This is not a flaw in the system. This is a virtue of the system. Nobody wants to read 100s of papers about how bananas do not cause cancer. No scientist (at least no scientist that I know) believes that a paper proves anything. The paper is a finding worth sharing which must then be confirmed repeatedly by other scientists to be accepted as a fact.
The problem is that articles on/. are only discussed for a couple hours after they are posted. It is impossible to have a reasoned debate on a message board unless there is a sustained discussion lasting at a few days.
Was Microsoft really worth more than Apple in 1980s? According to Google finance, since pi day 1986 (Microsoft's IPO) Microsoft stock has increased 24850% and Apple stock has increased 10820% (adjusted for splits). Obviously there is not a perfect connection between stock increase and market value (because of stock buybacks, acquisitions, etc.). But if the Google finance numbers are correct, it seems implausible that Microsoft was worth more than Apple in 1986. And since Apple stock did not increase between Apple's IPO (1980-12-12) and Microsoft's IPO, Apple was almost certainly worth more than Microsoft in the early 80s.
Not really. The control animals in these studies are given unlimited amounts of food. They eat excessively because evolution has programmed them to feast when food is available. They are the equivalent of obese humans. So eat 30% less than the typical obese person eats, which would be approximately the RDA not 30% less than the RDA.
I was very interesting in transhumanism in late 90s and early 00s. Back then Kurzweil was not in the picture. The most prominent transhumanists were Nick Bostrom, Max Moore, Natasha Vita-More and FM-2030. Furthermore, to the best of my knowledge, Kurzweil did not make any important theoretical contribution to transhumanism. In fact transhumanism today is ideologically almost identical to transhumanism in the 90s, except that the term "transhuman" is deemphasized in favor of the totally ridiculous term "singularity". So it is surprising to me that Ray Kurzweil has been able to establish himself has the singularity/transhumanism guru despite being a latecomer and making no important intellectual contributions.
How many workers in your office would prefer using Linux and OpenOffice.org to using Windows 7 and MS Office? I suspect almost all of them would prefer using Windows 7 and MS Office. Even a small dip in productivity or worker satisfaction would outweigh savings from using FOSS.
Gmail vs Exchange is a different matter. I suspect most workers under 40 would prefer Gmail, and most older workers would prefer Exchange. If there are savings, a switch might be justified.
after using Chrome for several months. Chrome was faster and worked better for certain sites including/., but I prefer Firefox's GUI and it handles downloads better. With Firefox pausing and resuming a stalled download almost always fixes the problem, but with Chrome I had no such luck.
The web has been getting more linear for a long time. Greedy businessmen are only part of the problem. The other part of the problem is the emphasis on recentness. The most recent articles are placed first creating a linear organization. Blogs,/., twitter, reddit are all part of this trend. In the past content was more likely to be organized hierarchically (e.g. most personal websites) or with the most recent comments first (message boards and newsgroups). The consequence of this trend is that now articles are only viewed and discussed for about a day after they are posted. In the past discussions would drag on for weeks and months (hence Godwin’s law), and 6 month old content on your website was as likely to be read as 1 day old content.
do not mean much because many patents and papers are low value. A better measure of innovation would be papers in prestigious journals like Nature and Science. If you look you will see a decent number of authors with Chinese names, but most of these researchers will be based outside of China.
The misconception is that Richard Stallman is stopping or hindering the “quiet extremism” of corporations. People like Richard Stallman actually hurt software freedom by promoting ideas that are not convincing to policymakers largely because they are bad ideas. Software developers need to make money, and Richard Stallman’s proposals would make this much more difficult. A better solution would be no software patents and shorter copyright that encourages open source software (e.g. 9 years of copyright protection for closed source software and 14 years for open source software). This would greatly increase the amount of free software without jeopardizing the livelihoods of software developers.
It is hardly undisclosed. The review on Amazon is posted under the user name www.pacificbookreview.com, and the website clearly says that they charge $125 to $195 per review link. I am going to assume that samzenpus was high on peyote and having sex with the entire college cheerleading squad when he posted this.
