... I commit to deploying one unit of the latest generation iDontPollute&trade (patent pending). The proprietary technology uses a revolutionary light-dependent reaction mediated via the thylakoid membranes of custom designed chloroplasts which use light energy to synthesize adenosine triphosphate and nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide phosphate (say that 10 times really fast). This technology, although in its early stages, is already enjoying wide adoption at a global level, see for example .
This exact comment was posted as-is a few days ago somewhere in here. I also found it (by googling the first sentence) on another blog as well. I find it very strange to have someone copy and paste their thoughts all over the place.
Absolutely spot on. Except I would add one thing. There is no need to create a new textbook. The fundamentals of mathematics have been well established for somewhere between 50-150 years. Let's face it, the current cutting edge of research in mathematics requires 10-20 years of full time training. As a corollary, we do not require a new textbook every year. Or every other year. Or every decade even.
And of course, it goes without saying that many / most graduate courses in most areas of study are absolutely spectacular, and one would be hard pressed to find anything comparable elsewhere in the world. As such, the most talented students can chart their own path through the mire (especially if they have an accomplished academic as a close family member), and once they make it to college (if they've received the right guidance along the way), they're in a great spot. But the low % of American science faculty is in part due to the significant handicap American kids have coming up through the weak and amorphous pre-college educational system.
Disclaimer: I am not familiar with the American High School system, since I first came to the US to attend an Ivy League school. I may sound critical, but please remember, I love being in America, and I am merely pointing out what I came to realize over the years.
I found that, even in an extremely prestigious American college, the mathematics taught in freshman and sophomore courses was at a similar level to what was broadly taught in the public high school system back in Europe where I came from, as early as 9th grade. I found most my American's colleagues math knowledge to be largely absent, but more importantly, many of them who had not entirely abandoned mathematics were nonetheless not even be aware of what they did not know .
My impression of why they got to be in this state had to do with the teaching method. The mathematics textbooks used in 'mainstream' courses even in my $45k/year college (i.e. over 20 students in attendance) are useless because they adopt a teaching style entirely devoid of insight and entirely too focused on mindless calculations. I suspect similar methods / textbooks are employed in high school. I found, over time, that I can recognize such a book right away, because they tend to be filled with examples with specific numbers. It doesn't matter if the topic is linear algebra, calculus, multivariate calculus, differential equations, Fourier analyis, they manage to insert 'exercises' with 'insight-building' arbitrary values, e.g. 'integrate 12.51 x^3 / (2.98 x + 1) from 0.1 to 2.31.'
There's of course nothing wrong with practicing integration (or other) techniques, and in fact back home we've all had to spend a massive amount of time doing just that. There's nothing wrong to being able to quickly and correctly do algebra, with large natural numbers or even arbitrary rational numbers - but that is something that is ingrained early on to the point where it doesn't need revisiting. In fact I would argue I am faster, more accurate, and can perform more complicated algebra, although the last time I was asked to work on it was in 5th grade. By the time you make it to calculus and beyond there's no need to test whether you can evaluate a function at specific values of its parameters (if you cannot do that, you would have failed a long time ago), so looking at the integral of x^3 / (a x + b) is allowing you to focus on the essence of the problem at hand, and not on mindless algebra. (Again, the algebra is mindless because you are supposed to know how to do it by the time you're 10, not because you can outsource it to a calculator or India.) Having examples with actual values is hardly the worst flaw, but it is strongly indicative of the mindset of the author and the teaching method, which I would characterize succinctly as 'lacking insight'. I would not have been able to understand and learn math had I only been exposed to such methods.
Math is a combination of art and hard labor, and both components are important. Good professors are absolutely essential, more important than even good textbooks. In fact all the good textbooks have already been written, many of them decades and sometimes 100+ years ago, it's just a matter of knowing about them and using them.
How do they expect to keep such large structures safe from worms? I guess this is a typical melange bull market phenomenon. As soon as the price of spice jumps past $70 these people start building unsustainable castles in the sand. I for one will continue diligently keeping urinating into my stillsuit with the water recycling conservatively set on 'maximum.'
