That's a very good point. I would add however, that certain fields make larger dips and climbs of this nature due to the fact that they get more media attention.
The teaching field gets a lot of media attention because education funding is a major issue at every federal election, and any new electee's plans to either raise or lower spending leads to either hopes or fears for the teaching job market. The silly thing, as you've pointed out, is that parents will push their kids into university programs based on these short term impressions.
I think Computer science has gotten a lot of media attention because of the ridiculous Dot-Com boom, and the growth of the internet and it's effect on business. I see nothing wrong with that. Technology has had a tremendous effect on business. The problem is that related reports about increasing or decreasing demands for tech professionals can make headline news, and we end up with what the article talks about.
I've read many posters here pointing out that plumbers make just as much money as the average developer. Why don't plumbers have to worry about their job market suddenly flooding with new hopefuls? Because nothing about their profession makes headline (or business) news. Parents don't hear much about the plumbing industry, so they don't push their kids into it in mass numbers.
One thing that differentiates CS from teaching is the job security for it's professionals. This came up on Slashdot a while ago. Teachers all belong to unions. When their funding drops and there aren't as many jobs, their field just stops inviting new people. They don't all get laid off and work at stores and restaurants to weather the storm, even though new people would work for lower salaries.
I thought the same thing about Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, but the major downfall of that movie was that their characters were so detailed that people looked at them and expected to see the performance of an actor, which made the characters seem like zombies in their computer animated facial expressions and movements.
Cartoon characters (even human ones) don't suffer from this because they are stylized enough to allow us to suspend our expectations of reality and just see them for what they represent. This is the main reason the big companies stick to stylized characters in cartoony situations; they don't have to worry about trying to simulate reality.
Whether intentional or not, the characters in this film all have a very nice stylized look that may allow us to just see them as characters and not zombie like humans. It looks like a pretty beautiful film, and if it fails in the US it won't be for the same major reason Final Fantasy did.
Actually, the real use I can see for this is as a replacement for biometric data as keys. Rather than using a unique real world object that can't be changed as your key (like your fingerprint or retina), this allows you to use something else that you can easily replace if it ever gets stolen or copied.
If somebody steals your fingerprint (or assprint) you cannot change the original, and people could forever identify you by it. I believe this arguement against biometric data is brought up here whenever new technology claims to use it.
Actually, I'd call today's comic an editorial cartoon. I don't know about US newspapers, but here in Canada editorial cartoons are a national treasure.
The Strawberry Shortcake cartoon is a little different though. I understand the right to parody, but I don't recall many parodies that use the actual name of what they are picking on. It's possible that very similar parodies actually get permission (Like Wierd Al Yankovic). They may actually have no right to keep the old comic posted. Let's hope they don't get destroyed financially for having it up for a day.
Although Penny Arcade had every right to ridicule the corporation that is threatening them, the parent is right in that pissing the big boys off will make them more likely to follow through with whatever lawsuit they may be planning.
I believe you mean:
"Lies, damn lies and statistics."
- Mark Twain
But in the meantime, maybe I can squeeze in by quoting this article in my cover letter:
"According to the Chicago Tribune, Tech Jobs are Projected to Double by 2010, so hire me now before I'm back in high demand!"
The best approach to that ongoing problem is a grassroots approach that some well-monitored and well run CS servers use. The best ones are the ones where almost all the players are regulars and they all at least recognize each other's names. Then you just have to watch the odd newcomer that shows up.
This can't be as easily in massivly multiplayer online games, but it's possible. In Ultima Online the game itself identifies and places restricitons on player killers (outlaws).
You will not always be able to automatically detect cheaters, but you could setup a self-recruiting police force in your game that has the power to levy brands on cheaters they spot. A cheater will first be branded by an officer, with no restrictions placed on them. Then subsequent officers he meets will watch him more closely. If he isn't seen cheating again, the brand will wear off after a week or two. If he is seen cheating by another officer, he will get that officer's brand and will now have some restrictions placed on him. Subsequent brands will place harder restrictions until finally he gets banned.
This only requires that a player have a consistent account to apply brands to, and MMORPGs already do this. A banned player would have to cancel his account, setup a new one, and start over with a new character. This is MUCH more painful than switching servers.
I read that Square is paying people to play and monitor Final Fantasy XI. I don't even see that as necessary. You could build up a trusted group of police players who do it for fun. Do any of you Slashdot moderators fell you should be paid?
