I was super disappointed about scientists playing politics and covering up what they obviously knew the audience wanted to know.
Working in a U.S. National Lab, I can say with some likelihood of correctness that any scientists speaking in front of cameras were almost certainly having their strings pulled by the hidden suits in Management, a separate division. So while it might have seemed like scientists were covering their tracks, they almost certainly would have lost their jobs if they'd been open, honest, and forthright without Management's vertiginous spin.
(And, any scientists that should lose their jobs over confusing seconds with minutes, or whatever happened here, would not be put into the spotlight)
they already use trace multipliers in other areas of medical testing, such as DNA tests
If that was indeed the thinking, then it speaks to her history as a college dropout. DNA tests relying on amplification use the polymerase chain reaction, which is explicitly a template-directed polymerization with exponential amplification. For proteins or small molecules, one would require a specific antibody against a target molecule coupled with something like chemiluminscence, that only results in linear amplification. That's already standard (and expensive) detection tech, so what was this company going to add? Integration? Is an inability to design small-scale fluid and materials handling devices why the established players haven't already done this? I doubt it.
Peter Eckstein, the president of the IEEE-USA, said what the university is doing "is just one more sad example of corporations, a major university system in this case,
This is the part I find most alarming about this particular case. While I don't care about the details of how an entity chooses to organize, FUNCTIONALLY universities in the public system are not, and AFAIK were never intended to be, private corporations free to cut costs however they see fit.
In UCSF's case, let it be privatized, all its public funding cut, and reparations paid to the generation(s) of taxpayers that supported it with the understanding that it was serving the American public.
In the broader environment, society needs to re-enable scholarship and an understanding that university education is not trade school, and requires public support to the degree that scholars, doctors, _certain_ types of lawyer, etc. are needed. Let real corporations pay to train IT and engineers they need in their own private educational institutions.</whining-about-society>
The Terminator comparison is a useful one in the following way. The problem with "the Machines" wasn't that they could kill without oversight, it was that they could self-replicate. If the military releases a bunch of autonomous weapons that run amock, they certainly have the capability to destroy said weapons. Lives lost, yes, but not an existential threat. Now, if the military is planning on setting up automated factories with automated Terminator guards and networking these factories with the drones and guards so the battlefield complement and guard station can be automagically expanded based on real-time situation, then we're screwed.
Outside of that, this is a play for increased funding, nothing more.
Lisa Lapin, the vice president of university communications, clarified that the goal is to prevent medical transports [i.e. trips to the hospital].
That's an eminently achievable goal without any restrictions on activities at all.
If they really aren't comfortable with a "leave 'em where they lie" policy, the admniistration could always try a new sanctioned procedure of (1) propping them in the corner, (2) feeding them a spoon of Ipecac, and (3) hooking a gallon IV to their arm until morning. I'll bet < $100/instance with a minimally trained campus volunteer squad. Other than ensuring the little 'uns don't fall forward to drown in their own vomit, a hospital isn't going to be able to do much more than that.
Microsoft has been warning people for ages that Kaby Lake will not run on anything older than Windows 10
First, operating systems run on hardware, not the other way around.
Second, TFA has no idea of the implications, only that Intel isn't going to waste energy and resources polishing drivers for a nearly 10-year old OS revision. I'll bet that holds true for 10-year-old MacOS and Linux kernels as well, although they might not target specific hardware in quite so integrated (in the poor design sense) a manner as does Windows 10. Maybe Win7/8 will run fine but not be able to access some of the newer hardware features. Maybe they won't boot. No one speaking publicly knows yet. Summary seems more FUD than fact.
...a wage race to the bottom. Programming isn't just being used for elite government projects with unlimited funding, it's everywhere.
And CS != programming, dammit. Programming can be done just fine without knowing a damn thing about how a computer works, any more than I need to know the human auditory system to communicate via spoken language. Are tomorrow's jobs really going to be designing higher performance processors and new paradigms for information transformation? Or, primarily using what we have to move data around faster and extract meaning from it? I suspect the former is saturated with homegrown talent. The latter probably requires community college on top of existing high school programs.
