Yes, except contrary to the original poster both IBM and motorolla do make g4s....I realize that there have been some recent developments with various companies dropping out and it may not be the case anymore. However, for a period of time you really did have a choice between IBM and motorolla chips.
Still, it is fair to say that intel and AMD are farther apart.
And you were being so sensible up until the statement about there being no real competition in the CPU market? Do you have any particular reason to believe this but what about an industry which has incredible technical innovation falling prices and buisnesses that have to deviate from their buisness plans (no x86-64 for intel) because of competitors actions makes you think the industry doesn't have much real competition? Where does $50 dollars come from?
While I agree with the post right above this one that competition brought by AMD did a great deal of good. I don't really think it's fair to laud AMD just because they were second and INTEL was first. You need both of them equally to have competition.
Well actually it was my understanding that IBM and Motorola actually made significant design distinctions between the processors. They are at least as differnt as intel and AMD (at least in x86-64)
Well.....except for the fact that the university isn't as concerned about furthering their careers as it is using this to make money (at least in the major sports). I don't really see a problem with this but we shouldn't pretend that the college serves primarily as a training center catering to the athlete. Rather they capitilize on the social pressure of athletes to attend college and the existing draft system to skim money out of this deal.
As I said I don't see any problem with this. College football and etc.. should properly be regarded as part of the universitys fundraising not their educational system. The football players are no differnt than waiters at a 1000 per plate dinner they are just paid in diplomas (from a school they probably could have gotten into) and access to the draft system. Since having colleges is a valuable social good giving them this opportunity seems like a good thing.
The linked paper seems to suggest that the open source community doesn't have a sufficently threatening way of counterattack. However, he only considers liscensces that terminate rights to that *particular* piece of code. What if the GPL revoked the rights to *all* other code liscensced under the GPL in the case of a patent or copyright suit.
Especially if this strong liscenscing clause revoked the right even to *use* the software in this case the FSF would have a very strong position. Almost any large software company probably uses GPLed software somewhere, even if it is only in binary form in drivers or software tools. Microsoft, especially makes use of GPLed software in it's SFU package and so forth.
The only problem I see is that this might be *too* powerfull/severe. A disaffected employee could contribute company code to a GPLed software knowing that any patent claim the company submited would bring down the wrath of these liscensces. Also are such provisions even legal? Perhaps if we restricted the backlash provision only to instances the FSF board verifies weren't copied.
So I have no doubt this page is filled with outraged posts about this idea. However, I come at this from a little differnt angle. I don't have any problem with government mandated mind alteration so long as it really made people happier/better off (the reason that we tend to view it as so objectionable it is always imagined to produce a situation that is on the whole less pleasant). However, this is simply a BAD idea which quite likely will make things significantly less pleasent.
The suggestion of vaccinating children againt morphine or cocaine reminds me of the claims of supposed health benefits for drinking radioactive water (it was eventually banned when someone drank so much their lower jaw fell off). People are jumping over a nifty new technology they don't understand and injudisciously pushing it on the public. I don't say this lightly, I am usually quite disgusted when people cry wolf about new technologies and demand they adhere to a higher safety standard than current options. However, just as in the radioactive water example it isn't merely that we can't guarantee something isn't harmfull but we have good reason to suspect something might be harmfull.
In this example scientists are blindly screwing with important neural circutry. This is analagous to inserting random bytes into your kernel until affects the option you desire. Even if on observation in a differnt enviornment from the production one (rats instead of humans) the kernel still appeared stable you wouldn't trust it for production. Even worse people age, go through puberty etc.. unlike a computer so even a vaccine that seems fine now might manefest problems years later. Also in people we care more about just their external behavior, what if this makes people unhappy.
This is precisely what I fear. More and more evidence keeps mountaing that all sorts of everyday activities cause the same brain activity as drug use. This includes things like eating chocolate and socialization. In fact many important experiences, like the glow of love or post orgasmic bliss are caused by natural versions of illicit drugs (endorphines affect the same receptors as opiates like heroin). Most likely the same receptors these drugs target exist to give important human experiences and perhaps drug addiction is nothing more than an extreme version of desire caused by enjoyment. Quite likely if we give someone these vaccines you would permanetly impair their happiness or experience.
These drugs might be usefull for some severe addicts who desperatly want to get clean but don't have the willpower. The drug lifestyle might be doing them more harm then they risk from this vaccine. Unfortunatly, since they are quiting narcotics (or continuing) it is virtually impossible to tell if the vaccine impaired their natural enjoyment of life (feeling this way can be a sideeffect of longterm drug use). While I'm normally all for testing I'm leary of even giving *one* human test subject this vaccine unless it is their only reasonable hope. Death is one thing but being still alive and finding you can't enjoy life like you were before is simply dreadfull.
First of all as a side note I would point out that the first poster did say the planets had danced for 10,000 years. As the earth is a planet this does seem to imply the earth is older than 10,000 years.
While I agree that the existance of dinosoars do not logically contradict the biblical account of creation but this wasn't what the poster claimed. He said the existance of dinosaurs 'debunked' the earth's age being 6,000 years. Given that they certainly provide strong and convincing evidence they do indeed debunk the claim.
For instance suppose someone examines a supposedly miraculous crying statue. Carefull examination reveales the statue can actually be accessed from underneath to replenish water which slowly drops out the statues eyes. Quite clearly this 'debunks' the the claim of miracle even though it is logically possible no one ever did fill the statues tear ducts and it all occured miraculously.
Furthermore, while most individuals don't learn "their side" well enough to write a scientific paper on the matter this is a far cry from whether they can make a case for the truth of the matter or know if they actually believe the matter. The poster above, just by the claim dinosaurs debunk new earth creationism made a case for 'their side' (implicitly this mention of dinosaurs is referencing such facts as them being found in differnt strata, no dinosaur teeth marks found on human bones etc.). While this might not sway the undicided it is far more than enough evidence to be convincing on pretty much any other scientific controversy.
Also not being able to make the case oneself is a fair cry from believing something on faith. I've observed no direct evidence of the existance of archimedes (and in fact I doubt anyone alive today has) but yet I hardly believe in his existance based on mere faith. Instead I believe in his existance because many individuals who I have otherwised discovered to be reliable attest to this. If the only sort of warranted belief (or even belief as you would have us believe...though I am strongly of the opinion that something believed on faith is still a belief) was that which we had direct evidence for believing essentially nothing would be believed for reasons stronger than faith. Realistically, people believe in an ancient earth for the same justifiable belief I have in the existance of archimedes; other individuals whom they have reason to believe assert that this is the case.
