If you think it is unpleasant to have an incompetent boss at work, spare a thought for all the soldiers in WW1 whose bosses thought massive frontal assaults were the way to win.
Just out of curiosity are there any professional programmers out there who don't regularly copy functions from the Internet?
Part of being a contemporary coder is making use of available code. Libraries of functions are "other people's code". Languages are other people's code. Etc. it's all about other people's code.
This defense always comes up when cheating is the issue, and it is always wrong. The purpose of an examination is to determine if an individual understands the subject matter, and no argument how programming is done in practice alters the fact that a cheater has failed to demonstrate that he understands the subject matter (and has, in fact, provided good evidence that he does not.)
Furthermore, one should not be spending the time and money a degree from Duke costs, just to be a cut-and-paste coder - a semester at a community college should be enough, if you can't teach yourself. The purpose of a university education is to develop a thorough understanding of the subject matter in order to become the person who finds solutions to problems, rather than the people who copy them.
There is one other group harmed, and quite seriously, by widespread cheating: those who have worked hard and honestly for the best diploma they can both achieve and afford, but see it devalued to worthlessness because too many holders of the same diploma are cheaters, and incompetent.
According to Anses, the process of assimilating a three-dimensional effect requires the eyes to look at images in two different places at the same time before the brain translates it as one image.
Isn't that how normal vision works anyway?
In normal vision, we look at the same place from two slightly different directions. Furthermore, it is well-established that the neural 'wiring' for assimilating these two views into a single stereo image develops during childhood, in response to the stimuli. (I am not so sure about this, but I think this is also true for the wiring that controls the eye muscles and therefore the convergence of vision.) I am not a biologist, but I think there are grounds for concern here.
1) Even assuming you are right, just because it 'only' sucks wouldn't lead me to think this issue can be disregarded. Dealing with credit card fraud while travelling, especially in a foreign country, is not something to shrug off.
2) At least in the UK, credit card companies have used the alleged security of EMV to transfer some of the risk to the cardholder (see http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~sjm21... )
3) I don't think transferring the cost to the merchant is an acceptable solution. As explained in other posts here, the merchant who accepts the stolen funds is rarely the perpetrator of the fraud.
Water is one of a large class of substances that we would like to find in space for local use, rather than to send back. Any mining materials return operation will want to minimize human presence, but for maintainability that presence cannot be zero. Hence the need for life-maintaining consumables.
I think you have missed the point of my second paragraph, "If you want to justify space exploration on economics, then you must accept that economics will set the schedule." In economic arguments, you cannot simply treat imagined future needs as if they were actual current needs.
A lot of space boosterism displays confusion over the proper use of the present and future tenses.
The folks from Deep Space Industries are hoping to sell their asteroid water for 1/1000th its current value. I question the intelligence of anyone that describes such a dramatic decrease in cost as "pricey".
Good, then the prof. is right - there's no point in the government spending money on developing technology that private enterprise can so easily and profitably create.
Thanks for your informative post. In addition, there is an issue that I was unaware of until I read it in the original article here: "...Challenger's external fuel tank disintegrated, throwing the orbiter into the local airflow at forces way above design tolerances. It ripped apart, claiming the lives of seven astronauts."
Implying that even if Challenger could have been separated cleanly and undamaged from the exploding tank, it would not have survived. A stronger, and therefore heavier or smaller orbiter, does not seem to be feasible, given the extent to which the shuttle design was already stretching the envelope.
"We are trying to identify the technologies that can help human workers minimize their contact with Ebola." said Taskin Padir, an assistant professor of robotics engineering at Worcester Polytechnic Institute.
That technology exists: protective clothing, properly used, and sanitary waste disposal. If you can't get that, you won't be able to get robots. If you have it but cannot organize its correct use, there is an effective solution, but it doesn't involve robotics.
This new definition of AI is several steps down from what Minski, McCarthy and company were aiming for. While this work is the direct descendent of theirs, and is often significant and sometimes impressive in its own right, there is an odor of self-congratulatory aggrandizement about the current usage.
In which case, there must have been an "odor of self-congratulatory aggrandizement" about Minsky (I haven't studied AI in general since 1998, but at least I know how to spell his name) because the guys working on it now are a lot nearer to what he was aiming for when he started out.
Only if he claims to have achieved those original goals.
This new definition of AI is several steps down from what Minski, McCarthy and company were aiming for. While this work is the direct descendent of theirs, and is often significant and sometimes impressive in its own right, there is an odor of self-congratulatory aggrandizement about the current usage.
All the results presented in the linked article show measures of perceived warmth, not trustworthiness. The author of the article clearly thinks a measure of warmth is also a measure of trustworthiness, but makes no attempt to justify making that highly dubious association, nor states whether she got it from the researcher (given the tone of the article and the title of the paper, I suspect she did.)
