I agree that extending a prison sentence seems a little barbaric. But what about looking at this from a pure cost-saving viewpoint? Instead of sentencing a prisoner to 10 years (or whatever is normal for their offense) and keeping them in prison that long, use the drug and keep them in prison for only one year but make them feel like 10 years have passed. Huge cost savings to the public, right there.
it is completely outrageous...the people who make the laws about a thing not knowing the essential function of how a thing works...that's the definition of legislative incompetence!
This isn't limited to the high-tech stuff we all love and know. Witness the asinine bans on e-cigarettes being instituted around the country. They seem to be based on the idea that "it looks like smoking analog cigarettes, so it must be just as bad for you and everyone else." Or, "some e-cigarettes have candy flavors, therefore they are being marketed to children" which completely ignores the fact that some adults like those flavors, too. No e-cigarette bans are based on science, or evidence.
I worked for Apple in the early 90's, when they were opening their first sites in Austin. Our group was eventually moved there (and I'm still there, in a suburb) from Campbell, CA. Anyway, at the time there was a lot of internal marketing around "why you would want to move to Austin."
With perfect timing, the local San Jose newspaper ran a political cartoon captioned "There Are Problems Everywhere" or something like that. It had a drawing of the entire United States, with descriptions of the local problems. California was titled with "Earthquakes" and a little arrow. Florida had "Hurricanes."
The state of Texas was decorated with the word "Texans" right in the center, with little arrows pointing all around.
This is still very true today. I wish I had saved that cartoon.
New technology typically goes through a phase where it is really expensive when it is first released, and then it gets less expensive, right? The Jigsaw Man is set in that initial timeframe. Breakthroughs in the medical science gave doctors the ability to transplant every organ except the brain and spinal column, but the cost was still very high and only a few could really afford it.
Niven does explore the next phase, where the cost comes down (or the technology is replaced by something less expensive), in his novel A Gift From Earth. I think the novel was written before the story, in fact.
Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them.
- Alfred North Whitehead, Introduction to Mathematics (1911)
Technology that Woz describes is essentially invisible, because the user can focus on the task and not the tool. As tech people, creating such technology should be our goal. I imagine that the vast majority of us want to do that, anyway. What we need to do is convince the people in charge of the money to let us.
Those of us under 55 who drink a lot of coffee – more than four cups per day...
I'm a 48-year old card-carrying member of the Serious Coffee Drinkers of America. I drink my first four cups of coffee before I leave for work in the morning. My coffee cup at work is actually a travel mug, and it's never empty or contain cold coffee. I drink a full pot of coffee between dinner and bedtime. Most workdays, I drink 20-30 cups of coffee, easily. I cut back to only 10 cups or so per day on the weekends.
I just had a full health checkup. I have no -- zero, none, nada -- health problems. Sure, my knees are starting to ache and I now wear glasses to read, but as far cholesterol, glucose levels, triglycerides, etc. goes, I'm well within the normal range. My blood pressure was 106/70 and my resting pulse was 54.
Maybe I'll be one of those old guys that eats and drinks whatever he wants and lives to 110. Maybe coffee is the reason.
Mayo Clinic Proceedings, I laugh in your general direction.
Uhhh...unproven theories stated as fact? The world must still be flat for some people. The earth IS the most significant planet in the solar system, and we haven't heard of a single person pop into an ape, or a human into an amphibious form, for thousands of years. Crazy how some THEORIES make some people deceive themselves into believing they have something smart to say.
The sound you're hearing is commonly referred to as the "Epic Woosh." It is similar to the sound of a Boeing 747 flying approximately six inches over your head.
The other sound you're hearing, or will hear once you've recovered from the Epic Woosh, is the sound of millions of geeks around world rolling their eyes at your colossal ignorance of science fiction canon.
It's been a very long time since I've messed with web technologies at this level, so I'm tossing the following out merely for discussion purposes: What about changing the default browser to behavior so that instead of first trying the http: prefix, browsers try https: instead and then fall back to http: only when necessary? Would that work around the 'ssl stripping' issue?
... sales of the Surface tablet are disappointing...
I'm not fan of Microsoft. It's a huge bureaucracy that stifles the innovation of a lot of very bright people who work there. I would not be surprised at all to learn that their late-to-the-party tablet isn't selling well.