The police force would still have to be monitored for corruption (Diablo Police, Department of Internal Affairs?), but that's a much smaller job then monitoring the entire player population.
Mozilla actually has an option to disable loading of remote images in mail and newsgroup messages.
For those using Mozilla Mail, go to preferences/privacy & security/images. The option is right there.
With that said, I will also switch to a lighter possibly more bug free re-write of Mozilla Mail so long as it has the SPAM filter Mozilla Mail currently does. In the meantime, I will read that bug referred you referred to, but it will have to be pretty nasty to tear me away from this SPAM eating demon.
Why would they need anything this sophisticated for a tank? I think cruise control is a perfectly good automated pilot for something that can drive through buildings.
He made a long bet on this. Not to belittle his boldness in going on the record, but he probably figured this wouldn't be solved until long after he died.
In other news: Wine and Cheese celebrations at the Institute for Advanced Study.
When you say "People outside of the US..." I hope you're not referring to us (Canadians), because from one Canuck to another, let me assure you that the tech careers I've seen here are nothing less than bouncy.
As for starting a union, this article sums up most of the reasons why IT workers should seriousely consider unionizing. The situations described in the article are typical of every IT worker I know, and from what I've read so far, they're typical of a lot of Slashdot posters as well. Maybe we should form a union.
I think the problems with our current model of programming that Jaron is describing can be seen mainly in the idea of Leaky Abstractions. With software abstractions, we try to do exactly what Jarod is talking about; we try to simply make things interface with one another fluidly. What he's pointing out, and what leaky abstractions prove, is that our programming languages just don't work this way. Everything assumes the pieces it interacts with will interact in a specified way. The system depends on every piece to follow it's assumptions and often falls apart completely if one doesn't.
There are questions to be raised about a flexible system like this:
What about misinterpretation? Would software now behave like a human and "missread" another component's piece of information? (as people missread each other's handwriting)
Would "fuzzy" interpretations lead to databases full of occasional false information? Could the same system still operate effectively with these kinds of errors? (a very tricky question)
Could we still make secure systems with this kind of software interaction? Would secure systems still require the strict standards our current systems have? (ie. your password must still be entered with the correct capitalization)
Obviousely, information passing wouldn't work in this model. Think of the party game where you sit in a circle and whisper a message in each other's ears to see how garbled it gets. We would just have to avoid that type of system.
These (and the others I've read) are the kinds of immediate questions that one will make of this concept. I guess Jarod is proposing that these are things that can be worked around conceptually; they're implementation details.
Personally, I think he's brilliant. I think he has stumbled onto what will be the foundation of the future of computing. Here is the big bold statement he is putting on the record for us:
"So instead of requiring protocol adherence in which each component has to be perfectly matched to other components down to the bit, we can begin to have similarity. Then a form of very graceful error tolerance, with a predictable overhead, becomes possible. The big bet I want to make as a computer scientist is that that's the secret missing ingredient that we need to create a new kind of software."
My question is this: Would any of you openly challenge this statement? If he were to more rigourousely define this bet and enter it here, would any of you put yourselves on record saying it was bunk?
I know that's alot harder than simply not challenging him, but think of the ultimate outcome of his work. Do you truly think computing systems will still be cooperating the way they do now 100 years from now? If the answer is no, but you still don't think he's on to something, then what will change things? Genetically altered super-humans whose brains operate as our computers? The "Mentats" of the Dune novels?
If I had $2000.00 to spare, I'd bet it on his idea.
He is saying that after your program becomes about 10 million lines of code, you may no longer look at a particular object or function and "KNOW" exactly what it's role is. You tend to forget.
"Personally, I think it would be simpler and more effective to put a
camera on the phone and transmit an image of the speakers face."
I don't think it would be either simpler nor more effective to do that. The advantage to this CG mouth is that it stays still, perfectly centered, and perfectly lit at all times. It also forms the all of it's facial positions clearly and more precicely than people bother to do when they talk.
A person with a camera pointed at their mouth would be constantly moving out of view, poorly lit, and probably not concentrating on clearly mouthing their words.
The other problem with effectiveness is the issue of bandwidth. A string of text or phonemes is phenominally smaller than a video stream.
What I wonder about is whether or not it's easier for a deaf person to lip read than it is for a machine to convert the phonemes it hears into meaningful words and sentences.
As mentioned above, the only difference between this and speech-to-text is how the phonemes are being interpreted and displayed by the machine. So is it better for a deaf person to read lips than machine interpreted sentences?
