Obviously a deep and complex question. You can split people into races using the method of your choice, or even construct hierarchies (Ethnic Jews are separate from the French, but Ashkenazi Jews have a different genetic composition than other Jewish people, etc.) The question becomes even more complicated when one considers offspring from two different races, and then consider a country like the Philippines.
Which is all well and good, but that is not the important question.
>>But these variations do not match up very well with conventional (cultural) concepts of race,which are >>often based simply on skin color or other physical attributes, and sometimes on national origin.
Casual cultural definitions are not meaningless; while I might even be completely deluded as to my race (I could think I'm an Ashkenazi Jew while I'm actually a complete mixture of every race on Earth), there is definitely a statistically valid correlation between cultural definitions and genetic variability.
This has real practical value for people's lives. If I were an Ashkenazi Jew, I'd definitely get tested for Tay-Sachs even if maybe my genetic makeup is actually closer to a Sephartic. Or, consider the case of genetic diversity in pharmacology: some drugs are found to have severe ADEs in a small percentage of the population. The percentage is low enough the FDA approves it. However, as case studies come in, analysis reveals that the severe ADE is caused by a mutation that is very rare in the general population, but quite common in (~25%), say, the Navajo. You work as a pharmacist in Tuba City. A man comes in and asks for the drug. He's speaking Navajo. What do you do?
As much as it's politically correct to claim that all people are equal, and race is all an illusion, the pharmacist would be negligent (and rightly so) if he didn't at least warn the man about the ADE, and probably shouldn't dispense it at all (finding an alternative drug if possible).
Our body of knowledge of cases like this are only going to grow as we map out locuses of various genes and mutations.
If you're going to play the history card, you should check your facts first.
The GP was absolutely correct that in Europe people would drink watered down beer instead of water to escape infections. If you've read the System of the World trilogy by Neal Stephenson, there's a scene in which this comes into play.
>>So if you start mucking around with the genetic code of your kids... Whos genetic code are you passing on?
Well, I'll give you two choices... or, rather, four.
We have two chromosomes to choose from, both for the father and for the mother.
And 16 if you want to allow reduplicated genes.
And they're 100% you.
BTW, posts like yours are exactly why science should stay out of the philosophy business. Eugenics and social darwinism was bad enough, K THX. Science is (and should be) only concerned with empirical knowledge.
>>Genetically, we have a concept called races. >No, we don't. Race is cultural, and is of little interest genetically.
Really? Explain that to my black friend in 8th grade as he suffered during a sickle-cell anemia crisis.
I'm sure he'd be happy to know that he can't have a disease that affects primarily African-Americans, because there are no genetic differences in races.
Or to my Chinese roommate who lacks alcohol dehydrogenase enzymes in his liver and so has one drink and turns bright red. Embarassing for a guy who was in a frat that prized heavy drinking skills very highly. The enzyme deficiency has a huge penetration in Asia, something like up to 70% in some countries, a couple percent in Germany, 0% in Ireland. Go figure.
The concept that race is solely a cultural construct is mere wishful thinking: "I wish there were no genetic differences in people, because then there'd be no racism, and we'd all live in a world filled with flowers and ponies." No, as we discover more about genetic diversity we learn which genes have greater tendencies in certain ethnic groups. This is NOT an excuse for racism -- the concept that one person can be somehow metaphysically superior than another due to skin pigmentation is absurd -- but denying uncontroversial science for political reasons is troubling as well.
The money placed on hold in this case was a PAYMENT, not a deposit, which means it did nothing to his ability to eat and pay rent. At most he had to wait a few days before balancing his checkbook.
Sounds like an aged, pissed off hippie to me ("We're a product of the 60s"), just blowing smoke. So to speak.
Deposits get placed on hold all the time as well. If you expect large checks to clear instantly, you'll be in for a disappointment. Especially if you use an ATM. If you do it in person, you usually get your money much faster, especially if you have them call the home bank and verify the signature.
The first thing I thought of when I read this was the little red book story, which I noticed never got a retraction on Slashdot (at least as far as I saw, I don't read religiously).
Even after contacting the professor who claimed the student's innocence, the story still fell apart a week later under scrutiny.
Huh, it's certainly interesting to see myself labelled a ID Creationist with an "active and horribly illogical attempt to defend [my] belief". Whereas, I'm rather not. I instead think that it is possible to state ID in such a way that it is a scientific theory that can be proven or disproven, instead of the nebulous, non-scientific way it is usually framed.
>>As is the reaction of the white world to the Genocide of the Aztecs (They >>weren't Christian, so they weren't human), The Native Americans (same as above), >> the Ashkenazy Jews of Germany & East Europe (Holocaust denial), their >>blubbering hatred towards any and all "Non-Aryans", their ridicule of all >>non-christian cultures, and the spread of their religion through subversion and >>outright lies.
On the contrary. I think Cortez was a brutal mass murderer, and parts of all of the world's history is incredibly tragic. British East India Company included. Unlike you, I deny no atrocities, no genocides. However, as far as genocides go, communism is #1. Yay, communism.
And again, I find your casual attitude towards the mass slaughter of innocent life extraordinarily troubling. Communism is the single greatest murderer of people the world has ever seen (in the 20th century, try 100M on for size, 65M in china alone).
>>When capital and the ruling classes apologize for
I'm neither capital... well, since I'm president of a 1 person company, I guess I AM capital. But proletariat as well. As Marx would say, my history is a history of class conflict within myself. It's very tragic.
Hopefully, you'll someday see how horrifically wrong Marx was.