According to the recent NYT piece on aging yet brilliant physicist Freeman Dyson:
Dyson published a paper titled "Can We Control the Carbon Dioxide in the Atmosphere?" His answer was yes, and he added that any emergency could be temporarily thwarted with a "carbon bank" of "fast-growing trees." He calculated how many trees it would take to remove all carbon from the atmosphere. The number, he says, was a trillion, which was "in principle quite feasible."
You can disagree with his math, but he does raise an interesting point. Sometimes the best ideas are also the simplest.
As an aside, I noticed that a lot of his critics seem to focus on what happens if you extract too much carbon from the atmosphere - which begs the question of how can Global Warming be an irreversible, extinction-threatening process if it's so 'easy' to fight.
Oh that is easy my friend. A price tag of $320 is a problem. Vista for free is a close call vs. Ubuntu, and Ubuntu probably only makes real sense for users with specific high performance needs (I would still use it, but for most users Windows would be a solid choice too). At $320 MSFT can dispatch its programmers to wipe windshields at rural intersections for all I care.
Dear Sir,
Thank you so dearly for sharing your thoughts with us. Your point is well taken. Bugs are a part of life. People have the right to be paid for their work. Spot on.
The problem you have Sir is that there are other people out there putting forth products that are as good and often better, FOR FREE.
Let me get this straight - you paid $40 for this? Do you know that Ubuntu offers this by default for free, and more? My interface right now looks as if it were controlling a UFO and it travelled from 3,432AD to save Sarah Connor.
I did not always resent MSFT. In fact as recently as 12 months ago I shelled out more than $300 to install Vista Ultimate 64 bit on my Dell computer. I was eager and excited to get the latest MSFT gadget. The reality was indeed disappointing. What is worse is that MSFT wants to charge me now another $300+ for a bug fix to an OS I already paid for. It's like going to the auto repair shop with your 1 year old Mercedes only to find out that the car is a lemon and that you have to buy a whole new car for the full sticker price. This in the same city were Porsches, Ferraris or Jaguars are free.
Thanks but no thanks. I am writing this on my Ubuntu 9.04. I've had no problems installing it, and few problems using it - most of them quickly solved by a quick google search. No more MSFT for me, thank you, I've had plenty.
It is amazing how you were able to post this brief message, sitting as you are, deep in the Amazon jungle, thousands of miles away from civilization surrounded by mystery and adventure, your copy of Thoreau's Walden lovingly ensconced in your chest pocket, close to your heart.
Well put Dave. And precisely to prove your point on the irrelevancy of their prior work experience, you can point to the very first decisions that the new team has made a few short weeks after being placed into office: http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2009/03/obama-sides-wit.html#previouspost
"The government said the damages range of $750 to $150,000 per violation of the Copyright Act was warranted." This argument clearly reveals how the former RIAA lawyers are untainted by their former activities. I don't mean to over-dramatize this, but let's also not be naive about it. This is as pro-big business as it gets - I can only speculate as to the back-room dealings that have led to this outcome.
Wait a minute!! This argument makes NO SENSE. Obama has taken a clear stance against lobbyists. He has clearly acted in favor of campaign finance reform (http://voices.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2008/06/obama_reneges_on_public_financ.html) and has taken NO MONEY from special interests (http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/contrib.php?cycle=2008&cid=N00009638). Oh wait...
This strains even the very-flexible dialectic reasoning capabilities of the Obamamaniacs. Although some of them, from the early comments, appear to be doing rather well: 'the new hires were well paid, hence they must be talented attorneys; once elected, they will do a solid job furthering the Presidents Chosen Causes; the fact they worked for RIAA is irrelevant.'
The reality? The industry lobby has managed to sneak this one in in order to further their 'copyright' protection agenda. This is not just a coincidence - to believe so would strain the imagination.
Now excuse me while I go back to my daily self-flagellation exercises:
WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH
OBAMA IS THE SECOND COMING
Thank you Microsoft for selling Windows 7 to me at a special-one-time-only-discounted-low-low price because I am such a treasured customer. Silly me, I was deluding myself that after spending $300 on Vista Ultimate 64 bit only a few short months ago, I would receive Vista Service Pack 2... err Windows 7 for free, just like any other old upgrade or update.
At this point I have reached the conclusion that buying MSFT is an exercise in personal stupidity and, at best, naivete. I will certainly not make that mistake again. I will take my business elsewhere. [walking faster towards a patrolling officer and throwing fearful, furtive glances behind] Steve Jobs, take your paws off me, I don't have any spare hundred dollar bills for you today!
