Answering "why" is actually pretty easy. That's what makes it a good question to determine if someone is human or a bot.
A bot is likely to spit out an answer similar to what the article said, or WTF or something similar. A person can be expected to answer with anything from associating music with feelings or memories, to beat, to rhythm and tone, to harmonics, to whatever. Most people will answer why with something more personal than "I've never thought about it".
Then again, most people are stupid and couldn't pass a turing test, so maybe I'm wrong about the whole thing.
Your problem is you've forgotten at least one variable and not quite gotten the gist of his meaning.
By his reasoning Apple may lose some hardware sales, but you make up for that with the added sales of OS as well as licensing costs. They will only license the original OS sold with the PCs but any upgrades will be pure profit from Apple's perspective because it's customers they don't currently have.
In theory, Apple will only stand to gain a significant market share in OS that will offset the cost of "cheap" PCs running OS X. They won't lose all of their current hardware sales, obviously, because some people still like the Apple brand and look.
Not to mention, odds are that the OS X for OEM could be slightly weaker in some areas, say not including iLife applications by default. That will generate more software sales because it works really well, even if it isn't the best app suite out there. There are other tweaks they could make that would generate other software sales, but that's probably the easiest and most likely one for them to make.
The only way that would ever affect you is if you can't pay your current mortgage or you try to sell your house and you can't. You can't be "upside down" on a mortgage for a house you plan to stay in that you can actually pay for. If you can't pay for it, your property value is the least of your worries.
Of course, your point is still the same, some asshat can completely fuck up your property value, and that's not good. There should be serious limitations on the rules that can be made by HOAs though.
bkr
Re:I'm not a Californian
on
Tinfoil Hat House
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· Score: 2, Informative
There is absolutley nothing requiring natural light in every room. The only rooms required to have a window are bedrooms. Any other room in the house can be as closed off as you want it, you just can't call a 4 room house a 4 bedroom house unless all four rooms have a window. (Well, two exits actually, whether they are doors or windows or whatever.)
bkr
Re:Too bad he's running the site off on 28.8 Kbps
on
Tinfoil Hat House
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· Score: 1
I saw this site a couple of years ago. I think I even found it through slashdot. It's funny but the dude is definitely obsessing about his neighbor. Yes the neighbor is an idiot, but damn, it's been a long time, get over it.
You must be kidding me. Most rainy days don't require any significant reduction in normal speeds. Now, I don't consider 85-90 a normal speed so I guess that's relative, but if the speed limit is 65 you can easily drive 65 on a rainy day as long as visibility isn't affected, though it may be smarter to drive 55-60.
To your other points, sure people can see things 2 miles and 12 seconds away, the problem is how fast they react once they've seen it. I don't know if you've noticed, but fully 55% of the driving population is also doing something else, whether it's reading, talking on the phone, digging through their purse/briefcase, shaving, putting on make-up, playing with themselves. You name it, someone's doing it while driving. Your scenario assumes the people actually look 12 seconds ahead of their cars as well, which most don't. The average driver (based on my completely unscientific observations while driving for the last 30 years) only looks 2 or 3 seconds ahead of their vehicle at any speed.
I think you're right about the stopping distance being over-stressed, but your reasons are like swiss cheese.
"Fear is the mind killer." Or so they say. You're dead on with the courage thing though. All the members of my family that "need" computer help at least once a week call me. It's not that I'm necessarily smarter than they are, just that I'm willing to make a mistake and learn how to fix it myself. I don't let it bother me when I do something wrong, and they do.
People always ask me how I learned so much about computers and my simple answer is "I break them and then I fix them." That simple statement says a lot about the way I think versus the way the people who constantly need help think. I've taught people how to use man and help pages, discussion groups on the web, and plenty of other resources for fixing their own problems, but invariably I get the call anyway.
Now, it's what I do for a living, so I don't mind so much.
