The Cuckoo rating is entirely irrelevant. Consider the Big Bang Theory. It hasn't yet been formally accepted (as a Physical Law*) by the scientific community, yet the author considers the notion of the Big Bang never happening to be nonsense?
There is no such thing as "formal acceptance" there isn't even really such a thing as the "scientific community". The big bang is generally accepted as the current best theory by the majority of astrophysicists. Does this mean it is true? No, it just means its the theory that fits most consistently that observational and experimental data currently available to us.
The fact of the matter is, the scientific community has been wrong more often than right. With further investigation, ideas are refined, and those that don't fit the observations are rejected.
That's correct and exactly the way it should be. Science is a process, not a collection of laws or facts. You gain knowledge of the way things work by applying the scientific method. That means that the set of best theories is constantly being re-evaluated and changed. That's a key differentiator of science from (for example) dogmatic religions.
But the process takes a long time. For nearly 2,000 years the best Western thinkers believed that the Earth was the center of the universe. That's a long time to be wrong about something so big.So even though I believe that the scientific method has its merits, I recognize the limitations.
As opposed to which system? The limitations of the scientific method are usually limitations of our ability to gather data. We can't attach more certainty to theories like Big Bang or Evolution because we have incomplete data to work from, for obvious reasons. That's not a limitation of the scientific method at all. If your notion of gathering knowledge is not based on the evidence available, then you are in a considerably worse situation that science can give you, incomplete though that may be.
If I had a time machine and could travel to the future, I would not be the least bit surprised if 500 years from now the Big Bang theory and Evolution were considered myths from the past.
While that's certainly a possibility, its much more likely that they will be considered incomplete. Much as Newtonian physics wasn't replaced by relativity, it was just seen as a particular case of relativistic physics at "low" speeds compared with c.
Even now, there's substantial logical and statistical problems with the "proofs" of Evolution.
Not really. Would you care to cite these supposed problems, or are you just trying to argue from authority?
well, if you are not a dumbass, you will know that Quicktime API is for Multimedia in your apps, Carbon is for LEGACY code and porting Classic apps to OS X is a breeze because of it, and Cocoa is for Aqua apps, IE NEW apps.
Thank you, I'm not. Although QuickTime is indeed primarily a digital video standard, it also includes a complete Mac OS-like operating system API in it. Indeed Carbon was originally based on the QuickTime for Windows code base - we ported QTW to Rhapsody and voila, there were the Mac OS classic APIs.
Apple may have intended Carbon to be used for legacy applications, but plenty of new apps are using it. For programmers familiar with classic Mac OS programming, its a much easier leap to Carbon than Classic, so a lot of them develop code using it.
It is much easier for Apple to develop applications for OS X than it is for Microsoft to Windows. Likewise, OS X's architecture is very clean, making it relatively easy to add new features. Windows, however is incredibly kludged together. Anyone who has developed on it can atest to that fact.
I think this is only partly true. Mac OS X's APIs are quite complex to develop for, especially considering there are several different parallel API sets (Carbon, Cocoa, QuickTime...). All of these have a certain amount of legacy cruft which makes developer's lives more difficult. For example the file IO APIs in Carbon are a mess because they come originally from Classic Mac OS.
Its also not true that you can tell much about the cleanness of the underlying code from the APIs. its quite possible to have a clean API and a real code mess underneath. The internals of Mac OS X are complex and cleaner in some places than others (I used to be an OS engineer at Apple). Now, it may be cleaner and cheaper to develop than Windows, I don't know, but only someone who has worked on building both could judge that.
What flavor of misreading is required to ignore the first thirteen words of the amendmant? Did Jefferson qualify his prose with "A well regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free State" because he was feeling particularly verbose? Did he worry that people wouldn't take him seriously if he didn't use some padding that shaped his meaning in no way?
If the founders simply meant that we should have unfettered access to weapons, everything before the comma is extraneous and misleading. The founders were not idiots, and Jefferson was not an incompetent writer. Every syllable is there for a purpose.
Not being a fan of guns I hate to point this out but the original poster is correct. What the second ammendment says is:
"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."
This should be paraphrased as:
"We have to have a well-regulated militia in order to ensure the security of the free State. In order to have a free militia, the government cannot pass laws that infringe on the right of people to keep and bear arms."
There are two important parts to understanding this. First the writer(s) are stating that the right to keep and bear arms is a pre-existing right. The amendment doesn't grant the right, it recognizes that it already exists. Second, the reason for the pre-amble is that the writer(s) are explaining why it is necessary to explicitly re-state this right. Its almost like they are saying "look, I know this is a bit odd, but we really need to keep the right to bear arms because it is the only way to maintain a well-regulated militia, and we need that to maintain freedom".
