A mercury ban can't happen soon enough.
Amalgam fillings are way worse than any vaccine mercury issues (which as others have pointed out are being phased out).
Mercury Does Leak Out of Your Fillings
Ok... why is longer, uglier code a win?
An OCaml example from The Fine Article: (both of these do the same thing)
let map f (x,y,z) = (f x, f y, f z) Here, map is defined as a function with two arguments: a function f and a triple (x,y,z). Note that f x is the syntax for applying the function f to x.
Now consider what this would look like in C# 4.0. The C# code, while functionally equivalent, looks cluttered, with the real structure obscured by syntactic noise.
Tuple<U,U,U> Map<T,U>(Func <T,U> f, Tuple<T,T,T> t)
{
return new Tuple<U,U,U>(f(t.item1), f(t.item2), f(t.item3));
}
And this isn't just to harsh on C#, the next example shows 15 lines of OCaml sized up against 50 lines Java
(or, if you strip whitespace, 258 chars of OCaml vs. 1,124 chars in java).
Somehow TL;DR doesn't apply to code? Maybe our species is irreparably stupid.
Actually... Re:Just don't ask him about Star Trek
on
Spock Gives Up the Con
·
· Score: 1
Actually, this interview is worth a listen (5min 38sec, from September 20, 2009): Leonard Nimoy Returns To TV As 'Fringe' Character
*shrug* It sounds like he has made his peace with his fame and found some life balance.
It's a short interview but ranges all over the place; the first minute is Fringe, the rest is other work and other contexts.
Quite interesting, really.
And Leonard had nice things to say about the startrek reboot; just a classy guy.
...one of those things is do not bring up the topic of Star Trek with him, he hates it.
The guy seriously thinks about some hanging-on-by-bleeding-fingernails edge case stuff.
I just don't see it being relevant to any real world situation.
From the part where he says "I work with compilers..." and, you know, just do int i = 1+1+1+1 a few thousand times... and it will blow the stack. Help me understand why anybody cares if that doesn't compile?
Here's the quote (emphasis added):
I work with compilers and it's easy to crash the Java compiler just by writing, you know, int i = 1+1+1+1 and just do that a few thousand times. And the semantic analyzer will be trying to analyze that, or the parser will be trying to parse it and it will just blow the stack. And what happens is, the process crashes.
You know, there's no good recovery from that. And you can fix it by [saying], "Well, we start over again but I'll just allocate more stack". The problem is, you can't necessarily know ahead of time how much stack to allocate to any given thread.
First of all, mod parent up as Informative.
Good book. Worth buying; it is very thought provoking.
Next, while I was reading the fine article, I noticed a legit free download of the Lights In The Tunnel book - you can get to it here:
http://singularityhub.com/2010/05/21/computers-to-take-human-jobs-shutdown-global-economy-get-fords-book-free/ Follow that to the download page (click through to amazon, it is a name-your-own price thing, and free is a valid price).
Here are some points from the download page to tweak your interest:
Here are just a few of the questions explored in this book:
How will job automation impact the economy in the future?
How will the offshore outsourcing trend evolve in the coming years?
What impact will technologies such as robotics and artificial intelligence have on the job market?
Did technology play a significant role in the 2007 subprime meltdown and the subsequent global financial crisis and recession?
How fast can we expect technological change to occur in the coming years and decades?
Which jobs and industries are likely to be most vulnerable to automation and offshoring?
Globalization. Collaboration. Telecommuting. Are these the forces that will shape the workplaces of the future? Or is there something bigger lurking?
Machine and computer automation will primarily impact low skilled and low paid workers. True or false?
Will advancing technology always make society as a whole more wealthy? Or could it someday cause a severe economic depression?
What are the implications of advancing automation technology for developing nations such as China and India?
The primary economic trend in the coming decades will be globalization. True or false?
Will a college education continue to be a good bet in the future?
Recent economic data suggests that, in United States, we are seeing increasing income inequality and a dwindling middle class. How will this trend play out in the future?
What will be the economic impact of truly advanced future technologies, such as nanotechnology?
