The debt is just a number that various groups start throwing at each other when they don't get their way. It means almost nothing in the real world, as no one is ever going to pay it. We have plenty of money to fund science. We just don't want to, apparently.
I don't think they can all be categorized in the same way. There are the "look at me I'm smart because I'm skeptical of everything" types that you mention, plus the crazy conspiracy nut types, the oil industry types, and also the religious types.
By the way, just for the sake of fairness, there are also a lot of nuts in the climate change camp too. But what matters is the science and evidence which firmly points to anthropogenic climate change being true.
Your first paragraph is partially sane but the rest is not. "desktop requirements are non-existent and aren't putting any stress on the system."? Desktop requirements may be modest, but desktop hardware is also modest. It's quite common for people to use desktops for purposes that put a lot of load on the system. I'm not just talking about cpu load. I'm talking about scheduler load, filesystem load, memory load. There are lots and lots of people out there who use Linux for numerical number-crunching and scientific tasks.
And what do you even mean by 'server'? Servers for webpages have vastly different requirements than beowulf clusters or HPC nodes, which also have vastly different requirements than HFT systems or dedicated database nodes. If you want to argue that a good server OS is not necessarily a good desktop OS, then you have to argue that a good LAMP stack OS is not a good HPC OS too.
But that's not the truth. Things that make a server scheduler desirable also make a desktop scheduler desirable.
Indeed, the reason I and many others started using Linux in the first place was because of this. Improvements made to the system to increase server performance usually also wind up being good for desktop users. Rarely it's the opposite.
And if the kernel itself were 'split in two', desktop users would wind up getting the shaft, since there is far less incentive for people to work on improving desktop Linux.
I agree with offering XXL seats for fat people for a price, but whatever you do don't punish normal-weight people for being normal weight. Seat girth is already fine if you're of normal human weight. What we need is more spacing between rows. I'm a relatively short guy and even I have trouble on flights; I shudder to think what tall people have to go through.
> maybe that's because the taxpayers' money was used to fund bizarre, esoteric research that nobody would use in a million years,
This is a very concerning attitude. Would you call research on, say, the Big Bang, 'esoteric' and 'useless'? If so, then you're wrong. If not, then could you cite some examples of what you mean?
And how would you know in advance whether something would turn out to be useful? The nature of scientific funding is that you fund a lot of projects knowing that most of them will probably fail, but if one succeeds it could cause a major paradigm shift.
> Too many scientists look down on the less intelligent and don't think they should have to answer to anyone.
Most scientists I know tend to be very humble people. At least, much more humble than, say, businessmen. I haven't seen anything less than scientists JUMPING at the opportunity to explain their work to others. If anything, it's the laypeople that seem to have zero interest in what the scientists are doing.
It's amazing how far removed scientific publishing has become from its original purpose. The original purpose of publishing a paper was to disseminate your results to the world. It was basically an open letter to other scientists (that's why so many journals have 'Letters' in the journal name). In the age of the internet, this has become redundant; you can just as easily (actually, much much more easily) communicate your results by writing them up in your blog. Once you have built up enough reputation on your blog, you might get requests from other scientists to feature their work on your blog. Voila - peer review and reputation.
But now, publications are just indicators of penis size. The process of writing and peer review takes away valuable time from actual work. In the past 1-2 years I haven't done any more than a week or two of actual work; I've just been writing papers and talking to reviewers. I'm sure many other scientists are in the same boat. This is not the way it's supposed to be.
It's not that hard to see what you have to do. Provide a funding system that reflects how science actually works. Provide longer-term grants that are accepting of minor failures or changes in research direction. Cut down on the bureaucracy and the committees. Realize that not all research falls into the domain of 'big name' journals and instead focus on more realistic metrics of progress. Some funding agencies are already starting to move in this direction.
Non-risky science is a big problem, but there's an even bigger problem. You know how news outlets have a focus on churning out news that is sensationalist and overhyped to whore for views and attention? Well, sadly, it's starting to look like that in science. Nowadays the most 'successful' labs are the ones that hype their output the most and shout loudest over the din of everyone else. This is aided and encouraged by both grant agencies and 'big name' journals like Nature.
As a result, we now have an entire self-sustaining system for producing bullshit, where bullshit goes through the cycle of hype and publication, leading to grant money, leading to even more bullshit. Some of these big labs become black holes for funding, consuming millions upon millions and then ten years later everyone wonders why their miraculous cancer cure turned out to be a dud.
I don't know when it got this way, or if it's always been this way. Hell, I'm just a newcomer. But I have a hard time imagining that this system would produce people like Einstein or Crick. People like Fleischmann and Pons, more likely.
