It's hype vs. truth in sort of the same way as Intel's claims about MMX were: It really is that fast, but only for those tasks that happen to benefit from vector-processing and whose code is optimized to use it. So it's true, but with a huge "Your Mileage May Vary" sticker attached for real-world applications.
However, it's a lot better in the real world than MMX, since (as has been posted countless times) the optimization can be done by flipping a single checkbox in CodeWarrior, with no need to drop into assembly code (though I guess you would still do that foe even better optimization). Also, Apple is optimizing (or has already) a lot of system-level routines to use it, e.g., QuickTime, networking, etc., so even an unoptimized application that spends a lot of time waiting for those routines will see major speedups.
Also, the range of tasks that can benefit from AltiVec is supposedly far wider than that of MMX: they're both the same sort of thing, i.e., a vector-processor, meaning they perform the same operation on multiple data elements with a single instruction, but AltiVec is supposedly much better-designed -- its new instructions are more useful and more powerful, it doesn't have MMX's problem of sharing registers with the FPU, etc. Part of that is due to the PowerPC's overall superior achitecture, which makes it easier to add new stuff without it all getting crowded and jumbled together.
And Jobs claimed in his speech that it really is true that they were contacted by the DOD telling them that these machines are subject to the export controls for supercomputer technology. Hence the ad "For the first time in history, a personal computer has been classified as a weapon by the U.S. government. With its ability to perform over a billion calculations per second, the Pentagon doesn't want it to fall into the wrong hands. As for Pentium PCs... they're harmless." This thing really is technically a supercomputer, since, with vector processing, its speed is in the GFLOPS.
Suppose that instead of an obviously-flimsy screen door, your house has an ordinary door with a keyhole above the knob, and you have a key that fits the keyhole. Say it's a very fancy, flashy model, with an electric sign that lights up "LOCKED" in big red letters, or "OPEN" in green letters, respectively, when you turn the key.
Suppose the people who sold you the house assured you that it was impossible for anyone without the key to open the door. To prove it, they turned the key and pointed at the sign, saying "See? It says "LOCKED", so it must be locked. The only way to open it is with the key, and only you have that, so you're perfectly safe."
Now, suppose that, in fact, the changing of the lights on the sign is the only thing that happens when you turn the key. There isn't even a bolt installed as part of the "lock" -- it just says "LOCKED", but the door is completely open for anyone who tries to turn the knob.
But, suppose that you trusted the people so blindly that it never occurred to you to try opening the door when it said "LOCKED", or even to look at the edge of the door to see the bolt. You just blindly believed the people who sold you the house when they said that the door could not be opened without the key. After all, the sign says "LOCKED", doesn't it?
Now, when someone walks in and robs you, surely he is still committing a crime, but don't you think the people who sold you the house are just a little bit to blame as well, since the security that they claimed to be selling you was in fact completely non-existent? In fact, isn't it even just slightly your fault that you were either too stupid or too lazy to take even the most basic measures to ensure your own security?
I re-read GEB every two or three years; it's part of my religion. I get quines. I was just wondering if I was missing something in the second one:
Quine "quine?" An attempt at just quining the word "quine," thus making it a self-referential self-similar statement, and also being a challenge for the next statement;
Okay, so it's not really a quine itself (though it's sort of quiney), but it sets up the next one: a quine consisting entirely of forms of the word "quine". No, actually just a sentence containing a quine of "quined" and consisting of forms of "quine".
How about one where those systems (and others) coexist and run applications that use common, standardized document formats that eliminate any need for conversion?
Or even if everyone used Office and the formats remained proprietary, as long as they are the same on each platform? Operating systems don't create file formats, applications do.
Also, the article didn't say anything about monopoly issues or the importance of multiple platforms; it just states the need for a platform that works, which Windows ain't. He blames Microsoft, not for being a monopoly, but for their making stuff that doesn't work. Don't change the subject.
Something else that he doesn't mention: didn't I hear a few years back that Sun (not exactly unbiased, I realize) had banned the use of PowerPoint becuase they had determined that their managers were spending more time playing with the pretty pictures than working on the actual content of their presentations, which actually declined in quality as a result? Point being: all this "productivity" software doesn't necessarily let you do any more actual work, even if it works fine. Instead, it can distract you from the real work by getting you obsessed with cosmetics.
One criticism I had after the first episode was that you guys seemed to be pretty much just reading through the headlines of that day's/. front page and making comments of about the same depth as the blurbs that you already add to the stories on the front page. Not that there's anything wrong with that, since it is interesting stuff, but it seemed kind of redundant. Aside from hearing your voices (which have also improved a lot), what was there that I hadn't already gotten by reading/. normally that day? Not much.
There's still some of that, but then what else are you going to talk about, right? Since, almost by definition, anything that you think is interesting to talk about you would have already posted on/., there's really no way to avoid some redundancy. I wouldn't want to see you holding stuff back from the page, just to have something new to talk about on the show. It's not so bad, though, since now you seem to just take a few cues from the page, then go off and discuss the topics in more depth, and add some jokes. I like that. At a couple points I had trouble staying in my chair and not ROTFLMAO, which wouldn't have looked good at work.
Of course, I don't see how the show could ever be as good as the site: "News for Nerds" is cool, but what makes it really special is the community interaction, and I guess you can't exactly take calls. Maybe you could occasionally select a few comments from/. discussions to read or quote, to add a little bit of interactivity.
By the way, for a while now, I've been thinking that Silicon Valley needs to have an All-Geek radio station -- KODE. After all, who lives here? It would probably be mostly a regular music station, but with guys like you for a morning show. I think "Mix 106.5" is somewhere close to what I have in mind for KODE, but maybe that's just my musical taste. (The only problem is they play too much Alanis Morisette stuff -- a guaranteed channel-change for me.) I don't suppose you could send your stuff over to one of the stations around here and get them to play it? That would be cool.
Thanks. Yours, too. Question though: I get the first and last parts, but I'm not sure about the middle -- the first part of the second line, which I assume is a separate item: [quine "quine?"]. Huh?
Aside from that, though, yes, I'd say your connotative definitions are more or less right, though your 'nerd' is a bit flaky; IMO, it can also mean what you mean by 'dork'. I still don't see how 'dork' can be taken as a compliment in any connotation, though, which was what I was originally responding to...
Your claim that "nerd" can also mean "dork" is exactly what I consider to be the problem: what's wrong with the way "normal" people think of us is partly the way they exaggerate the dork stereotype, but mainly the fact that they think nerds are dorks. That is, they hear you using big words and talking about stuff that they don't understand, and they just seem to see masking tape on your glasses, whether or not it's really there.
On the other hand, I guess you have a point, in that I was a bit facetious when I said "Some nerds and geeks may also be dorks, but this is purely coincidental." Maybe not purely coincidental, since being a nerd is a risk factor toward also being a dork. (different interests -> less socializing -> poor social skills, etc.) I still don't think they're the same thing, though.
I still think "nerd" and "geek" are pretty much the same thing, but with slightly different focus (general intellectualism vs. computers) Look at/.: "News for Nerds", not "News for Geeks".
Now that we have the origins of all three words, we can discuss their current meanings.
Growing up, I realized pretty quickly (almost as soon as people started calling me it) that what "nerd" actually means (as opposed to the way they meant it) is a good thing -- hardly an insult, but rather something that I would proudly claim about myself.