The average person does not have the time to create disinformation or the resources to move to New Zealand. On the other hand governments and large organizations will find disinformation strategies very useful. It is only a matter of time before sites like wikileaks are inverted.
I do not disagree with this article, but I think there are many other reasons why Microsoft is being nice. 1) Reputation. It is harder for Microsoft to attract talented programmers and “elite” users if they are viewed as some kind of Mordor. 2) Hurting competitors. Microsoft was no fan of freeware, but they made IE free (as in beer) for obvious reasons. 3) Helping the PC. Microsoft’s success is connected to the success of the personal computer. If more people switch to tablets or to the cloud, Microsoft suffers.
Human TRIM5alpha protects against SIV. Rhesus Macaque TRIM5alpha protects against HIV. But humans infected with HIV usually live more than 10 years, whereas Rhesus Macaques infected with SIV usually die within 18 months. Be careful what you wish for.
I think Wadhwa is biased by his startup background and confuses marketing breakthroughs with real scientific and technological innovation. From my experience (in the biotechnology sector), almost all real innovation takes places at universities, research institutes and larger companies. Startups are very useful for commercializing innovations, especially discoveries made at universities (which is how Google got started), but they are rarely innovative.
The computational power of the human brain, which uses only 25 watts, is estimated to be between 10^13 and 10^23 instructions per second [1]. This means the human brain is 100 to 10^12 times more powerful than a high-end desktop. So computers still have a way to go before they could possibly approach any physical limits.
Slashdot Mirror
This is not a flaw in the system. This is a virtue of the system. Nobody wants to read 100s of papers about how bananas do not cause cancer. No scientist (at least no scientist that I know) believes that a paper proves anything. The paper is a finding worth sharing which must then be confirmed repeatedly by other scientists to be accepted as a fact.
The problem is that articles on /. are only discussed for a couple hours after they are posted. It is impossible to have a reasoned debate on a message board unless there is a sustained discussion lasting at a few days.
Was Microsoft really worth more than Apple in 1980s? According to Google finance, since pi day 1986 (Microsoft's IPO) Microsoft stock has increased 24850% and Apple stock has increased 10820% (adjusted for splits). Obviously there is not a perfect connection between stock increase and market value (because of stock buybacks, acquisitions, etc.). But if the Google finance numbers are correct, it seems implausible that Microsoft was worth more than Apple in 1986. And since Apple stock did not increase between Apple's IPO (1980-12-12) and Microsoft's IPO, Apple was almost certainly worth more than Microsoft in the early 80s.
Not really. The control animals in these studies are given unlimited amounts of food. They eat excessively because evolution has programmed them to feast when food is available. They are the equivalent of obese humans. So eat 30% less than the typical obese person eats, which would be approximately the RDA not 30% less than the RDA.
I was very interesting in transhumanism in late 90s and early 00s. Back then Kurzweil was not in the picture. The most prominent transhumanists were Nick Bostrom, Max Moore, Natasha Vita-More and FM-2030. Furthermore, to the best of my knowledge, Kurzweil did not make any important theoretical contribution to transhumanism. In fact transhumanism today is ideologically almost identical to transhumanism in the 90s, except that the term "transhuman" is deemphasized in favor of the totally ridiculous term "singularity". So it is surprising to me that Ray Kurzweil has been able to establish himself has the singularity/transhumanism guru despite being a latecomer and making no important intellectual contributions.
How many workers in your office would prefer using Linux and OpenOffice.org to using Windows 7 and MS Office? I suspect almost all of them would prefer using Windows 7 and MS Office. Even a small dip in productivity or worker satisfaction would outweigh savings from using FOSS.
