there is a definite advantage for consumers in allowing this kind of test.
No. There is some advantage to those who pass the test and huge disadvantage to those who fail it or refuse to take it.
Remember folks, it's not mandatory,
Yeah, right. For how long? And aren't your premiums going to depend on whether you've taken the test?
anything that brings down those premiums is good
It is? I've got two suggestions for you and both will bring down these premiums. First, if a child is born with some genetic defects, you know, those that are expensive to treat and deal with, just kill him. It'll save a lot of money. Or just refuse medical care if his parent's can't pay -- it's the same thing. And, second, why waste money on old people? They are going to die soon anyway, right?
As long as it's voluntary, then we all win - you can either take the test and get cheaper premiums, or you can not take the test and satisfy your urge for privacy. It's a win-win situation.
Voluntary? Let's say the premiums used to be 100 zorkmids for everybody. Now the test comes. You can agree to the test and if you pass, your premiums are going to be 98 zorkmids. If you fail, though, your premium goes up to 1000 zorkmids -- we wouldn't want the insurance company to lose money, would we? And if you refuse to take the test?
Let's check how the thinking would go: "This guy can save himself 2 zorkmids by taking a test. He doesn't want to. This is suspicious. Why wouldn't he save 2 zorkmids? Of course! He has this genetic marker and is trying to rip us off! Yeah!"
In actuality, we generate lift with airfoils in the same way--by creating circulation. We just do it with thrust. =)
Well, the result is the same -- flow (and not circulation, btw) over the airfoil. The mechanism of achieving the flow, however, is rather different.
And as for the laws of aerodynamics being "pretty crisp", Kaa, please tell me how to model turbulent behavior past the stall point of an airfoil.
"Crisp" does not mean "able to calculate everything to the n-the degree of accuracy". "Crisp" is a term from fuzzy logic and refers to old/normal/conventional logic, specifically to values '1' and '0'. These values are "crisp", while real numbers, like 0.5, are "fuzzy".
fuzzy logic/set theory `generalised' conventional logic/set theory.
No, I don't subscribe to this particular belief that "normal" logic is a subset of fuzzy logic. It's fairly hard to substantiate, isn't it?
As for complex systems theory vs. cybernetics, the stuff about variation, interaction and selection described in the article occurs in cybernetics.
The review sucks heavily. I don't think the reviewer understands what he is talking about.
Now, AFAIK, cybernetics is mostly concerned with control systems with feedback loops. You have a system with inputs and outputs, and the outputs affect (with a suitable time delay) either the inputs, or the parameters of the system itself.
Complex systems is not really about this. They are, basically, about modeling highly nonlinear systems, ones where plain ol' regression just doesn't cut it. It's not a unified field by any stretch of imagination. Most research concentrates on:
(1) Optimization techniques, preferably non-linear and global. Here you have genetic algorithms, simulated annealing, partly neural networks.
(2) Emergent behavior, where you typically have multiple simple agents interacting and complex behaviour spontatneously emerges out of these interaction.
(3) Chaotic systems, which is usually taken to mean either sensitivity to inital conditions (butterfly effect) and/or nonlinear feedback loops.
(4) Misc other stuff.
For an example of a complex system look at stock market. This is very noisy nonlinear unstable system with a tendency towards feedback loops and reversion towards the mean. If you manage to model it successfully, you won't have to work any more...:-)
Unfortunately it falls prey to the set of difficulties that are well-known...
Well, yeah, fuzzy logic is not a complete drop-in replacement for "normal" logic, no question about it. I was not arguing that -- I was just surprised to see you say that it grows out of some "bad" ideas.
you can't quantify over fuzzy sets.
What do you mean?
As I understand it, systems theory is a synonym for cybernetics.
Systems theory, yes. Complex system threory, no. They are two different beasts.
You're right. You are 100% wrong. The concept of flight was first concieved of, and attempting to imitate birds.
If you were bothered to read what I have written, you would have noticed that I was NOT talking about the idea of flying. I was talking about aerodynamics, a branch of physics, and how it developed.
Which is why so many people died in the attempt.
Which goes to show that observing nature and blindly trying to imitate it is not always a good thing, right?
It wasn't until much much later, probably near WWII that fluid dynamics entered the picture at all.
Any proof? References? As you noticed, I can make unsubstantiated statements as well as you.
Kaa, you seem to have a problem with the reviewer
Well, yeah. I know a little about the subject -- enough to understand that the reviewer has no clue, that is as in "no clue at all", about complex systems and the current research in this area. Still, he presumed that just because he picked a book at a bookstore he was qualified to write a review and put it on Slashdot. To put it bluntly, he is NOT qualified. Besides, the review itself is a piece of crap -- it contains very little useful information and wonderful sentences such as "The important message here is that complex systems are not beyond our understanding, though it may be tough." Bletch.
it would probably be in your best interest and get help.
and get help? me? [maniacal laughter in the distance] I am BEYOND help, you worm! My plans for world domination through posting to Slashdot are almost complete! You'll all be petrified! Yes! And some select ones will be both naked and petrified! Yaaaaaah!
I don't think that there is a strong link between fuzzy set theory and complex systems theory.
Agreed.
Fuzzy set theory in my opinion is based upon bad ideas about the proper form of logical semantics
Huh? Fuzzy set theory is based on the idea that you could express membership in a set not as a boolean value (0 or 1), but as a real number (e.g. 0.33). From here comes the notion of partial membership in multiple sets and off you go into fuzzy logic. Computationally it's very similar to dealing with a bunch of random variables the distribution of which you know.
Which *bad* ideas are you talking about?
Complex systems theory is a sophisticated and well-thought out area that dates back to von Neumann
You probably mean cybernetics which does date back to von Neumann. However, in our context "complex system theory" means somewhat completely different, although also frequently involving feedback loops. Treat this a semantic contamination...
Chaos, in the sense the review meant, is a phenomenon (namely stochastic behavior in a deterministic system)
Strictly speaking, you cannot have stochastic behavior in a deterministic system. What you have is that the behavior is non-computable and so we are forced to rely on stochastic methods to evaluate it.
