What was the gender distribution of the tweets this was tested against? If 65.9% of the tweets were from a male, the algorithm "return Gender.male;" will get the gender right 65.9% of the time...
It seems to me your experience must be somewhat limited. I programmed c/c++ for 7 years (with some perl on the side) and switched to java. I've now done java (and some perl, and some python, etc) for about 12 years. I know several other developers who've done the same thing.
Maybe it's just that you're young, and people who are still doing c/c++ as of 5 years ago are stuck on it.
I dug through this thread looking for the surely inevitable reply to ask you for actual evidence to back your claim (that Kurzweil's predictions are often wrong), so I could mod it up.
I can't find one, so I sacrifice my option to mod this thread to call you out. Can you back up your claim?
The predictions criticized in that article are definitely not entirely accurate, but they're also pretty damn good for having been made in 1998. We are close to where Kurzweil says we should be.
either Oracle is right and thus is in violation of it's (Sun's) own terms for Java
That's not how licensing works. Licensing are the rules under which people who *are not the copyright holder* may distribute copies. If you own the copyright, you may distribute copies however you like.
I don't give up rights on what I can do with my copyrighted materials when I distribute under a license. I am just giving people the option to distribute in ways otherwise restricted by copyright law. I can't take away your distribution rights with a license, and I certainly don't give up my own distribution rights by granting you a license.
Yeah, that's why I copped out and said "likely". I personally have rarely worked on code in which CPU performance was a big factor - less than 1% of my time. I have been programming professionally on a large variety of projects for about 17 years.
I totally agree with you for the kind of work you mention, with the caveat that you should ALWAYS profile before doing low level optimization.
In some situations Java will be faster than unoptimized C++ - JIT compilation will do enough of a better job than vanilla C++ to make the difference. In general, C++ will clearly be faster. However, I think what most of the people you're qualifying as idiots get up in arms about (rightly) is the assumption that so many programmers seem to make that Java will be many times slower than C++. That's (usually) just wrong.
In particular, here's what Google's analysis had to say about it on page 9:
Jeremy Manson brought the performance of Java on par with the original C++ implementation
They go further to say that they deliberately chose not to optimize the Java further, but several of the other C++ optimizations would have applied to Java.
For most programming tasks, use the language that produces testable, maintainable code, and which is a good fit for the kind of problem you're solving. If it performs badly (unlikely on modern machines), profile it and optimize the critical sections. If you have to, write the most critical sections in C or assembly.
If you're choosing the language to write your app based on how it performs, you are likely the one making bad technical decisions.
I totally agree that each person should decide whether to have kids. I apologize; I saw an inflammatory comment and I responded with another inflammatory comment slanted the other direction.
On the other hand, I do agree that the tendency to not have kids will self correct, and I'd rather it's the thinking people correcting it than Idiocrats.
Ah, actually, that was Wovel, not me. I was just sticking in my 2c.
I guess I personally agree that we shouldn't say they have done nothing, but I still believe they need to demonstrate value before the question of making what they do legal is even worth discussing.
What grounds are there for the search? Is getting on a plane a valid basis to suspect illegal behavior? If they don't have probable cause, a government search is illegal, period. If you think this search is OK, in what circumstances does the 4th amendment protect anything? I guarantee the founding fathers didn't intend it to be meaningless.
If you have valid refutation of any signficant point here, I'm glad to debate. If you only have a tired, unfounded repetition of the supposed security benefits (with no evidence of a statistically signficant number of attacks *actually prevented* by the screening), I have no interest in responding.
Beyond that, though, it doesn't matter legally whether the checks are needed for our security (which I don't believe). Now, IF the checks gave material gains in our security, that would be a good starting point for a debate about amending the constitution. Until an amendment passes, however, it's still illegal to search everyone who wants to board a plane.
If your argument is about lives saved, you have to address the reasons why it's OK to spend many $$$s and subject ourselves to indignities to save lives in air travel, but not OK to limit speeds to 55 mph, have more restrictive driving license rules, integrate breathalysers into the ignition system for cars, etc. to save many more lives for fewer $$$s and less loss of liberty in auto travel.
Additionally, I see no reason why flights shouldn't opt in to the travel procedures. If you want to pay an extra $20 to get invasive body scans done before you get on a plane for the supposed peace of mind of knowing everyone else on that plane had them, have at. I don't, and I'll choose the flight that doesn't do it.
