What if I write a computer program that recites up to a number that you enter - is that not counting either? What if we have an AI that can count? Where do you draw the line?
I don't think it's a useful definition of "count" to restrict it to entites that have sentience. Do you have a reference for that definition?
Tell me, does a calculator "calculate"? Does a computer "compute"? Or are these also terms reserved for sentient entities that can think?
Re:This doesn't prove ants can count
on
Ants That Can Count
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· Score: 4, Insightful
I admit I'm not a drummer, but I have played other instruments - surely if we're talking about an entire song rather than one bar, the person still has to count lines/bars (e.g., this bit happens 4 times, before going onto the next bit, and these two sections alternate two times)? This would be especially true if the drummer was playing on their own, without being able to rely on listening to the music.
Ants can count. The reason it sounds uncomfortable is because it might imply a comparison to how humans count - we do it using our sentient mind. I doubt that this is the case for ants. But even if it's done by some automatic mechanism, I don't think "counting" is unreasonable (I mean, we say that computers can count, even if it's just following an automatic process that a human set up).
Did you not read what he said? I'll quote it again:
"Do not imagine for a second that the people who create images of Michelle Obama that make her look more monkey like are doing it simply because they noticed the striking similarity between humans and monkeys."
Yes sure, at first it seems the same thing. But what do you think is likely? Was it about comparing facial expressions and a critic of the person's intelligence? Or was it done with racist intent? Let's consider what is most likely?
Not to mention that Michelle Obama isn't the President. Yes, mocking one's leader seems to be a special case, but this is less clear for people in general, even if they are in the public eye.
But those search terms are not analogous - the correct comparison would be if that image came up to with a "George Bush" term. If it does, I agree it should be fixed. If not, the comparison is not relevant.
And Michelle Obama isn't herself a politician, let alone the President, last time I looked.
It's still a bug if the incorrect image comes up top for someone's name. That's not censorship, that's fixing a bug. (If they've really removed all references to the image, under any search term, then yes that would be the wrong answer - it's unclear if this has happened?)
Yes, exactly - but then the obvious question is, have they simply removed the image from the "Michelle Obama" search (which as you say, is correct behaviour), or have they made it so the image is removed altogether? I can see there being more concern over the latter - if someone's trying to search for that image with "Michelle Obama Monkey", then as you say, they should find it, no matter how offensive or sad we might find it.
Does the term still find it, anyone? (I'd rather not check at work...)
I also don't think the Streisand effect applies here - I don't think the concern was over people seeing the image, but it appearing top on Google's search result for her name. Let's face it, who's really harmed by everyone seeing the image? All it tells us is that someone who doesn't like the Obama family is a pathetic racist - not exactly a ringing endorsement for the anti-Obama camp...
Yes that's my point. Since when was Facebook? Everyone I know uses it to keep up with their existing friends, and the idea of that being imaginary seems nonsensical. I never saw it as a place to meet new people (as opposed to say, OKCupid, which are clearly aimed at that).
Yeah they should come over to Slashdot, it's the place to be if you want a great social life. Everyone on here are your real life friends, honest, unlike Facebook where it's all imaginary.
Wikipedia "is rotten from top to the bottom", because you think some things on a list of trigonometry identies are in the wrong order? For heaven's sake, get some perspective - even though there are plenty of issues to work on, that doesn't make the whole thing flawed.
The irony is that, someone, somewhere, will also be criticising Wikipedia as being full of annoying editors, based on their experience with you!
If you argue by throwing ad hominems and insults rather than reasoning, perhaps that is your problem. I'm not sure what the best way to introduce e^x is - but there is no right answer, and it's reasonable that different people will have different opinions.
I'm a mathematician too. Yes, there's plenty to be done, but that doesn't mean there is some kind of conspiracy against getting things done; it doesn't mean you alone are right and everyone else is wrong. It's not immediately obvious to me why the order of identities in an article should matter - and can you point me where you tried to change it, or brought the issue up for discussion? I can't find anything in the history.
In response to the original point about Wikipedia being finished or not, I think it's at the stage of "doing the last 10% takes 90% of the time". Wikipedia is mostly done in some sense, in that every mainstream topic you can think of has an article that is fairly extensive. But adding the polish - getting those articles up to Featured Article status, or filling in articles on less mainstream areas, takes a lot of time.
Wikipedia was always going to primarily attract the type of person who is not interesting in providing knowledge for all, but only those for whom its articles are personal prestige projects, intended to impress only themselves and their imagined audience.