But in any case the concept of chaos is wider. Chaos is usually defined as specific property of a system (as well as the resulting behavior of the system) and is commonly used to mean high sensitivity to inital conditions -- "the butterfly effect" -- and/or nonlinear feedback loops. There are both deterministic chaotic systems and stochastic chaotic systems (which are pretty much unanalyzable given the current state of the art).
I think the reviewer meant to highlight the distinction, while still acknowledging that there are relationships between the concepts of complexity and chaos.
Pardon me for bluntness, but I didn't get the impression that the reviewer understood anything. I think that the reviewer has a very vague and muddled idea of what is complexity, what is chaos, and what is the relationship between them. Kaa
I have a nasty suspicion that it'll take us at least a dozen posts to sort out what "natural" means in this context. Besides, it's all handwaving. You say it's natural to think in fuzzy terms, I say it's natural to think in crisp terms, and how are we going to decide who is right?
I'm not sure that proves anything.
It proves that "humans are equipped to deal with complex systems" is a content-free sentence.
If you doubt that man didn't learn the concepts of flight from flying creatures, then go down to the library and research it yourself. Where do you think one would learn about concepts of aerodynamics? From creatures that have mastered it themselves, perhaps?
I don't understand what do you mean by "concepts" of flight. The concept of flight, that is, that heavier-than-air object can fly, certainly came from looking at birds. However I doubt very much that aerodynamics were developed by studying birds.
Off the top of my head (and I freely admit that I could be 100% wrong) I would think that aerodynamics developed from fluid dynamics, which are much easier to observe and, until the invention of aircraft, were much more useful. As to the fluid dynamics, I again doubt that they developed from looking at fish. Most likely they developed by putting simple physical objects into a stream and looking at what happens. Add to that a lot of practical experience with boats and ships of all kinds and you have a pretty good base.
The flaw in your argument is that living things are usually very complicated and it's not trivial to derive laws of physics from looking at them. It's usually easier to observer a much simpler system, work out how it works, and then complexify (sic!) the experiments until you think you have a reasonable grasp on what's happening. Understanding how living things work usually comes very late in the process. Remember the (in)famous bumblebee case? Until recently (10-20 years ago?) according to then-current aerodynamics the bumblebee could not fly: it was too heavy and its wings could not -- theoretically! -- generate sufficient lift to keep it in the air. It turned out that the bumblebee does some very, very complicated things (dealing with turbulence at wing edges AFAIK) that allow it to fly. But my point is that trying to derive *basic* aerodynamics from observing the bumblebee is impossible -- you would never get off the ground:-)
it was completely natural to think in terms of fuzzy sets.
As usual, it depends. Thinking about, say, IP packets in terms of fuzzy sets is not likely to be productive. Thinking about political affiliations would be a good way to apply them. Fuzzy sets are a tool: just like any tool they are applicable to some situations and not applicable to others.
And in discussing other aspects of complex systems, even amoung the average joe, it becomes pretty clear, that people are more than well enough equipped to deal with complex systems
Among the average joe? Never mind...
Note, though, that reality itself is a very complex system. People (as well as protozoa, grasshoppers, rats, etc.) who were NOT equipped to deal with complex systems died out long time ago.
Flight was mastered by looking at how birds fly and experimenting.
Not really. Birds fly by flapping their wings and I don't know of a single successful aircraft that does this. Flight was mastered by understanding physical laws, specifically the laws of aerodynamics. These laws, by the way, are pretty crisp (=non-fuzzy).
So was medicine, math and every other complex system.
Err... so math was developed by imitating what you see, exploring the world, and experimenting? Uh, yeah, sure, right... [nods his head and slowly backs away]
Well, first of all there is no such thing as "complexity science". There is a multidisciplinary field of study, very broad one, populated mostly by statisticians and physicists with some sprinkling of mathematicians, biologists and some other assorted folk. What unites this field is attempts to deal with complex systems which cannot be modeled by "classic", mostly linear, methods. Currently it's mostly a motley collection of approaches and techniques.
[rough summation of the book]: "Agents, of a variety of types, use their strategies, in patterned interaction, with each other and with artifacts. Performance measures on the resulting events drive the selection of agents and/or strategies through processes of error-prone copying and recombination, thus changing the frequencies of the types within the system."
They did say this is written for a layman, right?:-)
Anyway, this basically describes "genetic algorithms", an optimization technique. Nothing particularly innovative and there are better books about it. Certainly, the complexity study field is much wider than this.
Complexity theory is not the same as chaos.
Well, a theory is not the same as chaos. That's reassuring to know.
Complex systems are not chaotic, though they do depend on variation in order to adapt, or change the equilibrium point.
Err... "complex systems" is a very very wide term (usually meaning "I can't understand how it works and I've been looking at it for five minutes already!") and generally chaotic systems are treated as a subset of complex systesm. Not that the quoted sentence makes much sense, anyway. "Depend on variation in order to adapt"? Ahem, and how else could one adapt except by changing something?
The important message here is that complex systems are not beyond our understanding, though it may be tough.
No kidding! That is the important message of the book? Wow! That's really, really useful to know.
[flame] It sure looks tough, for complex systems are clearly beyond the understanding of the reviewer. Hint: before reviewing a book on Slashdot it's useful to know at least something about the field. [/flame]
Mozilla started out wrong but even if you don't like their current browser design, note that the gecko rendering engine is showing up as a gnome widget in simpler browsers.
Galeon shows promise, I agree. But remember that the goals of the Mozilla project are (or at least were) to make a browser that would achieve dominance on the mostly Windows desktop and win back market share from Internet Explorer. The chances of achieving this goal do not look good.
StarOffice needs a lot of rewrite, I agree.
Remember, the original issue was the degree of selfless benevolence that Sun showed by releasing StarOffice to the community. I contended that they could do nothing else with it -- it was (and is) not a contender and nobody in his right mind would pay money for it. Sun took the opportunity to stick it to Microsoft by releasing StarOffice for free hoping that some day, at least, it will eat into the sales of MS Office and so hurt Scott McNealy's favorite person, Bill.