No, you appear to assume the default is that we should allow invasive procedures based on unsupported assertions.
We don't have to show that their unsupported assertions are false. They have to show that there is supporting evidence, and then, based on that evidence, we could pass an amendment to the constitution saying that it's OK to violate the 4th amendment rights. Until then, it's not just a gross violation of my rights, it's a gross violation based on hot air.
I have a MakerBot (a repstrap machine), so I'm familiar with the philosophy. Unfortunately you can only make about half the $$$ value of the machine with another machine right now. (And in fact it's much cheaper to buy molded versions of the printable parts).
I'd be interested in hearing more about your replicator if you happen to find the reference. I have vague notions that I heard of a CNC & chip fab lab designed at MIT to be self-contained and manufacture a wide variety of things, but it required human operation.
This is cool, but clearly what needs to be done is to build a lego replicator. Surely it's possible to build a factory out of lego that can build a wide variety of lego objects, including a copy of itself.
Then you just feed it a bunch of parts, wait for the exponential growth to kick in, and then you can cloudsource assembly of many lego models. You could sell the (the models or the factories) for a little over the cost of the constituent legos + electricity and still make money.
Most arguments I've seen about matter/antimatter is that they should have been attracted to each other and annihilated immediately at the big bang.
Well, anti-atoms are neutral. It's true that charged particle/antiparticle pairs would have strong attraction, and should have been created near one another, but random interactions would carry some minute portion of them far enough to combine to a neutral form (e.g. an atom) that would have no attraction over any kind of distance.
You have given me something to ponder for many days, I thank you:)
I have a BS in physics, but I'm not sure it matters for this discussion. I do think you have a point. I guess it depends on what you mean by antimatter study.
My personal opinion is that matter and antimatter are entirely symmetrical, and it is only chance that our galaxy is made up almost entirely of matter. The figures I've seen thrown around suggest that only one in a billion "extra" atoms of matter were required to see the distribution we see today, and I think that during early inflation it would have been easy for what was once a symmetrical matter/antimatter pair to be separated and leave part of the universe matter and part antimatter.
(I don't know any reason to believe distant galaxies are made of matter rather than antimatter. To my knowledge, we only detect distant objects by light or gravitational effects. Photons are their own antiparticle and antimatter behaves the same as matter gravitationally, as far as we know, so we can't tell the difference.)
While positrons were experimentally confirmed in 1932, I don't think that qualifies as "antimatter". When people speak of matter they're typically talking about atoms. Antiprotons were not confirmed by experiment until 1955, and there were no reliable reports of anti-atoms until 1995.
I would say until we have millions or billions of anti-atoms to play with, we can't say we have really studied antimatter. Most of the high level properties of atoms we see day-to-day are emergent from millions of atoms interacting, and can't really be tested on one atom at a time.
What we have studied so far are various anti-particles, and some anti-atoms.
Most of the US Constitution is clearly written language that puts strong restrictions and obligations on the federal government. The reading of "direct tax" that was taken by the US government 70+ years after the constitution was written waters the taxation clause down to the point of being no restriction at all. While my reading may well be far different from the founders, I doubt very much that the wishy washy reading exemplified in your reference bears much relationship to what the founders meant.
Also, calling people morons for a difference of opinion, or even a mistake about the facts, only makes your argument look weaker.
How many kids do you have? Are you supporting a spouse?
I will readily admit that I have made monetary mistakes, primarily gambling that one of mybusinessventures would take off. I do not have $20,000 easily available to me; in fact I have debt that I am working on.
I am certainly not ashamed of myself, although I would not do the same things the same way again.
Your attitude indicates to me that one or more of the following apply to you:
your extended family is relatively well off and has supported (or at least not required support from) you
you are single with a good income and have been for some time
you are half of a DINK couple
I would say that you also have good money management skills, but $35k for a lexus brings that into question for me. I have not spent any signficant sum on such luxuries, unless you count taking months off working for The Man to build my own projects a luxury. Which I personally do...
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What was the gender distribution of the tweets this was tested against? If 65.9% of the tweets were from a male, the algorithm "return Gender.male;" will get the gender right 65.9% of the time...
It seems to me your experience must be somewhat limited. I programmed c/c++ for 7 years (with some perl on the side) and switched to java. I've now done java (and some perl, and some python, etc) for about 12 years. I know several other developers who've done the same thing.
Maybe it's just that you're young, and people who are still doing c/c++ as of 5 years ago are stuck on it.