For a while, I guess I thought of "geek" as the correct word for what they meant by "nerd" (the insult), but after a few years, I realized that "geek" really also refers more to things that I would consider "cool".
However, there has to be some word that means the "bad" things, so we can say things like "Yes, I'm a nerd and a geek, but not a dork." or "He's not a geek; he's just a dork" (must... not... mention... Bill Gates -- oops). I think "dork" is a perfect candidate: it doesn't have any positive connotations that I am aware of, and it just sounds insulting. I really don't see us "adopting" it like the others.
Here's how I currently think of each word:
Nerd: A smart person who is interested in things that go over the heads of others, who respond by mistakenly stereotyping nerds as dorks. Nerds are not necessarily into computers -- there are computer nerds, math nerds, physics nerds, chemistry nerds, and possibly even English Lit. nerds. They tend to turn off non-nerds because they use big words and get good grades in school.
Geek: The subset of nerds who are specifically into computers. Not restricted to Electrical Engineering and Computer Science majors ("EECS geeks"), but those should give a pretty good idea. Math, physics, or other kinds of nerds can also be geeks if they have enough interest in computers, or even just the "geek culture" mindset. I would almost consider "geek" as a substitute for "hacker" (in light of the hacker/cracker confusion), but that is probably wrong, since geeks don't necessarily have the skill level to qualify as "true" hackers (I myself don't quite claim to be worthy of that title), though they probably share the right mindset.
Dork: An unattractive, annoying person with bad personal hygeine, a whiny voice, thick-framed glasses held together with masking tape, etc. In short, all the bad stereotypes that are directed against nerds and geeks. A dork is not necessarily a nerd or geek, since "dork" does not imply any particular intelligence. Some nerds and geeks may also be dorks, but this is purely coincidental. The stereotype is invariably obscenely exaggerated: I don't think I've ever met anyone that matched the way they are portrayed in movies and sitcoms. And yet, that image is what non-nerds mean when they call people nerds or geeks.
I agree with the basic idea of the previous post, assuming the following interpretation:
It's not that there's anything wrong with open source. It has all the listed benefits, and the philosophy is certainly appealing. However, aside from the philosophy, the benefits tend to be pragmatic matters. It's one development model with it's pros and cons, but it's not necessarily the only model that amyone should ever use.
The pros and cons of OSS vs. other models are really not relevant here -- what really matters for purposes of freedom, competition, etc., is open protocols. If you write an OSS client and I write a proprietary one, and they both use a standard protocol, then people can decide which one to use based on factors that are really nobody else's business but theirs. According to the OSS arguments, yours will probably, but not necessarily, be technically superior. If so, people who appreciate such things would use yours. Or, if mine is superior despite being non-open, they could use it. Others might choose mine for any number of other reasons, such as finding my user interface more appealing. Even if mine is superior, those who oppose proprietary software for philosophical reasons would use yours. The point is, choices exist and everybody's happy. Open-source is not relevant, except to those who care about it, or as a means to achieve the real goal of high quality.
The key is that we both used the same protocol. If not for that, our programs would not be able to interoperate, and people would have to either deal with both or only be able to work with other people who chose the same one (and those who refuse to use mine for philosophical reasons would be completely unable to interoperate with those who chose mine for whatever reason). Assuming both became at least moderately popular, the scene would turn ugly as people evangelize the one that they prefer and fight over which one "everybody" should use. Ideally, I suppose, mine would "lose", leaving everyone using the OSS version. However, I think it's much more reasonable, and perfectly satisfactory, to simply have me use the same standard protocol, since that would eliminate all the unpleasantness. Maybe my version offers some particular features that some people want, and are willing to pay for. They could use it, but nobody else would be forced to do so simply in order to be able to work with them. My version would be adding value for these people but not making any trouble for anyone.
Like I said, I find the OSS/free software philosophy attractive, but I don't think it's absolutely essential that all software follow it. However, it is absolutely essential that all communication protocols, file formats, and APIs be fully open standards. We can't have some software vendor making, say, a word processor or a spreadsheet program that uses a proprietary file format making it impossible for users to use a competing product because of incompatibilities.
I mean, I know I've never seen a typo in a program I've written make a better program.
I actually have had this happen, or at least one that made a different-but-equally-valid program from what I intended: I was writing a Scheme interpreter in Java. In the code to evaluate a procedure application, I first put something like
Basically, to create the environment in which to evaluate the procedure's body, I was extending the environment from which it was invoked, not the one in which it was defined. The result would be an interpreter that used dynamic scope instead of lexical scope. This is a feature with pros and cons -- the only reason to call it "wrong" is because it was not what I intended (and not the standard way for Scheme to work). It is not a new idea, but it arose in my program at a time that I certainly wasn't thinking about it, so in a sense it was a random mutation that produced a program with different, but still meaningful, behavior.
Anecdotes aside, it doesn't make much sense to talk about beneficial mutations in code written by people because we have a (more or less) clear idea of how we want it to work, and "goodness" is measured almost exclusively by how closely the result matches that idea. Hence, any unintended behavior is almost by definition a bug, not a feature.
Also:
I oppose deciding beforehand not to consider certain theories. Saying that "evolution" is fact, and not falsifiable, then saying that evolution is scientific, because the theories that have been presented over the years as evolution have been falsifiable, is another neat trick. The reason evolution can't be falsified is because those defining evolution reserve the right to change the definition in the future.
I'm not impressed. There's changing definitions, and then there's changing definitions. You seem to be accusing scientists of changing their theories willy-nilly and claiming "But that's what we meant all along", whereas I think it's more a matter of "Well, it turns out we were off on a few details: the basic idea is the same, but with the following small amendments...". There's a difference between a theory being refined to account for new developments and being discarded completely.
Think about physics: you could say that relativity means that Newtonian physics is wrong, but I think it's more appropriate to say that Newton's theories were incomplete, though they were right within the limited problem domain that he was considering. He may have been wrong to think that they covered all of reality, but all the statements about motion of bodies, etc., are correct, as long as we prepend a disclaimer to the effect of "For bodies of a macroscopic scale, in a given inertial frame of reference, as long as velocities are not an appreciable fraction of the speed of light,...". The refinement of theories is a process of approaching Truth through successive approximation. It can happen that new developments cause major upsets by showing a huge portion of the current beliefs to be wrong, but this is rare, and must be backed up by sufficient evidence to surmount correspondingly huge amounts of skepticism.
1) We had to do streaming because we don't have rights to let people download the original song (puffy's)
What has that got to do with anything whatsoever? You wouldn't be distributing the original song aither way -- just making it possible for people to see a version of this one that doesn't suck. You're already distributing this song. What possible difference could it make whether you stream it or just serve up the file?
I'm sure media-streaming is the coolest thing to be invented since, well, ever, since that's what everyone seems to think and who am I to argue, but it should always be an option, not the only one.
Obviously, when you stream something, you have to use the bitrate dictated by the user's connection speed, but how dare you assume that the user wants to stream it in the first place? It's just evil to refuse to give an option where the user can say, "Streaming's cool and all, but my connection is slow, and I want to see it at high quality. I'm willing to wait; just give me the whole file."
I'm trying to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that the issue is not that you're trying to prevent people from saving the file to disk, though it's hard to see any other possible reason. Given that you're going to make it available at all, you have absolutely no right to even try to control how I use it. Once you send me the bits, they're in my computer's memory, to do with as I please. Of course, applicable copyright restrictions forbid me to redistribute or sell it, but why shouldn't I be able to keep it and view it again later?
