Publishing is part of the process, not the result of the process.
Universities, governments, and corporate science divisions have been paying for raw output without validating the quality of that output. The result is a vast sea of crap masquerading as the truth.
How often is a scientist given the job of vetting another's work? So how often do you suppose it happens? And how much do you suppose it's worth to a scientist to participate in validating the truth, and how much to participate in publishing over validating?
Re:I wonder how much of this is quality . . .
on
Critics Pan Nemesis
·
· Score: 2
This is why computer geeks still make fun of English majors.
"The conflict between the free exchange of ideas that the scientific community demands, and the property ownership that commercial sponsors need to survive".
We like to see the business community as demanding and unreasonable, and we like to see the scientific community as altruistic and open, but in the real world, business is based on not losing money and most science can (possibly) proceed without community-wide coordination.
Kleck's study is part of a spectrum of studies, and not surprisingly stands out as being almost entirely free of rational survey construction and scientific method.
His numbers are some 15X as high as those gathered in the Department of Justice's own study of the use of guns to avert crimes.
If I went looking for ESP and discovered I could read minds (because minds wrote words and I can read words 100% of the time, not just 50% like the pros say I should be able to if there was no ESP!), I'd go around telling people I was converted to ESP, too.
--Blair
Did that article teach anyone anything?
on
Molecular Photography
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Blah blah blah
The quantum states of phosphorus atoms are particularly long-lived,...and other neobabble.
The article tells us basically nothing real, except the names of a few people and that they're working on something called "quantum" computing.
So here's how it should work (off the top of my head):
An atom or molecule (a collection of particles) has a set of wave-equation solutions. Each of solutions corresponds to a single point in a lattice, whose coordinates are the quantum numbers; or a single value of an n-tuple whose indices are the quantum numbers; or a single member of a set of n-tuples each of which is identified by a unique combination of quantum numbers...however you want to express it. These quantum numbers are inserted into the wave equation and out pops a solution--a wave-function--that does not diverge or otherwise go kaput.
If the atom, molecule, collection of particles, etc., is in one state (one combination of quantum numbers; one wavefunction), it's just a matter of applying energy in the right way to push it into another state. The quantum numbers move to a new point in the lattice, you change the n-tuple indices, whatever. You really cause the wavefunction to change, and the spatial arrangement available to the particles moving in the system changes. A spherical shell becomes a dumb-bell shape (not really, but it's a simpler visual than what really happens, so go with it).
Now you have a binary memory system. Most systems have way more than two states, but only a few will be stable (metastable, actually) enough to be useful for computation. But trinary, quaternary, etc. are certainly not out of the question; though the question is a lot easier if you can still use all this software expertise that has binary math running through its veins.
Quantum calculations are a lot harder to grok than quantum memory. Something has to work so that the state of the memory actuates another part of the system to undergo a change on a quantum level from one stable state (n-tuple value/wavefunction) to another.
The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle would get involved, so the family of states you use would have to be pretty special to keep the particles in knowable states. I think that's what the reporter was really getting at when talking about the phosphorus thing.
StarOffice is listed at $79.95 for SOHO; less for larger license packs.
Sun should just give up. Looking at the website, they still don't know how to present information so that you can make a rational decision before committing money and very expensive time to installing and evaluating the product.
And they still present "point-and-click" interfaces as though they're something special and different. I can tell from here that unless I get some serious geek mojo going, downloading and running this is going to be a pain in the ass.
The only feature that seems competitive is their touting of "scalability", whatever they want to mean by that. But I've got three running computers in this room, and two on the floor that I could "scale" into the network, so why would I care about massive scalability?
Their market is small, their niche is narrow, and their execution is bush.
Damn. They should put the preview and submit buttons on separate computers.
Anyway, to continue:
Yes, the popularity of the convention among local merchants, and how it treats them, is important. If the convention was worth more in cashflow, competent managers would buy it and run it better and attract more participants and flow some of that cash to themselves. It's all interconnected. It's not more significant than the revelation that the telecom industry was telling lies, or the software industry's failure to keep up with the computing power curve, but it's significant.
The cabbie was just the first one I talked to. Everyone hates Comdex. Except the LVCVB, who still see it as a way to say that over a hundred thousand people will be in Vegas, although only about 80K are showing up these days.
Might as well post this here because there won't be any Comdex news on/. because nobody cares anymore.
I was in a cab in Vegas the week before Comdex. The cabbie said everyone in town hates Comdex. "They all come here with one shirt and $20 and a week later they leave with the same shirt and the same $20."
Makes sense. If that town loved Comdex, you can be sure it'd still be growing even if the technology industry wasn't (which it is).