Well, it attracted you, so yes that does seem to be the case.
But, but, it's a virtual crime! That's worse than the real thing!
Of course, in a sensible world things would be as you describe. Instead we have Governments preferring to go after people who do "virtual" things, and ignoring any actual crimes that occured in real life. It's far more of a "waste" of resources to have to investigate actual crimes, when instead they can just arrest some guy, and use computer logs as evidence of the virtual crime.
Here in the UK, we have our very own big red button for dealing with the very serious virtual crimes, such as 30 year old Virgin Killer albums covers on Wikipedia, or extremely disgusting naughty pr0n involving consenting adults.
I think we need to compare the number with Slashdot usage, to see if this is true - if people are being laid off, are people therefore leaving Slashdot in record numbers...?
It's an interesting idea, though there's the tricky problems of how a paragraph is defined - surely someone could just move paragraphs around, or insert the contentious material elsewhere in the page?
Yet oddly, despite all this, it still works well enough.
As for TFA, I don't see that losing thousands of editors is a problem, as it tells us nothing about how many are left! It also doesn't tell us who those editors are - are they the ones who made lots of decent articles? Wikipedia isn't a company losing employees or paid members, so the statistic is meaningless. You don't need hundreds of thousands of editors to write an encyclopedia (how many does Britannica have?)
Hell, for all we know, these people leaving are more likely to be the problem editors you talk about, in which case, good riddance!
The obvious point is that Wikipedia reached immense popularity in 2007-2008 IIRC, so there'd obviously be an influx of people who edit for a while, and then get bored. That's not a problem as long as you've still got the original editors, and indeed, too many editors may just give more problems.
Wikipedia got to being a Top 10 website before these 49,000 came along, I'm sure it can manage without them.
And then you have the same discussions over which of these many versions become the default version! Already there are discussion as to what the page should be, and now you've just multiplied the problem many times.
It's already possible, anyway - just create a version of the page in your user space. (Sometimes people do do this, as a way of working on a new proposal.)
Indeed, I'm having trouble seeing the difference between them and Slashdot geeks;)
And as an aside, I love it that both "meterosexual" is used as an insult, as well as accusing people of the complete opposite of bad hygiene. I mean, which is it? And why is it only men who seem to have this confusion? It's like, if I have long hair I'm either an untidy hippy, or if I take care of it, I'm suddenly a "meterosexual"... This issue comes up on the occasional stories we have about geeks and work dress codes - simultaneously, people are insulted for not putting in an effort in, and putting too much effort in (e.g., goths being the obvious example).
Yes thanks for that - obviously we here at Slashdot are clueless about what a platform is, without a reference to a pop culture reference. (Though I do wonder why you don't at least make a comparison to a more mainstream brand of phones, instead of one that's just a few per cent of the market.)
No, it couldn't possibly be an attempt to make a story more newsworthy with an "On Your Iphone" reference...
Is that you, Lily Allen? Come on now, you know you shouldn't be "stealing" other people's work, even if you do distribute it in the form of a "mix tape". As you said yourself, music's not free to make, so it can't be free, can it? Who could argue with solid and well thought out logic like that?
If you decide to share your gun - which you only use for plinking - with some random stranger, they shoot somebody, and the ballistics end up matching a gun that's registered to you, you'd have some explaining to do, too.
Yes, but you still wouldn't be guilty of murder. And this would still be a reasonable defence - whether or not the jury believe it is another matter.
"Your honor
Stop right there - the whole problem with this proposed law is that there is no "honor", and no defence. Whether people are disconnected isn't going to be up to a court to decide (although I'm not sure if the exact process of how this will work has been worked out yet?)
Part of the problem is that many such people have no problem with such a scheme anyway (I mean, obviously the people arguing in favour of compulsory DNA databases for everyone realise that it would include them - the current tactic of only taking those who are arrested is probably more down to the costs rather than views). And it makes them less likely to see a problem with critics ("my DNA is on the database anyway, why should I worry about yours going on it too?")
Now, having their DNA publically available (they have our DNA, why can't we have theirs?) might be a better analogy to demonstrate the concerns people have, and be something politicians and police would be less likely to be okay with.
Slashdot Mirror
What if I write a computer program that recites up to a number that you enter - is that not counting either? What if we have an AI that can count? Where do you draw the line?
I don't think it's a useful definition of "count" to restrict it to entites that have sentience. Do you have a reference for that definition?