Before you object, let me agree that releasing StarOffice as Open Source was a Good Thing to do. My point is that it is NOT evidence for Sun's new-found love for Open Source. I still think that Sun is Microsoft with smaller teeth.
Presumably Carnivore would only be used once the FBI has a warrant, therefore the fourth Amendment does not apply.
Bzzzz. Sorry, wrong answer.
It turns out that our wonderful judiciary has decided that while the payload of an IP packet is protected by the Fourth Amendment, its headers are not. Thus Carnivore can (and does) capture packets, discard payload, and store packet headers for further analysis, all without any warrants at all. To understand why this is important, read any crypto text on traffic analysis.
the fourth Amendment in its strictest interpretation technically only applies to physical objects (effects, persons, houses, etc.).
No, it doesn't. To give a trivial example, telephone conversations, which are not physical objects, are protected by the Fourth.
Carnivore/Omnivore on NT is VERY scary. If someone were able to exploit a hole on a carnivore box, they could then use it to monitor anyone's communication.
Now, now, don't be afraid. It's not all that bad.
First, hacking into a Carnivore box would give you the ability to monitor communications only on that particular network segment where the box is sitting. It will not magically give you the ability to monitory anybody everywhere.
Second, law enforcement is not known for abundance of brain cells, but I would be VERY surprised if a carnivore box had any open ports at all. All it does is gather packets that pass its filtering criteria and write them to a file. Login should be through physical console only.
Not to mention that a carnivore box can act like a bridge and thus have no IP address at all. I'd like to see a remote crack for a box that has no IP address.
it has opened and rendered correctly every Office file I've had reason to throw at it
Heh. That's what people use it for -- to look at MS Office documents in *nix environment. You start up StarOffice when somebody sends you a Word document -- you do not open it to work in. Why? Because it sucks.
It means that most office workers will be able to do their days work with free software
And other than the feeling of ideological purity, what will it contribute? I played a bit with StarOffice. It will take a huge amount of work to make it competitive with MS Office. Yes, we'll have the source, but we also have the source to Netscape/Mozilla and that already looks like a smelly and bloated corpse which is so late it's not even funny anymore. And to continue the analogy, don't forget that Mozilla had to scrap all old Netscape code and basically start from scratch. I fear that the same fate awaits StarOffice...
I disagree with you. No, corporations don't generally have ethics. But they should.
They should? [grin] That's a dangerous idea. Ethics are a personal value system. As such it has no necessary relationship to laws of the society, not to mention the general good. Ethics can be very different, and some varieties are extremely nasty and ugly.
Consider a white supremacist. He certainly has his personal value system -- it's just that you find it repugnant and evil. Obviously, he doesn't think so. It so happens that there is no good way of setting up an absolute standard of goodness to measure ethics against. It's very hard to say what kinds of ethics are better than other ones and why (without resorting to arguments of the "my God told me so" kind).
So, if you advocate ethics for corporations, beware! Their ethics may not correspond to yours. In fact, you may not like them at all.
I rather prefer ethicless corporations which just make money and obey the laws.
Corporations are treated much like regular individuals in nearly all ways--except that individuals have moral duties while corporations (supposedly) do not
Duh! Individuals also have bodies, desires, emotions and many other things that corporations do not have. Corporation is basically a mechanism created by legal means. Why would a mechanism have morals?
Nope, just a short attention span. Er... what I was talking about?;-)
removing the job-transfer restrictions on people with H1B's.
A sensible idea. Two drawbacks, though. First, the goal of the whole process is to make it painful. It's kind of a Darwinian selection. Bureacracy likes to make people jump through hoops and since there is no control over INS ("You say we are rude? Hmm... you want to know about your application? What application? We have no records of any application from you..."), it makes its hoops particularly numerous and nasty. In any case, reducing the painfullness of the process (of getting to a green card) will result in the increase of people applying to the program.
The second problem is a bigger one: companies would be hesitant to support H1B visas. Why should they when, as far as they know, they are going to be used as just a way to get into the country, a temporary stop to jump to someplace else.
Sillicon valley is getting worse though. The rent and housing prices are astronomically high.
Yeah, well, it's not like it's hard to find a computer-related job anywhere in the States. Options are mostly given out in Silicon Valley, but for straight salary you can get work anywhere.
OK. Let me chop this into smaller pieces for your digestive pleasure.
Entities (people and corporations) have duties. One of those duties is to follow the laws. Thus, regardless of Sun's interests, it cannot torture MS employees. Note that duties are mandatory.
Entities also have interests. Interests are NOT mandatory. You are interested in butterflies, I am interested in pr0n. Fine. As long as interests do not conflict with duties, there is no problem here.
Now we come to the interesting part: people have ethics (==morals, ==personal value systems). Corporations don't. Sometimes people who run corporations make these corporations act in accordance with their personal ethics, but per se corporations have no ethics. In a way, their ethics are laws and nothing more.
Thus, Sun as a corporation has certain duties (including its legal duty to the shareholders to make money, for example). It also has certain interests (be the biggest fish in the pond, make more money). As long as these interests do not conflict with duties, it's all fine. Sun as a corporation does not have ethics.
Now, Scott McNealy is a person and has his personal value system. It seems that in his personal value system playing "King of the Hill" against Bill Gates and Larry Ellison takes a very large spot. Sun's corporate policy, to some extent, reflects that.
Whether Sun "should" be interested in other things -- well, I'd say it could but there is no obligation on it to do so. Sun could be interested in the environmental problems, but it does not have to (ethically, as well as legally). Ditto with the welfare of total strangers. As to employees and customers, use common sense -- both groups are vital to Sun's success so it is very much interested in their welfare.
I see this a lot on Slashdot. Why is it that when an organization or individual is trying to make money, all other ethics become irrelevant?
False logic. You are drawing (incorrect) conclusions that I did not make. I am interested in computers -- that does not mean that it's OK for me to torture people. All it means is that I'm likely to spend time and effort tweaking my system and not reading romance pulp novels.
[re NYT articles] What makes you think you have a right to view that content for free?
Because I can? Without breaking any laws, I might add. That's sufficient justification for me.
