I wonder whether encouraging people to switch to an incompatible java3 will just convince them to jump ship?
A few years back I made some java-based webpages for a science course I teach. I had been interested in the language, and this little (few 100 lines) application seemed just right for a test case. So, I took some cgibin code and started rewriting. The results were fine, in the end, and I thought that my time had been justified.
The next year I wanted to add something new to the code. Whoa. My old code no longer compiled, given java function renaming.
That was enough to turn me off Java. In several decades of programming (assembler, fortran, algol, PL/1, C, C++,...) I've never had code written in one year fail in the next.
I've been told that I was just being caught in the "early adopters" disease, and that java now has now stopped making incompatible changes.
This Nasa press release is closer to tabloid reporting than it should
be, and it does a disservice to the scientists.
In the
press release
we read
"
new evidence confirming that 25 percent of
the magnetic material in the meteorite was produced by ancient
bacteria on Mars.... This means that
one-quarter of the magnetite
crystals... in Martian meteorite
ALH84001 require the intervention of biology to explain their
presence.
"
The words "confirm" and "require" are very strong, indeed.
However, in the
abstract of the scientific report
we read something quite different:
"
On Earth such...
magnetites are known to
be produced by magnetotactic bacteria. We suggest that the observation...
are [sic] both
consistent with, and in the absence of terrestrial inorganic analogs,
likely formed by biogenic processes."
So, the scientists suggest that something is consistent with a proposition,
and the press-releasers convert that into confirmation of the proposition.
Sure, scientists' language often needs to be modified for public
consumption, but here we have a case of changing the entire
thrust of the story.
This sort of mistake would be unacceptable
from a high-school science student, and that makes me wonder whether this exaggerating rewriting might have been deliberate. I remember a story of crying "wolf"...
Regardless of the significance for space research, there may be many earthly benefits to this NASA research on human-style robots.
I'm thinking of people with disabilities.
Since NASA is so well-funded and since it attracts such talented engineers, let's hope for spinoffs of research into mimicking human function will improve the quality of life for disabled individuals.
Probably not. The timescale is wrong. Besides, the warming trend [difficult as it is to measure] seems to be consistent with CO2 emissions, linked through climate models in which we have [some, of not great] confidence.
In my tests staroffice was much slower than office. Unless launch time is under 200 ms (human reaction time), users will select the faster product, all other things being equal.
Users in an office environment will need full compatibility with office (for document sharing). How can that be accomplished, when Microsoft can change file formats at a whim, knowing that users will update like lemmings to get the new "features" provide along with the thwarting format changes?
Folks won't choose because of cost because cost is not a big issue. In an office environment, it makes sense to pay a day's salary (on tools), to save 10 days of work. In a home environment, people use (cheap) bundled Microsoft products or they steal them.
I like the fact that your sigline is a C program to print itself... it nicely illustrates your subjectline!
open-source science: funding/promotion/timetables
on
Open-Source Biology
·
· Score: 1
Open-sourcing scientific data can be great for science, although it needs protocals and conventions to be workable.
For example, it is common in my field (oceanography) that funding agencies require that data be shared openly, but only after the original investigator has had a certain amount of time to work with the data and to publish findings.
It makes sense to give the data originator "first dibs" on the data because
The data originator is probably the person most able/interested to leverage the data into a scientific result (commonly, a peer-reviewed publication).
Denying the originator a first chance at publication thwarts the funding/promotion processes, and thus can cause problems in getting personnel to do the science.
Better science often results if the data originator has some time to think deeply about the data, without rushing to publish before others do so.
However, it's often the case that there is information in the data that the originator had not thought of, or that becomes clear only by integrating the data with the results of other investigations. That's why open sharing is crucial. Indeed, we would know very little about the state of the ocean, and of the climate system, without open sharing according to established "publish, then share" principles.
PS: throughout the above, please take "data" to mean either the results of measurement or the results of calculation.
Dan Kelley, Dalhousie University, Halifax, NS, Canada.
My experience with the 'evolution' software has been uneven.
