Please don't tell me that entities selected through Amazon's Mechanical Turk pass for subjects in MIT-level scientific research. Should I start taking MIT less seriously?
Looking at your posting history, you have some fairly deep-seated issues and it's fairly obvious that you're using Slashdot as an outlet. Get outside and breathe the fresh air more - perhaps move out of the city if you're stuck in one.
It's fortunate that people are more compassionate than you, otherwise you'd probably be out on the street by now. The only stupidity here is your religious understanding of the human brain as having the potential to be a perfectly rational machine rather than just another biological organ with the potential for programming and faults. This guy, if even real, is either an ignorant kid or a man with significant mental health problems, as is anyone who would destroy his body for short term thrill. Even though you and any fellow human would be better off if he were healthy, your sadism instead forces you to revel in his suffering. You're faulty, and I'm sorry for you.
tl;dr You're a buffoon and people don't even expect gratitude for their tolerance of you - how lucky are you?
What is wrong with you? There are dozens of language which implement objects via prototypes, many of which are older than Javascript (and probably older than you) - you've even provided a (Wikipedia.. eugh) link to support this. Understanding the syntax above doesn't mean you understand prototypes; understanding prototypes doesn't mean you understand the syntax above. But going from the general understanding to the specific is a matter of seconds.
It's one thing to be able to say "I know the general principles of programming." It's something quite different to say "I am a C/Java/Javascript/Perl developer."
The difference should be one concise reference and a couple of weeks, or your chosen language is awful.
It's VITAL to understanding a PECULIAR quirk of Javascript? Explain carefully what's so magically special and conceptually unique about Javascript objects in your opinion. I'll be happy to disabuse you of your misconceptions.
Also, I can appreciate that Javascript makes you angry, but chill.
Intellectual property is censorship. The First Amendment should be read as an implicit repeal: if only "protected speech" is protected - for example, speaking a derivative work is not regarded as protected - then there is no anti-censorship provision whatever.
Are you really that incapable of understanding the difference between the concrete and the abstract? In what way is understanding some peculiar syntax quirk of Javascript the same as understanding what an object is?
My question is rhetorical, as I'm well aware of this problem with today's programmer.
Tension and compression are generic engineering concepts, not at all like knowing the difference between writing "obj.property" and "obj['property']", when "obj = {}".
HTML5 vs Flash is just Apple vs Adobe. I don't care for either, although if you are a "web developer" I guess eventually you'll have to get to grips with HTML5.
I'd say it's quite odd to define seniority in terms of understanding quirks of particular languages.
Imagine a mathematics PhD programme which examines you on Mathematica pattern matching. Or an undergrad entrance test which measures your proficiency with a TI-89. It's stuff anyone could learn by just reading a sufficiently detailed reference, but demonstration of the knowledge determines almost nothing else.
Am I the only one depressed by the number of people who think that knowing how to write software means knowing obscure details about specific programming languages? This is the sort of thing I'd care about when I was 15, wanting to demonstrate my smarts via elite knowledge of the internals/intricacies of, well, anything. Then I realised that actually it's all just marketing buzzword bullshit to sell the new unnecessary, bloated toy - either that or it's a theatrical gauntlet run (Perl, I'm looking at you) - and I'd be wasting my time to care about anything but generic principles and research.
Javascript was an OK client-side scripting language for the web, if you absolutely felt the need to tart up your information without Flash. For everything else, there was and is already something better. As for the web, everything worth using on it works fine with Javascript off.
My private school education was crap, and I went to one of the usual British boarding schools.
No schools teach much to kids below 18. Before university, it's all about innate potential + knowing the right thing to say. As far as entrance requirements, the best universities care about both; the rest only really notice the latter.
NATO, being the military wing of US imperialism, models itself only on the best but is left wanting. Who can forget The Right Honourable Viceroy and Governor-General The Lord George Nathaniel Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston, Knight's Garter, Knight Grand Commander of the The Most Exalted Order of the Star of India, Knight Grand Commander of the Order of the Indian Empire? I guess some people never grow up from the joy they felt when they got a sticker on their jacket for good work at school.