Now, I personally disagree with the view being stated in the amendment - I don't think we need individuals bearing arms to keep freedom in the modern world. I am in favor of gun control. But I do believe the second ammendment states that the government cannot pass laws that infringe on the right to bear arms. Therefore I have to reluctantly accept that the second ammendment means what the NRA claims it means.
Even with existing prices, it is about as cheap to buy cheaper land in outlying areas and generate your own power as it is to pay a power company _and_ pay higher prices for land. The main problem is you have to have a fair degree of mechanical aptitude to keep one of these systems running reliably.
No, the main problem is that unless you are generating your power using only renewable resources, you are likely causing a disproportionately high amount of pollution. Almost all power generation from fossil fuels is much more efficient if done on a large scale at a centralized power generation station. If we abandonded the grid and went to a lot of localized power generation facilities, the overall impact on the environment would be severe.
Persononally, if Paul McGann isn't coming back to play the Doctor then I'd prefer Colin Firth, Sean Bean or Sean Pertwee (Jon Pertwee's, the third Doctor, son) to get the title role.
I didn't warm to Paul McGann as the Doctor, but maybe that was more to do with the awful script he was working with. Doctor Who without a great script is pretty pointless. I grew up a Tom Baker man myself. In that mold, the one actor who could top the great Tom would be Mr. Stephen Fry whose name has been linked to the role before. A wittier, more erudite and eccentric actor could not be found in the British or any other isles.
I'll second the recommendation for this excellent book. I appreciated the religious themes more than the sci-fi aspects, though, and I'm an atheist. Most of the SF elements were fairly realistic. Without revealing too much, the alien society and the humans' interaction with it sort of serves as a very loose metaphor for the Christian myth of God's relationship to humans, but you should really read the whole book before thinking about what it means. Also, definitely check out the sequel, Children of God.
I agree about the religious themes, and I'm also an atheist. Fascinating insights into a world view that is not my own.
Interestingly the author is herself a recent convert to Judaism after many years as a self-described agnostic. So the Jesuits were an "alien" culture to her too.
Also interestingly she said she originally wrote about the Society of Jesus because they were amongst the first westerners to encounter many human tribes, especially those in Papua New Guinea. She recounts the tale of one priest who was terribly mutilated by the tribe he made first contact with because of the clash of cultures. IIRC both his hands were cut off. After returning to Italy to recuperate he later voluntarily returned to the tribe to "carry out God's mission" to them. A remarkable thing to do, even if you don't believe in God. Also a clear inspiration for the story.
As you say Children of God, the sequel, is also essential reading.
The Sparrow
on
Blind Lake
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Another fairly recent sci-fi book that tackles the problems in interpreting alien behavior is Mary Doria Russell's The Sparrow. The book follows a technician at SETI who discovers an alien signal from a nearby star and eventually is drafted onto the first mission to explore this newly discovered civilization. Interestingly the spaceship and crew is provided by the Jesuits.
That may sound odd, but this is an exceptionally fine book with well-developed characters and a compeling story. Russell is an anthropologist by training and her understanding of what it means to encounter a truly alien society and the consequences of that are profound and impactful.
Highly recommended if the wider implications of Blind Lake appeal to you, or you enjoy thought-provoking literature.
But every time when I decide to deal with Apple I always come to painful realisation that I just hate their attitude. They have this dumbass business strategy that only they know what you really need and they determined to shove it down your throat. I don't want to troll on them. Apple has really cool products, they have good engineers and designers. But at the same time they always try to sell you the most expensive one. Here in Bay Area it is impossible to find 10 GB version of iPod. All BestBuys and Fried electronics have only 30 GB versions (for extra $200)
That's unfair. Its the retailers that decide which models to carry, not the manufacturer. I'd guess that the retailer margin is higher on the larger models, which is why Best Buy et al. don't stock the low end models. Don't blame Apple, blame the retailers.
You could always order a 10GB model online if your local store doesn't stock them. I bought my wife an iPod at CompUSA in San Francisco- they stock all three models.
Just wondering... the article says that Burst now only employs two people. I don't know how functional the company still is (their website is up at least), but I would think that like SCO, their primary goal is pursuing this lawsuit. The obvious difference is that Burst seems to have a legitimate claim. After they (hopefully) win the MS case, I would hope that the two people working at Burst would continue to develop their business and their technology, rather than just sitting back on a fat cash settlement or award.
I had a friend who worked for Burst in the last year or so of their existence. They fired everyone about IIRC 18 months ago. Two people stayed behind to try to "extract value" from their IP claims. In some ways this is not so dissimilar to SCO.
