As a european, I can say this knowing exactly why this is a bad thing. Before 1940, we had no ID cards. After 1945, we tore up the ID cards across the continent. That should really tell you something. Invoke Godwin if you must, but Godwin never contemplated that at one point the comparison was actually warrented.
And if you think it's just a reaction towards oppressors...we still have laws based on the Napoleonic code, we all have surnames and streetnames...so if something is good and makes sense, it gets used. If something is bad, we scrap it.
"without the knowledge of the underlying software used to create them (e.g. CAD drawings where he could make annotations, etc)"
All the advice in this thread will probably be all well and good. But grow some balls and tell your boss that what I quoted above is just not gonna happen. He needs to know the tech his company is using, because even face to face he can't function without that knowledge. Building him a nice teleconferencing unit isn't gonna solve that lack of knowledge. Even worse, telepresence is just gonna make matters worse. If he can't use a CAD program, what the fuck is he doing being your boss?
Simply put, a simple solution doesn't exist: if your boss doesn't know what his comapny is doing (and annotating CAD drawings is beneath minimum knowledge...firstyear trade school people can do that!) go behind his back, talk to your boss's boss and get your direct boss fired for incompetence.
It's all well and good being the IT got-to-guy...but no amount of money is going to mkae telkeconferencing an easy discipline to use...and it's going to be nigh on impossible to use even halfway effectively if your boss doesn't know how to use the software his subordinates sue daily.
This kind of thing has been going on for a very long time. ATI does it too. What happens isn't that the card isn't tested, it's that it/is/.
After the card is made, they run a series of tests on it. If all parts work perfectly, you have the "6855,5 UltraDuper"; if all parts work, but instability occurs at higher clockspeeds, they call it a "6849 Ultra"; if certain parts (ie a few pixel/vertex shader units) don't work, they lock these off and call the card a plain "6800"; if more than a certain number don't work, they just trash the card.
Thing is, it's nothing new; ATI has been doing it (and softmods [software based] and hardware based modshve been available) since at least the 8xxx series. So whilst this is news, this isn't as hot as the blurb or/. would have you believe...it was actually innevitable. Shit, soon/. will have a press release out on how to mod your x800/6800 into a fireGL/quadro:) Whooppie...what news...
BTW, the same kind of thing goes on with cpu's, where it's called 'binning'.
"who were dying to get laid off from Deutsche Bank because of the generous termination packages and the abundance of positions elsewhere."
That must have been at least 5 years ago...unless you haven't been up on your news, Germany has had mayor unemployment problems for the past couple of years.
"It isn't unethical if those people are just free riders. "
Yeah...but how likely is it that all 10.000 are dead wood? Either the personell department needs to be fired en-masse, or (more likely) 10.000 totally redundant employees is statistically impossible. Something fishy is going on here, and I really think it's upper management's golden handshake/stock options/IBM's stock price which is being looked after, rather than the companies health.
The mayor problem is that this is something which is looked upon in a very unsymmetrical way: companies demand and expect employee loyalty...but they conveniently forget that loyalty is a two-way street; a company has to display loyalty towards it's employees if they can reasonably expect an employees loyalty in return.
Furthermore, how much do you want to bet that IMB will be on a hiring streak in a couple of months time when they realise that they have a myor employee shortage? That pattern shows up everywhere when a large company lays off so many people in one go (look at the oil companies in the nineties, the airline companies etc etc etc).
Oh, f*ck. I was hoping it wouldn't come to this:) See, I have read the entire PATRIOT ACT...in 2001, when it got passed into law. I wanted to know what the stink was about.
So now, just to prove my point, I have to re-read the thing again....
Check section 814(e). '[...]economic damages[...]'. This seemingly simple statement included in (of all things) the cyberterrorism section basically means that civil action can be taken against me, marking me as a terrorist, if my non-US company has such a good product that I force the US company to go out of business or to not make as much money as they would if my product didn't exist; they can make the case that I am doing them economic damage.
Oh, man, I hate you for making me go over that POS document with a hangover...now my head really hurts:(
I'm sorry, but I have to correct you: if the unit is merely oscilating, your unit is going up and down in a linear direction. I think the applicance you are cogitating on is of the rotary designation: that way you shall have a much more even application of shit to the surrounding environment (as opposed to just up and down).
Actually, I can think of one reason why P2P should be taught in ANY study, ANYWHERE: it's the perfect example of how collaboration works and is a good thing(tm)...and collaboration is essential in ANY field of study/work/life.