If you still insist that this type of secondary evidence isn't valid how about we start betting on (verifieable) facts we look up in the encyclopedia. If the claims of the encyclopedia don't provide strong evidence that these claims are indeed true you certainly won't mind wagering against what the encyclopedia claims is true (i.e. look up simple science experiments which neither of us has direct knowledge of, you bet against the enclyopedia's predicted result and we do the experiment). Giving people the impression that only first hand knowledge/reasoning justifies belief only confuses the issues. Unfortunatly, it is just these sorts of beliefs (that listening to experts doesn't give one good evidence) which haunts national policy on things like nuclear power. Quite frankly people simply don't have the inclination nor interest to research every claim from first sources and if they are convinced experts don't constitute a good reason to believe/disbelieve these claims they will make the deciscions randomly or for purely emotional reasons.
Re:Competition != Subject
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Is Math A Sport?
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· Score: 0, Offtopic
Reading my post I realized that there might be some confusion over what I mean by physics or math competition (or even science competition in general). I mean this to include things like IMO (International Math Olympiad), IPO (international physics olympiad), the putnam exam, ARML or other high school math competitions. In short any competition where contestants must answer well-defined questions especially under a time limit.
I do not mean to include in my criticism things like the Intel Sciece Talent Search (formerly westinghouse). These sorts of competitions much more accurately capture the open-ended and often collaborative nature of science and mathematical research. In fact the mathematics winners at least appear to be doing real mathematics.
These open-ended project style competitions are still far from perfect. To a great extent it appeats that it is merely access to a labratory and a sympathetic professor which is being evaluated rather than the indivudal's merits. While access to money and experimental equitment are important issues in real world science they become particularly troubling in a contest setting especially among high schoolers whose access to labs and equitment is entierly dependent on the good will of others rather than their own prior accomplishments (as is ideally is in science). In areas like biology where there are often more open questions than availible researchers or equitment a competition like this will often reflect who had connections more than who had ideas.
I don't mean to slander the winners of these contests. I have known some personally and without exception they are incredibly bright talented individuals. However, the difference between them and other bright talented individuals often appears to be that they were given lab access and pointed towards promising areas by a helpfull researcher rather than ideas or scientific talent. Furthermore, the fact that winners are picked from across a range of fields further muddies the water. How do you compare an individual who solved a minor mathematical problem against someone who answered a biological question which while not of huge significance was of actual interest in the field? On the one hand the biological contestant contributed more to real science but on the other they might not have needed any new insight and merely conducted experiements no one else had yet had time to do while the mathematical result clearly demonstrates fresh insight.
In any case it isn't even clear that these contests truly desire to pick the best individual rather than merely rewarding (and thereby encouraging) youthful scientific endeavor. In either case I wanted to make clear that I don't believe these contests cause the same misconceptions as the more test oriented IMO/IPO/putnam. Even if their judging doesn't pick out the contestant demonstrating the best scientific insight they (for the most part) accurately portray the nature and process of science/math.
Competition != Subject
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Is Math A Sport?
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· Score: 2, Interesting
First of all I want to point out how absolutely ridiculous this question is. It is merely an invitation to petty linguistic bickering over whether the word 'sport' is broad enough to cover mathematics competitions. There is no real substance to this issue and I expect to see a bunch of pointless posts referencing differnt dictionaries. This is doubly pointless because the dictionary could say a sport is a type of lettuce and it wouldn't make any difference, the public at large is going to continue to use sport to refer primarily to athletic events and not mathematical competitions. Regardless of how you can twist dictionary definitions for all prctical purposes the word sport (by usage) will continue to not include mathematical competitions.
There is however, a more important issue to be addressed. That is the inappropriate confusion of these math (or science) competitions with the actual subject itself. Now I realize that these competitions are run with the best intentions but in the long run they do a disservice to the communities they attempt to publisicise.
While it *should* be entierly irrelevant who is making an argument unfortunatly it often is not. So perhaps it will clear up confusion if I point out that I am a math grad student who has competed in many of these type events (I even was in the physics olympiad camp) and I have quite positive regard for both these subjects and the competitions. The competitions are certainly a fun way for students interested in these activities to interact, meet others, and engage competitively. I'm not advocating they cease existing or anything of the kind.
I am, however, deeply disturbed by the way these activities are presented. The math and physics olympiads (as well as numerous lesser high school competitions) are presented as representitives of actual math or science. While it might have some local benefit to get people excited about the competitive aspect of these competitions it will ultimately only hurt these communities if people confuse these rigged competitions with what mathematicians or scientists *really* do. Science and math *aren't* sports where people race to solve rigged problems and presenting them as such quite likely erodes public perception of their importance. The public might admire sports but when push comes to shove they will cut sports funding before other programs, we don't want them to consider math and science the same way. Even worse by emphasising only the competitive aspects and problem solving tricks of these disciplines many students who have slightly differnt interests are turned off. I don't have any evidence but it is quite possible that the mischarechterization of science/math as primarily competitive contributes to the underrepresentation of females in these fields.
Unfortunatly this confusion between the competitions and the actual subject is quite real. At least in the mathematical world performing well on the putnam or IMO will get one into grad school or college respectively. There seems to be a widespread, and false, belief that these competitions bear a significant resembelance to their subjects.
It is true that the putnam and IMO competitions do focus on proving various results and not on the brute calculations that unfortunatly comprise most of HS and undergrad mathematics education. However, solving cute little problems under time pressure is hardly an accurate description of mathematical enterprise. Many important fascets of mathematical investigation (developing new definitions/conceptual frameworks, collaboration etc..) are entierly absent and the competition favors quick studious thinkers who go through books of past competitions over deeper thinkers.
The physics competitions (which I have more personal knowledge of having been a finalist in the physics olympiad) are even worse. Physics is the search for *new* laws and rules about the universe (not necessarily fundamental...for instance laws about liquid flow) while the competitions merely measure application o
I'm afraid this doesn't seem like a particularly appropriate use of genetic algorithims. In fact the entire piece seems to suggest a poor research project (someone who did genetic algorithms needed a thesis) which got picked up on a slow news day.
