> FWIW, in the Waterstone poll of 25,000 readers, the LotR was voted best book of the 20th century. Not too shabby for a work that's over 50 years old.
Not shabby at all. I hope I didn't imply that everything that makes a list is crap; rather, I'm saying that lists tend to be weighted by recency. If the book at the top of a list is brand new, its placement in the list might by due to the recency effect; it the book at the top of the list is 50 years old, then there must be a reason for it beyond hype.
LotR, the book, has established itself well as a classic. But the question remains open for LotR, the movie. Will it still be at the top of the IMDB list in 50 years? In 10? In 10 months? 10 weeks?
Whenever I see awards or polls for "best of the year" or "decade" or "century" or "all time", I figure you should normalize the results by multiplying each entry's rank in the list by the log of the time since it came out. The recency hype dominates awards and polls, as can be seen by look at e.g. the all-time top films at IMDB. I mean c'mon, Memento as the tenth best film ever? American Beauty as the 18th???
When you see 50-60 year old films still rated in the top 50 you have to concede that they've got some genuine enduring quality, but some of the more recent ones probably won't even be remembered a decade from now.
So maybe LotR is great (dunno; the hype turned me off from going to see it yet), but right now the only "news" would be if it didn't win an award.
> Netscape 6 pulled the same trick, covering my desktop with AOL ads.
The reason I finally ditched Netscape 4.* on Linux is because I have a dialup connection and anytime I hang up with Netscape running it started complaining after a while that it can't find netscape.com and a couple of other sites. I don't have any idea why it phones home, but even if it's completely harmless I don't care for the idea of software making contacts that I didn't request. So it's out the door with Netscape, thank you very much.
> I'm reading about them on Slashdot and they're sitting on the sidewalk. I form an opinion of them and post it and they're still sitting on the sidewalk. [...] To make a long story short, four months later I'll have forgotten about this whole thing, and we both know where they'll be...
Meanwhile, you and I will have wasted four months of our lives reading Slashdot...
> Is there really anyplace the provides good customer service anymore?
If you're rich, yes.
While waiting my turn in the dentist's chair a couple of years ago I read an longish article in some rag (sorry; forgot which one) that went into a great bit of detail about the cold-hearted calculations businesses do about the ROI of giving good service vs. just blowing you off. In short, unless they can hope to make a lot of money off you-the-individual in the future, there's just no ROI in providing you any kind of service at all.
Places like banks actually hope to lose your business if you don't have very much money, because you simply aren't worth the trouble to them.
The article didn't go into the PR costs of blowing too many people off, but in a world of increasingly captive markets that's becoming less and less of an issue. (And where there is still competition, if that competition is equally cavalier about customer service then there's still no PR motivation.)
It's a drug they did back in the 40's. In the 50's they upgraded it to LSC, and in the 60's they upgraded it again to LSD. I think we're up to LSH or so now, but my brain's too fried to keep track anymore.
IMO, spyware is the single issue that is going to weigh heaviest in the scales in the eventual switch of businesses (and sensible users) from CSS to OSS.
It's a real shame, though, that most businesses can't seem to see any value in the internet beyond collecting data about consumers.
> If colleges are doing this as a method of enhancing revenue, I have to wonder if they're prepared for the loss of potential alumni contributions that actions like this could cause.
Where the heck did you go to school? On my planet the only thing that affects alumni contributions is how well the ball team did this year.
And of course, the 98% of the donations go straight back to the athletics program anyway.
Most public universities in the USA are just fronts for hiding the fact that the state legislature wants to own a professional football team. Though I advocate higher education, I'll never donate a dime to any school I ever attended.
> It's a simple trick - they sent out slightly different copies of the email to everyone on the list. Then, when the public version gets published they can reference the published version against who got what.
That's why you should always leak messages from a co-worker's workstation.
> Could this be the first step into determining or simulating where the source of life came from, or could this lead to the destruction of it? (insert your favorite Sci-Fi scenario here)
My favorite Sci-Fi scenario involves me and a bunch of robo-babes from Sexworld, but I don't see what that has to do with your musings.
> The curious thing is that despite GAs being widely researched for over 20 years, they seem to have found few practical applications that I am aware of. It is tempting to blame this on lack of computing power, but I am not sure that is the real reason. Either way, the possibility of automated design is very exciting indeed and I hope more people find ways to apply it in the real world.