I can't say I liked Jar Jar, because honestly the character annoyed the hell out of me. That's not what made the prequels bad. It wasn't even the acting, because we all know that the acting was pretty bad with the first three movies.
The difference, however, is the chemistry between the actors. In the first three movies there was definite chemistry between the actors and the moments of tension between the characters felt more real because of it. In the new movies, there isn't any of that expressed on the screen. The acting is flat because it's flat, not because it's bad. I honestly believe that Lucas chose to have "poor acting" in the prequels to kind of fit along with the originals. He couldn't predict whether there would be good chemistry though, and he had to work with what he got. These movies were always about the effects anyway. I don't think, however, he's done his fans or himself any sort of service by doing so. Unless of course you consider him laughing all the way to the bank with your money a service.
I'll probably go see this movie, and honestly it looks better to me than Episodes 1 and 2, but either way, I won't be happy about it unless the movie turns out far better than I expect it to.
The solution for that is to return the paper ungraded and explain why. Have the student resubmit both papers (so you know they didn't complete problems or whatnot) and then grade it. You've spent no extra time as the grader/TA/prof and it gets the point across without being detrimental to the student's grade. Negative points are bullshit, no matter what your justification for them is. They just have no educational benefit.
I completely agree with that! I had a professor who wouldn't answer a question I had, in class. It was directly related to the topic and he guaranteed us that a question would be on our final regarding the question I had. Everyone in class was freaked out when I told him I wouldn't come to his office hours and I demanded that he answer my question in class.
I got my question answered but it was tense for a while there. All my friends were sure he was going to fail me. I assured them the only person who could fail me and get away with it was me. That's one of the benefits of engineering courses, the answers are definitely right or wrong so there's no ambiguity in grades. I still wouldn't take another class of his if you paid me to.
Have you seen the iPod photo? Next step is one that will play video and you've got a portable DVD player with no need for physical media. Granted, you probably would want a larger screen, but that's just real estate and not difficult at all. Perhaps make the whole front of the iPod a touch screen instead of the wheel so you have a 16:9 screen format as well (turn it sideways) or just make it somewhat larger. That will be the difficult part, finding a screen size that is small enough to be truly portable and large enough for people to actually want to use it as a solution.
While an MBA may be a good degree, I would think something along the lines of Engineering Management would be better. You still gain more technical knowlege but you have to learn management information too.
I don't know how common these programs are but several schools in the DC area have decent graduate programs in Engineering Management so I'm sure it can be found elsewhere as well.
You're not serious are you? Every physicist I've ever met neglects this effect or that effect when doing their research. Does it work? Sure to a certain extent, but having a CS degree the OP already has a strong basis in math and physics. Certainly enough to know "how the world really works, including computers (Solid State Physics)"
Physics like you describe are for people who want to build computers, not use them.
I'll have to disagree here. I have over 12 years of solid experience in my field (electrical/system engineering) and it's hard for me to have lateral mobility due to lack of the required education. I can certainly move up (until I hit my personal ceiling) within my own company but it's hard to move elsewhere.
To the OP: I agree that a couple more years of experience is generally better than a Masters of any kind, but why not do both? Have your company pay for you Masters (MBA, CS, EE, whatever) and then use it to work for something better for yourself.
As for which degree to get, do the one that interests you the most. Forget what anyone else says you "should" have, do what you like. The rest will fall into place anyway.
While I don't disagree entirely, I will say that your experience is very limited. At the school I went to there are at least 5 unix labs I can think of, several linux labs and several more labs with a mix of intel boxes (with Windows) and unix/linux boxes. As far as I can remember, the only "Windows only" lab was the library and that was limited to browsing the card catalog online.
I will disagree that teaching alternatives to Windows is an injustice. Yes it may be a little awkward but it's not that difficult for most people to go from OpenOffice back to MSOffice or vice versa. Once you understand one, you more or less understand the other until you're an "advanced" user, which most people don't ever learn to be.