Actually that's kind of the point, to some degree. It's now clear he was suffering from symptoms of dementia throughout his entire term, and they became especially pronounced near the end. His suggestibility and deteriorating mental health made him easy prey for those who wanted laws changed in their favor.
As someone who is not Canadian but has lived in Canada... whoo boy, you have no idea. I'm not surprised by this article in the least. Now if only it weren't so cold...
> I don't know where the line gets drawn, it seems any little thing is promoting "rape culture" or sexism or some such. I don't want to offend people, I genuinely, honestly do not want to - I don't want to be ignorant and just point and laugh or say stupid things. However I feel like the goalposts are constantly moving.
That's how I feel too.
Lookie here. We all agree that it's not cool that the movie industry treats everyone as criminals. You got an endless series of compulsory non-skippable anti-piracy dreck at the beginning of every DVD. There are tons of restrictions on how you can view media you bought and have every right to watch. The feminist tactics in gaming are starting to become similar to this. I'm tired of being told that just because of my sex I am 'part of the problem'. I'm not. I never harassed a woman online and I'm pretty sure most other guys don't either.
Yet when it comes to stuff like this article, it seems like any rational criticism or skepticism gets thrown out the window. You are not allowed to disagree. Any kind of rational discussion is equivalent to rape. It's bizarre.
It's bullshit regulation by people who lack understanding and by a bureaucratic system that is resistant to change.
Let's also put aside the fact that the full benefits of self-driving cars can only really be realized if they are truly 100% self-driving. Otherwise you still can't have cars-as-a-service, you still can't let the blind or the elderly or the disabled achieve the level of perosnal mobility everyone else enjoys.
And let's also put aside the fact that once you free up people to not pay attention to the road while driving, it would encourage sleeping at the wheel or driving drunk. People already do these things, but not being actively involved in driving would make the problem worse. I mention this because it's only a matter of time before someone sleeps at the wheel in a driverless car and causes a crash, and everyone is going to blame the tech, not the irresponsible driver.
But let's put all of those things aside for the moment and just look at the issue at hand. A split-second before impact is the WORST time to be putting control back in the hands of the slow reflexes of a human driver. If anything, the exact opposite of this would be much better. Have the human drive most of the time, with the machine taking over control if it senses a crash is imminent. At least that would be a way of using technology to make a positive difference.
Yup, and what makes it even more rubbish is the idea that simply feeding someone more food is enough to change their biochemistry, metabolism, and energy distribution budget towards diverting more energy towards growth and less towards the brain, and that blood glucose levels are determined by dietary carbohydrates.
But I do enjoy reading the pseudo-intellectual armchair philosophizing that we see so often.
Where did I use ad-hominem? Talk about knee-jerking...
I agree with your points about genocide, I never said anything contrary. Nevertheless, sawing off a man's head and posting the video online is an act of terror. To drive the point home, it seems that the knife used during the video was a prop knife (or just a very dull one) and the actual beheading happened off-screen, maybe even after he was killed by other means.
The same goes for the video of heads on spikes.
The Yezidi people, on the other hand, were given a more 'martial'-style firing squad execution. These things should give you hints about what their motives, tactics, and strategies are.
I never suggested anything about capitulation. The strategy that I'd like to personally see is a targeted effort to take out key facilities and leaders, perhaps with the cooperation of neighboring states like Iran. But indiscriminate bombing (what other people seem to be suggesting in this thread) is emotionally motivated and will not solve anything, in fact it will make things (much) worse.
If you're NOT frightened/angry and are capable of still thinking about the situation rationally, then my comment doesn't apply to you.
This is more a shift in games than a shift in gamers. Especially, a shift towards mobile games. If you look at stuff like first-person shooters, then males are still in the majority.
Anger impairs your judgement, as it's doing now. Instead of thinking about what needs to be done to stop the ISIS threat, and then doing it, you're just directing your anger at the wrong target and proposing a plan that makes no sense and would just make things worse.
Slashdot Mirror
The debt is just a number that various groups start throwing at each other when they don't get their way. It means almost nothing in the real world, as no one is ever going to pay it. We have plenty of money to fund science. We just don't want to, apparently.
I don't think they can all be categorized in the same way. There are the "look at me I'm smart because I'm skeptical of everything" types that you mention, plus the crazy conspiracy nut types, the oil industry types, and also the religious types.
By the way, just for the sake of fairness, there are also a lot of nuts in the climate change camp too. But what matters is the science and evidence which firmly points to anthropogenic climate change being true.