I don't remember the details, but wasn't one of the/. Beowulf articles from a year or so ago about someone who had set up a B-cluster to run a GA to find "patentable algorithms"?
I agree that there doesn't seem to be much by way of practical applications for GA, but the technology has come a long way and the CPU time that can be thrown at a run is growing according to Moore's Law, so I would not be surprised to start seeing some noteworth results coming out of the field within the next decade or so. I do know of cases where people have tried to use it for industrial optimization problems, but I don't know whether it has been adopted as a mainstream technology for that sort of thing.
> This morning while I was eating breakfast and watching TV, I had a vision. I normally don't have visions and I'm not crazy, okay.... Can somebody help me understand what happened? PLEASE?
I suspect you sprinkled the wrong white powder on your cereal.
> A major three-letter intelligence agency will suffer a public and catastrophic breach of classified data because of exploits in Windows XP and ban its use completely. Previous security incidents involving the loss of classified data will also be revealed. Eyes (and heads) will roll.
Not quite the same thing, but this interesting note appeared in Risks Digest 21.83 (available on newsgroup comp.risks) -
Date: Thu, 20 Dec 2001 00:59:00 +0000
From: "michael e. goldsby"
Subject: Wiretapping equipment compromised: FBI, CALEA
A recent series of four newscasts on the Fox Network alleged that
U. S. telephone call records have been falling into the hands of
international organized crime. Call records allow traffic analysis but do
not disclose the contents of the conversations.
However, the newscasts further alleged that the equipment used by the FBI to
do the wiretaps authorized by the CALEA legislation (1994) has been
compromised. It is said to contain back doors that allow unauthorized
persons to obtain access to the contents of telephone conversations. The
back doors were not put there by the FBI and are not under their control.
Partial transcripts of the newscasts are available at
http://foxnews.com/story/0,2933,40684,00.html
http://foxnews.com/story/0,2933,40747,00.html
http://foxnews.com/story/0,2933,40824,00.html
http://foxnews.com/story/0,2933,40981,00.html
The second newscast cites an example of a 1997 Los Angeles drug case in
which access to telephone call records was used to "completely compromise
the communications of the FBI, the Secret Service, the DEO [sic] and the
LAPD."
Alas, the links now say "this story has been removed". Insert your favorite conspiracy theory as required.
> If you mean evolution in terms of adaptation based on traits that make the species more hearty, that is scientific and observable.
> Extension of that pattern to explain origin of species is not scientific in nature. It is merely conjecture.
All science is 'conjecture'. The difference between science and other types of conjecture is that scientists think out the implications of their conjectures and then look at the world again to see whether it conforms to those implications. That is the essence of the scientific method.
> When you speak of origin of all species, you move past the scientific method.
Not at all. Please re-read my previous paragraph.
> Since it's not a theory that can be tested, it can't be called science.
Ah, but it can be tested. Indeed, you can reasonably think of all of modern genetics as a big test of the theory of creation, which was originally a 'conjecture' based on the fossil record, but which had very strong implications for what we should see when we started realizing how genetics worked on the level of biochemistry. Alas for creationism, modern genetics bears those implications out quite well.
If you understand the scientific method and then add just a tiny amount of knowlege about biology, biochemistry, and paleontolgy, it becomes immediately obvious why the 'conjecture' represented by the theory of evolution continues to be accepted as 'scientific'.
> Evolutionists and creationists have the same data, we just have different explanations of the cause of that data.
Yes: scientists have a dense network of interrelated and mutually supporting, falsifiable theories spanning several fields of study, whereas creationists have "I think goddidit."
> Your belief that it is explainable by survival of the fittest, time and chance may be the "only game in town that makes sense" to you, but having a creator who intelligently designed the basic species and allowed them to adapt from there seems to me to fit the evidence more accurately.
Anything can be made to 'fit' the evidence if you are willing to invoke enough miracles. And that's exactly what creationists do when they're pressed to actually explain something: lurk talk.origins for a while if you doubt me.
Also notice that divine intervention has no explanatory value whatsoever: any observation is compatible with it. Unlike scientific explanations such as the theory of evolution, creationism is beyond falsification.
> Sure seems like there would be many more 'missing links' between algae and a land plant.
No problem: every time a 'missing link' is found, it generates two new 'missing links' -- one to either side of the one just found. There shouldn't be any problem generating enough to fill your gap.
Slashdot Mirror
> FWIW, in the Waterstone poll of 25,000 readers, the LotR was voted best book of the 20th century. Not too shabby for a work that's over 50 years old.
