Actually, it was intended to be humorous in the "it's funny because it's true," vein. Not all blogs are self-important crap but all Dvorak articles are self-important crap. I'm not the one that made the initial comparison:P
Blogs, however, lend themselves easily to the Dvorak self-righteous, know-it-all style of discourse. Well, it's not discourse so much as soliloquy.
Now, don't be so defensive and understand that what people really are reacting to is Slashdot linking to a blogger's ranting as if it mattered.
TechNewsWorld? Ah, one of those ECT publications. They have such esteemed writers as Maureen O'Gara on their payroll. Their publications are barely news and frequently contain some form of troll or flamebait to get them posted on Slashdot.
If you thought ZDnet was crap, ECT makes them smell like roses.
So, they're using older vector data. They're using older imagery, too. For most places MS uses USGS DOQQs, probably from 1999. Google, for urban areas at least, uses more recent satellite imagery. But outside of urban areas, Google uses low-res Landsat imagery which is fairly useless for this application.
If the book slips out a few hours early it's not like it will be ripped and reprinted in illegal copies before the real version officially goes on sale.
The submitter completely distorted the motivation behind the publisher's restrictions in order make this a Slashdot story. The real reason they do this is that Barnes and Noble get mighty pissed if Borders sells the new Harry Potter before they do because it gives Borders a huge advantage.
It's about keeping all of their retailers happy and keeping everything fair by making the playing field even. Every publisher does this for every big book. Hell, I've seen embargoes on books that you couldn't give away. It's not a big deal. The only interesting part is the extremes to which Scholastic is forced to go..
That this whole universe as we see it is not an experiment in somebody's supercomputer.
If I had a dollar for every stoned college kid that thought of that and exclaimed, "Whoa, dude," I'd have enough money to buy a supercomputer capable of simulating an entire universe of stoned college kids wondering whether they were in a computer simulation and exclaiming, "Whoa, dude."
If you look at Curry's blog it mentions that Apple is supposed to be distributing the podcasts they index on Akamai. They just haven't gotten that going yet.
but there is no RSS standard on how to date the headlines. RSS readers currently have to cache the old RSS file and look for changes to ascertain when new headlines appear and infer the date based on when the new headline appeared.
No research has ever said that all Asians are smarter than all Africans.
I didn't, nor did I intend to say they did. But why do they talk about Asians, Africans and Caucasians? Why don't they talk about people with such and such an allele? Why do people like Rushton rank the races? And, again, who gets to decide the definition of a race? It's easy to attack such research on the statistics alone. How do you define the population? How do you define the quantity being measured? What other factors could have influenced the observed correllation? Can you prove or give a strong argument for causation?
On average, Asians have a higher IQ than whites, whites higher than blacks.
Which is completely meaningless to the case for a genetic cause unless you're taken into account all environmental factors. And, again, how do you define race? On average Texans perform better on tests than Hawaiians. Genetics?
If some people's bodies can metabolize faster than others, why couldn't some people's neurons fire faster than others?
Are we defining intelligence by how fast someone's neurons fire? Or is it by how well they do are standardized tests? Is it g?
You simply can't define intelligence in any meaningful objective way. You can say that children aged 10 should score this way on a standardized test and the average is 100. You cannot say that test is a measure of 'intelligence.' It may be a useful indicator of how the child compares to other children their age. You can't say that Billy scored 80 on the IQ test therefore his neurons fire 20% slower than average. You can say that Billy needs some help with schoolwork. That's what the IQ test is designed for. It does not measure an real quantity.
Metabolism is measurable. Intelligence is not. IQ is not a measure of intelligence. Even the American Psychological Association says that IQ should not be used to make inferences about a population. It's useful for evaluating individuals, especially children. It's usefulness diminishes quickly outside of school and laboratory settings. In my experience, the only people who hang on to a notion of IQ as a measure of intelligence are people who don't understand IQ, who need to quantify their intelligence for their own self esteem, eugenicists and racists.
You cannot have a serious discussion of biological determinism. Especially concerning people like Rushton who say that the large testicals of the African make him dumber.
Do Asians do better on tests? From most evidence, yes. Does that make the Asian 'race' inherently more intelligent? That is a meaningless question. How many Asians have to score consistently higher than how many Africans on how many tests to be considered more intelligent? What kind of tests? Who makes the tests? Who counts as Asian? How intelligent can an Asian get? If I'm half Asian and half African, will I be of average intelligence? Or do I have to get the Asian intelligence gene to be smart?
