Anything harder than a problem needs to be is too hard. The question is whether concurrency can be made easier while preserving the benefits it provides.
Tangential, but I find that small groups of people can restore faith in humanity, while it generally takes the actions and behaviors of large groups to dash it.
I find it interesting that Obama's greatest political scandal during the race is based on someone else's actions. It made me want to vote for him more, actually - his opponents couldn't dig anything particularly scandalous up on him, so they found someone else to blame him with by association.
Also, the pastor's speech was taken out of context (not that there really is a good reason to be saying the stuff he was saying). The full thing's up on YouTube.
Taxes must be raised or spending must be cut. The current economic situation demonstrates that stimulus policies based on debt spending do not work in the long term. Sure, it worked sort of well for a few years, but the bubble just burst and now we're all paying the price for it.
I don't know about entertainment authors, but many scientific writers already do this. Certainly we give our publications away freely, if not our books, and most of us are perfectly OK with that. (The publishers tend to lock the works up for profit which we don't receive any of, which isn't OK, but that's a whole different issue).
Give your works away for free if you want the greatest exposure to your ideas. Sell them if you want to monetize them. But at least have the decency to allow fair use.
It's not like they're reading your thoughts anyway. Just the electrical signal produced by clusters of neurons firing.
Maybe that can eventually be decoded into thought (although I suspect the particular signals that would work best for gaming are motor in nature), but that technology is probably rather far away.
I actually do. Never underestimate explaining things in different ways, especially when discussing specialized concepts to people that might be coming from different backgrounds within the same field:)
Strictly speaking, that's the rank rather than the dimensionality of the matrix (it is, however, the geometric dimensionality of the manifold in which it lies), but if the matrix is invertible (full-rank), they're the same thing.
I'd agree with the other poster, actually - go for topology if you want to test the bounds of your intuition. I found it to be one of the most intuitive fields of higher mathematics I gained exposure to, despite the fact that I generally consider myself firmly in the symbolic camp.
Quite the contrary, actually - I think we need more discussions (and more posts) like this on Slashdot. It's a good starting point to look things up.
I already know a few things about L-functions and GRH, but I'm not sure what the "membranes" you refer to are. Are you speaking of the same "membranes" that appear in M-theory?
Like you said, if they don't like the way scientists go about their work, they can stop using the fruits of the scientists' labor. If they keep using the products of science but do not appreciate the people who created them, that's rather hypocritical. No one is entitled to my mind and labor, or that of any other scientist; they receive only because we choose to give. Perhaps it is elitist, but nothing is stopping them from picking up a book and doing the same.
The personality of a scientist is a certain way because it needs to be. Scientists need to be "workaholics", first: they need to love what they are doing, because doing good science is hard and can be unrewarding for a very long time. If scientists didn't love their fields, they'd be doing something easier. They need to possess a certain amount of haughtiness, because otherwise they will assume they can never create anything that no one has ever thought of before - as audacious as it sounds, that is a scientist's job. They're not as well-paid as you think (at least until they've spent several decades at work), but given that they need an extreme amount of training, talent, and insight to do what they do, I think they should be paid well. Medical doctors go through about as much training as scientists, yet they are paid much more and no one complains.
About being intolerant of idiots, that's an interesting one, because scientists generally don't need to be to do their jobs. In my own experience, scientists are intolerant of idiots because idiots make no effort to learn. I can't speak for everyone, but I don't think we have any problem with stupidity, per se, until it becomes used as an excuse to avoid making the attempt. Most of us love teaching. I've spent weeks on end tutoring strangers who came to me for help at the expense of my own work, and I still count it a worthwhile use of the time. But there are just people who want the benefits of knowledge but don't want to make the effort of learning it - and the only way they can get that is by hanging onto those who know what they are doing like a crutch. You probably know the type - their hallmark is usually a phrase like "I'll never understand this stuff".
Skepticism based on lack of evidence or falsifiability (or any of the idea's own merits) is a different beast from skepticism based on personal convictions. The problem most people seem to have with string theory is that it is not falsifiable - no one has any religious or political stake in the question of whether the universe is made of tiny vibrating strings. Evolution is different because many people believe it incompatible with creationism, although some argue on the basis of the idea itself.
I have no problem with either form of personal skepticism (though I find it slightly foolish to believe things that run contrary to a great deal of evidence or to reject ideas that show evidence of validity) - believe what you wish. The problem is that many of our scientific policies are being dictated by people who have no knowledge of the underlying issues (and have no wish to use that knowledge to make sound decisions), which could lead us down a road to the era you spoke of - particularly if combined with the anti-intellectualism that seems to pop up every couple of decades or so in the public.
