*sigh* I don't believe that it's possible to design and build an AI. This is partly because the best and only thinking computers we know of (brains), were not designed at all, they evolved.
I don't believe it's possible to design and build a machine that flies. This is partly because the best and only flying machines we know of (birds), were not designed at all, they evolved. What the hell are you talking about, it's 2010? Flying machines exist since the early 20th century??? You're mad!
You cant get Strong AI in software alone. We probably wont see much progress in strong AI until we get into quantum computing.
There is no computation that can be done in a quantum computer that can't be done in a traditional computer. The only difference about quantum computers is that there exist algorithms which makes certain computations faster. You can factor integers just fine with your computer right now, but you can factor large integers with a quantum computer using Shor's Algorithm much faster.
As for the mouse example, mice have hardwired instincts. Human babies would fail the mouse test. It is the ability to learn new skills and improvise in unfamiliar situations that defines intelligence.
Humans have hardwired instincts and mice have intelligence. There's nothing fundamentally different between humans and other animals. I'm not going to argue we're not smarter, we most certainly are. However, most people seem to assume the difference in intelligent is huge, when honestly...it's not by that much. My dog is smarter than any human baby you can find at age 1 or so, and I don't mean in terms of hardwired instincts. I mean my dog can learn new things and apply this new knoweldge easier and faster than a 1-year-old human.
huh? You've experienced different emotions while having a seizure and you assume they are unique because you can't find the words for them? That doesn't sound unique, that sounds like a lack of creative expression.
Because you're creative enough to explain in words to a green / red colorblind person what the difference between your perception of the color green and the color red is?
If you don't have a common frame of reference, it's impossible to use language to explain it. I would probably have called bullshit on the uniqueness of the emotion if he HAD tried to explain it. The fact that he says he can't and doesn't even bother brings more credence to the claim, not less.
but even back in the "good ol days", you did not purchase the right to the actual content.
That's because in the "good ol days", nobody could own the right to the actual content. It was understood that it was not property, and rather part of the public domain. The entire concept of copyright is relatively new, although obviously it depends how far back you consider the "good ol days" to be.
Yes, a little. But providing me with something that I want in exchange for an agreed price is not "living off me". If someone publishes a book or releases a movie and says they're selling it for X amount of money, that's my choice. Are they offering me something I think is worth X money, yes or no. If yes, I buy it. If no, I don't.
Agreed. And once you buy the medium where that comes in it's yours, and you can now do whatever you want with it including making copies and giving it away.
Copyrights are not a defense of property, because things which can be copyright cannot be property. It used to be well understood that no one could be the owner of such content, which is why the constitution explicitly says it can only be granted for a limited time. The idea is that since we want to give incentives to artists so that they will continue to create content that we wish to consume, we will graciously allow them to hold the rights to something which would otherwise by default be part of the public domain. We allow them this right for only as long as we perceive that it is beneficial to the public, since we're giving up our rights to that content. Then, after a reasonable (as short as possible) period, we get it back.
Saying that the actual music, or the actual movie, is the property of the artist is analogous to your coworker out loud saying some random numbers, you playing those numbers in the lottery after you overhear them, only to have him try to make a claim for the prize money because he came up with that set of numbers and is therefore the "owner" of the set. Anything that can be created in your mind, but is not physical property, might be very well hard to create, but it's only yours while you keep it to yourself. Once you let anyone else in, it's now also theirs, it's a part of them.
You can steal or buy the medium the art comes in, they can rent you a physical location to watch a performance, but morally speaking they have absolutely no right to prevent you from doing whatever you want with the content. Legally speaking, that's another matter, but that's because the laws are out of whack.
I always tell people, if you didn't vote in the election, don't complain.
Stop trying to make people feel they should vote, or they actually will. That's a very bad thing.
If you convince somebody that doesn't have enough interest to actually go vote, that doesn't mean that they will suddenly start caring about politics and start studying the issues and the candidates. It means that they will get up that day and press the button for the candidate of the party they've been fooled to believe is on their side. In other words, you're creating uninformed voters that will offset the vote of the informed voters. Considering informed voters are already a minority, you shouldn't work to make the problem worse.
Civic responsibility isn't about voting. That's part of it, but if you skip everything else and just do the voting part you're doing more damage than the alternative.
There was an interesting pair of CNN polls the last couple of days:
The first asked if people thought that burning Qurans would endanger US soldiers: it was roughly 80% saying yes, 20% saying no.
Today, they asked "does the pastor have the right to burn Qurans" and, amazingly, it is roughly 80% saying yes, 20% saying no.
So really, I think it's pretty clear that most people think that it's just a stupid idea to burn them. Few people are saying they shouldn't be able to; but the vast majority of people think they *shouldn't*.