"Hopefully this was just an isolated incident and not the start of a larger coordinated effort to overthrow humanity."
This one has apparently been coordinating with our Roomba when we forget to shut the door. It escapes into the hallway to train for mayhem on the day it gets its flamethrowing upgrade.
You don't have to be a mathematician, you only need to be able to implement algorithms designed by mathematicians on computers. I think they called that profession "programmer" once, and there even used to be Americans who did it.
You seem to be starting from the premise that management would honestly assess whether the target skills are available domestically, that the labor market is functional, and that those skills are worth $120-$150k.
* There maybe other advantages to bringing in someone under H1-B than just their skills, such that paying a premium is worth it. Less access or familiarity with the judicial system? Easier to fire? Easier to work like a dog because they're desperate to stay?
* If the skills are worth MORE than $120-$150k, then it's the same as the current system.
* If the skills are worth LESS than $120-$150k, then imagine the domestic outcry at "importing" overpaid foreigners
* Does the labor market function? Or has it become complex enough that it can be gamed arbitrarily? Maybe that $120-$150k will be granted in stock options, with a base salary of $40k. Then, write the requisition in that over-expansive fashion most seem to be written in today--I don't need a ditch-digger, I need a ditch-digger with at least 4 years experience digging using the model XK49 shovel, and working familiarity with the DA99 pickaxe, and all models of pitchfork and mattock. Gosh, no domestic applicants have that experience. Of course, no one really needs it to do the job, but now I can bring in that $40k H1-B.
They're also not splitting water because in order to prevent the hydroxyl radicals (formed from hydroxide ions after taking one electron out) from chewing up everything or taking their electron back (thereby lowering the photonic efficiency), they quench them with isopropanol. So, they have made an isopropanol-fueled photoelectrochemical cell that uses water as an intermediate electron donor. Next.
"Science" hasn't failed anything. Surveys and amateur statisticians that can't differentiate correlation from causation; journalists who wouldn't understand statistical significance and its implications if their life depended on it; and, a public that hasn't the attention span beyond a headline, and filters based on celebrity name keywords. On top of multiscale incompetence, maybe "the scientific funding mechanism and a priority for novelty and publicity over scholarship" has failed...yes, actually, I suspect that's the main one.
You know, salt water freezes at a lower temperature than fresh.
If I were melting a sh*t-ton of fresh water into a pool of salt water that had a temperature < the freezing point of fresh water, I might expect that fresh water would freeze when it hit that cold salt water. Given that the density of fresh water < the density of salt water, I might even expect that the freezing would occur at the surface.
This isn't rocket science, nor is it especially confusing. The ice in one place is turning into ice in another place. The critical feature is, given these curiously sudden changes being observed, what sort of factor when increased would melt that ice in the first place? I know I'm voting for The Great Liberal Conspiracy, but maybe someone here has other ideas...
Trying to prove a hypothesis is fraught with danger--witness the use of complexity as a "proof" of intelligent design. Failure to disprove is about the best that science can do while maintaining its objectivity. That's not to say that working scientists don't get attached to their ideas and try to "prove" them, but they're not supposed to. If the idea is sound, you can hammer on it all you want, it'll stay standing.
Sometimes I think how much it sucks that I can't keep doing what I like ("actual work") as I get more experienced, and I'm forced into supervising other people doing things I don't particularly care about ("managing"). But that's the point of gaining experience. For programmers, you've experienced umpteen languages, software architectures, programming models, etc. You can see how they relate, and that permits you to solve problems faster. The fresh IT import/grad doesn't have the experience, so when they are faced with that "totally new" problem, they can waste weeks. You-as-manager can fix it in 5 minutes by conveying your experience, possibly without writing a line of code.
As an "aging IT worker", you're not worth much as a code monkey, and even though you might like to be paid like a manager with the responsibilities of a code monkey, that's of no particular value to the ones signing your paycheck. Get into management. Or, start a company where the coding is incumbent on you (along with the managing, budgeting, fund raising, accounting, insuring,...). But whining about having to move up in the world? Not going to work, I doubt.
And if the general population answered 80% yes, then we'd have a debate about the pacifying effect of XBox 360 games. Without context, the observation is irrelevant.