A request for information is hardly a form of denial. You can continue to reply with snotty childish retorts or you can help educate those who would like to know more.
To anyone with a mature theory of mind, your position is clearly intended to indicate doubt, and your claim of open-minded curiosity is a pretense, as is made obvious by your self-confessed lack of effort to correct your ignorance, and your bogus dismissal of valid sources. You are apparently not only a denier, but a passive-aggressive one.
True as that may be, people who are absolutely nuts tend to use the perpetual openness of science as an excuse to inject irrelevant, arbitrary insanity into discussions of fact.
You seem to be missing the point of TFA. Science doesn't need you to discuss it - it stands on it's own. If you have to discuss/debate it you have moved well out of the realm of science and into politics. There is no exception to that and frankly it's disgusting you claim affinity for scientific knowledge and understanding and can't grasp such a basic concept.
You seem to be confusing science with religion - that is where you find the 'truth' written down once and for all. Where do you think science comes from? A bible-like collection of textbooks? In reality, science starts in uncertainty and reaches a consensus only if and only if the evidence is strong. In the case of global warming, that is what has happened.
I've never considered myself a "denier", and yet every time I ask someone to point to the evidence, I hear that slur tossed out. I've only briefly attempted to search for evidence online, and had virtually no success except to find things like the 97% consensus page at NASA's site. So, if anyone here has better sources, I'm all "ears".
So by your own admission, you either haven't tried very hard to inform yourself, or you are too prejudiced to accept valid information. The latter certainly counts as denial. The former - claiming that there is little evidence on the basis of only "briefly attempt[ing] to search for evidence online" - is also a form of denial.
As a result [a] pure statistician is not very useful - generic analysis can be performed by software, in-depth analysis requires specific knowledge.
In-depth analysis requires a real understanding of statistics as well as of the domain. CS knowledge, at least as commonly taught, is not a substitute for for the statistics requirement.
This is not unlike complaining that assembly coding is dying. Well, yes, we now have less need to code everything that way because we have better tools.
This is not a valid analogy. HLLs automated some of the rote, mechanical aspects of implementing algorithms. They do not automate away the need for a higher-level understanding of what you are doing.
You don't need to ask for permission to test your car with simulations.
Agreed. Google is being misleading in its arguments, which raises the question of whether it is being dumb or acting dumb. I have my opinion as to which it is, but neither inspires confidence in Google's judgement and motives, and confidence is of the essence when it comes to getting self-driving cars accepted.
Simulations can only test for what the simulation programmers have accounted for.
And they are also based on assumptions about the response of the cars' sensors to the real world.
Furthermore, good programmers often anticipate problems that lesser ones are oblivious to. On account of this, the former may show higher signs of stress (which is actually concentration) early, while the latter don't realize things are going wrong until they see tests failing in ways they don't understand, and only then will the stress levels reflect actual competence.
Two areas where this is particularly prevalent are concurrency and security - though often, in the case of security, the problems are not found until after deployment.
In the 21st century, people are screaming for the government to regulate their lives in order to protect them, to provide "security", and to "make people feel safe". It's the fag end of the smoldering socialist experiment.
It has nothing to do with socialism. There are a lot of self-described conservatives in favor of restrictive and intrusive regulation in the name of security.
The paper makes it clear that this is about remote sensing, and more about getting the response back from the remote location than getting the probe beam to it.
The list of other potential uses seems to have been added by the linked article's author, who does not seem to have asked himself why, if you are sending guide beams to the destination, can't you just modulate them?
The word 'weapon' does not appear in the paper, and the researchers do not seem to have attempted to guide powerful beams by this method. Given that the guide beams can create this channel, perhaps attempting to send an equally or more powerful beam through that channel would dissipate it.
From the last paragraph of the article: "The study reveals nothing about the nature of the link between socialism and dishonesty. It might be a function of the relative poverty of East Germans, for example."
In other words, the study failed to control for the value each participant placed on the monetary gain from cheating, rendering it of little value.
Nevertheless, this conclusion didn't dissuade the Economist from ignoring it in the very next sentence: "All the same, when it comes to ethics, a capitalist upbringing appears to trump a socialist one."
Slashdot Mirror
Traffic on Thanksgiving itself is also light, according to the data.
Another important revelation!
The data apparently hasn't heard of the Jersey Turnpike - probably because of its laser-like focus on cities.
If you think it is unpleasant to have an incompetent boss at work, spare a thought for all the soldiers in WW1 whose bosses thought massive frontal assaults were the way to win.