First of all I would point out that genetic algorithms are most appropriate for pure optimization problems with minimal mandatory constraints. While loading speed is important for internet caching it must be optimized inside certain constraints. A good cache system would have guarantees about how frequently web pages were refreshed/verified. For instance one might evolve a very efficent cache algorithm which only refreshes slashdot once per day.
Of course one could tack refresh guarantees on top of your evolved algorithm but the more constraints you place on top of the algorithm the less likely it is that this algorithm is more efficent than a more traditional solution. Most likely one would like to make the refresh minimum dependent on the frequency the website updates and placing a complex condition like this on top of a genetic algorithm evolved simply to maximize cache hits is likely to destroy any speed benefit it might provide.
To be fair one could amalgamate all these concerns into the evolution process. Instead of just measuring cache hits/download speed one could also check how frequently the cache page matches the current page and optimize some combination of these scores. However, this doesn't appear to be what was done in the article. Moreover, for web page cacheing some absolute gaurantee of freshness is desierable. The winning genetic algorithm might have very good performance on average but almost never update one person's report on the stock market.
In general it seems like a dangerous idea to use genetic algorithms in situations open to abuse. Handwritten code can be analyzed and it's behavior in exceptional situations relatively easily determined (as opposed to a genetic algorithm). With a genetic algorithm not only is it not clear how it will behave in exceptional circumstances but we aren't even sure what kind of situations are most likely to break the algorithm.
A web cache should robustly handle attempts to misdirect or corrupt it. If someone forges a great deal of web page requests we don't want the cache to dump truly popular pages to load the falsely requested pages. A flaw like this could quite possibly be used to mount a DNS attack using the large bandwidth of the web cache. More worrying is the possibility that a clever hacker might be able to trick the cache into replacing a valid website with a page of his choosing. Handwriting the code allows one to deal with all these potential problems and also ensures that the cache files/records are in a manageable form so sysadmins can manually flush some pages out of the cache or otherwise address errors.
Finally, it is not clear that a genetic caching algorithm would continue to work as the internet changes. If you sort through a wide swath of algorithms it is quite possible that certain features/tricks will end up being hardcoded, for instance the algorithm might refuse to cace anything starting with google.com which will then become inefficent if the internet changes. It would be good to remember the story about the army using a neural net to diffrentiate russian and american tanks and discovering it had just learned to distinguish the time of day as the american tanks had all been photographed at noon.
In short it seems that genetic algorithms have major drawbacks as cache algorithms. Since we have barely broken the surface of handwritten cache systems the effort hardly seems warranted. Before moving to genetic algorithms there are tons of good ideas which should be explored first. For instance making browsers cache aware (so the online cache can cooperate with the browsers cache like I suppose earthlink does), predictively requesting pages linked from downloaded pages, generating user profiles to better predict which pages wil
That python script to transfer your mbox files to gmail doesn't work very well. I'm trying it on the unix machines at my office and it won't read my mbox files...sigh, I don't really want to screw around with the source code now...maybe I will try it at home.
Well, not quite. It all depends on how this prediction is represented. After all we *can* compute the n-th prime, there is a simple procedure to do this which can even be written in basic number theory.
If they are using entagled photons it seems they can't ever use a repeater or amplify the signal. How do they get this to cover any reasonable distance...or do they just send a whole bunch of photons knowing some will get lost...if so I wonder how low the bit rate is.
It would be real easy to combine the ease of use advantages of highlight to copy with the ability to highlight to delete or even copy multiple items.
Implement a copy buffer stack. Bind a simple key like escape to a function like swaping the top of the stack and the next element (you would want to have a minimum of two elements (possibly blank) in the stack at all times).
So you want to copy something highlight it. Now you don't want to have it deleted when you copy the next thing tap escape highlight your new text and if you want to replace this with the text in the buffer tap escape again to paste.
This sort of system preserves the ease of just highlighting to copy while giving it a great deal of additional power. Power users could of course bind additional functions like duplicate the top entry, delete an item etc.. etc.. If my description is a little confusing the model is from my hp48.
For all I know this has already been written, if so maybe someone can post a link.
What wrong with the rich getting richer? I'm most certainly not one of the rich (poor grad student) but I'm in favor of everyone getting a higher standard of living including the rich.
It is only a problem if the rich get richer at the expense of the poor. In the case of credit we are looking at a mechanism that lets the rich get richer while bettering all of society (financing lets people start stores and industry which improves everyone's lot)
This is very unlikely because it simply isn't profitable.
In order to produce a magazine that caters either to left or right wingers depending on the viewer you have to do all the work to create two differnt magazines (which I am using to include web publications). Now why not just produce two magazines? People like being able to tell their friend to go look at a certain article, if content changes for the viewer they can't do this anymore making this sort of operation strictly less profitable than two seperate magazines.
What does it mean not to be compelled to be a witness against yourself? I would certainly interpret this as meaning you can't be punished for refusing to be a witness against yourself, and the supreme court has also interpreted it this way as well. Pleading guilty (where you have to get up and usually explain your crime) certainly counts as being a witness against yourself. So in effect you are being penalized for not being a witness against yourself.
A law which added 5 years to someone's sentence if they take the 5th and are then convicted would certainly be declared unconstitutional. So why are plea bargains, which in effect accomplish exactly the same thing, constitutional?
I can't tell are you agreeing with me or disagreeing with me. The first sentence seems to agree that plea bargains shouldn't be offered for admiting your guilt while later you seem to argue the other way.
The problem is that we can't offer plea bargains only to people who really commited the crime (nor am I really sure we would want to). In regular cases I hope the government only prosecutes people it truly thinks of as guilty. Unfortunatly now plea bargains pragmatically become a system which often *severly* punishes an individual because he insisted on his innocence.
Still, it does seem everyone would go through the expense of a trial. So while still unfair in my mind I guess I could come to accept a plea bargain system which offers the individual no more than a 10 or 20% reduction in sentence (no dropping the death penalty either). This probably would encourage those who are obviously guilty to plea out while not discouraging those who are innocent from seeking a trial. Still there are alot of details which would need to be worked out. Prosecuters would have to be watched to make sure they didn't get around this by completly dropping other charges. Also it would be complicated to determine what the sentence you remove 10 or 20% from would have been, perhaps we should have a penalty phase even if you skip the guilt phase.
True, not having plea bargains would significantly increase costs. However, the amount of money we spend on our judicary is still quite small compared to say defense or other major government expenses. So I think we could employ enough judges and attorneys to make the system work without letting people go based on their right to a speedy trial. Besides, it seems nearly every person in prison spends their time filling in court and we manage to deal with this.
