No, I don't think this is what the DOJ is fighting against; the bundling of features is not itself bad (it can be very convenient and powerful, if a bit risky thanks to virii and poor defaults) on Microsoft's part. It's their business practices and habit of trying to use their desktop to muscle and leverage other monopolies that's bad.
IE, using Windows and it's monopoly on the desktop to gain leverage in browsers, or using Windows and it's monopoly on the desktop to gain leverage in graphics libraries, the gaming market, or audio formats and media distribution.
I mean, it's great if they're bundling stuff with XP in order to convince users to buy it; but because of licensing practices, I don't think users have a choice (WinMe, Win2k, or WinXP), and *have* to settle for whatever the OEM decides to distribute, right?
Oh, I thought you were gonna say 'It sounds like Windows... sluggish and without the important things, like CD-RW or DVD capabilities (built in), plus it doesn't always work correctly. I know, I know, on Windows you can dl or borrow a copy of EZ-CD Creator or something... and Roxio has yet to release OS X support...
Well that's the difference between a typical Mac user and a typical PC user; most PC users 'settle' for Microsoft, either cause it's what everyone else uses or because it's the only thing they know or they think Macs are expensive.
Apple's customers usually choose Macs in spite of, despite the prevailing norm of the PC users.
So Apple users will tolerate this kind of thing (oh, they'll complain), as long as it will improve. PC users, on the other hand, bitch because Microsoft doesn't truly mean anything to them, and Microsoft grows lazy, assuming things just because they own 90% of the market.
On the other hand Mac users are spoiled... what Windows OS comes with CD burning and DVD playback out of the box? Or even CD ripping and mp3 encoding, movie making, DVD burning software, and web server software out of the box? Windows users have to settle for Windows Media Player and Internet Explorer, on the average...
It's an idealistic philosophy, not a military strategy. If the philosophy works, then it's the military genius who needs to figure out how to implement it. I am not that genius.
On the other hand, you could even see it as building lures, targets as it were, for which to draw out terrorist attacks. Otherwise what would we be fighting?
Not that war should *ever* be commonplace, everyday, or mundane... but if this article is correct, if we are facing warriors that live in homes with very little to lose...
It seems that the counter to terrorism then is hope. While it seems... stupid... to those screaming for blood and violence, helping the country rebuild and strengthen itself may work to our advantage on several fronts. 'Occupy' the territory and help them build infrastructure (in the name of troop facilities and such, perhaps?)
Such as power facilities, communications channels, transport infrastructure, buildings, etc. Pour money into the country in such a way that the people are no longer hopeless and no longer believe the have nothing to lose?
Educate the people. Not indoctrinate them, but give them the tools necessary to change their own lot, rather than forcing change upon them. Reading, science, math, communication. More hope.
It sounds a whole lot better than fighting with guns and tanks, doesn't? Fighting terrorism with hope and life.
In that case, isn't that a goal Apple set forth 17 years ago with the Mac OS?
It certainly seems as if Windows is trying to reach the same goal that the Mac OS is, and that Linux is trying to reach the same goal that the Windows OS is...
The interesting part about asynch CPUs is that they, duh, aren't clocked...
So in the case of a pipeline flush (and accompanying stall), it doesn't take N clocks (whatever the pipeline depth is), it goes as fast or as slow as the flush mechanism reset takes...
If done well, then a pipeline flush can operate at thousands of times faster than the normal operation of the pipeline because, well, you're just dumping data without doing any work; raise the proper bits and reset signals, and the whole pipeline dumps as fast as it can, while the front end feeder just slows down a bit (without stopping) in feeding data into the pipeline.
Above assembly, btw, the programming language for the CPU doesn't have to look like SMT; it can, but it doesn't have to.
It *can* be different, that but's really a function of the state of compilers and languages adapted for an asycn system. It needn't be different at all.
Disclaimer, I was a student at Caltech, and I took 1 async VLSI course, and not very in depth at that.