I can't even imagine why you would want to do that. When you're trying to get some content out to the largest possible audience, you'd actually rather have the extra bandwidth load on your server when the same person wants to watch it again, or show it to a friend, and not just give him the file once and be done with it? You'd also rather have people see what I got -- one small (~200 pixel) frame that could have been Weird Al on a stage, quickly replaced by a garbled mess of partially-loaded frames, changing about every two seconds -- instead of a near-broadcast-quality version that would actually show me how cool the video is?
Please try to see past all the over-hyped technologies du jour, think about the actual results, and make the site good.
Unless I've managed to get this all mixed up, Lisp has dynamic binding, but not dynamic scope. That is, a procedure invocation is always evaluated in the environment in which the procedure was defined, not the environment in which the invocation occurs. Where it makes a difference is when the procedure refers to non-local variables. So, e.g. (this is Scheme, not Lisp):
would return 6, not 7, because the invocation of "foo" sees the "a" bound in the first line's "let", not the second, since that's the environment in which the "lambda" was evaluated. Once I was writing a Scheme interpreter (in Java, by the way) and I noticed where with a one-word change I could select between dynamic and lexical scope, by changing which environment to extend when binding the arguments for an application.
That said, I agree that dynamic binding (which I assume is what you meant) makes Lisp incredibly powerful. In fact, it makes nearly all other languages (including Java) seem downright primitive. I mean, imagine actually having to recompile a program each time you want to test a change! In Lisp, you don't even always have to stop the application to apply a patch, let alone rebuild it. Just re-evaluate the definition of the procedure that is changed and code that calls it will seamlessly see the new version. Since symbols are bound dynamically, there's nothing to re-link.
The major argument against Lisp has always been performance, but with moderm hardware that's less of an issue -- to be fair, compare it to Java, not C. Besides, with modern compiler technology, the difference is not as great: I've actually seen a piece of Lisp code run significantly faster than the exactly-equivalent C code.
Now consider the fact that things like maintainability and availability are becoming more important than raw performance. I would think that the ability to apply a patch to, say, an e-commerce server without having to bring the system down, even for a minute would be of a lot of interest to the people running those systems.
Lisp was ahead of its time -- its time is coming now.
And even worse: what are we going to do with these things when AOL starts mailing them out? Their CDs make nice coasters, but that's already not as good as the unlimited supply of blank floppies that they used to provide.
Yeah, that's a good size. Any smaller, and you'd lose it.
Also, of course, on TV they keep the disks naked just to make it look more "high-tech". As mentioned above, keeping it clean and undamaged would become more of an issue as the density increases, so it would probably be better to seal it inside a cartridge. It would probably help to have the entire drive mechanism sealed in with it, since the positioning, etc., has to be so precise.
Actually, just make it the same size and shape as a flash card or IBM microdrive, so it would fit all the same devices. That's a lot of mp3s for a portable player with the right slot.
no, wait! Too small! I want it to look like those orange "tapes" in Star Trek.
The idea in Isaac Asimov's short story "The Martian Way" is probably more practical (or less impractical) than this. What they did was: fly out to Saturn, pick a ring particle that was about a cubic mile of fresh water ice, attach thrusters, and fly it back, to land on Mars. The background was that there was an established colony on Mars and lots of nasty politics going on between them and Earth, mainly over water.
This might be easier because it doesn't involve building a tank big enough to contain the HUGE amount of oil that it would take to make the trip worthwhile, or landing on a planet and having to lift the payload off of its surface. And as fresh water gets more valuable here due to pollution and overpopulation, something like that could really come in handy.
Of course, either way, this stuff is way, way, far out there. On the other hand, if we're going to look that far ahead, an ocean of hydrocarbons would make a nice energy source for a colony out there, at least if there was also a good supply of oxygen.
Yeah, and something doesn't add up: it would seem that the CPS 2000 (and definitely the 3000) were already "aimed at the college-age market." I've let eleven-year-olds try to use my CPS2K and, though they could lift it, they couldn't exactly aim it, pump it, run with it, etc. Even pulling the trigger is kind of awkward for them. This is already some heavy artillery -- it's definitely best-suited for college-age people who take such things very seriously.
So what else is there? Aside from just making them even bigger (so even we can't lift them?) and continuing to improve the tank, valve, pump, etc., technology (metal parts to hold higher pressure?), there is one development I'd like to see: make it use compressed CO2 cartridges instead of a hand-pump.
It used to be possible to set the threshold in the preferences to high negative values. When that changed, I seem to recall that it was explicitly stated that (-1) was an absolute minimum: no post would ever have a score lower than that, so (-1) was equivalent to negative infinity for a threshold value.
If that is not the case, and posts can be scored lower than that, then there absolutely has to be a way to specify a threshold of negative infinity. Otherwise, there is no way to be sure of seeing absolutely everything.
For all I know, it's possible that this is a bug in the Slash code and not an intentionally unfair change in the rules. If so, it's pretty important that it be fixed.
...unless all you want is for it to construct a copy of itself and evaluate it in an infinite loop. For a Quine that returns a copy of itself, try this (though I've seen Scheme interpreters that handled quotes differently so you might have to play with it a bit):
Don't try this one unless you're quick on the interrupt key -- on MacGambit at least, yours runs forever in constant space, but mine eats the entire heap, almost before I can reach the button to stop it.
I haven't been formally keeping track, but they probably beat whoever previously held the honor of having made the worst web page in the world. I don't recall ever seeing an animated background before, or at least not one that assaulted my poor eyeballs so viciously. I felt pain, and I'm looking at a flat-panel screen! I'm glad I didn't have to be there when that thing jumped out of a CRT.
Of course, I only know about the first two pages, the second of which, as you say, is covered with a bunch of images that look like they should be links but aren't, and a single little one down at the bottom that doesn't look like much, but is a link. That link popped up a JavaScript window, so, as is my policy, I closed them both without another glance. Now, if there's anything interesting in there, I'll never know.
My message to web designers is simple: you try to tell me where to place my windows, and I'll tell you where to stick your site.
Agreed: the accent wasn't a big deal racism-wise. Actually, I couldn't help but feel a bit uncomfortable at times because it sounded so much like some kind of a racial stereotype (whatever it actually was, since he's so clear that wasn't Jamaican), but I didn't think it was really offensive. At least not that way.
No, my problem was more that, whatever the accent was based on, it was just so damned annoying! I probably disliked Jar-Jar somewhat less than most -- some of his scenes were kind of cute, or even a bit cool (Qui-Gon grabbing his tongue) -- but for the most part, it just positively grated on my ears. At times it was literally painful.
Lucas seems to be aware of the real issue, and he mentions it briefly, but he uses the racism thing to cover it up:
"There is a group of fans for the films that doesn't like comic sidekicks. They want the films to be tough like Terminator, and they get very upset and opinionated about anything that has anything to do with being childlike."
I'd say that's just about right, though it's not quite fair to us: there's a difference between "comic" and "childlike", and there's yet another thing called "just plain annoyingly silly". Also, I for one didn't want it to be quite like Terminator -- more somewhere in the middle, like, maybe, exactly the way it was, but without Jar-Jar.
