IIRC, there is one huge problem with Bayesian analysis: recalculation. Unlike a neural net, there is no "backprop" correction process. Once you walk your data set, you have fixed values for analysis. If you want to update the values (new spam words!), you need to re-process all of your mail again. You need to keep all of your spam around, as well as non-spam, just so you can constantly update your filters. Ick.
Boole was not doing engineering when he came up with his arithmetic, but that doesn't make it a "pointless diversion." Would you care to characterize all philosophy as such, or all theoretical math?
Um, yeah, I'd qualify all philosophy or theoretical math as a pointless diversion. Let me speak your language for a second. In Maslow's hierarchy of needs, I think that philosophy and theoretical math come pretty close to the tippy-top. Only societies that have already met a great deal of other needs can spend the time working on how many angels can dance on the head of a pin or if space has 14 dimensions or 20 dimensions.
In fact, I'd argue that taking philosophy as more than just a pointless diversion has done a great deal of damage to the human race, as the nonsense spouted by Marx and Nietzche formed the basis for two of the most awful societies the world has ever seen.
I agree with funding theoreticians; nothing wrong with that. They make stuff (or ideas) that seems neat but pointless until someone with a more practical bent says "your neat toy would perfectly solve this problem..." George Boole and Boolean math comes to mind as an example of this. When George was thinking about AND and OR in the 1800's, it was a pointless diversion. Now? It's the backbone of modern society.
I do take exception to the idea that you can just throw money at smart people, and expect magic to happen. Having a goal is important. The space program is a great case in point. Would making computers smaller have been a priority if they weren't going to shove them into a lunar capsule where every kilo counted? Probably not. Constraints are the source of genius.
What if the moon money was pumped *directly* into technology research instead?
Um, it would most likely have been completely wasted.
There's a reason why the phrase "Necessity is the mother of invention" exists. Most of the great advancements have ocurred because someone had a problem to solve. The spin-offs of the solution to the original problem simply ended up being more important.
Meanwhile, pure research has produced impressively little.
Can anyone who can provide counter-examples to my claim?
This actually happened to a company I worked for. A wretched programmer built this application that calculated costs using floating point. Even though values were tiny, errors in the cents column started appearing. Our client heard about it from one of their customers (unhappy that they were being overcharged), and we heard about it from our unhappy client. Needless to say, crappy programmer guy had long since quit and the problem was left for someone else to fix.
This was a Java program, back in the days when JDK 1.1 (with its BigDecimal class) were cutting edge and not entirely to be trusted, so we had to write our own fixed place class or licence one from someone else (I forget which we did).
You better use a fixed decimal notation for interest calculations, or you are going to end up with highly pissed off customers. Floating point math is too inaccurate to use for financial calculations.
Yeah, people are stupid because they don't have TiVos. That's a good argument. Do you work for TiVo, or do you keep the CEO's penis in your mouth for free?
One correction: they weren't moneylenders, they were moneyCHANGERS. They did currency conversion, for a fee. Other commercial activities (such as selling animals for sacrifice, saving the trouble of dragging your own along to the Temple) also took place around the Temple; if you wanted to buy a sheep for the slaughter, you would need the right currency to do so.
Considering that NeXT had foundered for years with the cross-platform OpenStep concept, it doesn't seem like it would have been a good idea at all.
Java, like it or not, has become the cross-platform language/API of choice. Other systems, like Galaxy, have died in the face of the competition. Considering that Sun is the force behind Java, how much help would they have been in improving OpenStep for Solaris?
Apple/NeXT did the only thing that made sense: focus on the Mac.
maybe that's because the UN is US controlled, and india doesn't provide the US with any oil for Bob's (hailing from arizona, texas) new SUV purchase.
Um, skipping over the fact that you think that Arizona is a city in Texas, you make no sense.
If the UN is US-controlled, then why does Israel, one of America's closest allies, keep on getting condemned by the UN? If the UN is US-controlled, and since India doesn't supply oil for Bob's SUV, then wouldn't India be condemned?
By the by, Israel doesn't have any oil, either. In fact, as natural resources go, Israel doesn't have much of anything.
I know that you're spouting an irrational conspiracy theory, but try for some internal consistency.
(I'm just going to keep re-posting this until it stops being moderated down. I've got more karma than the Slashdot jackbooted thugs have moderation points...)
No, you idiot, the reason why the US doesn't want to have anything to do with the ICC is because "war crimes" and "crimes against humanity" are bullshit charges. You just pick someone you don't like and accuse them of it.
Here's an easy one: there's a country where thousands of Muslims have been killed in revenge attacks just this year. Hundreds of thousands have been made homeless, their homes destroyed and their lives threatened if they return to rebuild. Can you name the country? If you guessed Israel, the current whipping boy of Liberals world-wide, you'd be wrong. I'm talking about India.
While Israel is accused of "crimes against humanity" on an hourly basis by Arab thugs and European inbreds, the Indian government is turning a blind eye on some horrible crimes. We're talking children being raped and then burned alive. Somehow, no one is calling for UN troops to intervene or condemning India in the UN or talking about bringing Indian officials before the ICC. Apparently, that honor is reserved for Jews only.