How accurate are machine interpreters?
How hard is it to read lips?
If lip reading is much harder than text reading, would it be better to just display the interpreted sounds phonetically? It may look silly, but people who use abbreviated chat lingo can read it quite fluently (wut r u doin? l8tr, etc.).
I did a search for this word and it didn't show up anywhere on the page, so I'm wondering if anyone has looked into this solution the the overprofiteering broadband problem? This is the way a free market is supposed to balance itself afterall.
The one cheap alternative I believe I saw mentioned here before was that of the Co-Op Broadband ISP. I don't know what the Slashdot community could do to promote these smaller, non-profit operations other than to look for them in your area, so I suggest we all do this.
I don't know if it's entirely possible to cut profits and beat the big company's service, but these are probably the only ones trying.
Frankly, I see an effective filtering mechanism like this as the best way of ridding the world of SPAM. It's very true that a law is only as effective as it's enforcement. The better it's enforced, the harder life is for those in the spamming business. However, if we all had effective filters like this, life would be even harder for spammers, as they would have to both dodge the law, and deal with getting only a fraction of their waste to it destinations.
I can just imagine the pictures in that CNN article: Kids walking around hunched over with strained faces trying to lug those whopping X-Boxes around all day. You'd see the occasional one on the ground being kicked by dorks in penguin T-shirts.
Slashdot Mirror
Am I the only one who looks at that suit, hears the name "Scorpion" and pictures US troops running around shooting hooks out of their arms?
I can't wait until the rival "Sub-Zero" suit hits our shores.
With £8m, I would assume they'll have something a bit more impressive. Foam rubber at the least.
Although with that kind of funding and a bit more time, they could probably breed a Balrog from laboratory Newts.
That's a very good point. I would add however, that certain fields make larger dips and climbs of this nature due to the fact that they get more media attention.
The teaching field gets a lot of media attention because education funding is a major issue at every federal election, and any new electee's plans to either raise or lower spending leads to either hopes or fears for the teaching job market. The silly thing, as you've pointed out, is that parents will push their kids into university programs based on these short term impressions.
I think Computer science has gotten a lot of media attention because of the ridiculous Dot-Com boom, and the growth of the internet and it's effect on business. I see nothing wrong with that. Technology has had a tremendous effect on business. The problem is that related reports about increasing or decreasing demands for tech professionals can make headline news, and we end up with what the article talks about.
I've read many posters here pointing out that plumbers make just as much money as the average developer. Why don't plumbers have to worry about their job market suddenly flooding with new hopefuls? Because nothing about their profession makes headline (or business) news. Parents don't hear much about the plumbing industry, so they don't push their kids into it in mass numbers.
One thing that differentiates CS from teaching is the job security for it's professionals. This came up on Slashdot a while ago. Teachers all belong to unions. When their funding drops and there aren't as many jobs, their field just stops inviting new people. They don't all get laid off and work at stores and restaurants to weather the storm, even though new people would work for lower salaries.
I thought the same thing about Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, but the major downfall of that movie was that their characters were so detailed that people looked at them and expected to see the performance of an actor, which made the characters seem like zombies in their computer animated facial expressions and movements.
Cartoon characters (even human ones) don't suffer from this because they are stylized enough to allow us to suspend our expectations of reality and just see them for what they represent. This is the main reason the big companies stick to stylized characters in cartoony situations; they don't have to worry about trying to simulate reality.
Whether intentional or not, the characters in this film all have a very nice stylized look that may allow us to just see them as characters and not zombie like humans. It looks like a pretty beautiful film, and if it fails in the US it won't be for the same major reason Final Fantasy did.
"My apologies if my information is out of date, I quit my PhD in plasma physics 4 years ago..."
That's still more recent than the last time I did plasma physics... which was never.
"...fusion certainly doesn't produce any "conventional" pollution."
You mean like cows? Good. One nuclear fart and we're all goners.
Oh whoop-dee-doo. Good for Gateway and microsoft.
The fact of the matter is, we've all known tablet PCs are the way of the future since the 60's. Haven't you ever watched Star Trek?
Actually, the real use I can see for this is as a replacement for biometric data as keys. Rather than using a unique real world object that can't be changed as your key (like your fingerprint or retina), this allows you to use something else that you can easily replace if it ever gets stolen or copied.
If somebody steals your fingerprint (or assprint) you cannot change the original, and people could forever identify you by it. I believe this arguement against biometric data is brought up here whenever new technology claims to use it.
