"Otherwise, you run the danger of looking at the code later, and not being in that mental ecstacy of understanding everything at once"...
okay, someone has to stop coding while on LSD...
"conceived of a frightfully, inhumanly efficient and clever way of doing something that no human may ever imagine again."
Okay, and I imagine this happens to you, how many times a day? Month? Year? Lifetime? And of those times, what percentage of the time do you look back and wonder what the hell you were smoking? Or worse yet, have to come back to your "clever code" and modify it? Perhaps having someone else there to provide sanity checks might help?
Unless it's a solo poject for pure comp-sci research (and even then you're going to have to write a paper on it), your code doesn't exist in a vacuum. Whatever "clever" code you make will be a headache to whomever has to come afterwards to change, modify, or maintain it. Especially if it's "something that no human may ever imagine again."
My house is not securable, nor do I expect it to be. So a person entering my house, or temporarily taking my car is not doing me a service - I already *know* they are insecure, and I expect people to stay the hell out.
By contrast who gave NYTimes their confidential information expected that their information would be kept secure. But the NY Times left that information available to anyone with modest hacking talents. Bad news. What if someone other than Adrian Lamo found that information first?
If someone finds a security hole in any site that stores my credit card information and then reports it, then I'm happy, whether or not it was an official security audit or someone like Adrian Lamo. The bank/merchant will be forced to close a hole that a malicious person would *not* report and instead use for nefarious purposes.
The New York Times did not "find" Adrian Lemo "rummaging" through their - he directly reported what he did to them. I'm not an elite hacker, but I'm guessing what he did would have gone unnoticed had he not done so.
So your analogy is wrong, twice. Either try again or realise that, embarrasing to the NY Times it may have been, Adrian Lamo was actually providing a public service. The FBI's wrongheaded actions, though in compliance with the law, hurts us all.
Bottom line: if there's a security flaw in an important system that keeps confidential information, no-one should go to jail for reporting it. Period.
So what? The end result is positive. If a person points out critical security flaws in your system, he's doing a service for you. True, it's obnoxious and even a little scary that the person could stick his/her nose that far into your system,
Being confident that what you're doing is okay doesn't mean necessarily that you trust that the legal system/government won't fuck you over. Ruby Ridge or Waco anyone?
What's the point in driving white-hats underground? What they do is good for the internet community. And the NY Times is being a bunch of wrongheaded dicks for fucking with that.
From related story http://www.securityfocus.com/news/358
[Li]mited amnesty for hackers was too much for NFR Security CTO Marcus Ranum, who signaled his dissent by applauding alone from the back of the room at the mention of a legislative proposal that would make some hackers eligible for life imprisonment. "You guys are a bunch of security professionals and you're sitting here making apologies for hackers," said Ranum. "That's the lamest thing I've never heard of."
In an interview later, Ranum called Lamo a "sociopath," and said his hacks are indefensible. "It's against the law, how much more cut and dry can you get?" said Ranum. "If society was comfortable with what's he's doing, they'd change the law."
Perhaps he doesn't like the fact that Lamo is doing this for free instead of making the NYTimes pay through the nose?
Being responsible is not always compatible with fun. But stealing someone's hard-thought intellectual property is not fair either. Why do you think it's reasonable to hoard 100's of gigs of other people's hard work?
Your all or nothing "it's free or else we can't afford it" argument is bogus - there's some point of payment that's fair - perhaps $0.01 or $0.02 cents per picture? $0.02 to $0.05 per play of a song, up to 10 plays and then it's free? It may not be easy to figure out, but an equitable level of payment *does* exist - one that doesn't unduly burden the user, but does fairly honor and reward the creator.
No one does something for nothing. If you're doing open-source software, you're getting something from it, even if it's not direct $$$. Maybe it's for prestige from your peers, maybe it's so that you can get recognized and get an actual paying programming job. The point is that (consciously or unconsciously), you expect reward for your efforts.
The same goes for artistic endeavors. If I put in 1000's of hours into making something worthwhile, I deserve reward from it, including $$$. Exactly how much is up for debate - but my work is not free.
It may be impossible to track smells and tastes, saying tunes and pictures cannot be tracked is pure manure. The technology exists and is being refined for tracking and digital rights management. Be honest -- you know who made your favorite song -- so when's the last time you wrote a check and thank-you note to your favorite band?