When it works, it's slick-looking but annoyingly
slow even on fast (1.7GHz pentium) machine. The slowness seems mainly to involve email folders. I have many folders, into which I file quite a few of my incoming messages. For years I've used the 'pine' software, which is very fast; it displays the list of available folders in as long as it takes to fill up an xterm window with ascii text. By contrast, 'evolution' is sluggish. I think it may take several seconds to do what 'pine' does in a flash.
I had to say "I think" in the last sentence because it's been a while since I've used 'evolution'. That's because 'evolution' is broken on my box. I'm not entirely sure, but I think the problem occured when I upgraded from redhat 7.2 to redhat 7.3, with evolution-1.0.5-4. When I try to launch 'evolution' I get
Cannot initialize the Ximian Evolution shell: Configuration Database not found
which is a phrase I've searched for on the web, and indeed other folks have the same problem. I've not seen, in my searches, any remedy that works for me.
By the way, that error message phrase is not locatable in the ximian "knowledge" database, so although it's a known problem. If I had found 'evolution' to have been a wonderful programme, and if I had time to invest in maintaining it across redhat upgrades that have proven stable for other software, I'd spend time navigating the ximian site, to see if there is a bug related to it, or I'd try installing an older redhat on one of my boxes to test if my theory about 'evolution' breaking upon upgrade. But not and not, so not and not.
Still, if a gui-loving user finds that it works at all, then (s)he might find it rather agreeable to use.
The cellphone application may have another analogy to biological
systems: the setting of priorities of requests.
You have a weak
need to inhale after every exhalation, but that need grows exceedingly
pressing -- occupying your entire consciousness, instead of being
something of which you're hardly aware -- if you just hold your breath
for a minute or so. The priority "inhale" becomes higher than the
priority "type the next word in this message", for example.
For cell-phones, it seems that either there will be too many
antennae [wasting resources of subscribers who pay for them,
indirectly] or occasionally too few [possibly thwartingg
important communication].
A solution would be a button on the phone that indicates the
priority of outgoing calls, or the priority to be assigned for
incoming calls. Call me naive, but I think most folks would be happy
to turn the priority down a notch, when they are just calling to chat
about unimportant fluff.
I realize that these comments may be more germaine to other
applications, since cell-phone communications don't really seem that
limited [given the number of folks with those mobiles fixed to their
faces], but the idea remains: adding priority to the mix works in
nature, and it may work in technology as well.
Slashdot Mirror
I wonder whether encouraging people to switch to an incompatible java3 will just convince them to jump ship?
A few years back I made some java-based webpages for a science course I teach. I had been interested in the language, and this little (few 100 lines) application seemed just right for a test case. So, I took some cgibin code and started rewriting. The results were fine, in the end, and I thought that my time had been justified.
The next year I wanted to add something new to the code. Whoa. My old code no longer compiled, given java function renaming.
That was enough to turn me off Java. In several decades of programming (assembler, fortran, algol, PL/1, C, C++, ...) I've never had code written in one year fail in the next.
I've been told that I was just being caught in the "early adopters" disease, and that java now has now stopped making incompatible changes.
And then I read this /. thread. Oh my.
In the press release we read " new evidence confirming that 25 percent of the magnetic material in the meteorite was produced by ancient bacteria on Mars. ... This means that
one-quarter of the magnetite
crystals ... in Martian meteorite
ALH84001 require the intervention of biology to explain their
presence.
"
The words "confirm" and "require" are very strong, indeed.
However, in the abstract of the scientific report we read something quite different: " On Earth such ...
magnetites are known to
be produced by magnetotactic bacteria. We suggest that the observation ...
are [sic] both
consistent with, and in the absence of terrestrial inorganic analogs,
likely formed by biogenic processes."
So, the scientists suggest that something is consistent with a proposition, and the press-releasers convert that into confirmation of the proposition.
Sure, scientists' language often needs to be modified for public consumption, but here we have a case of changing the entire thrust of the story.
This sort of mistake would be unacceptable from a high-school science student, and that makes me wonder whether this exaggerating rewriting might have been deliberate. I remember a story of crying "wolf" ...
I'm thinking of people with disabilities.