Retail positions at Wal-mart and other chain stores have become the jobs of last resort for many workers. Will robots and other forms of machine automation someday threaten these jobs? If so, what alternatives will the economy create for these workers?
Do we need to adapt our market-based economic system to advancing technology or will the same rules continue to work indefinitely?
What government policies might make sense as technology continues to accelerate?
And much more...
More details, please.
This "present special skills to students" is a vague goal.
Is this like parents coming in for 10 minutes and explaining "I am Timmy's dad. I'm a carpenter. I build houses."
That would be pretty easy: show them what software does (xbox, ipad, cell phone, internet(club penguin), a tickle-me-elmo or some other toy with software. Tell them you build software, and that software makes these things "smart". What *doesn't* use software in 2011?
They're like what, 8 years old? Don't overshoot.
If they want volunteers to help students acquire these skill, you're going to needs lots of prep time.
Very enterprising.
Reminds me of "Market Forces" (by Richard Morgan, author of Altered Carbon among others).
Kind of like venture capital firms, but competing for would-be regimes in sovereign states instead of startup businesses.
Rather plausible.
A coup in Cambodia. Guns to Guatemala. For the men and women of Shorn Associates, opportunity is calling. In the superheated global village of the near future, big money is made by finding the right little war and supporting one side against the other–in exchange for a share of the spoils.
Oh, and the "death match" road warrior duels to make Partner in a firm didn't hurt the story any.:-)
"Grey goo" today is about as likely as a renaissance inventor building a thermonuclear weapon.
Focusing on just "today" is rather short sighted.
Let's look at the timeline from renaissance-man to nuclear-physicist:
It took about 200 years to go from the simple phsyics like the pendulum (Galileo, 1581) to the discovery of oxygen (Lavosier, 1778).
It took another 120 years to invent quantum theory (Planck, 1897).
Another 35 years to find the neutron (Chadwick, 1932).
15 years to the atom bomb (Trinity, 1945).
7 years to fusion (thermonuclear) (Ivy Mike, 1952).
Oh, and just for fun, about 40 years later the Human Genome project kicked off (1989).
Our species has a knack for figuring out small things.
As for nano tech, it's hard for me to believe we'll be blindly stumbling about at "renaissance inventor level" even 10 years from now.
Our species also has a knack for being short sighted and focusing only on "today":-(
A closing thought for you: "grey goo" doesn't have to be a long-term stable system to be a serious problem; suppose it "just" eats the world's food crops for a year (think blight + major famine) and then, if we're "lucky", fades away.
Here's an interesting read for you The Windup Girl (Paolo Bacigalupi) about destabilized ecosystems. Imagine some MBA's in Monsanto saying, "You know, if we release genetic plant 'malware' we could own the planet! Of course we would control it. What could go wrong?"
Most of the posts I see here assume well-intentioned non-malicious researchers.
People haven't hesitated to crash the economy to line their pockets.
Why would the ecosystem be any different?
Thank you for what you & the other HFT people posted.
Your perspectives are very interesting; especially about the workplace dynamics, the value flow from big banks etc.
This is one of the more interesting threads I've read on Slashdot for a while.
p.s. about the "leech" complainers, *shrug* if I thought they had a plan for building a better world, I'd ask to hear about it.
The Fine Article made a very interesting point about performance; one SSD can replace four (or more) spinning disks to meet goals for access times & throughput. So... suppose you could replace a 32 spinning disk array with an 8 unit SSD array. Team-SSD's reliability is better than team-spinning-disk's, even if one-on-one SSD's are a bit worse. You know, having 4x as many units to possibly fail and all that.
We simply get significantly higher I/O [with SSDs] at a lower cost than we'd be able to get with standard drives. We've had many customers needing more I/O than what 4x 15k RPM SAS drives in RAID 10 provide, and an upgrade involves moving to a larger server chassis to support more than four drives, a larger RAID card, etc. Other configurations have needed 16+ 15k RPM drives to get the necessary I/O. Going with a single SSD (or a couple SSDs in RAID) greatly simplifies the configurations and makes them much cheaper overall.
That is then compounded by the fact that you generally use one SSD to replace 4+ standard drives on average.
You're then looking at a 20%+ AFR with hard drives and 1.6% with an SSD.