>>Like I said, the race hater finally reveals himself.
*The* race hater? Have you been waiting in the wings at slashdot, trolling to get someone to respond to your implausable beliefs? Sorry, I was just taking a guess based on the information you provided. Given the current dialectic coming out of Iran, I made that my first guess.
No, on the contrary. I hate no races, nor any general classes of people, be they rich... poor... or even American. I do dislike ideas, communism and fascism notably and primarily, and find individuals contemptable who can somehow believe in communism by denying all truth. I find your twin statements of calling me a racist, and calling all Americans idiots to be a particularly amusing example of the dialectical materialism of Marx. (If you're not following along, here's a hint -- most of your statements have been racist.) Deny all truth; truth is only what serves your purpose; might makes right.
Unfortunately for you, I live in a free society, so I won't get shot for speaking the truth.
I also find it amusing that you think that communism is the solution for malnutrition. Have you read what happens when communism is implemented? FIFTY MILLION PEOPLE IN CHINA STARVED TO DEATH. MILLIONS STARVED TO DEATH in the USSR. North Korea is starving to death. More would have died if the UNITED BLOODY STATES hadn't shipped millions of tons of grain to the USSR. If I recall correctly, America gave grain to India as well in the 60s to stop a famine there.
All of those issues you raised have nothing to deal with my main point, which is that you deny the horrors of communism. Admit that Stalin outshone even yourself (you claim to be Ghengis Khan, after all) in the millions he killed, that he is the #1 killer of all time.
>>Ooooooo! Whitey wants to enlighten >>me now is it? Big White man wants >>to convert me to western >>capitalism, the schizophrenic twin >>brother of christian savagery.
Wow, that's certainly a, um... interesting way of reacting to facts about the mass murder of innocent lives.
So your answer is that you will keep believing in communism, regardless of the millions it has murdered, because you think that a person named "Shaka" is white. It's certainly a... novel... belief system, I'll give you at least that much credit.
>>So the redneck finally reveals >>himself from the veneer of >>intelligence. Do you think I'm >>stupid?
If you're expecting me to say no out of curtesy, I think my curtesy reaches an end when someone denies the mass murder of millions of innocent lives.
>>Do you think we don't see beyond >>your half-truths, outright lies >>and propaganda?
Do you live in the 80s? In some sort of dystopian soviet bloc country whose youth was raised on a diet of propaganda?
I love you, you're awesome. Please, speak more. You're vastly entertaining in a campy sort of way. Please, tell me your life story and everything.
>>Do you think we buy into whatever >> garbage spouted by Fox News and >>the lie-machines of Hollywood?
I guess it depends if you watch Fox News, doesn't it? Do you get it wherever it is that you live?
As for the lie machines of Hollywood... if you knew anything at all they constantly focus on the Genocide of Hitler to the exclusion of all others. I don't think I've ever seen a single movie dealing with the millions upon millions Stalin slaughtered. On the other hand, we have Schindler's list, the Diary of Anne Frank, and a thousand WWII movies with evil Nazis and heroic soviets. Please, enlighten me with some movies dealing with the Stalin genocide, since you seem to be an expert on the "Hollywood Lie-Machine".
>>Do you westerners think we are so >>inferior that we don't know the >>truth
Honestly, I don't know where you live. I'm kinda curious now! Tell me, what kind of country raises its people with the kind of vehemence, hatred, and blindness to the facts that you seem to possess?
No, no. Let me guess. 1) Iran 2) Pakistan? 3) Any of the other *stans.
Any of these would make sense because they'd want to raise physicists with an irrational hatred toward the west. It's rather scary, actually.
Oh, wait, you think we're contemptuous of slavic people. Hmm..
Croatia, maybe?
>>Please, don't waste your time >>trying to "educate" me. I'd >>rather just be shot than listen >>to your mind-numbing drivel.
Oh, what an ironic choice of words for someone who denies Stalin's genocide.
Ok, tell me which of my statements is lies. So far you have just engaged in an ad hominem attack. "Whitey" "Big White Man" "Arayan Supremacy".
No, communism is the single greatest murderer of innocents the world has ever seen.
You said... "Murdered few million under misguided regime of Stalin."
WTF? Please tell me this was said in some sort of morbid tongue and cheek manner. Or do you actually believe this?? Are you like a holocaust denier, but for communists? Try 20,000,000 innocents killed by Stalin, mainly by his own hand. He beat Hitler hands down. (Does one get gold medals in genocide?) The Communist Revolution in China has killed 65,000,000 since the revolution started. It depends on if you count starving your own people to death because you believe in a retarded philosophy like communism as better than, or worse than, sending them to death camps to be executed, in Siberia.
Educate yourself... please. Learn to think for yourself. For the sake of everyone on this planet. People willing to lightly dismiss the largest mass murderer the world has ever seen are not just deluded, but scarily so.
>>In general most modern applications are not expressed clearly or simply to >>normal every day people and programmers or advanced/expert users (i.e. much of >>the Slashdot crowd) simply make fun of them. Why should we expect any better >>when we don't understand something? Pot, meet kettle.
I majored in computer science with a minor in writing. I hold nothing but contempt for people that take a simple idea and make it complicated. For people that 'understand' a complex concept but cannot express it with less complexity, again I hold low regard for their intellect.