I just bought $2000+ worth of computer components that I will use to build my own high end desktop (i7 920 / 6gb ddr3 1600 ram / 300gb velociraptor / 1tb hdd / ati 4890 / 2 x 24'' samsung lcds). Do you know how much I spent on software for it? $0. And I am actually better off - no MSFT bloatware for me, thank you. This is a great opportunity for people to reexamine their long held beliefs, e.g. when you buy a new computer you _must_ get Windows.
First of all, I was puzzled by some of the long (>5s) times required to open some of the websites on the top 25 list. I attempted it myself for a few of them. The first time is defined as going to that website for the first time ever. The second time is defined as going there after closing the tab and reopening the new one. I measure time until "Done" appears.
WEBSITE CHROME: 1st 2nd M$ FF: 1st 2nd M$
adobe.com 3.5 1.5 9.5 4 1.5 9.4
qq.com 8 4 6.8 12 3.5 7.9
I do not have IE8 on my machine so it is possible that IE8 is also faster measured in this way, but their timings appear to be off by almost an order of magnitude.
In the mean time please consider this report as being suspect, and do your own tests before deciding which browser to use.
I know I switched to Chrome when I realized that I did not have to wait for 10 seconds to wait for wsj.com to come up in IE7, and that Chrome could load the page in under 1 second for me. So no amount of spurious studies will convince me of a fact that is not true (funny, for the longest time 'tobacco was not proven to be medically damaging' - surely tobacco had no impact on my grandfather who was a chain smoker died of cancer in his early 60s).
Slashdot Mirror
... I commit to deploying one unit of the latest generation iDontPollute&trade (patent pending). The proprietary technology uses a revolutionary light-dependent reaction mediated via the thylakoid membranes of custom designed chloroplasts which use light energy to synthesize adenosine triphosphate and nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide phosphate (say that 10 times really fast). This technology, although in its early stages, is already enjoying wide adoption at a global level, see for example .
This exact comment was posted as-is a few days ago somewhere in here. I also found it (by googling the first sentence) on another blog as well. I find it very strange to have someone copy and paste their thoughts all over the place.
Absolutely spot on. Except I would add one thing. There is no need to create a new textbook. The fundamentals of mathematics have been well established for somewhere between 50-150 years. Let's face it, the current cutting edge of research in mathematics requires 10-20 years of full time training. As a corollary, we do not require a new textbook every year. Or every other year. Or every decade even.
Books like Courant's Introduction to Calculus and Analysis or Rudin's Principles of Mathematical Analysis are great examples. In fairness, they are a little too advanced, but chapters from them can be used selectively or simpler but equally outstanding presentations can be found.
And of course, it goes without saying that many / most graduate courses in most areas of study are absolutely spectacular, and one would be hard pressed to find anything comparable elsewhere in the world. As such, the most talented students can chart their own path through the mire (especially if they have an accomplished academic as a close family member), and once they make it to college (if they've received the right guidance along the way), they're in a great spot. But the low % of American science faculty is in part due to the significant handicap American kids have coming up through the weak and amorphous pre-college educational system.
Disclaimer: I am not familiar with the American High School system, since I first came to the US to attend an Ivy League school. I may sound critical, but please remember, I love being in America, and I am merely pointing out what I came to realize over the years.
I found that, even in an extremely prestigious American college, the mathematics taught in freshman and sophomore courses was at a similar level to what was broadly taught in the public high school system back in Europe where I came from, as early as 9th grade. I found most my American's colleagues math knowledge to be largely absent, but more importantly, many of them who had not entirely abandoned mathematics were nonetheless not even be aware of what they did not know .
My impression of why they got to be in this state had to do with the teaching method. The mathematics textbooks used in 'mainstream' courses even in my $45k/year college (i.e. over 20 students in attendance) are useless because they adopt a teaching style entirely devoid of insight and entirely too focused on mindless calculations. I suspect similar methods / textbooks are employed in high school. I found, over time, that I can recognize such a book right away, because they tend to be filled with examples with specific numbers. It doesn't matter if the topic is linear algebra, calculus, multivariate calculus, differential equations, Fourier analyis, they manage to insert 'exercises' with 'insight-building' arbitrary values, e.g. 'integrate 12.51 x^3 / (2.98 x + 1) from 0.1 to 2.31.'