The bitter "get up/get down" battle, which has polarized the nation's funk community, is part of a long-running battle between the two factions, rooted in more than 35 years of conflict over the direction in which the American people should shake it.
In his introduction, "Engineering and the Truth Fairies," Hogan describes the ideal view of science, but points out that even scientists will accept findings in fields other than their own without skepticism. He states: "I used to say . . . that science was the only area of human activity in which it actually matters whether or not what one believes is true. . . . Today, I reserve that aphorism for engineering" (p. 9).
He makes the point that since engineering deals directly with reality, it is a useful gauge to the truth of scientific theories.
In his afterword, "Gothic Cathedrals and the Stars," he notes that many of the most important findings in science over the past several centuries were actually made by outsiders, from Leonardo da Vinci (who was trained as a painter) to Albert Einstein (who was working as a patent clerk when he made many of his most important findings). He observes: "While most research today depends ultimately on government funding . . . history shows that bureaucratic stifling and an inherent commitment to linear thinking makes officially inaugurated programs the least productive in terms of true creativity" (p. 466). It is a scathing analysis of modern science, but one that is not undeserved.
Maybe not - he put the randomizer into a standalone URL, which just returns some text.
(Try it a few times, and do a view page source: http://mailinator.com/randomdomain.jsp )
The "clever" part is that it just returns some text, nothing labeled as an "alternate domain".
The URL suggests it is some random domain; it doesn't say anything about alternate or mainstream.
The text might be a domain.
It might be a pie recipe.
*shrug*
Anyway, his main page uses that standalone URL and labels that page labels the result as an alternate domain.
So suppose it was fraud.
Next question - who would prosecute?:-)
"Why do you feel it was fraud?"
"Because we asked for an alternate domain and they gave us gmail.com."
"Was that the only request you made for a 'random domain'?"
"Probably."
"Wasn't that request just one in a batch of 2,000 you made during a 10 minute window on July 17th, 2010?"
"Uh, I don't recall."
"Does this server log help your memory?"
"Oh. Hmm. Yeah, that might have been us..."
... the pompous notion that process can somehow prevent logical errors
Pompous?
Preventing logical errors is the key idea here: Introduction to Test Driven Design (TDD).
excerpt: If it's worth building, it's worth testing. If it's not worth testing, why are you wasting your time working on it?
So... what's your strategy for preventing logical errors?
I know you're going for +5 funny...
But what I read is "Here's some things that might be useful."
The review was well written and I appreciated the reviewer's comments on what they found interesting.
Sure, tech-skills are important.
But what a lot of programmers miss is that the other topics (estimates, integrity, responsibility) are important.
Maybe if you work on solo projects your entire life, then it doesn't matter so much.
But social interactions really are big deal in software, just like they are with every other human endeavor.
(The more cynical slashdotters would s/social interactions/politics/ and they wouldn't be wrong, but that doesn't make it any less relevant.)
Suppose somebody develops software professionally (e.g. for money).
What will help their career more: adding another language to their resume?
Or learning more about the people side of things? e.g. process, psychology & practices
(Diminishing returns start to kick in after learning your 4th or 5th programming language.)
On the contrary, the review is well written. The writer has clearly done their legwork, and I thank them for sharing their insights.
(And anyway, wouldn't a "shill" be 100% positive?)
Interesting point on bone marrow.
That is what "maintenance" contracts are for...
Kusanagi: So what if we can't live without high-level maintenance?
We have nothing to complain about.
lt doesn't mean we've sold our souls to Section 9.
We do have the right to resign if we choose.
Provided we give the government back our cyborg shells and the memories they hold.
So to upgrade... do you flush the bios?
How does it handle backups?
Does it support pipework neutrality?
Or pee-er to pee-er streaming?
Is it torrent-ready?
Slashdot Mirror
A mercury ban can't happen soon enough. Amalgam fillings are way worse than any vaccine mercury issues (which as others have pointed out are being phased out). Mercury Does Leak Out of Your Fillings
An OCaml example from The Fine Article: (both of these do the same thing)
let map f (x,y,z) = (f x, f y, f z)
Here, map is defined as a function with two arguments: a function f and a triple (x,y,z). Note that f x is the syntax for applying the function f to x.