However, the problem with plea bargains is not only that they can be explicitly abused with the intention of threating people into cooperation. The simple existance of a regime which punishes you for not confessing (or pleading guilty) is abuse. This is the motivation for the 5th ammendment.
I would be entierly open to suggestions about ways to reduce cost but prevent abuse of plea bargains. Where plea bargains are most usefull (save the most money) and I imagine most frequently offered are where the evidence against a person isn't extremely clear cut. The more complex and less compelling the evidence of guilt the longer and more expensive the trial will be and the more likely the prosecuter will lose. At the moment this is the justification for offering plea bargains, you avoid the risks of trial and save money. However, this is exactly the sort of case it is most inappropriate to offer a plea bargain as it is the time you are most likely to be railroading an innocent man into taking the plea bargain out fear of what the more severe punishment might be. We certainly don't want to offer plea bargains only in cases where the evidence is overwhelmingly against the individual in question, as it hardly seems fair to throw the book more at those more likely to be innocent or have mitigating factors.
I guess I would be willing to support a plea bargain system that caps the percentage relief offered. So a prosecutor can't offer more than 20% reduction of sentence (I'm not sure what the exact number should be) and most certainly shouldn't be allowed to plea the death penalty off the table. While still not truly fair the percentage is low enough that individuals convinced of their innocence will probably not be detered from claiming it while those who are clearly guilty still have every motivation to take the bargain. Still there are significant possibilities for abuse in this case which would require carefull oversight. Since the DA has the freedom to decide what crimes are prosecuted we want to prevent them from going around this 20% limit by agreeing not to bring up certain charges.
Well the quote in the article says they insist they didn't do anything illegal. Also from what I read they dug up the machines and looked at them, there was no indication they ever shut them off or interfered with their operation. Moreover, there is an issue with selective enforcement. For instance you can't create a law and not bother to prosecute people unless they are publishing information you don't like. It seems the governments real objection is not that they blocked or delayed some signal, but that this is merely an excuse to stop people from publishing information about the sensors around area 51.
Still, as I said in my article I really don't know the situations in this case. If indeed he only listened in on the sensors and opened them up and looked inside then it seems according to the law he wouldn't be guilty. There is also the issue with selective enforcement. Still, I have to agree that in this case he is probably guilty but this really doesn't make a difference to my point.
I'm not sure if I agree that poorly regulated patents are worse than no patents at all but I do entierly agree with you about the problems with patents.
However, the entire point of this was just to show that regulations, as opposed of common sense laws like 'don't murder people' are necessery. I probably should have picked pollution controls as a better and less controversial area where you need precisce regulations as opposed to vague rules. I think it is pretty clear that once you have a system like patents or pollution controls it is important to have precisce laws otherwise companies will be always live in fear of stepping over someone's interpratation of this vague laws. Patents were a poor example as one can reasonably make the case (even if I don't agree with it) that they aren't necessery in the first place.
While I know that often plea deals are important in order to garner testimony about organized crime or other criminal activities this sort of case illustrates (or at least might illustrate since I don't actually know who is telling the truth) the potential dangers. Bizarelly I find myself in agreement with Ashcroft, plea bargains should be *only* be offered in return for becoming an informant, it should be banned (legally and not just by the AGs rules) otherwise.
For instance in this case the government has *every* encouragment to file suit against this guy even if they have no evidence. The threat of prison time is scary enough that any normal person will take a plea agreement accomplishing what the government really wants, stopping them from investigating area 51 (it would not surprise me at all if part of his probhation is not to even passively map the sensors, or even go close to area 51). The plea bargain allows the government to exercise considerable power by the threat of legal action without any real chance of court review.
Moreover, as far as I'm concerned giving someone a deal for pleading guilty should be a violation of the 5th ammendment. After all a plea bargain is a reduced sentence in return for not insisting on your innocence. Or put another way in the presence of a plea offer there is a penalty for insisting on your innocence. Sure it isn't technically punishing someone for refusing to incriminate themselves but this is certainly within the spirit of the ammendment, if the implicit privacy argument is considered a valid constitutional principle than this sort of broad interpratation of the 5th is perfectly reasonable as well. I really can't see any pragmatic difference between a law which penalizes someone for not testifying to their guilt (which presumably could only apply if the individual was convicted) and a general practice of giving significantly reduced sentences in return for the admisson of guilt.
Some people will protest that my position would rob the judicial system of discretion. Not at all, judges would still have plenty of discretion to give a light sentence. The change would just stop penalizing individuals for insisting on innocence. I also think it is only because upper class white kids always recieve plea bargains in drug cases (while poor black ones often don't) that the public is willing to stand for things like mandatory minimums and extreme drug sentences. I doubt most of the prosecutors are overtly racist but many people's gut reaction to seeing a well dressed white kid busted for drugs is a good kid who screwed up while a black kid in baggy pants and so forth is far more likely to be thought of as a bad person. Sure, the problem will still exist in sentencing but at least the system will be a little better and more open (it is easier to see that a judge is racially biased in his deciscions because everything is public record while often the surrounding facts to a plea bargain aren't so publicly accesible).
While it isn't strictly patents for quite awhile the US did not offer copyrights. While we were otherwise fairly comparable with european societies which did offer copyrights (england) we had a much lower output of creative work. This output increased dramaticaly when we finally did institute an IP scheme.
Now you *may* question the strength of my data but may I remind you that at least there is both empirical evidence as well as theoretical reason to believe patents encourage development. In order to claim we would be better off without patents you need to do more than simply point out my evidence is week but offer equally convincing reasons to believe they *aren't* beneficial.
Moreover, the original US congress which set up a patent system was hardly doing so because of corporate pressure, quite the opposite their was a large pirate industry in the US at this time which was going to be negativly affected. The notion that patent systems are on the whole negative (and not merely currently out of control) and yet all developed western countries have decided to pass them is quite difficult to swallow. Especially when it simply isn't true that they were forced on the world by some large multinationals.
Regardless if you don't like the patent case take drivers liscene's. Surely it is important to have actual regulations in this area and not simply have a 'common sense' law saying "people need 'good' vision to drive" rather to avoid conflicts we should have specific objective criteria about how bad vision can be before you don't get a liscence.