"people assumed wrongly that objects in motion had determined positions at any instant in time, thus freezing the bodies motion static at that instant and enabling the impossible situation of the paradoxes to be derived"
In your maths and physics class, there *was* a presumption of an instant; that things had a precise position at an exact time.
Your Xeno's paradox solution (presumably that the infinite added up to a finite number) implicitly relies on this basic assumption -- that we can talk about the absoute position of a particle at an instantaneous moment in time.
Newtonian physics relies on Calculus, which also relies on the idea of the instant position and instant time. So what happens when you cannot use these concepts?
You're clearly not having fun, and you're doing something that you've decided (emotionally, not mentally) is unimportant.
No? You think you need to be in college? Try giving me some reasons otherwise - and see if YOU find your arguments convincing (again, emotionally, not mentally - it's not your abstract mind that keeps you going when school gets tough). If not, then you're wasting your time and energy.
Find something else that you *want* to do. Right now, not some abstract idea of a career some 10 years down the line. Assuming you're smart, you'll have both good times and bad, but you'll learn a lot that isn't taught inside classrooms but is equally important to having a successful life (and your life is more important than your career, right?).
College will be waiting when you are truly ready for it, when you really have a desire or need to learn something.
P.S.
It's interesting that someone else mentioned Persig's "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance". Reading Chapter 16 in Part III, where Persig discusses a hypothetical student might be of particular relevance to you right now.
Your explanation is a little vague. How do you acquire dedication and discipline? And could you elaborate on this "shift" and how this student might acquire it?
Otherwise, I'm afraid your answer is rather useless...
My metaphor does not fail. Both corporations and sharks act according to their own natures. A shark acts according to its biological mandate to hunt, eat, and procreate. A corporation similarly acts according to the mandates of capitalism, which is to grow and make profits.
Microsoft is a very successful company, but no one can say this is because of successful ethics - in fact, there is considerable evidence that they succeeded by ignoring ethical considerations in their single-minded pursuit of control and dominance of various markets.
Yes, it is naive to expect that any corporation be or do good. That is not their reason for existence.
Sure I can question your statement that any "artificial" system cannot be good. Maybe we just haven't found the right system yet for optimal "goodness".
Of course, I consider "good" to be a relative term anyways - the Kantian viewpoint of an absolute moral imperative is BS (see the Chinese parable that "a broken leg could be a good thing"), as what's good for me may not be good for you, and what I think may be good for me may not be at all.
Yes it is naive to expect that priveleged human beings will act in the interests of "the rest of the world" whomever or whatever you consider them to be. To do so is to ignore what history, current events, psychology, and economics tell us about human beings, corporations, and the way both tend to behave.
I don't know what "like-minded" ethical conduct means. Again, you are implying a universal code of conduct that everyone agrees upon when in fact none such exists.
As to whether I'm being cynical or not, that's a judgement call. For me, it's merely based on what I've seen, read and heard in my 30 years of existence - the fact is, I see a lot of negative stories (pick your favorite evil corporation - Microsoft and Enron, GE and AOL immediately come to mind) and not a lot about corporations intentionally doing good (e.g. Ben and Jerry's), and those corporations tend to get bought or die out (again, Ben and Jerry's). I also understand that a corporation is an organization designed to make money for its shareholders - and that's their singular and primary goal. Based on these two things, my conclusion is inevitable. One may wish otherwise, but it just ain't so.
"This article seems to confirm my suspicion that this lawsuit is a business strategy rather than a principled legal action."
Wow, this is a surprise - we're talking about a corporation here, not a philanthropist. This is like saying 'the way this shark is circling around me confirms my suspicion that it wants to eat me and not be my friend.'
Corporation's motivations and ethical motivations are completely orthogonal to one another. In some cases, what's best for the company (& shareholders) is ethical. In some cases it's not ethical. Either way, the corporation will chose what it thinks is better for the bottom line.
"Rather than doing something just and benevolent (as lawsuits are intended), this suit seems to seek to exploit a weakness for selfish gain or malevolent satisfaction."
See above. Like a shark, SCO's motivations are not malicious (although the CEO appears to be a butt-head) - it's goal is to make money (for top executives first, shareholders second), and if they think they can do it by throwing around lawsuits, they will.
