We've bought into the myth that all you need to succeed in STEM fields is convergent thinking
Don't use the "we" when it was you who thought so
STEM was never, is never, and will never be a product of "convergent thinking"
And I have a problem with your description of art being the source of "divergent thinking"
Take the so-called "art" that we have, for example - Music... these days you listen to one song you listen to all songs --- all of them sound so similar as everybody tries to sound like everybody else --- the beats, the rhythm, who the fuck cares anymore who sings what since they all sound just so much alike
Creativity ? Where IS creativity nowadays ?
Certainly not in the art field --- When a guy put a crucifix into a container filled with urine that guy instantly becomes an "artist" and his "crucifix in urine" was described as "creative", I dunno about you, but "creativity" sure ain't the right adjective to use in this case
I wouldn't say learning to code outweighed a college degree
I started as a college student, spending days and night digging into each and every details to the machines (big irons) that we were using in order to make things work
Then I worked, starting as a coder, then a team leader, then in charge of the entire department, then I was hired by another company, and another, and another, and end up I started one company, and the next, and the next...
What you say may be true, from the end of the coder, but if you see it from the other side, as I have done, for more than the past 3 decades, you will know that hiring people base on their sheepskin alone is beyond stupid
Of the people that I hired, and those who ended up being my partners in my businesses, most of them didn't even finish their college degree - but they possess the skill that no college student have, they have the experience and the instinct to know where to look and what to fix when something fucks up
But they (meaning NSA + Microsoft + US Department of Justice) still need to orchestrate a very public show and tell, something that the whole world can see, something that tells the whole world that Microsoft has BIG AND STRONG BACKBONE, so much so that they dare to stand against the US Department of Justice, the NSA, and so on...
From TFA---
"Let there be no doubt that Microsoft's actions in this controversial case are customer-centric. The firm isn't just standing up to the US government on moral principles. It's now defying a federal court order "
Ain't you so glad now that Microsoft has finally becomes a company with "MORAL PRINCIPLES"???
TFA is nothing but a propaganda piece, and/. has become a willing partner in the act of spreading Pro-Microsoft propagandum
Also, getting yourself very drunk to near death alcohol levels might help solubilize some of the cholesterol fat deposits easier during periods of starvation, but that has downsides to it too
Good idea !
But I think there ought to be a better way to dissolved the fatty deposits along the veins than getting seriously drunk
While fatty acids does dissolve in alcohol, alcohol is far from being the only solvent that can dissolve cholesterol
Perhaps someone could come up with something that can dissolve the cholesterol buildup in the veins while not getting the person into a serious drunken stage
America has turned into a police state and you guys are laughing
I, as an American, find it very hard to swallow the hard fact that my country is no longer the Land of the Free nor Home for the Brave
With 850 Billion (and growing) dossiers to search, anyone in any of the so-called law enforcement agencies get to pry open things that they are not supposed to know, maybe even things that have been erroneously included in the dossier
America used to be a country which respects the Rule of Law
No more !
Nowadays the government of the United States of America can lie to the congress, can trample the rights of the citizens, can haul up people without any valid reason, in fact, it can do anything it likes --- and we have you, Sir, and your fellow fascists, to thank !
If the government of England wants England to become a nation of ostriches it can use whatever might it wants but if the people doesn't want to, the government can't legally force people to become ostriches
As long as England remains a democratic country, that is...
The first time when I saw the wheels I was wondering why the hell they spend so much money to send up a robot to Mars and then equip that thing with such flimsy wheels
And I did post question here on/, and there were people (NASA fanbois, perhaps) defending those flimsy wheels
I've always felt that our meatbrains have a pretty incredible capacity for taking WAGs at NP problems (i.e. traveling salesman). And I feel like an AI would just bring itself to its knees trying to find the 100% best solution to NP questions asked of it
There has been a classical on that topic, and it boils down to Digital versus Analog
In Digital, everything either is a "0" (zero) or a "1" (one), which means, everything is either true, or false
In Analog, as there is no definite "0" nor definite "1", nothing is so clear cut as there are a lot of shades of grey in between.
Our meatbrain can cope with a lot of stuffs that the digital computer can't precisely because our brain makes its decision based on imprecise feedback
Looking at this thread --- http://science.slashdot.org/st... --- I can't help but think that people who are so adamantly political correct might have been because their DNA are defective
I know, I know, I know that this is just a wild conjecture --- I have tried very hard to prove myself wrong, but so far I have yet to find the concrete proof yet
I arrived at America pretty late - at the 60's - but at least at that time America had several institutions doing all kinds of wonderful basic research
Bell Labs Xerox's famous lab at Palo Alto The Skunkworks
And at that time Darpa funded a lot of basic research as well
Today, all gone
Even Darpa's funding are not aiming at basic research - such as what TFA has outlined - what they are doing at Carnegie Mellon is actually an applied research... taking what has been known and add another layer onto it
What's happening in America nowadays is very worrying
The zero-day bugs are bugs, while we know bugs are inevitable (nobody is perfect), it does not mean that we should just throw up our hands and say "Oh, there is nothing we can do"
We can !