Gmail vs Exchange is a different matter. I suspect most workers under 40 would prefer Gmail, and most older workers would prefer Exchange. If there are savings, a switch might be justified.
to ban your children from reading fiction.
after using Chrome for several months. Chrome was faster and worked better for certain sites including /., but I prefer Firefox's GUI and it handles downloads better. With Firefox pausing and resuming a stalled download almost always fixes the problem, but with Chrome I had no such luck.
The web has been getting more linear for a long time. Greedy businessmen are only part of the problem. The other part of the problem is the emphasis on recentness. The most recent articles are placed first creating a linear organization. Blogs, /., twitter, reddit are all part of this trend. In the past content was more likely to be organized hierarchically (e.g. most personal websites) or with the most recent comments first (message boards and newsgroups). The consequence of this trend is that now articles are only viewed and discussed for about a day after they are posted. In the past discussions would drag on for weeks and months (hence Godwin’s law), and 6 month old content on your website was as likely to be read as 1 day old content.
What percentage of blog posts get a reply? My guess is a lot less than 29%. 29% is shockingly high.
do not mean much because many patents and papers are low value. A better measure of innovation would be papers in prestigious journals like Nature and Science. If you look you will see a decent number of authors with Chinese names, but most of these researchers will be based outside of China.
aisuyu.
The misconception is that Richard Stallman is stopping or hindering the “quiet extremism” of corporations. People like Richard Stallman actually hurt software freedom by promoting ideas that are not convincing to policymakers largely because they are bad ideas. Software developers need to make money, and Richard Stallman’s proposals would make this much more difficult. A better solution would be no software patents and shorter copyright that encourages open source software (e.g. 9 years of copyright protection for closed source software and 14 years for open source software). This would greatly increase the amount of free software without jeopardizing the livelihoods of software developers.
It is hardly undisclosed. The review on Amazon is posted under the user name www.pacificbookreview.com, and the website clearly says that they charge $125 to $195 per review link. I am going to assume that samzenpus was high on peyote and having sex with the entire college cheerleading squad when he posted this.
The average person does not have the time to create disinformation or the resources to move to New Zealand. On the other hand governments and large organizations will find disinformation strategies very useful. It is only a matter of time before sites like wikileaks are inverted.
I do not disagree with this article, but I think there are many other reasons why Microsoft is being nice. 1) Reputation. It is harder for Microsoft to attract talented programmers and “elite” users if they are viewed as some kind of Mordor. 2) Hurting competitors. Microsoft was no fan of freeware, but they made IE free (as in beer) for obvious reasons. 3) Helping the PC. Microsoft’s success is connected to the success of the personal computer. If more people switch to tablets or to the cloud, Microsoft suffers.
Maybe. But alcohol is also known to reduce blood glucose levels.
31337 = eleet. It took me like 10 minutes to figure that out. I guess that proves I am not a geek.
Human TRIM5alpha protects against SIV. Rhesus Macaque TRIM5alpha protects against HIV. But humans infected with HIV usually live more than 10 years, whereas Rhesus Macaques infected with SIV usually die within 18 months. Be careful what you wish for.
Tasmanian devils would disagree that biting is a terrible way to spread a disease.
I think Wadhwa is biased by his startup background and confuses marketing breakthroughs with real scientific and technological innovation. From my experience (in the biotechnology sector), almost all real innovation takes places at universities, research institutes and larger companies. Startups are very useful for commercializing innovations, especially discoveries made at universities (which is how Google got started), but they are rarely innovative.
Yes, but that is 100 processors with no hard disk, RAM or motherboard.
The computational power of the human brain, which uses only 25 watts, is estimated to be between 10^13 and 10^23 instructions per second [1]. This means the human brain is 100 to 10^12 times more powerful than a high-end desktop. So computers still have a way to go before they could possibly approach any physical limits.
1. Merkle, 1989: 10^13-10^16 IPS; Maravec, 1997: 10^14 IPS; Thagard, 2002: 10^23 IPS; Modha, 2009: 3.8*10^16 IPS.
It really depends on what kind of extrapolating function you use. The way I see it, in 70 million years we will be small rodent-like lizards again.