Tell me, does a calculator "calculate"? Does a computer "compute"? Or are these also terms reserved for sentient entities that can think?
I admit I'm not a drummer, but I have played other instruments - surely if we're talking about an entire song rather than one bar, the person still has to count lines/bars (e.g., this bit happens 4 times, before going onto the next bit, and these two sections alternate two times)? This would be especially true if the drummer was playing on their own, without being able to rely on listening to the music.
Ants can count. The reason it sounds uncomfortable is because it might imply a comparison to how humans count - we do it using our sentient mind. I doubt that this is the case for ants. But even if it's done by some automatic mechanism, I don't think "counting" is unreasonable (I mean, we say that computers can count, even if it's just following an automatic process that a human set up).
Did you not read what he said? I'll quote it again:
"Do not imagine for a second that the people who create images of Michelle Obama that make her look more monkey like are doing it simply because they noticed the striking similarity between humans and monkeys."
Yes sure, at first it seems the same thing. But what do you think is likely? Was it about comparing facial expressions and a critic of the person's intelligence? Or was it done with racist intent? Let's consider what is most likely?
Not to mention that Michelle Obama isn't the President. Yes, mocking one's leader seems to be a special case, but this is less clear for people in general, even if they are in the public eye.
But those search terms are not analogous - the correct comparison would be if that image came up to with a "George Bush" term. If it does, I agree it should be fixed. If not, the comparison is not relevant.
And Michelle Obama isn't herself a politician, let alone the President, last time I looked.
It's still a bug if the incorrect image comes up top for someone's name. That's not censorship, that's fixing a bug. (If they've really removed all references to the image, under any search term, then yes that would be the wrong answer - it's unclear if this has happened?)
And that is relevant to the definition of censorship how, exactly?
Yes, exactly - but then the obvious question is, have they simply removed the image from the "Michelle Obama" search (which as you say, is correct behaviour), or have they made it so the image is removed altogether? I can see there being more concern over the latter - if someone's trying to search for that image with "Michelle Obama Monkey", then as you say, they should find it, no matter how offensive or sad we might find it.
Does the term still find it, anyone? (I'd rather not check at work...)
I also don't think the Streisand effect applies here - I don't think the concern was over people seeing the image, but it appearing top on Google's search result for her name. Let's face it, who's really harmed by everyone seeing the image? All it tells us is that someone who doesn't like the Obama family is a pathetic racist - not exactly a ringing endorsement for the anti-Obama camp...
Yes that's my point. Since when was Facebook? Everyone I know uses it to keep up with their existing friends, and the idea of that being imaginary seems nonsensical. I never saw it as a place to meet new people (as opposed to say, OKCupid, which are clearly aimed at that).
Yeah they should come over to Slashdot, it's the place to be if you want a great social life. Everyone on here are your real life friends, honest, unlike Facebook where it's all imaginary.
Wikipedia "is rotten from top to the bottom", because you think some things on a list of trigonometry identies are in the wrong order? For heaven's sake, get some perspective - even though there are plenty of issues to work on, that doesn't make the whole thing flawed.
The irony is that, someone, somewhere, will also be criticising Wikipedia as being full of annoying editors, based on their experience with you!
If you argue by throwing ad hominems and insults rather than reasoning, perhaps that is your problem. I'm not sure what the best way to introduce e^x is - but there is no right answer, and it's reasonable that different people will have different opinions.
I'm a mathematician too. Yes, there's plenty to be done, but that doesn't mean there is some kind of conspiracy against getting things done; it doesn't mean you alone are right and everyone else is wrong. It's not immediately obvious to me why the order of identities in an article should matter - and can you point me where you tried to change it, or brought the issue up for discussion? I can't find anything in the history.
In response to the original point about Wikipedia being finished or not, I think it's at the stage of "doing the last 10% takes 90% of the time". Wikipedia is mostly done in some sense, in that every mainstream topic you can think of has an article that is fairly extensive. But adding the polish - getting those articles up to Featured Article status, or filling in articles on less mainstream areas, takes a lot of time.
Wikipedia was always going to primarily attract the type of person who is not interesting in providing knowledge for all, but only those for whom its articles are personal prestige projects, intended to impress only themselves and their imagined audience.
Well, it attracted you, so yes that does seem to be the case.
The paradox is that as the number of useful contributors leave, the number of vandals is sure to only increase.
I'm curious why you think this? I mean, it could happen, but I don't see any reason why there should be a correlation?
