I think you will find that "The Red Queen" by Matt Ridley explains it pretty well, in terms of game theory. Of course the game theory stuff is just analogical and suggestive, but I find it convincing.
Basically the default condition (just because it's mathematically the simplest) is where everyone is looking out for himself. That's the imaginary "state of nature" that Thomas Hobbes depicted in "Leviathan":
"In such condition there is no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain, and consequently, not culture of the earth, no navigation, nor the use of commodities that may be imported by sea, no commodious building, no instruments of moving and removing such things as require much force, no knowledge of the face of the earth, no account of time, no arts, no letters, no society, and which is worst of all, continual fear and danger of violent death, and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short".
Writing in the 17th century, of course, Hobbes knew little about evolution and nothing of ethology. His knowledge of pre-agricultural societies was drawn exclusively from the travellers' tales of those who had been to the Americas, Africa, or the East Indies. Thus he assumed, reasonably enough, that without formal states and societies people would have no communities at all. That turns out not to be the case, as hunter-gatherers normally live in groups ranging from family size to a few hundred - and they cooperate intensively.
Models of Hobbes' extreme case show that, as he expected, it's not good. People do vastly better if they cooperate, so we almost always find society developing naturally. People develop morals, and come to expect honesty and straight dealing - even altruism, which is often repaid.
Now here is the interesting part: in a society where 19 out of 20 are honest, a tempting niche opens up for those who aren't. By pretending to be honest, these criminals (or banksters, politicians, marketing executives, lawyers or whatever you want to call them) leech off the work of others to live comfortably with little effort. It seems that mathematics and nature are against efforts to make everyone good, because in a society where most people are good it is just too tempting to be bad.
All this should be very familiar by now to anyone who is interested in nutrition. Gary Taubes, in particular, has explained the facts fully and clearly in his books, starting with "Good Calories, Bad Calories" (published, for some strange reason, under the title "The Diet Delusion" in the UK).
It should be obvious that the total chemical energy in a substance is by no means the same as the energy that the human digestive system extracts from it. Otherwise we could consume, and thrive on, hydrocarbons such as coal and oil. Incidentally, there is strong evidence that the potential calories in alcohol are not used by the normal human body for energy. (See Tony Edwards' book "The Good News About Booze" for many convincing citations). The confusing exceptions are beer and sweetened drinks, in which the energy is provided by carbohydrates not alcohol. If we did use alcohol for energy, I would certainly not have lost weight in the past year while eating a good balanced diet and drinking several bottles of wine a week. (Dry wine, of course).
Another ancient metric that is completely discredited is the Body Mass Index (BMI). Adolphe Quetelet proposed the standard formula "weight(kg)/height(m)^2" as a stopgap approximation in 1830! It is a marvellous example of how people will accept a standard, once it is exists, without ever asking how valid or accurate it is. A single glance should be enough to recognize that, as human beings are three-dimensional and not two-dimensional, there is something seriously wrong with Quetelet's BMI. He himself seems to have understood that an exponent of more like 2.5 would be more appropriate. Yet everyone, from doctors to actuaries, has simply gone on using it ever since. See https://people.maths.ox.ac.uk/... for a better approximation, with a brief explanation and an "improved BMI calculator".
"You know, these people seem to forget that the internet was NOT primarily created for revenue generation, but for free exchange of ideas on a network where every computer connected could be a peer with any other one connected".
Exactly so! A very convincing case could be made that the worst thing wrong with modern American (and hence Western) society is the belief that EVERYTHING must always be about money. I have seen quite honest and serious people discussing the need for vital measures that everyone needs, and bewailing that, "nothing can be done because it wouldn't be profitable". Money should be a tool to get what we want done - not the only aim in life.
"All of these security flaws have been left unpatched by Microsoft, with the explanation that by patching them, the company would effectively break compatibility between the different versions of their operating system".
Because that is far more important than security.
"Windows, The Compatible Family: All Members Are Equally Vulnerable - And In The Same Way!!!"
But C++ and Java isn't for beginners. You need to have a certain level of understanding of programming before you can use them.
You need to have a certain level of understanding of programming before you can use ANY programming language productively. Which is why it's not really about the syntax and semantics - it's about algorithms and data structures, and above all about mathematical modelling. Until you master the art of creating suitable models of real-world situations, and judging how amenable to computation your models will be, there's not much point in writing a single line of code.