Nobody is talking about sacrificing any values (well, 4/5 of the people aren't talking about that); it's more that this group has the right to be idiots, and everyone else has the right to point out that they are idiots.
--Jeremy
I agree completely. My post is in response to the statement that burning the Quran was different than burning the Bible or burning flags. They might have different consequences, but the act itself is exactly the same: a statement designed to show your anger against the other side.
I also think you need to judge the act based on its intention, not based on its consequence. I see no contradiction in the two polls you've discussed. Defending the right of speech, even the speech coming from this particular idiot, is part of the most important duty a member of the US armed forces has: to support and defend the Constitution of the United States. Justifying the increased risk on their part due to this guy's stupid media grab is actually easier than to justify the increased risk due to an attempt to spread democracy to people who don't want it.
Basically, I'm all about pointing out that this guy is an idiot. But he's an idiot because of his prejudices, not because the people he's angering are more likely to retaliate.
From what I can tell, it looks like you're right. It looks like the members of that church are bigoted morons.
and is on a different level to the Islamic radicals burning American or western flags or Bibles, because we have a significantly lower attachment to the actual physical object (although in some ways, American patriotism and anti-flag burning movements are starting to become a religion in themselves) - burning an American flag or bible isn't going to get the streets filled with hundreds of thousands of Americans denouncing Iran or whomever, its barely going to register on our news cycle that evening.
No, it is not on a different level. When they burn western flags or Bibles, it is also typically with the purpose of incitement. The reaction is on a different level (although not always, people have posted in this thread quite a few examples of Christians reacting with terrorism to what they perceived as incitement, such as the movie "The Last Temptation of the Christ"). Either way, we shouldn't validate violent strategies of protest by sacrificing our values, in this case, of free speech. I don't agree with the idiots burning the Quran, but I most certainly think they have the right to do it, and to talk about it.
So basically, what, you made all that fuss to answer to your own strawman?
You said a theory is not a scientific theory if it fails Occam's Razor, which is a completely incorrect statement. I answered you because you can't invoke Occam's Razor unless you have two theories that give identical predictions. That's clearly not the case for string theory considering that the reason for it is precisely because competing theories are lacking in the area of quantum gravity.
String Theory makes plenty of predictions, even if you can't go out and test them all right now. You don't have to be able to test your predictions with current technology in order to qualify as a theory. You simply need to have a complete framework from which predictions can be made. The many string theories might be too broad to be considered falsifiable based on what we now know, but data we get from experimentation will continually eliminate some of those string theory subsets, and help refine others. That's one of the reasons why string theorists get so excited about the LHC.
As long as there are no testable predictions, and it fails Occam's Razor, it's not a theory, plain and simple.
I hate Contact, I hate Contact, I hate Contact.
Because Carl Sagan had a misunderstanding about what Occam's Razor is, but nevertheless explained it wrongly in Contact, now millions of people have been introduced to the concept as explained by his novel or the movie. "The simplest explanation is usually the correct one" is not Occam's Razor. Occam's Razor says nothing about correctness at all, and it's most certainly not a requirement to create a scientific theory. All it actually says is that if two theories make the exact same predictions, with absolutely no differences but one is more complex than the other, than there's no reason to use the more complex theory, even though it's perfectly reasonable that the more complex one could more correctly describe what actually happens. The point is, science is about making predictions and testing them, not about some other abstract form of "truth." If you can't differentiate them through this method, you have determined you can't be any more specific about "truth" but you have not determined that one is more likely than the other.
Well, what if I as a consumer WANT to pay a bit more to have my Comcast voice work really well with video, or to get faster bandwidth to some CDN's so that I could really replace cable video with internet video? Why should they and I not be allowed to do that?
Because if you deal with them for this prioritization (or worse, if companies like google and netflix have to pay them), it affects everybody else who is a customer of theirs. ISPs provides you with a dumb pipe. You get bandwidth. If you want to pay more to get more bandwidth, you can pay them more for more bandwidth. If you want to pay more to get QoS, you pay more in the sense of buying a router that has those features, and then you prioritize the bandwidth you're paying for according to what you believe should get priority. This way, if I have different priorities than you, I can still prioritize MY bandwidth according to MY priorities, without you screwing me over.
This sort of thing was common even through the early 90s for computer games. People understood that the graphical level on the boxes wasn't anywhere near the level of the games. It is misleading to call this sort of thing misleading.
Gamers understood, but the deception wasn't aimed at them. As a child, I remember being gifted crappy games quite a few times because the non-gamer adults thought I'd like it based on what was on the box art. "This looks really cool, I'll bet my son, nephew, grandson, will like it!"
The parents are the one with the money, so they were the ones that needed to fooled.
That was because God withdrew his protection from you for the abomination of wanting to watch Superman III. Everyone knows that only the first two Christopher Reeve films were any good.