Intelligence is not something that can be measured like height. I can show you my height. I can give you a consistent, reproducible measurement of my height. You can't say the same for intelligence. It's like trying to measure 'sticktoitiveness.'
The problem is not saying, "Asians are smarter." I grant that in a given American school, the Asian kids will make up a disproportionate part of the upper percentiles of students. However, that does not mean that Asians are inherently smarter. Their families and culture may value education more. They may work harder. A genetic explanation is unnecessary and contrived.
But, if I am to accept that races are inherently different with reagrds to intelligence then I need to know,
how a race is defined,
how intelligence is measured,
what I'm supposed to do with these distinctions.
The last part being the most important and the most dangerous. If Asians are smarter, what do we do with that? Breed Asians into every population? Elect them to Congress? Worship them as gods? And what about the Africans? Give them menial jobs that won't tax their limited cognitive abilities? What do we do with dumb Asians? What do we do with smart Africans?
The objections to Rushton and his ilk is not PC do-gooder bullshit. It's an objection to racism veiled as science. Some of his science is good but his agenda is racist.
A hack eugenicist's review of The Mismeasure of Man? That's hardly a "throughly(sic)" debunking.
The author of that review is J. Phillipe Rushton (see also Wikipedia) who recieves much of his funding from the Pioneer Fund (Wikipedia) of which he is president. The Pioneer Fund is fairly blatanly racist and eugenicist.
Slashdot Mirror
Don't get too excited.
HTML just wants to be valid. Is that so wrong?
And why not go for XHTML Strict, or even Transitional?
"Penn" is short for University of Pennsylvania, not Penn State (which is itself short for Pennsylvania State University).
Actually, it was intended to be humorous in the "it's funny because it's true," vein. Not all blogs are self-important crap but all Dvorak articles are self-important crap. I'm not the one that made the initial comparison :P
Blogs, however, lend themselves easily to the Dvorak self-righteous, know-it-all style of discourse. Well, it's not discourse so much as soliloquy.
Now, don't be so defensive and understand that what people really are reacting to is Slashdot linking to a blogger's ranting as if it mattered.
Exactly. It's all the same steaming pile of self-important crap.
Uh... I think you mean Godwin's Law.
TechNewsWorld? Ah, one of those ECT publications. They have such esteemed writers as Maureen O'Gara on their payroll. Their publications are barely news and frequently contain some form of troll or flamebait to get them posted on Slashdot.
If you thought ZDnet was crap, ECT makes them smell like roses.
Apple no longer makes a single CPU Power Mac. And, all Power Macs have 512MB standard.
They both get their data from NAVTEQ. If you look in the lower right corner of MS Earth, you'll see "© 2004 NAVTEQ." In Google maps you'll see "© 2005 NAVTEQ."
So, they're using older vector data. They're using older imagery, too. For most places MS uses USGS DOQQs, probably from 1999. Google, for urban areas at least, uses more recent satellite imagery. But outside of urban areas, Google uses low-res Landsat imagery which is fairly useless for this application.
Actually, I'm wrong. It's not bluetooth.
Cringley is speculating that it will come with a bluetooth retina scan display.
But, you know, it's Cringley so...
Because it's good business.
If the book slips out a few hours early it's not like it will be ripped and reprinted in illegal copies before the real version officially goes on sale.The submitter completely distorted the motivation behind the publisher's restrictions in order make this a Slashdot story. The real reason they do this is that Barnes and Noble get mighty pissed if Borders sells the new Harry Potter before they do because it gives Borders a huge advantage.
It's about keeping all of their retailers happy and keeping everything fair by making the playing field even. Every publisher does this for every big book. Hell, I've seen embargoes on books that you couldn't give away. It's not a big deal. The only interesting part is the extremes to which Scholastic is forced to go..
If I had a dollar for every stoned college kid that thought of that and exclaimed, "Whoa, dude," I'd have enough money to buy a supercomputer capable of simulating an entire universe of stoned college kids wondering whether they were in a computer simulation and exclaiming, "Whoa, dude."
Except more people give back with the GPL.
Just look at the BSD project, and the thousands of apps licensed under the BSD license.Linux is far more widespread than all the BSDs combined and has an order of maginitude more apps.
From SourceForge
It seems that people who write code prefer the GPL.
There is: Advanced > Subscribe to Podcast...
