I've got news for nerds. CS matters. But not in the way you want it to. No one cares if you can do reduction proofs, they want CODE. They want APPS. They want UI that is easy to use.
Like many other people, you're confused about this subject. The things you mention are not, and will never be, CS. They may be software engineering, or various other disciplines, but they are not CS. There's no reason to change the definition of CS just because we need more technical colleges teaching people how to write code.
I find it rather amazing that there isn't already more of this. When it comes to immigration, it almost seems as though many people with real skills are lumped in with unskilled labor sneaking across the border (thus proving the U.S. commitment to the idea that "all men are created equal", I suppose). While there are some immigration programs for people of "exceptional merit and ability" and similar categories, the number of people who get in this way are a tiny fraction of the people who could truly benefit the U.S. economy.
If you're a smart, motivated person with high potential, but not already world-famous or rich, your options for entering the U.S. are limited to non-existent, practically speaking, other than getting in a line with waiting periods up to and exceeding 20 years.
One standard argument justifying this situation is the economic competition: an influx of smart workers would drive down wages for Americans. But this is a logical error, with roots in 19th century economic thinking, that drives so much immigration policy. The point, and it's worth devoting its own paragraph to, is:
Knowledge work is not a zero-sum game!
If someone's going to come up with a new invention, a new product, or a new business, where do you want those people to do that? Inside the U.S., where all the benefits of the new development accrue to the U.S. economy, or outside the U.S., where the U.S. risks ultimately becoming an importer of that thing, further increasing its trade deficit?
Up until now, the U.S. dominance in science and technology has allowed it to essentially ignore this point except in the most extreme cases, which is where that "exceptional merit and ability" immigration category comes in. But with increasing competition from highly-motivated, high-population developing nations, and major economic and technological assets being "globalized" to other countries, previous tactics won't be enough. To have any hope of retaining its competitiveness in the long term, the U.S. is going to want to start doing a better job of importing some of the cream of the crop from those competing nations.
But it seems that the combination of "democratic" egalitarianism and Republican protectionism is enough to completely block this line of thinking. The U.S. is going to have to wait until its economic ass is being kicked, but good, before it changes its policies. By then, it may be too late, and the U.S. role as world science and technology leader may finally be over.
Another factor is that it's much harder to be convicted of murder than many other crimes, unless you were really stupid about it or can't afford a decent lawyer. You're much better off being guilty of a good murder than of, say, tax evasion that has a chance of being discovered.
"That is a mindset that should be discouraged from being advocated."
The person who said that, Mukul Krishna, is clearly a devotee of the Winston Churchill style of prose, and would probably respond to you by saying "That is a criticism up with which I shall not put".
The web is an information exchange conduit, not a graphic design medium.
Unfortunately, what a lot of people *want* is a graphic design medium. If you don't give it to them, then they'll hack away at it until they get something like what they want, and the results will be... well, exactly like what we have now.
However, there are plenty of large websites that still use this method of spacing. It sounds like this addition to the browser would break many of those sites.
Like the OP said, those sites are broken already. So what's the problem? There's no technological solution to the cluelessness of the average web developer.
I know how to answer these tests to get any result I want.
Dude! Write up a HOWTO, put it on a site with some advertising, post a story about it to Slashdot, Digg etc., and you won't need to apply for any more employee positions.
Your use is non-standard - see e.g. the article on Kilometer per hour), which doesn't mention the use of a colon. I don't recall ever seeing units expressed using a ratio colon - can you provide even a single reference that wasn't authored by you?
There's already a convention for expressing ratios between units, i.e. the slash. This subthread is evidence that it's not helpful to invent your own conventions and then use them to try and communicate. Your rationale is nonsensical: if people are confused by the apparent division, they simply need to learn the meaning of the convention, which is just as true with your convention.
I hope you read the replies to your post and realize how judgemental and immature you're being. Just like me, but then I don't pretend to be mature except when I'm serving on committees.
I don't really disagree, although I think there are other opportunities in the tech industry (I'll tell you what they are if you have $10m to invest...;)
In any case, if he succeeds, I for one welcome our new Shuttleworthy overlord! He couldn't possibly be any worse than Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, or Scott McNealy.