That also depends on your definition of "good." They are entertaining, but during the first movie I can't get past the fact that Superman isn't fast enough to catch the two missiles while in the very same movie he starts flying so fast he goes back in time. In the second movie, the "wtf" moment is the entire final scene against the other Kryptonians at the fortress of solitude. What the hell was up with the throwing of the uniform insignia?
That said, they had good, quotable parts. The first movie had, "you've got me? Who's got you?" and for the second movie, "kneel before Zod!" Still, none of them were anywhere near good enough that you should ever want to write some sort of half-assed sequel to them instead of a proper reboot. Curse you, Bryan Singer!
Sorry about that... I think I was reading into your post what I wanted to read, since I had already read several posts above saying exactly what I thought you were saying. Doh. (Inserts foot in mouth =D).
Well, like I said, I do understand my wording was ambiguous. Using pronouns when the subject isn't clear tends to cause misunderstandings such as these. I was typing a comment that made sense to me, and didn't bother to proofread it, because, you know...it's slashdot:)
WHAT? The real security issue is that a website could own your device.
Relax. Take a deep breath. I'll wait. If you're ready now, I'll explain.
You said: Once they do that, these vulnerabilities will no longer have a beneficial side to them
I'm sorry, but what the heck are you talking about? I can think of a ton of vulnerabilities that would have a "beneficial" side to them. Say, for instance, a website were to install a key logger and capture all your passwords...
That was my fault for writing an ambiguous sentence. I should have said, "Once Apple gives control of the phone to the users, these vulnerabilities will no longer have a beneficial side to iPhone owners."
The exploits are a bad thing, I agree with you. However, since they currently have a legitimate use with a beneficial value to owners, there's an active incentive to keep phones unpatched and to delay updating when new firmware is released, because you're afraid updating it might disable your jailbreak. That is the greatest security issue there is: it encourages people to keep using phones with known exploits, and they do this on purpose, fully aware that there's an exploit, and fully aware that there's a fix for it.
This is a massively publicized remote exploit. That is the most critical sort of security issue for an operating system. There is nothing strange about them prioritizing it.
The problem is that they haven't patched the real security issue: the one that makes exploits desirable for users of an iphone.
Make it so that owners don't have to jailbreak their phones in order to run whatever they might want to. Once they do that, these vulnerabilities will no longer have a beneficial side to them.
I doubt very much that your password at work is your property at all. It is a method of secure access of company resources, like a key or card.
Incorrect. My account is a method of secure access of company resources. My password is mine in the same way my fingerprints are mine if the company happens to use biometric authentication.
Childs denied the owner his property (the passwords) or use of other property (the computers).
My password for work computers is not my boss' property, it's my own. I should never, under absolutely any circumstance, hand over my passwords to anyone, even those that pay me. Instead, the system should be setup so that my account has privileges, and then if I'm fired, that account gets disabled. My password no longer allows me any access to their system, and they do not need my account to perform any work on their system, because the account of their current employees can do it. Any other method of doing things is insecure and completely unacceptable.
Now, I remember hearing something about Childs logging in after he was fired to those computers and doing something to them. That is clearly unauthorized access, and he should be punished for that, if it's something he has done. Not for not giving up his passwords.
... But i LOVE my 1680*1024 widescreen. It also helps that every coder in the office has a widescreen. Nothing says 'reusable' like descriptive variables on a widescreen.
So do I, but I use that real estate for things other than code text. Reading very long lines is not efficient anyway. Have you ever tried reading a web-page that actually spans the text through your entire maximized browser?
I use my extra screen real-estate to have multiple files open at the same time, different programs, different IDE debugging windows, etc. And when I need to do a quick edit from the terminal without an IDE, I can still do it.
People who indent with spaces should be shot. Indent with tabs all you want and I can view it the way I want (2 space, 4 space, etc.).
The ability for you to view it however you want is precisely what I'm trying to avoid when I set space indentations. Code should be no wider than 80 characters, so I can use cat in a standard terminal and see the results without them being wrapped around at illogical locations. That means we all need to agree on using monospace fonts, 2-space indentations to maximize available screen space, and you need to wrap your code manually at locations where it makes sense to do so, at or before the 80-char mark. If you edit it with your own custom view, you can't follow these guidelines. Then when I look at the code, it's going to suck in a way I can't fix with a script or style change.
1) There's no concept of ownership on Wikipedia, so the "editor" (as you call them) owns the article as much as anybody.
It's not about ownership, it's about the role you take on when you edit an article. I don't see why you would think that just because anyone can edit the text, there's no place for a traditional editor role in wikipedia. In fact, I would say that's a very important role.