I flip it around see it rather as a challenge. If a person asks me, say, what the advantages are of a hyperthreading chip, and I found myself unable to reduce the issue into a correct, meaningful, and jargon-free response, I'd see that as a sign that I didn't understand it well enough, and would hit the books again. Defending a baroque explanation of divs, grads, and undefined variables to someone who obviously hasn't taken basic physics with this:
"I can only report the truth. I do not have the ability to explain it better than Einstein, Bergmann and Wheeler themselves (Covariant 4-vector formalism is their work mainly)... This person is clearly ignorant about many things, and too arrogant to admit it and try to learn something interesting and relevant to the discussion. (American? Nah! That's just a stereotype)."
is indefensible. Again, giving an explanation that only someone who already knows the answer can understand is no explanation at all. Perhaps you would call it a proof, or some such, but certainly not an explanation.
>>My Jargon vocabulary was highly limited until I entered the business world. >> At University we used the specific, word that concisely and precisely >>describes what we are talking about. The Epidermis -> skin point you use is >>actually a good example as skin generally covers multiple layers as aspects, >>while epidermis is precise.
Do you really think that you should tell people to apply a creme to their 'epidermis' instead of their 'skin'? Is Mrs Jones at risk of pulling back her epidermis and dermis so she can apply her antifungal creme to her hypodermis? Hey, you said "skin", after all.
No. Use terminology only when the difference is important, and if you must, define your terms before unleashing them. Call it a bruise instead of a hematoma, so they don't get a heart attack thinking they have cancer.
Even when my fiancee is explaining things like pharmokinetics to me, as long I stop her from using terms like AUC, MEC, MTC, etc. I can understand her lectures.
The key defining factor, of course, is your audience. If I am conducting technology training with K-12 teachers, which I do on a fairly regular basis, I have two options: 1) Use big fancy words to make myself look and feel smart, or 2) Express the exact same concept in words they understand and can use. There's a reason why I get universally good reviews on my workshops: I don't have an ego to get in the way of a clear explanation.
It doesn't just apply to the general public either. At my university, people applying for professorial positions and people giving defenses of their theses wuold generally talk for an hour or so on their respective areas of expertise, and then would be asked questions. Almost always, the first question was: explain your thesis in three sentences or less. If the person stumbled, or even worse, couldn't answer, they were almost sure to not get the position (graduating students were obviously given a little more leniency, but at the same time the dept chair would tell them they'd better damn well have an answer for that question ready when asked).
This is a fairly common trend from what I've seen. Some say, for example, the genius of Einstein was not in his theory of relativity, but in his E=mc^2.
A critical part of the full understanding of a concept is the ability to express it simply.
As soon as you use jargon, you lose your audience unless they also understand the specialized vocabulary of your field. With such a simple question they are blatantly not physicists, so you're just (perhaps intentionally) talking over their heads, making yourself sound smart./shrug
Not a big deal, most professors do it, but it's a bad habit, and one I hope academia will someday break. My fiancee is at UCSF, so I have to constantly tell her to use plain English. Skin works just as well as Epidermis, honey. She works with the public, so she has a more critical need to break that habit than most academes.
Just recalling my high school physics, if I'd have written it (and you were responding to a troll, IMO), I'd just have said that all electrical waves are electromagnetic in nature. Maybe talked about the history of ether, and how the electrical and magnetic components provide the medium for each other.
Perhaps the worst field is Philosophy, though. Philosophers are especially bad at it. Or especially good, depending on your perspective, of taking something that can be stated clearly and simply, and loading it up with propositions and jargon until only they know what they're arguing about. And sometimes not even then. Kant took an idea that could be stated in a sentence, expanded it out to hundreds of pages, and ended with something not even his other contemporaries could understand. Ditto Wittgenstein (whose thesis Bertrand Russell couldn't understand), ditto Hegel, etc.
Not a criticism of you, but a criticism of your defense of your post.
>>The older I get the more I come to believe that democracy is fundementally flawed.
'Democracy is the worst form of government, with the exception of all others.' -- Winston Churchill.
I think time has shown him right.
>>The majority of voters are to stupid to truly consider the results of their voting
Hmm, indeed.
>>Of course with just 1 vote every four years how can I make my views known?
Polls. Clinton was a master of telling people what they wanted to hear, as determined by the polls.
It's debatable if that's a better system than someone like Bush, who sticks to his guns. On one side, you're a leaf that blows in the wind. On the other, you're not getting as much democracy for your buck.
>>Just you could chose between a communist and a communist, not at all of course like the US where you can choose between a capatalist and a capatalist.
I was about to say, you could move to the European Union, since they are unabashedly socialistic. But then I saw you live in Denmark.
Personally, give me any day, a country where none of the politicians are socialists.
>>Same with imigration, if you ever complaint about illegal immigrants then you vote for indentification since that is the only way to find them.
Not true. Countries have been deadling with immigration for ages without compulsory ID cards. And certainly without biometric cataloguing of the entire country.
>>Yes the world will be less fun wheneverone carries an ID all the time. It could even be very dangerous BUT I don't think we can avoid it unless we learn to accept the costs of freedom.
I think that if there's widespread rioting / protests / noncompliance, the policy will be scrapped.
Life on a campus is like an Oasis of technology. I loved my time at UC San Diego.
Now I travel all over the country doing tech stuff. And I use a 1GB Lexar JumpDrive as my baby. Yes, I have an FTP with all my necessary files on it, yes I email my files to myself as a backup. Yes, my cell phone doubles as a 128kpbs through Verizon. But when you're in a hotel and you need to work on your files and then go to a Kinko's to print em out, you had better have a USB drive.
