>
The researchers wanted to use the computer to try and understand women, but realized that in order to have a computer answer something, it has to be based on logic. >
-- >
*insert guitar solo here*
"She don't read Slashdot, but software makes her Blue Gene talk!" - Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show
Here we are, the conference agenda, and the talk...
4:30pm Panel: From Search to Eternity
[Moderator: Chris Shipley (Guidewire Group), Kapenda Thomas (Jookster), David Sifry (Technorati), Jim Lanzone (Ask.com), Leila Boujnane (Idee)]
Search engines are the dominant interface for the Web today, and a huge force in driving economic activity online. What's next for search? It seems unlikely that we have reached the end-point of significant technical or business evolution in this incredibly active area.
I can think of... one company that's 10^100 (a googol) times more likely to have something meaningful to say when it comes to "what's next for search", but which wasn't represented on this panel.
Not that I'm naming names or anything. But who's missing from this panel?
3 billion human legs were humped on August 29th, 2007. The survivors of the frottage called the war Judgment Day. They lived only to face a new nightmare: the war against the cute little machines.
> >.. one would have to ask, "What is CSS, and do we think it's involved in these discusions some how?"
> >
What I have to ask is, "Is CSS to blame for the tiny text in boxes with horizontal scrollbars?"
No, that's the new Slashdot layout. But the guy who knows about CSS thinks it's cool, so suck it up with the rest of us.
Maybe the Slashdot layout's choice of the Microsoft system font, probably the least-readable sans-serif font of all, is part of a nefarious GNU/plot (heh, didn't see that pun coming!:) to get those of us stuck on Windows to finally migrate, or to learn how to use Greasemonkey)
(I cheated - I went to low-bandwidth, which gives me the old serif font back, and hit Ctrl+ on every page to bump the size back up to the old font size. Yeah, it's a kludge, but it's great motivation to learn Greasemonkey. )
The root cause of the misunderstanding is that scientists and politicians mean opposite things when they use qualifiers/modifiers on their adjectives.
Suppose you ask the question: Is X happening?
When a scientist says that a phenomenon "X is probably happening", or "the bulk of the evidence indicates that X is happening", he means "I'm pretty damn sure about it, but because everyting in science is subject to further investigation, I'm open to hear evidence to the contrary."
When a lawyer says that "X is probably happening", or "the bulk of the evidence indicates that X is happening", he means "I haven't the foggiest idea, and I need wiggle room so I don't look like an idiot when someone who knows what he's talking about asks me."
Trouble starts when the two world views are mixed. The scientist hears the bolded words in his part of the speech -- and the politician hears precisely the opposite.
The qualifiers are necessary to the scientist, because they're part of why a theory is explanation falsifiable (and by extension, scientific). Science can't progress except for those areas in which there exists Reasonable Doubt.
The politician hears only the phrases "is probably" (as opposed to certainly), the "bulk of" (as opposed to all of the evidence), and the "indication" (as opposed to conclusive truth pounded out on the table before Judge and Jury) that something is the case. In an adversarial "justice" system, you can't use weasel words, because the holy grail is Proof Beyond A Reasonable Doubt.
And the planet burns because people who don't grok science prefer oratory.
What the hell, the dinosaurs died because they didn't understand science either.
Actually, it's worse than that. It's a bunch of crappy business plans and licensing arrangements looking for a solution looking for a problem.
It's VOIP! And instead of bypassing the telco, it requires a telco! And instead of working on every computer, it only works on Windows computers. And instead of being free, it costs money! And instead of working with every IM system, it only works with MSN! And instead of rendering it in HTML, we decided to give Adobe/Macromedia a cut and do the whole web page in Flash!
About all it's missing is a.us domain name for Web 2.0 buzzword compliance.
> This will include training for 1000 mail administrators and recruitment of 20,000 'anti-spam volunteers.
A little random number generation on the back end, and we're all good.
550 - Stegospam hash recognized in message body. Thank you for your support of Falun Dafa. Use key responding with #48187 to access payment - U8FDO 4J7D3 5FLI0 0S5DX RTND6
> The NSA terrorist surveillance program approved by President Bush is an effective tool for law enforcement to identify and break up terrorist activity before it can metastasize again on these shores and cause 9/11 style death and destruction. A large majority of the American electorate approves this action. By all means write to your representative on this issue. That is the American way. Then take your place on the minority side of the issue while President Bush kicks the bloody hell out of radical islam.