I seems unlikely that Shuttleworth is "TOTALLY" into this for the money. If that's really so, then he's not thinking straight, because there are many other investment opportunities that in all likelihood will dwarf the returns he's going to get on having invested in Ubuntu. IOW, if he were really TOTALLY into it for the money, he'd be doing something else. There seem to be motivations at work here other than, or in addition to, money.
I'm glad you're willing to accept "As best as can be determined". We don't have the exact digit yet, but the latest work has narrowed down the last digit of pi to a fairly small set of digits. At this point, it's looking as though the last base-10 digit of pi is either 4, 6, or 2. However, analysis indicates that it could also be 9, 5, or 1. Finally, there's a chance that it could be 8, 3, 0, or 7. So we don't know exactly, but we're pretty sure it's one of those.
What's that you say? Pi has no last digit? Don't be silly, that would mean the digits just go on forever!
Sure, your algorithm would count as functional programming, but part of the point about functional programming is that entire programs, not just individual functions, consist of nothing but the composition of pure mathematical functions. Which means that a lot of what you do is "normal" languages just isn't allowed. Point 2.1 in the
comp.lang.functional FAQ, which gives a simple comparison between imperative and functional style, although to really understand it you'd need to learn a bit more about at least one of the functional languages.
Just about any language allows you to implement simple pure mathematical functions - as you say, "a simple equation would have unlimited portablity" - but very few languages allow you to construct entire programs that way. None of the mainstream languages (PHP, Perl, Python, Ruby, Java, C, C++, BASIC, etc.) support functional programming to that extent. The languages which do support it are ones like Haskell, ML, OCaml, and Scheme. The reason I say that functional programming is not commercially applicable is not because there aren't commercial applications of it, but because these languages are hardly being used at all commercially. There's a bit of a catch-22 there, because people don't know them because they aren't being used, and they aren't being used because people don't know them.
Here's your algorithm implemented in the Haskell language. If you want to try running it, download and install Glasgow Haskell (on Debian, you can do "apt-get install ghc6"), and run "ghci" to get an interactive Haskell prompt.
-- define a list of p values
let ps = [0.825, 0.8868, 1, 0.8542, 0.8889, 0.8, 0.9118, 0.95, 0.9487, 1, 1, 0.8333, 0.8197, 0.6383, 1, 0.8727, 0.875, 0.7879, 0.8667, 0.8636]
-- define a function which averages a list of numbers.
-- The 'fromIntegral' is needed because Haskell is a strongly, statically typed language
let avg xs = sum xs / fromIntegral (length xs)
-- work out the average of all the p's
let avgP = avg ps
-- define the function, f(p)
-- this would usually be written on multiple lines, but the interactive shell doesn't allow that (?)
let z p = x / y - 1 where x = p - avgP; y = 1 - avgP
-- Finally, "map" the function f over the list ps, giving a list of results.
map z ps
The above is oriented towards experimenting with it at the command line. For a real program, you'd probably ultimately package it into a single function that takes an input list and produces an output list, e.g.:
-- repeating the avg definition for the sake of completeness
let avg xs = sum xs / fromIntegral (length xs)
let f ps = map z ps
where avgP = avg ps;
z p = x / y - 1
where x = p - avgP;
y = 1 - avgP
("f" is defined over multiple lines for readability, the way it would be written in a program file, although the indentation didn't make it through Slashdot; to enter it interactively, you'd have to do it on one line.)
This last version defines your entire formula quite clearly, for anyone who knows functional programming. That's one answer to your question of how to express these things mathematically: if you express them using high-level programming languages, it has the benefit being concise and unambiguous, but also checked by the compiler, so if it works you know you haven't made any mistake
Math and dreams are fine with me, I'm into functional programming myself, which (right now) is one of the least commercially applicable branches of programming imaginable. The only reason I brought up the dotcom stuff is that you were talking about improving on Google, and my point is just that despite the marketing hype, companies like Google are really doing more like high-end IT than anything deeper, because the deeper stuff takes decades to develop. I could be wrong, but what you're describing sounds more like it would be the latter.
