> Yet, I can't imagine anyone saying Newton or > Einstein should not be taught in school.
I can, at least for Einstein's work. Suppose for a moment that the powers that be pass a resolution so that no mention may be made in schools of a universe that is older than 6000 years. Since this would require a notion of absolute time, special relativity would be invalidated. Also, the big bang hypothesis/theory would be at odds with many fundamentalists' sensibilities. Modern astronomy (which Newton helped institute with his work on celestial mechanics) would be at odds with the 6k yr. old universe premise as well.
We live in an age of revisionist history; it would appear that we are tending towards revisionist science as well.
Even if the patent expires it still has value in terms of defining prior art, if I'm not mistaken. In 25 years when someone builds a machine to implement Shor's algorithm and then they try to patent both the machine and the idea, then one can point to the original patent and say, "Prior art. You may only patent your machine, but someone else may implement the same algorithm." It's unfortunate that published journal articles containing the algorithms do not seem to suffice for defining prior art, as has been discussed numerous times on/.
Given a world with numerous patents applied for (and received) for preexisting technology and algorithms, using the patent office defensively in this manner doesn't seem to me to be as bad as the rest of the patent abuse. It just seems like a bit of wasted time on the part of the researchers is all.
Another possible reason for an apparent dumbing down of the story line in the TPM can be derived from there being two more flicks in the queue: If Lucas wants to hook another generation on the film, it makes sense to target 7 to 10 year olds now with a simple plot line, overly clarified and simple themes, and slapstick humor. 5 years from now, as II and III get released, the audience of children he hooked will be older, more sophisticated, and able to handle more complex themes. Until then, they'll continue to have Mom and Dad shell out big cash for action figures and toy light sabers, and his cash cow will not run dry.
When I first saw Star Wars when I was seven, I doubt if I'd have been able to understand tension between Leia and Han as being more than just tension. Of course I remember enjoying the protracted "droids walking in the desert beeping at each other and complaining" scenes too, so I was hardly a sophisticated viewer at the time.
Just out of curiosity, how do the plasma displays hold up? I heard in a talk a few years ago from someone working on them that sputtering would eventually degrade the pixels' performance, and that they were trying to find ways to beat that problem. (I remember him mentioning that the time scale for the degradation was on the order of years--I assume they got that problem licked)?
I am currently teaching a course in physics at a university in the USA. (I will decline to mention which one, in case one of my students is reading this). I can say with certainty that many instructors do in fact judge people by their appearance. If you look like a slacker who doesn't care much about the course, you're much less likely to receive "benefit of the doubt" regarding grading issues. Ask for an outside-the-class meeting with an instructor, and, depending on the instructor, your gender and appearance will play a role.
As an amusing anecdote, when I was in grad school one of my colleagues had her name changed to "James" while she was going through her undergraduate engineering program. This was done shortly after an instructor stapled "Drop" slips to the midterm exams of all his female students, thereby sending a not-so-subtle signal to XX-chromosome-endowed individuals that they were not welcome in his course. Though attitudes and opinions are changing, the traditional "geek fields" of engineering and the physical sciences are probably the least progressive in terms of tolerance and achieving equality. It's amusing to read all this talk about equality for geeks when they themselves seem to harbor the strongest sentiments against those of ethnic and gender groups who are not white/asian males.
The only Microsoft peripheral I have owned was a Microsoft mouse, (the 2-button, non-optical one). I found its performance to be lacking; after only a couple months of use I had difficulty getting the left mouse button to register. Sometimes I would have to click three or four times for it to work. Eventually I gave up and got a MouseSystems optical mouse instead, and I have been very happy with its performance since.
Angels on the head of a pin.
on
ShutUp Software
·
· Score: 1
I find an argument that "automatic filtering is bad, but scanning a title with my eyes and then choosing whether to read it is not bad" to be academic at best, and downright silly at heart. Filters are a practical solution to an impossible problem: spam aside, usenet has orders of magnitude too much information for a single person to digest. A team of trained Mr. Katzs could not even scan all the titles of the usenet articles, much less peruse the juicy ones. A single article, taken at random from all of usenet, would have a negligible probability of possessing information of interest to me. Killfiles, topical selection, blatant disregard for any titles possessing more than three dollar signs or the word "horny"--these are just practical measures to increase the signal to noise ratio. Call me subhuman if you wish, Mr. Katz. Most would say I'm just pragmatic.