Just a few studies teach propper collaboration, and even then only in a sideways kinda way. And that whilst collaboration is the one thing you can be sure you have to do at some point in life (unless you're a hermit...but even geeks need to hollar to their parents from the basement at certain points in life:)).
Dude, not only have you misinterpreted the PATRIOT ACT, but you've also missed the newsreports from FISA that stated that they have had federal investigators use the newly created loophole so that FISA enquiries have gone up a whopping 118%...and due to the loophole the FISA can't say 'no' anymore.
And as for the time limit? Doesn't exist anymore. I really recommend that you re-read the PATRIOT ACT.
Shit, the PATRIOT ACT makes me a terrorist if I start a business anywhere outside of the US and outperform a US business: go search the PATIOT ACT for terms like 'economic detriment' and 'foreign entity'. Does it sound ridiculous? Yes...but that's what the PATRIOT ACT states, so even if it was only meant for terrorists, a lawyer can (and thus will) read it like that, given the propper circumstances.
So re-read your PATRIOT ACT, keeping lawyers, loopholes and different interpretations in mind. Read it like it was meant to be evil, and you'll shudder...and the really bad thing is? That the 'evil reading' is correct, because that's what the fucking ACT says, even if you wanted it to mean/do something else.
Now that's what you get with a bunch of religious fundamentalists in power: a suppression and degradation in science. I mean, it's bad enough that Bush is stacking the commissions with untrustworthy and interest-conflicted people, and it's even worse that Bush and cohorts are actively changing scientific reports to suit their agenda (and when 20 Nobel laureates and countless other scientists sign a petition to that effect, you can take that as fact. Makes you wonder what happened to the respect which scientists where afforded in the '50's that that petition is so underreported.)...but now you remove a portion of the acedemic debate straight out!
These people are important to the scientific debate as a whole: science is basically peer-review by smart people, and young scientists are a rare (way too rare!) breed which cast a critical eye on what has gone before...which is the very essence of science! And now Bush is ensuring that there are even less of them, for fear of...what, actually? Fear of spreading evil technology?
Let me tell you something: technology is not inherently evil, it just/is/. And security through obscurity JUST DOESN'T WORK! The IT-industry knows that. What people want to know, they find out, a truism even more/certain/ in science than anywhere else. All Bush is doing is slowing down the scientific process (which with global warming is kinda essential that it solve certain problems FAST) and keeping people dumb.
Hmmm...couple that with the 'no child left behind act', and you'd almost wonder if there isn't actually a concerted effort to do just that?
Anyway, as Galileo said: '...and still the earth turns around the sun', meaning that you can deny certain knowledge, but in the end the knowledge will come out.
Heh...the first thing I thought when I read the blurb was 'come back when you've actually proven something'.
Whilst what they're doing is very cool, I think the subject is only interesting to the mainstream (as opposed to the trade journals, where this/is/ very interesting) if and when they actually could use this method to prove/disprove the existence of strings. Or even just observe/indications/ of strings.
Yeah, lets get an organisation whose members aren't elected in any way to write legislation! Cool...and for the next trick, lets hjave the oil companies write environmental legislation! Oh...nevermind...
"However the editorial board work is still essential"
Yeah, I've been thinking about that. I'd say the solution is to get the universities to do that job, in a kind of peer-2-peer style. Say a researcher at uni UofX creates a paper on say quantum transportation: then just send it round the Internet2 to all the other faculties of quantum transportation around the world and have at least 25% of all those people peer-review it.
That way, you have instant distribution to all places that need it (maybe force 'em to have a webserver open to the public with all the publications) and peer review by the people who can do it. Hell, you could send the paper to different faculties and get a prof of statistics to have a look at the statistical methods used, and make that kind of cross-peer-review mandatory nfor a stamp of credibility (and make participation in that peer-review process a job requirement for being attached to a university.)
I've seen this repeatedly in the comments to this article...and it's bullshit. A commodity is something which can be produced on demand, for mass market even. Knowledge doesn't work that way: you can't produce knwoledge on demand, and new knowledge isn't just application of technology (as new commodities are). Just as knowledge can't be sold: it can be distributed for a price, but in that sense it works like mp3's: you copy it, you don't move a physical item. As soon as knowledge is tangible and it is able to produce it on demand, it will be a commodity....but it's not at the moment.
But the main problem with that is in regards to basic research. The famous joke, 'basic reserch is what we call it when we have no idea what we're doing', is kinda true. You would call it parasitic, because the research doesn't pay off directly (and a lot of/real/ researchers wouldn't be able to give you practical applications even if they wanted to), but you never know which (combination of) reserach is going to give you the final bits which allow you to create selfsustaining fusion.