> or cutting the amount of coal plants which is the worst culprit.
Which is pretty much the exact thing that responsible policymakers have recommended doing, so I don't see your point.
I entirely agree.
Your first paragraph is partially sane but the rest is not. "desktop requirements are non-existent and aren't putting any stress on the system."? Desktop requirements may be modest, but desktop hardware is also modest. It's quite common for people to use desktops for purposes that put a lot of load on the system. I'm not just talking about cpu load. I'm talking about scheduler load, filesystem load, memory load. There are lots and lots of people out there who use Linux for numerical number-crunching and scientific tasks.
And what do you even mean by 'server'? Servers for webpages have vastly different requirements than beowulf clusters or HPC nodes, which also have vastly different requirements than HFT systems or dedicated database nodes. If you want to argue that a good server OS is not necessarily a good desktop OS, then you have to argue that a good LAMP stack OS is not a good HPC OS too.
But that's not the truth. Things that make a server scheduler desirable also make a desktop scheduler desirable.
Indeed, the reason I and many others started using Linux in the first place was because of this. Improvements made to the system to increase server performance usually also wind up being good for desktop users. Rarely it's the opposite.
And if the kernel itself were 'split in two', desktop users would wind up getting the shaft, since there is far less incentive for people to work on improving desktop Linux.
I agree with offering XXL seats for fat people for a price, but whatever you do don't punish normal-weight people for being normal weight. Seat girth is already fine if you're of normal human weight. What we need is more spacing between rows. I'm a relatively short guy and even I have trouble on flights; I shudder to think what tall people have to go through.
That first link was remarkably lucid and applies even more today. Thanks for that.
> maybe that's because the taxpayers' money was used to fund bizarre, esoteric research that nobody would use in a million years,
This is a very concerning attitude. Would you call research on, say, the Big Bang, 'esoteric' and 'useless'? If so, then you're wrong. If not, then could you cite some examples of what you mean?
And how would you know in advance whether something would turn out to be useful? The nature of scientific funding is that you fund a lot of projects knowing that most of them will probably fail, but if one succeeds it could cause a major paradigm shift.
> Too many scientists look down on the less intelligent and don't think they should have to answer to anyone.
Most scientists I know tend to be very humble people. At least, much more humble than, say, businessmen. I haven't seen anything less than scientists JUMPING at the opportunity to explain their work to others. If anything, it's the laypeople that seem to have zero interest in what the scientists are doing.
It's amazing how far removed scientific publishing has become from its original purpose. The original purpose of publishing a paper was to disseminate your results to the world. It was basically an open letter to other scientists (that's why so many journals have 'Letters' in the journal name). In the age of the internet, this has become redundant; you can just as easily (actually, much much more easily) communicate your results by writing them up in your blog. Once you have built up enough reputation on your blog, you might get requests from other scientists to feature their work on your blog. Voila - peer review and reputation.
But now, publications are just indicators of penis size. The process of writing and peer review takes away valuable time from actual work. In the past 1-2 years I haven't done any more than a week or two of actual work; I've just been writing papers and talking to reviewers. I'm sure many other scientists are in the same boat. This is not the way it's supposed to be.
It's not that hard to see what you have to do. Provide a funding system that reflects how science actually works. Provide longer-term grants that are accepting of minor failures or changes in research direction. Cut down on the bureaucracy and the committees. Realize that not all research falls into the domain of 'big name' journals and instead focus on more realistic metrics of progress. Some funding agencies are already starting to move in this direction.
Non-risky science is a big problem, but there's an even bigger problem. You know how news outlets have a focus on churning out news that is sensationalist and overhyped to whore for views and attention? Well, sadly, it's starting to look like that in science. Nowadays the most 'successful' labs are the ones that hype their output the most and shout loudest over the din of everyone else. This is aided and encouraged by both grant agencies and 'big name' journals like Nature.
As a result, we now have an entire self-sustaining system for producing bullshit, where bullshit goes through the cycle of hype and publication, leading to grant money, leading to even more bullshit. Some of these big labs become black holes for funding, consuming millions upon millions and then ten years later everyone wonders why their miraculous cancer cure turned out to be a dud.
I don't know when it got this way, or if it's always been this way. Hell, I'm just a newcomer. But I have a hard time imagining that this system would produce people like Einstein or Crick. People like Fleischmann and Pons, more likely.
Putin is a man of plots and deceptions. I like the avengers quote "He is THE spy! His secrets have secrets!"
His latest actions are probably just deceptions to provoke irrational action from Western powers.