You know full well that link is not intended for you,
Why in the world should I care about the intentions of publishers? The book "Perl Cookbook", for example, is intended for Perl programmers. Does it mean that if I am not a Perl programmer I should not buy this book?
If New York Times wants this information not to be world-readable, there are plenty of simple ways to achieve this.
everytime I see this it just strikes a nerve.
It does? You must be really in pain reading the CueCat stories, then. Isn't it also using something in a way that was not intended?
Look, folks, they would not be Open-Sourcing a $70M+ product (StarOffice) if they didn't want the community buy-in.
Ahem. And what else could they do with StarOffice? Sell it? I don't think so. It's buggy, bloated, tries to pretend it's the only application you'll ever need (tm), and is generally full of cruft. It cannot compete with MS Office. It's actually not even in the same league.
Sun is an old-style company trying to find its way into this new world.
Er... Sun is Microsoft with smaller teeth. If it manages to kick Microsoft's teeth in (with the help of DoJ or otherwise), it'll become the biggest fish in the pond. That's the only thing, other than money, that it's interested in. And, yes, since it's a big corporation this is as it should be.
Basically, Sun is practicing diplomacy towards OpenSource, where diplomacy is defined as "saying 'nice doggie' until you can find a stick".
If you need a bar code scanner, the inconvenience of buying one for $100-200 is that great?
I don't know about you, but I can easily find a better use for that money.
The only inconvenience to my life the CueCat represents is reading a bunch of temper tantrums thrown by children on slashdot.org
I am seriously tempted to change my.sig and put "Don't do it, then!" into it. That seems to be a good answer to much of the complaints I hear on Slashdot. Don't want to read the temper tantrums -- don't! Besides, if people have nothing better to do with their life than to bitch and whine about CueCat on Slashdot, who are you to judge them?
The foreign workers aren't happy, and the American workers aren't happy
Well, you can't make everybody happy all the time. The foreign workers accept this (=> think this is a good deal) because this is a way for them to stay in the US. Again, they pay a price, but they believe that what they get in return is worth it. As to American workers, they seem to forget that it is now a global economy and they have no any special rights to jobs.
I've had first-hand experience
That's not proof. That's what's called anecdotal evidence and I can pull up any number of things that happened to me or my friends and prove anything with that.
Of course these people are going to work really hard to make sure they don't get fired
So, what's wrong with that? We do not live in an ideal world -- being born in the US confers much more advantages than, say, being born in Bangladesh. Given that, these people on H1B visas are climbing up -- they are bettering their life. They pay for this, in part by somewhat worse working conditions. It's up to them whether they believe it is a fair trade.
I'm not saying to remove the quota. Keep it.
So what are you saying? Or you are just bitching for bitching sake?
[re completely open immigration] So tell me, what would be wrong with that provided these people paid taxes (which they do)?
Never been to the third world, have you? I'll tell you what. Say you are a peasant in China. Or India. Or Russia (I'm just naming the most populous countries of the third world). Where would you life be better -- at home or panhandling in the US? For some of them -- at home, but enough of them will choose USA. How do several hundred million of Chinese, Indians and Russians immigrants strike you?
What I'm talking about is the fact that immigrant workers are getting more and more pissed off at the INS
Oh, for sure. INS is a completely horrible organization that is composed of terminally stupid people who believe they are the direct representatives of god on Earth. If it were up to me I'd have them all taken out and shot. Spoken from personal experience:-)
I wouldn't be too surprised if in a few years all of the good high tech workers leave for Canada instead.
I doubt it very much. INS is a secondary factor, Silicon Valley still has more jobs and higher pay.
When the supply of indentured servants dries up, the American high tech companies will either have to leave or do their development outside of the US.
So? No problem. That's one of the things that the marketplace is supposed to take care of, right?
There are many companies that offer bar code scanners that plug into PS/2 keyboard ports and require no extra drivers.
By "offer" I assume you mean "sell". I don't know of anybody else stupid enought to give out bar scanners for free.
I don't see how wasting your time with this device helps.
Helps what? Your idea of worthwhile use of time is probably quite different from mine.
About the only thing being accomplished is to give Linux users a bad name...
The wounds of DC are entirely self-inflicted. They have an idiotic business model the deficiencies of which were just demonstrated in a convincing way. Not to mention that I hardly envisage anybody sitting and reading a magazine next to their computer with a bar code reader in hand (and that's their intended usage...).
But of course most companies are more than happy to sponsor a greencard, because your application will be cancelled if you leave the company.
So everybody is happy. What's your complaint, then?
[re 9-to-5 jobs] I'm fairly certain that non-US citizens can't get jobs in the US government.
The original poster was complaining that honest Americans had to work 90-hour weeks.
I think his complaint had to do with the fact that H1B workers typically work longer hours for equal or even lower pay than American workers.
Proof, please. Just because you believe that this is possibly true does not make it so, and handwaving isn't going to help.
H1B workers and greencard applicants could switch jobs anywhere near as easily as American workers, I guarantee that the H1B quotas wouldn't even be reached the following year. High tech companies would start hiring Americans first, and only hiring H1B workers when they needed to.
Wonderful. You "guarantee". And what would you do if your prediction fails?
High-tech companies (at least ones with some sense) hire people they need. Whether the person is an American or an H1B holder is a relatively minor issue. Do you really think that the whole world has less talent to offer than just the United States of America?
I'm not sure how you define "completely open"
I define "completely open" as anybody who wants to can come in and live (and work) here for as long as he wants.
Besides, what have you done that makes you deserve special treatment? You were born here?
I? I ain't done nuthing. And, as a matter of fact, I wasn't born here.
Don't worry, the INS's policies are making the environment hostile enough that soon all of the high-tech companies will leave,
Er.. weren't you just saying that without artificial incentives the high-tech companies will just hire American workers instead of these damned foreigners? Please unconfuse yourself.
Slashdot Mirror
there is a definite advantage for consumers in allowing this kind of test.
No. There is some advantage to those who pass the test and huge disadvantage to those who fail it or refuse to take it.