One way to go about it is to make an async CPU that externally looks like a sync CPU; then you drop it into just about any system, and it works. Speed is wholey dependent upn VCore settings, cooling solutions, and drive strength, I think, though of course there's always gate and transistor performance bottlenecks. Programming and using such a chip would be no different than any other CPU.
Another method is to have a partially async system, in which the CPU, some of the motherboard, and the ram interface is async because of how fast they operate; go ahead and clock something like PCI, USB, etc, because those operate slow enough that the effort of async isn't worth it. This solution is just a question of degrees, really, on how much of the system is async and how much isn't.
Now, that aside, there's the software aspect; how do you program an async system? At the lowest level it resembles, slightly, multi-threaded programming, in which you have multiple threads equating to the multiple function units, execution units, decoders, and stages in the pipeline, etc.
You shuttle data around and wait for acknowledges that the data has been processed before you continue shuttling and processing data. You can synchronize around stages or functional units by making other stages or units dependent upon the output of said unit; instead of waiting for a clock to signal the next cycle of execution, you wait for an acknowledge signal.
To be a little more clear, at the ASM level you would mov data, wait for an ack before another mov data, wait for an ack before sending an instruction, etc. Due to the magic of pipelining, the CPU doesn't have to be finished before you can start stuffing the pipeline, and because it's asynchronous, that means you can actually feed in data as fast as the processor can recieve it, even if the back end or the core is chocking on a particularly nasty multiplication.
So you're feeding data at a furious rate into the CPU, while the CPU is processing prior instructions. If the front end gets full, or whatnot, it fails to signal an ack, so whatever mechanism is feeding data in (ram, cache, memory, whatever) pauses until the CPU can handle more data.
The core, independent off the front end, is processing the data and sending out more instructions, branches, setting bits. With multiple functional units, each unit can run at it's own speed at it's own rate. So if all it's doing is adds, checking conditionals, etc, it may be able to outrun the data feed mechanism, since an add can be completed in one pipeline unit, while data always has to wait upon a slower storage mechanism.
Or if the execution units are waiting because it's doing a square root or something, it just tells the prefetch or whatever front end units to wait, because it cannot handle another chunk of data or instruction, yet, which propogates back to the data feed to wait as well.
When it finishes with it's current instruction a ready signal would get propogated back through all the stages or so, and then more data would get fed in.
So at the lowest levels it would start to resemble writing threaded code, in which you have to wait for the thread to be ready, to be awake, to be active before you send data, and if the thread is asleep, you wait until it awakes, or something like that.
Multiprocessor async is similar, except that each CPU is just another thread, and if there's a hardware front end that decides which CPU to send instructions to, then it's really just a function of stuffing instructions into the least loaded or fastest running CPU; each CPU could, more or less, look like just another functional unit, and clusters pretty well because they all run asynchronously, meaning you don't have to do anything particularly special for load balancing; just send the data to the first one who signals ready, or if there are multiple cpus ready, read a status register to see which is more empty or whatever.
Apologies if I made some errors, especially to those who know much more than I; this is a 4 year old interpretation of my async vlsi class =)
That doesn't get rid of heat, however. What can we do? Strap a portable AC unit and cool down the water? Where does the AC unit vent heat in the Martian atmosphere? How does it vent heat? The problem doesn't disappear, because there is so little atmosphere that the only way I can see to vent heat is via the radiation of IR...
I still don't think it was ever discussed how they shed heat in a stillsuit, especially if they recycled and collected all the sweat... no evaporation means no heat loss, right?
Where are you going to find flecks of paint traveling 20kmph on the surface of Mars?
I would have to hazard the existence of an EVA suit and a ''Planetary Descent Hazard' suit. At least it'd be something more comfortable and utilitarian than the short if cute yeoman's miniskirts in Star Trek.
I'd think, in space and such, with a proper insulative suit, the problem isn't generating heat, because the human body does that okay... it's shedding excess heat!