No: you were dreaming. It has never been like that. It's one of the greatest folies of mankind to date, too: research and human knowledge would benefit incredibly from totally open research. But a lot of research is done by commercial companies and is kept under lock and key, or conducted by governments and is classified, or is kept in obscurity by the fact that it's only published in highly specific trade magazines.
Fact is, just researching what has been done before is a mayor part of a masters programme, and has to be directed by the professor guiding you, 'cause he knows (you hope) what's been done before and where you're likely to find it.
Sure, uni's have subscriptions to the trade mags, but it's still a hell of an inefficient way of distributing knowledge. My prediction is that the trade mags (even physical review letters and the like) will have to perish and be reborn on the internet if research is to truly grow and benefit mankind....and I give it twenty years or so.
You know, I'd be very, very surprised, if not stunned, if the brain didn't rely on quantum effects.
I'd actually go so far as to say that my entire worldview, as pertaining to biology and it's application of physics/chemistry, would crumble.
All 'inventions' are based off physical principles. In many instances these are taken from the existing biological world, and if they are not, it is soon found out that nature has something similar already. And it's getting so that more and more inventions which are at the forefront of their field take direct notes from nature (extra-hard and light metal layers based on clamshells, spider silk, gecko's feet, use of nano-particles). And let's face it: nature has been playing around a lot longer than us with the laws of physics. By it's very nature of/being there/, the effects of quantum mechanics have to be used (if not worked around) by nature in it's construction of living matter.
So if the brain uses 'quantum mechanical rules' (like it uses osmosis and other physical tricks), it would mean that the brain is a quantum computer.
How much energy do you think it takes to produce one of these ROM chips? Take into account shipping, handling, packaging...you know. Think of the production methods used to create these kinds of chiups: they're very messy, And all you can think of is "but it's miniature landfill"?
Grandparent poster's point is very valid: why consume those resources when you can just use some electrons/photons to transport the same data? Sure, this memorychip has it's place, but to say it's environmen-friendly because it's small is ignoring the poster's point that "disposable" is not very efficient.
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As a european, I can say this knowing exactly why this is a bad thing. Before 1940, we had no ID cards. After 1945, we tore up the ID cards across the continent. That should really tell you something.
Invoke Godwin if you must, but Godwin never contemplated that at one point the comparison was actually warrented.
And if you think it's just a reaction towards oppressors...we still have laws based on the Napoleonic code, we all have surnames and streetnames...so if something is good and makes sense, it gets used. If something is bad, we scrap it.
"without the knowledge of the underlying software used to create them (e.g. CAD drawings where he could make annotations, etc)"
All the advice in this thread will probably be all well and good. But grow some balls and tell your boss that what I quoted above is just not gonna happen. He needs to know the tech his company is using, because even face to face he can't function without that knowledge. Building him a nice teleconferencing unit isn't gonna solve that lack of knowledge. Even worse, telepresence is just gonna make matters worse. If he can't use a CAD program, what the fuck is he doing being your boss?
Simply put, a simple solution doesn't exist: if your boss doesn't know what his comapny is doing (and annotating CAD drawings is beneath minimum knowledge...firstyear trade school people can do that!) go behind his back, talk to your boss's boss and get your direct boss fired for incompetence.
It's all well and good being the IT got-to-guy...but no amount of money is going to mkae telkeconferencing an easy discipline to use...and it's going to be nigh on impossible to use even halfway effectively if your boss doesn't know how to use the software his subordinates sue daily.
Come on, It's obvious: he's the secret lovechild of a shell-less turtle and a frog! Anyone can see that :)
This kind of thing has been going on for a very long time. ATI does it too. What happens isn't that the card isn't tested, it's that it /is/.
/. would have you believe...it was actually innevitable. Shit, soon /. will have a press release out on how to mod your x800/6800 into a fireGL/quadro :) Whooppie...what news...
After the card is made, they run a series of tests on it. If all parts work perfectly, you have the "6855,5 UltraDuper"; if all parts work, but instability occurs at higher clockspeeds, they call it a "6849 Ultra"; if certain parts (ie a few pixel/vertex shader units) don't work, they lock these off and call the card a plain "6800"; if more than a certain number don't work, they just trash the card.
Thing is, it's nothing new; ATI has been doing it (and softmods [software based] and hardware based modshve been available) since at least the 8xxx series. So whilst this is news, this isn't as hot as the blurb or
BTW, the same kind of thing goes on with cpu's, where it's called 'binning'.
"who were dying to get laid off from Deutsche Bank because of the generous termination packages and the abundance of positions elsewhere."