This is basically true, but you seem to imply that the degradation is linear - 2x the cache size = 2x the wait. I would be surprised if this were true for Mozilla, which uses a hashing scheme. In general, the amount of items in the cache should not dramatically affect performance.
In real life of course, you can just do an emperical experiment - set your browser's cache to 1/4 1/2 1x 2x 4x the current size, clear it out, and see how it does at each setting.
Keep in mind that cached files are sitting on your hard drive, so if you can do something to improve that, it should help speed.
"junxtaposition"? I had to look through dictionary.com and the word isn't even there.
Please be nice to your fellow Slashdotters and keep your language a little simpler. If your idea has merit we'll appreciate it without the fancy words.
Otherwise, you think you're being impressive when you're just being grandiloquent.
Are there certain games that make people more productive than others? Should employers promote solitaire but ban Everquest?
What about the kind of job being done? Clearly, someone flipping burgers doesn't need time off to rejuvenate their creative side.
In the end, though, I think game-playing should be taken on a case-by-case basis. You ban gaming, and see what happens to productivity. Then let some gaming in, and check the same.
And frankly, if people need to waste time, they'll find ways. At least gaming is obvious. What's worse is when people are doing psuedo-productive activities (e.g. "pencil sharpening"), that kill time or contribute nothing to the project, because it's much harder to track them and/or stop them.
A good question. The reason is that a kilogram is not a mathematical object (which is pure idea). It is a scientific object (which can and should have a real world representation).
Pi does not exist in the real world. If you don't agree, show me an object in the real world that has exactly pi length, weight, or volume.
By contrast, the kilogram is an idea (an agreement really), that leads to a real world object (bar of platinum, sphere of silicon) that people can test their measuring devices against.
Ask yourself this: if you and your friend had two scales, how would you know which one is more accurate?
Answer: you would test them against a scale you agreed was more accurate.
But, in order to test for accuracy, you need a very "accurate" object. You need something that everyone agrees weighs a certain amount (say a kilogram?) And your "most accurate" scale had better exactly weigh that object as exactly one kilogram.
That's basically what calibration is: you take an object you declare to be 1 kg (or 1 g) and then you set your scale to indicate it as such. Obviously, there is more to it than that, but that's the very basics.
Science relies tremendously on these types of standards. One of the biggest (and unsung) "wins" of the 20th century was the tremendous increase in the objective standards of accuracy. Imagine trying to build a microprocessor if everything was designed in terms of hand lengths or feet lengths of the various contractors. Without increasingly tight, objective standards of measurement, modern science and technology would not exist.
Ironically enough, I'm a mathematician. I would encourage you to talk to a professional scientist or engineer and ask them about it.
Probably not a serious problem. If you look at the dupont site http://www.dupont.com/displays/oled/ these appear to be "Polymer OLEDs" or LEDs made with basically a type of plastic. So think organic (carbon based) as in the plastic that makes your keyboard instead of organic as in a banana peel.
Yes, just as Italy is the land of the Italians, France is the land of the French, Germany the land of the Germans. Except no one complains about that, do they? And let's not forget Israel and Judea were there before those countries (2000 year diaspora after the Romans found them to be a little bit too fiesty). So let's be fair. If you're going to bag on Israel, you're going to have to bag on pretty much all the countries in Europe.
Also, given that anyone can convert to Judaism (get a circumcision, consult with a good rabbi, have your Bar Mitzvah), it's not a racist country. It's a theocracy (not much better in my opinion).
But, anonymous coward, this anti-semitism is so old news anyhow. There are plenty of Middle Eastern religions to attack. Why don't you broaden your anti-religous horizons and become an Anti-Zoroastrian? Or, you know, there are a lot of Buddhist temples opening up in the United States - perhaps you could check that out...
I'll gladly have this and the parent comment moderated to -1.
The Matrix protagonists *used* technology (as well as the mystical stuff) to win. The movie takes place in a technologically advanced world, so, *surprise!* the villains use (and are(?)) technology.
With a little more thought (you didn't use much of your brain for your comment), you would be able to distinguish between "Luddite" and "Dark Future" which the Matrix is.