Not shabby at all. I hope I didn't imply that everything that makes a list is crap; rather, I'm saying that lists tend to be weighted by recency. If the book at the top of a list is brand new, its placement in the list might by due to the recency effect; it the book at the top of the list is 50 years old, then there must be a reason for it beyond hype.
LotR, the book, has established itself well as a classic. But the question remains open for LotR, the movie. Will it still be at the top of the IMDB list in 50 years? In 10? In 10 months? 10 weeks?
Whenever I see awards or polls for "best of the year" or "decade" or "century" or "all time", I figure you should normalize the results by multiplying each entry's rank in the list by the log of the time since it came out. The recency hype dominates awards and polls, as can be seen by look at e.g. the all-time top films at IMDB. I mean c'mon, Memento as the tenth best film ever? American Beauty as the 18th???
When you see 50-60 year old films still rated in the top 50 you have to concede that they've got some genuine enduring quality, but some of the more recent ones probably won't even be remembered a decade from now.
So maybe LotR is great (dunno; the hype turned me off from going to see it yet), but right now the only "news" would be if it didn't win an award.
> Don't we have enough of these goons sitting around saluting themselves?
I never heard it called "saluting" before.
> At least thats what I think it does. I could be wrong, not having access to the sources....
"Aye, there's the rub."
> Netscape 6 pulled the same trick, covering my desktop with AOL ads.
The reason I finally ditched Netscape 4.* on Linux is because I have a dialup connection and anytime I hang up with Netscape running it started complaining after a while that it can't find netscape.com and a couple of other sites. I don't have any idea why it phones home, but even if it's completely harmless I don't care for the idea of software making contacts that I didn't request. So it's out the door with Netscape, thank you very much.
> I'm reading about them on Slashdot and they're sitting on the sidewalk. I form an opinion of them and post it and they're still sitting on the sidewalk. [...] To make a long story short, four months later I'll have forgotten about this whole thing, and we both know where they'll be...
Meanwhile, you and I will have wasted four months of our lives reading Slashdot...
> Is there really anyplace the provides good customer service anymore?
If you're rich, yes.
While waiting my turn in the dentist's chair a couple of years ago I read an longish article in some rag (sorry; forgot which one) that went into a great bit of detail about the cold-hearted calculations businesses do about the ROI of giving good service vs. just blowing you off. In short, unless they can hope to make a lot of money off you-the-individual in the future, there's just no ROI in providing you any kind of service at all.
Places like banks actually hope to lose your business if you don't have very much money, because you simply aren't worth the trouble to them.
The article didn't go into the PR costs of blowing too many people off, but in a world of increasingly captive markets that's becoming less and less of an issue. (And where there is still competition, if that competition is equally cavalier about customer service then there's still no PR motivation.)
It's a drug they did back in the 40's. In the 50's they upgraded it to LSC, and in the 60's they upgraded it again to LSD. I think we're up to LSH or so now, but my brain's too fried to keep track anymore.
IMO, spyware is the single issue that is going to weigh heaviest in the scales in the eventual switch of businesses (and sensible users) from CSS to OSS.
It's a real shame, though, that most businesses can't seem to see any value in the internet beyond collecting data about consumers.
> The project is *so* supersecret that it appeared on Slashdot three months ago.
Wow! The didn't even tell the editors about it!
> If colleges are doing this as a method of enhancing revenue, I have to wonder if they're prepared for the loss of potential alumni contributions that actions like this could cause.
Where the heck did you go to school? On my planet the only thing that affects alumni contributions is how well the ball team did this year.
And of course, the 98% of the donations go straight back to the athletics program anyway.
Most public universities in the USA are just fronts for hiding the fact that the state legislature wants to own a professional football team. Though I advocate higher education, I'll never donate a dime to any school I ever attended.
> Maybe it's just me, but this really seems to go against the basic idea of a forum like
/. has developed a Microsoftesque "features for features sake" mentality.
They gave us all this crap when all we really wanted was a check-box to hide CowboyNeal poll entries.
> [ ] Automatically remove repeated stories.
And merge the comments with the older story?
> [ ] Automatically give my posts +5 (because I want to think everyone loves me.)
Just mark everyone as "friend", and congratulate yourself on how many friends you have.
And I want an interpreter that will let me say
> It's a simple trick - they sent out slightly different copies of the email to everyone on the list. Then, when the public version gets published they can reference the published version against who got what.
