Yes, but the publishers don't add a lot of value anymore. They filter, but pagerank filters better. They review, but the reviewers are often just working for the glory (and promotions).
The problem is, rankings tend to be based on journal articles, not on the impact of articles. If researchers are rewarded by journal acceptances, they will publish in the best journal they can. If they are rewarded by impact (which they should), they will self-publish (and update the papers on feedback).
The problem is, administrators are lazy, and don't want to wait for impact to show (which can take years), or take the risk of actually predicting what research will have an impact. So they just outsource this to journals, and don't worry about the collateral damage.
I think Intel, with its Larrabee thingy (now Knights Ferry?) will come to dominate the lists even more, in the short term. But honestly, who wants it?
People (like, 99% of people) want a reasonable CPU, and maybe a GPU for games. Most researchers want fast cores (parallel problems are hard), or vector processing (Matlab, Scipy, Mathematica etc take the pain out of distributing the workload), or distributed systems; in that order.
So normal people will want Fusion for its cheap GPU, and researchers will want it because it's actually easier to program.
>It's clear that things have been getting worse over the past 30 years in the West.
Really? Since 1981? So the 1970s was as good as we got? What about the 70s oil and energy crisis? Watergate? The Vietnam war? Pol Pot, and the West's apathy towards him? Pinochet leading a CIA-backed coup? Not to mention Margaret Thatcher.
The West has had ups and downs. You can certainly cherry pick things we've screwed up, but there are a lot progress being made behind the scenes. Sure, there's moral panics over terrorism, Islam, piracy and child porn. But gay marriage is finally on the agenda in a big way, and universal health is getting some approval in the US. The biggest enemies the US has aren't China and Russia, but Iran, North Korea, and a couple of lunatics hijacking 767s.
The government can spy on everybody, and shouldn't, but does; but they aren't acting on it very much.
The best way to beat sympathy isn't hate. It's disgust. I read a study [citation needed] that showed people stopped showing sympathy if they were disgusted by the perp's crime. This is, incidentally, why perverts (for whatever the current definition of pervert is) get cracked down on so hard - it's easy to be disgusted by them, so nobody has any sympathy.
If you want to get rid of illegal immigrants, you don't run a hate campaign. It's likely to be illegal, makes you look bad, and may actually drum up a lot of opposition. Accusing Mexicans of being drug smugglers, violent criminals, and terrorists might drum up a bit of fear (and hate), but it doesn't really work.
The best way to persecute people is to drum up disgust. It can be overt (attacking their personal hygiene), or more subtle (attacking their immoral values). Calling mexicans "filthy" has been extremely effective, but it isn't going to fly anymore. The modern day equivalent is calling them tax cheats, freeloaders, and queue jumpers. Queue jumping (at the supermarket checkout, or Disneyland, or any other context) isn't seen as a serious crime, but as a disgusting lack of social nous. Which makes it a far better slur than "drug runner", if you want people to lose sympathy.
It's a great technology. Long lasting, hard to forge, and it doesn't carry dirt and germs the way US money does. You'd think they could sell it on its features though.
Keep in mind, we aren't talking about the cream of manufacturing. That's what China wants to keep. We are talking fabrics. China makes the tread and cloth, then sends it to Africa for poor women to sew into t-shirts. All you need is a sewing machine, and semi-reliable power.
Once that starts, the infrastructure starts improving. Also, stable governments will get more support than smash-and-grab raiders, as there is actually something that's financially worth protecting.
OK, so what we really need is each "particular field of business" getting a TLD. So there's one apple.computer; one apple.records, and no apple.fruit as that would be too generic.
Exactly. Conservatives (in Australia, not the US) have a reputation for being good economic managers (cutting wasteful spending), while liberals (in Australia) have a reputation for being good economic reforms (improving the tax and currency systems). They both make unpopular decisions, trading short term unpopularity for a better reputation in the long run.
Except the current PM, and worse, the one before, who seem obsessed with short-term poll results.