2) In theory, everything posted to Wikipedia is look-up-able, so the "editor" is just as capable of looking up the factoid as anybody else
Alright. I don't know if you're an engineer or in some other profession where your mathematics and control background is strong enough to understand this article, but let's assume you're not. Do you think that you'd be able to just look up information online and start verifying the mathematical equations and explanations?
I expect that your answer to that would be along the lines of, "if you don't understand the article, you shouldn't be editing at all," but I think you'd be wrong. In fact, as a grad student I frequently visited my school's English Center and had them help me with my engineering papers before I submitted them to be published. They couldn't understand the technical matter, but they were great at helping me with proper phrasing, organization, and yes, they even sometimes asked, "where did you get this information? Did it come directly from your research, or can you cite a reference for it?". They most certainly improved the quality of my papers.
And adding [citation needed] tags increases the quality... how?
It reminds other people reading the article that the information is unsourced. The original person who wrote the information might have overlooked the fact that the particular section needed a reference, considering it common knowledge, since he's in the field. It gives other readers of the article who might know a reference to that factoid an easy way to contribute to wikipedia...that's just what came immediately to mind, if I spent another 5 minutes on it, I could probably come up with ten or so other things.
No, what I'm saying is that a real "editor" (instead of someone who's just pretending to edit) would try to look up the factoid, and delete it if they can't find a reference-- without ever adding a [citation needed] tag.
If you write a textbook, your editor will most certainly not do any research for you. He will most certainly tell you when you need additional references. It's not the same job, and "because it's an the internet and anyone can write what they want" doesn't mean that job is obsoleted. It just means you can have multiple writers, multiple editors, and you get to choose which role you play when you contribute.
But since the Wikipedia elite have already decided to be deletionists, they might as well do it properly and consistently....The website you and I want doesn't exist, and never will at the "wikipedia.org" domain.
I'm not sure how doing the wrong thing consistently is better than doing the right think every once in a while. But yeah, it disappoints me that the deletionists tend to rule the wikipedia mindset for now. I have hopes that this might change.
Real encyclopedias, which is the example Wikipedia is trying to follow, don't have little annoying tags after every fucking sentence.
That's because they're not user-editable. You can be sure that the article writers got messages back from their editors with [citation needed] equivalents.
Absolutely, I agree with you. I was replying to the other guy who gave me the impression he hated the tag in general.
In fact, the whole, "wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a repo of trivia" folks are the ones that I was railing against when I mentioned that the problem are the people who just delete information. Just because that one editor doesn't think the information is useful, doesn't mean nobody else does.
In my opinion, Wikipedia should be a repository of all knowledge, and the only criteria the editors should have are organization and correctness issues. If the information is correct and organized in such a form that is easy to get to and understand, it stays.
The message there is basically, "I think whoever wrote this is wrong, but I'm too fucking lazy to look it up my damn self. Therefore, I'll shit this tag on it so one of my slaves can look it up later." Except there aren't any slaves, so the damned [citation needed] stays up for 6 years...
Look, if the factoid sounds like bullshit, you have two options:
1) Look it up your damned self and add a citation
2) Delete it
Your first recommendation assumes its the responsibility of the editor to be an expert in every article. It's not. The contributors are responsible for doing the research, the editors are merely there to make sure the final article is of good quality.
Your second recommendation is actually sending the "I think this is wrong" message you dislike. "Citation needed" means just that: there are claims being made which are not supported by any given references. Leaving it untouched means that the editor isn't sure if this is, in fact, correct, so the information is left there for all to see with a reminder that if it is untrusted. On the other hand, if you just up and delete, that must mean that you know it's wrong.
I think the biggest problem with wikipedia are the people deleting shit. If it's vandalism, delete it. If you know for sure that something is wrong, and can post the factual information with citations, then delete it. Otherwise, leave it there (and add the [citation needed] tag where appropriate). I'm not sure why the tags would bother anyone, even if they are up there for six years. If nobody ever adds a citation, that means a citation is still needed, so the tag should stay there forever.
I understand what you're saying - but in that case the solution would be to offer a separate course where attendance indeed -doesn't- matter but your participation also doesn't count toward the student count. Then somebody who does need the attendance for themselves can still get in.
Sure there'll always be people who attend and don't learn.. that's where the intake committee didn't do their homework.
Oh, I agree with you. I even think there are classes were attendance and participation are important. If you're required to engage in discussion during class time, then you need to be there in order to engage in this discussion. Under this situation, RFID is obviously worthless because you'll be graded on your actual participation (and such classes usually contain less than 15 students anyway, otherwise it's not conducive to discussion).
It's not really the RFID I'm complaining about. It's the idea that attendance is important in a class where you wouldn't even realize a student is skipping unless you do some type of roll call.
Slashdot Mirror
*sigh* I don't believe that it's possible to design and build an AI. This is partly because the best and only thinking computers we know of (brains), were not designed at all, they evolved.
