I believe we're talking about the Kuiper Belt, not the Oort cloud.
I'll accept this correction, since really the Oort cloud is actually still hypothetical, but with the caveat that it really is apropos to the issue.
See the word "known" in the original.
This is the specific objection I was waiting for. If we take "known" to be an individual object that has been definatively seen your objection is well placed, however, I chose to interpret known (knowing it was a twist that might raise objection) to mean what we take for granted or at least except without any particular controversy. See my caveat about the Oort Cloud. I think we'd be more surprised to discover that it isn't there than that it is.
For the want of better technical terms we "know" there's a "shitload" of stuff floating around out there past Neptune, even if we haven't seen it yet and the issue is how to classify that stuff as groups.
Einstein hated the bomb. That's why he took no part in making it, other than signing a letter. He felt bad about signing that letter, not about the science he had done.
Feynman, on the other hand, went into a protracted funk over the whole thing because he helped build it.
Oppie felt so bad about it that was willing to throw away his reputation and career to oppose the building of more powerful bombs.
Any advancement of knowledge can be used to do harm, from discovering that you can bang things with rocks on up. Mass killing began as far back as bringing fire under control, and, for the most part, researchers don't have to be particularly vocal about the possible dangers because the dangers are nearly always as obvious to the general public as they are to the researchers, not withstanding the old, and erroneous, saw that the builders of the bomb didn't know whether it would destroy the atmosphere when they set it off.
Your own example of genetic research is a good example of this. It's hardly off the ground and it's a major public topic.
As a researcher you have one solid ethical line you can draw in the sand:
Do not participate in any applications of knowlege which you are opposed to. To twist the saying, All it takes for evil to prevail is for good men to be complicit in it.
I guess I'd feel about the same as I would if I had discovered the laws of motion and used them to explain the motion of the planets, only to find out they were useful to the artillary experts to explain the motion of shells:
"Yeah. So? You want I should feel bad about fire and the wheel too? How about rocks, you want I should feel bad about rocks?"
I didn't build the goddamed thing. I built science. It's not even close to an issue for my conscience.
The problem here is that the number of known small iceballs out there past Neptune is growing fairly rapidly
No, not really. That assumed figure for individual members of the Ort Cloud is about a trillion and has been for quite some time.
. ..and if we classify them all as planets. ..
But we already classify these as comets, because they're small iceballs.
. . . we'll no longer be able to teach elementary school children the list of planets.
Why, ummmmmmmm, on Earth, do you feel this is an important issue?
Personally, I think Pluto should be grandfathered in just because it was classified as a planet before its size was known . ..
This is not science and would set a bad example for elemetary school children.
. ..a comet if it has a "tail" pointing away from the primary
So Halley's isn't a comet, but will suddenly become one in about 70 years, but then it won't be again, but then. . .
Most comets never have tails.
. ..if a planet has a larger impact on its motion than the primary does, then it's a moon.
But now the Gas Giants each have a godzillion moons. We'll never be able to name them all, let alone teach a list of their names to elementary school children.
Classification isn't always so easy, because, you see, the object itself keeps insisting that it, as it is, is the only reality, not its classification.
As Mark Twain pondered, it's all very well for a naturalist to classify a bug, but how does he then go about explaining it to the bug?
Ahhh, I see, but you didn't do it in the same mindset as the Feds. They chose CDs because it makes the number look really big, when the actual number of "stolen" items is actually much smaller.
A movie is only one DVD disc, but several CDs.
See how the game is played? The exact opposite of what you doing by fitting an appropriate form of data to the disk.
See how well it worked on you? You completely lost track of what the real issue was and started thinking in terms of analogous strawmen, even to the point of wondering about how they managed the logistics of that many songs.
Way, way more copyright violations than are actually being dealt with here.
When looking at the numbers in these releases think very slowly and very hard, because they are, quite deliberately, out to mindfuck you.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and, even without reading the article, assert that the pigeons themselves are not "posting short blurbs of information" anywhere.
if so... thats a crap load of music... I'm betting that at least 40% of all the music downloaded were duplicates of the same songs
This isn't a song swapping case. It's movies, computer games, and software packages.
How many CDs to a single movie? How many CDs for Photoshop or AutoCAD?