Setting up a lab that has the same basic look and feel of the windows desktop (KDE for example) and using OpenOffice makes things nearly seemless for the computer illiterate. Furthermore, there are versions of OpenOffice and Firefox etc. for windows so there isn't really any confusion. The students can use the linux version at school and the windows version anywhere they need to.
This is a joke right? Giving students kernel access? Maybe in a small lab or on a special "development" lan or something, but in general this is a bad idea. Students (hell anyone new to this) have a tendency to jack things up without realizing what they've done. If that isn't recoverable, you've doomed at least one computer in the lab, possibly more. Yes it can be fixed with a backup, but why go to the effort for a standard computer lab used for word processing, email, and internet "research"?
Let's not even consider the few students who are actually involved in hacking or programming who might decide to use the school lab (instead of their home boxes) to develop malicious code.
Count youself lucky then because it's the only real complaint I've had with OS X. Half the time my help viewer just stalls and I have to kill it manually. When it does work, I find most of the help files useless because they are written for people who are at a much lower level of understanding with respect to how the OS works(ie Grandma). I've never been a fan of the XP help system either though, so I'm not sure how XP got kudos for that. Give me a proper set of man pages with more information than I need and let me sort through it myself, and I'll be happy.
No we haven't blown up the earth, but we have created the possibility. Learning too late that something might not be the right choice is human nature. What the people concerned are saying is that maybe we should make the right choice/before/ it's too late. For once in our history.
Yes, I wasn't confused about what the article said.
My problem was with the information in the previous post to mine...that fraternal twins have the same genetic structure. That isn't the case as far as I understand genetic structure.
Please take a moment to think about a few things your saying...yes there are some interesting possibilities but a lot of what you're saying is just as limited, in ways you may or may not see.
"What if we could engineer a breed of humans with brains 10% larger and redundant organs? What about having organs that could grow back if removed? It would be nice to be able to get a heart transplant from a human with an extra working heart that would grow back after you removed one"
So how would you prevent the faulty heart from growing back? How would you determine which heart works the body? If a heart isn't used, it will essentially shrivel and die (just like any muscle) so it must be a functioning heart, which would suggest a second circulatory system. How big would we have to be to support that? And two heads? Do you have any concept of how that would force adaptation of vision, hearing, speech? You need to think this through a bit more.
Implanting computer parts may be convenient but I don't think it will truly "enhance our ability to grow and understand the world around us" as you suggest. We are striving to reach the capabilities of the human brain now, why would going in reverse make us better? Yeah we could "jack in" and learn some things faster/maybe/ but will it really help us?
"Why not let our science help create more evolved humans. Over time, humanity will be better equipped to survive in the situations we will live in."
The problem is we don't know what situations we will live in. You can't predetermine evolution...that's the point of evolution to adapt to something that changes, be it environment, predators, disease, or whatever. Would mixed species be better off? Possibly but there is no guarantee of that. And if we did create a second species of sentient creatures capable of reproduction, how would we survive it? We can't even prevent war amongst humankind, how do you expect us to prevent it when we have to fight for dominance. There will be race issues. It's not a question of if, but when and how bad.
I'm not for or against the concept of mixing species, because honestly I see both sides of the issue. I'm not a religious person so morally I think the only line comes with "humanity" and what we define as acceptable treatment. At what point do we say this mouse is no longer a mouse but should be treated with equal rights as a human? Hell, in the United States we had laws that treated/humans/ with different color skin as having less rights and not even fully human up until 1865 (13th adn 14th amendments to the Constitution). How long will it take to get half-human species equal rights?
How much benefit will we get from this type of research? Is it truly worth the negatives of a divided society?
Slashdot Mirror
Answering "why" is actually pretty easy. That's what makes it a good question to determine if someone is human or a bot.
A bot is likely to spit out an answer similar to what the article said, or WTF or something similar. A person can be expected to answer with anything from associating music with feelings or memories, to beat, to rhythm and tone, to harmonics, to whatever. Most people will answer why with something more personal than "I've never thought about it".