But, but, it's a virtual crime! That's worse than the real thing!
Of course, in a sensible world things would be as you describe. Instead we have Governments preferring to go after people who do "virtual" things, and ignoring any actual crimes that occured in real life. It's far more of a "waste" of resources to have to investigate actual crimes, when instead they can just arrest some guy, and use computer logs as evidence of the virtual crime.
Here in the UK, we have our very own big red button for dealing with the very serious virtual crimes, such as 30 year old Virgin Killer albums covers on Wikipedia, or extremely disgusting naughty pr0n involving consenting adults.
Citation needed.
I think we need to compare the number with Slashdot usage, to see if this is true - if people are being laid off, are people therefore leaving Slashdot in record numbers...?
It's an interesting idea, though there's the tricky problems of how a paragraph is defined - surely someone could just move paragraphs around, or insert the contentious material elsewhere in the page?
Yet oddly, despite all this, it still works well enough.
As for TFA, I don't see that losing thousands of editors is a problem, as it tells us nothing about how many are left! It also doesn't tell us who those editors are - are they the ones who made lots of decent articles? Wikipedia isn't a company losing employees or paid members, so the statistic is meaningless. You don't need hundreds of thousands of editors to write an encyclopedia (how many does Britannica have?)
Hell, for all we know, these people leaving are more likely to be the problem editors you talk about, in which case, good riddance!
The obvious point is that Wikipedia reached immense popularity in 2007-2008 IIRC, so there'd obviously be an influx of people who edit for a while, and then get bored. That's not a problem as long as you've still got the original editors, and indeed, too many editors may just give more problems.
Wikipedia got to being a Top 10 website before these 49,000 came along, I'm sure it can manage without them.
And then you have the same discussions over which of these many versions become the default version! Already there are discussion as to what the page should be, and now you've just multiplied the problem many times.
It's already possible, anyway - just create a version of the page in your user space. (Sometimes people do do this, as a way of working on a new proposal.)
Yeah but at least they moved out of their mum's basement.
Indeed, I'm having trouble seeing the difference between them and Slashdot geeks ;)
And as an aside, I love it that both "meterosexual" is used as an insult, as well as accusing people of the complete opposite of bad hygiene. I mean, which is it? And why is it only men who seem to have this confusion? It's like, if I have long hair I'm either an untidy hippy, or if I take care of it, I'm suddenly a "meterosexual"... This issue comes up on the occasional stories we have about geeks and work dress codes - simultaneously, people are insulted for not putting in an effort in, and putting too much effort in (e.g., goths being the obvious example).
Yes thanks for that - obviously we here at Slashdot are clueless about what a platform is, without a reference to a pop culture reference. (Though I do wonder why you don't at least make a comparison to a more mainstream brand of phones, instead of one that's just a few per cent of the market.)
No, it couldn't possibly be an attempt to make a story more newsworthy with an "On Your Iphone" reference...
Is that you, Lily Allen? Come on now, you know you shouldn't be "stealing" other people's work, even if you do distribute it in the form of a "mix tape". As you said yourself, music's not free to make, so it can't be free, can it? Who could argue with solid and well thought out logic like that?
Here in the UK, you don't have a right to use the mp3, even if you do own the CD.
Unless you're Lily Allen, making a "mix tape" of copyrighted material - then it's okay. Even if you fileshare it to push your own career.
If you decide to share your gun - which you only use for plinking - with some random stranger, they shoot somebody, and the ballistics end up matching a gun that's registered to you, you'd have some explaining to do, too.
Yes, but you still wouldn't be guilty of murder. And this would still be a reasonable defence - whether or not the jury believe it is another matter.
"Your honor
Stop right there - the whole problem with this proposed law is that there is no "honor", and no defence. Whether people are disconnected isn't going to be up to a court to decide (although I'm not sure if the exact process of how this will work has been worked out yet?)
Now. What about in 5 years' time?
Part of the problem is that many such people have no problem with such a scheme anyway (I mean, obviously the people arguing in favour of compulsory DNA databases for everyone realise that it would include them - the current tactic of only taking those who are arrested is probably more down to the costs rather than views). And it makes them less likely to see a problem with critics ("my DNA is on the database anyway, why should I worry about yours going on it too?")
Now, having their DNA publically available (they have our DNA, why can't we have theirs?) might be a better analogy to demonstrate the concerns people have, and be something politicians and police would be less likely to be okay with.