If you look at Curry's blog it mentions that Apple is supposed to be distributing the podcasts they index on Akamai. They just haven't gotten that going yet.
You can 1TB of RAID (RAID levels 0, 0+1, 5, and RAID 5+hot spare) for $1500 from . I imagine other manufacturers have similar offerings.
This is in the RSS 2.0 Spec. +5 indeed.
That link is so much better than the parent post. Thanks.
I didn't, nor did I intend to say they did. But why do they talk about Asians, Africans and Caucasians? Why don't they talk about people with such and such an allele? Why do people like Rushton rank the races? And, again, who gets to decide the definition of a race? It's easy to attack such research on the statistics alone. How do you define the population? How do you define the quantity being measured? What other factors could have influenced the observed correllation? Can you prove or give a strong argument for causation?
On average, Asians have a higher IQ than whites, whites higher than blacks.Which is completely meaningless to the case for a genetic cause unless you're taken into account all environmental factors. And, again, how do you define race? On average Texans perform better on tests than Hawaiians. Genetics?
If some people's bodies can metabolize faster than others, why couldn't some people's neurons fire faster than others?Are we defining intelligence by how fast someone's neurons fire? Or is it by how well they do are standardized tests? Is it g?
You simply can't define intelligence in any meaningful objective way. You can say that children aged 10 should score this way on a standardized test and the average is 100. You cannot say that test is a measure of 'intelligence.' It may be a useful indicator of how the child compares to other children their age. You can't say that Billy scored 80 on the IQ test therefore his neurons fire 20% slower than average. You can say that Billy needs some help with schoolwork. That's what the IQ test is designed for. It does not measure an real quantity.
Metabolism is measurable. Intelligence is not. IQ is not a measure of intelligence. Even the American Psychological Association says that IQ should not be used to make inferences about a population. It's useful for evaluating individuals, especially children. It's usefulness diminishes quickly outside of school and laboratory settings. In my experience, the only people who hang on to a notion of IQ as a measure of intelligence are people who don't understand IQ, who need to quantify their intelligence for their own self esteem, eugenicists and racists.
Like, duh.... it makes the computer go faster.
You cannot have a serious discussion of biological determinism. Especially concerning people like Rushton who say that the large testicals of the African make him dumber.
Do Asians do better on tests? From most evidence, yes. Does that make the Asian 'race' inherently more intelligent? That is a meaningless question. How many Asians have to score consistently higher than how many Africans on how many tests to be considered more intelligent? What kind of tests? Who makes the tests? Who counts as Asian? How intelligent can an Asian get? If I'm half Asian and half African, will I be of average intelligence? Or do I have to get the Asian intelligence gene to be smart?
Intelligence is not something that can be measured like height. I can show you my height. I can give you a consistent, reproducible measurement of my height. You can't say the same for intelligence. It's like trying to measure 'sticktoitiveness.'
The problem is not saying, "Asians are smarter." I grant that in a given American school, the Asian kids will make up a disproportionate part of the upper percentiles of students. However, that does not mean that Asians are inherently smarter. Their families and culture may value education more. They may work harder. A genetic explanation is unnecessary and contrived.
But, if I am to accept that races are inherently different with reagrds to intelligence then I need to know,
- how a race is defined,
- how intelligence is measured,
- what I'm supposed to do with these distinctions.
The last part being the most important and the most dangerous. If Asians are smarter, what do we do with that? Breed Asians into every population? Elect them to Congress? Worship them as gods? And what about the Africans? Give them menial jobs that won't tax their limited cognitive abilities? What do we do with dumb Asians? What do we do with smart Africans?The objections to Rushton and his ilk is not PC do-gooder bullshit. It's an objection to racism veiled as science. Some of his science is good but his agenda is racist.
A hack eugenicist's review of The Mismeasure of Man? That's hardly a "throughly(sic)" debunking.
The author of that review is J. Phillipe Rushton (see also Wikipedia) who recieves much of his funding from the Pioneer Fund (Wikipedia) of which he is president. The Pioneer Fund is fairly blatanly racist and eugenicist.
What's that spell?! EUGENICS!!!
Stephen J. Gould diedThe reification of
intelligence lives.
Time for a new edition of The Mismeasure of Man.
It's not so much what CPU is in the box, it's that I don't want that hideous "Intel Inside" sticker on my PowerBook! :P
Or will that be a PentiBook?
Probably, the same way they stop people from running it on commodity PowerPC hardware.