What I will say is that their technology claims seemed dubious. At the time I worked for a large supplier of streaming media software so I had some interest in their technology. Their central claim was for a buffering caching technique for streaming video that frankly was well known in the community long before Burst came along. It just wasn't novel. I would have thought Microsoft could have found plenty of prior art to fight this claim.
In the short term having a PhD may be an impediment. Spending between 3 and 8 years (sometimes even more) in an academic environment is in some sense "wasted" time when you could have been gaining experience of the commercial environment. The academic world is very different from the business world.
In the longer term it can be a tremendous advantage, if you work in the field you studied. There is no doubt that getting a PhD is genuinely hard work and most companies know this and respect it. You will be an acknowledged expert in your field. If you specialize in an area that can be applied to commercial problems - for example security, parallel processing, AI, visualization - then a PhD is a almost required if you aspire to be lead the technology division of a company that specializes in that area. A very disproportionate percentage of CTOs of high tech. companies are PhDs.
That said, if you just want to be a software engineer or a sys admin, the PhD isn't going to help you much and you will perhaps always be seen as overqualified.
Finally my most important advice: don't start on a PhD if you don't have a deep interest and genuine passion for the work. You will spend several years of your life learning and discovering more about some arcane corner of the universe than all but a handful of people in the world. It is an enormous amount of hard work and requires true dedication. If you aren't energized by that prospect you won't make it. A PhD is not something you do because it will enhance your career, its something you do because you need to do it.
I don't know if these guys have something for real or not. Their press release is - perhaps unsurprisingly - fluff that says nothing about how their system is supposed to work. Without knowing some technical details its almost impossible to evaluate how sound their approach is and whether they've got anything new.
However a couple of things are suspicious. First they say "work on cognitive machines took off in 2002". So in less than 2 years they have essentially cracked several of the major problems that AI researchers have been struggling with for at least the last 4 decades? That seems unlikely. Second they seem to think that a combination of software engineering, cognitive psychology and robotics is the silver bullet of AI and that this is a radical new breakthrough. I hate to break it to them but these disciplines have been working together for many years in the AI community. This just isn't new.
Until we have a techical paper that describes their approach in detail and can be peer reviewed I will remain sceptical. AI got overhyped enough as it is, we don't need more extravegant claims and fluff press releases.
It beats me why the telemarketers are complaining. Currently about 28 million numbers have been registered on the national Do Not Call list, of around 313 million phone numbers in the US - that's less than 10%.
Until 100% of numbers are registered I would have thought the telemarketers would have loved this. A tool that lets them to avoid wasting time calling people who don't want their services. This should make their operation much more efficient - in other words profitable.
If they really believe they offer a valuable service, then clearly 100% of numbers won't be registered and they can continue to operate a profitable business serving those who do want their calls. Those who don't want to be called aren't. Win-win.
Although I can see where this would be useful - the example of a photojournalist is a good one - I'd prefer to have a digital camera with Bluetooth. I'd like to separate the camera itself from its storage - be able to have a small hard drive on a belt loop and the camera itself just has a small cache which gets flushed over Bluetooth to the hard drive.
That way I can take as much or as little storage as I need - I just hook on the appropriate drive pod. The drive pod has separate power supply so I don't have to bulk up the camera with large batteries to power the mass storage.
Because now MS can run "Us too!" ads and FUD Linux in interviews at will. It doesn't have to be true, or even slightly true, all they have to do is put the idea out there and the PHBs of the world, already a bit put off by the SCO mess, will buy it hook, line and sinker.
As someone whose job it is to make complex technical and business evaluations of the software platform my company uses uses, let me point out that this patronizing and ill-considered rant hardly endears you or your view to "PHB"s. Your attitude that elite OSS coders are way too smart to be suckered in, but anyone who has to live in the real world is a fool who buys into any ridiculous story, can hurt OSS as much as SCO and now Microsoft can. If you want to influence the people who make the decisions, try talking to them instead of talking down to them.
It also doesn't help to go round shouting "SCO and Microsoft are liars". You may see the world as black and white, but it really contains many shades of gray and most of the PHBs who you so despise see that. Like it or not, given the current laws there are ideas that are covered by patents and other IP protection and you can't just re-implement those ideas without legal repercussions. You may want a world with no or different IP laws but pretending you live in that world now is naive. If OSS software contains illegal code then it is monumental irresponsibility for a company to use that software.
Of course, no-one has yet proved that there are any OSS infringements, and until they do I am going to continue to run Linux servers. But I will keep a close eye on the unfolding legal situation and if SCO wins its case the world will have changed radically. You may think there is no chance of that happening. I think there is a slim chance there is a real case there.