And just because I *use* technology doesn't mean I shouldn't be cautious of the dangers.
The real question is then, why are there so many "Dark Future" movies instead of "Happy Future" movies? Well, can you think of a non-boring movie plot where the future is perfectly okay?
Being someone who was in the online education market (pre dot-bomb), let me tell you *exactly* what's going to happen (and in fact I've already seen happening):
Right now every teacher for every class delivers lectures. In the future (10-20 years), this will be the exception. Here's what we'll see:
As with music and books, will be an online store of "greatest hits" - collections of the best online lectures and course materials (tests, activities, skills tests).
The vast majority of instructors will be relegated either to being "support" positions (like most T.A.'s today), roaming class bulletin boards, or being "production assistants" to the Professorial "Superstar", or proctors (grading) for non-automated (e.g. non-multiple choice) tests and assignments.
This is analogous to what's happened in the music industry. Live band performances are the exception, not the rule. Live bands were killed by the invention of records, CD's, and video. (Most) Live courses are going to be killed by the internet. There's simply no need for 1000's of professors to do "covers" of the material one professor (or a good team of educators) can create and distribute online.
FYI - here's how a new (and very good!) online course is produced and automated:
A "Superstar" Professor ("Prof. BIG IQ") and her team creates an online course.
She teaches the course for one quarter. (alpha-testing)
She reviews how the course went, and finds ways to automate (via reorganizing and adding more course material, more skills checks) the areas that students find hard to understand. The goal is to have the course "automate" the questions the students ask most.
She "tests" the course again, by teaching it another quarter (beta-testing).
She repeats steps 3 and 4 (rewriting, adding, revising, and testing) until "the course practically teaches itself".
The course is finally "published" and, in fact is better than 99% of the "non-automated" courses out there. Professor "BIG IQ" (and her support team) now moves onto the next challenge.
Note that I use "is produced" rather than "will be produced in the future" up above, because it's already happening.
Taking that argument further along, it's time to go back to programming in assembly, or better yet, binary. High level languages are overrated, anyhow.
Slashdot Mirror
Yay! Time to feed the troll. Atkins' heart attack was in no way related to ateriosclerosis.
2 5/ atkins.diet/
http://www.cnn.com/2002/HEALTH/diet.fitness/04/
Hmmm... I couldn't get a total of more than 999.
Not really affordable though, even at a Apple Loan rate of $87,000/month.
"Otherwise, you run the danger of looking at the code later, and not being in that mental ecstacy of understanding everything at once"...
okay, someone has to stop coding while on LSD...
"conceived of a frightfully, inhumanly efficient and clever way of doing something that no human may ever imagine again."
Okay, and I imagine this happens to you, how many times a day? Month? Year? Lifetime? And of those times, what percentage of the time do you look back and wonder what the hell you were smoking? Or worse yet, have to come back to your "clever code" and modify it? Perhaps having someone else there to provide sanity checks might help?
Unless it's a solo poject for pure comp-sci research (and even then you're going to have to write a paper on it), your code doesn't exist in a vacuum. Whatever "clever" code you make will be a headache to whomever has to come afterwards to change, modify, or maintain it. Especially if it's "something that no human may ever imagine again."
You're one of those people who's into the "three strikes" laws, aren't you?
Black and white your favorite (only?) colors?
A very poor analogy.
My house is not securable, nor do I expect it to be. So a person entering my house, or temporarily taking my car is not doing me a service - I already *know* they are insecure, and I expect people to stay the hell out.
By contrast who gave NYTimes their confidential information expected that their information would be kept secure. But the NY Times left that information available to anyone with modest hacking talents. Bad news. What if someone other than Adrian Lamo found that information first?
If someone finds a security hole in any site that stores my credit card information and then reports it, then I'm happy, whether or not it was an official security audit or someone like Adrian Lamo. The bank/merchant will be forced to close a hole that a malicious person would *not* report and instead use for nefarious purposes.
The New York Times did not "find" Adrian Lemo "rummaging" through their - he directly reported what he did to them. I'm not an elite hacker, but I'm guessing what he did would have gone unnoticed had he not done so.
So your analogy is wrong, twice. Either try again or realise that, embarrasing to the NY Times it may have been, Adrian Lamo was actually providing a public service. The FBI's wrongheaded actions, though in compliance with the law, hurts us all.