I don't believe it's possible to design and build a machine that flies. This is partly because the best and only flying machines we know of (birds), were not designed at all, they evolved. What the hell are you talking about, it's 2010? Flying machines exist since the early 20th century??? You're mad!
You cant get Strong AI in software alone. We probably wont see much progress in strong AI until we get into quantum computing.
There is no computation that can be done in a quantum computer that can't be done in a traditional computer. The only difference about quantum computers is that there exist algorithms which makes certain computations faster. You can factor integers just fine with your computer right now, but you can factor large integers with a quantum computer using Shor's Algorithm much faster.
As for the mouse example, mice have hardwired instincts. Human babies would fail the mouse test. It is the ability to learn new skills and improvise in unfamiliar situations
that defines intelligence.
Humans have hardwired instincts and mice have intelligence. There's nothing fundamentally different between humans and other animals. I'm not going to argue we're not smarter, we most certainly are. However, most people seem to assume the difference in intelligent is huge, when honestly...it's not by that much. My dog is smarter than any human baby you can find at age 1 or so, and I don't mean in terms of hardwired instincts. I mean my dog can learn new things and apply this new knoweldge easier and faster than a 1-year-old human.
huh? You've experienced different emotions while having a seizure and you assume they are unique because you can't find the words for them? That doesn't sound unique, that sounds like a lack of creative expression.
Because you're creative enough to explain in words to a green / red colorblind person what the difference between your perception of the color green and the color red is?
If you don't have a common frame of reference, it's impossible to use language to explain it. I would probably have called bullshit on the uniqueness of the emotion if he HAD tried to explain it. The fact that he says he can't and doesn't even bother brings more credence to the claim, not less.
but even back in the "good ol days", you did not purchase the right to the actual content.
That's because in the "good ol days", nobody could own the right to the actual content. It was understood that it was not property, and rather part of the public domain. The entire concept of copyright is relatively new, although obviously it depends how far back you consider the "good ol days" to be.
Yes, a little. But providing me with something that I want in exchange for an agreed price is not "living off me". If someone publishes a book or releases a movie and says they're selling it for X amount of money, that's my choice. Are they offering me something I think is worth X money, yes or no. If yes, I buy it. If no, I don't.
Agreed. And once you buy the medium where that comes in it's yours, and you can now do whatever you want with it including making copies and giving it away.
Copyrights are not a defense of property, because things which can be copyright cannot be property. It used to be well understood that no one could be the owner of such content, which is why the constitution explicitly says it can only be granted for a limited time. The idea is that since we want to give incentives to artists so that they will continue to create content that we wish to consume, we will graciously allow them to hold the rights to something which would otherwise by default be part of the public domain. We allow them this right for only as long as we perceive that it is beneficial to the public, since we're giving up our rights to that content. Then, after a reasonable (as short as possible) period, we get it back.
Saying that the actual music, or the actual movie, is the property of the artist is analogous to your coworker out loud saying some random numbers, you playing those numbers in the lottery after you overhear them, only to have him try to make a claim for the prize money because he came up with that set of numbers and is therefore the "owner" of the set. Anything that can be created in your mind, but is not physical property, might be very well hard to create, but it's only yours while you keep it to yourself. Once you let anyone else in, it's now also theirs, it's a part of them.
You can steal or buy the medium the art comes in, they can rent you a physical location to watch a performance, but morally speaking they have absolutely no right to prevent you from doing whatever you want with the content. Legally speaking, that's another matter, but that's because the laws are out of whack.
I always tell people, if you didn't vote in the election, don't complain.
Stop trying to make people feel they should vote, or they actually will. That's a very bad thing.
If you convince somebody that doesn't have enough interest to actually go vote, that doesn't mean that they will suddenly start caring about politics and start studying the issues and the candidates. It means that they will get up that day and press the button for the candidate of the party they've been fooled to believe is on their side. In other words, you're creating uninformed voters that will offset the vote of the informed voters. Considering informed voters are already a minority, you shouldn't work to make the problem worse.
Civic responsibility isn't about voting. That's part of it, but if you skip everything else and just do the voting part you're doing more damage than the alternative.
There was an interesting pair of CNN polls the last couple of days:
The first asked if people thought that burning Qurans would endanger US soldiers: it was roughly 80% saying yes, 20% saying no.
Today, they asked "does the pastor have the right to burn Qurans" and, amazingly, it is roughly 80% saying yes, 20% saying no.
So really, I think it's pretty clear that most people think that it's just a stupid idea to burn them. Few people are saying they shouldn't be able to; but the vast majority of people think they *shouldn't*.
Nobody is talking about sacrificing any values (well, 4/5 of the people aren't talking about that); it's more that this group has the right to be idiots, and everyone else has the right to point out that they are idiots.