The human body, unfortunately, doesn't cool down by radiating in the IR range; it cools down via evaporation of sweat.
So in a skintight suit, the sweat would pool and collect into a thin puddle under the suit and heat would start to build up pretty quickly, I think.
I have no idea how the Dune stillsuits conquered that problem...
Re:Change the rules, be realistic about conflict
on
More On Tragedy
·
· Score: 2
It was impossible then to avoid such blunt and broad attacks. It is possible now to avoid such blunt and broad attacks. That said, it is not acceptable to involve civilians in an act of war, else we have just become terrorists.
We *can* minimize the damage we do. We must do everything possible to avoid destroying the host when excising a cancer, otherwise our weapons, our pilots, our soldiers, are *no different* than the 12 bastards who got on 4 airliners and took out the WTC and hit the Pentagon.
Don't do this to our soldiers, don't do this to our people, don't do this to our country.
Not quite; they hold the trademark for the Colonial Marines, Predators, Aliens, etc. Not for the games.
Just like Lego corp holds the trademark for the term LEGOS and Mindstorms...
So Lego doesn't have any control over the legOS software, but over the name since it's the same as their other products, and is software meant to interface with those self-same products.
Then did you notice them releasing Aliens vs Predator, AvP gold, and AvP2?
So Lego is being fairly nice about this, because it gives them the opportunity to release a robatics software kit, now that they know the amount of interest that exists.
So it isn't about where the confusion comes in; it's about Lego's legal right to the name legOS and how the law works.
What happens when the manager pops the CD into a player and it doesn't work? As an example, many DVD player drives are stock EIDE drives with new faceplates. If, for example, the box the manager pops the CD into is, say, a DVD 5.1 boombox thing... it may not work after all.
No, that is the point...
on
Make Your Own DSL
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
I think his point is valid.
If I had a dry pair to your house, we could shuttle info back and forth very effectively, right? If we both had a 802.11b point, then so could our neighbors, for about a couple miles or whatever the range is. You now have 30, 40 people hooked up to each other.
If one other person in each of these clouds also had a dry pair to another house elsewhere, and their own bridge, they could connect pairs of clouds... linked dumbbells, as it were. Each point would link up 10 or so houses, until a grassroots net could spring up, catering exclusively to the town. All it would take is one individual, perhaps working collectively with 20 other people, to get a high bandwidth connection, say a T1, or whatever, even a 'normal' 2mb DSL line, and this gathering of clouds hooked up by dry lines would be connected to the larger 'net. He doesn't mention this in his article, but it's a reasonable next step.
It's about communal, grassroots, bottoms up, emergent behavior type internet, and not the traditional top down subscription based allocated and doled up bandwidth that is the norm.
I have actually taken classes by Prof Goodstein, and my take on the article isn't the same as yours. First I've got to be precise about this: Prof Goodstein wants to redefine the entire notion of scientists. We'll call the current system products Leets and Goodstein's scientists Commons.
He wants everyone to have a grounding in science, because everyone has an interest whether they believe, understand, or like it, or not. To give examples of scientific thinking (without adequate scientific understanding):
Research, analysis, and prediction of the stock market, and the related activity of day trading. If that's not 'scientific'... It's not science, but it's definitely some of the very same procedures, methods, and goals.
Understanding and taking advantage of traffic patterns in your daily commute. Noting congestion spots and times, as well as avoiding them, predicting them, and minimizing them. The quest for minimized travel time is also scientific, even if it isn't science in the traditional sense.
Cooking. Not just following a textbook, but creating new flavors, textures, experiences, and meals from ideas, thoughts, and inspiration. Experimentation with new foodstuffs, new procedures, new equipment, again, not science, but can be very scientific.
Gardening. Not plant, water, feed, but the art of timing, seasons, and weather, as well as location, soil types, mineral supplements, shade requirements, insects, animals, etc. This can be very much science, as well as scientific...