I read what you wrote, but you made it sound so general that for all I know you were following advice you read on Slashdot. My advice to anyone reading, not just you, is to get professional help with those exercises.
The examples you give could be described as expert systems, of a sort, relying partly on socially-produced data. I think there's little doubt that such systems will proliferate, and at some point it could start making sense to tie them together. In a way, the "semantic web" is working towards supporting that sort of thing. But this approach is at odds with almost everything that's succeeded on the commercial Internet so far: it's all been about, essentially, exploiting simple business models (Amazon) or clever tricks (Google), and leveraging them to the hilt. That's what the short-term VC-funded approach to product- and company-building is good at.
I think your idea is the sort of thing which could evolve over time, but is unlikely to be built by any one team unless they start with a whole bunch of existing systems that are ripe for integrating. Of course, if I'm wrong and you end up founding a billion-dollar dotcom, please post a Slashdot article about it so I can kick myself!
BTW, if you're working on AI-like applications, I hope you've read PAIP. And of course, Norvig's at Google now...
I went to a chiropractor for my own computer-work related back problems. After initial treatment for the immediate pain, he referred me to a physical therapist - they're trained to help you fix the cause. Like the other posters mentioned, the right sort of exercise should work wonders, but a physical therapist will be able to give you the right sort of exercises based on your particular issues.
You haven't given enough information to go on. Points 2 & 3 are far too general. No offense, but point 2 reminds me of sales execs who ask software developers to "just give me a single button that does what I want". It's all very well to talk about a "single, simple UI" to do something very complicated, but it's something entirely different to design and implement such a UI. Think of existing applications and tell us which ones do something like your point 2. If there are any, then how is your system going to be better? If there aren't, why do you think that is? Point 3 suffers from similar problems.
You'd be better off just giving people a menu of search algorithms, and letting them pick which ones they want to use. (Maybe after a while, you could use Amazon-style "people who searched for X found good results using algorithm Y" logic to help automate algorithm-picking, but how often have you actually bought a product suggested to you that way?)
My first thought was that it would be great if some fake field of "science" could be created, and used as a sandbox for all the people for whom science is just one more bit of fuel for inane flamewars.
Then it occurred to me that we do have such a thing. Thank heavens for science fiction [...]
And there I thought you were going to say "Intelligent Design"...
Slashdot Mirror
I find it rather amazing that there isn't already more of this. When it comes to immigration, it almost seems as though many people with real skills are lumped in with unskilled labor sneaking across the border (thus proving the U.S. commitment to the idea that "all men are created equal", I suppose). While there are some immigration programs for people of "exceptional merit and ability" and similar categories, the number of people who get in this way are a tiny fraction of the people who could truly benefit the U.S. economy.
If you're a smart, motivated person with high potential, but not already world-famous or rich, your options for entering the U.S. are limited to non-existent, practically speaking, other than getting in a line with waiting periods up to and exceeding 20 years.
One standard argument justifying this situation is the economic competition: an influx of smart workers would drive down wages for Americans. But this is a logical error, with roots in 19th century economic thinking, that drives so much immigration policy. The point, and it's worth devoting its own paragraph to, is:
Knowledge work is not a zero-sum game!
If someone's going to come up with a new invention, a new product, or a new business, where do you want those people to do that? Inside the U.S., where all the benefits of the new development accrue to the U.S. economy, or outside the U.S., where the U.S. risks ultimately becoming an importer of that thing, further increasing its trade deficit?
Up until now, the U.S. dominance in science and technology has allowed it to essentially ignore this point except in the most extreme cases, which is where that "exceptional merit and ability" immigration category comes in. But with increasing competition from highly-motivated, high-population developing nations, and major economic and technological assets being "globalized" to other countries, previous tactics won't be enough. To have any hope of retaining its competitiveness in the long term, the U.S. is going to want to start doing a better job of importing some of the cream of the crop from those competing nations.
But it seems that the combination of "democratic" egalitarianism and Republican protectionism is enough to completely block this line of thinking. The U.S. is going to have to wait until its economic ass is being kicked, but good, before it changes its policies. By then, it may be too late, and the U.S. role as world science and technology leader may finally be over.