Just out of curiosity are there any professional programmers out there who don't regularly copy functions from the Internet?
Part of being a contemporary coder is making use of available code. Libraries of functions are "other people's code". Languages are other people's code. Etc. it's all about other people's code.
This defense always comes up when cheating is the issue, and it is always wrong. The purpose of an examination is to determine if an individual understands the subject matter, and no argument how programming is done in practice alters the fact that a cheater has failed to demonstrate that he understands the subject matter (and has, in fact, provided good evidence that he does not.)
Furthermore, one should not be spending the time and money a degree from Duke costs, just to be a cut-and-paste coder - a semester at a community college should be enough, if you can't teach yourself. The purpose of a university education is to develop a thorough understanding of the subject matter in order to become the person who finds solutions to problems, rather than the people who copy them.
Cheating only harms the cheater...
There is one other group harmed, and quite seriously, by widespread cheating: those who have worked hard and honestly for the best diploma they can both achieve and afford, but see it devalued to worthlessness because too many holders of the same diploma are cheaters, and incompetent.
According to Anses, the process of assimilating a three-dimensional effect requires the eyes to look at images in two different places at the same time before the brain translates it as one image.
Isn't that how normal vision works anyway?
In normal vision, we look at the same place from two slightly different directions. Furthermore, it is well-established that the neural 'wiring' for assimilating these two views into a single stereo image develops during childhood, in response to the stimuli. (I am not so sure about this, but I think this is also true for the wiring that controls the eye muscles and therefore the convergence of vision.) I am not a biologist, but I think there are grounds for concern here.
AmiMoJo makes a valid point (though not the most important one that could be made on the topic): the article's title is click bait.
1) Even assuming you are right, just because it 'only' sucks wouldn't lead me to think this issue can be disregarded. Dealing with credit card fraud while travelling, especially in a foreign country, is not something to shrug off.
2) At least in the UK, credit card companies have used the alleged security of EMV to transfer some of the risk to the cardholder (see http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~sjm21... )
3) I don't think transferring the cost to the merchant is an acceptable solution. As explained in other posts here, the merchant who accepts the stolen funds is rarely the perpetrator of the fraud.
If that's the only way to use a NFC card safely, then having NFC on a card seems to be a pointless additional security risk.
Water is one of a large class of substances that we would like to find in space for local use, rather than to send back. Any mining materials return operation will want to minimize human presence, but for maintainability that presence cannot be zero. Hence the need for life-maintaining consumables.
I think you have missed the point of my second paragraph, "If you want to justify space exploration on economics, then you must accept that economics will set the schedule." In economic arguments, you cannot simply treat imagined future needs as if they were actual current needs.
A lot of space boosterism displays confusion over the proper use of the present and future tenses.
The folks from Deep Space Industries are hoping to sell their asteroid water for 1/1000th its current value. I question the intelligence of anyone that describes such a dramatic decrease in cost as "pricey".
Good, then the prof. is right - there's no point in the government spending money on developing technology that private enterprise can so easily and profitably create.
Water on Earth is cheap and plentiful
Water in Earth orbit on the other hand is neither.
Water on on earth is needed, and in large quantities. Water in orbit is currently only being used by a few nations' vanity projects.
If you want to justify space exploration on economics, then you must accept that economics will set the schedule.
Thanks for your informative post. In addition, there is an issue that I was unaware of until I read it in the original article here: "...Challenger's external fuel tank disintegrated, throwing the orbiter into the local airflow at forces way above design tolerances. It ripped apart, claiming the lives of seven astronauts."
Implying that even if Challenger could have been separated cleanly and undamaged from the exploding tank, it would not have survived. A stronger, and therefore heavier or smaller orbiter, does not seem to be feasible, given the extent to which the shuttle design was already stretching the envelope.
That's why we are back to capsules, I guess.
"We are trying to identify the technologies that can help human workers minimize their contact with Ebola." said Taskin Padir, an assistant professor of robotics engineering at Worcester Polytechnic Institute.
That technology exists: protective clothing, properly used, and sanitary waste disposal. If you can't get that, you won't be able to get robots. If you have it but cannot organize its correct use, there is an effective solution, but it doesn't involve robotics.
This new definition of AI is several steps down from what Minski, McCarthy and company were aiming for. While this work is the direct descendent of theirs, and is often significant and sometimes impressive in its own right, there is an odor of self-congratulatory aggrandizement about the current usage.
In which case, there must have been an "odor of self-congratulatory aggrandizement" about Minsky (I haven't studied AI in general since 1998, but at least I know how to spell his name) because the guys working on it now are a lot nearer to what he was aiming for when he started out.
Only if he claims to have achieved those original goals.