My point is that scientific thinking is applicable in everyday life situations, and science is just the classroom method by which this thought is taught and understood. If you can figure out and understand how to measure and prove gravity, you should also be able to figure out how to maximize the growth potential of you favorite tomato plants, and if you can minimize your drivetime on your daily commute, then you should also be able to figure out and understand the whys and hows of meterology.
Your argument of 'roles' and 'inate interest and ability' applies to the old school Leet scientists that Prof Goodstein wants to make the exception, not the rule; the article specifically mentions that schools should not act as filters for the chosen few, the Leet, but as hotbeds to raise the scientific average! The few, the Leet, will *still* manage to find their way into the Caltechs and MITs and Stanfords, but everyone else can benefit from faster commutes, more profitable day trade speculation, etc.
He's trying to be generous, helpful, and altruistic here!
He teaches at a school that accepts 220 students a year undergrad, maybe 200 a year grad! He's not going to get more work, or more quality, or more anything by fostering more science (except perhaps fame and reknown as the person who pushed it out)...
Even granting that amount of gain onto Prof. Goodstein, the good for society and for each individual involved more than compensates for the gain he himself gains.
As an analogy:
The guy inventing and pushing PGP for privacy and security is being self serving in trying to push the technology (so that he can gain both privacy and security in his online transactions). Granted. Fine. But what about the gain everyone else gains as well?
Don't dismiss Prof. Goodstein's motives just because he gets something out of it; it's the value of what everyone else gets out of it that makes the big difference.
See this link for why science is not dull:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=20827&thresh ol d=0&commentsort=3&mode=thread&pid=2211170#2211339
You've described two things in your post: Why science is cool (the measurable, demonstrable things) and why science is hard (the explanation, the theory, the model)
Duh, it's harder. It's because you don't know it. Just like (as an example) Japanese is hard if you don't know it, or cooking tender pot roasts, or building a deck and patio, or laying a brick walkway.
Those skills are learned, and take patience, and practice, and effort.
People figure out how to cook gourmet meals. They learn the construction trade, they manage to speak Japanese. Why would it be impossible for them to understand lasers, and cavitation, and sublimation, vapor pressure, evaporation, Van Der Waals radii, or accretion disks, event horizons, etc?
Then we need to address both issues, not ignore one because we ignore the other!
Science is not boring to non-scientists... Where science is defined as:
The observation, identification, description, experimental investigation, and theoretical explanation of phenomena.
People aspire to science when they think they have the market cornered and start to daytrade... they assume scientific principles and knowledge and understanding, even if lacking the training normally ascribed to scientists.
People aspire to science when they think they have the local traffic patterns down, and learn to drive within those conditions.
People aspire to science when they play with their cooking, crafting new forms of joy and pleasure with their food.
People aspire to science when they think they've figured out men, or women, or boys, or girls, or whatever. They have models, and theories, and examples, and laws, and hypotheses, proofs, and experiments.
People aspire to science when they use their own computers, figuring out what causes it to lock, to crash, to stall, to slow down, to pause, and avoid those conditions.
It isn't science people are bored with... it's the lectures, the classes, the teachers, the expectation of science, without the understanding of what science is!
We can certainly decrease the variance to some extent, but there has to be a point of diminishing returns...
At that point I think we'll still be stuck with a distribution (gaussian, bell, whatever), with a low, median, and high value.
So how do we modify variance? There isn't a very good concept of quality control or quality assurance in our education system, is there? Throwing kids back a grade, holding them extra, etc, doesn't work to well.
Then there's the fact that different communities, regions, locales, etc, hold different values and standards...
Given we can't in good conscience homogenize our population (ethically, practically, or realistically), and we can't prune or stratify it for similar reasons... What can we do?
Slashdot Mirror
No, I don't think this is what the DOJ is fighting against; the bundling of features is not itself bad (it can be very convenient and powerful, if a bit risky thanks to virii and poor defaults) on Microsoft's part. It's their business practices and habit of trying to use their desktop to muscle and leverage other monopolies that's bad.