I've submitted one bug to Mozilla, and had to change the submission three times and recategorize the bug twice just to get those lamers to put it where it now sits, ignored, in a queue of bugs.
I have no faith that it will ever be fixed (it's been about 6 months, and I still get mail like "if you want this bug fixed you should put it in the right category").
Mozilla is an immature product being produced by puerile people. Its features are weak and its reliability is low. As much as I despise Microsoft, it has produced the best browser ever since AOL took over Netscape. Mozilla itself isn't even close. Phoenix was better than Mozilla, but still not as good as MSIE. Netscape, especially the execrable java versions, is unrunnable at modern network speeds.
Mozilla is no proof that the open source development model is superior to corporate engineering. Perfectly the opposite. Given the weaknesses of IE, Mozilla should by now be kicking its ass. It doesn't. The reason is the fractious, undirected, and weak talents of the developers and the model they work under. QED.
I just want to know why deleting a few dozen bits takes an hour...their DB design must suck. No wonder the thing can't keep up with its own hard drive.
You aren't buying a product, you're buying a service. The service is a license. If you don't want it so much because you rent it instead of owning it, don't pay so much for it. If you don't want it at the price they're charging, don't buy it at all.
I don't see what's anti-capitalist, anti-free-market, or anti-consumer about that.
A classical fresco is a painting on damp ("fresh") plaster, with the paint penetrating the wall. As such, it tends not to flake off as a painting on dried plaster would, and can last for thousands of years.
This Fresco is cheap middleware on a product of limited utility, and could last for thousands of days, maybe. Maybe not.
The point here is, if there is enough work they will hire more people to do it. They just had no idea how much work needed to be done, nor how to apportion it, and got rid of enough people to force a proper reorganization. When you come up with too much and tell them, they should get someone to help. If they don't, tell us, and we'll short the shit out of their stock, because they're too dumb to run a business.
Every gambling jurisdiction has adopted independent test and review guidelines similar to those used by the FAA to ensure that software used in gaming devices is reliable and free of hacks. Yes it makes the software a couple of hundred percent more expensive, but in that business capital expenses are never an issue.
Slashdot Mirror
Publishing is part of the process, not the result of the process.
Universities, governments, and corporate science divisions have been paying for raw output without validating the quality of that output. The result is a vast sea of crap masquerading as the truth.
How often is a scientist given the job of vetting another's work? So how often do you suppose it happens? And how much do you suppose it's worth to a scientist to participate in validating the truth, and how much to participate in publishing over validating?
This is why computer geeks still make fun of English majors.
Do you do windows and route tables?
Here it is: Ø
If you find a bug or want additional features, just submit a report and we'll fix it and issue a patch.
I think they got it backwards.
It could easily be
"The conflict between the free exchange of ideas that the scientific community demands, and the property ownership that commercial sponsors need to survive".
We like to see the business community as demanding and unreasonable, and we like to see the scientific community as altruistic and open, but in the real world, business is based on not losing money and most science can (possibly) proceed without community-wide coordination.
It seems I've struck a chord. Let's hope the metamods are paying attention.
I'd change it to "sigmoidal, or at the very most logarithmic", just to respect the asymptote, but otherwise, you're right and Reed's wrong.
The time between your hitting "Submit" and the bytes hitting the bus to your network card is so l33t I could plotz...
We're launching all our satellites on Yemeni SCUDs.
Kleck's study is part of a spectrum of studies, and not surprisingly stands out as being almost entirely free of rational survey construction and scientific method.
His numbers are some 15X as high as those gathered in the Department of Justice's own study of the use of guns to avert crimes.
If I went looking for ESP and discovered I could read minds (because minds wrote words and I can read words 100% of the time, not just 50% like the pros say I should be able to if there was no ESP!), I'd go around telling people I was converted to ESP, too.
--Blair
Blah blah blah
...and other neobabble.
The quantum states of phosphorus atoms are particularly long-lived,
The article tells us basically nothing real, except the names of a few people and that they're working on something called "quantum" computing.
So here's how it should work (off the top of my head):
An atom or molecule (a collection of particles) has a set of wave-equation solutions. Each of solutions corresponds to a single point in a lattice, whose coordinates are the quantum numbers; or a single value of an n-tuple whose indices are the quantum numbers; or a single member of a set of n-tuples each of which is identified by a unique combination of quantum numbers...however you want to express it. These quantum numbers are inserted into the wave equation and out pops a solution--a wave-function--that does not diverge or otherwise go kaput.
If the atom, molecule, collection of particles, etc., is in one state (one combination of quantum numbers; one wavefunction), it's just a matter of applying energy in the right way to push it into another state. The quantum numbers move to a new point in the lattice, you change the n-tuple indices, whatever. You really cause the wavefunction to change, and the spatial arrangement available to the particles moving in the system changes. A spherical shell becomes a dumb-bell shape (not really, but it's a simpler visual than what really happens, so go with it).