What I can't understand is why someone who apparently knows everything already should trouble to read a forum such as Slashdot - let alone comment, and abuse those who do not enjoy their educational advantages.
If Slashdot isn't a place where people can discuss matters in a calm, civilized way, and learn from each other, what is it? (That's a rhetorical question, by the way).
"...I'd hate for anyone to learn about the loss of a loved one through social media."
Sounds reasonable. But wait a minute - is there any good way to learn about the loss of a loved one? I know from personal experience that the arrival of two regular policemen at your front door in the middle of the night isn't ideal, either.
Something terrible has happened. It can't be undone. I'm not entirely sure I wouldn't actually prefer to read about it on social media, and be able to grieve alone before outsiders began to push in with their expectations and self-conscious caring voices.
Well, it seems that several moderators must have marked this as "troll". I can't work out whether that's from resentment of the (perhaps) implied superiority of "before a lot of you were born", or from natural resentment that Mark permitted himself to criticize M$.
I'm standing back to back with Mark, so please moderate this reply "troll" to your heart's content. Or stop and think for a few moments about what he actually said.
I would think the goal should be to get people to do something to actually help rather then just blog about it
Yes, I completely agree. BUT... everyone has got thoroughly used to seeing footage of dead, dying and horribly injured people abroad, taken by our "professional" media. If those cameramen and reporters choose to snap pictures rather than help, how can you expect ordinary people at home to act differently?
Just because something is (fairly) new, we cannot safely conclude that it is better than traditional methods. Unfortunately, fashion is far more powerful than judicious evaluation.
"The computer industry is the only industry that is more fashion-driven than women's fashion. Maybe I'm an idiot, but I have no idea what anyone is talking about. What is it? It's complete gibberish. It's insane. When is this idiocy going to stop?"
- Larry Ellison at Oracle OpenWorld, September 2008.
Unless its freeware the guy gets paid for writing the stuff so he can't complain and if it is freeware then that was his choice to do it. He can't co-opt someone elses plaudits just because he created a tool they used.
I think you have missed the point. It isn't a matter of "co-opting someone else's plaudits", more of getting an appropriate share of them. Perhaps that share should be a small one; or perhaps it should be dominant. The fact that it's freeware isn't really relevant. Do you think that the inventors of the alphabet, the number system, the periodic table of the elements, or the Web should be denied credit for their work just because they didn't "monetize" it? Believe it or not, there are still other values than money.
If you really believe that then perhaps you think the company that built the power sockets or the desk or made the PC motherboard should also get a mention? Where does it end? We all use things invented and built by others to do our jobs.
Again, this is quite true but not apropos. The companies you mention are in the business of manufacturing and installing certain types of equipment - hardware - as products for sale at a given price. With respect to almost any imaginable scientific project, their contributions would be strictly commodities - fungible with similar products on sale from many rival vendors. Moreover, there is nothing special about electricity or PC hardware that would be distinctively useful to a specific scientific project.
The case is entirely different with purpose-built software. Without it, the research would be difficult or impossible. And it is presumably difficult or impossible to obtain such software from any other source, whether paid-for or free.
'"Sweden has always been at the forefront of technology, so it's easy to embrace this," said Jacob de Geer, a founder of iZettle, which makes a mobile-powered card reader'.
In other news, sharks were in favour of sea bathing.
To my mind, one of the worst aspects of this matter (as reported) is that no one appears to have investigated, questioned or even challenged the boy who made the allegations against Armaan Singh. As Paula Young Lee wrote in the Salon article linked to,
'In Armaan’s case, a nameless “bully” targeted the most vulnerable kid in striking range at his school: a boy with a serious heart condition who was not only the new kid but whose race and religion identified him as an outsider. The bully chose his victim well: the police are vociferously defending their actions despite no evidence of any wrongdoing on Armaan’s part. Instead, at every step of the way, the bully’s lie was supported, endorsed, and reinforced by the actions of every adult authority figure who ought to have known better. That they did not is far more troubling than a child acting cruelly. The institutional response is only comprehensible inside a racist framework that makes it seem reasonable to assume that all brown people are Islamic extremists conspiring to blow up white Americans, and presumed to be guilty rather than innocent'.