Before you say that bamboo is weak and easily dismembered, here's a quote from the article:
"But Flavio makes me see things differently: Bamboo is a resource of immense potential. And it is strong too. What makes it possible to build bicycles from it is that it is stronger than steel when strained in the longitudinal direction, 17% to be exact."
While resistence to longitudinal stress is a good thing, many of the strains on the frame of a bike are not longitudinal - there is a lot of lateral flexing as you pedal. Bamboo is prone to splitting and fracturing when under lateral strain. I would really hate to have one of those collapse under me due to lateral stress fractures. All those sharp slivers of bamboo right under my crotch? No thanks...
IMHO... in the real world you have to sacrifice good engineering methods to get your product to market quickly. I'm sure there are markets that prefer quality engineering over early delivery but in most software markets there is a lot of competition out there. If you can't get your product/new release out before your competitors your customers will jump ship and it doesn't matter how good your software is if no-one buys it.
So to some extent you'll have to take a Quick and Dirty approach. Now this isn't really an either/or proposition. Its a spectrum from using full engineering methodologies at one extreme to a complete hack job (in the worst sense) at the other. You need to balance market priorities with longer-term engineering requirements. But in the end its the companies that respond to their customer's needs - including "I need this yesterday" - that succeed.
Again, if no one buys your software because you don't respond to your customers, it isn't worth anything.
If quick and dirty works good enough, then it should be the final solutions.
If it does not work good enough, then no matter how quick it is, it isn't a solution.
The procedure is there for a reason, follow it. If the procedure is wrong correct it.
I have to disagree. Although a Q&D approach can get you a good enough product now, it may induce much greater costs down the road. One definition of Quick and Dirty is a product that meets the requirements for v1 without allowing for the extensibility for version 2. Sure you can get to v1 more quickly, but the costs of getting from v1 to v2 will likely kill you unless you engineer v1 to be maintainable from the start.
Nice try. Actually, they began using HCFC-141b with STS-86. Here's some relevant info on Columbia's damage after STS-87 in 1997.
True, but the foam shedding problems have been going on long before STS-86. See this article, for example:
"The first NASA-reported loss of bipod closeout foam was on the June 1983 launch of Challenger. That was followed by a similar foam loss on the January 1990 flight of Columbia. No records are available from those flights about the size of the foam chunk or damage to the shuttles.
A little more than two years later, the Columbia again suffered bipod foam loss, that time from both closeouts, during a June 1992 launch. A 6-inch divot was missing from the right closeout, and the left closeout popped loose, taking with it a chunk of intertank foam. That piece measured 20 inches by 10 inches by several inches deep, according to a debris and ice assessment prepared after the mission." (quote is about half way down the page)
So it can't simply be the switch to the new foam that caused the shedding problems, now can it?
I looked at your link. You're wrong. Do a quick search on "Freon" in that page. Better yet, I'll show you what you get:
Four possible causes were put forth as to what caused the foam to separate from the External Tank:
1. The primer that bonds the tank foam to the External Tank itself was defective and did not set properly.
2. The aerodynamics of the roll to "heads up." The STS-87 mission was the first time this maneuver had ever been completed.
3. The change in the production methods of the foam to exclude the use of Freon and/or any ozone-damaging fluorocarbons.
4. An unforeseen shrinking of the External Tank due to cryogenic loading, leading to separation of the foam from the Tank and compromising its integrity and resistance to atmospheric drag at high velocities.
(emphasis mine)
Sorry but that's talking about STS-87 (see, its right there in the quote you gave). I'm not disputing that some of the flights that had the new foam saw shedding problems, that's clearly true. The original poster claimed it only happened after the switch to the new foam. But STS-107 (the Columbia flight that ended in disaster over Texas) was using the old foam. Its not the type of foam that's the problem, its something else.
It only started happening after they switched to a non-freon based foam to make the environmentalists happy. Despite that this was a known problem on quite a few missions, they were more interested in being politically correct than in insuring the safety of the missions.
NASA are in the process of switching foam types as mandated by the EPA. However STS-107 did not have the new "superlightweight" tanks with the new foam - the foam that was shed was the old foam. See the shuttle loss FAQ for details.
So it did not "only start happening after the switch". Its clearly a problem with the foam system in general, and is not directly related to the type of foam used, as you imply. This conspiracy theory that "environmentalists" or a "politically correct" NASA caused the shuttle disaster is wrong.
Slashdot Mirror
The Cuckoo rating is entirely irrelevant. Consider the Big Bang Theory. It hasn't yet been formally accepted (as a Physical Law*) by the scientific community, yet the author considers the notion of the Big Bang never happening to be nonsense?