As for the total value issue my guess is that they're talking suggested retail price, which jacks up the total quite a bit right there, but if they had a prerelease movie or two . ..well, basically, as a rarity, they say that was worth whatever the bloody hell they want.
"Yeah, new Carrot Top movie, prerelease. $49 Godzillion sound about right to you, Joe? Ok, that's what I'll write down."
This is the sort of shit they often pull to pad the charge up to a higher offense.
This isn't civil disobedience, since that is done publicly.
You just made that up, or, no, I take it back, you weren't that creative. You're just repeating what you've "heard." Civil disobedience as a form of public protest is done publicly, but civil disobedience is a matter of conscience, not public display.
Thoreau said, "Break the law."
He didn't say "Break the law, but make sure you get caught."
Damn near every pot smoker hiding in the basement is being civilly disobedient simply because they know in their hearts that it is the law that is wrong. It's an issue of intent.
Hell, 9 tenths of the 4th Amendment was to allow you be civilly disobedient in private and without fear of prosecution, because the framers knew that sooner or later the government would act to make mere possession of something or other a crime in and of itself.
Most of them had been criminally guilty of it themselves.
You do realize that the Google founders were in the Stanford PhD program, right?
Grad students often do some fine work. Bill Joy is another obvious example in the field.
Why do you think that Google mandates 20% of an employees time should be spent on fooling around with stuff?
And this is, indeed, one of the things they get very right. I applaud them for it. We'll have to see how long it lasts now that the grad students have handed over the keys to the store.
Not at all, but I can understand how, in an environment couched in overly polite language, mannerisms rather than manners, "straight shooting" might come across that way.
Note that we're talking averages here
Exactly. Gaggle.
. ..you seem to associate Ph.D.s with inherently smarter people.
I'm not at all sure you how you come to that conclusion, since, as you rightly point out I rightly point out that isn't case. In fact, it's about half my case in a nutshell.
However, what the *average* Ph.D. CAN do that the *average* Bucky Fuller CANNOT do is bridge the gap between academia and industry.
At the moment the bridges over the gap between academia and industry are almost entirely being built where they shouldn't be while the bridges going where they should are being burned. Industry is only too pleased to supply the gasoline and matches.
As a result there is starting to be quite little of value to be found in either place as academia regresses to the industrial mean and thus academia has less and less of value to give to industry other than labor.
I'm also getting a bit of amusement out of the idea of an "average" Buckey Fuller.
. ..has contributed originality to the FIELD.
Have you actually read a doctoral thesis lately? Originality does not imply value.
You understand, don't you, that the Google search engine itself is a purely accidental byproduct of some bright kids fooling around with something that interested them intensely?
5000 PhDs likely couldn't have accomplished the task.
First, it's unlikely that you've "known" 5000 PhDs to draw a meaningful conclusion.
You mistake me. It is necessary to know 5000 PhDs to draw meaningful conclusions about 5000 PhDs. The operative word was "gaggle."
Google employs PhDs from only a subset of the university research system. ..
Yes, that's where I learned to think of them as a gaggle of worthless lackeys. In groups they revert to the bullshit mean.
mathematicians
These are most likely to be worth something, but only inside their own field, which is rarely where they end up working in the IT industry.
CS
On the whole I think only Doctors of Humanities outstrip these folks for bullshit these days. Don't anybody get your panties tied up in knots, I'm not talking about you, I don't even know you. I'm talking about the field.
. ..makes the PhDs (sampled in large numbers). ..
A gaggle of worthless lackeys. That's where I came in to this movie.
. ..a wise investment.
Would be to hand pick a very small number of brilliant men and let them have at. You'll find they not only do more work than 5000, but higher quality work.
Newton, Einstein and Bucky Fuller all did their best work when they were out of both academia and industry. Of course you couldn't predict and direct that work. You should really think about that; and think about it hard.
Google at least does better at this than most. They at least have a clue. Gore (The inventors of Gore-Tex, not the Internet) used to as well, but I haven't looked at them in a long time, so I don't know how they're faring these days.
. ..by and large the hiring process is not blind.
Don't get me started on "Human Resources" departments or the ability of managment to select likely candidates. Haven't you ever gone through the hiring mill yourself?
In any case perhaps you misapprehend my point. The poster to whom I was responding seems to feel that the mere mention of the word "PhD" implies some sort of imprematuer. It does not. Only the man may or may not be valid.