I think Philo Taylor Farnsworth, the inventor of the television set, was the original inventor of these electrostatic confinement devices. He had a working prototype in the 60s, though it produced far too little fusion at the time to attain "break-even." One modern experiment of the type that I know of is being built at Los Alamos. The primary difficulty with achieving fusion power out of these devices, if I'm not mistaken, is that the material in the center tends to become a plasma (exhibit collective behavior) if the densities become too high. Debye shielding then takes place and the efficiency of the fusion power production diminishes.
Even if this is true, the devices would still be quite useful as a neutron source (e.g. for detecting plastic explosives in airports or detecting the presence of fissionable materials). They have the advantage of being easy to turn off, unlike a chunk of radioactive material, and I think this is one of the short-term goals of the Los Alamos work.
When's the last time you saw a group voluntarily lengthen a name in order to make it more precise and then have the name gain any kind of acceptance? To my knowledge it always goes the other way around. Hence the proliferation of acronyms. (Play a DVD or CD on my PC for free? Whee! Alternatively, if it's a g3 running LinuxPC, should KDE be for me?)
Being a physicist, I can't help but try to indentify some fundamental laws of nature here (and then shamelessly try to attach my name to it):
Claudius's First Law of Names for Stuff: All first laws for anything are trivial and can safely be ignored.
Claudius's Second Law of Names for Stuff: As a function of usage, names for things generally get shorter and the information content of the names shrinks to zero.
Claudius's Third Law of Names for Stuff: Things with long names are susceptible to acronymization or amputation (or both). Things whose names can't be safely Bobbited will "Never Get Used (tm)."
Claudius's Fourth Law of Names for Stuff: Design flaws can generally be compensated for by choosing a suitably short name.
Demonstrations: (1) A PC is more common than a Mac. Note the shorter name. The term "PC" doesn't carry much information anymore (less info than the word "Mac"), in accordance with the Second Law. (2) Perhaps the most used computer language is C. Note the brevity. (3) The Java folks have it right. Short language name, short acronyms for stuff (JDK, awt, etc), but they'll never be able to compete with C until it's called just "J." (4) C++ is the canonical example of the Fourth Law.
As you see, the entire GNU/Linux movement is doomed since it attempts to violate the fundamental laws of names for stuff. It'd be about as fruitful to advocate building a perpetual motion machine.
This is somewhat off-topic, but I find this author to be an interesting individual since for me his post raises more questions about the author than about its content. I am, at first glance, inclined to believe that the author is not who he says he is.
I find the author's excessive use of "idiot" to be a bit tiring. Perhaps it is an example of one of those "stupid secret codes" he is complaining of? An opening of "Idiot geeks at it again," is arguably too strong and untempered an expression of indignance to attribute to a typical university professor. (Most have learned to be slippery with their rhetoric so as not to be caught in the bind of having a documentable opinion on anything). Perhaps Deleware State University hires faculty who are only marginally literate? A more likely possiblity is that this individual is attempting, for whatever reason, to resemble the "idiot" he targets.
I also find it revealing that the author does not list an affiliation with his title, though certainly one with the mental capacity to acquire a tenured faculty position at a reputable university must understand that "idiot geeks" such as myself who are intrigued by his "Professor of History" will find his affiliation quickly enough. A quick search reveals that a Prof. Bradley Skelcher does indeed hold a full professor faculty position in the Department of History and Political Science at Delaware State University. One questions, if this post is legit, whether his university knows that he represents himself (and by extension his employer) publicly in this manner.
(As an aside, after perusing his CV he seems to have only six journal publications. I'm not familiar with the historical and political science fields, and I realize the number of journal publications an individual has is perhaps not an appropriate gauge of his contribution to the field, but is this typical of faculty in these disciplines?)