Bottom line: if there's a security flaw in an important system that keeps confidential information, no-one should go to jail for reporting it. Period.
Let them know that they're doing a disservice to the internet community.
t te rtoeditor.html
Give their public relations guys a call and let them know they're making a bad move.
http://www.nytco.com/contact.html for phone
Or via email:
http://www.nytimes.com/ref/membercenter/help/le
So what? The end result is positive. If a person points out critical security flaws in your system, he's doing a service for you. True, it's obnoxious and even a little scary that the person could stick his/her nose that far into your system,
Being confident that what you're doing is okay doesn't mean necessarily that you trust that the legal system/government won't fuck you over. Ruby Ridge or Waco anyone?
What's the point in driving white-hats underground? What they do is good for the internet community. And the NY Times is being a bunch of wrongheaded dicks for fucking with that.
From related story http://www.securityfocus.com/news/358
[Li]mited amnesty for hackers was too much for NFR Security CTO Marcus Ranum, who signaled his dissent by applauding alone from the back of the room at the mention of a legislative proposal that would make some hackers eligible for life imprisonment. "You guys are a bunch of security professionals and you're sitting here making apologies for hackers," said Ranum. "That's the lamest thing I've never heard of."
In an interview later, Ranum called Lamo a "sociopath," and said his hacks are indefensible. "It's against the law, how much more cut and dry can you get?" said Ranum. "If society was comfortable with what's he's doing, they'd change the law."
Perhaps he doesn't like the fact that Lamo is doing this for free instead of making the NYTimes pay through the nose?
Being responsible is not always compatible with fun. But stealing someone's hard-thought intellectual property is not fair either. Why do you think it's reasonable to hoard 100's of gigs of other people's hard work?
Your all or nothing "it's free or else we can't afford it" argument is bogus - there's some point of payment that's fair - perhaps $0.01 or $0.02 cents per picture? $0.02 to $0.05 per play of a song, up to 10 plays and then it's free? It may not be easy to figure out, but an equitable level of payment *does* exist - one that doesn't unduly burden the user, but does fairly honor and reward the creator.
No one does something for nothing. If you're doing open-source software, you're getting something from it, even if it's not direct $$$. Maybe it's for prestige from your peers, maybe it's so that you can get recognized and get an actual paying programming job. The point is that (consciously or unconsciously), you expect reward for your efforts.
The same goes for artistic endeavors. If I put in 1000's of hours into making something worthwhile, I deserve reward from it, including $$$. Exactly how much is up for debate - but my work is not free.
It may be impossible to track smells and tastes, saying tunes and pictures cannot be tracked is pure manure. The technology exists and is being refined for tracking and digital rights management. Be honest -- you know who made your favorite song -- so when's the last time you wrote a check and thank-you note to your favorite band?
No, this is not stunningly obvious.
RTFA again, and pay attention to the phrase,
"people assumed wrongly that objects in motion had determined positions at any instant in time, thus freezing the bodies motion static at that instant and enabling the impossible situation of the paradoxes to be derived"
In your maths and physics class, there *was* a presumption of an instant; that things had a precise position at an exact time.
Your Xeno's paradox solution (presumably that the infinite added up to a finite number) implicitly relies on this basic assumption -- that we can talk about the absoute position of a particle at an instantaneous moment in time.
Newtonian physics relies on Calculus, which also relies on the idea of the instant position and instant time. So what happens when you cannot use these concepts?
Why are you in college in the first place?
You're clearly not having fun, and you're doing something that you've decided (emotionally, not mentally) is unimportant.
No? You think you need to be in college? Try giving me some reasons otherwise - and see if YOU find your arguments convincing (again, emotionally, not mentally - it's not your abstract mind that keeps you going when school gets tough). If not, then you're wasting your time and energy.
Find something else that you *want* to do. Right now, not some abstract idea of a career some 10 years down the line. Assuming you're smart, you'll have both good times and bad, but you'll learn a lot that isn't taught inside classrooms but is equally important to having a successful life (and your life is more important than your career, right?).
College will be waiting when you are truly ready for it, when you really have a desire or need to learn something.
P.S.