Now you have a binary memory system. Most systems have way more than two states, but only a few will be stable (metastable, actually) enough to be useful for computation. But trinary, quaternary, etc. are certainly not out of the question; though the question is a lot easier if you can still use all this software expertise that has binary math running through its veins.
Quantum calculations are a lot harder to grok than quantum memory. Something has to work so that the state of the memory actuates another part of the system to undergo a change on a quantum level from one stable state (n-tuple value/wavefunction) to another.
The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle would get involved, so the family of states you use would have to be pretty special to keep the particles in knowable states. I think that's what the reporter was really getting at when talking about the phosphorus thing.
StarOffice is listed at $79.95 for SOHO; less for larger license packs.
Sun should just give up. Looking at the website, they still don't know how to present information so that you can make a rational decision before committing money and very expensive time to installing and evaluating the product.
And they still present "point-and-click" interfaces as though they're something special and different. I can tell from here that unless I get some serious geek mojo going, downloading and running this is going to be a pain in the ass.
The only feature that seems competitive is their touting of "scalability", whatever they want to mean by that. But I've got three running computers in this room, and two on the floor that I could "scale" into the network, so why would I care about massive scalability?
Their market is small, their niche is narrow, and their execution is bush.
Same old, same old.
Damn. They should put the preview and submit buttons on separate computers.
Anyway, to continue:
Yes, the popularity of the convention among local merchants, and how it treats them, is important. If the convention was worth more in cashflow, competent managers would buy it and run it better and attract more participants and flow some of that cash to themselves. It's all interconnected. It's not more significant than the revelation that the telecom industry was telling lies, or the software industry's failure to keep up with the computing power curve, but it's significant.
The cabbie was just the first one I talked to. Everyone hates Comdex. Except the LVCVB, who still see it as a way to say that over a hundred thousand people will be in Vegas, although only about 80K are showing up these days.
Might as well post this here because there won't be any Comdex news on /. because nobody cares anymore.
I was in a cab in Vegas the week before Comdex. The cabbie said everyone in town hates Comdex. "They all come here with one shirt and $20 and a week later they leave with the same shirt and the same $20."
Makes sense. If that town loved Comdex, you can be sure it'd still be growing even if the technology industry wasn't (which it is).
Bull.
I've submitted one bug to Mozilla, and had to change the submission three times and recategorize the bug twice just to get those lamers to put it where it now sits, ignored, in a queue of bugs.
I have no faith that it will ever be fixed (it's been about 6 months, and I still get mail like "if you want this bug fixed you should put it in the right category").
Mozilla is an immature product being produced by puerile people. Its features are weak and its reliability is low. As much as I despise Microsoft, it has produced the best browser ever since AOL took over Netscape. Mozilla itself isn't even close. Phoenix was better than Mozilla, but still not as good as MSIE. Netscape, especially the execrable java versions, is unrunnable at modern network speeds.
Mozilla is no proof that the open source development model is superior to corporate engineering. Perfectly the opposite. Given the weaknesses of IE, Mozilla should by now be kicking its ass. It doesn't. The reason is the fractious, undirected, and weak talents of the developers and the model they work under. QED.
--Blair
I just want to know why deleting a few dozen bits takes an hour...their DB design must suck. No wonder the thing can't keep up with its own hard drive.
You aren't buying a product, you're buying a service. The service is a license. If you don't want it so much because you rent it instead of owning it, don't pay so much for it. If you don't want it at the price they're charging, don't buy it at all.
I don't see what's anti-capitalist, anti-free-market, or anti-consumer about that.
A classical fresco is a painting on damp ("fresh") plaster, with the paint penetrating the wall. As such, it tends not to flake off as a painting on dried plaster would, and can last for thousands of years.
This Fresco is cheap middleware on a product of limited utility, and could last for thousands of days, maybe. Maybe not.
PDAs are a great management tool.
>(ages 12, 12, 14)
Always good to have a backup for the 12-year-old.
I remember my first checksum.
The point here is, if there is enough work they will hire more people to do it. They just had no idea how much work needed to be done, nor how to apportion it, and got rid of enough people to force a proper reorganization. When you come up with too much and tell them, they should get someone to help. If they don't, tell us, and we'll short the shit out of their stock, because they're too dumb to run a business.
The Harris case can not happen any more.
Every gambling jurisdiction has adopted independent test and review guidelines similar to those used by the FAA to ensure that software used in gaming devices is reliable and free of hacks. Yes it makes the software a couple of hundred percent more expensive, but in that business capital expenses are never an issue.
If you can't already explain process priority to your boss, you're fired.