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Yes, except contrary to the original poster both IBM and motorolla do make g4s....I realize that there have been some recent developments with various companies dropping out and it may not be the case anymore. However, for a period of time you really did have a choice between IBM and motorolla chips.
Still, it is fair to say that intel and AMD are farther apart.
And you were being so sensible up until the statement about there being no real competition in the CPU market? Do you have any particular reason to believe this but what about an industry which has incredible technical innovation falling prices and buisnesses that have to deviate from their buisness plans (no x86-64 for intel) because of competitors actions makes you think the industry doesn't have much real competition? Where does $50 dollars come from?
While I agree with the post right above this one that competition brought by AMD did a great deal of good. I don't really think it's fair to laud AMD just because they were second and INTEL was first. You need both of them equally to have competition.
Well actually it was my understanding that IBM and Motorola actually made significant design distinctions between the processors. They are at least as differnt as intel and AMD (at least in x86-64)
Care to elaborate. I've heard things like this before but not sure why. Is there a law to this effect? Court rulings?
Well.....except for the fact that the university isn't as concerned about furthering their careers as it is using this to make money (at least in the major sports). I don't really see a problem with this but we shouldn't pretend that the college serves primarily as a training center catering to the athlete. Rather they capitilize on the social pressure of athletes to attend college and the existing draft system to skim money out of this deal.
As I said I don't see any problem with this. College football and etc.. should properly be regarded as part of the universitys fundraising not their educational system. The football players are no differnt than waiters at a 1000 per plate dinner they are just paid in diplomas (from a school they probably could have gotten into) and access to the draft system. Since having colleges is a valuable social good giving them this opportunity seems like a good thing.
The linked paper seems to suggest that the open source community doesn't have a sufficently threatening way of counterattack. However, he only considers liscensces that terminate rights to that *particular* piece of code. What if the GPL revoked the rights to *all* other code liscensced under the GPL in the case of a patent or copyright suit.
Especially if this strong liscenscing clause revoked the right even to *use* the software in this case the FSF would have a very strong position. Almost any large software company probably uses GPLed software somewhere, even if it is only in binary form in drivers or software tools. Microsoft, especially makes use of GPLed software in it's SFU package and so forth.
The only problem I see is that this might be *too* powerfull/severe. A disaffected employee could contribute company code to a GPLed software knowing that any patent claim the company submited would bring down the wrath of these liscensces. Also are such provisions even legal? Perhaps if we restricted the backlash provision only to instances the FSF board verifies weren't copied.
So I have no doubt this page is filled with outraged posts about this idea. However, I come at this from a little differnt angle. I don't have any problem with government mandated mind alteration so long as it really made people happier/better off (the reason that we tend to view it as so objectionable it is always imagined to produce a situation that is on the whole less pleasant). However, this is simply a BAD idea which quite likely will make things significantly less pleasent.
The suggestion of vaccinating children againt morphine or cocaine reminds me of the claims of supposed health benefits for drinking radioactive water (it was eventually banned when someone drank so much their lower jaw fell off). People are jumping over a nifty new technology they don't understand and injudisciously pushing it on the public. I don't say this lightly, I am usually quite disgusted when people cry wolf about new technologies and demand they adhere to a higher safety standard than current options. However, just as in the radioactive water example it isn't merely that we can't guarantee something isn't harmfull but we have good reason to suspect something might be harmfull.
In this example scientists are blindly screwing with important neural circutry. This is analagous to inserting random bytes into your kernel until affects the option you desire. Even if on observation in a differnt enviornment from the production one (rats instead of humans) the kernel still appeared stable you wouldn't trust it for production. Even worse people age, go through puberty etc.. unlike a computer so even a vaccine that seems fine now might manefest problems years later. Also in people we care more about just their external behavior, what if this makes people unhappy.
This is precisely what I fear. More and more evidence keeps mountaing that all sorts of everyday activities cause the same brain activity as drug use. This includes things like eating chocolate and socialization. In fact many important experiences, like the glow of love or post orgasmic bliss are caused by natural versions of illicit drugs (endorphines affect the same receptors as opiates like heroin). Most likely the same receptors these drugs target exist to give important human experiences and perhaps drug addiction is nothing more than an extreme version of desire caused by enjoyment. Quite likely if we give someone these vaccines you would permanetly impair their happiness or experience.
These drugs might be usefull for some severe addicts who desperatly want to get clean but don't have the willpower. The drug lifestyle might be doing them more harm then they risk from this vaccine. Unfortunatly, since they are quiting narcotics (or continuing) it is virtually impossible to tell if the vaccine impaired their natural enjoyment of life (feeling this way can be a sideeffect of longterm drug use). While I'm normally all for testing I'm leary of even giving *one* human test subject this vaccine unless it is their only reasonable hope. Death is one thing but being still alive and finding you can't enjoy life like you were before is simply dreadfull.
First of all as a side note I would point out that the first poster did say the planets had danced for 10,000 years. As the earth is a planet this does seem to imply the earth is older than 10,000 years.
While I agree that the existance of dinosoars do not logically contradict the biblical account of creation but this wasn't what the poster claimed. He said the existance of dinosaurs 'debunked' the earth's age being 6,000 years. Given that they certainly provide strong and convincing evidence they do indeed debunk the claim.
For instance suppose someone examines a supposedly miraculous crying statue. Carefull examination reveales the statue can actually be accessed from underneath to replenish water which slowly drops out the statues eyes. Quite clearly this 'debunks' the the claim of miracle even though it is logically possible no one ever did fill the statues tear ducts and it all occured miraculously.
Furthermore, while most individuals don't learn "their side" well enough to write a scientific paper on the matter this is a far cry from whether they can make a case for the truth of the matter or know if they actually believe the matter. The poster above, just by the claim dinosaurs debunk new earth creationism made a case for 'their side' (implicitly this mention of dinosaurs is referencing such facts as them being found in differnt strata, no dinosaur teeth marks found on human bones etc.). While this might not sway the undicided it is far more than enough evidence to be convincing on pretty much any other scientific controversy.
Also not being able to make the case oneself is a fair cry from believing something on faith. I've observed no direct evidence of the existance of archimedes (and in fact I doubt anyone alive today has) but yet I hardly believe in his existance based on mere faith. Instead I believe in his existance because many individuals who I have otherwised discovered to be reliable attest to this. If the only sort of warranted belief (or even belief as you would have us believe...though I am strongly of the opinion that something believed on faith is still a belief) was that which we had direct evidence for believing essentially nothing would be believed for reasons stronger than faith. Realistically, people believe in an ancient earth for the same justifiable belief I have in the existance of archimedes; other individuals whom they have reason to believe assert that this is the case.