--Jeremy
I agree completely. My post is in response to the statement that burning the Quran was different than burning the Bible or burning flags. They might have different consequences, but the act itself is exactly the same: a statement designed to show your anger against the other side.
I also think you need to judge the act based on its intention, not based on its consequence. I see no contradiction in the two polls you've discussed. Defending the right of speech, even the speech coming from this particular idiot, is part of the most important duty a member of the US armed forces has: to support and defend the Constitution of the United States. Justifying the increased risk on their part due to this guy's stupid media grab is actually easier than to justify the increased risk due to an attempt to spread democracy to people who don't want it.
Basically, I'm all about pointing out that this guy is an idiot. But he's an idiot because of his prejudices, not because the people he's angering are more likely to retaliate.
Burning the Koran is a deliberate incitement
From what I can tell, it looks like you're right. It looks like the members of that church are bigoted morons.
and is on a different level to the Islamic radicals burning American or western flags or Bibles, because we have a significantly lower attachment to the actual physical object (although in some ways, American patriotism and anti-flag burning movements are starting to become a religion in themselves) - burning an American flag or bible isn't going to get the streets filled with hundreds of thousands of Americans denouncing Iran or whomever, its barely going to register on our news cycle that evening.
No, it is not on a different level. When they burn western flags or Bibles, it is also typically with the purpose of incitement. The reaction is on a different level (although not always, people have posted in this thread quite a few examples of Christians reacting with terrorism to what they perceived as incitement, such as the movie "The Last Temptation of the Christ"). Either way, we shouldn't validate violent strategies of protest by sacrificing our values, in this case, of free speech. I don't agree with the idiots burning the Quran, but I most certainly think they have the right to do it, and to talk about it.
Is there an e-edition? I'm not able to find it on Amazon.
And "Cooking for Geeks" should have an e-edition if any cookbook should.
Not only is there an e-edition, but in true geek fashion, it is DRM-free. You can order it here
So basically, what, you made all that fuss to answer to your own strawman?
You said a theory is not a scientific theory if it fails Occam's Razor, which is a completely incorrect statement. I answered you because you can't invoke Occam's Razor unless you have two theories that give identical predictions. That's clearly not the case for string theory considering that the reason for it is precisely because competing theories are lacking in the area of quantum gravity.
String Theory makes plenty of predictions, even if you can't go out and test them all right now. You don't have to be able to test your predictions with current technology in order to qualify as a theory. You simply need to have a complete framework from which predictions can be made. The many string theories might be too broad to be considered falsifiable based on what we now know, but data we get from experimentation will continually eliminate some of those string theory subsets, and help refine others. That's one of the reasons why string theorists get so excited about the LHC.
As long as there are no testable predictions, and it fails Occam's Razor, it's not a theory, plain and simple.
I hate Contact, I hate Contact, I hate Contact.
Because Carl Sagan had a misunderstanding about what Occam's Razor is, but nevertheless explained it wrongly in Contact, now millions of people have been introduced to the concept as explained by his novel or the movie. "The simplest explanation is usually the correct one" is not Occam's Razor. Occam's Razor says nothing about correctness at all, and it's most certainly not a requirement to create a scientific theory. All it actually says is that if two theories make the exact same predictions, with absolutely no differences but one is more complex than the other, than there's no reason to use the more complex theory, even though it's perfectly reasonable that the more complex one could more correctly describe what actually happens. The point is, science is about making predictions and testing them, not about some other abstract form of "truth." If you can't differentiate them through this method, you have determined you can't be any more specific about "truth" but you have not determined that one is more likely than the other.
Well, what if I as a consumer WANT to pay a bit more to have my Comcast voice work really well with video, or to get faster bandwidth to some CDN's so that I could really replace cable video with internet video? Why should they and I not be allowed to do that?
Because if you deal with them for this prioritization (or worse, if companies like google and netflix have to pay them), it affects everybody else who is a customer of theirs. ISPs provides you with a dumb pipe. You get bandwidth. If you want to pay more to get more bandwidth, you can pay them more for more bandwidth. If you want to pay more to get QoS, you pay more in the sense of buying a router that has those features, and then you prioritize the bandwidth you're paying for according to what you believe should get priority. This way, if I have different priorities than you, I can still prioritize MY bandwidth according to MY priorities, without you screwing me over.
This sort of thing was common even through the early 90s for computer games. People understood that the graphical level on the boxes wasn't anywhere near the level of the games. It is misleading to call this sort of thing misleading.
Gamers understood, but the deception wasn't aimed at them. As a child, I remember being gifted crappy games quite a few times because the non-gamer adults thought I'd like it based on what was on the box art. "This looks really cool, I'll bet my son, nephew, grandson, will like it!"
The parents are the one with the money, so they were the ones that needed to fooled.