Seriously, whenever I book a hotel I always filter based on hotels that offer in-room ethernet. About half of them lie, or have something wrong with them. For example, the hotel only has internet on a crappy computer in their lobby, and you can't even use it because some chick is typing emails to her boyfriend for two hours, and there's not even a spare eth outlet to plug into (Indy). Or they charge you (sometimes ridiculous amounts) to get on the net (Vegas). Or they have wireless, but their damn AP doesn't work and the clerk at the front desk thinks he knows better than you how 802.11 works (Tahoe), or you get stuck in a city where the entire city is on a 1Mbps microwave connection that goes down whenever it rains (Crescent City) and Verizon doesn't even bother supporting 1x connections there, or you're in a city where Kinko's net connection is slower than a 14.4 modem (every city in America), or you want to print from a USB drive in the back area instead of on their for-hire printers since it costs about a third as much, or you're in South Carolina and you get about 1kbps through the in-hotel ethernet because some jackass is downloading leet warez on bittorrent (Sumter).
High speed internet is good, but there's no way I could call myself a professional and leave home without a USB drive.
>Define an ordering "simplicity" on the family of explanations as E E' iff E >contains fewer postulates than E' ("fewer" isn't necessarily well-defined, but >hey). Then assume the least element of the family of explanations for a given >multifunction to be true until other data presents itself.
As I said, there's an entire set of problems by which the more complex/convoluted/whatever solution is the correct answer, so concluding that one is true (even using the scientific, not the mathematic, meaning of the word) is a logically invalid argument.
As I said, it should be used solely to set the burden of proof for an idea.
But overall, it smacks solely as a way for people to lend their "everyone knows X is true" some vague scientific/logical justification, since determining what is simpler is pretty much in the eye of the beholder. I'm not sure what belief the French Academy had that they rejected the theory of meteorites on the ground of, but whatever it was, I'm sure it was "simpler" in some way or another.
Reasoning by Occam's Razor, i.e. treating it as a law is a fallacy.
Proof that Occam's Razor is not a valid argument.
Occam's Razor: Given A and B, such that A or B is true, but not both, such that A is "simpler than" B -> A is true.
Given two sets of solutions to problems in the world, one set contains the simple answers, the other contains the corresponding complicated answers. If in any case the complicated answer is correct, then Occam's Razor is an invalid form of argumentation.
If you have any experience with computer science, you know that sometimes during debugging the complicated answer is the correct one. Or, in science, the French Academy of Science rejected the notion of meteorites for many years due to reasoning from Occam's Razor.
Hence Occam's Razor can not and should not be used as if it were a logical law.
Occam's Razor can/should only be used as a standard to determine the burden or amount of proof of a theory. If a paper claims that bigfoot is real, I'll need to see a lot more proof than if a paper claims they've discovered a new kind of bear.
Bugs the hell out of me when people claim something is true due to Occam's Razor.
Police can currently do that. When stopped by campus police at UC San Diego, they demanded ID. I asked about the law that allowed them to demand ID when walking around campus, and they gave me a rather long winded explaination that sounded somewhat reasonable (in the sense that they were probably right, not that the law was reasonable). I asked them then if they could demand ID of people swimming at the pool (which is where I was going), and they said "Don't be ridiculous". So, yeah. In summary, any place you could be reasonably expected to have ID, you have to have ID.
Also, in San Diego, you have to carry $20 on you at all times. Rarely enforced except in the case where they think you're homeless. IANAL, and it may just be hearsay, so that it with a grain of salt.
I personally wonder about people too lazy to get an ID card. How is it possible to function in America without a Driver's License (or State ID card if you're not a driver)? You can't get credit cards, drive cars, travel by any means whatsoever, even by foot, work (in San Diego, you need an ID to show you're not in the country illegally, and a SSID for taxes), go to clubs / buy alchohol, withdraw cash from a bank...
Essentially, if you're not carrying papers, you're not a person in America any more. Been musing a bit on this recently since my fiancee's wallet got stolen.
Uh, they made a real common problem in neural nets. Success rate on test data != actual success rate.
81% success when you run it back on your test data is meaningless. In fact, any number is meaningless when you apply it to your test data. I could get 100% success just by spitting back out if the name of a movie matches a name in the test set.
Here's the relevant quote: "[t]esting the system with known data from previous years, we have established an approximately 81% typical accuracy rate on a year-by-year basis."
The test is if they can successfully predict future winners, which they haven't done. All they've done is make predictions. Puccini will do badly, etc.
Oh, those guys. They're probably just using marketing hyberbole to see the ultimate luxury item -- DRINK THE BEST SCOTCH WITH THE BEST ROCKS: MILLION YEAR OLD ICE (supplied limited).
Do you really think you're going to replace religious thought with atheist ascendency with a site like "Religious Freaks"? Yes, having posters of the Virgin Mary wanted for arson and boxing photos of Jesus is the best way to prove the superior, rational nature of the atheist stance.
Slashdot Mirror
>>What is race?
Obviously a deep and complex question. You can split people into races using the method of your choice, or even construct hierarchies (Ethnic Jews are separate from the French, but Ashkenazi Jews have a different genetic composition than other Jewish people, etc.) The question becomes even more complicated when one considers offspring from two different races, and then consider a country like the Philippines.
Which is all well and good, but that is not the important question.
>>But these variations do not match up very well with conventional (cultural) concepts of race,which are
>>often based simply on skin color or other physical attributes, and sometimes on national origin.
Casual cultural definitions are not meaningless; while I might even be completely deluded as to my race (I could think I'm an Ashkenazi Jew while I'm actually a complete mixture of every race on Earth), there is definitely a statistically valid correlation between cultural definitions and genetic variability.