I loved the movie, and I don't want to be too critical, but he seems to be using some sneaky tricks here: as pointed out above, when fielding racism charges, he dwells on Jar-Jar's accent but doesn't mention the Federation guys' (I'll admit, I would have said Japanese. I stand corrected. Sorry), which would be a bit harder to defend. Also, he ignores the real point of the criticism -- he dismisses the racism thing, saying in effect, "Besides, they're just saying that because they don't like him." If you ask me, the whole point is that we "just" don't like him. This is interesting, though:
"The movies are for children but they don't want to admit that. In the first film they absolutely hated R2 and C3-PO. In the second film they didn't like Yoda and in the third one they hated the Ewoks... and now Jar Jar is getting accused of the same thing."
He makes a good point in the first sentence -- it's his movie, and his is the official word on who the target audience is. I guess we're just jealous that he's making movies for little kids instead of for us. I don't know about the rest, though: I always liked R2-D2 better than C3-P0, I always loved Yoda, and I never thought too highly of Ewoks. I'm not sure what the point is -- that we keep asking him to stop using annoying characters, but he keeps doing it anyway? I thought that was our point.
I think a Niven Ring (from Larry Niven's Ringworld series -- I don't know if he officially named it after himself, but it seems to make sense) would be a lot more practical. I don't remember the exact numbers, but I believe he worked out that if you take the mass of Jupiter, you could make a ring around the sun a million miles wide and a mile thick, with walls a thousand miles high to keep the atmosphere in.
Plenty of surface area there, even if it's no Dyson Sphere, and it has some other advantages: you can spin it for artifical gravity, you can have a smaller ring of evenly-spaced orbiting solar-collecting plates to beam power to collector stations around the rims, as well as cast shadows, creating day and night, etc.
I don't remember the rest of the details, but it was a pretty cool idea.
Otherwise, that would be great -- phrase the description as something like "a method for extorting money from other companies by exploiting the USPTO's incompetence to acquire a patent for some overly-broad technique that is is common use." You can't do it, though, since other people have thought of it first (not the frivolous-patent patent, just frivolous patents).
Question: if you could do it, would you charge guys like this a cut of their licensing fees as your licensing fee, or would you just refuse to license your technology at all?
I've been thinking about this. I'm not up on the theory, but I would believe that it probably is possible to watermark a track pretty much transparently (by doing something more sophisticated than twiddling the low bits), so that it would be very hard for a filter to destroy the watermark without also losing significant fidelity.
As you said, who wants low-quailty tracks? And whatever quality the original is, the filtered bootleg is going to be lower, right?
...with the hits "Self Esteem"(RealAudio excerpt) and "Come Out and Play."...
...included the song "I'm Insane" (RealAudio excerpt)...
You wouldn't think that in the middle of a gung-ho article about the success of mp3, they would know better than to include that most-proprietary of formats that is RealAudio?
Who's with me here? I for one can't stand RealNetworks stuff! I'm sure it's a wonderful format, but it requires their ugly, unstable player, which keeps expiring, forcing me to download it over and over again, while they keep trying to sell me their "Plus" version, and which, when it installs, changes my Netscape prefs, making itself the default player for all the media types (to be fair, QuickTime does this too -- Grr!), and doing everything it can to stop me from saving anything locally. No application is entitled to modify config files belonging to another application without my permission. Aside from being incredibly rude, things that do this are my prime suspects when my prefs file gets corrupted. And why won't they let me save files locally? Who owns this machine anyway?
For all I know, the expiring-version thing might have been just for beta, but I doubt the rest has changed. I wouldn't know, though, because I refuse to touch the stuff anymore. Unfortunately, that means that whenever some wise guy puts something up only in "Real" formats, it's inaccessible for me. I guess now I know how the rest of you feel about those QuickTime codecs without Linux players. My message to web designers: Fewer Formats, Fewer Clicks.
Looks like we now know at least three SlashDot accounts that are owned by the same person using different e-mail addresses. Apparently, he has yet another account that received moderator access -- we won't be seeing that one here, since you can't post and moderate on the same thread. Make that, not from the same account, anyway.
Elberon, eponymous cohort, and rdobbs appear to be related, though the four accounts (these three plus the unknown moderator) are not necessarily all the same person, since they could be a group of people posting in concert. I do not believe that this really happened independently. For all I know, the AC who appears to be so impressed with (and fooled by) the result could be from the same person or group, congratulating himself.
I am not part of the scheme, though I realize now that I can't prove it. (Why would I blow the whistle on my own game? Maybe to let "myself" be the clever one who saw through it? This is not the case. Really.) This may be a bit juvenile, but it's still pretty cool -- this sub-thread should be framed.
"Nerd" was always too negative for me. So is "geek"...
"SlashDot: News For Nerds. Stuff That Matters."?
Seems to me we (at least ought to) embrace the appellation "nerd" as much as "geek".
I've been meaning to hash this out for a while, and it's close enough to being on-topic now, so here goes:
I've always thought of myself as a nerd, but to me it does not mean the "Poindexter"-type image (goofy, pocket-protector-wearing, glasses taped together, etc.). I've never even known anyone who fit that stereotype, and I've always been offended by it. To me, "nerd" generally means "someone who is smart, and therefore finds intellectual things interesting which are above the heads of the non-smart non-nerds, who therefore think the nerd is weird and unfairly stereotype him as the Poindexter-type because he uses big words that they don't understand".
For a while, it seemed to me that "geek" should really mean what they meant by "nerd", while "nerd" remained a good thing, though some others seem to have it the other way around, but now I think these are both wrong: it's not that one means "smart person" and the other means "goofy guy with broken glasses". Rather, they're pretty much synonymous. "Normal" people use both to mean "goofy guy", but, in a sort of "geek pride movement", we reject the negative connotations in both cases, wearing our SlashDot and "Blood, Sweat, and Code" t-shirts, etc.
Maybe it's a situation where: they use some word to insult us; we start calling ourselves the same thing and meaning it in a good way, considering some other word to mean the bad thing; they start insulting us with the new word; we adopt it as well; etc. When I think of it this way, it's actually kind of silly, like most of "Political Correctness" in general.
I suppose "dork" might mean all the bad things that people usually have in mind when they say "nerd" or "geek", and to me it does not seem to have any of the good connotations, i.e., a dork is just Poindexter-ish, without necessarily being particularly smart. The cycle doesn't repeat because "dork" doesn't mean anything good, and I for one have no intention of taking it as a compliment. Then, the problem with non-geeks' perception of us is not that they call us nerds or geeks, but the fact that they think that nerds and geeks are also dorks. Hence, I am a nerd and a geek, but not, as most of the people I went to high school with seemed to think, a dork.
As for the difference between "nerd" and "geek", they are, as I said, pretty much the same, but with slightly different connotations. How about this: I tend to think that a nerd is someone who is generally smart, including computer nerds as well as math nerds, physics nerds, chemistry nerds, and even literature nerds, while geeks are specifically the computer-oriented subset of nerds.
Slashdot Mirror
It's hype vs. truth in sort of the same way as Intel's claims about MMX were: It really is that fast, but only for those tasks that happen to benefit from vector-processing and whose code is optimized to use it. So it's true, but with a huge "Your Mileage May Vary" sticker attached for real-world applications.