Since NASA is so well-funded and since it attracts such talented engineers, let's hope for spinoffs of research into mimicking human function will improve the quality of life for disabled individuals.
Indeed, I haven't tried it lately [too busy earning X dollars a day :-) I guess] but I'll definitely try version 6.x, based on your suggestion.
Thanks for your comments.
Probably not. The timescale is wrong. Besides, the warming trend [difficult as it is to measure] seems to be consistent with CO2 emissions, linked through climate models in which we have [some, of not great] confidence.
- In my tests staroffice was much slower than office. Unless launch time is under 200 ms (human reaction time), users will select the faster product, all other things being equal.
- Users in an office environment will need full compatibility with office (for document sharing). How can that be accomplished, when Microsoft can change file formats at a whim, knowing that users will update like lemmings to get the new "features" provide along with the thwarting format changes?
- Folks won't choose because of cost because cost is not a big issue. In an office environment, it makes sense to pay a day's salary (on tools), to save 10 days of work. In a home environment, people use (cheap) bundled Microsoft products or they steal them.
PS: all of the above applied to Corel, too.'slow' means a time delay of order seconds, on a pentium IV running at 1.7 GHz.
I like the fact that your sigline is a C program to print itself ... it nicely illustrates your subjectline!
For example, it is common in my field (oceanography) that funding agencies require that data be shared openly, but only after the original investigator has had a certain amount of time to work with the data and to publish findings.
It makes sense to give the data originator "first dibs" on the data because
However, it's often the case that there is information in the data that the originator had not thought of, or that becomes clear only by integrating the data with the results of other investigations. That's why open sharing is crucial. Indeed, we would know very little about the state of the ocean, and of the climate system, without open sharing according to established "publish, then share" principles.
PS: throughout the above, please take "data" to mean either the results of measurement or the results of calculation.
Dan Kelley, Dalhousie University, Halifax, NS, Canada.
When it works, it's slick-looking but annoyingly slow even on fast (1.7GHz pentium) machine. The slowness seems mainly to involve email folders. I have many folders, into which I file quite a few of my incoming messages. For years I've used the 'pine' software, which is very fast; it displays the list of available folders in as long as it takes to fill up an xterm window with ascii text. By contrast, 'evolution' is sluggish. I think it may take several seconds to do what 'pine' does in a flash.
I had to say "I think" in the last sentence because it's been a while since I've used 'evolution'. That's because 'evolution' is broken on my box. I'm not entirely sure, but I think the problem occured when I upgraded from redhat 7.2 to redhat 7.3, with evolution-1.0.5-4. When I try to launch 'evolution' I get
which is a phrase I've searched for on the web, and indeed other folks have the same problem. I've not seen, in my searches, any remedy that works for me.By the way, that error message phrase is not locatable in the ximian "knowledge" database, so although it's a known problem. If I had found 'evolution' to have been a wonderful programme, and if I had time to invest in maintaining it across redhat upgrades that have proven stable for other software, I'd spend time navigating the ximian site, to see if there is a bug related to it, or I'd try installing an older redhat on one of my boxes to test if my theory about 'evolution' breaking upon upgrade. But not and not, so not and not.
Still, if a gui-loving user finds that it works at all, then (s)he might find it rather agreeable to use.
You have a weak need to inhale after every exhalation, but that need grows exceedingly pressing -- occupying your entire consciousness, instead of being something of which you're hardly aware -- if you just hold your breath for a minute or so. The priority "inhale" becomes higher than the priority "type the next word in this message", for example.
For cell-phones, it seems that either there will be too many antennae [wasting resources of subscribers who pay for them, indirectly] or occasionally too few [possibly thwartingg important communication].
A solution would be a button on the phone that indicates the priority of outgoing calls, or the priority to be assigned for incoming calls. Call me naive, but I think most folks would be happy to turn the priority down a notch, when they are just calling to chat about unimportant fluff.
I realize that these comments may be more germaine to other applications, since cell-phone communications don't really seem that limited [given the number of folks with those mobiles fixed to their faces], but the idea remains: adding priority to the mix works in nature, and it may work in technology as well.