Now consider what this would look like in C# 4.0. The C# code, while functionally equivalent, looks cluttered, with the real structure obscured by syntactic noise.
Tuple<U,U,U> Map<T,U>(Func <T,U> f, Tuple<T,T,T> t)
{
return new Tuple<U,U,U>(f(t.item1), f(t.item2), f(t.item3));
}
And this isn't just to harsh on C#, the next example shows 15 lines of OCaml sized up against 50 lines Java
(or, if you strip whitespace, 258 chars of OCaml vs. 1,124 chars in java).
Somehow TL;DR doesn't apply to code? Maybe our species is irreparably stupid.
*shrug* It sounds like he has made his peace with his fame and found some life balance.
It's a short interview but ranges all over the place; the first minute is Fringe, the rest is other work and other contexts.
Quite interesting, really.
And Leonard had nice things to say about the startrek reboot; just a classy guy.
...one of those things is do not bring up the topic of Star Trek with him, he hates it.
You're talking about this slashdot entry from 5 months ago: http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/11/03/28/239212/artificial-leaf-could-provide-cheap-energy
Not exactly a dup; they link to different articles.
This one's article has a video showing the prototype in operation, which is kind of cool.
The old one's article has no video, but they basically make the same points in text.
The guy seriously thinks about some hanging-on-by-bleeding-fingernails edge case stuff.
I just don't see it being relevant to any real world situation.
From the part where he says "I work with compilers..." and, you know, just do int i = 1+1+1+1 a few thousand times... and it will blow the stack. Help me understand why anybody cares if that doesn't compile?
Here's the quote (emphasis added):
I work with compilers and it's easy to crash the Java compiler just by writing, you know, int i = 1+1+1+1 and just do that a few thousand times. And the semantic analyzer will be trying to analyze that, or the parser will be trying to parse it and it will just blow the stack.
And what happens is, the process crashes.
You know, there's no good recovery from that. And you can fix it by [saying], "Well, we start over again but I'll just allocate more stack". The problem is, you can't necessarily know ahead of time how much stack to allocate to any given thread.
Good book. Worth buying; it is very thought provoking.
Next, while I was reading the fine article, I noticed a legit free download of the Lights In The Tunnel book - you can get to it here: http://singularityhub.com/2010/05/21/computers-to-take-human-jobs-shutdown-global-economy-get-fords-book-free/
Follow that to the download page (click through to amazon, it is a name-your-own price thing, and free is a valid price).
Here are some points from the download page to tweak your interest:
Here are just a few of the questions explored in this book:
How will job automation impact the economy in the future?
How will the offshore outsourcing trend evolve in the coming years?
What impact will technologies such as robotics and artificial intelligence have on the job market?
Did technology play a significant role in the 2007 subprime meltdown and the subsequent global financial crisis and recession?
How fast can we expect technological change to occur in the coming years and decades?
Which jobs and industries are likely to be most vulnerable to automation and offshoring?
Globalization. Collaboration. Telecommuting. Are these the forces that will shape the workplaces of the future? Or is there something bigger lurking?
Machine and computer automation will primarily impact low skilled and low paid workers. True or false?
Will advancing technology always make society as a whole more wealthy? Or could it someday cause a severe economic depression?
What are the implications of advancing automation technology for developing nations such as China and India?
The primary economic trend in the coming decades will be globalization. True or false?
Will a college education continue to be a good bet in the future?
Recent economic data suggests that, in United States, we are seeing increasing income inequality and a dwindling middle class. How will this trend play out in the future?
What will be the economic impact of truly advanced future technologies, such as nanotechnology?
Retail positions at Wal-mart and other chain stores have become the jobs of last resort for many workers. Will robots and other forms of machine automation someday threaten these jobs? If so, what alternatives will the economy create for these workers?
Do we need to adapt our market-based economic system to advancing technology or will the same rules continue to work indefinitely?
What government policies might make sense as technology continues to accelerate?
And much more...
More details, please.
This "present special skills to students" is a vague goal.