Remember folks, it's not mandatory,
Yeah, right. For how long? And aren't your premiums going to depend on whether you've taken the test?
anything that brings down those premiums is good
It is? I've got two suggestions for you and both will bring down these premiums. First, if a child is born with some genetic defects, you know, those that are expensive to treat and deal with, just kill him. It'll save a lot of money. Or just refuse medical care if his parent's can't pay -- it's the same thing. And, second, why waste money on old people? They are going to die soon anyway, right?
As long as it's voluntary, then we all win - you can either take the test and get cheaper premiums, or you can not take the test and satisfy your urge for privacy. It's a win-win situation.
Voluntary? Let's say the premiums used to be 100 zorkmids for everybody. Now the test comes. You can agree to the test and if you pass, your premiums are going to be 98 zorkmids. If you fail, though, your premium goes up to 1000 zorkmids -- we wouldn't want the insurance company to lose money, would we? And if you refuse to take the test?
Let's check how the thinking would go: "This guy can save himself 2 zorkmids by taking a test. He doesn't want to. This is suspicious. Why wouldn't he save 2 zorkmids? Of course! He has this genetic marker and is trying to rip us off! Yeah!"
"Sir? Your insurance rates are 1000 zorkmids.".
Kaa
In actuality, we generate lift with airfoils in the same way--by creating circulation. We just do it with thrust. =)
Well, the result is the same -- flow (and not circulation, btw) over the airfoil. The mechanism of achieving the flow, however, is rather different.
And as for the laws of aerodynamics being "pretty crisp", Kaa, please tell me how to model turbulent behavior past the stall point of an airfoil.
"Crisp" does not mean "able to calculate everything to the n-the degree of accuracy". "Crisp" is a term from fuzzy logic and refers to old/normal/conventional logic, specifically to values '1' and '0'. These values are "crisp", while real numbers, like 0.5, are "fuzzy".
Kaa
fuzzy logic/set theory `generalised' conventional logic/set theory.
:-)
No, I don't subscribe to this particular belief that "normal" logic is a subset of fuzzy logic. It's fairly hard to substantiate, isn't it?
As for complex systems theory vs. cybernetics, the stuff about variation, interaction and selection described in the article occurs in cybernetics.
The review sucks heavily. I don't think the reviewer understands what he is talking about.
Now, AFAIK, cybernetics is mostly concerned with control systems with feedback loops. You have a system with inputs and outputs, and the outputs affect (with a suitable time delay) either the inputs, or the parameters of the system itself.
Complex systems is not really about this. They are, basically, about modeling highly nonlinear systems, ones where plain ol' regression just doesn't cut it. It's not a unified field by any stretch of imagination. Most research concentrates on:
(1) Optimization techniques, preferably non-linear and global. Here you have genetic algorithms, simulated annealing, partly neural networks.
(2) Emergent behavior, where you typically have multiple simple agents interacting and complex behaviour spontatneously emerges out of these interaction.
(3) Chaotic systems, which is usually taken to mean either sensitivity to inital conditions (butterfly effect) and/or nonlinear feedback loops.
(4) Misc other stuff.
For an example of a complex system look at stock market. This is very noisy nonlinear unstable system with a tendency towards feedback loops and reversion towards the mean. If you manage to model it successfully, you won't have to work any more...
Kaa
Unfortunately it falls prey to the set of difficulties that are well-known...
Well, yeah, fuzzy logic is not a complete drop-in replacement for "normal" logic, no question about it. I was not arguing that -- I was just surprised to see you say that it grows out of some "bad" ideas.
you can't quantify over fuzzy sets.
What do you mean?
As I understand it, systems theory is a synonym for cybernetics.
Systems theory, yes. Complex system threory, no. They are two different beasts.
Kaa
You're right. You are 100% wrong. The concept of flight was first concieved of, and attempting to imitate birds.
If you were bothered to read what I have written, you would have noticed that I was NOT talking about the idea of flying. I was talking about aerodynamics, a branch of physics, and how it developed.
Which is why so many people died in the attempt.
Which goes to show that observing nature and blindly trying to imitate it is not always a good thing, right?
It wasn't until much much later, probably near WWII that fluid dynamics entered the picture at all.
Any proof? References? As you noticed, I can make unsubstantiated statements as well as you.
Kaa, you seem to have a problem with the reviewer
Well, yeah. I know a little about the subject -- enough to understand that the reviewer has no clue, that is as in "no clue at all", about complex systems and the current research in this area. Still, he presumed that just because he picked a book at a bookstore he was qualified to write a review and put it on Slashdot. To put it bluntly, he is NOT qualified. Besides, the review itself is a piece of crap -- it contains very little useful information and wonderful sentences such as "The important message here is that complex systems are not beyond our understanding, though it may be tough." Bletch.
it would probably be in your best interest and get help.
and get help? me? [maniacal laughter in the distance] I am BEYOND help, you worm! My plans for world domination through posting to Slashdot are almost complete! You'll all be petrified! Yes! And some select ones will be both naked and petrified! Yaaaaaah!
Kaa
I don't think that there is a strong link between fuzzy set theory and complex systems theory.
Agreed.
Fuzzy set theory in my opinion is based upon bad ideas about the proper form of logical semantics
Huh? Fuzzy set theory is based on the idea that you could express membership in a set not as a boolean value (0 or 1), but as a real number (e.g. 0.33). From here comes the notion of partial membership in multiple sets and off you go into fuzzy logic. Computationally it's very similar to dealing with a bunch of random variables the distribution of which you know.
Which *bad* ideas are you talking about?
Complex systems theory is a sophisticated and well-thought out area that dates back to von Neumann
You probably mean cybernetics which does date back to von Neumann. However, in our context "complex system theory" means somewhat completely different, although also frequently involving feedback loops. Treat this a semantic contamination...
Kaa
Chaos, in the sense the review meant, is a phenomenon (namely stochastic behavior in a deterministic system)
Strictly speaking, you cannot have stochastic behavior in a deterministic system. What you have is that the behavior is non-computable and so we are forced to rely on stochastic methods to evaluate it.