And if I were starting an engineering firm right now I'd trade at least 4950 PhDs for one Bucky Fuller.
KFG
Re:Show me the money!
on
Beyond Java
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
. ..at the end of the day, you work on the systems your employer tells you to. ..
One, you have choice in where you work, unless you're one of Thoreau's wooden men. It is the function of an engineer to select the best tools and materials for the job and apply them appropriately. If that is not what you are doing, then you may well be a programmer, but you are certainly no engineer.
Two, what makes you think my jibe was aimed at the poster? He didn't write his job description.
They've got 5000 PhDs . . . a gaggle of worthless lackeys
I've probably known that many PhDs in my life, and; oddly enough, that's exactly the phrase to describe them that usually comes to mind.
On the other hand one of the most worthwhile human beings I've had the pleasure to discourse with had no degree at all, having earned the dubious distinction of being thrown out of Harvard. ..twice.
Oh, and having a molecule named after him.
Credentials don't mean as much as you appear to think they do. Taken en masse 5000 PhDs just means that the bullshit gets piled even higher and deeper.
KFG
Re:Show me the money!
on
Beyond Java
·
· Score: 2, Funny
If I'm to dump Java and use Ruby then someone's going to have to show me the money.
Lordy, I hope the word "Engineer" doesn't appear in your job title.
KFG
Re:Comparison with perl??
on
Beyond Java
·
· Score: 1
Comparing with C# is much better and should be more detailed.
Maybe what you need is an orange, instead of switching from Spanish peanuts to Blanched.
Slashdot Mirror
I believe we're talking about the Kuiper Belt, not the Oort cloud.
I'll accept this correction, since really the Oort cloud is actually still hypothetical, but with the caveat that it really is apropos to the issue.
See the word "known" in the original.
This is the specific objection I was waiting for. If we take "known" to be an individual object that has been definatively seen your objection is well placed, however, I chose to interpret known (knowing it was a twist that might raise objection) to mean what we take for granted or at least except without any particular controversy. See my caveat about the Oort Cloud. I think we'd be more surprised to discover that it isn't there than that it is.
For the want of better technical terms we "know" there's a "shitload" of stuff floating around out there past Neptune, even if we haven't seen it yet and the issue is how to classify that stuff as groups.
KFG
Einstein hated the bomb. That's why he took no part in making it, other than signing a letter. He felt bad about signing that letter, not about the science he had done.
Feynman, on the other hand, went into a protracted funk over the whole thing because he helped build it.
Oppie felt so bad about it that was willing to throw away his reputation and career to oppose the building of more powerful bombs.
Any advancement of knowledge can be used to do harm, from discovering that you can bang things with rocks on up. Mass killing began as far back as bringing fire under control, and, for the most part, researchers don't have to be particularly vocal about the possible dangers because the dangers are nearly always as obvious to the general public as they are to the researchers, not withstanding the old, and erroneous, saw that the builders of the bomb didn't know whether it would destroy the atmosphere when they set it off.
Your own example of genetic research is a good example of this. It's hardly off the ground and it's a major public topic.
As a researcher you have one solid ethical line you can draw in the sand:
Do not participate in any applications of knowlege which you are opposed to. To twist the saying, All it takes for evil to prevail is for good men to be complicit in it.
KFG
Don't forget the Kremer Prizes, where the technology to be developed had, and really still has, no particular practical or commercial value.
Paul MacCready specifically set out to win the prize because he needed the money.
Ok, bad idea financially, because as with most of these prizes it costs more to collect than the prize pays, but it did act as the overt motivator.
KFG
And now you have just unlocked the secret to understanding Federal domestic policy:
Make everyone either an inmate or a guard, for the economy.
KFG
Pride, no.
I guess I'd feel about the same as I would if I had discovered the laws of motion and used them to explain the motion of the planets, only to find out they were useful to the artillary experts to explain the motion of shells:
"Yeah. So? You want I should feel bad about fire and the wheel too? How about rocks, you want I should feel bad about rocks?"
I didn't build the goddamed thing. I built science. It's not even close to an issue for my conscience.
KFG
Isn't that how we ended up with Detroit?
KFG
The problem here is that the number of known small iceballs out there past Neptune is growing fairly rapidly
.and if we classify them all as planets. . .
.
.a comet if it has a "tail" pointing away from the primary
.if a planet has a larger impact on its motion than the primary does, then it's a moon.