That's why you should always leak messages from a co-worker's workstation.
> ff123 from the r3mix.net/hydrogenaudio.org forums is conducting automated ABX double blind tests comparing Vorbis, mp3 (several encoders), AAC, WMA and MPC.
Wonder what monolingual English speakers make of that sentence.
> > "And so what if you will never have sex again?"
> What's he mean, "again"?
I suppose that means that The Marine Biologists' Jargon File lacks an entry for "get laid" too.
Could the machines hide their intelligence? Sure, why not? My programs hide their basic correctness all the time!
> Could this be the first step into determining or simulating where the source of life came from, or could this lead to the destruction of it? (insert your favorite Sci-Fi scenario here)
My favorite Sci-Fi scenario involves me and a bunch of robo-babes from Sexworld, but I don't see what that has to do with your musings.
> The curious thing is that despite GAs being widely researched for over 20 years, they seem to have found few practical applications that I am aware of. It is tempting to blame this on lack of computing power, but I am not sure that is the real reason. Either way, the possibility of automated design is very exciting indeed and I hope more people find ways to apply it in the real world.
I don't remember the details, but wasn't one of the
I agree that there doesn't seem to be much by way of practical applications for GA, but the technology has come a long way and the CPU time that can be thrown at a run is growing according to Moore's Law, so I would not be surprised to start seeing some noteworth results coming out of the field within the next decade or so. I do know of cases where people have tried to use it for industrial optimization problems, but I don't know whether it has been adopted as a mainstream technology for that sort of thing.
> This morning while I was eating breakfast and watching TV, I had a vision. I normally don't have visions and I'm not crazy, okay.
I suspect you sprinkled the wrong white powder on your cereal.
> 5. U.S. spy-secrets will be revealed
> A major three-letter intelligence agency will suffer a public and catastrophic breach of classified data because of exploits in Windows XP and ban its use completely. Previous security incidents involving the loss of classified data will also be revealed. Eyes (and heads) will roll.
Not quite the same thing, but this interesting note appeared in Risks Digest 21.83 (available on newsgroup comp.risks) -Alas, the links now say "this story has been removed". Insert your favorite conspiracy theory as required.
> Methinks Linux is about creating a good operating system, not about killing Microsoft. Or did I miss something?
Yes, you missed the fact that "creating a good operating system" and "killing Microsoft" amount to the same thing.
> If you mean evolution in terms of adaptation based on traits that make the species more hearty, that is scientific and observable.
> Extension of that pattern to explain origin of species is not scientific in nature. It is merely conjecture.
All science is 'conjecture'. The difference between science and other types of conjecture is that scientists think out the implications of their conjectures and then look at the world again to see whether it conforms to those implications. That is the essence of the scientific method.
> When you speak of origin of all species, you move past the scientific method.
Not at all. Please re-read my previous paragraph.
> Since it's not a theory that can be tested, it can't be called science.
Ah, but it can be tested. Indeed, you can reasonably think of all of modern genetics as a big test of the theory of creation, which was originally a 'conjecture' based on the fossil record, but which had very strong implications for what we should see when we started realizing how genetics worked on the level of biochemistry. Alas for creationism, modern genetics bears those implications out quite well.
If you understand the scientific method and then add just a tiny amount of knowlege about biology, biochemistry, and paleontolgy, it becomes immediately obvious why the 'conjecture' represented by the theory of evolution continues to be accepted as 'scientific'.
> Evolutionists and creationists have the same data, we just have different explanations of the cause of that data.
Yes: scientists have a dense network of interrelated and mutually supporting, falsifiable theories spanning several fields of study, whereas creationists have "I think goddidit."
> Your belief that it is explainable by survival of the fittest, time and chance may be the "only game in town that makes sense" to you, but having a creator who intelligently designed the basic species and allowed them to adapt from there seems to me to fit the evidence more accurately.
Anything can be made to 'fit' the evidence if you are willing to invoke enough miracles. And that's exactly what creationists do when they're pressed to actually explain something: lurk talk.origins for a while if you doubt me.
Also notice that divine intervention has no explanatory value whatsoever: any observation is compatible with it. Unlike scientific explanations such as the theory of evolution, creationism is beyond falsification.
> Sure seems like there would be many more 'missing links' between algae and a land plant.
No problem: every time a 'missing link' is found, it generates two new 'missing links' -- one to either side of the one just found. There shouldn't be any problem generating enough to fill your gap.