That must have been at least 5 years ago...unless you haven't been up on your news, Germany has had mayor unemployment problems for the past couple of years.
"It isn't unethical if those people are just free riders. "
Yeah...but how likely is it that all 10.000 are dead wood? Either the personell department needs to be fired en-masse, or (more likely) 10.000 totally redundant employees is statistically impossible. Something fishy is going on here, and I really think it's upper management's golden handshake/stock options/IBM's stock price which is being looked after, rather than the companies health.
The mayor problem is that this is something which is looked upon in a very unsymmetrical way: companies demand and expect employee loyalty...but they conveniently forget that loyalty is a two-way street; a company has to display loyalty towards it's employees if they can reasonably expect an employees loyalty in return.
Furthermore, how much do you want to bet that IMB will be on a hiring streak in a couple of months time when they realise that they have a myor employee shortage? That pattern shows up everywhere when a large company lays off so many people in one go (look at the oil companies in the nineties, the airline companies etc etc etc).
Oh, f*ck. I was hoping it wouldn't come to this :) See, I have read the entire PATRIOT ACT...in 2001, when it got passed into law. I wanted to know what the stink was about.
:(
So now, just to prove my point, I have to re-read the thing again....
Check section 814(e). '[...]economic damages[...]'.
This seemingly simple statement included in (of all things) the cyberterrorism section basically means that civil action can be taken against me, marking me as a terrorist, if my non-US company has such a good product that I force the US company to go out of business or to not make as much money as they would if my product didn't exist; they can make the case that I am doing them economic damage.
Oh, man, I hate you for making me go over that POS document with a hangover...now my head really hurts
Except of course if you teach IT or physics...in which case you'd hardly get the opportunity :)
I'm sorry, but I have to correct you: if the unit is merely oscilating, your unit is going up and down in a linear direction. I think the applicance you are cogitating on is of the rotary designation: that way you shall have a much more even application of shit to the surrounding environment (as opposed to just up and down).
/is/ /., after all :)
Sorry, this
Actually, I can think of one reason why P2P should be taught in ANY study, ANYWHERE: it's the perfect example of how collaboration works and is a good thing(tm)...and collaboration is essential in ANY field of study/work/life.
:)).
Just a few studies teach propper collaboration, and even then only in a sideways kinda way. And that whilst collaboration is the one thing you can be sure you have to do at some point in life (unless you're a hermit...but even geeks need to hollar to their parents from the basement at certain points in life
"but disagreeing with corporate practices doesn't justify theft "
Ever heard of civic disobedience? It's what you do when the unjust has become law...
Uhmmm...I assume 'conflict of interest' doesn't translate too well into spanish?
" the patriot act has a number of points or provisions which are to expire soon "
Yup...but the scary part is how many clauses don't have sunset clauses. Read the PATRIOT ACT and see how many you can discover!(!!)
Dude, not only have you misinterpreted the PATRIOT ACT, but you've also missed the newsreports from FISA that stated that they have had federal investigators use the newly created loophole so that FISA enquiries have gone up a whopping 118%...and due to the loophole the FISA can't say 'no' anymore.
And as for the time limit? Doesn't exist anymore. I really recommend that you re-read the PATRIOT ACT.
Shit, the PATRIOT ACT makes me a terrorist if I start a business anywhere outside of the US and outperform a US business: go search the PATIOT ACT for terms like 'economic detriment' and 'foreign entity'. Does it sound ridiculous? Yes...but that's what the PATRIOT ACT states, so even if it was only meant for terrorists, a lawyer can (and thus will) read it like that, given the propper circumstances.
So re-read your PATRIOT ACT, keeping lawyers, loopholes and different interpretations in mind. Read it like it was meant to be evil, and you'll shudder...and the really bad thing is? That the 'evil reading' is correct, because that's what the fucking ACT says, even if you wanted it to mean/do something else.
Now that's what you get with a bunch of religious fundamentalists in power: a suppression and degradation in science.
...what, actually? Fear of spreading evil technology?
/is/. And security through obscurity JUST DOESN'T WORK! The IT-industry knows that. What people want to know, they find out, a truism even more /certain/ in science than anywhere else. All Bush is doing is slowing down the scientific process (which with global warming is kinda essential that it solve certain problems FAST) and keeping people dumb.
I mean, it's bad enough that Bush is stacking the commissions with untrustworthy and interest-conflicted people, and it's even worse that Bush and cohorts are actively changing scientific reports to suit their agenda (and when 20 Nobel laureates and countless other scientists sign a petition to that effect, you can take that as fact. Makes you wonder what happened to the respect which scientists where afforded in the '50's that that petition is so underreported.)...but now you remove a portion of the acedemic debate straight out!