On the face of it - based on what Armaan and his family told the media - Armaan did nothing wrong, but the other boy bullied him, then maliciously lied to the authorities. It was this other boy (if anyone) who is guilty of making a bomb threat. Yet somehow it is the brown-skinned lad who finds himself in police detention and in court.
There is something deeply ironic that Americans find it so easy and natural to accused a brown person of conspiring to bomb them, since Americans - through their armed forces, the CIA, and other agencies - have killed literally millions of brown Asian people. Notably at least 3 million in South-East Asia, and about the same number in Iraq. Is there some kind of subconscious guilt operating here?
With modern hard drive sizes I don't see the need for compression. Without compression you can use any good free text search tool. I have kept a good proportion of my email since about 1990, and it's all in Thunderbird. (Messages from earlier clients I just emailed to myself en masse).
Thunderbird has pretty good search capability, but as I am still running on Windows 7 I use Copernic Desktop Search, which has some useful features. (It indexes and searches files, and handles Firefox as well as Thunderbird). With this kind of volume, I do think an indexing tool is better than grep unless you want to have a lot of coffee breaks.
"...computer science has been recognized as important an academic subject as math and English..."
So the plan would be to neglect it utterly, ensuring that graduating students can hardly tell an iPad from an abacus? If, as we have been told, ignorance is strength, they might as well double down.
Humans have evolved to be the worst-tasting animal on the planet. Even sharks spit us out nine times out of ten, and they'll eat anything.
Mandatory cartoon reference: The Far Side, "In the days before soap". From memory, shows a dinosaur (typical Larson anachronistic humour) spitting out a caveman, with the speech bubble "Ptooey".
Slashdot Mirror
I think you will find that "The Red Queen" by Matt Ridley explains it pretty well, in terms of game theory. Of course the game theory stuff is just analogical and suggestive, but I find it convincing.
Basically the default condition (just because it's mathematically the simplest) is where everyone is looking out for himself. That's the imaginary "state of nature" that Thomas Hobbes depicted in "Leviathan":
"In such condition there is no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain, and consequently, not culture of the earth, no navigation, nor the use of commodities that may be imported by sea, no commodious building, no instruments of moving and removing such things as require much force, no knowledge of the face of the earth, no account of time, no arts, no letters, no society, and which is worst of all, continual fear and danger of violent death, and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short".
Writing in the 17th century, of course, Hobbes knew little about evolution and nothing of ethology. His knowledge of pre-agricultural societies was drawn exclusively from the travellers' tales of those who had been to the Americas, Africa, or the East Indies. Thus he assumed, reasonably enough, that without formal states and societies people would have no communities at all. That turns out not to be the case, as hunter-gatherers normally live in groups ranging from family size to a few hundred - and they cooperate intensively.
Models of Hobbes' extreme case show that, as he expected, it's not good. People do vastly better if they cooperate, so we almost always find society developing naturally. People develop morals, and come to expect honesty and straight dealing - even altruism, which is often repaid.
Now here is the interesting part: in a society where 19 out of 20 are honest, a tempting niche opens up for those who aren't. By pretending to be honest, these criminals (or banksters, politicians, marketing executives, lawyers or whatever you want to call them) leech off the work of others to live comfortably with little effort. It seems that mathematics and nature are against efforts to make everyone good, because in a society where most people are good it is just too tempting to be bad.
All this should be very familiar by now to anyone who is interested in nutrition. Gary Taubes, in particular, has explained the facts fully and clearly in his books, starting with "Good Calories, Bad Calories" (published, for some strange reason, under the title "The Diet Delusion" in the UK).
It should be obvious that the total chemical energy in a substance is by no means the same as the energy that the human digestive system extracts from it. Otherwise we could consume, and thrive on, hydrocarbons such as coal and oil. Incidentally, there is strong evidence that the potential calories in alcohol are not used by the normal human body for energy. (See Tony Edwards' book "The Good News About Booze" for many convincing citations). The confusing exceptions are beer and sweetened drinks, in which the energy is provided by carbohydrates not alcohol. If we did use alcohol for energy, I would certainly not have lost weight in the past year while eating a good balanced diet and drinking several bottles of wine a week. (Dry wine, of course).