I dug through this thread looking for the surely inevitable reply to ask you for actual evidence to back your claim (that Kurzweil's predictions are often wrong), so I could mod it up.
I can't find one, so I sacrifice my option to mod this thread to call you out. Can you back up your claim?
I certainly don't think Kurzweil has been perfect in his prediction, but I think he does quite a good job. Here is my evidence: http://singularityhub.com/2010/01/19/kurzweil-defends-predictions-for-2009-says-he-is-102-for-108/
The predictions criticized in that article are definitely not entirely accurate, but they're also pretty damn good for having been made in 1998. We are close to where Kurzweil says we should be.
Please defend with counterexamples :-)
That's not how licensing works. Licensing are the rules under which people who *are not the copyright holder* may distribute copies. If you own the copyright, you may distribute copies however you like.
I don't give up rights on what I can do with my copyrighted materials when I distribute under a license. I am just giving people the option to distribute in ways otherwise restricted by copyright law. I can't take away your distribution rights with a license, and I certainly don't give up my own distribution rights by granting you a license.
Yeah, that's why I copped out and said "likely". I personally have rarely worked on code in which CPU performance was a big factor - less than 1% of my time. I have been programming professionally on a large variety of projects for about 17 years.
I totally agree with you for the kind of work you mention, with the caveat that you should ALWAYS profile before doing low level optimization.
Usually slower, yes. Enough slower to make you turn your nose up? You're just being precious.
In some situations Java will be faster than unoptimized C++ - JIT compilation will do enough of a better job than vanilla C++ to make the difference. In general, C++ will clearly be faster. However, I think what most of the people you're qualifying as idiots get up in arms about (rightly) is the assumption that so many programmers seem to make that Java will be many times slower than C++. That's (usually) just wrong.
In particular, here's what Google's analysis had to say about it on page 9:
They go further to say that they deliberately chose not to optimize the Java further, but several of the other C++ optimizations would have applied to Java.
For most programming tasks, use the language that produces testable, maintainable code, and which is a good fit for the kind of problem you're solving. If it performs badly (unlikely on modern machines), profile it and optimize the critical sections. If you have to, write the most critical sections in C or assembly.
If you're choosing the language to write your app based on how it performs, you are likely the one making bad technical decisions.
I totally agree that each person should decide whether to have kids. I apologize; I saw an inflammatory comment and I responded with another inflammatory comment slanted the other direction.
On the other hand, I do agree that the tendency to not have kids will self correct, and I'd rather it's the thinking people correcting it than Idiocrats.
Only, chroot every service you provide that could be accessed over the network.
You don't think your genes and memes deserve to live on beyond you?
The real question is "Does the D-Wave 'quantum computer' do anything useful at all?"
See Scott Aaronson's opinions on the topic: http://blogs.forbes.com/alexknapp/2011/05/24/q-and-a-with-prof-scott-aaronson-on-d-waves-quantum-computer/
Aaronson is a brilliant quantum algorithm complexity professor for MIT. You can read his blog at http://www.scottaaronson.com/
Ah, actually, that was Wovel, not me. I was just sticking in my 2c.
I guess I personally agree that we shouldn't say they have done nothing, but I still believe they need to demonstrate value before the question of making what they do legal is even worth discussing.
I'm sure you're a troll, but I'll bite.
I very specifically backed up my assertions with facts, yet you don't even mention the 4th amendment. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution
What grounds are there for the search? Is getting on a plane a valid basis to suspect illegal behavior? If they don't have probable cause, a government search is illegal, period. If you think this search is OK, in what circumstances does the 4th amendment protect anything? I guarantee the founding fathers didn't intend it to be meaningless.
If you have valid refutation of any signficant point here, I'm glad to debate. If you only have a tired, unfounded repetition of the supposed security benefits (with no evidence of a statistically signficant number of attacks *actually prevented* by the screening), I have no interest in responding.
Beyond that, though, it doesn't matter legally whether the checks are needed for our security (which I don't believe). Now, IF the checks gave material gains in our security, that would be a good starting point for a debate about amending the constitution. Until an amendment passes, however, it's still illegal to search everyone who wants to board a plane.
If your argument is about lives saved, you have to address the reasons why it's OK to spend many $$$s and subject ourselves to indignities to save lives in air travel, but not OK to limit speeds to 55 mph, have more restrictive driving license rules, integrate breathalysers into the ignition system for cars, etc. to save many more lives for fewer $$$s and less loss of liberty in auto travel.