There's of course nothing wrong with practicing integration (or other) techniques, and in fact back home we've all had to spend a massive amount of time doing just that. There's nothing wrong to being able to quickly and correctly do algebra, with large natural numbers or even arbitrary rational numbers - but that is something that is ingrained early on to the point where it doesn't need revisiting. In fact I would argue I am faster, more accurate, and can perform more complicated algebra, although the last time I was asked to work on it was in 5th grade. By the time you make it to calculus and beyond there's no need to test whether you can evaluate a function at specific values of its parameters (if you cannot do that, you would have failed a long time ago), so looking at the integral of x^3 / (a x + b) is allowing you to focus on the essence of the problem at hand, and not on mindless algebra. (Again, the algebra is mindless because you are supposed to know how to do it by the time you're 10, not because you can outsource it to a calculator or India.) Having examples with actual values is hardly the worst flaw, but it is strongly indicative of the mindset of the author and the teaching method, which I would characterize succinctly as 'lacking insight'. I would not have been able to understand and learn math had I only been exposed to such methods.
Math is a combination of art and hard labor, and both components are important. Good professors are absolutely essential, more important than even good textbooks. In fact all the good textbooks have already been written, many of them decades and sometimes 100+ years ago, it's just a matter of knowing about them and using them.
And I say: The """""""""liberal media news is a liberal myth" is a conservative myth" is a liberal myth" is a conservative myth" is a liberal myth" is a conservative myth" is a liberal myth" is a conservative myth" is a liberal myth"
P.S. Please don't bother replying to this. All I have to do is run my little script© to skip through the next n replies:
#!/bin/sh recText() { if [ $1 -gt 1 ]; then i=`expr $1 - 1` if [ $(($1 % 2 )) -eq 0 ]; then j=`echo \"$2 is a liberal myth\"` else j=`echo \"$2 is a conservative myth\"` fi k=`recText $i "$j"` echo $k else echo $2 fi } echo "The `recText 10 "liberal media news"`"
My one and only twitter comment from months ago:
OMG twitter is like SOOO cool I will never use anything else EVER again It is now my home page I will log in every day and post everything
Walk without rythm, fellow travelers.
According to the recent NYT piece on aging yet brilliant physicist Freeman Dyson:
Dyson published a paper titled "Can We Control the Carbon Dioxide in the Atmosphere?" His answer was yes, and he added that any emergency could be temporarily thwarted with a "carbon bank" of "fast-growing trees." He calculated how many trees it would take to remove all carbon from the atmosphere. The number, he says, was a trillion, which was "in principle quite feasible."
You can disagree with his math, but he does raise an interesting point. Sometimes the best ideas are also the simplest.
As an aside, I noticed that a lot of his critics seem to focus on what happens if you extract too much carbon from the atmosphere - which begs the question of how can Global Warming be an irreversible, extinction-threatening process if it's so 'easy' to fight.
Oh that is easy my friend. A price tag of $320 is a problem. Vista for free is a close call vs. Ubuntu, and Ubuntu probably only makes real sense for users with specific high performance needs (I would still use it, but for most users Windows would be a solid choice too). At $320 MSFT can dispatch its programmers to wipe windshields at rural intersections for all I care.
Dear Sir, Thank you so dearly for sharing your thoughts with us. Your point is well taken. Bugs are a part of life. People have the right to be paid for their work. Spot on. The problem you have Sir is that there are other people out there putting forth products that are as good and often better, FOR FREE.
Let me get this straight - you paid $40 for this? Do you know that Ubuntu offers this by default for free, and more? My interface right now looks as if it were controlling a UFO and it travelled from 3,432AD to save Sarah Connor.
I did not always resent MSFT. In fact as recently as 12 months ago I shelled out more than $300 to install Vista Ultimate 64 bit on my Dell computer. I was eager and excited to get the latest MSFT gadget. The reality was indeed disappointing. What is worse is that MSFT wants to charge me now another $300+ for a bug fix to an OS I already paid for. It's like going to the auto repair shop with your 1 year old Mercedes only to find out that the car is a lemon and that you have to buy a whole new car for the full sticker price. This in the same city were Porsches, Ferraris or Jaguars are free. Thanks but no thanks. I am writing this on my Ubuntu 9.04. I've had no problems installing it, and few problems using it - most of them quickly solved by a quick google search. No more MSFT for me, thank you, I've had plenty.