As pan^Wnon-governmental organisations go, you can't beat a bit of name NGOCONGO. Um bongo, anyone?
Everything you say is true, but I still can't quite work out who stood to benefit from it. Why did Thatcher rename all the polys? Why was NL obsessed with increasing numbers of people in "university" rather than, as you suggest, increasing skilled labour in general?
I see that it is possible to create lots of pointless degrees, pay per head, and make lots of departments happy with high in-take for programmes which comprise little useful work. But that only works after the whole system has been established. Who planned it out in the first place, and why? It is often said that it was one way of massaging unemployment figures through the '80s, like telling men in their 50s who were able to work to sign up for Invalidity Benefit. But there are so many ways of misleading the population on unemployment and it is not like hearing a number on TV is going to change the average person's voting behaviour, so I am not satisfied with that answer.
Put more bluntly: which group stood to gain financially by the decision? I could see an argument that the intention was to create a country which lacks essential skills as an excuse to both shipping entire industries abroad and opening borders, reducing labour costs. Even if you want to keep people in something to stop a Madrid where suddenly everyone sees that there really isn't a need for so many young workers at home, why would you keep them doing something which is so clearly pointless? Why not exportable skills at the very least? Would the UK not benefit from skilled emigrants sending money back home?
There's this nagging conspiracist in my head which says that recent governments have wanted the UK to fail: they're represented by increasingly mediocre individuals who are aware of how tenuous their position is and who feel threatened by their own countrymen. Thatcher was no conservative and Blair no laborista; they may each have made some short-term contributions to the country coincident with ostensible ideals but for the long term they engaged in very similar destructive behaviour.
Once upon a time, universities were for the top 5-10%.
Now, in the UK, university is for about 50% of people, not really determined by entrance qualifications since these have been corrupted by all the exam boards being sold to the publishers.
The UK is full of people with meaningless pieces of paper. Of course you're going to get lots of people who look qualified on paper.
At this rate we'll get the reputation of being as lawsuit-happy as the US:-(. Though we've been Reagan's bitch ever since Thatcher. As, sadly, has the US.
The footballer thing is about being silenced against telling the truth.
The Tyneside council thing is about being identified for libel proceedings.
Lots of people in the US have had the latter happen to them. But the former does not and still does not apply in the US. The only "implications" are that in both cases the complainant is from the UK.
Also, this is one of the most boring distractions from real problems the media has been stirred up into obsessing itself with. Cameron's a smart fucker.
Because there are lots of ways of making credit cards far more secure which the banks refuse to use because the banks profit from a data breach.
If someone fraudulently uses a card, the bank will refund them by debiting the merchant's account, not out of its own infinite pool of generosity. And it'll usually fine the merchant, either per-transaction or by increasing the discount rate in the long term (or both).
Are you implying that the reason most assistants don't receive majority credit is because they don't have enough "gratitude and humbleness"? That the mountains of grad students who often make an intellectual contribution beyond mere grunt work are ignored because they would refuse to acknowledge the contribution of their supervisor? And that it is fine to mislead the public as long as the subject is humble about it? Present your argument, please. Because what I see are dozens of articles implying that F-M was at the centre of the discovery when in fact she only made a minor contribution.
Look at most scientific discoveries described in the press. Notice how they try, no matter how challenging, to describe the discovery rather than the person. Something is wrong here. What do you think it is?
Yeah, but ENIAC was't misleadingly described as being more than it was, and it was clear what its benefits were over traditional methods of computation.
Like the IEEE says, it's bullshit in the sense that it's not quantum in the sense usually understood and it's no more effective than a traditional computer. What is more, as with all snake-oil, it has not allowed peer review.
It would be interesting to see how the money flows from the citizen-taxpayer via the government through Lockheed into D-Wave and finally back to the people in government who set up the purchase.
Slashdot Mirror
Please don't tell me that entities selected through Amazon's Mechanical Turk pass for subjects in MIT-level scientific research. Should I start taking MIT less seriously?
Aren't there measures in terms of users rather than volume of traffic?
The average Internet user is fairly clueless.
