so what you're saying is that we need another huge war to speed things along? i have to say, i kind of agree.... hey, china, launch a few of those nucular missiles, already!
progress should be measured as the derivative of some numerical property of technology that measures how advanced it is, not as the difference between actual and expected achievements. just because in the 60's some sci-fi author wrote about people colonizing Jupiter's moons by the year 2000 doesn't mean that we're living through another dark age right now...
I think the article's author's disappointment might at least in part be due to the fact that we're getting a little better at predicting what future technology might look like and accomplish (as opposed to Jules Verne, who thought someday we'd fly to the moon with a hot air balloon..)
There are 2 components to this issue that I see:
1) Honoring a dead person - pointless or not? Well, obviously pointless for the dead person himself, but the reason we hold funerals, give posthumous awards, etc., is because those actions have some impact on those of us who are alive. Recognizing the achievements of the person who essentially laid out the theoretical framework for computing could (and probably would) help all of mankind by increasing the social importance of such achievements. Personally, I'm very happy that in popular culture the position of the smartest person in history is usually held by Albert Einstein, a theoretical physicist, as opposed to, say, Napoleon or Hitler for brilliant military strategy, or Walt Disney for making good (albeit racist) cartoons. I think it helps steer more people in their formative years towards science, and as a Slashdotter, I don't need to tell you how important I think that is.
2) Apologizing to nobody in particular for something your ancestors did - ridiculous or not? For me this one's trickier. Every case where a question like this has come up has its nuances, which, I think, have a very big impact on whether or not the govt/group in question ends up apologizing. Since I'm Armenian, the first example that comes to mind is the [alleged] genocide of my people living on Turkish territory during WWI. 94 years after that period, the Turkish government is adamant in its denial of any wrongdoing on the part of their predecessors. And it's easy to see why - even if the issue wasn't further complicated by potential loss of (currently) Turkish territory to Armenia, the incredibly strong Turkish sense of national pride would still, just on its own, likely be an insurmountable obstacle to any admittance of wrongdoing on their part. After all, the person who was ultimately responsible for the (once again, alleged) atrocities would have to be none other than Mustafa Kemal Ataturk (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mustafa_Kemal_Atat%C3%BCrk), the equivalent of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Abraham Lincoln put together for the Turkish people.
My point is, I don't think the question of apologizing for historical events is one that is easy to understand in any one instance, let alone as a generalization. Fortunately, the case in question is a rather simple one, and one that wouldn't have any negative repercussions for any powerful group or individual in the modern UK.
For these two reasons, I believe a formal apology for the way Turing was treated shouldn't be so hard to muster on the part of the British parliament, or whoever the hell it is that has to do the apologizing.
microsoft aims to satisfy X percent of the population with their product. instead of making multiple OS's for every different kind of user, they just create one, and then offer a few different "versions", that end up not being that different after all. from their perspective, it makes complete sense to do this, since wasting a few MB's on DVD's and their users' HDD's costs less to them than carefully stripping away parts of WinXxx and offering super-customized OS's.
This post, on the other hand, is both good enough and not good enough at the same time. Until you read it, there's no way to tell which it will end up being.
Experts have called for the introduction of a mandatory license for ownership of Dihydrogen Monoxide, citing its common usage in the illegal manufacturing of most controlled substances.
[pretty much] anything you can do using GOTO's, you can also do by making small functions that accomplish only one or two tasks. personally, the only time i can think of when a goto would be useful for me is when i have deeply nested for loops, and something happens that makes me want to break out of all of them. this can be accomplished in 2 ways other than GOTO - either have the for loops in a dedicated function and return;, or check a flag at the end of each loop, and break if it's set.
I don't know why they're complaining. No one could come up with a better marketing campaign in a million years that this. It basically means their product won over competitors, completely.
I disagree. I lost count a long time ago of the number of times that I coughed and crapped at the same time. It really is possible - just ask Vonnegut.
store a virtual machine (in an open format) along with the data, containing all the software necessary to view the media they want to include. then 16 years from now, only 2 things will be needed to make it all work - VM software that uses that open format, and hardware that can read whatever storage device you decide to use.
I'm the founder of a world-wide organization whose aim it is to execute every person to have ever used the "aluminum" spelling. I'm very serious about this. You should be, too.
Slashdot Mirror
maybe the authors of the study were taught math skills through unschooling?
batman, anyone?
(you forgot WWII - nuclear energy, jet engines, computers, modern engineering practices...)
so what you're saying is that we need another huge war to speed things along? i have to say, i kind of agree.... hey, china, launch a few of those nucular missiles, already!
progress should be measured as the derivative of some numerical property of technology that measures how advanced it is, not as the difference between actual and expected achievements. just because in the 60's some sci-fi author wrote about people colonizing Jupiter's moons by the year 2000 doesn't mean that we're living through another dark age right now...