Then again, most people are stupid and couldn't pass a turing test, so maybe I'm wrong about the whole thing.
Christ, that means I've had sex with 30 robots! No wonder people call me a geek!
Actually, watch a child learning to tie shoes sometime. You'll find it's nowhere near as trivial as it seems to someone who's been doing it for years.
But, like you said it isn't really about intelligence; while it is complicated, it's more like hand-eye coordination than true intelligence.
"I'll be more worried when they realize that they could make even more money by charging you to put your phone on buzz."
Just out of curiousity, how would they do that, as that's generally a feature of the hardware, not the service.
Your problem is you've forgotten at least one variable and not quite gotten the gist of his meaning.
By his reasoning Apple may lose some hardware sales, but you make up for that with the added sales of OS as well as licensing costs. They will only license the original OS sold with the PCs but any upgrades will be pure profit from Apple's perspective because it's customers they don't currently have.
In theory, Apple will only stand to gain a significant market share in OS that will offset the cost of "cheap" PCs running OS X. They won't lose all of their current hardware sales, obviously, because some people still like the Apple brand and look.
Not to mention, odds are that the OS X for OEM could be slightly weaker in some areas, say not including iLife applications by default. That will generate more software sales because it works really well, even if it isn't the best app suite out there. There are other tweaks they could make that would generate other software sales, but that's probably the easiest and most likely one for them to make.
bkr
The only way that would ever affect you is if you can't pay your current mortgage or you try to sell your house and you can't. You can't be "upside down" on a mortgage for a house you plan to stay in that you can actually pay for. If you can't pay for it, your property value is the least of your worries.
Of course, your point is still the same, some asshat can completely fuck up your property value, and that's not good. There should be serious limitations on the rules that can be made by HOAs though.
bkr
There is absolutley nothing requiring natural light in every room. The only rooms required to have a window are bedrooms. Any other room in the house can be as closed off as you want it, you just can't call a 4 room house a 4 bedroom house unless all four rooms have a window. (Well, two exits actually, whether they are doors or windows or whatever.)
bkr
I saw this site a couple of years ago. I think I even found it through slashdot. It's funny but the dude is definitely obsessing about his neighbor. Yes the neighbor is an idiot, but damn, it's been a long time, get over it.
bkr
So now all we have to do is put dimples all over our cars to get better gas mileage?
You must be kidding me. Most rainy days don't require any significant reduction in normal speeds. Now, I don't consider 85-90 a normal speed so I guess that's relative, but if the speed limit is 65 you can easily drive 65 on a rainy day as long as visibility isn't affected, though it may be smarter to drive 55-60.
To your other points, sure people can see things 2 miles and 12 seconds away, the problem is how fast they react once they've seen it. I don't know if you've noticed, but fully 55% of the driving population is also doing something else, whether it's reading, talking on the phone, digging through their purse/briefcase, shaving, putting on make-up, playing with themselves. You name it, someone's doing it while driving. Your scenario assumes the people actually look 12 seconds ahead of their cars as well, which most don't. The average driver (based on my completely unscientific observations while driving for the last 30 years) only looks 2 or 3 seconds ahead of their vehicle at any speed.
I think you're right about the stopping distance being over-stressed, but your reasons are like swiss cheese.
"Fear is the mind killer." Or so they say. You're dead on with the courage thing though. All the members of my family that "need" computer help at least once a week call me. It's not that I'm necessarily smarter than they are, just that I'm willing to make a mistake and learn how to fix it myself. I don't let it bother me when I do something wrong, and they do.
People always ask me how I learned so much about computers and my simple answer is "I break them and then I fix them." That simple statement says a lot about the way I think versus the way the people who constantly need help think. I've taught people how to use man and help pages, discussion groups on the web, and plenty of other resources for fixing their own problems, but invariably I get the call anyway.
Now, it's what I do for a living, so I don't mind so much.