However, it's a lot better in the real world than MMX, since (as has been posted countless times) the optimization can be done by flipping a single checkbox in CodeWarrior, with no need to drop into assembly code (though I guess you would still do that foe even better optimization). Also, Apple is optimizing (or has already) a lot of system-level routines to use it, e.g., QuickTime, networking, etc., so even an unoptimized application that spends a lot of time waiting for those routines will see major speedups.
Also, the range of tasks that can benefit from AltiVec is supposedly far wider than that of MMX: they're both the same sort of thing, i.e., a vector-processor, meaning they perform the same operation on multiple data elements with a single instruction, but AltiVec is supposedly much better-designed -- its new instructions are more useful and more powerful, it doesn't have MMX's problem of sharing registers with the FPU, etc. Part of that is due to the PowerPC's overall superior achitecture, which makes it easier to add new stuff without it all getting crowded and jumbled together.
And Jobs claimed in his speech that it really is true that they were contacted by the DOD telling them that these machines are subject to the export controls for supercomputer technology. Hence the ad "For the first time in history, a personal computer has been classified as a weapon by the U.S. government. With its ability to perform over a billion calculations per second, the Pentagon doesn't want it to fall into the wrong hands. As for Pentium PCs... they're harmless." This thing really is technically a supercomputer, since, with vector processing, its speed is in the GFLOPS.
David Gould
Suppose that instead of an obviously-flimsy screen door, your house has an ordinary door with a keyhole above the knob, and you have a key that fits the keyhole. Say it's a very fancy, flashy model, with an electric sign that lights up "LOCKED" in big red letters, or "OPEN" in green letters, respectively, when you turn the key.
Suppose the people who sold you the house assured you that it was impossible for anyone without the key to open the door. To prove it, they turned the key and pointed at the sign, saying "See? It says "LOCKED", so it must be locked. The only way to open it is with the key, and only you have that, so you're perfectly safe."
Now, suppose that, in fact, the changing of the lights on the sign is the only thing that happens when you turn the key. There isn't even a bolt installed as part of the "lock" -- it just says "LOCKED", but the door is completely open for anyone who tries to turn the knob.
But, suppose that you trusted the people so blindly that it never occurred to you to try opening the door when it said "LOCKED", or even to look at the edge of the door to see the bolt. You just blindly believed the people who sold you the house when they said that the door could not be opened without the key. After all, the sign says "LOCKED", doesn't it?
Now, when someone walks in and robs you, surely he is still committing a crime, but don't you think the people who sold you the house are just a little bit to blame as well, since the security that they claimed to be selling you was in fact completely non-existent? In fact, isn't it even just slightly your fault that you were either too stupid or too lazy to take even the most basic measures to ensure your own security?
David Gould
I re-read GEB every two or three years; it's part of my religion. I get quines. I was just wondering if I was missing something in the second one:
Quine "quine?" An attempt at just quining the word "quine," thus making it a self-referential self-similar statement, and also being a challenge for the next statement;
Okay, so it's not really a quine itself (though it's sort of quiney), but it sets up the next one: a quine consisting entirely of forms of the word "quine". No, actually just a sentence containing a quine of "quined" and consisting of forms of "quine".
((lambda (x) (list (list 'lambda '(x) x) (list 'quote x))) '(list (list 'lambda '(x) x) (list 'quote x)))
David Gould
How about one where those systems (and others) coexist and run applications that use common, standardized document formats that eliminate any need for conversion?
Or even if everyone used Office and the formats remained proprietary, as long as they are the same on each platform? Operating systems don't create file formats, applications do.
Also, the article didn't say anything about monopoly issues or the importance of multiple platforms; it just states the need for a platform that works, which Windows ain't. He blames Microsoft, not for being a monopoly, but for their making stuff that doesn't work. Don't change the subject.
Something else that he doesn't mention: didn't I hear a few years back that Sun (not exactly unbiased, I realize) had banned the use of PowerPoint becuase they had determined that their managers were spending more time playing with the pretty pictures than working on the actual content of their presentations, which actually declined in quality as a result? Point being: all this "productivity" software doesn't necessarily let you do any more actual work, even if it works fine. Instead, it can distract you from the real work by getting you obsessed with cosmetics.
David Gould
One criticism I had after the first episode was that you guys seemed to be pretty much just reading through the headlines of that day's /. front page and making comments of about the same depth as the blurbs that you already add to the stories on the front page. Not that there's anything wrong with that, since it is interesting stuff, but it seemed kind of redundant. Aside from hearing your voices (which have also improved a lot), what was there that I hadn't already gotten by reading /. normally that day? Not much.
/., there's really no way to avoid some redundancy. I wouldn't want to see you holding stuff back from the page, just to have something new to talk about on the show. It's not so bad, though, since now you seem to just take a few cues from the page, then go off and discuss the topics in more depth, and add some jokes. I like that. At a couple points I had trouble staying in my chair and not ROTFLMAO, which wouldn't have looked good at work.
/. discussions to read or quote, to add a little bit of interactivity.
There's still some of that, but then what else are you going to talk about, right? Since, almost by definition, anything that you think is interesting to talk about you would have already posted on
Of course, I don't see how the show could ever be as good as the site: "News for Nerds" is cool, but what makes it really special is the community interaction, and I guess you can't exactly take calls. Maybe you could occasionally select a few comments from
By the way, for a while now, I've been thinking that Silicon Valley needs to have an All-Geek radio station -- KODE. After all, who lives here? It would probably be mostly a regular music station, but with guys like you for a morning show. I think "Mix 106.5" is somewhere close to what I have in mind for KODE, but maybe that's just my musical taste. (The only problem is they play too much Alanis Morisette stuff -- a guaranteed channel-change for me.) I don't suppose you could send your stuff over to one of the stations around here and get them to play it? That would be cool.
David Gould
Your .sig indicates otherwise. :)
/.: "News for Nerds", not "News for Geeks".
Thanks. Yours, too. Question though: I get the first and last parts, but I'm not sure about the middle -- the first part of the second line, which I assume is a separate item: [quine "quine?"]. Huh?
Aside from that, though, yes, I'd say your connotative definitions are more or less right, though your 'nerd' is a bit flaky; IMO, it can also mean what you mean by 'dork'. I still don't see how 'dork' can be taken as a compliment in any connotation, though, which was what I was originally responding to...
Your claim that "nerd" can also mean "dork" is exactly what I consider to be the problem: what's wrong with the way "normal" people think of us is partly the way they exaggerate the dork stereotype, but mainly the fact that they think nerds are dorks. That is, they hear you using big words and talking about stuff that they don't understand, and they just seem to see masking tape on your glasses, whether or not it's really there.
On the other hand, I guess you have a point, in that I was a bit facetious when I said "Some nerds and geeks may also be dorks, but this is purely coincidental." Maybe not purely coincidental, since being a nerd is a risk factor toward also being a dork. (different interests -> less socializing -> poor social skills, etc.) I still don't think they're the same thing, though.
I still think "nerd" and "geek" are pretty much the same thing, but with slightly different focus (general intellectualism vs. computers) Look at
David Gould
Now that we have the origins of all three words, we can discuss their current meanings.
Growing up, I realized pretty quickly (almost as soon as people started calling me it) that what "nerd" actually means (as opposed to the way they meant it) is a good thing -- hardly an insult, but rather something that I would proudly claim about myself.
For a while, I guess I thought of "geek" as the correct word for what they meant by "nerd" (the insult), but after a few years, I realized that "geek" really also refers more to things that I would consider "cool".