There is no such thing as "formal acceptance" there isn't even really such a thing as the "scientific community". The big bang is generally accepted as the current best theory by the majority of astrophysicists. Does this mean it is true? No, it just means its the theory that fits most consistently that observational and experimental data currently available to us.
The fact of the matter is, the scientific community has been wrong more often than right. With further investigation, ideas are refined, and those that don't fit the observations are rejected.
That's correct and exactly the way it should be. Science is a process, not a collection of laws or facts. You gain knowledge of the way things work by applying the scientific method. That means that the set of best theories is constantly being re-evaluated and changed. That's a key differentiator of science from (for example) dogmatic religions.
But the process takes a long time. For nearly 2,000 years the best Western thinkers believed that the Earth was the center of the universe. That's a long time to be wrong about something so big.So even though I believe that the scientific method has its merits, I recognize the limitations.
As opposed to which system? The limitations of the scientific method are usually limitations of our ability to gather data. We can't attach more certainty to theories like Big Bang or Evolution because we have incomplete data to work from, for obvious reasons. That's not a limitation of the scientific method at all. If your notion of gathering knowledge is not based on the evidence available, then you are in a considerably worse situation that science can give you, incomplete though that may be.
If I had a time machine and could travel to the future, I would not be the least bit surprised if 500 years from now the Big Bang theory and Evolution were considered myths from the past.
While that's certainly a possibility, its much more likely that they will be considered incomplete. Much as Newtonian physics wasn't replaced by relativity, it was just seen as a particular case of relativistic physics at "low" speeds compared with c.
Even now, there's substantial logical and statistical problems with the "proofs" of Evolution.
Not really. Would you care to cite these supposed problems, or are you just trying to argue from authority?
But a good one
What's the difference between Larry Ellison and God? God doesn't think he's Larry Ellison...
Boom, boom.
well, if you are not a dumbass, you will know that Quicktime API is for Multimedia in your apps, Carbon is for LEGACY code and porting Classic apps to OS X is a breeze because of it, and Cocoa is for Aqua apps, IE NEW apps.
Thank you, I'm not. Although QuickTime is indeed primarily a digital video standard, it also includes a complete Mac OS-like operating system API in it. Indeed Carbon was originally based on the QuickTime for Windows code base - we ported QTW to Rhapsody and voila, there were the Mac OS classic APIs.
Apple may have intended Carbon to be used for legacy applications, but plenty of new apps are using it. For programmers familiar with classic Mac OS programming, its a much easier leap to Carbon than Classic, so a lot of them develop code using it.
It is much easier for Apple to develop applications for OS X than it is for Microsoft to Windows. Likewise, OS X's architecture is very clean, making it relatively easy to add new features. Windows, however is incredibly kludged together. Anyone who has developed on it can atest to that fact.
I think this is only partly true. Mac OS X's APIs are quite complex to develop for, especially considering there are several different parallel API sets (Carbon, Cocoa, QuickTime...). All of these have a certain amount of legacy cruft which makes developer's lives more difficult. For example the file IO APIs in Carbon are a mess because they come originally from Classic Mac OS.
Its also not true that you can tell much about the cleanness of the underlying code from the APIs. its quite possible to have a clean API and a real code mess underneath. The internals of Mac OS X are complex and cleaner in some places than others (I used to be an OS engineer at Apple). Now, it may be cleaner and cheaper to develop than Windows, I don't know, but only someone who has worked on building both could judge that.
What flavor of misreading is required to ignore the first thirteen words of the amendmant? Did Jefferson qualify his prose with "A well regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free State" because he was feeling particularly verbose? Did he worry that people wouldn't take him seriously if he didn't use some padding that shaped his meaning in no way?
If the founders simply meant that we should have unfettered access to weapons, everything before the comma is extraneous and misleading. The founders were not idiots, and Jefferson was not an incompetent writer. Every syllable is there for a purpose.
Not being a fan of guns I hate to point this out but the original poster is correct. What the second ammendment says is:
"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."
This should be paraphrased as:
"We have to have a well-regulated militia in order to ensure the security of the free State. In order to have a free militia, the government cannot pass laws that infringe on the right of people to keep and bear arms."
There are two important parts to understanding this. First the writer(s) are stating that the right to keep and bear arms is a pre-existing right. The amendment doesn't grant the right, it recognizes that it already exists. Second, the reason for the pre-amble is that the writer(s) are explaining why it is necessary to explicitly re-state this right. Its almost like they are saying "look, I know this is a bit odd, but we really need to keep the right to bear arms because it is the only way to maintain a well-regulated militia, and we need that to maintain freedom".
