sites.
I think the net's propensity to get ugly keeps conversation honest and open -- no one is speaking diplomatically, so everyone feels free to tell it like it is.
This makes the net a welcome antidote to the PC/Esteem/Language Cops orthodoxy. And a good reminder that the school of hard knocks is the most effective teacher.
Not that I consider flaming effective discourse, just real discourse.
Perhaps Microsoft should explain it. The window title and the icon on the Programs menu says "MS-DOS Prompt" in Win9x.
But, it does alter their definition of "Recess", which is what matters for security bugs.
Which brings me to an OT rant about small ISV's and (wait for it) open source:
;) Usually, the story goes like this:
:-)
The consulting company I work for (and many others) makes a lot of money fixing problems created by some dork who was too stupid to realize you can't start your own software company.
Dork writes app with some puny but vital business purpose (If unethical dork, insert "on customer's time" here.), invariably in a lame-ass tool that really should only be used to handle smallish recipe files.
Dork manages to sell to one big client where an in-law works.
Dork makes major release and generates marketing pamphlets for distro at industry trade shows, which promise that the app will have user docs and a real-database port Real Soon Now.
Meanwhile, the app really hasn't progressed beyond "almost alpha" at the one big client who is paying for "integration services".
Hapless company (my future client!) correctly decides that buy is better than build, but incorrectly assumes that there must be a decent package out there for this. Someone at hapless company randomly stumbles upon dork's marketing pamphlet or web site, and buys in.
Hapless company is promised by dork that software is ready to go, and the "integration services" should only last a month or so.
Fast forward six to eighteen months (depending on client IQ)...
Client has no system, or worse, has a crippled system and turned off or stopped paying for the old one, has spent hundreds of thousands on dork hours alone, has no docs on how to install, operate, or fix, has no source to allow me to fix or diagnose it for them, has no database schema (and often a dork-encrypted/proprietary database), is paying more thousands for staff to babysit and undo the misdeeds of the app, has dork saying that he can't spend any more time with them (assuming his number is still listed), etc.
Basically, the only good news is that hapless company didn't bring Andersen Consulting in to do the app
So, how would this have improved with Open Source?
Well, dork could have:
Had input on his app from client or consultant help,
Started a bit smaller before hapless company showed up,
Made continuous improvement to his app based on experiences at first big client,
Gotten paid the honest way, for development services, rather than for vaporware,
And eventually have built a user base big enough to handle the Hapless account smoothly.
Meanwhile (and, per RMS, more importantly), the client could have:
reviewed dork's code before betting the company on it,
brought in extra help that would really fix problems, not just clean up after them,
been assured that they could still improve the app after dork fled the country,
had a consultant provide necessary docs and schema,
and been part of a community of users that would work together to improve the app, whether dork was there to help or not.
Or, at least I've heard it could work this way...
I apologize if I give anything away.
I read this book as a junior-high kid, and it had a few profound impacts on me:
The simplicity with which the various human evils were eliminated by the Overlords sent the message that so much of our suffering is caused by irrational traditions and shallow beliefs, and
The picture of the Overmind at the end depressed me so greatly (and, I think, was meant to -- that's why we had the astronaut's perspective?) that I have since always carried around the idea that the Christian depiction of Heaven really isn't that appealing -- a life of struggle and torment is far more appealing than "paradise", because it brings real meaning to whatever joy and discovery might be experienced.
One last thing: if you've read Rendezvous with Rama, you must conclude that Clarke intended the second lesson in Childhood's End, as Rama is a celebration of the wonder of an accidental experience that vanishes without impact, and a warning of the danger of focusing on the destination to the exclusion of noticing the journey (after all, the aliens came all that way, and never imagined or noticed the puny Earthlings).
Thanks for the review. This book deserves to be read and remembered.
Another helpful rule, IMO: more segments (them's the words between the dots) in a group name is better, as exemplified by the poster's 3 5-segment examples. Two segments is a recipe for trouble.
:)
Of course, this excludes the made-up group names: alt.slashdot.die.die.die or whatever
The part about these being useful when it's not possible to carry along one of each tool would be a big help to soldiers on the move, and they do make the point that they could be macro-sized for bridges, shelters, etc.