However, there has to be some word that means the "bad" things, so we can say things like "Yes, I'm a nerd and a geek, but not a dork." or "He's not a geek; he's just a dork" (must... not... mention... Bill Gates -- oops). I think "dork" is a perfect candidate: it doesn't have any positive connotations that I am aware of, and it just sounds insulting. I really don't see us "adopting" it like the others.
Here's how I currently think of each word:
Nerd: A smart person who is interested in things that go over the heads of others, who respond by mistakenly stereotyping nerds as dorks. Nerds are not necessarily into computers -- there are computer nerds, math nerds, physics nerds, chemistry nerds, and possibly even English Lit. nerds. They tend to turn off non-nerds because they use big words and get good grades in school.
Geek: The subset of nerds who are specifically into computers. Not restricted to Electrical Engineering and Computer Science majors ("EECS geeks"), but those should give a pretty good idea. Math, physics, or other kinds of nerds can also be geeks if they have enough interest in computers, or even just the "geek culture" mindset. I would almost consider "geek" as a substitute for "hacker" (in light of the hacker/cracker confusion), but that is probably wrong, since geeks don't necessarily have the skill level to qualify as "true" hackers (I myself don't quite claim to be worthy of that title), though they probably share the right mindset.
Dork: An unattractive, annoying person with bad personal hygeine, a whiny voice, thick-framed glasses held together with masking tape, etc. In short, all the bad stereotypes that are directed against nerds and geeks. A dork is not necessarily a nerd or geek, since "dork" does not imply any particular intelligence. Some nerds and geeks may also be dorks, but this is purely coincidental. The stereotype is invariably obscenely exaggerated: I don't think I've ever met anyone that matched the way they are portrayed in movies and sitcoms. And yet, that image is what non-nerds mean when they call people nerds or geeks.
David Gould
I agree with the basic idea of the previous post, assuming the following interpretation:
It's not that there's anything wrong with open source. It has all the listed benefits, and the philosophy is certainly appealing. However, aside from the philosophy, the benefits tend to be pragmatic matters. It's one development model with it's pros and cons, but it's not necessarily the only model that amyone should ever use.
The pros and cons of OSS vs. other models are really not relevant here -- what really matters for purposes of freedom, competition, etc., is open protocols. If you write an OSS client and I write a proprietary one, and they both use a standard protocol, then people can decide which one to use based on factors that are really nobody else's business but theirs. According to the OSS arguments, yours will probably, but not necessarily, be technically superior. If so, people who appreciate such things would use yours. Or, if mine is superior despite being non-open, they could use it. Others might choose mine for any number of other reasons, such as finding my user interface more appealing. Even if mine is superior, those who oppose proprietary software for philosophical reasons would use yours. The point is, choices exist and everybody's happy. Open-source is not relevant, except to those who care about it, or as a means to achieve the real goal of high quality.
The key is that we both used the same protocol. If not for that, our programs would not be able to interoperate, and people would have to either deal with both or only be able to work with other people who chose the same one (and those who refuse to use mine for philosophical reasons would be completely unable to interoperate with those who chose mine for whatever reason). Assuming both became at least moderately popular, the scene would turn ugly as people evangelize the one that they prefer and fight over which one "everybody" should use. Ideally, I suppose, mine would "lose", leaving everyone using the OSS version. However, I think it's much more reasonable, and perfectly satisfactory, to simply have me use the same standard protocol, since that would eliminate all the unpleasantness. Maybe my version offers some particular features that some people want, and are willing to pay for. They could use it, but nobody else would be forced to do so simply in order to be able to work with them. My version would be adding value for these people but not making any trouble for anyone.
Like I said, I find the OSS/free software philosophy attractive, but I don't think it's absolutely essential that all software follow it. However, it is absolutely essential that all communication protocols, file formats, and APIs be fully open standards. We can't have some software vendor making, say, a word processor or a spreadsheet program that uses a proprietary file format making it impossible for users to use a competing product because of incompatibilities.
David Gould
I mean, I know I've never seen a typo in a program I've written make a better program.
I actually have had this happen, or at least one that made a different-but-equally-valid program from what I intended: I was writing a Scheme interpreter in Java. In the code to evaluate a procedure application, I first put something like
Environment execEnv = env.ExtendEnvironment();
instead of:
Environment execEnv = proc.definingEnv.ExtendEnvironment();
Basically, to create the environment in which to evaluate the procedure's body, I was extending the environment from which it was invoked, not the one in which it was defined. The result would be an interpreter that used dynamic scope instead of lexical scope. This is a feature with pros and cons -- the only reason to call it "wrong" is because it was not what I intended (and not the standard way for Scheme to work). It is not a new idea, but it arose in my program at a time that I certainly wasn't thinking about it, so in a sense it was a random mutation that produced a program with different, but still meaningful, behavior.
Anecdotes aside, it doesn't make much sense to talk about beneficial mutations in code written by people because we have a (more or less) clear idea of how we want it to work, and "goodness" is measured almost exclusively by how closely the result matches that idea. Hence, any unintended behavior is almost by definition a bug, not a feature.
Also:
I oppose deciding beforehand not to consider certain theories. Saying that "evolution" is fact, and not falsifiable, then saying that evolution is scientific, because the theories that have been presented over the years as evolution have been falsifiable, is another neat trick. The reason evolution can't be falsified is because those defining evolution reserve the right to change the definition in the future.
I'm not impressed. There's changing definitions, and then there's changing definitions. You seem to be accusing scientists of changing their theories willy-nilly and claiming "But that's what we meant all along", whereas I think it's more a matter of "Well, it turns out we were off on a few details: the basic idea is the same, but with the following small amendments...". There's a difference between a theory being refined to account for new developments and being discarded completely.
Think about physics: you could say that relativity means that Newtonian physics is wrong, but I think it's more appropriate to say that Newton's theories were incomplete, though they were right within the limited problem domain that he was considering. He may have been wrong to think that they covered all of reality, but all the statements about motion of bodies, etc., are correct, as long as we prepend a disclaimer to the effect of "For bodies of a macroscopic scale, in a given inertial frame of reference, as long as velocities are not an appreciable fraction of the speed of light,
David Gould
1) We had to do streaming because we don't have rights to let people download the original song (puffy's)
What has that got to do with anything whatsoever? You wouldn't be distributing the original song aither way -- just making it possible for people to see a version of this one that doesn't suck. You're already distributing this song. What possible difference could it make whether you stream it or just serve up the file?
I'm sure media-streaming is the coolest thing to be invented since, well, ever, since that's what everyone seems to think and who am I to argue, but it should always be an option, not the only one.
Obviously, when you stream something, you have to use the bitrate dictated by the user's connection speed, but how dare you assume that the user wants to stream it in the first place? It's just evil to refuse to give an option where the user can say, "Streaming's cool and all, but my connection is slow, and I want to see it at high quality. I'm willing to wait; just give me the whole file."
I'm trying to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that the issue is not that you're trying to prevent people from saving the file to disk, though it's hard to see any other possible reason. Given that you're going to make it available at all, you have absolutely no right to even try to control how I use it. Once you send me the bits, they're in my computer's memory, to do with as I please. Of course, applicable copyright restrictions forbid me to redistribute or sell it, but why shouldn't I be able to keep it and view it again later?