Actually, I'd call today's comic an editorial cartoon. I don't know about US newspapers, but here in Canada editorial cartoons are a national treasure.
The Strawberry Shortcake cartoon is a little different though. I understand the right to parody, but I don't recall many parodies that use the actual name of what they are picking on. It's possible that very similar parodies actually get permission (Like Wierd Al Yankovic). They may actually have no right to keep the old comic posted. Let's hope they don't get destroyed financially for having it up for a day.
Although Penny Arcade had every right to ridicule the corporation that is threatening them, the parent is right in that pissing the big boys off will make them more likely to follow through with whatever lawsuit they may be planning.
I believe you mean: "Lies, damn lies and statistics." - Mark Twain But in the meantime, maybe I can squeeze in by quoting this article in my cover letter: "According to the Chicago Tribune, Tech Jobs are Projected to Double by 2010, so hire me now before I'm back in high demand!"
I'm sorry but I just don't buy that excuse.
Perhaps an illustration:
Storm Trooper #1: Ow, My ass!
Storm Trooper #2: What did they say about this in training?
Storm Trooper #1: Ow! There it is again! Damnit, I'm going to need armor just to sit down after this.
Storm Trooper #2: No, that wasn't it, It was some kind of warning... Oh yeah, it means they behind us!
See? Simple logic. Nobody needs a bright red line to figure that out.
The most likely answer is that George Lucas thought the term "laser" referred to anything hot and glowing red.
The best approach to that ongoing problem is a grassroots approach that some well-monitored and well run CS servers use. The best ones are the ones where almost all the players are regulars and they all at least recognize each other's names. Then you just have to watch the odd newcomer that shows up. This can't be as easily in massivly multiplayer online games, but it's possible. In Ultima Online the game itself identifies and places restricitons on player killers (outlaws). You will not always be able to automatically detect cheaters, but you could setup a self-recruiting police force in your game that has the power to levy brands on cheaters they spot. A cheater will first be branded by an officer, with no restrictions placed on them. Then subsequent officers he meets will watch him more closely. If he isn't seen cheating again, the brand will wear off after a week or two. If he is seen cheating by another officer, he will get that officer's brand and will now have some restrictions placed on him. Subsequent brands will place harder restrictions until finally he gets banned. This only requires that a player have a consistent account to apply brands to, and MMORPGs already do this. A banned player would have to cancel his account, setup a new one, and start over with a new character. This is MUCH more painful than switching servers. I read that Square is paying people to play and monitor Final Fantasy XI. I don't even see that as necessary. You could build up a trusted group of police players who do it for fun. Do any of you Slashdot moderators fell you should be paid? The police force would still have to be monitored for corruption (Diablo Police, Department of Internal Affairs?), but that's a much smaller job then monitoring the entire player population.
Mozilla actually has an option to disable loading of remote images in mail and newsgroup messages.
For those using Mozilla Mail, go to preferences/privacy & security/images. The option is right there.
With that said, I will also switch to a lighter possibly more bug free re-write of Mozilla Mail so long as it has the SPAM filter Mozilla Mail currently does. In the meantime, I will read that bug referred you referred to, but it will have to be pretty nasty to tear me away from this SPAM eating demon.
Why would they need anything this sophisticated for a tank? I think cruise control is a perfectly good automated pilot for something that can drive through buildings.
Heck, that might even be the US Military's entry.
WHAMMO~!
He made a long bet on this. Not to belittle his boldness in going on the record, but he probably figured this wouldn't be solved until long after he died.
In other news: Wine and Cheese celebrations at the Institute for Advanced Study.
When you say "People outside of the US..." I hope you're not referring to us (Canadians), because from one Canuck to another, let me assure you that the tech careers I've seen here are nothing less than bouncy.
As for starting a union, this article sums up most of the reasons why IT workers should seriousely consider unionizing. The situations described in the article are typical of every IT worker I know, and from what I've read so far, they're typical of a lot of Slashdot posters as well. Maybe we should form a union.
I think the problems with our current model of programming that Jaron is describing can be seen mainly in the idea of Leaky Abstractions. With software abstractions, we try to do exactly what Jarod is talking about; we try to simply make things interface with one another fluidly. What he's pointing out, and what leaky abstractions prove, is that our programming languages just don't work this way. Everything assumes the pieces it interacts with will interact in a specified way. The system depends on every piece to follow it's assumptions and often falls apart completely if one doesn't.