The NSA terrorist surveillance program approved by President Clinton II is an effective tool for law enforcement to identify and break up terrorist activity before it can can metastasize again on these shores and cause Okalahoma-style death and destruction. A large majority of the American electorate approves this action. By all means write to your representative on this issue. That is the American way. Then take your place on the minority side of the issue while President Clinton II thanks your half of the Party for giving her the tools she needs to kick the bloody hell out of the Second Amendment fanatics.
(And after 8 years of Republicans arguing against Stasi-like surveillance of fundie Christian groups, the Democratic wing of the Party will power over to the Republican wing of the Party, and the ratchet having gone another 360 degrees tighter...)
> Navy doctors are performing these operations with "assembly-line efficiency," allowing older pilots to continue flying, and those who might otherwise have been disqualified to pursue flight school.
> > The sad part comes when in 50 years this vault is eagerly opened and found to only contain many many dead weevils. > > Is that really your personal experience with Arctic seed storages?
Weevils sense his power and they seek the life essence. He, uh... he does not avoid weevils, Slashdotter... but he does deny them his essence.
> trying to jam the square peg into yet another shaped hole.
Aha! So that's why Paris, Britney, and Jessica are featured so prominently.
Seriously. From the current netscape.com front page, at least a third of the content is of the form...
* Men Have Biological Baby Clocks, Too
* These Questions Can Freak a Man Out
* 10 Things You Never Want Her to Say
* You Want to Be Sexy? Don't Do This
* See Soccer's Hottest Young Stars
* Dating's Best and Worst Moments--Ever
* First Kisses: The New Rules
* 5 Ways to Let Her Know She's Hot
# 64% of Men Have Done THIS by Age 29
# Brutal Breakup Lines: Heard These?
Solutions: 5 Sex Problems That Aren't
Hudson: "Is this going to be a standup open beta programme, or just another bug hunt?" Gorman: "All we know is that there is still is no contract or schedule with the developer, and that SOE may be involved." Frost: "Excuse me sir, SOE?" Gorman: "Guys who made Star Wars Galaxies." Hicks: "It's a bug hunt."
> This is dumb for two reasons. One is that it is the US meddling in other nations purely internal affairs. The other is that it is yet another war on an abstract idea. (joining the war on terror and the war on poverty) Bad news, you can't win against an idea, only against a group of people (terrorists, pirates, the poor?). And yes there are too many pirates to even think about "winning" against them. They probably make up more than 50% of the population.
Did you really think that we want those laws to be observed?" said
Dr. Ferris. "We want them broken. You'd better get it straight that
it's not a bunch of boy scouts you're up against - then you'll know
that this is not the age for beautiful gestures. We're after power
and we mean it. You fellows were pikers, but we know the real trick,
and you'd better get wise to it. There's no way to rule innocent men.
The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals.
Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares
so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live
without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens'
What's there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that
can neither be observed nor enforced nor objectively interpreted - and
you create a nation of law-breakers - and then you cash in on guilt.
Now that's the system, Mr. Rearden, that's the game, and once you
understand it, you'll be much easier to deal with."
- Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged, 1957.
In other words,
This is smart for two reasons. One is that it is the US meddling in other nations' purely internal affairs. The other is that it is yet another war on an abstract idea. (joining the war on terror and the war on poverty and the war on some drugs, which that other guy forgot.)
Good news, you can't win against an idea, only against a group of people (terrorists, pirates, the poor?). And yes there are too many pirates to even think about "winning" against them. They probably make up more than 50% of the population, meaning that there's about a 50/50 chance that when we need to put someone in prison, or just sue them into the stone age, we'll be able to do so.
All we need now is a war on pr0n, and we'll have around 70% of the population as criminals. Then we turn power over to the Democrats, they can declare the Christian fundies that make up our voting base as McVeigh militia whackjobs, and we'll have absolute power over everybody.
"It was terribly dangerous to use cash when you were in any public place and not a member of a loyalty program. The smallest thing could give you away. A falafel here, an unconscious visit to a halal butcher, a habit of not drinking, anything that carried with it the suggestion of abnormality, of having something to hide. In any case, to have insufficient data on your credit card record, was itself a punishable offense. There was even a word for it in Amspeak: feedcrime"
- G. Orwell, Functional Specification: A Consumer Data Mining Model for Homeland Security
The damndest part is that I drink like a fish, and the only problem I have with pork is my Homeresque refusal to believe that things as wonderful as bacon, ham, and sausage can all come from the same, magical animal.
Unfortunately, I live next to a really good butcher's shop, and have no need of a loyalty-card based chain grocery stores. Guess I gotta get out there and start buying Lee Greenwood albums on my credit card or something.