But in any case the concept of chaos is wider. Chaos is usually defined as specific property of a system (as well as the resulting behavior of the system) and is commonly used to mean high sensitivity to inital conditions -- "the butterfly effect" -- and/or nonlinear feedback loops. There are both deterministic chaotic systems and stochastic chaotic systems (which are pretty much unanalyzable given the current state of the art).
I think the reviewer meant to highlight the distinction, while still acknowledging that there are relationships between the concepts of complexity and chaos.
Pardon me for bluntness, but I didn't get the impression that the reviewer understood anything. I think that the reviewer has a very vague and muddled idea of what is complexity, what is chaos, and what is the relationship between them.
Kaa
Careful
:-)
Don't run with scissors, eh?
Just that it was natural to think in fuzzy terms.
I have a nasty suspicion that it'll take us at least a dozen posts to sort out what "natural" means in this context. Besides, it's all handwaving. You say it's natural to think in fuzzy terms, I say it's natural to think in crisp terms, and how are we going to decide who is right?
I'm not sure that proves anything.
It proves that "humans are equipped to deal with complex systems" is a content-free sentence.
If you doubt that man didn't learn the concepts of flight from flying creatures, then go down to the library and research it yourself. Where do you think one would learn about concepts of aerodynamics? From creatures that have mastered it themselves, perhaps?
I don't understand what do you mean by "concepts" of flight. The concept of flight, that is, that heavier-than-air object can fly, certainly came from looking at birds. However I doubt very much that aerodynamics were developed by studying birds.
Off the top of my head (and I freely admit that I could be 100% wrong) I would think that aerodynamics developed from fluid dynamics, which are much easier to observe and, until the invention of aircraft, were much more useful. As to the fluid dynamics, I again doubt that they developed from looking at fish. Most likely they developed by putting simple physical objects into a stream and looking at what happens. Add to that a lot of practical experience with boats and ships of all kinds and you have a pretty good base.
The flaw in your argument is that living things are usually very complicated and it's not trivial to derive laws of physics from looking at them. It's usually easier to observer a much simpler system, work out how it works, and then complexify (sic!) the experiments until you think you have a reasonable grasp on what's happening. Understanding how living things work usually comes very late in the process. Remember the (in)famous bumblebee case? Until recently (10-20 years ago?) according to then-current aerodynamics the bumblebee could not fly: it was too heavy and its wings could not -- theoretically! -- generate sufficient lift to keep it in the air. It turned out that the bumblebee does some very, very complicated things (dealing with turbulence at wing edges AFAIK) that allow it to fly. But my point is that trying to derive *basic* aerodynamics from observing the bumblebee is impossible -- you would never get off the ground
Kaa
it was completely natural to think in terms of fuzzy sets.
As usual, it depends. Thinking about, say, IP packets in terms of fuzzy sets is not likely to be productive. Thinking about political affiliations would be a good way to apply them. Fuzzy sets are a tool: just like any tool they are applicable to some situations and not applicable to others.
And in discussing other aspects of complex systems, even amoung the average joe, it becomes pretty clear, that people are more than well enough equipped to deal with complex systems
Among the average joe? Never mind...
Note, though, that reality itself is a very complex system. People (as well as protozoa, grasshoppers, rats, etc.) who were NOT equipped to deal with complex systems died out long time ago.
Flight was mastered by looking at how birds fly and experimenting.
Not really. Birds fly by flapping their wings and I don't know of a single successful aircraft that does this. Flight was mastered by understanding physical laws, specifically the laws of aerodynamics. These laws, by the way, are pretty crisp (=non-fuzzy).
So was medicine, math and every other complex system.
Err... so math was developed by imitating what you see, exploring the world, and experimenting? Uh, yeah, sure, right... [nods his head and slowly backs away]
Kaa
Well, first of all there is no such thing as "complexity science". There is a multidisciplinary field of study, very broad one, populated mostly by statisticians and physicists with some sprinkling of mathematicians, biologists and some other assorted folk. What unites this field is attempts to deal with complex systems which cannot be modeled by "classic", mostly linear, methods. Currently it's mostly a motley collection of approaches and techniques.
:-)
[rough summation of the book]: "Agents, of a variety of types, use their strategies, in patterned interaction, with each other and with artifacts. Performance measures on the resulting events drive the selection of agents and/or strategies through processes of error-prone copying and recombination, thus changing the frequencies of the types within the system."
They did say this is written for a layman, right?
Anyway, this basically describes "genetic algorithms", an optimization technique. Nothing particularly innovative and there are better books about it. Certainly, the complexity study field is much wider than this.
Complexity theory is not the same as chaos.
Well, a theory is not the same as chaos. That's reassuring to know.
Complex systems are not chaotic, though they do depend on variation in order to adapt, or change the equilibrium point.
Err... "complex systems" is a very very wide term (usually meaning "I can't understand how it works and I've been looking at it for five minutes already!") and generally chaotic systems are treated as a subset of complex systesm. Not that the quoted sentence makes much sense, anyway. "Depend on variation in order to adapt"? Ahem, and how else could one adapt except by changing something?
The important message here is that complex systems are not beyond our understanding, though it may be tough.
No kidding! That is the important message of the book? Wow! That's really, really useful to know.
[flame] It sure looks tough, for complex systems are clearly beyond the understanding of the reviewer. Hint: before reviewing a book on Slashdot it's useful to know at least something about the field. [/flame]
Kaa
Mozilla started out wrong but even if you don't like their current browser design, note that the gecko rendering engine is showing up as a gnome widget in simpler browsers.
Galeon shows promise, I agree. But remember that the goals of the Mozilla project are (or at least were) to make a browser that would achieve dominance on the mostly Windows desktop and win back market share from Internet Explorer. The chances of achieving this goal do not look good.
StarOffice needs a lot of rewrite, I agree.
Remember, the original issue was the degree of selfless benevolence that Sun showed by releasing StarOffice to the community. I contended that they could do nothing else with it -- it was (and is) not a contender and nobody in his right mind would pay money for it. Sun took the opportunity to stick it to Microsoft by releasing StarOffice for free hoping that some day, at least, it will eat into the sales of MS Office and so hurt Scott McNealy's favorite person, Bill.