I can't even imagine why you would want to do that. When you're trying to get some content out to the largest possible audience, you'd actually rather have the extra bandwidth load on your server when the same person wants to watch it again, or show it to a friend, and not just give him the file once and be done with it? You'd also rather have people see what I got -- one small (~200 pixel) frame that could have been Weird Al on a stage, quickly replaced by a garbled mess of partially-loaded frames, changing about every two seconds -- instead of a near-broadcast-quality version that would actually show me how cool the video is?
Please try to see past all the over-hyped technologies du jour, think about the actual results, and make the site good.
David Gould
Unless I've managed to get this all mixed up, Lisp has dynamic binding, but not dynamic scope. That is, a procedure invocation is always evaluated in the environment in which the procedure was defined, not the environment in which the invocation occurs. Where it makes a difference is when the procedure refers to non-local variables. So, e.g. (this is Scheme, not Lisp):
(define foo (let ((a 1)) (lambda (x) (+ x a))))
(let ((a 2)) (foo 5))
would return 6, not 7, because the invocation of "foo" sees the "a" bound in the first line's "let", not the second, since that's the environment in which the "lambda" was evaluated. Once I was writing a Scheme interpreter (in Java, by the way) and I noticed where with a one-word change I could select between dynamic and lexical scope, by changing which environment to extend when binding the arguments for an application.
That said, I agree that dynamic binding (which I assume is what you meant) makes Lisp incredibly powerful. In fact, it makes nearly all other languages (including Java) seem downright primitive. I mean, imagine actually having to recompile a program each time you want to test a change! In Lisp, you don't even always have to stop the application to apply a patch, let alone rebuild it. Just re-evaluate the definition of the procedure that is changed and code that calls it will seamlessly see the new version. Since symbols are bound dynamically, there's nothing to re-link.
The major argument against Lisp has always been performance, but with moderm hardware that's less of an issue -- to be fair, compare it to Java, not C. Besides, with modern compiler technology, the difference is not as great: I've actually seen a piece of Lisp code run significantly faster than the exactly-equivalent C code.
Now consider the fact that things like maintainability and availability are becoming more important than raw performance. I would think that the ability to apply a patch to, say, an e-commerce server without having to bring the system down, even for a minute would be of a lot of interest to the people running those systems.
Lisp was ahead of its time -- its time is coming now.
David Gould
And even worse: what are we going to do with these things when AOL starts mailing them out? Their CDs make nice coasters, but that's already not as good as the unlimited supply of blank floppies that they used to provide.
David Gould
Yeah, that's a good size. Any smaller, and you'd lose it.
Also, of course, on TV they keep the disks naked just to make it look more "high-tech". As mentioned above, keeping it clean and undamaged would become more of an issue as the density increases, so it would probably be better to seal it inside a cartridge. It would probably help to have the entire drive mechanism sealed in with it, since the positioning, etc., has to be so precise.
Actually, just make it the same size and shape as a flash card or IBM microdrive, so it would fit all the same devices. That's a lot of mp3s for a portable player with the right slot.
no, wait! Too small! I want it to look like those orange "tapes" in Star Trek.
David Gould
The idea in Isaac Asimov's short story "The Martian Way" is probably more practical (or less impractical) than this. What they did was: fly out to Saturn, pick a ring particle that was about a cubic mile of fresh water ice, attach thrusters, and fly it back, to land on Mars. The background was that there was an established colony on Mars and lots of nasty politics going on between them and Earth, mainly over water.
This might be easier because it doesn't involve building a tank big enough to contain the HUGE amount of oil that it would take to make the trip worthwhile, or landing on a planet and having to lift the payload off of its surface. And as fresh water gets more valuable here due to pollution and overpopulation, something like that could really come in handy.
Of course, either way, this stuff is way, way, far out there. On the other hand, if we're going to look that far ahead, an ocean of hydrocarbons would make a nice energy source for a colony out there, at least if there was also a good supply of oxygen.
David Gould
Yeah, and something doesn't add up: it would seem that the CPS 2000 (and definitely the 3000) were already "aimed at the college-age market." I've let eleven-year-olds try to use my CPS2K and, though they could lift it, they couldn't exactly aim it, pump it, run with it, etc. Even pulling the trigger is kind of awkward for them. This is already some heavy artillery -- it's definitely best-suited for college-age people who take such things very seriously.
So what else is there? Aside from just making them even bigger (so even we can't lift them?) and continuing to improve the tank, valve, pump, etc., technology (metal parts to hold higher pressure?), there is one development I'd like to see: make it use compressed CO2 cartridges instead of a hand-pump.
David Gould
-3! What?
It used to be possible to set the threshold in the preferences to high negative values. When that changed, I seem to recall that it was explicitly stated that (-1) was an absolute minimum: no post would ever have a score lower than that, so (-1) was equivalent to negative infinity for a threshold value.
If that is not the case, and posts can be scored lower than that, then there absolutely has to be a way to specify a threshold of negative infinity. Otherwise, there is no way to be sure of seeing absolutely everything.
For all I know, it's possible that this is a bug in the Slash code and not an intentionally unfair change in the rules. If so, it's pretty important that it be fixed.
David Gould
((lambda (x) (x x)) (lambda (x) (x x)))
...unless all you want is for it to construct a copy of itself and evaluate it in an infinite loop. For a Quine that returns a copy of itself, try this (though I've seen Scheme interpreters that handled quotes differently so you might have to play with it a bit):
((lambda (x)
(list (list 'lambda '(x) x) (list 'quote x)))
'(list (list 'lambda '(x) x) (list 'quote x)))
I also have one that makes an infinite loop:
((lambda (x)
(eval (list (list 'lambda '(x) x) (list 'quote x))))
'(eval (list (list 'lambda '(x) x) (list 'quote x))))
Don't try this one unless you're quick on the interrupt key -- on MacGambit at least, yours runs forever in constant space, but mine eats the entire heap, almost before I can reach the button to stop it.
David Gould
I haven't been formally keeping track, but they probably beat whoever previously held the honor of having made the worst web page in the world. I don't recall ever seeing an animated background before, or at least not one that assaulted my poor eyeballs so viciously. I felt pain, and I'm looking at a flat-panel screen! I'm glad I didn't have to be there when that thing jumped out of a CRT.
Of course, I only know about the first two pages, the second of which, as you say, is covered with a bunch of images that look like they should be links but aren't, and a single little one down at the bottom that doesn't look like much, but is a link. That link popped up a JavaScript window, so, as is my policy, I closed them both without another glance. Now, if there's anything interesting in there, I'll never know.
My message to web designers is simple: you try to tell me where to place my windows, and I'll tell you where to stick your site.
David Gould
Agreed: the accent wasn't a big deal racism-wise. Actually, I couldn't help but feel a bit uncomfortable at times because it sounded so much like some kind of a racial stereotype (whatever it actually was, since he's so clear that wasn't Jamaican), but I didn't think it was really offensive. At least not that way.
No, my problem was more that, whatever the accent was based on, it was just so damned annoying! I probably disliked Jar-Jar somewhat less than most -- some of his scenes were kind of cute, or even a bit cool (Qui-Gon grabbing his tongue) -- but for the most part, it just positively grated on my ears. At times it was literally painful.
Lucas seems to be aware of the real issue, and he mentions it briefly, but he uses the racism thing to cover it up:
"There is a group of fans for the films that doesn't like comic sidekicks. They want the films to be tough like Terminator, and they get very upset and opinionated about anything that has anything to do with being childlike."