IE, using Windows and it's monopoly on the desktop to gain leverage in browsers, or using Windows and it's monopoly on the desktop to gain leverage in graphics libraries, the gaming market, or audio formats and media distribution.
I mean, it's great if they're bundling stuff with XP in order to convince users to buy it; but because of licensing practices, I don't think users have a choice (WinMe, Win2k, or WinXP), and *have* to settle for whatever the OEM decides to distribute, right?
Oh, I thought you were gonna say 'It sounds like Windows... sluggish and without the important things, like CD-RW or DVD capabilities (built in), plus it doesn't always work correctly. I know, I know, on Windows you can dl or borrow a copy of EZ-CD Creator or something... and Roxio has yet to release OS X support...
Well that's the difference between a typical Mac user and a typical PC user; most PC users 'settle' for Microsoft, either cause it's what everyone else uses or because it's the only thing they know or they think Macs are expensive.
Apple's customers usually choose Macs in spite of, despite the prevailing norm of the PC users.
So Apple users will tolerate this kind of thing (oh, they'll complain), as long as it will improve. PC users, on the other hand, bitch because Microsoft doesn't truly mean anything to them, and Microsoft grows lazy, assuming things just because they own 90% of the market.
On the other hand Mac users are spoiled... what Windows OS comes with CD burning and DVD playback out of the box? Or even CD ripping and mp3 encoding, movie making, DVD burning software, and web server software out of the box? Windows users have to settle for Windows Media Player and Internet Explorer, on the average...
It's an idealistic philosophy, not a military strategy. If the philosophy works, then it's the military genius who needs to figure out how to implement it. I am not that genius.
On the other hand, you could even see it as building lures, targets as it were, for which to draw out terrorist attacks. Otherwise what would we be fighting?
Not that war should *ever* be commonplace, everyday, or mundane... but if this article is correct, if we are facing warriors that live in homes with very little to lose...
It seems that the counter to terrorism then is hope. While it seems... stupid... to those screaming for blood and violence, helping the country rebuild and strengthen itself may work to our advantage on several fronts. 'Occupy' the territory and help them build infrastructure (in the name of troop facilities and such, perhaps?)
Such as power facilities, communications channels, transport infrastructure, buildings, etc. Pour money into the country in such a way that the people are no longer hopeless and no longer believe the have nothing to lose?
Educate the people. Not indoctrinate them, but give them the tools necessary to change their own lot, rather than forcing change upon them. Reading, science, math, communication. More hope.
It sounds a whole lot better than fighting with guns and tanks, doesn't? Fighting terrorism with hope and life.
In that case, isn't that a goal Apple set forth 17 years ago with the Mac OS?
It certainly seems as if Windows is trying to reach the same goal that the Mac OS is, and that Linux is trying to reach the same goal that the Windows OS is...
The interesting part about asynch CPUs is that they, duh, aren't clocked...
So in the case of a pipeline flush (and accompanying stall), it doesn't take N clocks (whatever the pipeline depth is), it goes as fast or as slow as the flush mechanism reset takes...
If done well, then a pipeline flush can operate at thousands of times faster than the normal operation of the pipeline because, well, you're just dumping data without doing any work; raise the proper bits and reset signals, and the whole pipeline dumps as fast as it can, while the front end feeder just slows down a bit (without stopping) in feeding data into the pipeline.
Above assembly, btw, the programming language for the CPU doesn't have to look like SMT; it can, but it doesn't have to.
It *can* be different, that but's really a function of the state of compilers and languages adapted for an asycn system. It needn't be different at all.
Disclaimer, I was a student at Caltech, and I took 1 async VLSI course, and not very in depth at that.
One way to go about it is to make an async CPU that externally looks like a sync CPU; then you drop it into just about any system, and it works. Speed is wholey dependent upn VCore settings, cooling solutions, and drive strength, I think, though of course there's always gate and transistor performance bottlenecks. Programming and using such a chip would be no different than any other CPU.