Now, I personally disagree with the view being stated in the amendment - I don't think we need individuals bearing arms to keep freedom in the modern world. I am in favor of gun control. But I do believe the second ammendment states that the government cannot pass laws that infringe on the right to bear arms. Therefore I have to reluctantly accept that the second ammendment means what the NRA claims it means.
Even with existing prices, it is about as cheap to buy cheaper land in outlying areas and generate your own power as it is to pay a power company _and_ pay higher prices for land. The main problem is you have to have a fair degree of mechanical aptitude to keep one of these systems running reliably.
No, the main problem is that unless you are generating your power using only renewable resources, you are likely causing a disproportionately high amount of pollution. Almost all power generation from fossil fuels is much more efficient if done on a large scale at a centralized power generation station. If we abandonded the grid and went to a lot of localized power generation facilities, the overall impact on the environment would be severe.
Persononally, if Paul McGann isn't coming back to play the Doctor then I'd prefer Colin Firth, Sean Bean or Sean Pertwee (Jon Pertwee's, the third Doctor, son) to get the title role.
I didn't warm to Paul McGann as the Doctor, but maybe that was more to do with the awful script he was working with. Doctor Who without a great script is pretty pointless. I grew up a Tom Baker man myself. In that mold, the one actor who could top the great Tom would be Mr. Stephen Fry whose name has been linked to the role before. A wittier, more erudite and eccentric actor could not be found in the British or any other isles.
I'll second the recommendation for this excellent book. I appreciated the religious themes more than the sci-fi aspects, though, and I'm an atheist. Most of the SF elements were fairly realistic. Without revealing too much, the alien society and the humans' interaction with it sort of serves as a very loose metaphor for the Christian myth of God's relationship to humans, but you should really read the whole book before thinking about what it means. Also, definitely check out the sequel, Children of God.
I agree about the religious themes, and I'm also an atheist. Fascinating insights into a world view that is not my own.
Interestingly the author is herself a recent convert to Judaism after many years as a self-described agnostic. So the Jesuits were an "alien" culture to her too.
Also interestingly she said she originally wrote about the Society of Jesus because they were amongst the first westerners to encounter many human tribes, especially those in Papua New Guinea. She recounts the tale of one priest who was terribly mutilated by the tribe he made first contact with because of the clash of cultures. IIRC both his hands were cut off. After returning to Italy to recuperate he later voluntarily returned to the tribe to "carry out God's mission" to them. A remarkable thing to do, even if you don't believe in God. Also a clear inspiration for the story.
As you say Children of God, the sequel, is also essential reading.
Another fairly recent sci-fi book that tackles the problems in interpreting alien behavior is Mary Doria Russell's The Sparrow. The book follows a technician at SETI who discovers an alien signal from a nearby star and eventually is drafted onto the first mission to explore this newly discovered civilization. Interestingly the spaceship and crew is provided by the Jesuits.
That may sound odd, but this is an exceptionally fine book with well-developed characters and a compeling story. Russell is an anthropologist by training and her understanding of what it means to encounter a truly alien society and the consequences of that are profound and impactful.
Highly recommended if the wider implications of Blind Lake appeal to you, or you enjoy thought-provoking literature.
It lists 600 webcams? More like 404 right now...
But every time when I decide to deal with Apple I always come to painful realisation that I just hate their attitude. They have this dumbass business strategy that only they know what you really need and they determined to shove it down your throat. I don't want to troll on them. Apple has really cool products, they have good engineers and designers. But at the same time they always try to sell you the most expensive one. Here in Bay Area it is impossible to find 10 GB version of iPod. All BestBuys and Fried electronics have only 30 GB versions (for extra $200)
That's unfair. Its the retailers that decide which models to carry, not the manufacturer. I'd guess that the retailer margin is higher on the larger models, which is why Best Buy et al. don't stock the low end models. Don't blame Apple, blame the retailers.
You could always order a 10GB model online if your local store doesn't stock them. I bought my wife an iPod at CompUSA in San Francisco- they stock all three models.
Just wondering... the article says that Burst now only employs two people. I don't know how functional the company still is (their website is up at least), but I would think that like SCO, their primary goal is pursuing this lawsuit. The obvious difference is that Burst seems to have a legitimate claim. After they (hopefully) win the MS case, I would hope that the two people working at Burst would continue to develop their business and their technology, rather than just sitting back on a fat cash settlement or award.
I had a friend who worked for Burst in the last year or so of their existence. They fired everyone about IIRC 18 months ago. Two people stayed behind to try to "extract value" from their IP claims. In some ways this is not so dissimilar to SCO.