If you like Ebola you are more than welcome to go to Africa and try out your 'genetic fitness' for yourself...
Actually that's kind of the point, to some degree. It's now clear he was suffering from symptoms of dementia throughout his entire term, and they became especially pronounced near the end. His suggestibility and deteriorating mental health made him easy prey for those who wanted laws changed in their favor.
As someone who is not Canadian but has lived in Canada... whoo boy, you have no idea. I'm not surprised by this article in the least. Now if only it weren't so cold...
> I don't know where the line gets drawn, it seems any little thing is promoting "rape culture" or sexism or some such. I don't want to offend people, I genuinely, honestly do not want to - I don't want to be ignorant and just point and laugh or say stupid things. However I feel like the goalposts are constantly moving.
That's how I feel too.
Lookie here. We all agree that it's not cool that the movie industry treats everyone as criminals. You got an endless series of compulsory non-skippable anti-piracy dreck at the beginning of every DVD. There are tons of restrictions on how you can view media you bought and have every right to watch. The feminist tactics in gaming are starting to become similar to this. I'm tired of being told that just because of my sex I am 'part of the problem'. I'm not. I never harassed a woman online and I'm pretty sure most other guys don't either.
Yet when it comes to stuff like this article, it seems like any rational criticism or skepticism gets thrown out the window. You are not allowed to disagree. Any kind of rational discussion is equivalent to rape. It's bizarre.
> No one wants to risk getting Eich'ed or doxxed because they don't toe the SJW/leftoid/women-as-perpetual-victim line.
Speak for yourself.
> You must ask yourself honestly : Why is it, when faced with stories like this, is your first instinct to claim that the woman lied or made it up?
It's not the 'first instinct'. Skepticism is healthy. People would be skeptical of this story regardless of if it was a man or a woman.
Being skeptical (when definite grounds for skepticism exist) makes you a troll now?
It's bullshit regulation by people who lack understanding and by a bureaucratic system that is resistant to change.
Let's also put aside the fact that the full benefits of self-driving cars can only really be realized if they are truly 100% self-driving. Otherwise you still can't have cars-as-a-service, you still can't let the blind or the elderly or the disabled achieve the level of perosnal mobility everyone else enjoys.
And let's also put aside the fact that once you free up people to not pay attention to the road while driving, it would encourage sleeping at the wheel or driving drunk. People already do these things, but not being actively involved in driving would make the problem worse. I mention this because it's only a matter of time before someone sleeps at the wheel in a driverless car and causes a crash, and everyone is going to blame the tech, not the irresponsible driver.
But let's put all of those things aside for the moment and just look at the issue at hand. A split-second before impact is the WORST time to be putting control back in the hands of the slow reflexes of a human driver. If anything, the exact opposite of this would be much better. Have the human drive most of the time, with the machine taking over control if it senses a crash is imminent. At least that would be a way of using technology to make a positive difference.
Group selection is pretty controversial; we know that the initial group selection ideas were not true.
Yup, and what makes it even more rubbish is the idea that simply feeding someone more food is enough to change their biochemistry, metabolism, and energy distribution budget towards diverting more energy towards growth and less towards the brain, and that blood glucose levels are determined by dietary carbohydrates.
But I do enjoy reading the pseudo-intellectual armchair philosophizing that we see so often.
Where did I use ad-hominem? Talk about knee-jerking...
I agree with your points about genocide, I never said anything contrary. Nevertheless, sawing off a man's head and posting the video online is an act of terror. To drive the point home, it seems that the knife used during the video was a prop knife (or just a very dull one) and the actual beheading happened off-screen, maybe even after he was killed by other means.
The same goes for the video of heads on spikes.
The Yezidi people, on the other hand, were given a more 'martial'-style firing squad execution. These things should give you hints about what their motives, tactics, and strategies are.
I never suggested anything about capitulation. The strategy that I'd like to personally see is a targeted effort to take out key facilities and leaders, perhaps with the cooperation of neighboring states like Iran. But indiscriminate bombing (what other people seem to be suggesting in this thread) is emotionally motivated and will not solve anything, in fact it will make things (much) worse.
If you're NOT frightened/angry and are capable of still thinking about the situation rationally, then my comment doesn't apply to you.
This is more a shift in games than a shift in gamers. Especially, a shift towards mobile games. If you look at stuff like first-person shooters, then males are still in the majority.
Anger impairs your judgement, as it's doing now. Instead of thinking about what needs to be done to stop the ISIS threat, and then doing it, you're just directing your anger at the wrong target and proposing a plan that makes no sense and would just make things worse.