When the world is a fair place, with everyone judged by the same set of standards, America will let itself be judged by the world. Until then, it is rightfully telling everyone else to piss off.
-jon
Right. The justice of Bosnia, of Rwanda, of Kashmir, of Hama, Syria?
The justice of a UN Human Rights Commission with Cuba, China, the Sudan, and Syria?
I'll take US justice any day over what the UN calls justice. And by the millions of people who want to come TO the US from these countries that you are holding up as the light of the world, I don't think I'm alone in my opinion.
No, you idiot, the reason why the US doesn't want to have anything to do with the ICC is because "war crimes" and "crimes against humanity" are bullshit charges. You just pick someone you don't like and accuse them of it.
Here's an easy one: there's a country where thousands of Muslims have been killed in revenge attacks just this year. Hundreds of thousands have been made homeless, their homes destroyed and their lives threatened if they return to rebuild. Can you name the country? If you guessed Israel, the current whipping boy of Liberals world-wide, you'd be wrong. I'm talking about India.
While Israel is accused of "crimes against humanity" on an hourly basis by Arab thugs and European inbreds, the Indian government is turning a blind eye on some horrible crimes. We're talking children being raped and then burned alive. Somehow, no one is calling for UN troops to intervene or condemning India in the UN or talking about bringing Indian officials before the ICC. Apparently, that honor is reserved for Jews only.
When the world is a fair place, with everyone judged by the same set of standards, America will let itself be judged by the world. Until then, it is rightfully telling everyone else to piss off.
The Geneva Conventions are, in a word, nonsense. Has there been a war yet where BOTH sides actually obeyed them?
Are you aware that under the Geneva Conventions, prisoners of war are supposed to receive equipment to perform scientific experiments, if they so desire? Care to give a chemistry set or bio lab to an enemy in this day and age?
The fact is that the Geneva Conventions were nonsense from the beginning. Well-meaning nonsense, but nonesense nonetheless. You might as well cite the the Kellogg-Briand Pact when complaining about wartime activities. You know, the agreement that outlawed war in the 1928? It won its sponsors the Nobel Peace Prize. Worked real well, didn't it? Haven't had a war in the world since it was ratified...
It's not about giving it away, its about your music being trasparent. Your musician friends are Open Source friendly whether they like it or not - I can go to a show, transcibe their music, make some modifications, alter it. Now, I can't sell it, but that doesn't mean that I'm not able to know how the music was built. I can find out just by listening to it.
The battles for control over sheet music at the turn of the 20th century would be very instructive for the majority of slashdotters. Until intellectual property laws were strengthened, it was perfectly legal to send someone to a musical and have them write down the music during the performance. Then sheet music publishers would buy the copied music and publish it themselves, with not a penny to the original composers/arraingers. Gilbert and Sullivan used to complain bitterly about this.
Meanwhile, in the developing world (which was America at the time), copyrights on European (especially British) content was ignored. Dickens hated America for just this reason. Remind anyone of China in the 21st century?
Somehow, the world survived the sheet music monopolies and content control system (back when content control meant hiring thugs to destroy businesses that were suspected of "pirating" sheet music), just as it will survive the RIAA, MPAA, and the DMCA. They're just going to be made irelevant by some future technological occurence.
Slashdot Mirror
Is there a shortcut that I'm missing?
-jon
Um, yeah, I'd qualify all philosophy or theoretical math as a pointless diversion. Let me speak your language for a second. In Maslow's hierarchy of needs, I think that philosophy and theoretical math come pretty close to the tippy-top. Only societies that have already met a great deal of other needs can spend the time working on how many angels can dance on the head of a pin or if space has 14 dimensions or 20 dimensions.
In fact, I'd argue that taking philosophy as more than just a pointless diversion has done a great deal of damage to the human race, as the nonsense spouted by Marx and Nietzche formed the basis for two of the most awful societies the world has ever seen.
-jon
I agree with funding theoreticians; nothing wrong with that. They make stuff (or ideas) that seems neat but pointless until someone with a more practical bent says "your neat toy would perfectly solve this problem..." George Boole and Boolean math comes to mind as an example of this. When George was thinking about AND and OR in the 1800's, it was a pointless diversion. Now? It's the backbone of modern society.
I do take exception to the idea that you can just throw money at smart people, and expect magic to happen. Having a goal is important. The space program is a great case in point. Would making computers smaller have been a priority if they weren't going to shove them into a lunar capsule where every kilo counted? Probably not. Constraints are the source of genius.
-jon
If you are just going to make stuff up, at least have it be hard to test. Going to Google and typing in "owns the moon" rebuts your nonsense.
-jon
Um, it would most likely have been completely wasted.
There's a reason why the phrase "Necessity is the mother of invention" exists. Most of the great advancements have ocurred because someone had a problem to solve. The spin-offs of the solution to the original problem simply ended up being more important.
Meanwhile, pure research has produced impressively little.