The average clueless user doesn't go installing an alternative browser.
The idea that approaching 50% of Internet users are savvy enough to even consider an alternative browser, let alone choose one, is implausible.
Therefore I question the methodology.
Looking at your posting history, you have some fairly deep-seated issues and it's fairly obvious that you're using Slashdot as an outlet. Get outside and breathe the fresh air more - perhaps move out of the city if you're stuck in one.
It's fortunate that people are more compassionate than you, otherwise you'd probably be out on the street by now. The only stupidity here is your religious understanding of the human brain as having the potential to be a perfectly rational machine rather than just another biological organ with the potential for programming and faults. This guy, if even real, is either an ignorant kid or a man with significant mental health problems, as is anyone who would destroy his body for short term thrill. Even though you and any fellow human would be better off if he were healthy, your sadism instead forces you to revel in his suffering. You're faulty, and I'm sorry for you.
tl;dr You're a buffoon and people don't even expect gratitude for their tolerance of you - how lucky are you?
What is wrong with you? There are dozens of language which implement objects via prototypes, many of which are older than Javascript (and probably older than you) - you've even provided a (Wikipedia.. eugh) link to support this. Understanding the syntax above doesn't mean you understand prototypes; understanding prototypes doesn't mean you understand the syntax above. But going from the general understanding to the specific is a matter of seconds.
It's one thing to be able to say "I know the general principles of programming." It's something quite different to say "I am a C/Java/Javascript/Perl developer."
The difference should be one concise reference and a couple of weeks, or your chosen language is awful.
It's VITAL to understanding a PECULIAR quirk of Javascript? Explain carefully what's so magically special and conceptually unique about Javascript objects in your opinion. I'll be happy to disabuse you of your misconceptions.
Also, I can appreciate that Javascript makes you angry, but chill.
Intellectual property is censorship. The First Amendment should be read as an implicit repeal: if only "protected speech" is protected - for example, speaking a derivative work is not regarded as protected - then there is no anti-censorship provision whatever.
Are you really that incapable of understanding the difference between the concrete and the abstract? In what way is understanding some peculiar syntax quirk of Javascript the same as understanding what an object is?
My question is rhetorical, as I'm well aware of this problem with today's programmer.
Tension and compression are generic engineering concepts, not at all like knowing the difference between writing "obj.property" and "obj['property']", when "obj = {}".
HTML works fine for information. The browser produces the UI according to the user's tastes.
HTML5 vs Flash is just Apple vs Adobe. I don't care for either, although if you are a "web developer" I guess eventually you'll have to get to grips with HTML5.
I'd say it's quite odd to define seniority in terms of understanding quirks of particular languages.
Imagine a mathematics PhD programme which examines you on Mathematica pattern matching. Or an undergrad entrance test which measures your proficiency with a TI-89. It's stuff anyone could learn by just reading a sufficiently detailed reference, but demonstration of the knowledge determines almost nothing else.
Am I the only one depressed by the number of people who think that knowing how to write software means knowing obscure details about specific programming languages? This is the sort of thing I'd care about when I was 15, wanting to demonstrate my smarts via elite knowledge of the internals/intricacies of, well, anything. Then I realised that actually it's all just marketing buzzword bullshit to sell the new unnecessary, bloated toy - either that or it's a theatrical gauntlet run (Perl, I'm looking at you) - and I'd be wasting my time to care about anything but generic principles and research.
Javascript was an OK client-side scripting language for the web, if you absolutely felt the need to tart up your information without Flash. For everything else, there was and is already something better. As for the web, everything worth using on it works fine with Javascript off.
My private school education was crap, and I went to one of the usual British boarding schools.
No schools teach much to kids below 18. Before university, it's all about innate potential + knowing the right thing to say. As far as entrance requirements, the best universities care about both; the rest only really notice the latter.
That's England, anyway.
NATO, being the military wing of US imperialism, models itself only on the best but is left wanting. Who can forget The Right Honourable Viceroy and Governor-General The Lord George Nathaniel Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston, Knight's Garter, Knight Grand Commander of the The Most Exalted Order of the Star of India, Knight Grand Commander of the Order of the Indian Empire? I guess some people never grow up from the joy they felt when they got a sticker on their jacket for good work at school.