That was because God withdrew his protection from you for the abomination of wanting to watch Superman III. Everyone knows that only the first two Christopher Reeve films were any good.
That also depends on your definition of "good." They are entertaining, but during the first movie I can't get past the fact that Superman isn't fast enough to catch the two missiles while in the very same movie he starts flying so fast he goes back in time. In the second movie, the "wtf" moment is the entire final scene against the other Kryptonians at the fortress of solitude. What the hell was up with the throwing of the uniform insignia?
That said, they had good, quotable parts. The first movie had, "you've got me? Who's got you?" and for the second movie, "kneel before Zod!" Still, none of them were anywhere near good enough that you should ever want to write some sort of half-assed sequel to them instead of a proper reboot. Curse you, Bryan Singer!
Sorry about that... I think I was reading into your post what I wanted to read, since I had already read several posts above saying exactly what I thought you were saying. Doh. (Inserts foot in mouth =D).
Well, like I said, I do understand my wording was ambiguous. Using pronouns when the subject isn't clear tends to cause misunderstandings such as these. I was typing a comment that made sense to me, and didn't bother to proofread it, because, you know...it's slashdot :)
No harm, no foul.
WHAT? The real security issue is that a website could own your device.
Relax. Take a deep breath. I'll wait. If you're ready now, I'll explain.
You said: Once they do that, these vulnerabilities will no longer have a beneficial side to them
I'm sorry, but what the heck are you talking about? I can think of a ton of vulnerabilities that would have a "beneficial" side to them. Say, for instance, a website were to install a key logger and capture all your passwords...
That was my fault for writing an ambiguous sentence. I should have said, "Once Apple gives control of the phone to the users, these vulnerabilities will no longer have a beneficial side to iPhone owners."
The exploits are a bad thing, I agree with you. However, since they currently have a legitimate use with a beneficial value to owners, there's an active incentive to keep phones unpatched and to delay updating when new firmware is released, because you're afraid updating it might disable your jailbreak. That is the greatest security issue there is: it encourages people to keep using phones with known exploits, and they do this on purpose, fully aware that there's an exploit, and fully aware that there's a fix for it.
This is a massively publicized remote exploit. That is the most critical sort of security issue for an operating system. There is nothing strange about them prioritizing it.
The problem is that they haven't patched the real security issue: the one that makes exploits desirable for users of an iphone.
Make it so that owners don't have to jailbreak their phones in order to run whatever they might want to. Once they do that, these vulnerabilities will no longer have a beneficial side to them.
I doubt very much that your password at work is your property at all. It is a method of secure access of company resources, like a key or card.
Incorrect. My account is a method of secure access of company resources. My password is mine in the same way my fingerprints are mine if the company happens to use biometric authentication.
Childs denied the owner his property (the passwords) or use of other property (the computers).
My password for work computers is not my boss' property, it's my own. I should never, under absolutely any circumstance, hand over my passwords to anyone, even those that pay me. Instead, the system should be setup so that my account has privileges, and then if I'm fired, that account gets disabled. My password no longer allows me any access to their system, and they do not need my account to perform any work on their system, because the account of their current employees can do it. Any other method of doing things is insecure and completely unacceptable.
Now, I remember hearing something about Childs logging in after he was fired to those computers and doing something to them. That is clearly unauthorized access, and he should be punished for that, if it's something he has done. Not for not giving up his passwords.
... But i LOVE my 1680*1024 widescreen. It also helps that every coder in the office has a widescreen. Nothing says 'reusable' like descriptive variables on a widescreen.
So do I, but I use that real estate for things other than code text. Reading very long lines is not efficient anyway. Have you ever tried reading a web-page that actually spans the text through your entire maximized browser?
I use my extra screen real-estate to have multiple files open at the same time, different programs, different IDE debugging windows, etc. And when I need to do a quick edit from the terminal without an IDE, I can still do it.
People who indent with spaces should be shot. Indent with tabs all you want and I can view it the way I want (2 space, 4 space, etc.).
The ability for you to view it however you want is precisely what I'm trying to avoid when I set space indentations. Code should be no wider than 80 characters, so I can use cat in a standard terminal and see the results without them being wrapped around at illogical locations. That means we all need to agree on using monospace fonts, 2-space indentations to maximize available screen space, and you need to wrap your code manually at locations where it makes sense to do so, at or before the 80-char mark. If you edit it with your own custom view, you can't follow these guidelines. Then when I look at the code, it's going to suck in a way I can't fix with a script or style change.
You're on my lawn. Get off it.
1) There's no concept of ownership on Wikipedia, so the "editor" (as you call them) owns the article as much as anybody.
It's not about ownership, it's about the role you take on when you edit an article. I don't see why you would think that just because anyone can edit the text, there's no place for a traditional editor role in wikipedia. In fact, I would say that's a very important role.