I can't say I liked Jar Jar, because honestly the character annoyed the hell out of me. That's not what made the prequels bad. It wasn't even the acting, because we all know that the acting was pretty bad with the first three movies.
The difference, however, is the chemistry between the actors. In the first three movies there was definite chemistry between the actors and the moments of tension between the characters felt more real because of it. In the new movies, there isn't any of that expressed on the screen. The acting is flat because it's flat, not because it's bad. I honestly believe that Lucas chose to have "poor acting" in the prequels to kind of fit along with the originals. He couldn't predict whether there would be good chemistry though, and he had to work with what he got. These movies were always about the effects anyway. I don't think, however, he's done his fans or himself any sort of service by doing so. Unless of course you consider him laughing all the way to the bank with your money a service.
I'll probably go see this movie, and honestly it looks better to me than Episodes 1 and 2, but either way, I won't be happy about it unless the movie turns out far better than I expect it to.
bkr
The solution for that is to return the paper ungraded and explain why. Have the student resubmit both papers (so you know they didn't complete problems or whatnot) and then grade it. You've spent no extra time as the grader/TA/prof and it gets the point across without being detrimental to the student's grade. Negative points are bullshit, no matter what your justification for them is. They just have no educational benefit.
bkr
I completely agree with that! I had a professor who wouldn't answer a question I had, in class. It was directly related to the topic and he guaranteed us that a question would be on our final regarding the question I had. Everyone in class was freaked out when I told him I wouldn't come to his office hours and I demanded that he answer my question in class.
I got my question answered but it was tense for a while there. All my friends were sure he was going to fail me. I assured them the only person who could fail me and get away with it was me. That's one of the benefits of engineering courses, the answers are definitely right or wrong so there's no ambiguity in grades. I still wouldn't take another class of his if you paid me to.
bkr
Have you seen the iPod photo? Next step is one that will play video and you've got a portable DVD player with no need for physical media. Granted, you probably would want a larger screen, but that's just real estate and not difficult at all. Perhaps make the whole front of the iPod a touch screen instead of the wheel so you have a 16:9 screen format as well (turn it sideways) or just make it somewhat larger. That will be the difficult part, finding a screen size that is small enough to be truly portable and large enough for people to actually want to use it as a solution.
bkr
While an MBA may be a good degree, I would think something along the lines of Engineering Management would be better. You still gain more technical knowlege but you have to learn management information too.
I don't know how common these programs are but several schools in the DC area have decent graduate programs in Engineering Management so I'm sure it can be found elsewhere as well.
You're not serious are you? Every physicist I've ever met neglects this effect or that effect when doing their research. Does it work? Sure to a certain extent, but having a CS degree the OP already has a strong basis in math and physics. Certainly enough to know "how the world really works, including computers (Solid State Physics)"
Physics like you describe are for people who want to build computers, not use them.
I'll have to disagree here. I have over 12 years of solid experience in my field (electrical/system engineering) and it's hard for me to have lateral mobility due to lack of the required education. I can certainly move up (until I hit my personal ceiling) within my own company but it's hard to move elsewhere.
To the OP:
I agree that a couple more years of experience is generally better than a Masters of any kind, but why not do both? Have your company pay for you Masters (MBA, CS, EE, whatever) and then use it to work for something better for yourself.
As for which degree to get, do the one that interests you the most. Forget what anyone else says you "should" have, do what you like. The rest will fall into place anyway.
bkr
While I don't disagree entirely, I will say that your experience is very limited. At the school I went to there are at least 5 unix labs I can think of, several linux labs and several more labs with a mix of intel boxes (with Windows) and unix/linux boxes. As far as I can remember, the only "Windows only" lab was the library and that was limited to browsing the card catalog online.
I will disagree that teaching alternatives to Windows is an injustice. Yes it may be a little awkward but it's not that difficult for most people to go from OpenOffice back to MSOffice or vice versa. Once you understand one, you more or less understand the other until you're an "advanced" user, which most people don't ever learn to be.