This has real practical value for people's lives. If I were an Ashkenazi Jew, I'd definitely get tested for Tay-Sachs even if maybe my genetic makeup is actually closer to a Sephartic. Or, consider the case of genetic diversity in pharmacology: some drugs are found to have severe ADEs in a small percentage of the population. The percentage is low enough the FDA approves it. However, as case studies come in, analysis reveals that the severe ADE is caused by a mutation that is very rare in the general population, but quite common in (~25%), say, the Navajo. You work as a pharmacist in Tuba City. A man comes in and asks for the drug. He's speaking Navajo. What do you do?
As much as it's politically correct to claim that all people are equal, and race is all an illusion, the pharmacist would be negligent (and rightly so) if he didn't at least warn the man about the ADE, and probably shouldn't dispense it at all (finding an alternative drug if possible).
Our body of knowledge of cases like this are only going to grow as we map out locuses of various genes and mutations.
If you're going to play the history card, you should check your facts first.
The GP was absolutely correct that in Europe people would drink watered down beer instead of water to escape infections. If you've read the System of the World trilogy by Neal Stephenson, there's a scene in which this comes into play.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_beer
>>So if you start mucking around with the genetic code of your kids... Whos genetic code are you passing on?
Well, I'll give you two choices... or, rather, four.
We have two chromosomes to choose from, both for the father and for the mother.
And 16 if you want to allow reduplicated genes.
And they're 100% you.
BTW, posts like yours are exactly why science should stay out of the philosophy business. Eugenics and social darwinism was bad enough, K THX. Science is (and should be) only concerned with empirical knowledge.
>>Genetically, we have a concept called races.
G enetics
e
>No, we don't. Race is cultural, and is of little interest genetically.
Really? Explain that to my black friend in 8th grade as he suffered during a sickle-cell anemia crisis.
I'm sure he'd be happy to know that he can't have a disease that affects primarily African-Americans, because there are no genetic differences in races.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sickle-cell_disease#
Or to my Chinese roommate who lacks alcohol dehydrogenase enzymes in his liver and so has one drink and turns bright red. Embarassing for a guy who was in a frat that prized heavy drinking skills very highly. The enzyme deficiency has a huge penetration in Asia, something like up to 70% in some countries, a couple percent in Germany, 0% in Ireland. Go figure.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcohol_dehydrogenas
Or the Jewish student organization that sponsored a free screening day for Tay-Sachs.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tay-Sachs_disease
The concept that race is solely a cultural construct is mere wishful thinking: "I wish there were no genetic differences in people, because then there'd be no racism, and we'd all live in a world filled with flowers and ponies." No, as we discover more about genetic diversity we learn which genes have greater tendencies in certain ethnic groups. This is NOT an excuse for racism -- the concept that one person can be somehow metaphysically superior than another due to skin pigmentation is absurd -- but denying uncontroversial science for political reasons is troubling as well.
Deposits get placed on hold all the time.
The money placed on hold in this case was a PAYMENT, not a deposit, which means it did nothing to his ability to eat and pay rent. At most he had to wait a few days before balancing his checkbook.
Sounds like an aged, pissed off hippie to me ("We're a product of the 60s"), just blowing smoke. So to speak.
Deposits get placed on hold all the time as well. If you expect large checks to clear instantly, you'll be in for a disappointment. Especially if you use an ATM. If you do it in person, you usually get your money much faster, especially if you have them call the home bank and verify the signature.
Yep. =)
The first thing I thought of when I read this was the little red book story, which I noticed never got a retraction on Slashdot (at least as far as I saw, I don't read religiously).
Even after contacting the professor who claimed the student's innocence, the story still fell apart a week later under scrutiny.
Huh, it's certainly interesting to see myself labelled a ID Creationist with an "active and horribly illogical attempt to defend [my] belief". Whereas, I'm rather not. I instead think that it is possible to state ID in such a way that it is a scientific theory that can be proven or disproven, instead of the nebulous, non-scientific way it is usually framed.
No, I just meant the game sucked, and they used all those adjectives to describe IT, too.
> A new AAA world class game...
> a pool of 100 super talented developers...
> a new super team...
> an amazing next generation title...
Sorry, Lionhead forfeited the right to all those adjectives when it made Black and White.
>>As is the reaction of the white world to the Genocide of the Aztecs (They
p ortations
>>weren't Christian, so they weren't human), The Native Americans (same as above),
>> the Ashkenazy Jews of Germany & East Europe (Holocaust denial), their
>>blubbering hatred towards any and all "Non-Aryans", their ridicule of all
>>non-christian cultures, and the spread of their religion through subversion and
>>outright lies.
On the contrary. I think Cortez was a brutal mass murderer, and parts of all of the world's history is incredibly tragic. British East India Company included. Unlike you, I deny no atrocities, no genocides. However, as far as genocides go, communism is #1. Yay, communism.
And again, I find your casual attitude towards the mass slaughter of innocent life extraordinarily troubling. Communism is the single greatest murderer of people the world has ever seen (in the 20th century, try 100M on for size, 65M in china alone).
>>When capital and the ruling classes apologize for
I'm neither capital... well, since I'm president of a 1 person company, I guess I AM capital. But proletariat as well. As Marx would say, my history is a history of class conflict within myself. It's very tragic.
Hopefully, you'll someday see how horrifically wrong Marx was.
>>Like I said, the race hater finally reveals himself.
*The* race hater? Have you been waiting in the wings at slashdot, trolling to get someone to respond to your implausable beliefs? Sorry, I was just taking a guess based on the information you provided. Given the current dialectic coming out of Iran, I made that my first guess.