Another method is to have a partially async system, in which the CPU, some of the motherboard, and the ram interface is async because of how fast they operate; go ahead and clock something like PCI, USB, etc, because those operate slow enough that the effort of async isn't worth it. This solution is just a question of degrees, really, on how much of the system is async and how much isn't.
Now, that aside, there's the software aspect; how do you program an async system? At the lowest level it resembles, slightly, multi-threaded programming, in which you have multiple threads equating to the multiple function units, execution units, decoders, and stages in the pipeline, etc.
You shuttle data around and wait for acknowledges that the data has been processed before you continue shuttling and processing data. You can synchronize around stages or functional units by making other stages or units dependent upon the output of said unit; instead of waiting for a clock to signal the next cycle of execution, you wait for an acknowledge signal.
To be a little more clear, at the ASM level you would mov data, wait for an ack before another mov data, wait for an ack before sending an instruction, etc. Due to the magic of pipelining, the CPU doesn't have to be finished before you can start stuffing the pipeline, and because it's asynchronous, that means you can actually feed in data as fast as the processor can recieve it, even if the back end or the core is chocking on a particularly nasty multiplication.
So you're feeding data at a furious rate into the CPU, while the CPU is processing prior instructions. If the front end gets full, or whatnot, it fails to signal an ack, so whatever mechanism is feeding data in (ram, cache, memory, whatever) pauses until the CPU can handle more data.
The core, independent off the front end, is processing the data and sending out more instructions, branches, setting bits. With multiple functional units, each unit can run at it's own speed at it's own rate. So if all it's doing is adds, checking conditionals, etc, it may be able to outrun the data feed mechanism, since an add can be completed in one pipeline unit, while data always has to wait upon a slower storage mechanism.
Or if the execution units are waiting because it's doing a square root or something, it just tells the prefetch or whatever front end units to wait, because it cannot handle another chunk of data or instruction, yet, which propogates back to the data feed to wait as well.
When it finishes with it's current instruction a ready signal would get propogated back through all the stages or so, and then more data would get fed in.
So at the lowest levels it would start to resemble writing threaded code, in which you have to wait for the thread to be ready, to be awake, to be active before you send data, and if the thread is asleep, you wait until it awakes, or something like that.
Multiprocessor async is similar, except that each CPU is just another thread, and if there's a hardware front end that decides which CPU to send instructions to, then it's really just a function of stuffing instructions into the least loaded or fastest running CPU; each CPU could, more or less, look like just another functional unit, and clusters pretty well because they all run asynchronously, meaning you don't have to do anything particularly special for load balancing; just send the data to the first one who signals ready, or if there are multiple cpus ready, read a status register to see which is more empty or whatever.
Apologies if I made some errors, especially to those who know much more than I; this is a 4 year old interpretation of my async vlsi class =)
Well, yeah. 20k=20,000
mph=miles per hour
Of course, the way I said it, 20kmph, looks like 20km per hour.
I think I would have said 20kph if I meant km per hour, but there's no guarantee =)
That doesn't get rid of heat, however. What can we do? Strap a portable AC unit and cool down the water? Where does the AC unit vent heat in the Martian atmosphere? How does it vent heat? The problem doesn't disappear, because there is so little atmosphere that the only way I can see to vent heat is via the radiation of IR...
I still don't think it was ever discussed how they shed heat in a stillsuit, especially if they recycled and collected all the sweat... no evaporation means no heat loss, right?
Where are you going to find flecks of paint traveling 20kmph on the surface of Mars?
I would have to hazard the existence of an EVA suit and a ''Planetary Descent Hazard' suit. At least it'd be something more comfortable and utilitarian than the short if cute yeoman's miniskirts in Star Trek.
I'd think, in space and such, with a proper insulative suit, the problem isn't generating heat, because the human body does that okay... it's shedding excess heat!