However, I've not seen any concrete evidence that Surface tablet sales are "disappointing." There were some vaguely-worded comments by Ballmer in a French magazine or something, and something about a few people returning the table after discovering that they couldn't run their existing apps, but that's about it. From what I've read, Surface seems to be selling. Does anyone have any concrete numbers?
I was a casual pot smoker decades ago. I tried, several times, to write code while stoned. Invariably, I regretted it in the next day. It was like looking at someone else's code and realizing that the other person really doesn't understand programming at all.
The problem (devil?), I think, was in the details. You get some terrific ideas when you're stoned. (Also some terrible ideas, but we'll stay positive for now.) Broad, general, sweeping ideas about how to do something in the most elegant manner imaginable. Better than anything that's come before. Then you sit down and actually try to write the stuff and realize that the compiler is extremely, extremely picky about everything. You also realize that you can only hold about two things in your head at a time, which makes handling complex data structures or algorithms really challenging. It's like trying to drive a cheap RC car from one point to another, where all you can do is go forward in a straight line and turn right in reverse. You can get there, but the route is torturous. Going from a broad idea to the details of writing code is not well accomplished while stoned. You have to hold too many things in your head simultaneously.
Bottom line, I discovered that it was a lot better doing other stuff stoned than write software. Programming with a perfectly clear head is way more satisfying in the long run. Of course, all this was a very long time ago. Maybe if I returned to smoking now I would think differently.
"The question is not, why are we getting smarter, but the much less catchy, why are we getting better at abstract reasoning and little else?"
I am not a teacher or psychologist, but I have to wonder if at least some of this can be attributed to the things we have to normally deal with on a day-to-day basis. Specifically, in how those "things" have changed over time. As an earlier poster pointed out, life was a whole lot simpler several decades ago. Technology was much simpler and therefore easier to understand. The average person interacted with fewer people, less technology, less variance in their daily routine. Now, in developed countries at least, people are forced to interact with complicated devices and many people who are not actually present (via phone, teleconference, email, whatever).
People used to be amazed by the telephone, back when it was first invented. Many thought the user was talking to the device, not through it. Understanding that the telephone enabled remote conversation is the type of abstract thinking I'm trying to get it here. Multiply this by the hundreds of devices we're surrounded by and it's no wonder that people think more abstractly than 100 years ago. People have to, in order to deal with all the technology.
These kinds of readings irritate me. They present a wonderful picture, but only when everything goes right. When all the automated thingies in the environment can correctly anticipate your next action. When you don't do the unexpected, or the unexpected doesn't pop up somewhere in the surroundings.
Who's life is that? Not mine. In the above scenario: 1) the alarm clock would wake me up on my day off because I forgot to notify it; 2) the Internet is down and I can't connect outside my house; 3) my arm is in a cast so making decent gestures at my desktop 'computer' is real chore, if not impossible; and 4) my wife is extremely pissed at me for not being able to fix a damn thing in our house. Then a major storm tears through the neighborhood, my roof is half torn off, rainwater gets everywhere and all the electronics go absolutely apeshit.
Tell me what happens when things go wrong, not right. At least a little bit, to provide some much-needed reality.
Summing up, Vixie says: "These victims seem to feel that [they] have more important things to worry about. My gut feeling is that they're wrong, but I can't seem to prove it. My other gut feeling about all this is that we, as a digital society, are doing this all wrong."
My gut feeling is that International Business Times didn't really have a useful article but needed some more ad space, so they wrote this thing.
For the few of you considering actually reading the article: There is nothing new to see there. Move along.
Now scientists think they have found a tropical lake — some 60 kilometers long and 40 kilometers wide, and at least 1 meter deep...
What other bass fishermen out there read that of the summary and immediately thought, "Topwater!"
(I'm going on a fishing vacation all next week. All I've been doing this week is planning rod setups, and posting to/. of course, to the detriment of my real work.)
Slashdot Mirror
Like most of the comments here, not impressed... See the comments under the article for rebuttals.
Did you see how old those comments were? And that the review was against Julia v0.4 or 0.5? They've made quite a bit of progress since then.
I agree that extending a prison sentence seems a little barbaric. But what about looking at this from a pure cost-saving viewpoint? Instead of sentencing a prisoner to 10 years (or whatever is normal for their offense) and keeping them in prison that long, use the drug and keep them in prison for only one year but make them feel like 10 years have passed. Huge cost savings to the public, right there.
it is completely outrageous...the people who make the laws about a thing not knowing the essential function of how a thing works...that's the definition of legislative incompetence!