Slashdot Mirror
I know we're short on good metaphors for a Trump presidency, but this seems a little over the top.
I was super disappointed about scientists playing politics and covering up what they obviously knew the audience wanted to know.
Working in a U.S. National Lab, I can say with some likelihood of correctness that any scientists speaking in front of cameras were almost certainly having their strings pulled by the hidden suits in Management, a separate division. So while it might have seemed like scientists were covering their tracks, they almost certainly would have lost their jobs if they'd been open, honest, and forthright without Management's vertiginous spin.
(And, any scientists that should lose their jobs over confusing seconds with minutes, or whatever happened here, would not be put into the spotlight)
It just didn't have the right list of synonyms to parse the command "HEAT F*CKING WATER YOU WORTHLESS PIECE OF SH*T!!!"
Just be glad they aren't charging extra for this feature.
...and now they are.
Your tongue-in-cheek idea is at least as good as any Yahoo's executives have put forward in the last 5 years.
Would love some references to these assertions.
they already use trace multipliers in other areas of medical testing, such as DNA tests
If that was indeed the thinking, then it speaks to her history as a college dropout. DNA tests relying on amplification use the polymerase chain reaction, which is explicitly a template-directed polymerization with exponential amplification. For proteins or small molecules, one would require a specific antibody against a target molecule coupled with something like chemiluminscence, that only results in linear amplification. That's already standard (and expensive) detection tech, so what was this company going to add? Integration? Is an inability to design small-scale fluid and materials handling devices why the established players haven't already done this? I doubt it.
Peter Eckstein, the president of the IEEE-USA, said what the university is doing "is just one more sad example of corporations, a major university system in this case,
This is the part I find most alarming about this particular case. While I don't care about the details of how an entity chooses to organize, FUNCTIONALLY universities in the public system are not, and AFAIK were never intended to be, private corporations free to cut costs however they see fit.
In UCSF's case, let it be privatized, all its public funding cut, and reparations paid to the generation(s) of taxpayers that supported it with the understanding that it was serving the American public.
In the broader environment, society needs to re-enable scholarship and an understanding that university education is not trade school, and requires public support to the degree that scholars, doctors, _certain_ types of lawyer, etc. are needed. Let real corporations pay to train IT and engineers they need in their own private educational institutions.</whining-about-society>
The Terminator comparison is a useful one in the following way. The problem with "the Machines" wasn't that they could kill without oversight, it was that they could self-replicate. If the military releases a bunch of autonomous weapons that run amock, they certainly have the capability to destroy said weapons. Lives lost, yes, but not an existential threat. Now, if the military is planning on setting up automated factories with automated Terminator guards and networking these factories with the drones and guards so the battlefield complement and guard station can be automagically expanded based on real-time situation, then we're screwed.
Outside of that, this is a play for increased funding, nothing more.
Call me when she questions the definition of "is". It is a proven Clinton strategy.
Lisa Lapin, the vice president of university communications, clarified that the goal is to prevent medical transports [i.e. trips to the hospital].
That's an eminently achievable goal without any restrictions on activities at all.
If they really aren't comfortable with a "leave 'em where they lie" policy, the admniistration could always try a new sanctioned procedure of (1) propping them in the corner, (2) feeding them a spoon of Ipecac, and (3) hooking a gallon IV to their arm until morning. I'll bet < $100/instance with a minimally trained campus volunteer squad. Other than ensuring the little 'uns don't fall forward to drown in their own vomit, a hospital isn't going to be able to do much more than that.
Microsoft has been warning people for ages that Kaby Lake will not run on anything older than Windows 10
First, operating systems run on hardware, not the other way around.
Second, TFA has no idea of the implications, only that Intel isn't going to waste energy and resources polishing drivers for a nearly 10-year old OS revision. I'll bet that holds true for 10-year-old MacOS and Linux kernels as well, although they might not target specific hardware in quite so integrated (in the poor design sense) a manner as does Windows 10. Maybe Win7/8 will run fine but not be able to access some of the newer hardware features. Maybe they won't boot. No one speaking publicly knows yet. Summary seems more FUD than fact.