It's interesting that someone else mentioned Persig's "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance". Reading Chapter 16 in Part III, where Persig discusses a hypothetical student might be of particular relevance to you right now.
Your explanation is a little vague. How do you acquire dedication and discipline? And could you elaborate on this "shift" and how this student might acquire it?
Otherwise, I'm afraid your answer is rather useless...
My metaphor does not fail. Both corporations and sharks act according to their own natures. A shark acts according to its biological mandate to hunt, eat, and procreate. A corporation similarly acts according to the mandates of capitalism, which is to grow and make profits.
Microsoft is a very successful company, but no one can say this is because of successful ethics - in fact, there is considerable evidence that they succeeded by ignoring ethical considerations in their single-minded pursuit of control and dominance of various markets.
Yes, it is naive to expect that any corporation be or do good. That is not their reason for existence.
Sure I can question your statement that any "artificial" system cannot be good. Maybe we just haven't found the right system yet for optimal "goodness".
Of course, I consider "good" to be a relative term anyways - the Kantian viewpoint of an absolute moral imperative is BS (see the Chinese parable that "a broken leg could be a good thing"), as what's good for me may not be good for you, and what I think may be good for me may not be at all.
Yes it is naive to expect that priveleged human beings will act in the interests of "the rest of the world" whomever or whatever you consider them to be. To do so is to ignore what history, current events, psychology, and economics tell us about human beings, corporations, and the way both tend to behave.
I don't know what "like-minded" ethical conduct means. Again, you are implying a universal code of conduct that everyone agrees upon when in fact none such exists.
As to whether I'm being cynical or not, that's a judgement call. For me, it's merely based on what I've seen, read and heard in my 30 years of existence - the fact is, I see a lot of negative stories (pick your favorite evil corporation - Microsoft and Enron, GE and AOL immediately come to mind) and not a lot about corporations intentionally doing good (e.g. Ben and Jerry's), and those corporations tend to get bought or die out (again, Ben and Jerry's). I also understand that a corporation is an organization designed to make money for its shareholders - and that's their singular and primary goal. Based on these two things, my conclusion is inevitable. One may wish otherwise, but it just ain't so.
"Most importantly: "if a company is not after money, suing is not the way to go.""
Anyone else not not gagging on the non not use of double negatives?
"This article seems to confirm my suspicion that this lawsuit is a business strategy rather than a principled legal action."
Wow, this is a surprise - we're talking about a corporation here, not a philanthropist. This is like saying 'the way this shark is circling around me confirms my suspicion that it wants to eat me and not be my friend.'
Corporation's motivations and ethical motivations are completely orthogonal to one another. In some cases, what's best for the company (& shareholders) is ethical. In some cases it's not ethical. Either way, the corporation will chose what it thinks is better for the bottom line.
"Rather than doing something just and benevolent (as lawsuits are intended), this suit seems to seek to exploit a weakness for selfish gain or malevolent satisfaction."
See above. Like a shark, SCO's motivations are not malicious (although the CEO appears to be a butt-head) - it's goal is to make money (for top executives first, shareholders second), and if they think they can do it by throwing around lawsuits, they will.
This is basically true, but you seem to imply that the degradation is linear - 2x the cache size = 2x the wait. I would be surprised if this were true for Mozilla, which uses a hashing scheme. In general, the amount of items in the cache should not dramatically affect performance.
k /c ache/src/nsDiskCacheMap.cpp
i li ty/reports/hash.html
In real life of course, you can just do an emperical experiment - set your browser's cache to 1/4 1/2 1x 2x 4x the current size, clear it out, and see how it does at each setting.
Keep in mind that cached files are sitting on your hard drive, so if you can do something to improve that, it should help speed.
References:
http://lxr.mozilla.org/mozilla1.0/source/netwer
http://www.citi.umich.edu/projects/linux-scalab
(ugh hate the spaces Slashdot puts in URLs -- why does it do that?)
"junxtaposition"? I had to look through dictionary.com and the word isn't even there.
Please be nice to your fellow Slashdotters and keep your language a little simpler. If your idea has merit we'll appreciate it without the fancy words.
Otherwise, you think you're being impressive when you're just being grandiloquent.
Are there certain games that make people more productive than others? Should employers promote solitaire but ban Everquest?