No, on the contrary. I hate no races, nor any general classes of people, be they rich... poor... or even American. I do dislike ideas, communism and fascism notably and primarily, and find individuals contemptable who can somehow believe in communism by denying all truth. I find your twin statements of calling me a racist, and calling all Americans idiots to be a particularly amusing example of the dialectical materialism of Marx. (If you're not following along, here's a hint -- most of your statements have been racist.) Deny all truth; truth is only what serves your purpose; might makes right.
Unfortunately for you, I live in a free society, so I won't get shot for speaking the truth.
Read this section, and explain to me your thought process when you read it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalin#Purges_and_de
I also find it amusing that you think that communism is the solution for malnutrition. Have you read what happens when communism is implemented? FIFTY MILLION PEOPLE IN CHINA STARVED TO DEATH. MILLIONS STARVED TO DEATH in the USSR. North Korea is starving to death. More would have died if the UNITED BLOODY STATES hadn't shipped millions of tons of grain to the USSR. If I recall correctly, America gave grain to India as well in the 60s to stop a famine there.
All of those issues you raised have nothing to deal with my main point, which is that you deny the horrors of communism. Admit that Stalin outshone even yourself (you claim to be Ghengis Khan, after all) in the millions he killed, that he is the #1 killer of all time.
>>Ooooooo! Whitey wants to enlighten
4 783262)
>>me now is it? Big White man wants
>>to convert me to western
>>capitalism, the schizophrenic twin
>>brother of christian savagery.
Wow, that's certainly a, um... interesting way of reacting to facts about the mass murder of innocent lives.
So your answer is that you will keep believing in communism, regardless of the millions it has murdered, because you think that a person named "Shaka" is white. It's certainly a... novel... belief system, I'll give you at least that much credit.
>>So the redneck finally reveals
>>himself from the veneer of
>>intelligence. Do you think I'm
>>stupid?
If you're expecting me to say no out of curtesy, I think my curtesy reaches an end when someone denies the mass murder of millions of innocent lives.
>>Do you think we don't see beyond
>>your half-truths, outright lies
>>and propaganda?
Do you live in the 80s? In some sort of dystopian soviet bloc country whose youth was raised on a diet of propaganda?
I love you, you're awesome. Please, speak more. You're vastly entertaining in a campy sort of way. Please, tell me your life story and everything.
>>Do you think we buy into whatever
>> garbage spouted by Fox News and
>>the lie-machines of Hollywood?
I guess it depends if you watch Fox News, doesn't it? Do you get it wherever it is that you live?
As for the lie machines of Hollywood... if you knew anything at all they constantly focus on the Genocide of Hitler to the exclusion of all others. I don't think I've ever seen a single movie dealing with the millions upon millions Stalin slaughtered. On the other hand, we have Schindler's list, the Diary of Anne Frank, and a thousand WWII movies with evil Nazis and heroic soviets. Please, enlighten me with some movies dealing with the Stalin genocide, since you seem to be an expert on the "Hollywood Lie-Machine".
>>Do you westerners think we are so
>>inferior that we don't know the
>>truth
Honestly, I don't know where you live. I'm kinda curious now! Tell me, what kind of country raises its people with the kind of vehemence, hatred, and blindness to the facts that you seem to possess?
No, no. Let me guess.
1) Iran
2) Pakistan?
3) Any of the other *stans.
Any of these would make sense because they'd want to raise physicists with an irrational hatred toward the west. It's rather scary, actually.
Oh, wait, you think we're contemptuous of slavic people. Hmm..
Croatia, maybe?
>>Please, don't waste your time
>>trying to "educate" me. I'd
>>rather just be shot than listen
>>to your mind-numbing drivel.
Oh, what an ironic choice of words for someone who denies Stalin's genocide.
Ok, tell me which of my statements is lies. So far you have just engaged in an ad hominem attack. "Whitey" "Big White Man" "Arayan Supremacy".
But, they don't bug me too much. As a wise man once said, ad hominem attacks are the last refuge of the truly ignorant.
(http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=178269&cid=1
No, communism is the single greatest murderer of innocents the world has ever seen.
You said...
"Murdered few million under misguided regime of Stalin."
WTF? Please tell me this was said in some sort of morbid tongue and cheek manner. Or do you actually believe this?? Are you like a holocaust denier, but for communists? Try 20,000,000 innocents killed by Stalin, mainly by his own hand. He beat Hitler hands down. (Does one get gold medals in genocide?) The Communist Revolution in China has killed 65,000,000 since the revolution started. It depends on if you count starving your own people to death because you believe in a retarded philosophy like communism as better than, or worse than, sending them to death camps to be executed, in Siberia.
http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/atrox.htm
http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/tyrants.htm
Educate yourself... please. Learn to think for yourself. For the sake of everyone on this planet. People willing to lightly dismiss the largest mass murderer the world has ever seen are not just deluded, but scarily so.
>>In general most modern applications are not expressed clearly or simply to
>>normal every day people and programmers or advanced/expert users (i.e. much of
>>the Slashdot crowd) simply make fun of them. Why should we expect any better
>>when we don't understand something? Pot, meet kettle.
I majored in computer science with a minor in writing. I hold nothing but contempt for people that take a simple idea and make it complicated. For people that 'understand' a complex concept but cannot express it with less complexity, again I hold low regard for their intellect.