...a wage race to the bottom. Programming isn't just being used for elite government projects with unlimited funding, it's everywhere.
And CS != programming, dammit. Programming can be done just fine without knowing a damn thing about how a computer works, any more than I need to know the human auditory system to communicate via spoken language. Are tomorrow's jobs really going to be designing higher performance processors and new paradigms for information transformation? Or, primarily using what we have to move data around faster and extract meaning from it? I suspect the former is saturated with homegrown talent. The latter probably requires community college on top of existing high school programs.
So, not homegrown, more like "homecloned" from US chips and then enhanced.
In other words, the hard work was already done, and they just took it.
As can be said of most innovation--building on the shoulders of giants.
This one has apparently been coordinating with our Roomba when we forget to shut the door. It escapes into the hallway to train for mayhem on the day it gets its flamethrowing upgrade.
You don't have to be a mathematician, you only need to be able to implement algorithms designed by mathematicians on computers. I think they called that profession "programmer" once, and there even used to be Americans who did it.
Crafty, leaving off the initial "De"! That's why Zuckerberg's making mad $$ while the rest of us are wasting time with password managers.
You seem to be starting from the premise that management would honestly assess whether the target skills are available domestically, that the labor market is functional, and that those skills are worth $120-$150k.
UC Davis motto: "Let There Be Light." As long as, you know, it doesn't reflect poorly on us or give donors and student cash-cows pause...
They're also not splitting water because in order to prevent the hydroxyl radicals (formed from hydroxide ions after taking one electron out) from chewing up everything or taking their electron back (thereby lowering the photonic efficiency), they quench them with isopropanol. So, they have made an isopropanol-fueled photoelectrochemical cell that uses water as an intermediate electron donor. Next.
"Science" hasn't failed anything. Surveys and amateur statisticians that can't differentiate correlation from causation; journalists who wouldn't understand statistical significance and its implications if their life depended on it; and, a public that hasn't the attention span beyond a headline, and filters based on celebrity name keywords. On top of multiscale incompetence, maybe "the scientific funding mechanism and a priority for novelty and publicity over scholarship" has failed...yes, actually, I suspect that's the main one.
You know, salt water freezes at a lower temperature than fresh.
If I were melting a sh*t-ton of fresh water into a pool of salt water that had a temperature < the freezing point of fresh water, I might expect that fresh water would freeze when it hit that cold salt water. Given that the density of fresh water < the density of salt water, I might even expect that the freezing would occur at the surface.
This isn't rocket science, nor is it especially confusing. The ice in one place is turning into ice in another place. The critical feature is, given these curiously sudden changes being observed, what sort of factor when increased would melt that ice in the first place? I know I'm voting for The Great Liberal Conspiracy, but maybe someone here has other ideas...
Trying to prove a hypothesis is fraught with danger--witness the use of complexity as a "proof" of intelligent design. Failure to disprove is about the best that science can do while maintaining its objectivity. That's not to say that working scientists don't get attached to their ideas and try to "prove" them, but they're not supposed to. If the idea is sound, you can hammer on it all you want, it'll stay standing.
Sometimes I think how much it sucks that I can't keep doing what I like ("actual work") as I get more experienced, and I'm forced into supervising other people doing things I don't particularly care about ("managing"). But that's the point of gaining experience. For programmers, you've experienced umpteen languages, software architectures, programming models, etc. You can see how they relate, and that permits you to solve problems faster. The fresh IT import/grad doesn't have the experience, so when they are faced with that "totally new" problem, they can waste weeks. You-as-manager can fix it in 5 minutes by conveying your experience, possibly without writing a line of code. As an "aging IT worker", you're not worth much as a code monkey, and even though you might like to be paid like a manager with the responsibilities of a code monkey, that's of no particular value to the ones signing your paycheck. Get into management. Or, start a company where the coding is incumbent on you (along with the managing, budgeting, fund raising, accounting, insuring, ...). But whining about having to move up in the world? Not going to work, I doubt.
And if the general population answered 80% yes, then we'd have a debate about the pacifying effect of XBox 360 games. Without context, the observation is irrelevant.