My gut reaction is to assume this is a troll written by another and intended to somehow defame this Professor Skelcher, however Professor Skelcher appears to have a strong involvement with the Democratic party, so this comment may have been made made more as a public declaration of loyalty to that party and an attack on "idiot geeks" who are not "Gore2k" supporters.
The difficulty here is one of semantics. Politicians have long been known for taking a turnip and calling it an apple, turnipness notwithstanding. What matters is not the content of what is said but rather the affective qualities. Does Gore make you feel all cozy and warm now that he appears to be on the technotwink side? Go to Iowa at the time of the early caucuses and you'll see the same techo-Gore wearing a seed-corn cap and riding a tractor. Like any modern politician, he's after the image of "Gore the Computer Hacker" (original meaning intended), "Gore the Farmer," "Gore the Transexual Plumber From Boise." Whatever images he has to plant to get the votes, that's what he'll do.
The inherent difficulty arises when the same politician tries to appeal to a community, such as the scientific communities, the medical community, or the computer/info tech communities, who expect and rely upon precision of speech. Gore simply had bad advice from his staff, I'd guess. He saw the technologically savvy as a virgin to woo; he (or more likely, his staff) underestimated just how anal this same group of people can be when it comes to language, though the incessant sparring over whether it should be called Linux, GNU/Linux, LiGNUx, or Linux/GNU should have clued them in had they done a little legwork.
To take his "Open Source" offer at face value could be a dangerous legal move; it's doubtful Gore or his staff understand what those words mean to this community, and I doubt they'll toss away any of their perceived legal rights just because they are ignorant of what they said.
Incidentally, I don't see this snafu as being any worse than Kennedy's eating pizza with a fork. Kennedy alienated those in the community he was trying to reach, but as a side effect he probably impressed scads of wasps out there with his impeccable table manners. My prediction is that Gore will not only survive but will likely gain more votes by wowing housewives with his techo-laced Newspeak than he'll lose from this community.
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> Yet, I can't imagine anyone saying Newton or
> Einstein should not be taught in school.
I can, at least for Einstein's work. Suppose for a moment that the powers that be pass a resolution so that no mention may be made in schools of a universe that is older than 6000 years. Since this would require a notion of absolute time, special relativity would be invalidated. Also, the big bang hypothesis/theory would be at odds with many fundamentalists' sensibilities. Modern astronomy (which Newton helped institute with his work on celestial mechanics) would be at odds with the 6k yr. old universe premise as well.
We live in an age of revisionist history; it would appear that we are tending towards revisionist science as well.
Even if the patent expires it still has value in terms of defining prior art, if I'm not mistaken. In 25 years when someone builds a machine to implement Shor's algorithm and then they try to patent both the machine and the idea, then one can point to the original patent and say, "Prior art. You may only patent your machine, but someone else may implement the same algorithm." It's unfortunate that published journal articles containing the algorithms do not seem to suffice for defining prior art, as has been discussed numerous times on /.
Given a world with numerous patents applied for (and received) for preexisting technology and algorithms, using the patent office defensively in this manner doesn't seem to me to be as bad as the rest of the patent abuse. It just seems like a bit of wasted time on the part of the researchers is all.
Another possible reason for an apparent dumbing down of the story line in the TPM can be derived from there being two more flicks in the queue: If Lucas wants to hook another generation on the film, it makes sense to target 7 to 10 year olds now with a simple plot line, overly clarified and simple themes, and slapstick humor. 5 years from now, as II and III get released, the audience of children he hooked will be older, more sophisticated, and able to handle more complex themes. Until then, they'll continue to have Mom and Dad shell out big cash for action figures and toy light sabers, and his cash cow will not run dry.
When I first saw Star Wars when I was seven, I doubt if I'd have been able to understand tension between Leia and Han as being more than just tension. Of course I remember enjoying the protracted "droids walking in the desert beeping at each other and complaining" scenes too, so I was hardly a sophisticated viewer at the time.
