I don't see it as "the ends justifies the means". He's suggesting that graphically showing lawmakers the consequences of existing (lack of) laws may be the only way to get meaningful legislation passed. Especially if there are strong governmental or lobbying interests pushing hard in the opposite direction.
Somewhat offtopic, but here's an alternate idea if you decide to ditch the Firefox ide: Do text mining of Slashdot posts.
- See if you can predict what score will be assigned to a particular posting by moderators. Then maybe use your prediction model on a separate corpus to determine which postings are under- (or over-) scored.
- Cluster the responses thematically. Threading already does some of this, but poorly. For example, in this article's comments you have a number of postings with ideas, some postings saying "don't ruin Firefox!", some trolls, and various other things. Could you cluster these automatically?
Compared to the Firefox idea, this domain has the advantage that there's a huge amount of existing data and it's relatively clean (as text goes). The labels are pretty clean and extensive, so a lot of data quality problems are avoided.
Re:It's Gone Beyond Science Fiction into Mainstrea
on
Open Source Life?
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· Score: 1
> Sounds a bit like the plot of White Death. In this book, the heroes must stop a megaconglomerate from seeding the seas with genetically engineered fish that will overrun all the native populations and then die, so the conglomerate can corner the market with their GMO farm-raised fish. Anyone wanting to raise fish will need to buy stock from them.
Sounds like typical silly Sci Fi nonsense, where a situation is taken to its logical extreme but all social factors are ignored. What government in the world would grant a corporation exclusive rights to genetic copyright after they had replaced an entire species? What population in the world would stand for this? Paranoia is often laughably naive.
If this story were published in ___ it would be titled ___
1790: Plants and their Hidden Telegraphs! 1870: Do Plants Talk to Each Other on Leafy Telephones? 1962: Plants and their Invisible DEW Lines 1990: Plants have their Own Secret Internet! 2004: Do Plants Practice Grid Computing? 2010: Do Plants Engage in CyberBiphrenistic Nano-Spatulation?
The cell phone is nothing but a tool... When you need one, they're very handy. When you don't want to be bothered by it, you use the OFF button.
The car is really nothing but a tool. When you need one, they're very handy. When you don't, all of our cities magically shrink back to walkable size, pollution disappears, and all the people who died in traffic fatalities magically come back to life.
Moral: The effect of a technology is more than just the individual, localized use of it.
The 'ATM gang' profiled managed to purchase and setup 50+ machines and steal over $4 million from over 21,000 customers.
Maybe I'm alone here, but this doesn't seem like a very impressive return for their efforts, considering the risk. 50+ machines they had to install, 21K individual potential criminal charges they face, and for what? $4 million dollars. That's cab fare for the average CEO.
This is a decent answer, but there are two problems with it. While those resources are excellent. they only contain papers on the net. Many classic CS papers are not on the net. Citeseer fortunately does index references to non-electronic papers, though I don't think arXiv does.
The second problem is that they are paper archives. good for research (for people who know what they're looking for) but not for people who want an overview or survey of a field.
For a general overview, I'd recommend either a textbook or a survey paper (from, eg, _CS Surveys_ or _Surveys in AI_). Unfortunately, neither type is likely to be found on the net.
Please READ the article instead of guessing at what he's saying and flaming it. He is NOT saying:
- Capitalism is bad because it gives people what they want.
- Today's robots/PCs are not good enough; we need better technology.
- If I can't see the use of something, it's useless.
His essay is not a structural criticism of technology or economy but rather of society's values. I don't think he would criticise the inter/ARPAnet as a technology, but he is criticizing the use of technology for the purpose of building electric eyebrow tweezers, ultrasonic dog polishers and internet-enabled toasters -- as ends in themselves. Yes, we can build them, we can buy them; that's not the point. He's not questioning the purpose of the inventions, he's expressing dismay at the trivility of the answers. If you're satisfied with them, fine.
This is not completely relevant, but people here might be interested in the converse question: What does music look like when viewed as a sequential, mathematical structure. This guy has analyzed a number of musical pieces and shows their structure. He also shows what sequential data look like.
As proposed, the submarine would constitute the single largest private undersea vehicle ever built, and arguably, the most significant personal transportation device of the 20th century.
Besides say...oh...THE AIRPLANE?
Nah, besides THE SEGWAY! Which revolutionized personal transportation sometime last month.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't see it as "the ends justifies the means". He's suggesting that graphically showing lawmakers the consequences of existing (lack of) laws may be the only way to get meaningful legislation passed. Especially if there are strong governmental or lobbying interests pushing hard in the opposite direction.