What I will say is that their technology claims seemed dubious. At the time I worked for a large supplier of streaming media software so I had some interest in their technology. Their central claim was for a buffering caching technique for streaming video that frankly was well known in the community long before Burst came along. It just wasn't novel. I would have thought Microsoft could have found plenty of prior art to fight this claim.
In the short term having a PhD may be an impediment. Spending between 3 and 8 years (sometimes even more) in an academic environment is in some sense "wasted" time when you could have been gaining experience of the commercial environment. The academic world is very different from the business world.
In the longer term it can be a tremendous advantage, if you work in the field you studied. There is no doubt that getting a PhD is genuinely hard work and most companies know this and respect it. You will be an acknowledged expert in your field. If you specialize in an area that can be applied to commercial problems - for example security, parallel processing, AI, visualization - then a PhD is a almost required if you aspire to be lead the technology division of a company that specializes in that area. A very disproportionate percentage of CTOs of high tech. companies are PhDs.
That said, if you just want to be a software engineer or a sys admin, the PhD isn't going to help you much and you will perhaps always be seen as overqualified.
Finally my most important advice: don't start on a PhD if you don't have a deep interest and genuine passion for the work. You will spend several years of your life learning and discovering more about some arcane corner of the universe than all but a handful of people in the world. It is an enormous amount of hard work and requires true dedication. If you aren't energized by that prospect you won't make it. A PhD is not something you do because it will enhance your career, its something you do because you need to do it.
I don't know if these guys have something for real or not. Their press release is - perhaps unsurprisingly - fluff that says nothing about how their system is supposed to work. Without knowing some technical details its almost impossible to evaluate how sound their approach is and whether they've got anything new.
However a couple of things are suspicious. First they say "work on cognitive machines took off in 2002". So in less than 2 years they have essentially cracked several of the major problems that AI researchers have been struggling with for at least the last 4 decades? That seems unlikely. Second they seem to think that a combination of software engineering, cognitive psychology and robotics is the silver bullet of AI and that this is a radical new breakthrough. I hate to break it to them but these disciplines have been working together for many years in the AI community. This just isn't new.
Until we have a techical paper that describes their approach in detail and can be peer reviewed I will remain sceptical. AI got overhyped enough as it is, we don't need more extravegant claims and fluff press releases.
It beats me why the telemarketers are complaining. Currently about 28 million numbers have been registered on the national Do Not Call list, of around 313 million phone numbers in the US - that's less than 10%.
Until 100% of numbers are registered I would have thought the telemarketers would have loved this. A tool that lets them to avoid wasting time calling people who don't want their services. This should make their operation much more efficient - in other words profitable.
If they really believe they offer a valuable service, then clearly 100% of numbers won't be registered and they can continue to operate a profitable business serving those who do want their calls. Those who don't want to be called aren't. Win-win.
Another (in)famous machine mis-translation that I was taught in my Introduction to Natural Language Processing course was:
Hydraulic Ram -> Water Sheep
Ahem.
Although I can see where this would be useful - the example of a photojournalist is a good one - I'd prefer to have a digital camera with Bluetooth. I'd like to separate the camera itself from its storage - be able to have a small hard drive on a belt loop and the camera itself just has a small cache which gets flushed over Bluetooth to the hard drive.
That way I can take as much or as little storage as I need - I just hook on the appropriate drive pod. The drive pod has separate power supply so I don't have to bulk up the camera with large batteries to power the mass storage.
This would be a better solution for me.
Because now MS can run "Us too!" ads and FUD Linux in interviews at will. It doesn't have to be true, or even slightly true, all they have to do is put the idea out there and the PHBs of the world, already a bit put off by the SCO mess, will buy it hook, line and sinker.
As someone whose job it is to make complex technical and business evaluations of the software platform my company uses uses, let me point out that this patronizing and ill-considered rant hardly endears you or your view to "PHB"s. Your attitude that elite OSS coders are way too smart to be suckered in, but anyone who has to live in the real world is a fool who buys into any ridiculous story, can hurt OSS as much as SCO and now Microsoft can. If you want to influence the people who make the decisions, try talking to them instead of talking down to them.
It also doesn't help to go round shouting "SCO and Microsoft are liars". You may see the world as black and white, but it really contains many shades of gray and most of the PHBs who you so despise see that. Like it or not, given the current laws there are ideas that are covered by patents and other IP protection and you can't just re-implement those ideas without legal repercussions. You may want a world with no or different IP laws but pretending you live in that world now is naive. If OSS software contains illegal code then it is monumental irresponsibility for a company to use that software.
Of course, no-one has yet proved that there are any OSS infringements, and until they do I am going to continue to run Linux servers. But I will keep a close eye on the unfolding legal situation and if SCO wins its case the world will have changed radically. You may think there is no chance of that happening. I think there is a slim chance there is a real case there.