Is this like parents coming in for 10 minutes and explaining "I am Timmy's dad. I'm a carpenter. I build houses." That would be pretty easy: show them what software does (xbox, ipad, cell phone, internet(club penguin), a tickle-me-elmo or some other toy with software. Tell them you build software, and that software makes these things "smart". What *doesn't* use software in 2011? They're like what, 8 years old? Don't overshoot.
If they want volunteers to help students acquire these skill, you're going to needs lots of prep time.
...the difference between open source and a proprietary model is to allow people to be idiots? Correct me if I'm wrong.
There, fixed that for you:
The difference between open source and a proprietary model is open allows people to be smarter.
Reminds me of "Market Forces" (by Richard Morgan, author of Altered Carbon among others).
Kind of like venture capital firms, but competing for would-be regimes in sovereign states instead of startup businesses.
Rather plausible.
A coup in Cambodia. Guns to Guatemala. For the men and women of Shorn Associates, opportunity is calling. In the superheated global village of the near future, big money is made by finding the right little war and supporting one side against the other–in exchange for a share of the spoils.
Oh, and the "death match" road warrior duels to make Partner in a firm didn't hurt the story any. :-)
The AWESOM-O :-)
Thank you, sir - that link made my day.
"Grey goo" today is about as likely as a renaissance inventor building a thermonuclear weapon.
Focusing on just "today" is rather short sighted.
Let's look at the timeline from renaissance-man to nuclear-physicist:
It took about 200 years to go from the simple phsyics like the pendulum (Galileo, 1581) to the discovery of oxygen (Lavosier, 1778).
It took another 120 years to invent quantum theory (Planck, 1897).
Another 35 years to find the neutron (Chadwick, 1932).
15 years to the atom bomb (Trinity, 1945).
7 years to fusion (thermonuclear) (Ivy Mike, 1952).
Oh, and just for fun, about 40 years later the Human Genome project kicked off (1989).
Our species has a knack for figuring out small things.
As for nano tech, it's hard for me to believe we'll be blindly stumbling about at "renaissance inventor level" even 10 years from now.
Our species also has a knack for being short sighted and focusing only on "today" :-(
A closing thought for you: "grey goo" doesn't have to be a long-term stable system to be a serious problem; suppose it "just" eats the world's food crops for a year (think blight + major famine) and then, if we're "lucky", fades away.
Here's an interesting read for you The Windup Girl (Paolo Bacigalupi) about destabilized ecosystems. Imagine some MBA's in Monsanto saying, "You know, if we release genetic plant 'malware' we could own the planet! Of course we would control it. What could go wrong?"
Most of the posts I see here assume well-intentioned non-malicious researchers.
People haven't hesitated to crash the economy to line their pockets.
Why would the ecosystem be any different?
Thank you for what you & the other HFT people posted.
Your perspectives are very interesting; especially about the workplace dynamics, the value flow from big banks etc.
This is one of the more interesting threads I've read on Slashdot for a while.
p.s. about the "leech" complainers, *shrug* if I thought they had a plan for building a better world, I'd ask to hear about it.
Bravo, well said! :-)
So... are you running for office?
For example:
Steadfast Networks' Karl Zimmerman, as quoted from bottom of this page (emphasis added)
We simply get significantly higher I/O [with SSDs] at a lower cost than we'd be able to get with standard drives. We've had many customers needing more I/O than what 4x 15k RPM SAS drives in RAID 10 provide, and an upgrade involves moving to a larger server chassis to support more than four drives, a larger RAID card, etc. Other configurations have needed 16+ 15k RPM drives to get the necessary I/O. Going with a single SSD (or a couple SSDs in RAID) greatly simplifies the configurations and makes them much cheaper overall.
That is then compounded by the fact that you generally use one SSD to replace 4+ standard drives on average.
You're then looking at a 20%+ AFR with hard drives and 1.6% with an SSD.
(AFR = Annual Failure Rate)
The bitter "get up/get down" battle, which has polarized the nation's funk community, is part of a long-running battle between the two factions, rooted in more than 35 years of conflict over the direction in which the American people should shake it.
Strangely appropriate. I wish it wasn't funny.