I flip it around see it rather as a challenge. If a person asks me, say, what the advantages are of a hyperthreading chip, and I found myself unable to reduce the issue into a correct, meaningful, and jargon-free response, I'd see that as a sign that I didn't understand it well enough, and would hit the books again. Defending a baroque explanation of divs, grads, and undefined variables to someone who obviously hasn't taken basic physics with this:
"I can only report the truth. I do not have the ability to explain it better than Einstein, Bergmann and Wheeler themselves (Covariant 4-vector formalism is their work mainly)... This person is clearly ignorant about many things, and too arrogant to admit it and try to learn something interesting and relevant to the discussion. (American? Nah! That's just a stereotype)."
is indefensible. Again, giving an explanation that only someone who already knows the answer can understand is no explanation at all. Perhaps you would call it a proof, or some such, but certainly not an explanation.
>>My Jargon vocabulary was highly limited until I entered the business world.
>> At University we used the specific, word that concisely and precisely
>>describes what we are talking about. The Epidermis -> skin point you use is
>>actually a good example as skin generally covers multiple layers as aspects,
>>while epidermis is precise.
Do you really think that you should tell people to apply a creme to their 'epidermis' instead of their 'skin'? Is Mrs Jones at risk of pulling back her epidermis and dermis so she can apply her antifungal creme to her hypodermis? Hey, you said "skin", after all.
No. Use terminology only when the difference is important, and if you must, define your terms before unleashing them. Call it a bruise instead of a hematoma, so they don't get a heart attack thinking they have cancer.
Even when my fiancee is explaining things like pharmokinetics to me, as long I stop her from using terms like AUC, MEC, MTC, etc. I can understand her lectures.
The key defining factor, of course, is your audience. If I am conducting technology training with K-12 teachers, which I do on a fairly regular basis, I have two options: 1) Use big fancy words to make myself look and feel smart, or 2) Express the exact same concept in words they understand and can use. There's a reason why I get universally good reviews on my workshops: I don't have an ego to get in the way of a clear explanation.
It doesn't just apply to the general public either. At my university, people applying for professorial positions and people giving defenses of their theses wuold generally talk for an hour or so on their respective areas of expertise, and then would be asked questions. Almost always, the first question was: explain your thesis in three sentences or less. If the person stumbled, or even worse, couldn't answer, they were almost sure to not get the position (graduating students were obviously given a little more leniency, but at the same time the dept chair would tell them they'd better damn well have an answer for that question ready when asked).
This is a fairly common trend from what I've seen. Some say, for example, the genius of Einstein was not in his theory of relativity, but in his E=mc^2.
It's a movement I wholeheartedly support.
>>Is that the simplest explanation? Could
A critical part of the full understanding of a concept is the ability to express it simply.
/shrug
As soon as you use jargon, you lose your audience unless they also understand the specialized vocabulary of your field. With such a simple question they are blatantly not physicists, so you're just (perhaps intentionally) talking over their heads, making yourself sound smart.
Not a big deal, most professors do it, but it's a bad habit, and one I hope academia will someday break. My fiancee is at UCSF, so I have to constantly tell her to use plain English. Skin works just as well as Epidermis, honey. She works with the public, so she has a more critical need to break that habit than most academes.
Just recalling my high school physics, if I'd have written it (and you were responding to a troll, IMO), I'd just have said that all electrical waves are electromagnetic in nature. Maybe talked about the history of ether, and how the electrical and magnetic components provide the medium for each other.
Perhaps the worst field is Philosophy, though. Philosophers are especially bad at it. Or especially good, depending on your perspective, of taking something that can be stated clearly and simply, and loading it up with propositions and jargon until only they know what they're arguing about. And sometimes not even then. Kant took an idea that could be stated in a sentence, expanded it out to hundreds of pages, and ended with something not even his other contemporaries could understand. Ditto Wittgenstein (whose thesis Bertrand Russell couldn't understand), ditto Hegel, etc.
Not a criticism of you, but a criticism of your defense of your post.
>>The older I get the more I come to believe that democracy is fundementally flawed.
'Democracy is the worst form of government, with the exception of all others.' -- Winston Churchill.
I think time has shown him right.
>>The majority of voters are to stupid to truly consider the results of their voting
Hmm, indeed.
>>Of course with just 1 vote every four years how can I make my views known?
Polls. Clinton was a master of telling people what they wanted to hear, as determined by the polls.
It's debatable if that's a better system than someone like Bush, who sticks to his guns. On one side, you're a leaf that blows in the wind. On the other, you're not getting as much democracy for your buck.
>>Just you could chose between a communist and a communist, not at all of course like the US where you can choose between a capatalist and a capatalist.
I was about to say, you could move to the European Union, since they are unabashedly socialistic. But then I saw you live in Denmark.
Personally, give me any day, a country where none of the politicians are socialists.
>>Same with imigration, if you ever complaint about illegal immigrants then you vote for indentification since that is the only way to find them.
Not true. Countries have been deadling with immigration for ages without compulsory ID cards. And certainly without biometric cataloguing of the entire country.
>>Yes the world will be less fun wheneverone carries an ID all the time. It could even be very dangerous BUT I don't think we can avoid it unless we learn to accept the costs of freedom.
I think that if there's widespread rioting / protests / noncompliance, the policy will be scrapped.
>>We know that a dimensionless number such as 1 has absolutely no meaning in as far as expressing velocity.
>Mach 1.25 is a perfectly well-defined speed
You may have a PhD. in Physics, but even I, as a CS guy, know the difference between speed (scalar) and velocity (vector).
Life on a campus is like an Oasis of technology. I loved my time at UC San Diego.