Already done. The new iPhone is getting lots of sharing functionality. Some of it may be Facebook powered, for now. But Apple can go to Twitter, Flickr, or iCloud. And Steve Jobs has a reputation for being just a little paranoid and vindictive.
I respect Facebook. They have done wonderful things with about 300 engineers. But I'm not sure they can go toe to toe with a giant like Apple.
Not really. Solar and wind both compete with base load sources (like nuclear) and are complimented by variable sources (like gas and hydro). If you go solar / wind, then coal / nuclear plants lose, and gas / hydro plants win.
As you said - use solar, wind, or nukes to pump hydro if you have excess power, then use hydro or gas when you need a boost.
While a country is spending (rather than saving), it has no reason to produce anything itself. Its income is artificially inflated (just like an individual buying on credit) so it's too expensive to produce anything there anyway. Jobs get off-shored, except the ones that can't - entertainment (which has to be local for cultural reasons), services, and law.
If it's your code, you can re-release it under any licence you want.
I take your point though, if assisted suicide becomes an option then more palliative treatment may be denied. IMO, that's not a terrible thing - too much is spent on EOL treatment anyway... but I understand how that wouldn't be universally popular.
Yes, Java and Javacript are TOTALLY different, just like tigers and polar bears are TOTALLY different (if you disregard the fact that they're both large carnivores and therefore incredibly similar from an alien point of view). My point is that, if you were happy using non-native code, no "walls" have ever stopped you on the iPhone.
Um, no. The iPhone doesn't *have* Java support. Yes, they are like polar bears and tigers. And the iPhone is like Antarctica. To an alien visiting Antarctica, there's a big difference between a polar bear and a tiger because only one of them lives there.
And yes, I know that there's a difference between Antarctic and The Arctic Circle, but they are both kinda similar, right? Except for the lack of polar bears...
Or, it's just the guts of a cheap mobile phone. It's only installed on the occasional "high risk" targets (frequent border crossers), and immediately swapped as they pass customs. Everyone with a bug gets "inspected", and the "inspected" cars get their bugs serviced or swapped for a non-bugged plate.
In China, it's quite common for people to tamper with their license plates. Taping a CD over them (to blind cameras) is popular. Swapping your plates for forged military / police plates is also done, but a little riskier - some farmer got sentenced to death for "impersonating the military" - driving with military plates to avoid toll booths, but the sentence was overturned and I think the judge got sacked.
Heavy charges are reserved for property crimes, drug related crimes, violent crimes, and anything *remotely* resembling treason. Tamper with the device would probably be ignored. Publishing anything about it... not so clever. Notice how all the identifiable interviewees are Hong Kongers?
It doesn't really matter if the ingredients are actually fresh - that's half marketing, and half a catch-all phrase for "good" (not spoilt, ripe if it's a fruit or vegetable, appropriate cuts of meat, avoid cheap manufactured crap, etc).
Actually, the reason chefs seem to like simple fresh dishes is threefold - nobody is likely to really hate one one of the ingredients, it's quicker to make (so you can pump out more dishes), and it's not going to be too interesting.
Chicken with glazed oranges sounds a little interesting, but you can make a good guess if you will like it or not. Chicken with glazed oranges, juniper berries, foies gras, and fried shallots *might* be nice (I've no idea), but it just sounds a little weird.
Exactly. It's perfectly possible that Ayn Rand was a welfare cheat and a hypocrite, yet her books could still be true.
But we can't be bothered getting into a deep philosophical debate with conniving personality cultists. They aren't interested in a logical debat, just justifying their deal leader. It's like trying to explain to Mac fanatics that Windows is more stable these days.
I could point out that all her books were painfully unrealistic. That not all left-wingers are talentless assholes (um, Einstein), and greedy fuckers quite often are.Or that socialist institutions like public health are almost certainly a good idea (after all, almost every first world country manages to have a socialised health system that is better *and* cheaper than the US's privatized health system), but there's no point arguing logically with fundamentalists.
Exactly. They should do their jobs, and pony up for an X-Box. That way their kids can learn to massacare their enemies in a safe and supportive environment, where there is no danger of being exposed to breasts, swear words, or pirated material.