They remind a bit me of this book, which I think you'd like, by James Hogan:
Kicking The Sacred Cow (Questioning the Unquestionable and Thinking the Impermissible)
Two excerpts from a review:
In his introduction, "Engineering and the Truth Fairies," Hogan describes the ideal view of science, but points out that even scientists will accept findings in fields other than their own without skepticism. He states: "I used to say . . . that science was the only area of human activity in which it actually matters whether or not what one believes is true. . . . Today, I reserve that aphorism for engineering" (p. 9).
He makes the point that since engineering deals directly with reality, it is a useful gauge to the truth of scientific theories.
In his afterword, "Gothic Cathedrals and the Stars," he notes that many of the most important findings in science over the past several centuries were actually made by outsiders, from Leonardo da Vinci (who was trained as a painter) to Albert Einstein (who was working as a patent clerk when he made many of his most important findings). He observes: "While most research today depends ultimately on government funding . . . history shows that bureaucratic stifling and an inherent commitment to linear thinking makes officially inaugurated programs the least productive in terms of true creativity" (p. 466).
It is a scathing analysis of modern science, but one that is not undeserved.
cool - Tell you wife's friend, "Nicely done!" :-)
Neat - anyone been to the show yet? I'd love to see a first hand report - it will be a while before I can get down there myself.
Isn't this hypothetical situation just fraud?
Maybe not - he put the randomizer into a standalone URL, which just returns some text.
(Try it a few times, and do a view page source: http://mailinator.com/randomdomain.jsp )
The "clever" part is that it just returns some text, nothing labeled as an "alternate domain".
The URL suggests it is some random domain; it doesn't say anything about alternate or mainstream.
The text might be a domain.
It might be a pie recipe.
*shrug*
Anyway, his main page uses that standalone URL and labels that page labels the result as an alternate domain.
So suppose it was fraud. :-)
Next question - who would prosecute?
"Why do you feel it was fraud?"
"Because we asked for an alternate domain and they gave us gmail.com."
"Was that the only request you made for a 'random domain'?"
"Probably."
"Wasn't that request just one in a batch of 2,000 you made during a 10 minute window on July 17th, 2010?"
"Uh, I don't recall."
"Does this server log help your memory?"
"Oh. Hmm. Yeah, that might have been us..."
... the pompous notion that process can somehow prevent logical errors
Pompous?
Preventing logical errors is the key idea here: Introduction to Test Driven Design (TDD).
excerpt: If it's worth building, it's worth testing. If it's not worth testing, why are you wasting your time working on it?
So... what's your strategy for preventing logical errors?
Programming--You're doing it all wrong!
I know you're going for +5 funny...
But what I read is "Here's some things that might be useful."
The review was well written and I appreciated the reviewer's comments on what they found interesting.
Sure, tech-skills are important.
But what a lot of programmers miss is that the other topics (estimates, integrity, responsibility) are important.
Maybe if you work on solo projects your entire life, then it doesn't matter so much.
But social interactions really are big deal in software, just like they are with every other human endeavor.
(The more cynical slashdotters would s/social interactions/politics/ and they wouldn't be wrong, but that doesn't make it any less relevant.)
Suppose somebody develops software professionally (e.g. for money).
What will help their career more: adding another language to their resume?
Or learning more about the people side of things? e.g. process, psychology & practices
(Diminishing returns start to kick in after learning your 4th or 5th programming language.)
Beautiful shot - I'm happy for you; I have to put that on my travel wish list now :-)
On the contrary, the review is well written. The writer has clearly done their legwork, and I thank them for sharing their insights.
(And anyway, wouldn't a "shill" be 100% positive?)
Interesting point on bone marrow.
That is what "maintenance" contracts are for...
Kusanagi: So what if we can't live without high-level maintenance?
We have nothing to complain about.
lt doesn't mean we've sold our souls to Section 9.
We do have the right to resign if we choose.
Provided we give the government back our cyborg shells and the memories they hold.
So to upgrade... do you flush the bios?
How does it handle backups?
Does it support pipework neutrality?
Or pee-er to pee-er streaming?
Is it torrent-ready?
How long before someone connects it to twitter?
oops - too late: http://hackaday.com/2009/05/05/twittering-toilet/