Setting up a lab that has the same basic look and feel of the windows desktop (KDE for example) and using OpenOffice makes things nearly seemless for the computer illiterate. Furthermore, there are versions of OpenOffice and Firefox etc. for windows so there isn't really any confusion. The students can use the linux version at school and the windows version anywhere they need to.
bkr
This is a joke right? Giving students kernel access? Maybe in a small lab or on a special "development" lan or something, but in general this is a bad idea. Students (hell anyone new to this) have a tendency to jack things up without realizing what they've done. If that isn't recoverable, you've doomed at least one computer in the lab, possibly more. Yes it can be fixed with a backup, but why go to the effort for a standard computer lab used for word processing, email, and internet "research"?
Let's not even consider the few students who are actually involved in hacking or programming who might decide to use the school lab (instead of their home boxes) to develop malicious code.
bkr
Count youself lucky then because it's the only real complaint I've had with OS X. Half the time my help viewer just stalls and I have to kill it manually. When it does work, I find most of the help files useless because they are written for people who are at a much lower level of understanding with respect to how the OS works(ie Grandma). I've never been a fan of the XP help system either though, so I'm not sure how XP got kudos for that. Give me a proper set of man pages with more information than I need and let me sort through it myself, and I'll be happy.
No we haven't blown up the earth, but we have created the possibility. Learning too late that something might not be the right choice is human nature. What the people concerned are saying is that maybe we should make the right choice /before/ it's too late. For once in our history.
bkr
Yes, I wasn't confused about what the article said.
My problem was with the information in the previous post to mine...that fraternal twins have the same genetic structure. That isn't the case as far as I understand genetic structure.
So my fraternal twin sister (I'm male) has the same genetic structure I do?
I don't think that's quite right...unless I'm misunderstanding the term genetic structure.
bkr
Please take a moment to think about a few things your saying...yes there are some interesting possibilities but a lot of what you're saying is just as limited, in ways you may or may not see.
/maybe/ but will it really help us?
/humans/ with different color skin as having less rights and not even fully human up until 1865 (13th adn 14th amendments to the Constitution). How long will it take to get half-human species equal rights?
"What if we could engineer a breed of humans with brains 10% larger and redundant organs? What about having organs that could grow back if removed? It would be nice to be able to get a heart transplant from a human with an extra working heart that would grow back after you removed one"
So how would you prevent the faulty heart from growing back? How would you determine which heart works the body? If a heart isn't used, it will essentially shrivel and die (just like any muscle) so it must be a functioning heart, which would suggest a second circulatory system. How big would we have to be to support that? And two heads? Do you have any concept of how that would force adaptation of vision, hearing, speech? You need to think this through a bit more.
Implanting computer parts may be convenient but I don't think it will truly "enhance our ability to grow and understand the world around us" as you suggest. We are striving to reach the capabilities of the human brain now, why would going in reverse make us better? Yeah we could "jack in" and learn some things faster
"Why not let our science help create more evolved humans. Over time, humanity will be better equipped to survive in the situations we will live in."
The problem is we don't know what situations we will live in. You can't predetermine evolution...that's the point of evolution to adapt to something that changes, be it environment, predators, disease, or whatever. Would mixed species be better off? Possibly but there is no guarantee of that. And if we did create a second species of sentient creatures capable of reproduction, how would we survive it? We can't even prevent war amongst humankind, how do you expect us to prevent it when we have to fight for dominance. There will be race issues. It's not a question of if, but when and how bad.
I'm not for or against the concept of mixing species, because honestly I see both sides of the issue. I'm not a religious person so morally I think the only line comes with "humanity" and what we define as acceptable treatment. At what point do we say this mouse is no longer a mouse but should be treated with equal rights as a human? Hell, in the United States we had laws that treated
How much benefit will we get from this type of research? Is it truly worth the negatives of a divided society?
bkr