If you still insist that this type of secondary evidence isn't valid how about we start betting on (verifieable) facts we look up in the encyclopedia. If the claims of the encyclopedia don't provide strong evidence that these claims are indeed true you certainly won't mind wagering against what the encyclopedia claims is true (i.e. look up simple science experiments which neither of us has direct knowledge of, you bet against the enclyopedia's predicted result and we do the experiment). Giving people the impression that only first hand knowledge/reasoning justifies belief only confuses the issues. Unfortunatly, it is just these sorts of beliefs (that listening to experts doesn't give one good evidence) which haunts national policy on things like nuclear power. Quite frankly people simply don't have the inclination nor interest to research every claim from first sources and if they are convinced experts don't constitute a good reason to believe/disbelieve these claims they will make the deciscions randomly or for purely emotional reasons.
Reading my post I realized that there might be some confusion over what I mean by physics or math competition (or even science competition in general). I mean this to include things like IMO (International Math Olympiad), IPO (international physics olympiad), the putnam exam, ARML or other high school math competitions. In short any competition where contestants must answer well-defined questions especially under a time limit.
I do not mean to include in my criticism things like the Intel Sciece Talent Search (formerly westinghouse). These sorts of competitions much more accurately capture the open-ended and often collaborative nature of science and mathematical research. In fact the mathematics winners at least appear to be doing real mathematics.
These open-ended project style competitions are still far from perfect. To a great extent it appeats that it is merely access to a labratory and a sympathetic professor which is being evaluated rather than the indivudal's merits. While access to money and experimental equitment are important issues in real world science they become particularly troubling in a contest setting especially among high schoolers whose access to labs and equitment is entierly dependent on the good will of others rather than their own prior accomplishments (as is ideally is in science). In areas like biology where there are often more open questions than availible researchers or equitment a competition like this will often reflect who had connections more than who had ideas.
I don't mean to slander the winners of these contests. I have known some personally and without exception they are incredibly bright talented individuals. However, the difference between them and other bright talented individuals often appears to be that they were given lab access and pointed towards promising areas by a helpfull researcher rather than ideas or scientific talent. Furthermore, the fact that winners are picked from across a range of fields further muddies the water. How do you compare an individual who solved a minor mathematical problem against someone who answered a biological question which while not of huge significance was of actual interest in the field? On the one hand the biological contestant contributed more to real science but on the other they might not have needed any new insight and merely conducted experiements no one else had yet had time to do while the mathematical result clearly demonstrates fresh insight.
In any case it isn't even clear that these contests truly desire to pick the best individual rather than merely rewarding (and thereby encouraging) youthful scientific endeavor. In either case I wanted to make clear that I don't believe these contests cause the same misconceptions as the more test oriented IMO/IPO/putnam. Even if their judging doesn't pick out the contestant demonstrating the best scientific insight they (for the most part) accurately portray the nature and process of science/math.
First of all I want to point out how absolutely ridiculous this question is. It is merely an invitation to petty linguistic bickering over whether the word 'sport' is broad enough to cover mathematics competitions. There is no real substance to this issue and I expect to see a bunch of pointless posts referencing differnt dictionaries. This is doubly pointless because the dictionary could say a sport is a type of lettuce and it wouldn't make any difference, the public at large is going to continue to use sport to refer primarily to athletic events and not mathematical competitions. Regardless of how you can twist dictionary definitions for all prctical purposes the word sport (by usage) will continue to not include mathematical competitions.
There is however, a more important issue to be addressed. That is the inappropriate confusion of these math (or science) competitions with the actual subject itself. Now I realize that these competitions are run with the best intentions but in the long run they do a disservice to the communities they attempt to publisicise.
While it *should* be entierly irrelevant who is making an argument unfortunatly it often is not. So perhaps it will clear up confusion if I point out that I am a math grad student who has competed in many of these type events (I even was in the physics olympiad camp) and I have quite positive regard for both these subjects and the competitions. The competitions are certainly a fun way for students interested in these activities to interact, meet others, and engage competitively. I'm not advocating they cease existing or anything of the kind.
I am, however, deeply disturbed by the way these activities are presented. The math and physics olympiads (as well as numerous lesser high school competitions) are presented as representitives of actual math or science. While it might have some local benefit to get people excited about the competitive aspect of these competitions it will ultimately only hurt these communities if people confuse these rigged competitions with what mathematicians or scientists *really* do. Science and math *aren't* sports where people race to solve rigged problems and presenting them as such quite likely erodes public perception of their importance. The public might admire sports but when push comes to shove they will cut sports funding before other programs, we don't want them to consider math and science the same way. Even worse by emphasising only the competitive aspects and problem solving tricks of these disciplines many students who have slightly differnt interests are turned off. I don't have any evidence but it is quite possible that the mischarechterization of science/math as primarily competitive contributes to the underrepresentation of females in these fields.
Unfortunatly this confusion between the competitions and the actual subject is quite real. At least in the mathematical world performing well on the putnam or IMO will get one into grad school or college respectively. There seems to be a widespread, and false, belief that these competitions bear a significant resembelance to their subjects.
It is true that the putnam and IMO competitions do focus on proving various results and not on the brute calculations that unfortunatly comprise most of HS and undergrad mathematics education. However, solving cute little problems under time pressure is hardly an accurate description of mathematical enterprise. Many important fascets of mathematical investigation (developing new definitions/conceptual frameworks, collaboration etc..) are entierly absent and the competition favors quick studious thinkers who go through books of past competitions over deeper thinkers.
The physics competitions (which I have more personal knowledge of having been a finalist in the physics olympiad) are even worse. Physics is the search for *new* laws and rules about the universe (not necessarily fundamental...for instance laws about liquid flow) while the competitions merely measure application o
I'm afraid this doesn't seem like a particularly appropriate use of genetic algorithims. In fact the entire piece seems to suggest a poor research project (someone who did genetic algorithms needed a thesis) which got picked up on a slow news day.
First of all I would point out that genetic algorithms are most appropriate for pure optimization problems with minimal mandatory constraints. While loading speed is important for internet caching it must be optimized inside certain constraints. A good cache system would have guarantees about how frequently web pages were refreshed/verified. For instance one might evolve a very efficent cache algorithm which only refreshes slashdot once per day.