Imagine your platoon being able to combine their bots into a temporary shelter, or a raft, or an observation platform. Then along comes a whole company, and now you've got enough for a pontoon bridge, an HQ, a barricade, etc.
Of course, these bots would be even more useful on spacecraft, but, since NASA's broke, let's get the Pentagon to spend the money on development, eh?
"Sex is not bad (or if you prefer, fucking is fun!)
:-O
sorry about the offtopicness, but I had to spout off. "
That's sick!
"It is not uncommon to see some stars get 1 million dollars per episode. At a minimum, to break even, the network needs to sell 1 million in advertising."
But the stars wouldn't be worth $1M per episode if not for the ability to sell ad space.
Also, I think the internet is a demonstration that it's possible to have a non-advertised mass media (remember, banners are a recent phenomenon), provided the production costs are low enough.
Read "All Consuming Images" by Stuart Ewen. What he and the poster are saying is that no one is above influence. Hell, there's even a marketing segment for those who like to think of themselves as too cynical for ads, or too unswayable. If an ad needs to create an iconoclastic message for you to relate to, they can do that.
As for bad Sunny Delight ads, there's a good chance that they weren't meant to persuade *you*, but maybe some June Cleaver wannabe (of which there are plenty, and all of whom were more likely to buy an orange-juice-like drink than you anyway).
Another point is that ads very often (and these days usually) aren't really looking for the "I'm going to go right out and buy that now" reaction. Rather, they are trying to get you to make positive associations with that brand, to legitimize the brand, or even just to "innoculate" the brand so that it's almost impossible to have negative feelings about it, regardless of what horrible things you might hear. Or, as in the case of the 10-10 services, there simply is no other "shelf" on which to display the product.
Back to the original post, IIRC, advertising allows for tax deductions, so your tax dollars are helping to make your life uglier and noisier. Yay.
Moral Dilemma Aside: do I give the fellow slashdotter who put me onto the Ewen book credit, or would I be exposing him to the Effect?
The theory of relativity hinges on the assumption that an event occurs regardless of the frame of reference of the observers: if I see two cars crash in an intersection, then any observer in any reference frame will also see the cars crash.
The upshot of this is the idea of simultaneity: regardless of the various measurements of space and time by the cars and any other observers, any proper explanation of space and time must conclude that the cars were in the same place at the same time, in order to cause the crash.
Interestingly, (and, IMHO, incorrectly) one of the interpretations of quantum mechanics (Many Worlds), posits that all possible scenarios actually occur, i.e. that there is a "parallel universe" in which the cars' particles' locations resolve in such a way that they do not crash!
To be even more clear, viewing the light from a star 10 light years away tells us what the star *might* look like right now to some alien who is also 10 light years from the star (and up to 20 light years from us) but that doesn't mean that we are communicating with that alien.
While not yet a fully-developed crackpot theory, there's a connection I often make, and I wonder if it has any validity:
It seems to me that the probabilistic behavior observed at the quantum level may be an artifact of complex interactions occuring at an even smaller scale, that are unobservable due to the uncertainty principle, much like non-linear "chaotic" systems involving huge numbers of particles yield behavior that is non-deterministic, but has observable "patterns" on a large scale.
That is, are our observations of quantum systems like someone listening to the chaotic rhythms of dripping faucets, without the means to learn about water, viscosity, surface tension -- the underlying causes of the dripping?
I am aware that the "quantum chaos" field looks to apply quantum mechanical analytic techniques to chaotic systems, and while my question turns that on its head, is there possibly something to it?
Teach a kid to stop rambling and he'll never post to Slashdot ;)
Just another point for open source, I guess:
Open source software has, for the first time, given me the belief that I could actually invent something useful, and have people use it before someone with more $ beats me to market. Of course, it decreases the likelihood I'll be the next Bill Gates, but on the other hand, some Gates wannabe won't be able to cash in and leave me high-and-dry, either.
Also, we should not forget the effect that competition and "wasted" energy by dozens of companies has on hardware. (We all believe in the power of a naturally evolving technology here in open-source land, right?)