Before you object, let me agree that releasing StarOffice as Open Source was a Good Thing to do. My point is that it is NOT evidence for Sun's new-found love for Open Source. I still think that Sun is Microsoft with smaller teeth.
Kaa
Presumably Carnivore would only be used once the FBI has a warrant, therefore the fourth Amendment does not apply.
Bzzzz. Sorry, wrong answer.
It turns out that our wonderful judiciary has decided that while the payload of an IP packet is protected by the Fourth Amendment, its headers are not. Thus Carnivore can (and does) capture packets, discard payload, and store packet headers for further analysis, all without any warrants at all. To understand why this is important, read any crypto text on traffic analysis.
the fourth Amendment in its strictest interpretation technically only applies to physical objects (effects, persons, houses, etc.).
No, it doesn't. To give a trivial example, telephone conversations, which are not physical objects, are protected by the Fourth.
Kaa
Carnivore/Omnivore on NT is VERY scary. If someone were able to exploit a hole on a carnivore box, they could then use it to monitor anyone's communication.
Now, now, don't be afraid. It's not all that bad.
First, hacking into a Carnivore box would give you the ability to monitor communications only on that particular network segment where the box is sitting. It will not magically give you the ability to monitory anybody everywhere.
Second, law enforcement is not known for abundance of brain cells, but I would be VERY surprised if a carnivore box had any open ports at all. All it does is gather packets that pass its filtering criteria and write them to a file. Login should be through physical console only.
Not to mention that a carnivore box can act like a bridge and thus have no IP address at all. I'd like to see a remote crack for a box that has no IP address.
Kaa
it has opened and rendered correctly every Office file I've had reason to throw at it
Heh. That's what people use it for -- to look at MS Office documents in *nix environment. You start up StarOffice when somebody sends you a Word document -- you do not open it to work in. Why? Because it sucks.
It means that most office workers will be able to do their days work with free software
And other than the feeling of ideological purity, what will it contribute? I played a bit with StarOffice. It will take a huge amount of work to make it competitive with MS Office. Yes, we'll have the source, but we also have the source to Netscape/Mozilla and that already looks like a smelly and bloated corpse which is so late it's not even funny anymore. And to continue the analogy, don't forget that Mozilla had to scrap all old Netscape code and basically start from scratch. I fear that the same fate awaits StarOffice...
Kaa
I disagree with you. No, corporations don't generally have ethics. But they should.
They should? [grin] That's a dangerous idea. Ethics are a personal value system. As such it has no necessary relationship to laws of the society, not to mention the general good. Ethics can be very different, and some varieties are extremely nasty and ugly.
Consider a white supremacist. He certainly has his personal value system -- it's just that you find it repugnant and evil. Obviously, he doesn't think so. It so happens that there is no good way of setting up an absolute standard of goodness to measure ethics against. It's very hard to say what kinds of ethics are better than other ones and why (without resorting to arguments of the "my God told me so" kind).
So, if you advocate ethics for corporations, beware! Their ethics may not correspond to yours. In fact, you may not like them at all.
I rather prefer ethicless corporations which just make money and obey the laws.
Corporations are treated much like regular individuals in nearly all ways--except that individuals have moral duties while corporations (supposedly) do not
Duh! Individuals also have bodies, desires, emotions and many other things that corporations do not have. Corporation is basically a mechanism created by legal means. Why would a mechanism have morals?
Kaa
Do you have reading comprehension problems
;-)
Nope, just a short attention span. Er... what I was talking about?
removing the job-transfer restrictions on people with H1B's.
A sensible idea. Two drawbacks, though. First, the goal of the whole process is to make it painful. It's kind of a Darwinian selection. Bureacracy likes to make people jump through hoops and since there is no control over INS ("You say we are rude? Hmm... you want to know about your application? What application? We have no records of any application from you..."), it makes its hoops particularly numerous and nasty. In any case, reducing the painfullness of the process (of getting to a green card) will result in the increase of people applying to the program.
The second problem is a bigger one: companies would be hesitant to support H1B visas. Why should they when, as far as they know, they are going to be used as just a way to get into the country, a temporary stop to jump to someplace else.
Sillicon valley is getting worse though. The rent and housing prices are astronomically high.
Yeah, well, it's not like it's hard to find a computer-related job anywhere in the States. Options are mostly given out in Silicon Valley, but for straight salary you can get work anywhere.
Kaa
OK. Let me chop this into smaller pieces for your digestive pleasure.
Entities (people and corporations) have duties. One of those duties is to follow the laws. Thus, regardless of Sun's interests, it cannot torture MS employees. Note that duties are mandatory.
Entities also have interests. Interests are NOT mandatory. You are interested in butterflies, I am interested in pr0n. Fine. As long as interests do not conflict with duties, there is no problem here.
Now we come to the interesting part: people have ethics (==morals, ==personal value systems). Corporations don't. Sometimes people who run corporations make these corporations act in accordance with their personal ethics, but per se corporations have no ethics. In a way, their ethics are laws and nothing more.
Thus, Sun as a corporation has certain duties (including its legal duty to the shareholders to make money, for example). It also has certain interests (be the biggest fish in the pond, make more money). As long as these interests do not conflict with duties, it's all fine. Sun as a corporation does not have ethics.
Now, Scott McNealy is a person and has his personal value system. It seems that in his personal value system playing "King of the Hill" against Bill Gates and Larry Ellison takes a very large spot. Sun's corporate policy, to some extent, reflects that.
Whether Sun "should" be interested in other things -- well, I'd say it could but there is no obligation on it to do so. Sun could be interested in the environmental problems, but it does not have to (ethically, as well as legally). Ditto with the welfare of total strangers. As to employees and customers, use common sense -- both groups are vital to Sun's success so it is very much interested in their welfare.
Kaa
I see this a lot on Slashdot. Why is it that when an organization or individual is trying to make money, all other ethics become irrelevant?
False logic. You are drawing (incorrect) conclusions that I did not make. I am interested in computers -- that does not mean that it's OK for me to torture people. All it means is that I'm likely to spend time and effort tweaking my system and not reading romance pulp novels.