Of course one could tack refresh guarantees on top of your evolved algorithm but the more constraints you place on top of the algorithm the less likely it is that this algorithm is more efficent than a more traditional solution. Most likely one would like to make the refresh minimum dependent on the frequency the website updates and placing a complex condition like this on top of a genetic algorithm evolved simply to maximize cache hits is likely to destroy any speed benefit it might provide.
To be fair one could amalgamate all these concerns into the evolution process. Instead of just measuring cache hits/download speed one could also check how frequently the cache page matches the current page and optimize some combination of these scores. However, this doesn't appear to be what was done in the article. Moreover, for web page cacheing some absolute gaurantee of freshness is desierable. The winning genetic algorithm might have very good performance on average but almost never update one person's report on the stock market.
In general it seems like a dangerous idea to use genetic algorithms in situations open to abuse. Handwritten code can be analyzed and it's behavior in exceptional situations relatively easily determined (as opposed to a genetic algorithm). With a genetic algorithm not only is it not clear how it will behave in exceptional circumstances but we aren't even sure what kind of situations are most likely to break the algorithm.
A web cache should robustly handle attempts to misdirect or corrupt it. If someone forges a great deal of web page requests we don't want the cache to dump truly popular pages to load the falsely requested pages. A flaw like this could quite possibly be used to mount a DNS attack using the large bandwidth of the web cache. More worrying is the possibility that a clever hacker might be able to trick the cache into replacing a valid website with a page of his choosing. Handwriting the code allows one to deal with all these potential problems and also ensures that the cache files/records are in a manageable form so sysadmins can manually flush some pages out of the cache or otherwise address errors.
Finally, it is not clear that a genetic caching algorithm would continue to work as the internet changes. If you sort through a wide swath of algorithms it is quite possible that certain features/tricks will end up being hardcoded, for instance the algorithm might refuse to cace anything starting with google.com which will then become inefficent if the internet changes. It would be good to remember the story about the army using a neural net to diffrentiate russian and american tanks and discovering it had just learned to distinguish the time of day as the american tanks had all been photographed at noon.
In short it seems that genetic algorithms have major drawbacks as cache algorithms. Since we have barely broken the surface of handwritten cache systems the effort hardly seems warranted. Before moving to genetic algorithms there are tons of good ideas which should be explored first. For instance making browsers cache aware (so the online cache can cooperate with the browsers cache like I suppose earthlink does), predictively requesting pages linked from downloaded pages, generating user profiles to better predict which pages wil
That python script to transfer your mbox files to gmail doesn't work very well. I'm trying it on the unix machines at my office and it won't read my mbox files...sigh, I don't really want to screw around with the source code now...maybe I will try it at home.
Well, not quite. It all depends on how this prediction is represented. After all we *can* compute the n-th prime, there is a simple procedure to do this which can even be written in basic number theory.
Not at all, it is going to be extremely uncommon to have 2 failed logins in a row. Even with passowrds I remember I mistype them occasionally.
If they are using entagled photons it seems they can't ever use a repeater or amplify the signal. How do they get this to cover any reasonable distance...or do they just send a whole bunch of photons knowing some will get lost...if so I wonder how low the bit rate is.
It would be real easy to combine the ease of use advantages of highlight to copy with the ability to highlight to delete or even copy multiple items.
Implement a copy buffer stack. Bind a simple key like escape to a function like swaping the top of the stack and the next element (you would want to have a minimum of two elements (possibly blank) in the stack at all times).
So you want to copy something highlight it. Now you don't want to have it deleted when you copy the next thing tap escape highlight your new text and if you want to replace this with the text in the buffer tap escape again to paste.
This sort of system preserves the ease of just highlighting to copy while giving it a great deal of additional power. Power users could of course bind additional functions like duplicate the top entry, delete an item etc.. etc.. If my description is a little confusing the model is from my hp48.
For all I know this has already been written, if so maybe someone can post a link.
What wrong with the rich getting richer? I'm most certainly not one of the rich (poor grad student) but I'm in favor of everyone getting a higher standard of living including the rich.
It is only a problem if the rich get richer at the expense of the poor. In the case of credit we are looking at a mechanism that lets the rich get richer while bettering all of society (financing lets people start stores and industry which improves everyone's lot)
This is very unlikely because it simply isn't profitable.
In order to produce a magazine that caters either to left or right wingers depending on the viewer you have to do all the work to create two differnt magazines (which I am using to include web publications). Now why not just produce two magazines? People like being able to tell their friend to go look at a certain article, if content changes for the viewer they can't do this anymore making this sort of operation strictly less profitable than two seperate magazines.
What does it mean not to be compelled to be a witness against yourself? I would certainly interpret this as meaning you can't be punished for refusing to be a witness against yourself, and the supreme court has also interpreted it this way as well. Pleading guilty (where you have to get up and usually explain your crime) certainly counts as being a witness against yourself. So in effect you are being penalized for not being a witness against yourself.
A law which added 5 years to someone's sentence if they take the 5th and are then convicted would certainly be declared unconstitutional. So why are plea bargains, which in effect accomplish exactly the same thing, constitutional?
I can't tell are you agreeing with me or disagreeing with me. The first sentence seems to agree that plea bargains shouldn't be offered for admiting your guilt while later you seem to argue the other way.
The problem is that we can't offer plea bargains only to people who really commited the crime (nor am I really sure we would want to). In regular cases I hope the government only prosecutes people it truly thinks of as guilty. Unfortunatly now plea bargains pragmatically become a system which often *severly* punishes an individual because he insisted on his innocence.
Still, it does seem everyone would go through the expense of a trial. So while still unfair in my mind I guess I could come to accept a plea bargain system which offers the individual no more than a 10 or 20% reduction in sentence (no dropping the death penalty either). This probably would encourage those who are obviously guilty to plea out while not discouraging those who are innocent from seeking a trial. Still there are alot of details which would need to be worked out. Prosecuters would have to be watched to make sure they didn't get around this by completly dropping other charges. Also it would be complicated to determine what the sentence you remove 10 or 20% from would have been, perhaps we should have a penalty phase even if you skip the guilt phase.