It is amazing how you were able to post this brief message, sitting as you are, deep in the Amazon jungle, thousands of miles away from civilization surrounded by mystery and adventure, your copy of Thoreau's Walden lovingly ensconced in your chest pocket, close to your heart.
Oh wait! ... ... Darn it, a large pink flying pig nearly took my head off. Can't be too careful these days...
This is the funniest comment I've read in a long time on /. Well done.
Well put Dave. And precisely to prove your point on the irrelevancy of their prior work experience, you can point to the very first decisions that the new team has made a few short weeks after being placed into office: http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2009/03/obama-sides-wit.html#previouspost "The government said the damages range of $750 to $150,000 per violation of the Copyright Act was warranted." This argument clearly reveals how the former RIAA lawyers are untainted by their former activities. I don't mean to over-dramatize this, but let's also not be naive about it. This is as pro-big business as it gets - I can only speculate as to the back-room dealings that have led to this outcome.
Wait a minute!! This argument makes NO SENSE. Obama has taken a clear stance against lobbyists. He has clearly acted in favor of campaign finance reform (http://voices.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2008/06/obama_reneges_on_public_financ.html) and has taken NO MONEY from special interests (http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/contrib.php?cycle=2008&cid=N00009638). Oh wait...
This strains even the very-flexible dialectic reasoning capabilities of the Obamamaniacs. Although some of them, from the early comments, appear to be doing rather well: 'the new hires were well paid, hence they must be talented attorneys; once elected, they will do a solid job furthering the Presidents Chosen Causes; the fact they worked for RIAA is irrelevant.' The reality? The industry lobby has managed to sneak this one in in order to further their 'copyright' protection agenda. This is not just a coincidence - to believe so would strain the imagination. Now excuse me while I go back to my daily self-flagellation exercises: WAR IS PEACE FREEDOM IS SLAVERY IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH OBAMA IS THE SECOND COMING
Thank you Microsoft for selling Windows 7 to me at a special-one-time-only-discounted-low-low price because I am such a treasured customer. Silly me, I was deluding myself that after spending $300 on Vista Ultimate 64 bit only a few short months ago, I would receive Vista Service Pack 2 ... err Windows 7 for free, just like any other old upgrade or update.
At this point I have reached the conclusion that buying MSFT is an exercise in personal stupidity and, at best, naivete. I will certainly not make that mistake again. I will take my business elsewhere. [walking faster towards a patrolling officer and throwing fearful, furtive glances behind] Steve Jobs, take your paws off me, I don't have any spare hundred dollar bills for you today!
I just bought $2000+ worth of computer components that I will use to build my own high end desktop (i7 920 / 6gb ddr3 1600 ram / 300gb velociraptor / 1tb hdd / ati 4890 / 2 x 24'' samsung lcds). Do you know how much I spent on software for it? $0. And I am actually better off - no MSFT bloatware for me, thank you. This is a great opportunity for people to reexamine their long held beliefs, e.g. when you buy a new computer you _must_ get Windows.
First of all, I was puzzled by some of the long (>5s) times required to open some of the websites on the top 25 list. I attempted it myself for a few of them. The first time is defined as going to that website for the first time ever. The second time is defined as going there after closing the tab and reopening the new one. I measure time until "Done" appears. WEBSITE CHROME: 1st 2nd M$ FF: 1st 2nd M$ adobe.com 3.5 1.5 9.5 4 1.5 9.4 qq.com 8 4 6.8 12 3.5 7.9 I do not have IE8 on my machine so it is possible that IE8 is also faster measured in this way, but their timings appear to be off by almost an order of magnitude. In the mean time please consider this report as being suspect, and do your own tests before deciding which browser to use. I know I switched to Chrome when I realized that I did not have to wait for 10 seconds to wait for wsj.com to come up in IE7, and that Chrome could load the page in under 1 second for me. So no amount of spurious studies will convince me of a fact that is not true (funny, for the longest time 'tobacco was not proven to be medically damaging' - surely tobacco had no impact on my grandfather who was a chain smoker died of cancer in his early 60s).