No, not really. That assumed figure for individual members of the Ort Cloud is about a trillion and has been for quite some time.
. .
But we already classify these as comets, because they're small iceballs.
. . . we'll no longer be able to teach elementary school children the list of planets.
Why, ummmmmmmm, on Earth, do you feel this is an important issue?
Personally, I think Pluto should be grandfathered in just because it was classified as a planet before its size was known . .
This is not science and would set a bad example for elemetary school children.
. .
So Halley's isn't a comet, but will suddenly become one in about 70 years, but then it won't be again, but then. . .
Most comets never have tails.
. .
But now the Gas Giants each have a godzillion moons. We'll never be able to name them all, let alone teach a list of their names to elementary school children.
Classification isn't always so easy, because, you see, the object itself keeps insisting that it, as it is, is the only reality, not its classification.
As Mark Twain pondered, it's all very well for a naturalist to classify a bug, but how does he then go about explaining it to the bug?
KFG
Ahhh, I see, but you didn't do it in the same mindset as the Feds. They chose CDs because it makes the number look really big, when the actual number of "stolen" items is actually much smaller.
A movie is only one DVD disc, but several CDs.
See how the game is played? The exact opposite of what you doing by fitting an appropriate form of data to the disk.
See how well it worked on you? You completely lost track of what the real issue was and started thinking in terms of analogous strawmen, even to the point of wondering about how they managed the logistics of that many songs.
Way, way more copyright violations than are actually being dealt with here.
When looking at the numbers in these releases think very slowly and very hard, because they are, quite deliberately, out to mindfuck you.
KFG
I'm going to go out on a limb here and, even without reading the article, assert that the pigeons themselves are not "posting short blurbs of information" anywhere.
And that, my friend, is why you should RTFA.
KFG
if so... thats a crap load of music... I'm betting that at least 40% of all the music downloaded were duplicates of the same songs
.well, basically, as a rarity, they say that was worth whatever the bloody hell they want.
This isn't a song swapping case. It's movies, computer games, and software packages.
How many CDs to a single movie? How many CDs for Photoshop or AutoCAD?
As for the total value issue my guess is that they're talking suggested retail price, which jacks up the total quite a bit right there, but if they had a prerelease movie or two . .
"Yeah, new Carrot Top movie, prerelease. $49 Godzillion sound about right to you, Joe? Ok, that's what I'll write down."
This is the sort of shit they often pull to pad the charge up to a higher offense.
KFG
This isn't civil disobedience, since that is done publicly.
You just made that up, or, no, I take it back, you weren't that creative. You're just repeating what you've "heard." Civil disobedience as a form of public protest is done publicly, but civil disobedience is a matter of conscience, not public display.
Thoreau said, "Break the law."
He didn't say "Break the law, but make sure you get caught."
Damn near every pot smoker hiding in the basement is being civilly disobedient simply because they know in their hearts that it is the law that is wrong. It's an issue of intent.
Hell, 9 tenths of the 4th Amendment was to allow you be civilly disobedient in private and without fear of prosecution, because the framers knew that sooner or later the government would act to make mere possession of something or other a crime in and of itself.
Most of them had been criminally guilty of it themselves.
KFG
. . .the trans-Neputnian objects probably need their own Big Rock classification system . . .
KFG
. . .so maybe they (MS. . .) do know what they're doing...
Indeed. They're building designing and building Microsoft products.
KFG
How does Pluto compare to Phobos and Deimos?
How would you like to walk around an equator in less than an hour?
Don't walk too fast though, you might achieve orbital velocity, or even escape if you tried to jog.
KFG
You do realize that the Google founders were in the Stanford PhD program, right?
Grad students often do some fine work. Bill Joy is another obvious example in the field.
Why do you think that Google mandates 20% of an employees time should be spent on fooling around with stuff?
And this is, indeed, one of the things they get very right. I applaud them for it. We'll have to see how long it lasts now that the grad students have handed over the keys to the store.
KFG
Yes, this would work, if you, for some reason, wanted to arbitrarily limit the number of Heliocentric planets to nine.
KFG
You sound a trifle bitter
.you seem to associate Ph.D.s with inherently smarter people.
.has contributed originality to the FIELD.
Not at all, but I can understand how, in an environment couched in overly polite language, mannerisms rather than manners, "straight shooting" might come across that way.