Can anyone who can provide counter-examples to my claim?
-jon
-jon
This was a Java program, back in the days when JDK 1.1 (with its BigDecimal class) were cutting edge and not entirely to be trusted, so we had to write our own fixed place class or licence one from someone else (I forget which we did).
-jon
-jon
-jon
-jon
-jon
Java, like it or not, has become the cross-platform language/API of choice. Other systems, like Galaxy, have died in the face of the competition. Considering that Sun is the force behind Java, how much help would they have been in improving OpenStep for Solaris?
Apple/NeXT did the only thing that made sense: focus on the Mac.
-jon
Wow! How did you manage this amazing feat? And do you have a newsletter I can subscribe to?
-jon
Or are you telling me that you are so ignorant that you don't know that laws passed by Congress don't supercede the Constitution?
-jon
I swear, mental illness is endemic on /. You'd think that Taco had a tin foil hat franchise.
-jon
I don't think it's her head that people want to see four feet across...
-jon
-jon
2. There is a page at the site dedicated to explaining why the C-64 server keeps on running while Linux/BSD servers crumple under the /. effect.
-jon
-jon
Um, skipping over the fact that you think that Arizona is a city in Texas, you make no sense.
If the UN is US-controlled, then why does Israel, one of America's closest allies, keep on getting condemned by the UN? If the UN is US-controlled, and since India doesn't supply oil for Bob's SUV, then wouldn't India be condemned?
By the by, Israel doesn't have any oil, either. In fact, as natural resources go, Israel doesn't have much of anything.
I know that you're spouting an irrational conspiracy theory, but try for some internal consistency.
-jon
No, you idiot, the reason why the US doesn't want to have anything to do with the ICC is because "war crimes" and "crimes against humanity" are bullshit charges. You just pick someone you don't like and accuse them of it. Here's an easy one: there's a country where thousands of Muslims have been killed in revenge attacks just this year. Hundreds of thousands have been made homeless, their homes destroyed and their lives threatened if they return to rebuild. Can you name the country? If you guessed Israel, the current whipping boy of Liberals world-wide, you'd be wrong. I'm talking about India. While Israel is accused of "crimes against humanity" on an hourly basis by Arab thugs and European inbreds, the Indian government is turning a blind eye on some horrible crimes. We're talking children being raped and then burned alive. Somehow, no one is calling for UN troops to intervene or condemning India in the UN or talking about bringing Indian officials before the ICC. Apparently, that honor is reserved for Jews only. When the world is a fair place, with everyone judged by the same set of standards, America will let itself be judged by the world. Until then, it is rightfully telling everyone else to piss off. -jon
The justice of a UN Human Rights Commission with Cuba, China, the Sudan, and Syria?
I'll take US justice any day over what the UN calls justice. And by the millions of people who want to come TO the US from these countries that you are holding up as the light of the world, I don't think I'm alone in my opinion.
-jon
Here's an easy one: there's a country where thousands of Muslims have been killed in revenge attacks just this year. Hundreds of thousands have been made homeless, their homes destroyed and their lives threatened if they return to rebuild. Can you name the country? If you guessed Israel, the current whipping boy of Liberals world-wide, you'd be wrong. I'm talking about India.
While Israel is accused of "crimes against humanity" on an hourly basis by Arab thugs and European inbreds, the Indian government is turning a blind eye on some horrible crimes. We're talking children being raped and then burned alive. Somehow, no one is calling for UN troops to intervene or condemning India in the UN or talking about bringing Indian officials before the ICC. Apparently, that honor is reserved for Jews only.
When the world is a fair place, with everyone judged by the same set of standards, America will let itself be judged by the world. Until then, it is rightfully telling everyone else to piss off.
-jon
Are you aware that under the Geneva Conventions, prisoners of war are supposed to receive equipment to perform scientific experiments, if they so desire? Care to give a chemistry set or bio lab to an enemy in this day and age?
The fact is that the Geneva Conventions were nonsense from the beginning. Well-meaning nonsense, but nonesense nonetheless. You might as well cite the the Kellogg-Briand Pact when complaining about wartime activities. You know, the agreement that outlawed war in the 1928? It won its sponsors the Nobel Peace Prize. Worked real well, didn't it? Haven't had a war in the world since it was ratified...
-jon
The battles for control over sheet music at the turn of the 20th century would be very instructive for the majority of slashdotters. Until intellectual property laws were strengthened, it was perfectly legal to send someone to a musical and have them write down the music during the performance. Then sheet music publishers would buy the copied music and publish it themselves, with not a penny to the original composers/arraingers. Gilbert and Sullivan used to complain bitterly about this.
Meanwhile, in the developing world (which was America at the time), copyrights on European (especially British) content was ignored. Dickens hated America for just this reason. Remind anyone of China in the 21st century?
Somehow, the world survived the sheet music monopolies and content control system (back when content control meant hiring thugs to destroy businesses that were suspected of "pirating" sheet music), just as it will survive the RIAA, MPAA, and the DMCA. They're just going to be made irelevant by some future technological occurence.
-jon