I'd say that's just about right, though it's not quite fair to us: there's a difference between "comic" and "childlike", and there's yet another thing called "just plain annoyingly silly". Also, I for one didn't want it to be quite like Terminator -- more somewhere in the middle, like, maybe, exactly the way it was, but without Jar-Jar.
I loved the movie, and I don't want to be too critical, but he seems to be using some sneaky tricks here: as pointed out above, when fielding racism charges, he dwells on Jar-Jar's accent but doesn't mention the Federation guys' (I'll admit, I would have said Japanese. I stand corrected. Sorry), which would be a bit harder to defend. Also, he ignores the real point of the criticism -- he dismisses the racism thing, saying in effect, "Besides, they're just saying that because they don't like him." If you ask me, the whole point is that we "just" don't like him. This is interesting, though:
"The movies are for children but they don't want to admit that. In the first film they absolutely hated R2 and C3-PO. In the second film they didn't like Yoda and in the third one they hated the Ewoks... and now Jar Jar is getting accused of the same thing."
He makes a good point in the first sentence -- it's his movie, and his is the official word on who the target audience is. I guess we're just jealous that he's making movies for little kids instead of for us. I don't know about the rest, though: I always liked R2-D2 better than C3-P0, I always loved Yoda, and I never thought too highly of Ewoks. I'm not sure what the point is -- that we keep asking him to stop using annoying characters, but he keeps doing it anyway? I thought that was our point.
David Gould
I think a Niven Ring (from Larry Niven's Ringworld series -- I don't know if he officially named it after himself, but it seems to make sense) would be a lot more practical. I don't remember the exact numbers, but I believe he worked out that if you take the mass of Jupiter, you could make a ring around the sun a million miles wide and a mile thick, with walls a thousand miles high to keep the atmosphere in.
Plenty of surface area there, even if it's no Dyson Sphere, and it has some other advantages: you can spin it for artifical gravity, you can have a smaller ring of evenly-spaced orbiting solar-collecting plates to beam power to collector stations around the rims, as well as cast shadows, creating day and night, etc.
I don't remember the rest of the details, but it was a pretty cool idea.
David Gould
Unfortunately there's prior art.
Otherwise, that would be great -- phrase the description as something like "a method for extorting money from other companies by exploiting the USPTO's incompetence to acquire a patent for some overly-broad technique that is is common use." You can't do it, though, since other people have thought of it first (not the frivolous-patent patent, just frivolous patents).
Question: if you could do it, would you charge guys like this a cut of their licensing fees as your licensing fee, or would you just refuse to license your technology at all?
David Gould
I've been thinking about this. I'm not up on the theory, but I would believe that it probably is possible to watermark a track pretty much transparently (by doing something more sophisticated than twiddling the low bits), so that it would be very hard for a filter to destroy the watermark without also losing significant fidelity.
As you said, who wants low-quailty tracks? And whatever quality the original is, the filtered bootleg is going to be lower, right?
David Gould
You wouldn't think that in the middle of a gung-ho article about the success of mp3, they would know better than to include that most-proprietary of formats that is RealAudio?
Who's with me here? I for one can't stand RealNetworks stuff! I'm sure it's a wonderful format, but it requires their ugly, unstable player, which keeps expiring, forcing me to download it over and over again, while they keep trying to sell me their "Plus" version, and which, when it installs, changes my Netscape prefs, making itself the default player for all the media types (to be fair, QuickTime does this too -- Grr!), and doing everything it can to stop me from saving anything locally. No application is entitled to modify config files belonging to another application without my permission. Aside from being incredibly rude, things that do this are my prime suspects when my prefs file gets corrupted. And why won't they let me save files locally? Who owns this machine anyway?
For all I know, the expiring-version thing might have been just for beta, but I doubt the rest has changed. I wouldn't know, though, because I refuse to touch the stuff anymore. Unfortunately, that means that whenever some wise guy puts something up only in "Real" formats, it's inaccessible for me. I guess now I know how the rest of you feel about those QuickTime codecs without Linux players. My message to web designers: Fewer Formats, Fewer Clicks.
David Gould
Looks like we now know at least three SlashDot accounts that are owned by the same person using different e-mail addresses. Apparently, he has yet another account that received moderator access -- we won't be seeing that one here, since you can't post and moderate on the same thread. Make that, not from the same account, anyway.
Elberon, eponymous cohort, and rdobbs appear to be related, though the four accounts (these three plus the unknown moderator) are not necessarily all the same person, since they could be a group of people posting in concert. I do not believe that this really happened independently. For all I know, the AC who appears to be so impressed with (and fooled by) the result could be from the same person or group, congratulating himself.
I am not part of the scheme, though I realize now that I can't prove it. (Why would I blow the whistle on my own game? Maybe to let "myself" be the clever one who saw through it? This is not the case. Really.) This may be a bit juvenile, but it's still pretty cool -- this sub-thread should be framed.
David Gould
"Nerd" was always too negative for me. So is "geek"...
"SlashDot: News For Nerds. Stuff That Matters."?
Seems to me we (at least ought to) embrace the appellation "nerd" as much as "geek".
I've been meaning to hash this out for a while, and it's close enough to being on-topic now, so here goes:
I've always thought of myself as a nerd, but to me it does not mean the "Poindexter"-type image (goofy, pocket-protector-wearing, glasses taped together, etc.). I've never even known anyone who fit that stereotype, and I've always been offended by it. To me, "nerd" generally means "someone who is smart, and therefore finds intellectual things interesting which are above the heads of the non-smart non-nerds, who therefore think the nerd is weird and unfairly stereotype him as the Poindexter-type because he uses big words that they don't understand".
For a while, it seemed to me that "geek" should really mean what they meant by "nerd", while "nerd" remained a good thing, though some others seem to have it the other way around, but now I think these are both wrong: it's not that one means "smart person" and the other means "goofy guy with broken glasses". Rather, they're pretty much synonymous. "Normal" people use both to mean "goofy guy", but, in a sort of "geek pride movement", we reject the negative connotations in both cases, wearing our SlashDot and "Blood, Sweat, and Code" t-shirts, etc.
Maybe it's a situation where: they use some word to insult us; we start calling ourselves the same thing and meaning it in a good way, considering some other word to mean the bad thing; they start insulting us with the new word; we adopt it as well; etc. When I think of it this way, it's actually kind of silly, like most of "Political Correctness" in general.
I suppose "dork" might mean all the bad things that people usually have in mind when they say "nerd" or "geek", and to me it does not seem to have any of the good connotations, i.e., a dork is just Poindexter-ish, without necessarily being particularly smart. The cycle doesn't repeat because "dork" doesn't mean anything good, and I for one have no intention of taking it as a compliment. Then, the problem with non-geeks' perception of us is not that they call us nerds or geeks, but the fact that they think that nerds and geeks are also dorks. Hence, I am a nerd and a geek, but not, as most of the people I went to high school with seemed to think, a dork.
As for the difference between "nerd" and "geek", they are, as I said, pretty much the same, but with slightly different connotations. How about this: I tend to think that a nerd is someone who is generally smart, including computer nerds as well as math nerds, physics nerds, chemistry nerds, and even literature nerds, while geeks are specifically the computer-oriented subset of nerds.
Thoughts?
David Gould