Sorting news as "liberal" or "conservative"... because there isn't already enough false dichotomization of people's views in modern politics. As long as this keeps up, we're ideologically locking ourselves into a two-party system.
Microsoft seems good at fixing existing problems that customers raise. The problem is that, in so doing, they tend to introduce more unforeseen problems.
The reason Wikipedia succeeded in the first place (and subsequently contributed much to the "Web 2.0" culture) was because of its editorial policy. You can't simply build up a project and then say "we're now going to renounce what made this possible". If they do that, the project is going to end up forking. Again.
The nonsense that is a Ph. D. also turns a lot of people off from a scientific career. It's sort of difficult to explain why unless you're already going (or have gone) through it, but let's just say it's nothing like anyone expects it to be. A lot of what I (and probably most others) thought was a bastion of pure innovation and discovery turns out to be a rather bureaucratic and dishonest system at work - and it wants to use you.
But that's just something that discourages those who are already considering becoming professors or scientists because they like doing research. The bigger challenge is probably encouraging people to choose a scientific career in the first place, as you mentioned.
I realize you were joking, but as the poster said, you illustrated his point: let's say you wanted to dictate that response. Those aren't words, so how do you do it?
"T". "y". "e". "s"....
*5 minutes later*
"o". "f". "o". "Period".
No matter how fast the system responds, you can probably type the letters faster than you can dictate them. Similar things would happen when dealing with non-natural languages, such as programming languages. Can you imagine trying to dictate a regular expression?:)
A voice is a wonderful thing, but we should probably acknowledge that it's not always the most appropriate input method for the job. In some scenarios, such as writing a lengthy Word document or transcribing meeting minutes, dictation offers great promise (if we can ensure a high degree of accuracy), but it is virtually useless in others.
I'm not too sure about that. Software scales to make use of available resources, which can result in the same task requiring more processing power over time. There's a vast difference between using, say, Vista and Word 2007 to do word processing vs. something like Windows 95 and Word 6.0 - even though you're using the two packages for the same purpose.
Slashdot Mirror
Anything harder than a problem needs to be is too hard. The question is whether concurrency can be made easier while preserving the benefits it provides.
Most of Google's newer products were acquired. I'm not sure about Apple.
Sure, go ahead.
Tangential, but I find that small groups of people can restore faith in humanity, while it generally takes the actions and behaviors of large groups to dash it.
I find it interesting that Obama's greatest political scandal during the race is based on someone else's actions. It made me want to vote for him more, actually - his opponents couldn't dig anything particularly scandalous up on him, so they found someone else to blame him with by association.
Also, the pastor's speech was taken out of context (not that there really is a good reason to be saying the stuff he was saying). The full thing's up on YouTube.
Taxes must be raised or spending must be cut. The current economic situation demonstrates that stimulus policies based on debt spending do not work in the long term. Sure, it worked sort of well for a few years, but the bubble just burst and now we're all paying the price for it.
I don't know about entertainment authors, but many scientific writers already do this. Certainly we give our publications away freely, if not our books, and most of us are perfectly OK with that. (The publishers tend to lock the works up for profit which we don't receive any of, which isn't OK, but that's a whole different issue).
Give your works away for free if you want the greatest exposure to your ideas. Sell them if you want to monetize them. But at least have the decency to allow fair use.
It's not like they're reading your thoughts anyway. Just the electrical signal produced by clusters of neurons firing.
Maybe that can eventually be decoded into thought (although I suspect the particular signals that would work best for gaming are motor in nature), but that technology is probably rather far away.
I actually do. Never underestimate explaining things in different ways, especially when discussing specialized concepts to people that might be coming from different backgrounds within the same field :)
Strictly speaking, that's the rank rather than the dimensionality of the matrix (it is, however, the geometric dimensionality of the manifold in which it lies), but if the matrix is invertible (full-rank), they're the same thing.
I'd agree with the other poster, actually - go for topology if you want to test the bounds of your intuition. I found it to be one of the most intuitive fields of higher mathematics I gained exposure to, despite the fact that I generally consider myself firmly in the symbolic camp.
In the end, you're only fooling yourself. Better to learn the material for real than waste effort trying to fake it.
Quite the contrary, actually - I think we need more discussions (and more posts) like this on Slashdot. It's a good starting point to look things up.
I already know a few things about L-functions and GRH, but I'm not sure what the "membranes" you refer to are. Are you speaking of the same "membranes" that appear in M-theory?
Like you said, if they don't like the way scientists go about their work, they can stop using the fruits of the scientists' labor. If they keep using the products of science but do not appreciate the people who created them, that's rather hypocritical. No one is entitled to my mind and labor, or that of any other scientist; they receive only because we choose to give. Perhaps it is elitist, but nothing is stopping them from picking up a book and doing the same.