There are questions to be raised about a flexible system like this:
What about misinterpretation? Would software now behave like a human and "missread" another component's piece of information? (as people missread each other's handwriting)
Would "fuzzy" interpretations lead to databases full of occasional false information? Could the same system still operate effectively with these kinds of errors? (a very tricky question)
Could we still make secure systems with this kind of software interaction? Would secure systems still require the strict standards our current systems have? (ie. your password must still be entered with the correct capitalization)
Obviousely, information passing wouldn't work in this model. Think of the party game where you sit in a circle and whisper a message in each other's ears to see how garbled it gets. We would just have to avoid that type of system.
These (and the others I've read) are the kinds of immediate questions that one will make of this concept. I guess Jarod is proposing that these are things that can be worked around conceptually; they're implementation details.
Personally, I think he's brilliant. I think he has stumbled onto what will be the foundation of the future of computing. Here is the big bold statement he is putting on the record for us:
"So instead of requiring protocol adherence in which each component has to be perfectly matched to other components down to the bit, we can begin to have similarity. Then a form of very graceful error tolerance, with a predictable overhead, becomes possible. The big bet I want to make as a computer scientist is that that's the secret missing ingredient that we need to create a new kind of software."
My question is this: Would any of you openly challenge this statement? If he were to more rigourousely define this bet and enter it here, would any of you put yourselves on record saying it was bunk?
I know that's alot harder than simply not challenging him, but think of the ultimate outcome of his work. Do you truly think computing systems will still be cooperating the way they do now 100 years from now? If the answer is no, but you still don't think he's on to something, then what will change things? Genetically altered super-humans whose brains operate as our computers? The "Mentats" of the Dune novels?
If I had $2000.00 to spare, I'd bet it on his idea.
Feel free to quote me on that 100 years from now.
"Why have a computer guess at it when we KNOW?"
He is saying that after your program becomes about 10 million lines of code, you may no longer look at a particular object or function and "KNOW" exactly what it's role is. You tend to forget.
Or better yet, could all of you stop viewing the page so I can load it?
Geez, the same thing happens to me every morning on the way to work. Why doesn't everyone take the bus so I can drive downtown in my SUV?
"Personally, I think it would be simpler and more effective to put a camera on the phone and transmit an image of the speakers face."
I don't think it would be either simpler nor more effective to do that. The advantage to this CG mouth is that it stays still, perfectly centered, and perfectly lit at all times. It also forms the all of it's facial positions clearly and more precicely than people bother to do when they talk.
A person with a camera pointed at their mouth would be constantly moving out of view, poorly lit, and probably not concentrating on clearly mouthing their words.
The other problem with effectiveness is the issue of bandwidth. A string of text or phonemes is phenominally smaller than a video stream.
What I wonder about is whether or not it's easier for a deaf person to lip read than it is for a machine to convert the phonemes it hears into meaningful words and sentences.
As mentioned above, the only difference between this and speech-to-text is how the phonemes are being interpreted and displayed by the machine. So is it better for a deaf person to read lips than machine interpreted sentences?
How accurate are machine interpreters?
How hard is it to read lips?
If lip reading is much harder than text reading, would it be better to just display the interpreted sounds phonetically? It may look silly, but people who use abbreviated chat lingo can read it quite fluently (wut r u doin? l8tr, etc.).
I did a search for this word and it didn't show up anywhere on the page, so I'm wondering if anyone has looked into this solution the the overprofiteering broadband problem? This is the way a free market is supposed to balance itself afterall.
The one cheap alternative I believe I saw mentioned here before was that of the Co-Op Broadband ISP. I don't know what the Slashdot community could do to promote these smaller, non-profit operations other than to look for them in your area, so I suggest we all do this.
I don't know if it's entirely possible to cut profits and beat the big company's service, but these are probably the only ones trying.
How about another challenge? Try scoring as many points as possible without getting a single line.
Frankly, I see an effective filtering mechanism like this as the best way of ridding the world of SPAM. It's very true that a law is only as effective as it's enforcement. The better it's enforced, the harder life is for those in the spamming business. However, if we all had effective filters like this, life would be even harder for spammers, as they would have to both dodge the law, and deal with getting only a fraction of their waste to it destinations.
That's great! I hope it has all the pieces needed to build these.
I can just imagine the pictures in that CNN article: Kids walking around hunched over with strained faces trying to lug those whopping X-Boxes around all day. You'd see the occasional one on the ground being kicked by dorks in penguin T-shirts.