Additionally, I see no reason why flights shouldn't opt in to the travel procedures. If you want to pay an extra $20 to get invasive body scans done before you get on a plane for the supposed peace of mind of knowing everyone else on that plane had them, have at. I don't, and I'll choose the flight that doesn't do it.
No, you appear to assume the default is that we should allow invasive procedures based on unsupported assertions.
We don't have to show that their unsupported assertions are false. They have to show that there is supporting evidence, and then, based on that evidence, we could pass an amendment to the constitution saying that it's OK to violate the 4th amendment rights. Until then, it's not just a gross violation of my rights, it's a gross violation based on hot air.
So I give up my constitutional rights if I pass a sign saying that the passing beyond it voids my rights?
*That* is awesome.
Thanks!
Thanks for the links.
I have a MakerBot (a repstrap machine), so I'm familiar with the philosophy. Unfortunately you can only make about half the $$$ value of the machine with another machine right now. (And in fact it's much cheaper to buy molded versions of the printable parts).
I'd be interested in hearing more about your replicator if you happen to find the reference. I have vague notions that I heard of a CNC & chip fab lab designed at MIT to be self-contained and manufacture a wide variety of things, but it required human operation.
Links?
This is cool, but clearly what needs to be done is to build a lego replicator. Surely it's possible to build a factory out of lego that can build a wide variety of lego objects, including a copy of itself.
Then you just feed it a bunch of parts, wait for the exponential growth to kick in, and then you can cloudsource assembly of many lego models. You could sell the (the models or the factories) for a little over the cost of the constituent legos + electricity and still make money.
Well, anti-atoms are neutral. It's true that charged particle/antiparticle pairs would have strong attraction, and should have been created near one another, but random interactions would carry some minute portion of them far enough to combine to a neutral form (e.g. an atom) that would have no attraction over any kind of distance.
You're very welcome!
I have a BS in physics, but I'm not sure it matters for this discussion. I do think you have a point. I guess it depends on what you mean by antimatter study.
My personal opinion is that matter and antimatter are entirely symmetrical, and it is only chance that our galaxy is made up almost entirely of matter. The figures I've seen thrown around suggest that only one in a billion "extra" atoms of matter were required to see the distribution we see today, and I think that during early inflation it would have been easy for what was once a symmetrical matter/antimatter pair to be separated and leave part of the universe matter and part antimatter.
(I don't know any reason to believe distant galaxies are made of matter rather than antimatter. To my knowledge, we only detect distant objects by light or gravitational effects. Photons are their own antiparticle and antimatter behaves the same as matter gravitationally, as far as we know, so we can't tell the difference.)
While positrons were experimentally confirmed in 1932, I don't think that qualifies as "antimatter". When people speak of matter they're typically talking about atoms. Antiprotons were not confirmed by experiment until 1955, and there were no reliable reports of anti-atoms until 1995.
I would say until we have millions or billions of anti-atoms to play with, we can't say we have really studied antimatter. Most of the high level properties of atoms we see day-to-day are emergent from millions of atoms interacting, and can't really be tested on one atom at a time.
What we have studied so far are various anti-particles, and some anti-atoms.
I read your reference to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_tax#U.S._constitutional_law_sense I believe it is the same disingenuous bullshit that has the SCOTUS using regulation of interstate trade as de facto permission to regulate anything.
Most of the US Constitution is clearly written language that puts strong restrictions and obligations on the federal government. The reading of "direct tax" that was taken by the US government 70+ years after the constitution was written waters the taxation clause down to the point of being no restriction at all. While my reading may well be far different from the founders, I doubt very much that the wishy washy reading exemplified in your reference bears much relationship to what the founders meant.
Also, calling people morons for a difference of opinion, or even a mistake about the facts, only makes your argument look weaker.
Citation please.
How many kids do you have? Are you supporting a spouse?
I will readily admit that I have made monetary mistakes, primarily gambling that one of my business ventures would take off. I do not have $20,000 easily available to me; in fact I have debt that I am working on.
I am certainly not ashamed of myself, although I would not do the same things the same way again.
Your attitude indicates to me that one or more of the following apply to you:
I would say that you also have good money management skills, but $35k for a lexus brings that into question for me. I have not spent any signficant sum on such luxuries, unless you count taking months off working for The Man to build my own projects a luxury. Which I personally do...