The personality of a scientist is a certain way because it needs to be. Scientists need to be "workaholics", first: they need to love what they are doing, because doing good science is hard and can be unrewarding for a very long time. If scientists didn't love their fields, they'd be doing something easier. They need to possess a certain amount of haughtiness, because otherwise they will assume they can never create anything that no one has ever thought of before - as audacious as it sounds, that is a scientist's job. They're not as well-paid as you think (at least until they've spent several decades at work), but given that they need an extreme amount of training, talent, and insight to do what they do, I think they should be paid well. Medical doctors go through about as much training as scientists, yet they are paid much more and no one complains.
About being intolerant of idiots, that's an interesting one, because scientists generally don't need to be to do their jobs. In my own experience, scientists are intolerant of idiots because idiots make no effort to learn. I can't speak for everyone, but I don't think we have any problem with stupidity, per se, until it becomes used as an excuse to avoid making the attempt. Most of us love teaching. I've spent weeks on end tutoring strangers who came to me for help at the expense of my own work, and I still count it a worthwhile use of the time. But there are just people who want the benefits of knowledge but don't want to make the effort of learning it - and the only way they can get that is by hanging onto those who know what they are doing like a crutch. You probably know the type - their hallmark is usually a phrase like "I'll never understand this stuff".
Trying to ascribe meaning to things seems more in the realm of philosophy than science, though. Science tends to answer the "how" more than the "why".
Skepticism based on lack of evidence or falsifiability (or any of the idea's own merits) is a different beast from skepticism based on personal convictions. The problem most people seem to have with string theory is that it is not falsifiable - no one has any religious or political stake in the question of whether the universe is made of tiny vibrating strings. Evolution is different because many people believe it incompatible with creationism, although some argue on the basis of the idea itself.
I have no problem with either form of personal skepticism (though I find it slightly foolish to believe things that run contrary to a great deal of evidence or to reject ideas that show evidence of validity) - believe what you wish. The problem is that many of our scientific policies are being dictated by people who have no knowledge of the underlying issues (and have no wish to use that knowledge to make sound decisions), which could lead us down a road to the era you spoke of - particularly if combined with the anti-intellectualism that seems to pop up every couple of decades or so in the public.
Science is very much about ideas. Math is just the language in which they are sometimes expressed.
Wow, literary publishing is exactly like scientific publishing.
Sorting news as "liberal" or "conservative"... because there isn't already enough false dichotomization of people's views in modern politics. As long as this keeps up, we're ideologically locking ourselves into a two-party system.
Headline: "AI Researchers Say 'Rascals' Might Pass Turing Test" :)
I think the article is blowing the researchers' (likely more modest) claims out of proportion, but that just makes the article misleading.
Microsoft seems good at fixing existing problems that customers raise. The problem is that, in so doing, they tend to introduce more unforeseen problems.
Or unless you bring something truly unique to the table that Akbar can't match.
The reason Wikipedia succeeded in the first place (and subsequently contributed much to the "Web 2.0" culture) was because of its editorial policy. You can't simply build up a project and then say "we're now going to renounce what made this possible". If they do that, the project is going to end up forking. Again.
The nonsense that is a Ph. D. also turns a lot of people off from a scientific career. It's sort of difficult to explain why unless you're already going (or have gone) through it, but let's just say it's nothing like anyone expects it to be. A lot of what I (and probably most others) thought was a bastion of pure innovation and discovery turns out to be a rather bureaucratic and dishonest system at work - and it wants to use you.
But that's just something that discourages those who are already considering becoming professors or scientists because they like doing research. The bigger challenge is probably encouraging people to choose a scientific career in the first place, as you mentioned.
I realize you were joking, but as the poster said, you illustrated his point: let's say you wanted to dictate that response. Those aren't words, so how do you do it?
:)
"T". "y". "e". "s"....
*5 minutes later*
"o". "f". "o". "Period".
No matter how fast the system responds, you can probably type the letters faster than you can dictate them. Similar things would happen when dealing with non-natural languages, such as programming languages. Can you imagine trying to dictate a regular expression?
A voice is a wonderful thing, but we should probably acknowledge that it's not always the most appropriate input method for the job. In some scenarios, such as writing a lengthy Word document or transcribing meeting minutes, dictation offers great promise (if we can ensure a high degree of accuracy), but it is virtually useless in others.
I'm not too sure about that. Software scales to make use of available resources, which can result in the same task requiring more processing power over time. There's a vast difference between using, say, Vista and Word 2007 to do word processing vs. something like Windows 95 and Word 6.0 - even though you're using the two packages for the same purpose.