This isn't limited to the high-tech stuff we all love and know. Witness the asinine bans on e-cigarettes being instituted around the country. They seem to be based on the idea that "it looks like smoking analog cigarettes, so it must be just as bad for you and everyone else." Or, "some e-cigarettes have candy flavors, therefore they are being marketed to children" which completely ignores the fact that some adults like those flavors, too. No e-cigarette bans are based on science, or evidence.
I worked for Apple in the early 90's, when they were opening their first sites in Austin. Our group was eventually moved there (and I'm still there, in a suburb) from Campbell, CA. Anyway, at the time there was a lot of internal marketing around "why you would want to move to Austin."
With perfect timing, the local San Jose newspaper ran a political cartoon captioned "There Are Problems Everywhere" or something like that. It had a drawing of the entire United States, with descriptions of the local problems. California was titled with "Earthquakes" and a little arrow. Florida had "Hurricanes."
The state of Texas was decorated with the word "Texans" right in the center, with little arrows pointing all around.
This is still very true today. I wish I had saved that cartoon.
New technology typically goes through a phase where it is really expensive when it is first released, and then it gets less expensive, right? The Jigsaw Man is set in that initial timeframe. Breakthroughs in the medical science gave doctors the ability to transplant every organ except the brain and spinal column, but the cost was still very high and only a few could really afford it.
Niven does explore the next phase, where the cost comes down (or the technology is replaced by something less expensive), in his novel A Gift From Earth. I think the novel was written before the story, in fact.
A number of Larry Niven's short stories would be excellent examples of futurism:
The Jigsaw Man really stands out as a commentary on how power would be abused when organ transfers became nearly 100% successful (yet very expensive).
The Last Days of the Permanent Floating Riot Club talks about flash crowds.
Cloak of Anarchy deals with, strangely enough, anarchy.
Technology that Woz describes is essentially invisible, because the user can focus on the task and not the tool. As tech people, creating such technology should be our goal. I imagine that the vast majority of us want to do that, anyway. What we need to do is convince the people in charge of the money to let us.
The actual paper, in PDF format, can be found here.
I'm a 48-year old card-carrying member of the Serious Coffee Drinkers of America. I drink my first four cups of coffee before I leave for work in the morning. My coffee cup at work is actually a travel mug, and it's never empty or contain cold coffee. I drink a full pot of coffee between dinner and bedtime. Most workdays, I drink 20-30 cups of coffee, easily. I cut back to only 10 cups or so per day on the weekends.
I just had a full health checkup. I have no -- zero, none, nada -- health problems. Sure, my knees are starting to ache and I now wear glasses to read, but as far cholesterol, glucose levels, triglycerides, etc. goes, I'm well within the normal range. My blood pressure was 106/70 and my resting pulse was 54.
Maybe I'll be one of those old guys that eats and drinks whatever he wants and lives to 110. Maybe coffee is the reason.
Mayo Clinic Proceedings, I laugh in your general direction.
Uhhh...unproven theories stated as fact? The world must still be flat for some people. The earth IS the most significant planet in the solar system, and we haven't heard of a single person pop into an ape, or a human into an amphibious form, for thousands of years. Crazy how some THEORIES make some people deceive themselves into believing they have something smart to say.
The sound you're hearing is commonly referred to as the "Epic Woosh." It is similar to the sound of a Boeing 747 flying approximately six inches over your head.
The other sound you're hearing, or will hear once you've recovered from the Epic Woosh, is the sound of millions of geeks around world rolling their eyes at your colossal ignorance of science fiction canon.
Microsoft's internal videos have made it out into the wild before. The iPod box video was eventually confirmed real.
This Scroogled video, on the other hand, feels like a transparent marketing ploy.
... Rev 2 will simply plug into neural probes and power itself from your brain. What battery life problem?
There are some managers where I work who would experience severe battery life problems, then.
Who can forget Lint Warp?
Remember: don't count your weasels before they pop, dink.
It's been a very long time since I've messed with web technologies at this level, so I'm tossing the following out merely for discussion purposes: What about changing the default browser to behavior so that instead of first trying the http: prefix, browsers try https: instead and then fall back to http: only when necessary? Would that work around the 'ssl stripping' issue?
Stephen Hawking is probably jumping up and down for joy now.
Errr, wait....
http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20121112PD219.html
Well, that only took a quick google.