True, not having plea bargains would significantly increase costs. However, the amount of money we spend on our judicary is still quite small compared to say defense or other major government expenses. So I think we could employ enough judges and attorneys to make the system work without letting people go based on their right to a speedy trial. Besides, it seems nearly every person in prison spends their time filling in court and we manage to deal with this.
However, the problem with plea bargains is not only that they can be explicitly abused with the intention of threating people into cooperation. The simple existance of a regime which punishes you for not confessing (or pleading guilty) is abuse. This is the motivation for the 5th ammendment.
I would be entierly open to suggestions about ways to reduce cost but prevent abuse of plea bargains. Where plea bargains are most usefull (save the most money) and I imagine most frequently offered are where the evidence against a person isn't extremely clear cut. The more complex and less compelling the evidence of guilt the longer and more expensive the trial will be and the more likely the prosecuter will lose. At the moment this is the justification for offering plea bargains, you avoid the risks of trial and save money. However, this is exactly the sort of case it is most inappropriate to offer a plea bargain as it is the time you are most likely to be railroading an innocent man into taking the plea bargain out fear of what the more severe punishment might be. We certainly don't want to offer plea bargains only in cases where the evidence is overwhelmingly against the individual in question, as it hardly seems fair to throw the book more at those more likely to be innocent or have mitigating factors.
I guess I would be willing to support a plea bargain system that caps the percentage relief offered. So a prosecutor can't offer more than 20% reduction of sentence (I'm not sure what the exact number should be) and most certainly shouldn't be allowed to plea the death penalty off the table. While still not truly fair the percentage is low enough that individuals convinced of their innocence will probably not be detered from claiming it while those who are clearly guilty still have every motivation to take the bargain. Still there are significant possibilities for abuse in this case which would require carefull oversight. Since the DA has the freedom to decide what crimes are prosecuted we want to prevent them from going around this 20% limit by agreeing not to bring up certain charges.
Well the quote in the article says they insist they didn't do anything illegal. Also from what I read they dug up the machines and looked at them, there was no indication they ever shut them off or interfered with their operation. Moreover, there is an issue with selective enforcement. For instance you can't create a law and not bother to prosecute people unless they are publishing information you don't like. It seems the governments real objection is not that they blocked or delayed some signal, but that this is merely an excuse to stop people from publishing information about the sensors around area 51.
Still, as I said in my article I really don't know the situations in this case. If indeed he only listened in on the sensors and opened them up and looked inside then it seems according to the law he wouldn't be guilty. There is also the issue with selective enforcement. Still, I have to agree that in this case he is probably guilty but this really doesn't make a difference to my point.
I'm not sure if I agree that poorly regulated patents are worse than no patents at all but I do entierly agree with you about the problems with patents.
However, the entire point of this was just to show that regulations, as opposed of common sense laws like 'don't murder people' are necessery. I probably should have picked pollution controls as a better and less controversial area where you need precisce regulations as opposed to vague rules. I think it is pretty clear that once you have a system like patents or pollution controls it is important to have precisce laws otherwise companies will be always live in fear of stepping over someone's interpratation of this vague laws. Patents were a poor example as one can reasonably make the case (even if I don't agree with it) that they aren't necessery in the first place.
While I know that often plea deals are important in order to garner testimony about organized crime or other criminal activities this sort of case illustrates (or at least might illustrate since I don't actually know who is telling the truth) the potential dangers. Bizarelly I find myself in agreement with Ashcroft, plea bargains should be *only* be offered in return for becoming an informant, it should be banned (legally and not just by the AGs rules) otherwise.
For instance in this case the government has *every* encouragment to file suit against this guy even if they have no evidence. The threat of prison time is scary enough that any normal person will take a plea agreement accomplishing what the government really wants, stopping them from investigating area 51 (it would not surprise me at all if part of his probhation is not to even passively map the sensors, or even go close to area 51). The plea bargain allows the government to exercise considerable power by the threat of legal action without any real chance of court review.
Moreover, as far as I'm concerned giving someone a deal for pleading guilty should be a violation of the 5th ammendment. After all a plea bargain is a reduced sentence in return for not insisting on your innocence. Or put another way in the presence of a plea offer there is a penalty for insisting on your innocence. Sure it isn't technically punishing someone for refusing to incriminate themselves but this is certainly within the spirit of the ammendment, if the implicit privacy argument is considered a valid constitutional principle than this sort of broad interpratation of the 5th is perfectly reasonable as well. I really can't see any pragmatic difference between a law which penalizes someone for not testifying to their guilt (which presumably could only apply if the individual was convicted) and a general practice of giving significantly reduced sentences in return for the admisson of guilt.
Some people will protest that my position would rob the judicial system of discretion. Not at all, judges would still have plenty of discretion to give a light sentence. The change would just stop penalizing individuals for insisting on innocence. I also think it is only because upper class white kids always recieve plea bargains in drug cases (while poor black ones often don't) that the public is willing to stand for things like mandatory minimums and extreme drug sentences. I doubt most of the prosecutors are overtly racist but many people's gut reaction to seeing a well dressed white kid busted for drugs is a good kid who screwed up while a black kid in baggy pants and so forth is far more likely to be thought of as a bad person. Sure, the problem will still exist in sentencing but at least the system will be a little better and more open (it is easier to see that a judge is racially biased in his deciscions because everything is public record while often the surrounding facts to a plea bargain aren't so publicly accesible).
While it isn't strictly patents for quite awhile the US did not offer copyrights. While we were otherwise fairly comparable with european societies which did offer copyrights (england) we had a much lower output of creative work. This output increased dramaticaly when we finally did institute an IP scheme.
Now you *may* question the strength of my data but may I remind you that at least there is both empirical evidence as well as theoretical reason to believe patents encourage development. In order to claim we would be better off without patents you need to do more than simply point out my evidence is week but offer equally convincing reasons to believe they *aren't* beneficial.
Moreover, the original US congress which set up a patent system was hardly doing so because of corporate pressure, quite the opposite their was a large pirate industry in the US at this time which was going to be negativly affected. The notion that patent systems are on the whole negative (and not merely currently out of control) and yet all developed western countries have decided to pass them is quite difficult to swallow. Especially when it simply isn't true that they were forced on the world by some large multinationals.
Regardless if you don't like the patent case take drivers liscene's. Surely it is important to have actual regulations in this area and not simply have a 'common sense' law saying "people need 'good' vision to drive" rather to avoid conflicts we should have specific objective criteria about how bad vision can be before you don't get a liscence.