Government: "Come off it, Mr Slashdotter," he said, "you can't win you know. You can't keep the Constitution in front of that bulldozer indefinitely."
Slashdotter: > What exactly was wrong with the ESRB ratings we had already? They gave an age category and described any potentially offensive content. It was perfect. What more could we need?
Government: What do you mean "what more could we need"? These are regulations! You've got to legislate regulations!
Some factual information for you. Have you any idea how much damage that bulldozer would suffer if I just let it roll straight over that Constitution of yours?"
> The amount of money thrown away in this fashion is staggering and it happens in pretty much every organization, private or public. Surely some accountant, finance head or game theorist has come up with a solution, or at least an improvement, no?
If you spend your own money on yourself,
you care how much you spend and how well you spend it.
If you spend your own money on someone else, you care how much you spend,
but you don't care how well it is spent.
If you spend someone else's money on yourself, you don't care how much you
spend, but you do care how well it is spent.
And finally, if you spend someone else's money on someone else,
you don't care how much you spend, and you don't care how well
it is spent. That is government.
- Milton Friedman, "Free To Choose"
Replace "government" with "any large bureaucracy inside or outside of government", and Milt was spot on. Bureaucracy is a metastatic organizational cancer; in business, it's somewhat limited by the threat of bankruptcy, and in government, it's unlimited until the society collapses.
Since we can't eliminate the problem, the only thing to do is to try and mitigate the collateral damage.
Employer-determined donations, plus employee-directed contributions, strike a pretty good balance. Yes, you're spending someone else's (your employer's shareholders') money, and yes, you're spending it on someone else (your favorite charity), but by having thousands of individual employees making those decisions, you at least get the sort of efficiency gains that come from free markets -- and if you don't like econo-speak, you can rephrase that same sentence for "swarms of decentralized intelligent agents", or "social networking".
$25000 thrown into the black hole of the government does more harm than good. $50000 thrown down the rathole of the United Way does no good, but does less harm than paying the taxes on that $50000.
But 10 $500 donations to the FSF, 7 $500 donations to the EFF, 2 $500 donations to Mozilla, 3 to the Apache Foundation, 3 to the FreeBSD folks, and so on - and for the 75 nontechnical employees out of an imaginary company of 100, 75 $500 donations to 75 separate charities ranging from the local animal shelter to half a dozen parents who set up tutoring classes for kids who would otherwise be getting shot on the street...
...that's how you spend $50000 and get some good out of it.
One guy with a $50000 budget isn't going to have the time to parcel out the cash like that, and even if he did, he's going to be sorely tempted to spend a day or two on the golf course (or on three-martini lunches) with the 501(c)3 equivalent of salesweasels who want to lobby him for a shot the whole $50000 prize.
But if he just gives his 100 employees $500 apiece, and each of those employees spends just ten minutes making up their minds on what to do with their own slice of the pie, the process of apportioning the donations takes him neither time nor effort, affords nobody an opportunity to accept any kickback more interesting than a coffee mug, and actually does some good.
Even if your only motivation is to get the tax deduction and/or burn through the rest of the budget, employee-directed contributions are a win. You get the same deduction, and spend the same dollars, for much less work, and you do vastly less harm (and even some good) in the process.
I must drink beer.
Beer is the painkiller.
And beer is the little drink that brings total satisfaction.
I will drink my beer.
I will permit it to pass through me.
And where the beer has gone there will be nothing.
Only a hangover will remain.
It is by caffeine alone I set my mind in motion,
It is by the beans of Java that thoughts acquire speed,
The hands acquire shakes, the shakes become a warning,
It is by caffeine alone I set my mind in motion.
> We have to enter a 16 character password each month that cannot
compare in any digits to the previous twelve passwords, nor can it be a
simple string -- it has to be a mixture of upper- and lower-case characters
including numerals and non-alphanumerical characters.
"0123456789aBcDeF"
That's amazing. I've got the same password on my 6-piece luggage set!
Slashdot Mirror
> --
> *insert guitar solo here*
"She don't read Slashdot, but software makes her Blue Gene talk!"
- Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show
I can think of... one company that's 10^100 (a googol) times more likely to have something meaningful to say when it comes to "what's next for search", but which wasn't represented on this panel.
Not that I'm naming names or anything. But who's missing from this panel?
3 billion human legs were humped on August 29th, 2007. The survivors of the frottage called the war Judgment Day. They lived only to face a new nightmare: the war against the cute little machines.