What about the kind of job being done? Clearly, someone flipping burgers doesn't need time off to rejuvenate their creative side.
In the end, though, I think game-playing should be taken on a case-by-case basis. You ban gaming, and see what happens to productivity. Then let some gaming in, and check the same.
And frankly, if people need to waste time, they'll find ways. At least gaming is obvious. What's worse is when people are doing psuedo-productive activities (e.g. "pencil sharpening"), that kill time or contribute nothing to the project, because it's much harder to track them and/or stop them.
Their reasons are right there in the article.
A good question. The reason is that a kilogram is not a mathematical object (which is pure idea). It is a scientific object (which can and should have a real world representation).
Pi does not exist in the real world. If you don't agree, show me an object in the real world that has exactly pi length, weight, or volume.
By contrast, the kilogram is an idea (an agreement really), that leads to a real world object (bar of platinum, sphere of silicon) that people can test their measuring devices against.
Ask yourself this: if you and your friend had two scales, how would you know which one is more accurate?
Answer: you would test them against a scale you agreed was more accurate.
But, in order to test for accuracy, you need a very "accurate" object. You need something that everyone agrees weighs a certain amount (say a kilogram?) And your "most accurate" scale had better exactly weigh that object as exactly one kilogram.
That's basically what calibration is: you take an object you declare to be 1 kg (or 1 g) and then you set your scale to indicate it as such. Obviously, there is more to it than that, but that's the very basics.
Science relies tremendously on these types of standards. One of the biggest (and unsung) "wins" of the 20th century was the tremendous increase in the objective standards of accuracy. Imagine trying to build a microprocessor if everything was designed in terms of hand lengths or feet lengths of the various contractors. Without increasingly tight, objective standards of measurement, modern science and technology would not exist.
Ironically enough, I'm a mathematician. I would encourage you to talk to a professional scientist or engineer and ask them about it.
Probably not a serious problem. If you look at the dupont site http://www.dupont.com/displays/oled/ these appear to be "Polymer OLEDs" or LEDs made with basically a type of plastic. So think organic (carbon based) as in the plastic that makes your keyboard instead of organic as in a banana peel.
Yes, just as Italy is the land of the Italians, France is the land of the French, Germany the land of the Germans. Except no one complains about that, do they? And let's not forget Israel and Judea were there before those countries (2000 year diaspora after the Romans found them to be a little bit too fiesty). So let's be fair. If you're going to bag on Israel, you're going to have to bag on pretty much all the countries in Europe.
Also, given that anyone can convert to Judaism (get a circumcision, consult with a good rabbi, have your Bar Mitzvah), it's not a racist country. It's a theocracy (not much better in my opinion).
But, anonymous coward, this anti-semitism is so old news anyhow. There are plenty of Middle Eastern religions to attack. Why don't you broaden your anti-religous horizons and become an Anti-Zoroastrian? Or, you know, there are a lot of Buddhist temples opening up in the United States - perhaps you could check that out...
I'll gladly have this and the parent comment moderated to -1.
Boy, who rained on your parade today?
The Matrix protagonists *used* technology (as well as the mystical stuff) to win. The movie takes place in a technologically advanced world, so, *surprise!* the villains use (and are(?)) technology.
With a little more thought (you didn't use much of your brain for your comment), you would be able to distinguish between "Luddite" and "Dark Future" which the Matrix is.
And just because I *use* technology doesn't mean I shouldn't be cautious of the dangers.
The real question is then, why are there so many "Dark Future" movies instead of "Happy Future" movies? Well, can you think of a non-boring movie plot where the future is perfectly okay?
Right now every teacher for every class delivers lectures. In the future (10-20 years), this will be the exception. Here's what we'll see:
This is analogous to what's happened in the music industry. Live band performances are the exception, not the rule. Live bands were killed by the invention of records, CD's, and video. (Most) Live courses are going to be killed by the internet. There's simply no need for 1000's of professors to do "covers" of the material one professor (or a good team of educators) can create and distribute online.
FYI - here's how a new (and very good!) online course is produced and automated:
Note that I use "is produced" rather than "will be produced in the future" up above, because it's already happening.
You heard it here first, ladies and gentlemen.
Taking that argument further along, it's time to go back to programming in assembly, or better yet, binary. High level languages are overrated, anyhow.