Another ancient metric that is completely discredited is the Body Mass Index (BMI). Adolphe Quetelet proposed the standard formula "weight(kg)/height(m)^2" as a stopgap approximation in 1830! It is a marvellous example of how people will accept a standard, once it is exists, without ever asking how valid or accurate it is. A single glance should be enough to recognize that, as human beings are three-dimensional and not two-dimensional, there is something seriously wrong with Quetelet's BMI. He himself seems to have understood that an exponent of more like 2.5 would be more appropriate. Yet everyone, from doctors to actuaries, has simply gone on using it ever since. See https://people.maths.ox.ac.uk/... for a better approximation, with a brief explanation and an "improved BMI calculator".
"You know, these people seem to forget that the internet was NOT primarily created for revenue generation, but for free exchange of ideas on a network where every computer connected could be a peer with any other one connected".
Exactly so! A very convincing case could be made that the worst thing wrong with modern American (and hence Western) society is the belief that EVERYTHING must always be about money. I have seen quite honest and serious people discussing the need for vital measures that everyone needs, and bewailing that, "nothing can be done because it wouldn't be profitable". Money should be a tool to get what we want done - not the only aim in life.
They put a lot of effort into press releases, brochures and presentations about backwards compatibility in each version.
FTFY.
"All of these security flaws have been left unpatched by Microsoft, with the explanation that by patching them, the company would effectively break compatibility between the different versions of their operating system".
Because that is far more important than security.
"Windows, The Compatible Family: All Members Are Equally Vulnerable - And In The Same Way!!!"
But C++ and Java isn't for beginners. You need to have a certain level of understanding of programming before you can use them.
You need to have a certain level of understanding of programming before you can use ANY programming language productively. Which is why it's not really about the syntax and semantics - it's about algorithms and data structures, and above all about mathematical modelling. Until you master the art of creating suitable models of real-world situations, and judging how amenable to computation your models will be, there's not much point in writing a single line of code.
"Similarly, should not every individual be required to display a 'license plate' on the digital super-highway?"
No.
What I can't understand is why someone who apparently knows everything already should trouble to read a forum such as Slashdot - let alone comment, and abuse those who do not enjoy their educational advantages.
If Slashdot isn't a place where people can discuss matters in a calm, civilized way, and learn from each other, what is it? (That's a rhetorical question, by the way).
"...I'd hate for anyone to learn about the loss of a loved one through social media."
Sounds reasonable. But wait a minute - is there any good way to learn about the loss of a loved one? I know from personal experience that the arrival of two regular policemen at your front door in the middle of the night isn't ideal, either.
Something terrible has happened. It can't be undone. I'm not entirely sure I wouldn't actually prefer to read about it on social media, and be able to grieve alone before outsiders began to push in with their expectations and self-conscious caring voices.
Well, it seems that several moderators must have marked this as "troll". I can't work out whether that's from resentment of the (perhaps) implied superiority of "before a lot of you were born", or from natural resentment that Mark permitted himself to criticize M$.
I'm standing back to back with Mark, so please moderate this reply "troll" to your heart's content. Or stop and think for a few moments about what he actually said.
I would think the goal should be to get people to do something to actually help rather then just blog about it
Yes, I completely agree. BUT... everyone has got thoroughly used to seeing footage of dead, dying and horribly injured people abroad, taken by our "professional" media. If those cameramen and reporters choose to snap pictures rather than help, how can you expect ordinary people at home to act differently?
It doesn't seem to be an appropriate use of the law to prevent people from posting. But what kind of people would do such a thing?
Empathy - they've heard of it.
Just because something is (fairly) new, we cannot safely conclude that it is better than traditional methods. Unfortunately, fashion is far more powerful than judicious evaluation.
"The computer industry is the only industry that is more fashion-driven than women's fashion. Maybe I'm an idiot, but I have no idea what anyone is talking about. What is it? It's complete gibberish. It's insane. When is this idiocy going to stop?"
- Larry Ellison at Oracle OpenWorld, September 2008.
Unless its freeware the guy gets paid for writing the stuff so he can't complain and if it is freeware then that was his choice to do it. He can't co-opt someone elses plaudits just because he created a tool they used.