>
> What I have to ask is, "Is CSS to blame for the tiny text in boxes with horizontal scrollbars?"
No, that's the new Slashdot layout. But the guy who knows about CSS thinks it's cool, so suck it up with the rest of us.
Maybe the Slashdot layout's choice of the Microsoft system font, probably the least-readable sans-serif font of all, is part of a nefarious GNU/plot (heh, didn't see that pun coming! :) to get those of us stuck on Windows to finally migrate, or to learn how to use Greasemonkey)
(I cheated - I went to low-bandwidth, which gives me the old serif font back, and hit Ctrl+ on every page to bump the size back up to the old font size. Yeah, it's a kludge, but it's great motivation to learn Greasemonkey. )
Suppose you ask the question: Is X happening?
When a scientist says that a phenomenon "X is probably happening", or "the bulk of the evidence indicates that X is happening", he means "I'm pretty damn sure about it, but because everyting in science is subject to further investigation, I'm open to hear evidence to the contrary."
When a lawyer says that "X is probably happening", or "the bulk of the evidence indicates that X is happening", he means "I haven't the foggiest idea, and I need wiggle room so I don't look like an idiot when someone who knows what he's talking about asks me."
Trouble starts when the two world views are mixed. The scientist hears the bolded words in his part of the speech -- and the politician hears precisely the opposite.
The qualifiers are necessary to the scientist, because they're part of why a theory is explanation falsifiable (and by extension, scientific). Science can't progress except for those areas in which there exists Reasonable Doubt.
The politician hears only the phrases "is probably" (as opposed to certainly), the "bulk of" (as opposed to all of the evidence), and the "indication" (as opposed to conclusive truth pounded out on the table before Judge and Jury) that something is the case. In an adversarial "justice" system, you can't use weasel words, because the holy grail is Proof Beyond A Reasonable Doubt.
And the planet burns because people who don't grok science prefer oratory.
What the hell, the dinosaurs died because they didn't understand science either.
It's VOIP! And instead of bypassing the telco, it requires a telco! And instead of working on every computer, it only works on Windows computers. And instead of being free, it costs money! And instead of working with every IM system, it only works with MSN! And instead of rendering it in HTML, we decided to give Adobe/Macromedia a cut and do the whole web page in Flash!
About all it's missing is a .us domain name for Web 2.0 buzzword compliance.
A little random number generation on the back end, and we're all good.
550 - Stegospam hash recognized in message body. Thank you for your support of Falun Dafa. Use key responding with #48187 to access payment - U8FDO 4J7D3 5FLI0 0S5DX RTND6
Let's put those 'volunteers' to good work.
The NSA terrorist surveillance program approved by President Clinton II is an effective tool for law enforcement to identify and break up terrorist activity before it can can metastasize again on these shores and cause Okalahoma-style death and destruction. A large majority of the American electorate approves this action. By all means write to your representative on this issue. That is the American way. Then take your place on the minority side of the issue while President Clinton II thanks your half of the Party for giving her the tools she needs to kick the bloody hell out of the Second Amendment fanatics.
(And after 8 years of Republicans arguing against Stasi-like surveillance of fundie Christian groups, the Democratic wing of the Party will power over to the Republican wing of the Party, and the ratchet having gone another 360 degrees tighter...)
"Plenty to see here. Cleared for takeoff."
"Third, he wrotte!"
Previous postter's comments reproduced in the spiritt of fair use, and exemptted from copyrightt prottection under the parody excepttion.
>
> Is that really your personal experience with Arctic seed storages?
Weevils sense his power and they seek the life essence. He, uh... he does not avoid weevils, Slashdotter... but he does deny them his essence.
Aha! So that's why Paris, Britney, and Jessica are featured so prominently.
Seriously. From the current netscape.com front page, at least a third of the content is of the form...
That's not a brand. It's a cheap rehash of Cosmo.
It is, however, unsurprising, considering the demographics of AOL's customer base.
Hudson: "Is this going to be a standup open beta programme, or just another bug hunt?"
Gorman: "All we know is that there is still is no contract or schedule with the developer, and that SOE may be involved."
Frost: "Excuse me sir, SOE?"
Gorman: "Guys who made Star Wars Galaxies."
Hicks: "It's a bug hunt."
In other words, This is smart for two reasons. One is that it is the US meddling in other nations' purely internal affairs. The other is that it is yet another war on an abstract idea. (joining the war on terror and the war on poverty and the war on some drugs, which that other guy forgot.)