Another factor is that it's much harder to be convicted of murder than many other crimes, unless you were really stupid about it or can't afford a decent lawyer. You're much better off being guilty of a good murder than of, say, tax evasion that has a chance of being discovered.
Even if he does say so himself!
Like the OP said, those sites are broken already. So what's the problem? There's no technological solution to the cluelessness of the average web developer.
Your use is non-standard - see e.g. the article on Kilometer per hour), which doesn't mention the use of a colon. I don't recall ever seeing units expressed using a ratio colon - can you provide even a single reference that wasn't authored by you?
There's already a convention for expressing ratios between units, i.e. the slash. This subthread is evidence that it's not helpful to invent your own conventions and then use them to try and communicate. Your rationale is nonsensical: if people are confused by the apparent division, they simply need to learn the meaning of the convention, which is just as true with your convention.
IOW, give it up.
Isn't it disturbing how few people in this thread actually got that? Where have all the nerds gone?
Seeing as how our best hands are busy.
I hope you read the replies to your post and realize how judgemental and immature you're being. Just like me, but then I don't pretend to be mature except when I'm serving on committees.
I don't really disagree, although I think there are other opportunities in the tech industry (I'll tell you what they are if you have $10m to invest... ;)
In any case, if he succeeds, I for one welcome our new Shuttleworthy overlord! He couldn't possibly be any worse than Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, or Scott McNealy.
I seems unlikely that Shuttleworth is "TOTALLY" into this for the money. If that's really so, then he's not thinking straight, because there are many other investment opportunities that in all likelihood will dwarf the returns he's going to get on having invested in Ubuntu. IOW, if he were really TOTALLY into it for the money, he'd be doing something else. There seem to be motivations at work here other than, or in addition to, money.
I'm glad you're willing to accept "As best as can be determined". We don't have the exact digit yet, but the latest work has narrowed down the last digit of pi to a fairly small set of digits. At this point, it's looking as though the last base-10 digit of pi is either 4, 6, or 2. However, analysis indicates that it could also be 9, 5, or 1. Finally, there's a chance that it could be 8, 3, 0, or 7. So we don't know exactly, but we're pretty sure it's one of those.
What's that you say? Pi has no last digit? Don't be silly, that would mean the digits just go on forever!
Yeah, it's called "Boss with Benefits".
Sure, your algorithm would count as functional programming, but part of the point about functional programming is that entire programs, not just individual functions, consist of nothing but the composition of pure mathematical functions. Which means that a lot of what you do is "normal" languages just isn't allowed. Point 2.1 in the comp.lang.functional FAQ, which gives a simple comparison between imperative and functional style, although to really understand it you'd need to learn a bit more about at least one of the functional languages.
Just about any language allows you to implement simple pure mathematical functions - as you say, "a simple equation would have unlimited portablity" - but very few languages allow you to construct entire programs that way. None of the mainstream languages (PHP, Perl, Python, Ruby, Java, C, C++, BASIC, etc.) support functional programming to that extent. The languages which do support it are ones like Haskell, ML, OCaml, and Scheme. The reason I say that functional programming is not commercially applicable is not because there aren't commercial applications of it, but because these languages are hardly being used at all commercially. There's a bit of a catch-22 there, because people don't know them because they aren't being used, and they aren't being used because people don't know them.
Here's your algorithm implemented in the Haskell language. If you want to try running it, download and install Glasgow Haskell (on Debian, you can do "apt-get install ghc6"), and run "ghci" to get an interactive Haskell prompt.
-- define a list of p values
let ps = [0.825, 0.8868, 1, 0.8542, 0.8889, 0.8, 0.9118, 0.95, 0.9487, 1, 1, 0.8333, 0.8197, 0.6383, 1, 0.8727, 0.875, 0.7879, 0.8667, 0.8636]
-- define a function which averages a list of numbers.