As pan^Wnon-governmental organisations go, you can't beat a bit of name NGOCONGO. Um bongo, anyone?
No, that was in fact quoting the Fox News article verbatim.
Even if we don't like copyright, we like correct attribution, right guys?
Everything you say is true, but I still can't quite work out who stood to benefit from it. Why did Thatcher rename all the polys? Why was NL obsessed with increasing numbers of people in "university" rather than, as you suggest, increasing skilled labour in general?
I see that it is possible to create lots of pointless degrees, pay per head, and make lots of departments happy with high in-take for programmes which comprise little useful work. But that only works after the whole system has been established. Who planned it out in the first place, and why? It is often said that it was one way of massaging unemployment figures through the '80s, like telling men in their 50s who were able to work to sign up for Invalidity Benefit. But there are so many ways of misleading the population on unemployment and it is not like hearing a number on TV is going to change the average person's voting behaviour, so I am not satisfied with that answer.
Put more bluntly: which group stood to gain financially by the decision? I could see an argument that the intention was to create a country which lacks essential skills as an excuse to both shipping entire industries abroad and opening borders, reducing labour costs. Even if you want to keep people in something to stop a Madrid where suddenly everyone sees that there really isn't a need for so many young workers at home, why would you keep them doing something which is so clearly pointless? Why not exportable skills at the very least? Would the UK not benefit from skilled emigrants sending money back home?
There's this nagging conspiracist in my head which says that recent governments have wanted the UK to fail: they're represented by increasingly mediocre individuals who are aware of how tenuous their position is and who feel threatened by their own countrymen. Thatcher was no conservative and Blair no laborista; they may each have made some short-term contributions to the country coincident with ostensible ideals but for the long term they engaged in very similar destructive behaviour.
Once upon a time, universities were for the top 5-10%.
Now, in the UK, university is for about 50% of people, not really determined by entrance qualifications since these have been corrupted by all the exam boards being sold to the publishers.
The UK is full of people with meaningless pieces of paper. Of course you're going to get lots of people who look qualified on paper.
At this rate we'll get the reputation of being as lawsuit-happy as the US :-(. Though we've been Reagan's bitch ever since Thatcher. As, sadly, has the US.
The footballer thing is about being silenced against telling the truth.
The Tyneside council thing is about being identified for libel proceedings.
Lots of people in the US have had the latter happen to them. But the former does not and still does not apply in the US. The only "implications" are that in both cases the complainant is from the UK.
Also, this is one of the most boring distractions from real problems the media has been stirred up into obsessing itself with. Cameron's a smart fucker.
Because there are lots of ways of making credit cards far more secure which the banks refuse to use because the banks profit from a data breach.
If someone fraudulently uses a card, the bank will refund them by debiting the merchant's account, not out of its own infinite pool of generosity. And it'll usually fine the merchant, either per-transaction or by increasing the discount rate in the long term (or both).
Are you implying that the reason most assistants don't receive majority credit is because they don't have enough "gratitude and humbleness"? That the mountains of grad students who often make an intellectual contribution beyond mere grunt work are ignored because they would refuse to acknowledge the contribution of their supervisor? And that it is fine to mislead the public as long as the subject is humble about it? Present your argument, please. Because what I see are dozens of articles implying that F-M was at the centre of the discovery when in fact she only made a minor contribution.
Look at most scientific discoveries described in the press. Notice how they try, no matter how challenging, to describe the discovery rather than the person. Something is wrong here. What do you think it is?
Yeah, but ENIAC was't misleadingly described as being more than it was, and it was clear what its benefits were over traditional methods of computation.
Like the IEEE says, it's bullshit in the sense that it's not quantum in the sense usually understood and it's no more effective than a traditional computer. What is more, as with all snake-oil, it has not allowed peer review.
It would be interesting to see how the money flows from the citizen-taxpayer via the government through Lockheed into D-Wave and finally back to the people in government who set up the purchase.