Although Apple and other envelope-pushers are essential, one could argue that a closed hardware standard would never have given us $1 per MB memory or $10 per GB storage or $.2 per MHz processors as we have today, as there wouldn't be the same competitive pressure and the certainty of market acceptance as with open, commodity hardware.
First, a quick snipe: but reading books, which have strictly 2-d information, would have the same effect then, no?
But seriously, I'd like to reiterate another poster's point elsewhere: the computer has the great potential to do the boring stuff in a more interesting way, and to allow teachers time to really teach the more interesting/difficult stuff.
In addition, just as with books, papers, and pencils, students should be exposed to the basic tools that they will use in adult life, and there's no question that means computers.
Don't forget, however, that the ability to develop a culture is the result of our biological evolution, and medicine is a result of evolution of culture (which happens more quickly and deliberately). So, it's all part of the same game -- all's fair in natural selection.
This one has been confirmed, and I'm not sure who did it either, although it may have been the NIST folks in Boulder who have been doing the super-cold atom work.
:-).
The idea is that they created a situation in which an atom (Rubidium?) was superimposed in two quantum states, then they manipulated it (do NOT ask me how) so that the states had a large separation in space, and so that the apparatus could measure the separation. Then they smacked the space representing one state of the atom with a laser, thus causing the atom to fall into that state, and "instantaneously" eliminate the other state.
This supposedly violates faster-than-light information transmission, as the visit of the laser to one part of space changed the state of the atom in a distant part of space, faster than a photon could have gone from one to the other.
I'm sure I've horribly botched the details, but anyway, you're not crazy for thinking that this experiment had been done. (I'll leave disproving other evidence of your insanity as an exercise for the reader
"Scientists don't just believe anything that somebody says, no matter who that is, they need to convince themselves that it's true, no matter if it's Hawking or Einstein or Homer Simpson."
Mmmmmm...11-dimensional manifold theory.
I'm of two minds on this. While I despise celebrity-gazing, which was definitely the tone of most of the article, and while I feel that the public fascination with Hawking is mostly at the carnival-sideshow level, I feel that the details covered provide an interesting context for Hawking's thoughts and works.
I'm reminded of an old Nova on Feynman that talks about his flighty interest in visiting Tuva (in/near Mongolia), and ends with one of his colleagues disappointed that he wasn't able to surprise Feynman with the Tuva trip before his death. Definitely memorable, and to some extent insightful into how someone like that operates. In that sense, viewing this article as biography lends it some value.
On the other hand, the author's pretense, to both Hawking and us, that this interview was meant to probe his profound thoughts on the future, is quite insulting. The author doesn't even comment on Hawking's responses, and doesn't tie any of it back to the biographical context provided.
IIRC, Celera is using a different process than HGP, that Celera believes would result in a MUCH faster mapping of the genome. Further, Celera has tried in vain to get the government to fund their approach, and so have whipped out the "we'll patent everything we find first" threat.
Now, whether or not Celera's claims are true, this opens up a whole can of worms:
If discoveries yield patents (either directly or by patenting the means of discovery or means of use), is publicly-funded research competing with potential commercial enterprise? Or are commercial enterprises using public research to gain exclusive advantage? (Note that researchers/universities can obtain patents for the fruits of publicly-funded work.)
Is market incentive or public policy the best way to determine how research is funded? Both have their faults, and both can be biased.
Are patents that claim rights to future/unproven technologies (e.g. cancer cure based on a discovered gene) invalid on the basis of being obvious? (After all, the applicant came up with the idea without even having the expertise or providing the details to make it work). Is the PTO also failing to enforce the necessary level of detail in such patents?
If Celera could really use the discovered genes to cure cancer, doesn't that provide a likely monetary reward, regardless of exclusivity?
Do Celera's tactics demonstrate that patents are only useful as a weapon to keep others away from an innovation? Or are patents the best protection for a small player versus the government or a large player?
A bigger difference is that Linus hasn't jailed anyone for failing to contribute to his Great Project -- although slackers have been punished by lack of IPO participation.
Seriously, I wonder if (truly) free software in China might not have a subversive influence. It would certainly make it possible for people to roll their own internet access (assuming they have phone lines!)