We can do something at the source level - at the very least we should be able to, after so many years of programming culture, to inculcate the correct way to future crops of programmer so that they produce stuffs that contain less bugs
Some of those bugs were actually added when the original program gone through an update, with extra bells and whistles - and if we can stick to the original Unix principle, in which, one utility does one thing, and one thing only, and does it very efficiently, the chances of "introducing added bugs" would be drastically lessen
The use of bogus BGP to treat networks into believing that it is connecting to a legitimate network instead of having its own network stream being hijacked can be used for much more than mere Bitcoin snatching
It can also be used to "branch out" legitimate net traffic to some listening posts (something NSA and all other spy agencies like to do) and thus, further compromise the legitimacy of the network itself - and the loss of privacy / data / whatever that the data stream happen to contain
Slashdot Mirror
You know, they do have a ton of code words that they throw around a lot, something like
"At risk"
"Underprivileged"
"[insert noun] - challenged"
"Vulnerable"
... and so on
We've bought into the myth that all you need to succeed in STEM fields is convergent thinking
Don't use the "we" when it was you who thought so
STEM was never, is never, and will never be a product of "convergent thinking"
And I have a problem with your description of art being the source of "divergent thinking"
Take the so-called "art" that we have, for example - Music ... these days you listen to one song you listen to all songs --- all of them sound so similar as everybody tries to sound like everybody else --- the beats, the rhythm, who the fuck cares anymore who sings what since they all sound just so much alike
Creativity ? Where IS creativity nowadays ?
Certainly not in the art field --- When a guy put a crucifix into a container filled with urine that guy instantly becomes an "artist" and his "crucifix in urine" was described as "creative", I dunno about you, but "creativity" sure ain't the right adjective to use in this case
I was puzzled with the involvement of Tsinghua University of China with this thing
After reading your comment it starts to make sense
The China Communist Party needs to regain control of the Internet (at least inside China), that explains why they endorse this new scheme so much
option A: moderate toxicity/radioactivity for (hundreds of) thousands of years
option B: EXTREME toxicity/radioactivity for decades
To the militarists option B is a Godsend
Whatever elements that make up the bulk in Option B are perfect for DIRTY BOMB
I wouldn't say learning to code outweighed a college degree
I started as a college student, spending days and night digging into each and every details to the machines (big irons) that we were using in order to make things work
Then I worked, starting as a coder, then a team leader, then in charge of the entire department, then I was hired by another company, and another, and another, and end up I started one company, and the next, and the next ...
What you say may be true, from the end of the coder, but if you see it from the other side, as I have done, for more than the past 3 decades, you will know that hiring people base on their sheepskin alone is beyond stupid
Of the people that I hired, and those who ended up being my partners in my businesses, most of them didn't even finish their college degree - but they possess the skill that no college student have, they have the experience and the instinct to know where to look and what to fix when something fucks up
... 300baud ?
Doesn't Parallel Construction cover this already?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P...
True
But they (meaning NSA + Microsoft + US Department of Justice) still need to orchestrate a very public show and tell, something that the whole world can see, something that tells the whole world that Microsoft has BIG AND STRONG BACKBONE, so much so that they dare to stand against the US Department of Justice, the NSA, and so on ...
From TFA---
"Let there be no doubt that Microsoft's actions in this controversial case are customer-centric. The firm isn't just standing up to the US government on moral principles. It's now defying a federal court order "
Ain't you so glad now that Microsoft has finally becomes a company with "MORAL PRINCIPLES"???
TFA is nothing but a propaganda piece, and /. has become a willing partner in the act of spreading Pro-Microsoft propagandum
Programmers don't die, they just enter an infinite goto
FTFY
For banks the virtual coins are but another form of financial vehicles but for government it represents new ways of landing them more $$$
Also, getting yourself very drunk to near death alcohol levels might help solubilize some of the cholesterol fat deposits easier during periods of starvation, but that has downsides to it too
Good idea !