I guess he got in because he had been working for 5 years after college - 1 in a possibly CIA-connected business consulting group, 1 in a public interest group, and 3 years as a "community organizer". It looks fucking great to an admissions officer. He's obviously ambitious, community-focused, and comfortable working with people. And I bet he wrote a killer application. Plus he had diversity points. Overal, he had "future mayor, governor, or maybe even president" written all over him - that's the kind of guy people pay to go to Harvard with.
I'm guessing Samsumg's VP of mobile considers the VP of manufacturing to be an enemy, as both of them are in competition for the CEO postion. If hitting Apple hurts manufacturing, that's two birds with one stone.
On the other hand, 10 years ago most Chinese were riding bicycles. Now they have electric scooters, and are lusting after cars. And it's a much larger country than the US.
It's a matter of GDP multiplied by government commitment to HPC. Both China and the US have a similar commitments to HPC, so I'd expect China will overtake the US in 10 years.
As an Australian, this doesn't bother me. If we are number 1 per capita, we are happy. The US wants to be number 1, which will simply not happen when China is 3 times the size. In 10 years, China will be the arrogant giant that pats itself on the back for being number 1, even if it has low achievements per capita.
The US will have to stop considering itself a giant when the rest of the world grows up.
If you don't like it, you are free to complain. And write blog posts. And vote for someone who also objects. And you can even run for parliament.
The thing is, most people are somewhat apathetic about this issue. I guess every system sucks compared to the one where you are the dictator.
Now, there are things that could be done to reform democracy. Preferential run-off voting (which encourages voting for minor parties) and compulsory voting (which forces people who aren't crusted-on ideologues from voting); but these are mostly incremental reforms.
Slashdot Mirror
No, you just want to think that nobody wants to touch it.
That's how you are able to sleep at night.
Yes, but the publishers don't add a lot of value anymore. They filter, but pagerank filters better. They review, but the reviewers are often just working for the glory (and promotions).
The problem is, rankings tend to be based on journal articles, not on the impact of articles. If researchers are rewarded by journal acceptances, they will publish in the best journal they can. If they are rewarded by impact (which they should), they will self-publish (and update the papers on feedback).
The problem is, administrators are lazy, and don't want to wait for impact to show (which can take years), or take the risk of actually predicting what research will have an impact. So they just outsource this to journals, and don't worry about the collateral damage.
I think Intel, with its Larrabee thingy (now Knights Ferry?) will come to dominate the lists even more, in the short term. But honestly, who wants it?
People (like, 99% of people) want a reasonable CPU, and maybe a GPU for games. Most researchers want fast cores (parallel problems are hard), or vector processing (Matlab, Scipy, Mathematica etc take the pain out of distributing the workload), or distributed systems; in that order.
So normal people will want Fusion for its cheap GPU, and researchers will want it because it's actually easier to program.
AMD might have a bright medium-term future.
So new reactors might be a nice way to reprocess waste from the old reactors.
>It's clear that things have been getting worse over the past 30 years in the West.
Really? Since 1981? So the 1970s was as good as we got? What about the 70s oil and energy crisis? Watergate? The Vietnam war? Pol Pot, and the West's apathy towards him? Pinochet leading a CIA-backed coup? Not to mention Margaret Thatcher.
The West has had ups and downs. You can certainly cherry pick things we've screwed up, but there are a lot progress being made behind the scenes. Sure, there's moral panics over terrorism, Islam, piracy and child porn. But gay marriage is finally on the agenda in a big way, and universal health is getting some approval in the US. The biggest enemies the US has aren't China and Russia, but Iran, North Korea, and a couple of lunatics hijacking 767s.
The government can spy on everybody, and shouldn't, but does; but they aren't acting on it very much.
Things haven't really gone backwards that much.
The best way to beat sympathy isn't hate. It's disgust. I read a study [citation needed] that showed people stopped showing sympathy if they were disgusted by the perp's crime. This is, incidentally, why perverts (for whatever the current definition of pervert is) get cracked down on so hard - it's easy to be disgusted by them, so nobody has any sympathy.