Before you say that bamboo is weak and easily dismembered, here's a quote from the article:
"But Flavio makes me see things differently: Bamboo is a resource of immense potential. And it is strong too. What makes it possible to build bicycles from it is that it is stronger than steel when strained in the longitudinal direction, 17% to be exact."
While resistence to longitudinal stress is a good thing, many of the strains on the frame of a bike are not longitudinal - there is a lot of lateral flexing as you pedal. Bamboo is prone to splitting and fracturing when under lateral strain. I would really hate to have one of those collapse under me due to lateral stress fractures. All those sharp slivers of bamboo right under my crotch? No thanks...
the obvious answer is 'buy more systems', but what if your customer says I only have 20K budgeted for the year.
If your client has budgeted 20,000 systems this year, I'm sure they can spare a couple of them for your project.
Sorry...
IMHO... in the real world you have to sacrifice good engineering methods to get your product to market quickly. I'm sure there are markets that prefer quality engineering over early delivery but in most software markets there is a lot of competition out there. If you can't get your product/new release out before your competitors your customers will jump ship and it doesn't matter how good your software is if no-one buys it.
So to some extent you'll have to take a Quick and Dirty approach. Now this isn't really an either/or proposition. Its a spectrum from using full engineering methodologies at one extreme to a complete hack job (in the worst sense) at the other. You need to balance market priorities with longer-term engineering requirements. But in the end its the companies that respond to their customer's needs - including "I need this yesterday" - that succeed.
Again, if no one buys your software because you don't respond to your customers, it isn't worth anything.
If quick and dirty works good enough, then it should be the final solutions.
If it does not work good enough, then no matter how quick it is, it isn't a solution.
The procedure is there for a reason, follow it. If the procedure is wrong correct it.
I have to disagree. Although a Q&D approach can get you a good enough product now, it may induce much greater costs down the road. One definition of Quick and Dirty is a product that meets the requirements for v1 without allowing for the extensibility for version 2. Sure you can get to v1 more quickly, but the costs of getting from v1 to v2 will likely kill you unless you engineer v1 to be maintainable from the start.
Nice try. Actually, they began using HCFC-141b with STS-86. Here's some relevant info on Columbia's damage after STS-87 in 1997.
True, but the foam shedding problems have been going on long before STS-86. See this article, for example:
"The first NASA-reported loss of bipod closeout foam was on the June 1983 launch of Challenger. That was followed by a similar foam loss on the January 1990 flight of Columbia. No records are available from those flights about the size of the foam chunk or damage to the shuttles.
A little more than two years later, the Columbia again suffered bipod foam loss, that time from both closeouts, during a June 1992 launch. A 6-inch divot was missing from the right closeout, and the left closeout popped loose, taking with it a chunk of intertank foam. That piece measured 20 inches by 10 inches by several inches deep, according to a debris and ice assessment prepared after the mission." (quote is about half way down the page)
So it can't simply be the switch to the new foam that caused the shedding problems, now can it?
I looked at your link. You're wrong. Do a quick search on "Freon" in that page. Better yet, I'll show you what you get:
Four possible causes were put forth as to what caused the foam to separate from the External Tank:
1. The primer that bonds the tank foam to the External Tank itself was defective and did not set properly.
2. The aerodynamics of the roll to "heads up." The STS-87 mission was the first time this maneuver had ever been completed.
3. The change in the production methods of the foam to exclude the use of Freon and/or any ozone-damaging fluorocarbons.
4. An unforeseen shrinking of the External Tank due to cryogenic loading, leading to separation of the foam from the Tank and compromising its integrity and resistance to atmospheric drag at high velocities.
(emphasis mine)
Sorry but that's talking about STS-87 (see, its right there in the quote you gave). I'm not disputing that some of the flights that had the new foam saw shedding problems, that's clearly true. The original poster claimed it only happened after the switch to the new foam. But STS-107 (the Columbia flight that ended in disaster over Texas) was using the old foam. Its not the type of foam that's the problem, its something else.
It only started happening after they switched to a non-freon based foam to make the environmentalists happy. Despite that this was a known problem on quite a few missions, they were more interested in being politically correct than in insuring the safety of the missions.
NASA are in the process of switching foam types as mandated by the EPA. However STS-107 did not have the new "superlightweight" tanks with the new foam - the foam that was shed was the old foam. See the shuttle loss FAQ for details.
So it did not "only start happening after the switch". Its clearly a problem with the foam system in general, and is not directly related to the type of foam used, as you imply. This conspiracy theory that "environmentalists" or a "politically correct" NASA caused the shuttle disaster is wrong.