Somewhat offtopic, but here's an alternate idea if you decide to ditch the Firefox ide: Do text mining of Slashdot posts.
- See if you can predict what score will be assigned to a particular posting by moderators. Then maybe use your prediction model on a separate corpus to determine which postings are under- (or over-) scored.
- Cluster the responses thematically. Threading already does some of this, but poorly. For example, in this article's comments you have a number of postings with ideas, some postings saying "don't ruin Firefox!", some trolls, and various other things. Could you cluster these automatically?
Compared to the Firefox idea, this domain has the advantage that there's a huge amount of existing data and it's relatively clean (as text goes). The labels are pretty clean and extensive, so a lot of data quality problems are avoided.
> Sounds a bit like the plot of White Death. In this book, the heroes must stop a megaconglomerate from seeding the seas with genetically engineered fish that will overrun all the native populations and then die, so the conglomerate can corner the market with their GMO farm-raised fish. Anyone wanting to raise fish will need to buy stock from them.
Sounds like typical silly Sci Fi nonsense, where a situation is taken to its logical extreme but all social factors are ignored. What government in the world would grant a corporation exclusive rights to genetic copyright after they had replaced an entire species? What population in the world would stand for this? Paranoia is often laughably naive.
If this story were published in ___ it would be titled ___
1790: Plants and their Hidden Telegraphs!
1870: Do Plants Talk to Each Other on Leafy Telephones?
1962: Plants and their Invisible DEW Lines
1990: Plants have their Own Secret Internet!
2004: Do Plants Practice Grid Computing?
2010: Do Plants Engage in CyberBiphrenistic Nano-Spatulation?
The car is really nothing but a tool. When you need one, they're very handy. When you don't, all of our cities magically shrink back to walkable size, pollution disappears, and all the people who died in traffic fatalities magically come back to life.
Moral: The effect of a technology is more than just the individual, localized use of it.
Maybe I'm alone here, but this doesn't seem like a very impressive return for their efforts, considering the risk. 50+ machines they had to install, 21K individual potential criminal charges they face, and for what? $4 million dollars. That's cab fare for the average CEO.
in using a jammer you're stopping/interferring with the rights of the other person to use their equipment.
Twenty years ago this technology didn't even exist.
Now you're claiming an inalienable right to it?
> Try looking at arxiv.org and citeseer
This is a decent answer, but there are two problems with it. While those resources are excellent. they only contain papers on the net. Many classic CS papers are not on the net. Citeseer fortunately does index references to non-electronic papers, though I don't think arXiv does.
The second problem is that they are paper archives. good for research (for people who know what they're looking for) but not for people who want an overview or survey of a field.
For a general overview, I'd recommend either a textbook or a survey paper (from, eg, _CS Surveys_ or _Surveys in AI_). Unfortunately, neither type is likely to be found on the net.
Here are two controlled studies of which activities attract spam, and how much:
"Why Am I Getting All This Spam? Unsolicited Email Six-month Report"
"The Great CNET Spam-off"
Please READ the article instead of guessing at what he's saying and flaming it. He is NOT saying:
- Capitalism is bad because it gives people what they want.
- Today's robots/PCs are not good enough; we need better technology.
- If I can't see the use of something, it's useless.
His essay is not a structural criticism of technology or economy but rather of society's values. I don't think he would criticise the inter/ARPAnet as a technology, but he is criticizing the use of technology for the purpose of building electric eyebrow tweezers, ultrasonic dog polishers and internet-enabled toasters -- as ends in themselves. Yes, we can build them, we can buy them; that's not the point. He's not questioning the purpose of the inventions, he's expressing dismay at the trivility of the answers. If you're satisfied with them, fine.
Here, have a baby's arm holding an apple.
This is not completely relevant, but people here might be interested in the converse question: What does music look like when viewed as a sequential, mathematical structure. This guy has analyzed a number of musical pieces and shows their structure. He also shows what sequential data look like.
As proposed, the submarine would constitute the single largest private undersea vehicle ever built, and arguably, the most significant personal transportation device of the 20th century.
Besides say...oh...THE AIRPLANE?
Nah, besides THE SEGWAY!
Which revolutionized personal transportation sometime last month.
Soon to come for US Postal Service:
- Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer special edition collectable stamps. Special $1.50 versions: their eyes follow you around the room.
- Windows 3.1 commemorative phone cards ("Relive the special magic of that release with every call you make!")
- Collector's Edition Outlook Virus Stamps. 24 special full-color postage stamps illustrating your favorite Outlook-spread viruses. Collect 'em all!
- Special "Blue Screen of Death" postcards. Nothing but white hex numbers on a field of blue, and you can't write on them. $5.00 for a set of 20.