I think you have missed the point. It isn't a matter of "co-opting someone else's plaudits", more of getting an appropriate share of them. Perhaps that share should be a small one; or perhaps it should be dominant. The fact that it's freeware isn't really relevant. Do you think that the inventors of the alphabet, the number system, the periodic table of the elements, or the Web should be denied credit for their work just because they didn't "monetize" it? Believe it or not, there are still other values than money.
If you really believe that then perhaps you think the company that built the power sockets or the desk or made the PC motherboard should also get a mention? Where does it end? We all use things invented and built by others to do our jobs.
Again, this is quite true but not apropos. The companies you mention are in the business of manufacturing and installing certain types of equipment - hardware - as products for sale at a given price. With respect to almost any imaginable scientific project, their contributions would be strictly commodities - fungible with similar products on sale from many rival vendors. Moreover, there is nothing special about electricity or PC hardware that would be distinctively useful to a specific scientific project.
The case is entirely different with purpose-built software. Without it, the research would be difficult or impossible. And it is presumably difficult or impossible to obtain such software from any other source, whether paid-for or free.
'"Sweden has always been at the forefront of technology, so it's easy to embrace this," said Jacob de Geer, a founder of iZettle, which makes a mobile-powered card reader'.
In other news, sharks were in favour of sea bathing.
Would you buy a car that came equipped with an explosive that would, under certain circumstances, explode and kill the driver?
You mean like an airbag? https://www.google.co.uk/searc...
To my mind, one of the worst aspects of this matter (as reported) is that no one appears to have investigated, questioned or even challenged the boy who made the allegations against Armaan Singh. As Paula Young Lee wrote in the Salon article linked to,
'In Armaan’s case, a nameless “bully” targeted the most vulnerable kid in striking range at his school: a boy with a serious heart condition who was not only the new kid but whose race and religion identified him as an outsider. The bully chose his victim well: the police are vociferously defending their actions despite no evidence of any wrongdoing on Armaan’s part. Instead, at every step of the way, the bully’s lie was supported, endorsed, and reinforced by the actions of every adult authority figure who ought to have known better. That they did not is far more troubling than a child acting cruelly. The institutional response is only comprehensible inside a racist framework that makes it seem reasonable to assume that all brown people are Islamic extremists conspiring to blow up white Americans, and presumed to be guilty rather than innocent'.
On the face of it - based on what Armaan and his family told the media - Armaan did nothing wrong, but the other boy bullied him, then maliciously lied to the authorities. It was this other boy (if anyone) who is guilty of making a bomb threat. Yet somehow it is the brown-skinned lad who finds himself in police detention and in court.
There is something deeply ironic that Americans find it so easy and natural to accused a brown person of conspiring to bomb them, since Americans - through their armed forces, the CIA, and other agencies - have killed literally millions of brown Asian people. Notably at least 3 million in South-East Asia, and about the same number in Iraq. Is there some kind of subconscious guilt operating here?
Dilbert readers understand that becoming a PHB has drastic effects, one of which is a form of lobotomy.
With modern hard drive sizes I don't see the need for compression. Without compression you can use any good free text search tool. I have kept a good proportion of my email since about 1990, and it's all in Thunderbird. (Messages from earlier clients I just emailed to myself en masse).
Thunderbird has pretty good search capability, but as I am still running on Windows 7 I use Copernic Desktop Search, which has some useful features. (It indexes and searches files, and handles Firefox as well as Thunderbird). With this kind of volume, I do think an indexing tool is better than grep unless you want to have a lot of coffee breaks.
At least now we know what Alice would be like if she ever became a PHB...
"...computer science has been recognized as important an academic subject as math and English..."
So the plan would be to neglect it utterly, ensuring that graduating students can hardly tell an iPad from an abacus? If, as we have been told, ignorance is strength, they might as well double down.
Humans have evolved to be the worst-tasting animal on the planet. Even sharks spit us out nine times out of ten, and they'll eat anything.
Mandatory cartoon reference: The Far Side, "In the days before soap". From memory, shows a dinosaur (typical Larson anachronistic humour) spitting out a caveman, with the speech bubble "Ptooey".
I have not the slightest idea what you are talking about. Any of it.
More exactly, they are passing China while going in the opposite direction. China is going the right way, while the UK is going the wrong way.
Like it, like it.