If you want to get rid of illegal immigrants, you don't run a hate campaign. It's likely to be illegal, makes you look bad, and may actually drum up a lot of opposition. Accusing Mexicans of being drug smugglers, violent criminals, and terrorists might drum up a bit of fear (and hate), but it doesn't really work.
The best way to persecute people is to drum up disgust. It can be overt (attacking their personal hygiene), or more subtle (attacking their immoral values). Calling mexicans "filthy" has been extremely effective, but it isn't going to fly anymore. The modern day equivalent is calling them tax cheats, freeloaders, and queue jumpers. Queue jumping (at the supermarket checkout, or Disneyland, or any other context) isn't seen as a serious crime, but as a disgusting lack of social nous. Which makes it a far better slur than "drug runner", if you want people to lose sympathy.
Ah yes. Wiring $12 million to offshore bank accounts, to a guy with connections to the Vietnamese government, to help smooth the transition. http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/10/30/2728388.htm
It's a great technology. Long lasting, hard to forge, and it doesn't carry dirt and germs the way US money does. You'd think they could sell it on its features though.
Keep in mind, we aren't talking about the cream of manufacturing. That's what China wants to keep. We are talking fabrics. China makes the tread and cloth, then sends it to Africa for poor women to sew into t-shirts. All you need is a sewing machine, and semi-reliable power.
Once that starts, the infrastructure starts improving. Also, stable governments will get more support than smash-and-grab raiders, as there is actually something that's financially worth protecting.
OK, so what we really need is each "particular field of business" getting a TLD. So there's one apple.computer; one apple.records, and no apple.fruit as that would be too generic.
What could possibly go wrong?
Exactly. Conservatives (in Australia, not the US) have a reputation for being good economic managers (cutting wasteful spending), while liberals (in Australia) have a reputation for being good economic reforms (improving the tax and currency systems). They both make unpopular decisions, trading short term unpopularity for a better reputation in the long run.
Except the current PM, and worse, the one before, who seem obsessed with short-term poll results.
Already done. The new iPhone is getting lots of sharing functionality. Some of it may be Facebook powered, for now. But Apple can go to Twitter, Flickr, or iCloud. And Steve Jobs has a reputation for being just a little paranoid and vindictive.
I respect Facebook. They have done wonderful things with about 300 engineers. But I'm not sure they can go toe to toe with a giant like Apple.
Not really. Solar and wind both compete with base load sources (like nuclear) and are complimented by variable sources (like gas and hydro). If you go solar / wind, then coal / nuclear plants lose, and gas / hydro plants win.
As you said - use solar, wind, or nukes to pump hydro if you have excess power, then use hydro or gas when you need a boost.
While a country is spending (rather than saving), it has no reason to produce anything itself. Its income is artificially inflated (just like an individual buying on credit) so it's too expensive to produce anything there anyway. Jobs get off-shored, except the ones that can't - entertainment (which has to be local for cultural reasons), services, and law.
If it's your code, you can re-release it under any licence you want.
I take your point though, if assisted suicide becomes an option then more palliative treatment may be denied. IMO, that's not a terrible thing - too much is spent on EOL treatment anyway ... but I understand how that wouldn't be universally popular.
Yes, Java and Javacript are TOTALLY different, just like tigers and polar bears are TOTALLY different (if you disregard the fact that they're both large carnivores and therefore incredibly similar from an alien point of view). My point is that, if you were happy using non-native code, no "walls" have ever stopped you on the iPhone.
Um, no. The iPhone doesn't *have* Java support. Yes, they are like polar bears and tigers. And the iPhone is like Antarctica. To an alien visiting Antarctica, there's a big difference between a polar bear and a tiger because only one of them lives there.
And yes, I know that there's a difference between Antarctic and The Arctic Circle, but they are both kinda similar, right? Except for the lack of polar bears ...
How about code that interfaces the db? If existing code is hard-coded, how would you change that?