The human body, unfortunately, doesn't cool down by radiating in the IR range; it cools down via evaporation of sweat.
So in a skintight suit, the sweat would pool and collect into a thin puddle under the suit and heat would start to build up pretty quickly, I think.
I have no idea how the Dune stillsuits conquered that problem...
It was impossible then to avoid such blunt and broad attacks. It is possible now to avoid such blunt and broad attacks. That said, it is not acceptable to involve civilians in an act of war, else we have just become terrorists.
We *can* minimize the damage we do. We must do everything possible to avoid destroying the host when excising a cancer, otherwise our weapons, our pilots, our soldiers, are *no different* than the 12 bastards who got on 4 airliners and took out the WTC and hit the Pentagon.
Don't do this to our soldiers, don't do this to our people, don't do this to our country.
I hope some US radical doesn't decide to nuke the world...
Not quite; they hold the trademark for the Colonial Marines, Predators, Aliens, etc. Not for the games.
Just like Lego corp holds the trademark for the term LEGOS and Mindstorms...
So Lego doesn't have any control over the legOS software, but over the name since it's the same as their other products, and is software meant to interface with those self-same products.
It's their right to do so, still.
Remember when Fox 'foxxed' the AliensTC on Quake?
Then did you notice them releasing Aliens vs Predator, AvP gold, and AvP2?
So Lego is being fairly nice about this, because it gives them the opportunity to release a robatics software kit, now that they know the amount of interest that exists.
So it isn't about where the confusion comes in; it's about Lego's legal right to the name legOS and how the law works.
What happens when the manager pops the CD into a player and it doesn't work? As an example, many DVD player drives are stock EIDE drives with new faceplates. If, for example, the box the manager pops the CD into is, say, a DVD 5.1 boombox thing... it may not work after all.
I think his point is valid.
If I had a dry pair to your house, we could shuttle info back and forth very effectively, right? If we both had a 802.11b point, then so could our neighbors, for about a couple miles or whatever the range is. You now have 30, 40 people hooked up to each other.
If one other person in each of these clouds also had a dry pair to another house elsewhere, and their own bridge, they could connect pairs of clouds... linked dumbbells, as it were. Each point would link up 10 or so houses, until a grassroots net could spring up, catering exclusively to the town. All it would take is one individual, perhaps working collectively with 20 other people, to get a high bandwidth connection, say a T1, or whatever, even a 'normal' 2mb DSL line, and this gathering of clouds hooked up by dry lines would be connected to the larger 'net. He doesn't mention this in his article, but it's a reasonable next step.
It's about communal, grassroots, bottoms up, emergent behavior type internet, and not the traditional top down subscription based allocated and doled up bandwidth that is the norm.
I can't say I agree with your view =)
I have actually taken classes by Prof Goodstein, and my take on the article isn't the same as yours. First I've got to be precise about this: Prof Goodstein wants to redefine the entire notion of scientists. We'll call the current system products Leets and Goodstein's scientists Commons.
He wants everyone to have a grounding in science, because everyone has an interest whether they believe, understand, or like it, or not. To give examples of scientific thinking (without adequate scientific understanding):
Research, analysis, and prediction of the stock market, and the related activity of day trading. If that's not 'scientific'... It's not science, but it's definitely some of the very same procedures, methods, and goals.
Understanding and taking advantage of traffic patterns in your daily commute. Noting congestion spots and times, as well as avoiding them, predicting them, and minimizing them. The quest for minimized travel time is also scientific, even if it isn't science in the traditional sense.
Cooking. Not just following a textbook, but creating new flavors, textures, experiences, and meals from ideas, thoughts, and inspiration. Experimentation with new foodstuffs, new procedures, new equipment, again, not science, but can be very scientific.
Gardening. Not plant, water, feed, but the art of timing, seasons, and weather, as well as location, soil types, mineral supplements, shade requirements, insects, animals, etc. This can be very much science, as well as scientific...