Ah, I should have searched the intertubes again before my post. That one is relatively new. Thanks.
I'm not fan of Microsoft. It's a huge bureaucracy that stifles the innovation of a lot of very bright people who work there. I would not be surprised at all to learn that their late-to-the-party tablet isn't selling well.
However, I've not seen any concrete evidence that Surface tablet sales are "disappointing." There were some vaguely-worded comments by Ballmer in a French magazine or something, and something about a few people returning the table after discovering that they couldn't run their existing apps, but that's about it. From what I've read, Surface seems to be selling. Does anyone have any concrete numbers?
I was a casual pot smoker decades ago. I tried, several times, to write code while stoned. Invariably, I regretted it in the next day. It was like looking at someone else's code and realizing that the other person really doesn't understand programming at all.
The problem (devil?), I think, was in the details. You get some terrific ideas when you're stoned. (Also some terrible ideas, but we'll stay positive for now.) Broad, general, sweeping ideas about how to do something in the most elegant manner imaginable. Better than anything that's come before. Then you sit down and actually try to write the stuff and realize that the compiler is extremely, extremely picky about everything. You also realize that you can only hold about two things in your head at a time, which makes handling complex data structures or algorithms really challenging. It's like trying to drive a cheap RC car from one point to another, where all you can do is go forward in a straight line and turn right in reverse. You can get there, but the route is torturous. Going from a broad idea to the details of writing code is not well accomplished while stoned. You have to hold too many things in your head simultaneously.
Bottom line, I discovered that it was a lot better doing other stuff stoned than write software. Programming with a perfectly clear head is way more satisfying in the long run. Of course, all this was a very long time ago. Maybe if I returned to smoking now I would think differently.
You clearly have not test driven a Cadillac CTS-V. 556hp V8, 0-60mph in 4.0 seconds. Not a track car, but it gets the job done.
Some of the "slightly older and affluent folks" appreciate that.
I am not a teacher or psychologist, but I have to wonder if at least some of this can be attributed to the things we have to normally deal with on a day-to-day basis. Specifically, in how those "things" have changed over time. As an earlier poster pointed out, life was a whole lot simpler several decades ago. Technology was much simpler and therefore easier to understand. The average person interacted with fewer people, less technology, less variance in their daily routine. Now, in developed countries at least, people are forced to interact with complicated devices and many people who are not actually present (via phone, teleconference, email, whatever).
People used to be amazed by the telephone, back when it was first invented. Many thought the user was talking to the device, not through it. Understanding that the telephone enabled remote conversation is the type of abstract thinking I'm trying to get it here. Multiply this by the hundreds of devices we're surrounded by and it's no wonder that people think more abstractly than 100 years ago. People have to, in order to deal with all the technology.
These kinds of readings irritate me. They present a wonderful picture, but only when everything goes right. When all the automated thingies in the environment can correctly anticipate your next action. When you don't do the unexpected, or the unexpected doesn't pop up somewhere in the surroundings.
Who's life is that? Not mine. In the above scenario: 1) the alarm clock would wake me up on my day off because I forgot to notify it; 2) the Internet is down and I can't connect outside my house; 3) my arm is in a cast so making decent gestures at my desktop 'computer' is real chore, if not impossible; and 4) my wife is extremely pissed at me for not being able to fix a damn thing in our house. Then a major storm tears through the neighborhood, my roof is half torn off, rainwater gets everywhere and all the electronics go absolutely apeshit.
Tell me what happens when things go wrong, not right. At least a little bit, to provide some much-needed reality.
Skimming the front page, looking for a headline that looks interesting.
"Hitachi Develops Boarding Gate With Built-In Explosives"
Hey! That looks promising! Oh, wait...
Son, you should really get a registered /. account.
From TFA:
Summing up, Vixie says: "These victims seem to feel that [they] have more important things to worry about. My gut feeling is that they're wrong, but I can't seem to prove it. My other gut feeling about all this is that we, as a digital society, are doing this all wrong."
My gut feeling is that International Business Times didn't really have a useful article but needed some more ad space, so they wrote this thing.
For the few of you considering actually reading the article: There is nothing new to see there. Move along.
What other bass fishermen out there read that of the summary and immediately thought, "Topwater!"
(I'm going on a fishing vacation all next week. All I've been doing this week is planning rod setups, and posting to /. of course, to the detriment of my real work.)