But I think there ought to be a better way to dissolved the fatty deposits along the veins than getting seriously drunk
While fatty acids does dissolve in alcohol, alcohol is far from being the only solvent that can dissolve cholesterol
Perhaps someone could come up with something that can dissolve the cholesterol buildup in the veins while not getting the person into a serious drunken stage
America has turned into a police state and you guys are laughing
I, as an American, find it very hard to swallow the hard fact that my country is no longer the Land of the Free nor Home for the Brave
With 850 Billion (and growing) dossiers to search, anyone in any of the so-called law enforcement agencies get to pry open things that they are not supposed to know, maybe even things that have been erroneously included in the dossier
... and you are laughing !!
America used to be a country which respects the Rule of Law
No more !
Nowadays the government of the United States of America can lie to the congress, can trample the rights of the citizens, can haul up people without any valid reason, in fact, it can do anything it likes --- and we have you, Sir, and your fellow fascists, to thank !
Apple Stock is at a record high. He did what he was hired to do
I too own stocks of corporations and also am major stock owner of several companies
Stock price for me is not a be all and end all - for me, the future of the company is much more important than the _current_ stock price
For this, Tim Cook has failed, and has failed miserably
If UK no longer is a country possessing nuclear bombs it would be a big PLUS for the world
This world needs fewer countries which have nuclear bombs, not more
If the government of England wants England to become a nation of ostriches it can use whatever might it wants but if the people doesn't want to, the government can't legally force people to become ostriches
As long as England remains a democratic country, that is ...
According to the info @ http://www.plosone.org/article...
The GMO rice requires much less application of pesticide than the non GMO counterparts (2 applications versus 5)
If the GMO rice is approved then the pesticide industry in China (both local / international vendors) will stand to lose a lot of sales
It could be their lobby which had killed the GMO rice
Pic of the wheel ...
http://www.garrettbelmont.com/...
The first time when I saw the wheels I was wondering why the hell they spend so much money to send up a robot to Mars and then equip that thing with such flimsy wheels
And I did post question here on /, and there were people (NASA fanbois, perhaps) defending those flimsy wheels
I've always felt that our meatbrains have a pretty incredible capacity for taking WAGs at NP problems (i.e. traveling salesman). And I feel like an AI would just bring itself to its knees trying to find the 100% best solution to NP questions asked of it
There has been a classical on that topic, and it boils down to Digital versus Analog
In Digital, everything either is a "0" (zero) or a "1" (one), which means, everything is either true, or false
In Analog, as there is no definite "0" nor definite "1", nothing is so clear cut as there are a lot of shades of grey in between.
Our meatbrain can cope with a lot of stuffs that the digital computer can't precisely because our brain makes its decision based on imprecise feedback
Looking at this thread --- http://science.slashdot.org/st... --- I can't help but think that people who are so adamantly political correct might have been because their DNA are defective
I know, I know, I know that this is just a wild conjecture --- I have tried very hard to prove myself wrong, but so far I have yet to find the concrete proof yet
I arrived at America pretty late - at the 60's - but at least at that time America had several institutions doing all kinds of wonderful basic research
Bell Labs
Xerox's famous lab at Palo Alto
The Skunkworks
And at that time Darpa funded a lot of basic research as well
Today, all gone
Even Darpa's funding are not aiming at basic research - such as what TFA has outlined - what they are doing at Carnegie Mellon is actually an applied research ... taking what has been known and add another layer onto it
What's happening in America nowadays is very worrying
If you think Israel is evil, okay, that's what you think, but please, this is /., not some Hamas fanboi club
You wanna talk about Ebola, talk about Ebola. Why the need to drag Israel into this discussion ??
The zero-day bugs are bugs, while we know bugs are inevitable (nobody is perfect), it does not mean that we should just throw up our hands and say "Oh, there is nothing we can do"
We can !
We can do something at the source level - at the very least we should be able to, after so many years of programming culture, to inculcate the correct way to future crops of programmer so that they produce stuffs that contain less bugs
Some of those bugs were actually added when the original program gone through an update, with extra bells and whistles - and if we can stick to the original Unix principle, in which, one utility does one thing, and one thing only, and does it very efficiently, the chances of "introducing added bugs" would be drastically lessen
The use of bogus BGP to treat networks into believing that it is connecting to a legitimate network instead of having its own network stream being hijacked can be used for much more than mere Bitcoin snatching
It can also be used to "branch out" legitimate net traffic to some listening posts (something NSA and all other spy agencies like to do) and thus, further compromise the legitimacy of the network itself - and the loss of privacy / data / whatever that the data stream happen to contain
This is a serious threat !
They want the smartest and fastest and strongest ...
They should look at that guy in the White House, the epitome of "smart", "fast" and "strong"
You still believe that due process is still practised in England or America or France ??
Welcome to the REAL WORLD !!