Kaa
[re NYT articles] What makes you think you have a right to view that content for free?
Because I can? Without breaking any laws, I might add. That's sufficient justification for me.
You know full well that link is not intended for you,
Why in the world should I care about the intentions of publishers? The book "Perl Cookbook", for example, is intended for Perl programmers. Does it mean that if I am not a Perl programmer I should not buy this book?
If New York Times wants this information not to be world-readable, there are plenty of simple ways to achieve this.
everytime I see this it just strikes a nerve.
It does? You must be really in pain reading the CueCat stories, then. Isn't it also using something in a way that was not intended?
Kaa
Look, folks, they would not be Open-Sourcing a $70M+ product (StarOffice) if they didn't want the community buy-in.
Ahem. And what else could they do with StarOffice? Sell it? I don't think so. It's buggy, bloated, tries to pretend it's the only application you'll ever need (tm), and is generally full of cruft. It cannot compete with MS Office. It's actually not even in the same league.
Sun is an old-style company trying to find its way into this new world.
Er... Sun is Microsoft with smaller teeth. If it manages to kick Microsoft's teeth in (with the help of DoJ or otherwise), it'll become the biggest fish in the pond. That's the only thing, other than money, that it's interested in. And, yes, since it's a big corporation this is as it should be.
Basically, Sun is practicing diplomacy towards OpenSource, where diplomacy is defined as "saying 'nice doggie' until you can find a stick".
Kaa
ROTFL!
Kaa
If you need a bar code scanner, the inconvenience of buying one for $100-200 is that great?
.sig and put "Don't do it, then!" into it. That seems to be a good answer to much of the complaints I hear on Slashdot. Don't want to read the temper tantrums -- don't! Besides, if people have nothing better to do with their life than to bitch and whine about CueCat on Slashdot, who are you to judge them?
I don't know about you, but I can easily find a better use for that money.
The only inconvenience to my life the CueCat represents is reading a bunch of temper tantrums thrown by children on slashdot.org
I am seriously tempted to change my
Kaa
The foreign workers aren't happy, and the American workers aren't happy
:-)
Well, you can't make everybody happy all the time. The foreign workers accept this (=> think this is a good deal) because this is a way for them to stay in the US. Again, they pay a price, but they believe that what they get in return is worth it. As to American workers, they seem to forget that it is now a global economy and they have no any special rights to jobs.
I've had first-hand experience
That's not proof. That's what's called anecdotal evidence and I can pull up any number of things that happened to me or my friends and prove anything with that.
Of course these people are going to work really hard to make sure they don't get fired
So, what's wrong with that? We do not live in an ideal world -- being born in the US confers much more advantages than, say, being born in Bangladesh. Given that, these people on H1B visas are climbing up -- they are bettering their life. They pay for this, in part by somewhat worse working conditions. It's up to them whether they believe it is a fair trade.
I'm not saying to remove the quota. Keep it.
So what are you saying? Or you are just bitching for bitching sake?
[re completely open immigration] So tell me, what would be wrong with that provided these people paid taxes (which they do)?
Never been to the third world, have you? I'll tell you what. Say you are a peasant in China. Or India. Or Russia (I'm just naming the most populous countries of the third world). Where would you life be better -- at home or panhandling in the US? For some of them -- at home, but enough of them will choose USA. How do several hundred million of Chinese, Indians and Russians immigrants strike you?
What I'm talking about is the fact that immigrant workers are getting more and more pissed off at the INS
Oh, for sure. INS is a completely horrible organization that is composed of terminally stupid people who believe they are the direct representatives of god on Earth. If it were up to me I'd have them all taken out and shot. Spoken from personal experience
I wouldn't be too surprised if in a few years all of the good high tech workers leave for Canada instead.
I doubt it very much. INS is a secondary factor, Silicon Valley still has more jobs and higher pay.
When the supply of indentured servants dries up, the American high tech companies will either have to leave or do their development outside of the US.
So? No problem. That's one of the things that the marketplace is supposed to take care of, right?
Kaa
There are many companies that offer bar code scanners that plug into PS/2 keyboard ports and require no extra drivers.
By "offer" I assume you mean "sell". I don't know of anybody else stupid enought to give out bar scanners for free.
I don't see how wasting your time with this device helps.
Helps what? Your idea of worthwhile use of time is probably quite different from mine.
About the only thing being accomplished is to give Linux users a bad name...
The wounds of DC are entirely self-inflicted. They have an idiotic business model the deficiencies of which were just demonstrated in a convincing way. Not to mention that I hardly envisage anybody sitting and reading a magazine next to their computer with a bar code reader in hand (and that's their intended usage...).
Kaa
But of course most companies are more than happy to sponsor a greencard, because your application will be cancelled if you leave the company.
So everybody is happy. What's your complaint, then?
[re 9-to-5 jobs] I'm fairly certain that non-US citizens can't get jobs in the US government.
The original poster was complaining that honest Americans had to work 90-hour weeks.
I think his complaint had to do with the fact that H1B workers typically work longer hours for equal or even lower pay than American workers.
Proof, please. Just because you believe that this is possibly true does not make it so, and handwaving isn't going to help.
H1B workers and greencard applicants could switch jobs anywhere near as easily as American workers, I guarantee that the H1B quotas wouldn't even be reached the following year. High tech companies would start hiring Americans first, and only hiring H1B workers when they needed to.
Wonderful. You "guarantee". And what would you do if your prediction fails?
High-tech companies (at least ones with some sense) hire people they need. Whether the person is an American or an H1B holder is a relatively minor issue. Do you really think that the whole world has less talent to offer than just the United States of America?
I'm not sure how you define "completely open"
I define "completely open" as anybody who wants to can come in and live (and work) here for as long as he wants.
Besides, what have you done that makes you deserve special treatment? You were born here?
I? I ain't done nuthing. And, as a matter of fact, I wasn't born here.
Don't worry, the INS's policies are making the environment hostile enough that soon all of the high-tech companies will leave,
Er.. weren't you just saying that without artificial incentives the high-tech companies will just hire American workers instead of these damned foreigners? Please unconfuse yourself.
Kaa