Or, it's just the guts of a cheap mobile phone. It's only installed on the occasional "high risk" targets (frequent border crossers), and immediately swapped as they pass customs. Everyone with a bug gets "inspected", and the "inspected" cars get their bugs serviced or swapped for a non-bugged plate.
In China, it's quite common for people to tamper with their license plates. Taping a CD over them (to blind cameras) is popular. Swapping your plates for forged military / police plates is also done, but a little riskier - some farmer got sentenced to death for "impersonating the military" - driving with military plates to avoid toll booths, but the sentence was overturned and I think the judge got sacked.
Heavy charges are reserved for property crimes, drug related crimes, violent crimes, and anything *remotely* resembling treason. Tamper with the device would probably be ignored. Publishing anything about it ... not so clever. Notice how all the identifiable interviewees are Hong Kongers?
It doesn't really matter if the ingredients are actually fresh - that's half marketing, and half a catch-all phrase for "good" (not spoilt, ripe if it's a fruit or vegetable, appropriate cuts of meat, avoid cheap manufactured crap, etc).
Actually, the reason chefs seem to like simple fresh dishes is threefold - nobody is likely to really hate one one of the ingredients, it's quicker to make (so you can pump out more dishes), and it's not going to be too interesting.
Chicken with glazed oranges sounds a little interesting, but you can make a good guess if you will like it or not. Chicken with glazed oranges, juniper berries, foies gras, and fried shallots *might* be nice (I've no idea), but it just sounds a little weird.
Exactly. It's perfectly possible that Ayn Rand was a welfare cheat and a hypocrite, yet her books could still be true.
But we can't be bothered getting into a deep philosophical debate with conniving personality cultists. They aren't interested in a logical debat, just justifying their deal leader. It's like trying to explain to Mac fanatics that Windows is more stable these days.
I could point out that all her books were painfully unrealistic. That not all left-wingers are talentless assholes (um, Einstein), and greedy fuckers quite often are.Or that socialist institutions like public health are almost certainly a good idea (after all, almost every first world country manages to have a socialised health system that is better *and* cheaper than the US's privatized health system), but there's no point arguing logically with fundamentalists.
Exactly. They should do their jobs, and pony up for an X-Box. That way their kids can learn to massacare their enemies in a safe and supportive environment, where there is no danger of being exposed to breasts, swear words, or pirated material.
I guess he got in because he had been working for 5 years after college - 1 in a possibly CIA-connected business consulting group, 1 in a public interest group, and 3 years as a "community organizer". It looks fucking great to an admissions officer. He's obviously ambitious, community-focused, and comfortable working with people. And I bet he wrote a killer application. Plus he had diversity points. Overal, he had "future mayor, governor, or maybe even president" written all over him - that's the kind of guy people pay to go to Harvard with.
I'm guessing Samsumg's VP of mobile considers the VP of manufacturing to be an enemy, as both of them are in competition for the CEO postion. If hitting Apple hurts manufacturing, that's two birds with one stone.
On the other hand, 10 years ago most Chinese were riding bicycles. Now they have electric scooters, and are lusting after cars. And it's a much larger country than the US.
It's a matter of GDP multiplied by government commitment to HPC. Both China and the US have a similar commitments to HPC, so I'd expect China will overtake the US in 10 years.
As an Australian, this doesn't bother me. If we are number 1 per capita, we are happy. The US wants to be number 1, which will simply not happen when China is 3 times the size. In 10 years, China will be the arrogant giant that pats itself on the back for being number 1, even if it has low achievements per capita.
The US will have to stop considering itself a giant when the rest of the world grows up.
If you don't like it, you are free to complain. And write blog posts. And vote for someone who also objects. And you can even run for parliament.
The thing is, most people are somewhat apathetic about this issue. I guess every system sucks compared to the one where you are the dictator.
Now, there are things that could be done to reform democracy. Preferential run-off voting (which encourages voting for minor parties) and compulsory voting (which forces people who aren't crusted-on ideologues from voting); but these are mostly incremental reforms.