Just out of curiosity, how do the plasma displays hold up? I heard in a talk a few years ago from someone working on them that sputtering would eventually degrade the pixels' performance, and that they were trying to find ways to beat that problem. (I remember him mentioning that the time scale for the degradation was on the order of years--I assume they got that problem licked)?
Thanks.
I am currently teaching a course in physics at a university in the USA. (I will decline to mention which one, in case one of my students is reading this). I can say with certainty that many instructors do in fact judge people by their appearance. If you look like a slacker who doesn't care much about the course, you're much less likely to receive "benefit of the doubt" regarding grading issues. Ask for an outside-the-class meeting with an instructor, and, depending on the instructor, your gender and appearance will play a role.
As an amusing anecdote, when I was in grad school one of my colleagues had her name changed to "James" while she was going through her undergraduate engineering program. This was done shortly after an instructor stapled "Drop" slips to the midterm exams of all his female students, thereby sending a not-so-subtle signal to XX-chromosome-endowed individuals that they were not welcome in his course. Though attitudes and opinions are changing, the traditional "geek fields" of engineering and the physical sciences are probably the least progressive in terms of tolerance and achieving equality. It's amusing to read all this talk about equality for geeks when they themselves seem to harbor the strongest sentiments against those of ethnic and gender groups who are not white/asian males.
The only Microsoft peripheral I have owned was a Microsoft mouse, (the 2-button, non-optical one). I found its performance to be lacking; after only a couple months of use I had difficulty getting the left mouse button to register. Sometimes I would have to click three or four times for it to work. Eventually I gave up and got a MouseSystems optical mouse instead, and I have been very happy with its performance since.
I find an argument that "automatic filtering is bad, but scanning a title with my eyes and then choosing whether to read it is not bad" to be academic at best, and downright silly at heart. Filters are a practical solution to an impossible problem: spam aside, usenet has orders of magnitude too much information for a single person to digest. A team of trained Mr. Katzs could not even scan all the titles of the usenet articles, much less peruse the juicy ones. A single article, taken at random from all of usenet, would have a negligible probability of possessing information of interest to me. Killfiles, topical selection, blatant disregard for any titles possessing more than three dollar signs or the word "horny"--these are just practical measures to increase the signal to noise ratio. Call me subhuman if you wish, Mr. Katz. Most would say I'm just pragmatic.
I think Philo Taylor Farnsworth, the inventor of the television set, was the original inventor of these electrostatic confinement devices. He had a working prototype in the 60s, though it produced far too little fusion at the time to attain "break-even." One modern experiment of the type that I know of is being built at Los Alamos. The primary difficulty with achieving fusion power out of these devices, if I'm not mistaken, is that the material in the center tends to become a plasma (exhibit collective behavior) if the densities become too high. Debye shielding then takes place and the efficiency of the fusion power production diminishes.
Even if this is true, the devices would still be quite useful as a neutron source (e.g. for detecting plastic explosives in airports or detecting the presence of fissionable materials). They have the advantage of being easy to turn off, unlike a chunk of radioactive material, and I think this is one of the short-term goals of the Los Alamos work.
[Warning: Unabashed facetiousness in this post.]
When's the last time you saw a group voluntarily lengthen a name in order to make it more precise and then have the name gain any kind of acceptance? To my knowledge it always goes the other way around. Hence the proliferation of acronyms. (Play a DVD or CD on my PC for free? Whee! Alternatively, if it's a g3 running LinuxPC, should KDE be for me?)
Being a physicist, I can't help but try to indentify some fundamental laws of nature here (and then shamelessly try to attach my name to it):
Claudius's First Law of Names for Stuff: All first laws for anything are trivial and can safely be ignored.
Claudius's Second Law of Names for Stuff: As a function of usage, names for things generally get shorter and the information content of the names shrinks to zero.
Claudius's Third Law of Names for Stuff: Things with long names are susceptible to acronymization or amputation (or both). Things whose names can't be safely Bobbited will "Never Get Used (tm)."
Claudius's Fourth Law of Names for Stuff: Design flaws can generally be compensated for by choosing a suitably short name.