-- The 'fromIntegral' is needed because Haskell is a strongly, statically typed language
let avg xs = sum xs / fromIntegral (length xs)
-- work out the average of all the p's
let avgP = avg ps
-- define the function, f(p)
-- this would usually be written on multiple lines, but the interactive shell doesn't allow that (?)
let z p = x / y - 1 where x = p - avgP; y = 1 - avgP
-- Finally, "map" the function f over the list ps, giving a list of results.
map z ps
The output from this is:
[-1.4721965172036693,-0.9523008328426015,0.0,-1.22 65500126188285,-0.9346344746361576,-1.682510305375 6212,-0.7419870446706487,-0.4206275763439058,-0.43 156389332884704,0.0,0.0,-1.4023723395305803,-1.516 783040296123,-3.0428198872718117,0.0,-1.0709178093 715828,-1.0515689408597635,-1.7843021788508464,-1. 1213931185328516,-1.1474720282661737]
The above is oriented towards experimenting with it at the command line. For a real program, you'd probably ultimately package it into a single function that takes an input list and produces an output list, e.g.:
-- repeating the avg definition for the sake of completeness
let avg xs = sum xs / fromIntegral (length xs)
let f ps = map z ps
where avgP = avg ps;
z p = x / y - 1
where x = p - avgP;
y = 1 - avgP
("f" is defined over multiple lines for readability, the way it would be written in a program file, although the indentation didn't make it through Slashdot; to enter it interactively, you'd have to do it on one line.)
This last version defines your entire formula quite clearly, for anyone who knows functional programming. That's one answer to your question of how to express these things mathematically: if you express them using high-level programming languages, it has the benefit being concise and unambiguous, but also checked by the compiler, so if it works you know you haven't made any mistake
That should be "Torture is bad, mmmkay?"
Math and dreams are fine with me, I'm into functional programming myself, which (right now) is one of the least commercially applicable branches of programming imaginable. The only reason I brought up the dotcom stuff is that you were talking about improving on Google, and my point is just that despite the marketing hype, companies like Google are really doing more like high-end IT than anything deeper, because the deeper stuff takes decades to develop. I could be wrong, but what you're describing sounds more like it would be the latter.
I read what you wrote, but you made it sound so general that for all I know you were following advice you read on Slashdot. My advice to anyone reading, not just you, is to get professional help with those exercises.
The examples you give could be described as expert systems, of a sort, relying partly on socially-produced data. I think there's little doubt that such systems will proliferate, and at some point it could start making sense to tie them together. In a way, the "semantic web" is working towards supporting that sort of thing. But this approach is at odds with almost everything that's succeeded on the commercial Internet so far: it's all been about, essentially, exploiting simple business models (Amazon) or clever tricks (Google), and leveraging them to the hilt. That's what the short-term VC-funded approach to product- and company-building is good at.
I think your idea is the sort of thing which could evolve over time, but is unlikely to be built by any one team unless they start with a whole bunch of existing systems that are ripe for integrating. Of course, if I'm wrong and you end up founding a billion-dollar dotcom, please post a Slashdot article about it so I can kick myself!
BTW, if you're working on AI-like applications, I hope you've read PAIP. And of course, Norvig's at Google now...
I went to a chiropractor for my own computer-work related back problems. After initial treatment for the immediate pain, he referred me to a physical therapist - they're trained to help you fix the cause. Like the other posters mentioned, the right sort of exercise should work wonders, but a physical therapist will be able to give you the right sort of exercises based on your particular issues.
You haven't given enough information to go on. Points 2 & 3 are far too general. No offense, but point 2 reminds me of sales execs who ask software developers to "just give me a single button that does what I want". It's all very well to talk about a "single, simple UI" to do something very complicated, but it's something entirely different to design and implement such a UI. Think of existing applications and tell us which ones do something like your point 2. If there are any, then how is your system going to be better? If there aren't, why do you think that is? Point 3 suffers from similar problems.
You'd be better off just giving people a menu of search algorithms, and letting them pick which ones they want to use. (Maybe after a while, you could use Amazon-style "people who searched for X found good results using algorithm Y" logic to help automate algorithm-picking, but how often have you actually bought a product suggested to you that way?)
And those are edited...