2) In theory, everything posted to Wikipedia is look-up-able, so the "editor" is just as capable of looking up the factoid as anybody else
Alright. I don't know if you're an engineer or in some other profession where your mathematics and control background is strong enough to understand this article, but let's assume you're not. Do you think that you'd be able to just look up information online and start verifying the mathematical equations and explanations?
I expect that your answer to that would be along the lines of, "if you don't understand the article, you shouldn't be editing at all," but I think you'd be wrong. In fact, as a grad student I frequently visited my school's English Center and had them help me with my engineering papers before I submitted them to be published. They couldn't understand the technical matter, but they were great at helping me with proper phrasing, organization, and yes, they even sometimes asked, "where did you get this information? Did it come directly from your research, or can you cite a reference for it?". They most certainly improved the quality of my papers.
And adding [citation needed] tags increases the quality... how?
It reminds other people reading the article that the information is unsourced. The original person who wrote the information might have overlooked the fact that the particular section needed a reference, considering it common knowledge, since he's in the field. It gives other readers of the article who might know a reference to that factoid an easy way to contribute to wikipedia...that's just what came immediately to mind, if I spent another 5 minutes on it, I could probably come up with ten or so other things.
No, what I'm saying is that a real "editor" (instead of someone who's just pretending to edit) would try to look up the factoid, and delete it if they can't find a reference-- without ever adding a [citation needed] tag.
If you write a textbook, your editor will most certainly not do any research for you. He will most certainly tell you when you need additional references. It's not the same job, and "because it's an the internet and anyone can write what they want" doesn't mean that job is obsoleted. It just means you can have multiple writers, multiple editors, and you get to choose which role you play when you contribute.
But since the Wikipedia elite have already decided to be deletionists, they might as well do it properly and consistently....The website you and I want doesn't exist, and never will at the "wikipedia.org" domain.
I'm not sure how doing the wrong thing consistently is better than doing the right think every once in a while. But yeah, it disappoints me that the deletionists tend to rule the wikipedia mindset for now. I have hopes that this might change.
Real encyclopedias, which is the example Wikipedia is trying to follow, don't have little annoying tags after every fucking sentence.
That's because they're not user-editable. You can be sure that the article writers got messages back from their editors with [citation needed] equivalents.
Absolutely, I agree with you. I was replying to the other guy who gave me the impression he hated the tag in general.
In fact, the whole, "wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a repo of trivia" folks are the ones that I was railing against when I mentioned that the problem are the people who just delete information. Just because that one editor doesn't think the information is useful, doesn't mean nobody else does.
In my opinion, Wikipedia should be a repository of all knowledge, and the only criteria the editors should have are organization and correctness issues. If the information is correct and organized in such a form that is easy to get to and understand, it stays.
The message there is basically, "I think whoever wrote this is wrong, but I'm too fucking lazy to look it up my damn self. Therefore, I'll shit this tag on it so one of my slaves can look it up later." Except there aren't any slaves, so the damned [citation needed] stays up for 6 years...
Look, if the factoid sounds like bullshit, you have two options:
1) Look it up your damned self and add a citation
2) Delete it
Your first recommendation assumes its the responsibility of the editor to be an expert in every article. It's not. The contributors are responsible for doing the research, the editors are merely there to make sure the final article is of good quality.
Your second recommendation is actually sending the "I think this is wrong" message you dislike. "Citation needed" means just that: there are claims being made which are not supported by any given references. Leaving it untouched means that the editor isn't sure if this is, in fact, correct, so the information is left there for all to see with a reminder that if it is untrusted. On the other hand, if you just up and delete, that must mean that you know it's wrong.
I think the biggest problem with wikipedia are the people deleting shit. If it's vandalism, delete it. If you know for sure that something is wrong, and can post the factual information with citations, then delete it. Otherwise, leave it there (and add the [citation needed] tag where appropriate). I'm not sure why the tags would bother anyone, even if they are up there for six years. If nobody ever adds a citation, that means a citation is still needed, so the tag should stay there forever.
I understand what you're saying - but in that case the solution would be to offer a separate course where attendance indeed -doesn't- matter but your participation also doesn't count toward the student count. Then somebody who does need the attendance for themselves can still get in.
Sure there'll always be people who attend and don't learn.. that's where the intake committee didn't do their homework.
Oh, I agree with you. I even think there are classes were attendance and participation are important. If you're required to engage in discussion during class time, then you need to be there in order to engage in this discussion. Under this situation, RFID is obviously worthless because you'll be graded on your actual participation (and such classes usually contain less than 15 students anyway, otherwise it's not conducive to discussion).
It's not really the RFID I'm complaining about. It's the idea that attendance is important in a class where you wouldn't even realize a student is skipping unless you do some type of roll call.