Demonstrations: (1) A PC is more common than a Mac. Note the shorter name. The term "PC" doesn't carry much information anymore (less info than the word "Mac"), in accordance with the Second Law. (2) Perhaps the most used computer language is C. Note the brevity. (3) The Java folks have it right. Short language name, short acronyms for stuff (JDK, awt, etc), but they'll never be able to compete with C until it's called just "J." (4) C++ is the canonical example of the Fourth Law.
As you see, the entire GNU/Linux movement is doomed since it attempts to violate the fundamental laws of names for stuff. It'd be about as fruitful to advocate building a perpetual motion machine.
This is somewhat off-topic, but I find this author to be an interesting individual since for me his post raises more questions about the author than about its content. I am, at first glance, inclined to believe that the author is not who he says he is.
I find the author's excessive use of "idiot" to be a bit tiring. Perhaps it is an example of one of those "stupid secret codes" he is complaining of? An opening of "Idiot geeks at it again," is arguably too strong and untempered an expression of indignance to attribute to a typical university professor. (Most have learned to be slippery with their rhetoric so as not to be caught in the bind of having a documentable opinion on anything). Perhaps Deleware State University hires faculty who are only marginally literate? A more likely possiblity is that this individual is attempting, for whatever reason, to resemble the "idiot" he targets.
I also find it revealing that the author does not list an affiliation with his title, though certainly one with the mental capacity to acquire a tenured faculty position at a reputable university must understand that "idiot geeks" such as myself who are intrigued by his "Professor of History" will find his affiliation quickly enough. A quick search reveals that a Prof. Bradley Skelcher does indeed hold a full professor faculty position in the Department of History and Political Science at Delaware State University. One questions, if this post is legit, whether his university knows that he represents himself (and by extension his employer) publicly in this manner.
(As an aside, after perusing his CV he seems to have only six journal publications. I'm not familiar with the historical and political science fields, and I realize the number of journal publications an individual has is perhaps not an appropriate gauge of his contribution to the field, but is this typical of faculty in these disciplines?)
My gut reaction is to assume this is a troll written by another and intended to somehow defame this Professor Skelcher, however Professor Skelcher appears to have a strong involvement with the Democratic party, so this comment may have been made made more as a public declaration of loyalty to that party and an attack on "idiot geeks" who are not "Gore2k" supporters.
Anyone know who this bloke is?
The difficulty here is one of semantics. Politicians have long been known for taking a turnip and calling it an apple, turnipness notwithstanding. What matters is not the content of what is said but rather the affective qualities. Does Gore make you feel all cozy and warm now that he appears to be on the technotwink side? Go to Iowa at the time of the early caucuses and you'll see the same techo-Gore wearing a seed-corn cap and riding a tractor. Like any modern politician, he's after the image of "Gore the Computer Hacker" (original meaning intended), "Gore the Farmer," "Gore the Transexual Plumber From Boise." Whatever images he has to plant to get the votes, that's what he'll do.
The inherent difficulty arises when the same politician tries to appeal to a community, such as the scientific communities, the medical community, or the computer/info tech communities, who expect and rely upon precision of speech. Gore simply had bad advice from his staff, I'd guess. He saw the technologically savvy as a virgin to woo; he (or more likely, his staff) underestimated just how anal this same group of people can be when it comes to language, though the incessant sparring over whether it should be called Linux, GNU/Linux, LiGNUx, or Linux/GNU should have clued them in had they done a little legwork.
To take his "Open Source" offer at face value could be a dangerous legal move; it's doubtful Gore or his staff understand what those words mean to this community, and I doubt they'll toss away any of their perceived legal rights just because they are ignorant of what they said.
Incidentally, I don't see this snafu as being any worse than Kennedy's eating pizza with a fork. Kennedy alienated those in the community he was trying to reach, but as a side effect he probably impressed scads of wasps out there with his impeccable table manners. My prediction is that Gore will not only survive but will likely gain more votes by wowing housewives with his techo-laced Newspeak than he'll lose from this community.