Note that we're talking averages here
Exactly. Gaggle.
. .
I'm not at all sure you how you come to that conclusion, since, as you rightly point out I rightly point out that isn't case. In fact, it's about half my case in a nutshell.
However, what the *average* Ph.D. CAN do that the *average* Bucky Fuller CANNOT do is bridge the gap between academia and industry.
At the moment the bridges over the gap between academia and industry are almost entirely being built where they shouldn't be while the bridges going where they should are being burned. Industry is only too pleased to supply the gasoline and matches.
As a result there is starting to be quite little of value to be found in either place as academia regresses to the industrial mean and thus academia has less and less of value to give to industry other than labor.
I'm also getting a bit of amusement out of the idea of an "average" Buckey Fuller.
. .
Have you actually read a doctoral thesis lately? Originality does not imply value.
You understand, don't you, that the Google search engine itself is a purely accidental byproduct of some bright kids fooling around with something that interested them intensely?
5000 PhDs likely couldn't have accomplished the task.
KFG
Now I run my own company
Bingo! We have a winner.
KFG
First, it's unlikely that you've "known" 5000 PhDs to draw a meaningful conclusion.
.
.makes the PhDs (sampled in large numbers). . .
.a wise investment.
.by and large the hiring process is not blind.
You mistake me. It is necessary to know 5000 PhDs to draw meaningful conclusions about 5000 PhDs. The operative word was "gaggle."
Google employs PhDs from only a subset of the university research system. .
Yes, that's where I learned to think of them as a gaggle of worthless lackeys. In groups they revert to the bullshit mean.
mathematicians
These are most likely to be worth something, but only inside their own field, which is rarely where they end up working in the IT industry.
CS
On the whole I think only Doctors of Humanities outstrip these folks for bullshit these days. Don't anybody get your panties tied up in knots, I'm not talking about you, I don't even know you. I'm talking about the field.
. .
A gaggle of worthless lackeys. That's where I came in to this movie.
. .
Would be to hand pick a very small number of brilliant men and let them have at. You'll find they not only do more work than 5000, but higher quality work.
Newton, Einstein and Bucky Fuller all did their best work when they were out of both academia and industry. Of course you couldn't predict and direct that work. You should really think about that; and think about it hard.
Google at least does better at this than most. They at least have a clue. Gore (The inventors of Gore-Tex, not the Internet) used to as well, but I haven't looked at them in a long time, so I don't know how they're faring these days.
. .
Don't get me started on "Human Resources" departments or the ability of managment to select likely candidates. Haven't you ever gone through the hiring mill yourself?
In any case perhaps you misapprehend my point. The poster to whom I was responding seems to feel that the mere mention of the word "PhD" implies some sort of imprematuer. It does not. Only the man may or may not be valid.
And if I were starting an engineering firm right now I'd trade at least 4950 PhDs for one Bucky Fuller.
KFG
. . .at the end of the day, you work on the systems your employer tells you to. . .
One, you have choice in where you work, unless you're one of Thoreau's wooden men. It is the function of an engineer to select the best tools and materials for the job and apply them appropriately. If that is not what you are doing, then you may well be a programmer, but you are certainly no engineer.
Two, what makes you think my jibe was aimed at the poster? He didn't write his job description.
KFG
. . .its straight out poking fun of it.
Isn't that what a SOTU Address is for?
KFG
English has just about every language outside of New Guinea in it, and in New Guinea that rule is void.
KFG
They've got 5000 PhDs . . . a gaggle of worthless lackeys
.twice.
I've probably known that many PhDs in my life, and; oddly enough, that's exactly the phrase to describe them that usually comes to mind.
On the other hand one of the most worthwhile human beings I've had the pleasure to discourse with had no degree at all, having earned the dubious distinction of being thrown out of Harvard. .
Oh, and having a molecule named after him.
Credentials don't mean as much as you appear to think they do. Taken en masse 5000 PhDs just means that the bullshit gets piled even higher and deeper.
KFG
If I'm to dump Java and use Ruby then someone's going to have to show me the money.
Lordy, I hope the word "Engineer" doesn't appear in your job title.
KFG
Comparing with C# is much better and should be more detailed.
Maybe what you need is an orange, instead of switching from Spanish peanuts to Blanched.
KFG