Now I travel all over the country doing tech stuff. And I use a 1GB Lexar JumpDrive as my baby. Yes, I have an FTP with all my necessary files on it, yes I email my files to myself as a backup. Yes, my cell phone doubles as a 128kpbs through Verizon. But when you're in a hotel and you need to work on your files and then go to a Kinko's to print em out, you had better have a USB drive.
Seriously, whenever I book a hotel I always filter based on hotels that offer in-room ethernet. About half of them lie, or have something wrong with them. For example, the hotel only has internet on a crappy computer in their lobby, and you can't even use it because some chick is typing emails to her boyfriend for two hours, and there's not even a spare eth outlet to plug into (Indy). Or they charge you (sometimes ridiculous amounts) to get on the net (Vegas). Or they have wireless, but their damn AP doesn't work and the clerk at the front desk thinks he knows better than you how 802.11 works (Tahoe), or you get stuck in a city where the entire city is on a 1Mbps microwave connection that goes down whenever it rains (Crescent City) and Verizon doesn't even bother supporting 1x connections there, or you're in a city where Kinko's net connection is slower than a 14.4 modem (every city in America), or you want to print from a USB drive in the back area instead of on their for-hire printers since it costs about a third as much, or you're in South Carolina and you get about 1kbps through the in-hotel ethernet because some jackass is downloading leet warez on bittorrent (Sumter).
High speed internet is good, but there's no way I could call myself a professional and leave home without a USB drive.
You know that's a parody site, right? If you look at the t-shirts, they're pretty obviously not Christian.
>Define an ordering "simplicity" on the family of explanations as E E' iff E
>contains fewer postulates than E' ("fewer" isn't necessarily well-defined, but
>hey). Then assume the least element of the family of explanations for a given
>multifunction to be true until other data presents itself.
As I said, there's an entire set of problems by which the more complex/convoluted/whatever solution is the correct answer, so concluding that one is true (even using the scientific, not the mathematic, meaning of the word) is a logically invalid argument.
As I said, it should be used solely to set the burden of proof for an idea.
But overall, it smacks solely as a way for people to lend their "everyone knows X is true" some vague scientific/logical justification, since determining what is simpler is pretty much in the eye of the beholder. I'm not sure what belief the French Academy had that they rejected the theory of meteorites on the ground of, but whatever it was, I'm sure it was "simpler" in some way or another.
Reasoning by Occam's Razor, i.e. treating it as a law is a fallacy.
Proof that Occam's Razor is not a valid argument.
Occam's Razor: Given A and B, such that A or B is true, but not both, such that A is "simpler than" B -> A is true.
Given two sets of solutions to problems in the world, one set contains the simple answers, the other contains the corresponding complicated answers. If in any case the complicated answer is correct, then Occam's Razor is an invalid form of argumentation.
If you have any experience with computer science, you know that sometimes during debugging the complicated answer is the correct one. Or, in science, the French Academy of Science rejected the notion of meteorites for many years due to reasoning from Occam's Razor.
Hence Occam's Razor can not and should not be used as if it were a logical law.
Occam's Razor can/should only be used as a standard to determine the burden or amount of proof of a theory. If a paper claims that bigfoot is real, I'll need to see a lot more proof than if a paper claims they've discovered a new kind of bear.
Bugs the hell out of me when people claim something is true due to Occam's Razor.
Police can currently do that. When stopped by campus police at UC San Diego, they demanded ID. I asked about the law that allowed them to demand ID when walking around campus, and they gave me a rather long winded explaination that sounded somewhat reasonable (in the sense that they were probably right, not that the law was reasonable). I asked them then if they could demand ID of people swimming at the pool (which is where I was going), and they said "Don't be ridiculous". So, yeah. In summary, any place you could be reasonably expected to have ID, you have to have ID.
Also, in San Diego, you have to carry $20 on you at all times. Rarely enforced except in the case where they think you're homeless. IANAL, and it may just be hearsay, so that it with a grain of salt.
I personally wonder about people too lazy to get an ID card. How is it possible to function in America without a Driver's License (or State ID card if you're not a driver)? You can't get credit cards, drive cars, travel by any means whatsoever, even by foot, work (in San Diego, you need an ID to show you're not in the country illegally, and a SSID for taxes), go to clubs / buy alchohol, withdraw cash from a bank...
Essentially, if you're not carrying papers, you're not a person in America any more. Been musing a bit on this recently since my fiancee's wallet got stolen.
Uh, they made a real common problem in neural nets. Success rate on test data != actual success rate.
81% success when you run it back on your test data is meaningless. In fact, any number is meaningless when you apply it to your test data. I could get 100% success just by spitting back out if the name of a movie matches a name in the test set.
Here's the relevant quote:
"[t]esting the system with known data from previous years, we have established an approximately 81% typical accuracy rate on a year-by-year basis."
The test is if they can successfully predict future winners, which they haven't done. All they've done is make predictions. Puccini will do badly, etc.
Oh, those guys. They're probably just using marketing hyberbole to see the ultimate luxury item -- DRINK THE BEST SCOTCH WITH THE BEST ROCKS: MILLION YEAR OLD ICE (supplied limited).
Goes with the Chinese "Thousand Year Old Eggs"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Century_egg
Do you really think you're going to replace religious thought with atheist ascendency with a site like "Religious Freaks"? Yes, having posters of the Virgin Mary wanted for arson and boxing photos of Jesus is the best way to prove the superior, rational nature of the atheist stance.
I had it set on ML on all the boss fights. They were just bitching about her needing twice on two worthless greens.