This new definition of AI is several steps down from what Minski, McCarthy and company were aiming for. While this work is the direct descendent of theirs, and is often significant and sometimes impressive in its own right, there is an odor of self-congratulatory aggrandizement about the current usage.
All the results presented in the linked article show measures of perceived warmth, not trustworthiness. The author of the article clearly thinks a measure of warmth is also a measure of trustworthiness, but makes no attempt to justify making that highly dubious association, nor states whether she got it from the researcher (given the tone of the article and the title of the paper, I suspect she did.)
A request for information is hardly a form of denial. You can continue to reply with snotty childish retorts or you can help educate those who would like to know more.
To anyone with a mature theory of mind, your position is clearly intended to indicate doubt, and your claim of open-minded curiosity is a pretense, as is made obvious by your self-confessed lack of effort to correct your ignorance, and your bogus dismissal of valid sources. You are apparently not only a denier, but a passive-aggressive one.
True as that may be, people who are absolutely nuts tend to use the perpetual openness of science as an excuse to inject irrelevant, arbitrary insanity into discussions of fact.
You seem to be missing the point of TFA. Science doesn't need you to discuss it - it stands on it's own. If you have to discuss/debate it you have moved well out of the realm of science and into politics. There is no exception to that and frankly it's disgusting you claim affinity for scientific knowledge and understanding and can't grasp such a basic concept.
You seem to be confusing science with religion - that is where you find the 'truth' written down once and for all. Where do you think science comes from? A bible-like collection of textbooks? In reality, science starts in uncertainty and reaches a consensus only if and only if the evidence is strong. In the case of global warming, that is what has happened.
I've never considered myself a "denier", and yet every time I ask someone to point to the evidence, I hear that slur tossed out. I've only briefly attempted to search for evidence online, and had virtually no success except to find things like the 97% consensus page at NASA's site. So, if anyone here has better sources, I'm all "ears".
So by your own admission, you either haven't tried very hard to inform yourself, or you are too prejudiced to accept valid information. The latter certainly counts as denial. The former - claiming that there is little evidence on the basis of only "briefly attempt[ing] to search for evidence online" - is also a form of denial.
As a result [a] pure statistician is not very useful - generic analysis can be performed by software, in-depth analysis requires specific knowledge.
In-depth analysis requires a real understanding of statistics as well as of the domain. CS knowledge, at least as commonly taught, is not a substitute for for the statistics requirement.
This is not unlike complaining that assembly coding is dying. Well, yes, we now have less need to code everything that way because we have better tools.
This is not a valid analogy. HLLs automated some of the rote, mechanical aspects of implementing algorithms. They do not automate away the need for a higher-level understanding of what you are doing.
You don't need to ask for permission to test your car with simulations.
Agreed. Google is being misleading in its arguments, which raises the question of whether it is being dumb or acting dumb. I have my opinion as to which it is, but neither inspires confidence in Google's judgement and motives, and confidence is of the essence when it comes to getting self-driving cars accepted.
Simulations can only test for what the simulation programmers have accounted for.
And they are also based on assumptions about the response of the cars' sensors to the real world.
Furthermore, good programmers often anticipate problems that lesser ones are oblivious to. On account of this, the former may show higher signs of stress (which is actually concentration) early, while the latter don't realize things are going wrong until they see tests failing in ways they don't understand, and only then will the stress levels reflect actual competence.
Two areas where this is particularly prevalent are concurrency and security - though often, in the case of security, the problems are not found until after deployment.
In the 21st century, people are screaming for the government to regulate their lives in order to protect them, to provide "security", and to "make people feel safe". It's the fag end of the smoldering socialist experiment.
It has nothing to do with socialism. There are a lot of self-described conservatives in favor of restrictive and intrusive regulation in the name of security.
The paper makes it clear that this is about remote sensing, and more about getting the response back from the remote location than getting the probe beam to it.
The list of other potential uses seems to have been added by the linked article's author, who does not seem to have asked himself why, if you are sending guide beams to the destination, can't you just modulate them?
The word 'weapon' does not appear in the paper, and the researchers do not seem to have attempted to guide powerful beams by this method. Given that the guide beams can create this channel, perhaps attempting to send an equally or more powerful beam through that channel would dissipate it.
From the last paragraph of the article:
"The study reveals nothing about the nature of the link between socialism and dishonesty. It might be a function of the relative poverty of East Germans, for example."
In other words, the study failed to control for the value each participant placed on the monetary gain from cheating, rendering it of little value.
Nevertheless, this conclusion didn't dissuade the Economist from ignoring it in the very next sentence:
"All the same, when it comes to ethics, a capitalist upbringing appears to trump a socialist one."