I think the article's author's disappointment might at least in part be due to the fact that we're getting a little better at predicting what future technology might look like and accomplish (as opposed to Jules Verne, who thought someday we'd fly to the moon with a hot air balloon..)
he just typed ******, and it showed up as your email account in your browser.
I think this is more than a legal question.
There are 2 components to this issue that I see:
1) Honoring a dead person - pointless or not? Well, obviously pointless for the dead person himself, but the reason we hold funerals, give posthumous awards, etc., is because those actions have some impact on those of us who are alive. Recognizing the achievements of the person who essentially laid out the theoretical framework for computing could (and probably would) help all of mankind by increasing the social importance of such achievements. Personally, I'm very happy that in popular culture the position of the smartest person in history is usually held by Albert Einstein, a theoretical physicist, as opposed to, say, Napoleon or Hitler for brilliant military strategy, or Walt Disney for making good (albeit racist) cartoons. I think it helps steer more people in their formative years towards science, and as a Slashdotter, I don't need to tell you how important I think that is.
2) Apologizing to nobody in particular for something your ancestors did - ridiculous or not? For me this one's trickier. Every case where a question like this has come up has its nuances, which, I think, have a very big impact on whether or not the govt/group in question ends up apologizing. Since I'm Armenian, the first example that comes to mind is the [alleged] genocide of my people living on Turkish territory during WWI. 94 years after that period, the Turkish government is adamant in its denial of any wrongdoing on the part of their predecessors. And it's easy to see why - even if the issue wasn't further complicated by potential loss of (currently) Turkish territory to Armenia, the incredibly strong Turkish sense of national pride would still, just on its own, likely be an insurmountable obstacle to any admittance of wrongdoing on their part. After all, the person who was ultimately responsible for the (once again, alleged) atrocities would have to be none other than Mustafa Kemal Ataturk (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mustafa_Kemal_Atat%C3%BCrk), the equivalent of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Abraham Lincoln put together for the Turkish people.
My point is, I don't think the question of apologizing for historical events is one that is easy to understand in any one instance, let alone as a generalization. Fortunately, the case in question is a rather simple one, and one that wouldn't have any negative repercussions for any powerful group or individual in the modern UK.
For these two reasons, I believe a formal apology for the way Turing was treated shouldn't be so hard to muster on the part of the British parliament, or whoever the hell it is that has to do the apologizing.
The UK has always been at war with Eurasia, and tolerant of homosexuals.
i don't get this.
microsoft aims to satisfy X percent of the population with their product. instead of making multiple OS's for every different kind of user, they just create one, and then offer a few different "versions", that end up not being that different after all. from their perspective, it makes complete sense to do this, since wasting a few MB's on DVD's and their users' HDD's costs less to them than carefully stripping away parts of WinXxx and offering super-customized OS's.
This post, on the other hand, is both good enough and not good enough at the same time. Until you read it, there's no way to tell which it will end up being.
Shit.
http://xkcd.com/45/
tl;dr
tl;dr
.
Experts have called for the introduction of a mandatory license for ownership of Dihydrogen Monoxide, citing its common usage in the illegal manufacturing of most controlled substances.
the end of clearQAM? bad news ladies, from now on it's always the stickier kind...
forget about that! doesn't anyone here have a problem with using racist fuel?
*opens -1:Flamebait umbrella*
[pretty much] anything you can do using GOTO's, you can also do by making small functions that accomplish only one or two tasks. personally, the only time i can think of when a goto would be useful for me is when i have deeply nested for loops, and something happens that makes me want to break out of all of them. this can be accomplished in 2 ways other than GOTO - either have the for loops in a dedicated function and return;, or check a flag at the end of each loop, and break if it's set.
I don't know why they're complaining. No one could come up with a better marketing campaign in a million years that this. It basically means their product won over competitors, completely.
Mars gets its ass to YOU! And as a result Earth is obliterated. That's why Capitalism won.
I disagree. I lost count a long time ago of the number of times that I coughed and crapped at the same time. It really is possible - just ask Vonnegut.
of course not. gods are eternal.
better yet, upload all the data to Google and store only the (randomly generated) password to the account in the capsule.
Multiple members of my family want to contribute digital data â" text, video, music files.
right, write it all down... in binary.
store a virtual machine (in an open format) along with the data, containing all the software necessary to view the media they want to include. then 16 years from now, only 2 things will be needed to make it all work - VM software that uses that open format, and hardware that can read whatever storage device you decide to use.
... does it run Linux?
I'm the founder of a world-wide organization whose aim it is to execute every person to have ever used the "aluminum" spelling. I'm very serious about this. You should be, too.