My point is that scientific thinking is applicable in everyday life situations, and science is just the classroom method by which this thought is taught and understood. If you can figure out and understand how to measure and prove gravity, you should also be able to figure out how to maximize the growth potential of you favorite tomato plants, and if you can minimize your drivetime on your daily commute, then you should also be able to figure out and understand the whys and hows of meterology.
Your argument of 'roles' and 'inate interest and ability' applies to the old school Leet scientists that Prof Goodstein wants to make the exception, not the rule; the article specifically mentions that schools should not act as filters for the chosen few, the Leet, but as hotbeds to raise the scientific average! The few, the Leet, will *still* manage to find their way into the Caltechs and MITs and Stanfords, but everyone else can benefit from faster commutes, more profitable day trade speculation, etc.
Anata wa wakarimasu ka?
Please accept my apologies for mangling Japanese. I am less skilled in the language than I really should be.
I don't think so, having taken his classes.
He's trying to be generous, helpful, and altruistic here!
He teaches at a school that accepts 220 students a year undergrad, maybe 200 a year grad! He's not going to get more work, or more quality, or more anything by fostering more science (except perhaps fame and reknown as the person who pushed it out)...
Even granting that amount of gain onto Prof. Goodstein, the good for society and for each individual involved more than compensates for the gain he himself gains.
As an analogy:
The guy inventing and pushing PGP for privacy and security is being self serving in trying to push the technology (so that he can gain both privacy and security in his online transactions). Granted. Fine. But what about the gain everyone else gains as well?
Don't dismiss Prof. Goodstein's motives just because he gets something out of it; it's the value of what everyone else gets out of it that makes the big difference.
See this link for why science is not dull:h ol d=0&commentsort=3&mode=thread&pid=2211170#2211339
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=20827&thres
You've described two things in your post: Why science is cool (the measurable, demonstrable things) and why science is hard (the explanation, the theory, the model)
Duh, it's harder. It's because you don't know it. Just like (as an example) Japanese is hard if you don't know it, or cooking tender pot roasts, or building a deck and patio, or laying a brick walkway.
Those skills are learned, and take patience, and practice, and effort.
People figure out how to cook gourmet meals. They learn the construction trade, they manage to speak Japanese. Why would it be impossible for them to understand lasers, and cavitation, and sublimation, vapor pressure, evaporation, Van Der Waals radii, or accretion disks, event horizons, etc?
Then we need to address both issues, not ignore one because we ignore the other!
Science is not boring to non-scientists... Where science is defined as:
The observation, identification, description, experimental investigation, and theoretical explanation of phenomena.
People aspire to science when they think they have the market cornered and start to daytrade... they assume scientific principles and knowledge and understanding, even if lacking the training normally ascribed to scientists.
People aspire to science when they think they have the local traffic patterns down, and learn to drive within those conditions.
People aspire to science when they play with their cooking, crafting new forms of joy and pleasure with their food.
People aspire to science when they think they've figured out men, or women, or boys, or girls, or whatever. They have models, and theories, and examples, and laws, and hypotheses, proofs, and experiments.
People aspire to science when they use their own computers, figuring out what causes it to lock, to crash, to stall, to slow down, to pause, and avoid those conditions.
It isn't science people are bored with... it's the lectures, the classes, the teachers, the expectation of science, without the understanding of what science is!
At least I hope you're joking!
We can certainly decrease the variance to some extent, but there has to be a point of diminishing returns...
At that point I think we'll still be stuck with a distribution (gaussian, bell, whatever), with a low, median, and high value.
So how do we modify variance? There isn't a very good concept of quality control or quality assurance in our education system, is there? Throwing kids back a grade, holding them extra, etc, doesn't work to well.
Then there's the fact that different communities, regions, locales, etc, hold different values and standards...
Given we can't in good conscience homogenize our population (ethically, practically, or realistically), and we can't prune or stratify it for similar reasons... What can we do?