Good news, you can't win against an idea, only against a group of people (terrorists, pirates, the poor?). And yes there are too many pirates to even think about "winning" against them. They probably make up more than 50% of the population, meaning that there's about a 50/50 chance that when we need to put someone in prison, or just sue them into the stone age, we'll be able to do so.
All we need now is a war on pr0n, and we'll have around 70% of the population as criminals. Then we turn power over to the Democrats, they can declare the Christian fundies that make up our voting base as McVeigh militia whackjobs, and we'll have absolute power over everybody.
Power corrupts. Absolute power is pretty cool.
- G. Orwell, Functional Specification: A Consumer Data Mining Model for Homeland Security
The damndest part is that I drink like a fish, and the only problem I have with pork is my Homeresque refusal to believe that things as wonderful as bacon, ham, and sausage can all come from the same, magical animal.
Unfortunately, I live next to a really good butcher's shop, and have no need of a loyalty-card based chain grocery stores. Guess I gotta get out there and start buying Lee Greenwood albums on my credit card or something.
Slashdotter: > What exactly was wrong with the ESRB ratings we had already? They gave an age category and described any potentially offensive content. It was perfect. What more could we need?
Government: What do you mean "what more could we need"? These are regulations! You've got to legislate regulations!
Some factual information for you. Have you any idea how much damage that bulldozer would suffer if I just let it roll straight over that Constitution of yours?"
Slashdotter: "How much?"
Government: "None at all."
So is beer. (It's not free beer as in free beer, but beer as in Free beer!)
Replace "government" with "any large bureaucracy inside or outside of government", and Milt was spot on. Bureaucracy is a metastatic organizational cancer; in business, it's somewhat limited by the threat of bankruptcy, and in government, it's unlimited until the society collapses.
Since we can't eliminate the problem, the only thing to do is to try and mitigate the collateral damage.
Employer-determined donations, plus employee-directed contributions, strike a pretty good balance. Yes, you're spending someone else's (your employer's shareholders') money, and yes, you're spending it on someone else (your favorite charity), but by having thousands of individual employees making those decisions, you at least get the sort of efficiency gains that come from free markets -- and if you don't like econo-speak, you can rephrase that same sentence for "swarms of decentralized intelligent agents", or "social networking".
$25000 thrown into the black hole of the government does more harm than good. $50000 thrown down the rathole of the United Way does no good, but does less harm than paying the taxes on that $50000.
But 10 $500 donations to the FSF, 7 $500 donations to the EFF, 2 $500 donations to Mozilla, 3 to the Apache Foundation, 3 to the FreeBSD folks, and so on - and for the 75 nontechnical employees out of an imaginary company of 100, 75 $500 donations to 75 separate charities ranging from the local animal shelter to half a dozen parents who set up tutoring classes for kids who would otherwise be getting shot on the street...
One guy with a $50000 budget isn't going to have the time to parcel out the cash like that, and even if he did, he's going to be sorely tempted to spend a day or two on the golf course (or on three-martini lunches) with the 501(c)3 equivalent of salesweasels who want to lobby him for a shot the whole $50000 prize.
But if he just gives his 100 employees $500 apiece, and each of those employees spends just ten minutes making up their minds on what to do with their own slice of the pie, the process of apportioning the donations takes him neither time nor effort, affords nobody an opportunity to accept any kickback more interesting than a coffee mug, and actually does some good.
Even if your only motivation is to get the tax deduction and/or burn through the rest of the budget, employee-directed contributions are a win. You get the same deduction, and spend the same dollars, for much less work, and you do vastly less harm (and even some good) in the process.
"Bite the fish-eye lens facing my Fembot's shiny metal boobs!"
I must drink beer.
Beer is the painkiller.
And beer is the little drink that brings total satisfaction.
I will drink my beer.
I will permit it to pass through me.
And where the beer has gone there will be nothing.
Only a hangover will remain.
It is by caffeine alone I set my mind in motion,
It is by the beans of Java that thoughts acquire speed,
The hands acquire shakes, the shakes become a warning,
It is by caffeine alone I set my mind in motion.
It's a planetarium turned inside-out. Or the offspring of a mating of a planetarium and a Klein bottle. In other words, it's a light trap :)
Over sufficiently long timeframes, and sufficiently large impactors, the same applies to continents.
Yeah, but only after the refractory period.
> "It's got shit all over it."
> "Well I didn't vote for it."
Bloody peasant.
You don't vote for the DMCA.
"0123456789aBcDeF"
That's amazing. I've got the same password on my 6-piece luggage set!