These people are important to the scientific debate as a whole: science is basically peer-review by smart people, and young scientists are a rare (way too rare!) breed which cast a critical eye on what has gone before...which is the very essence of science! And now Bush is ensuring that there are even less of them, for fear of
Let me tell you something: technology is not inherently evil, it just
Hmmm...couple that with the 'no child left behind act', and you'd almost wonder if there isn't actually a concerted effort to do just that?
Anyway, as Galileo said: '...and still the earth turns around the sun', meaning that you can deny certain knowledge, but in the end the knowledge will come out.
Heh...the first thing I thought when I read the blurb was 'come back when you've actually proven something'.
/is/ very interesting) if and when they actually could use this method to prove/disprove the existence of strings. Or even just observe /indications/ of strings.
Whilst what they're doing is very cool, I think the subject is only interesting to the mainstream (as opposed to the trade journals, where this
Yeah, lets get an organisation whose members aren't elected in any way to write legislation! Cool...and for the next trick, lets hjave the oil companies write environmental legislation! Oh...nevermind...
"However the editorial board work is still essential"
Yeah, I've been thinking about that. I'd say the solution is to get the universities to do that job, in a kind of peer-2-peer style. Say a researcher at uni UofX creates a paper on say quantum transportation: then just send it round the Internet2 to all the other faculties of quantum transportation around the world and have at least 25% of all those people peer-review it.
That way, you have instant distribution to all places that need it (maybe force 'em to have a webserver open to the public with all the publications) and peer review by the people who can do it. Hell, you could send the paper to different faculties and get a prof of statistics to have a look at the statistical methods used, and make that kind of cross-peer-review mandatory nfor a stamp of credibility (and make participation in that peer-review process a job requirement for being attached to a university.)
" knowledge is a commodity,"
I've seen this repeatedly in the comments to this article...and it's bullshit. A commodity is something which can be produced on demand, for mass market even. Knowledge doesn't work that way: you can't produce knwoledge on demand, and new knowledge isn't just application of technology (as new commodities are).
Just as knowledge can't be sold: it can be distributed for a price, but in that sense it works like mp3's: you copy it, you don't move a physical item.
As soon as knowledge is tangible and it is able to produce it on demand, it will be a commodity....but it's not at the moment.
But the main problem with that is in regards to basic research. The famous joke, 'basic reserch is what we call it when we have no idea what we're doing', is kinda true. You would call it parasitic, because the research doesn't pay off directly (and a lot of /real/ researchers wouldn't be able to give you practical applications even if they wanted to), but you never know which (combination of) reserach is going to give you the final bits which allow you to create selfsustaining fusion.
"Perhaps I was thinking of the good ol' days."
No: you were dreaming. It has never been like that. It's one of the greatest folies of mankind to date, too: research and human knowledge would benefit incredibly from totally open research. But a lot of research is done by commercial companies and is kept under lock and key, or conducted by governments and is classified, or is kept in obscurity by the fact that it's only published in highly specific trade magazines.
Fact is, just researching what has been done before is a mayor part of a masters programme, and has to be directed by the professor guiding you, 'cause he knows (you hope) what's been done before and where you're likely to find it.
Sure, uni's have subscriptions to the trade mags, but it's still a hell of an inefficient way of distributing knowledge. My prediction is that the trade mags (even physical review letters and the like) will have to perish and be reborn on the internet if research is to truly grow and benefit mankind....and I give it twenty years or so.
Have a look at arxiv and tell me that peer review has to be conducted under the auspices of a paper magazine.
You know, I'd be very, very surprised, if not stunned, if the brain didn't rely on quantum effects.
/being there/, the effects of quantum mechanics have to be used (if not worked around) by nature in it's construction of living matter.
I'd actually go so far as to say that my entire worldview, as pertaining to biology and it's application of physics/chemistry, would crumble.
All 'inventions' are based off physical principles. In many instances these are taken from the existing biological world, and if they are not, it is soon found out that nature has something similar already. And it's getting so that more and more inventions which are at the forefront of their field take direct notes from nature (extra-hard and light metal layers based on clamshells, spider silk, gecko's feet, use of nano-particles).
And let's face it: nature has been playing around a lot longer than us with the laws of physics. By it's very nature of
So if the brain uses 'quantum mechanical rules' (like it uses osmosis and other physical tricks), it would mean that the brain is a quantum computer.
Excuse me, mister I-didn't-really-think-this-one-through :P
How much energy do you think it takes to produce one of these ROM chips? Take into account shipping, handling, packaging...you know. Think of the production methods used to create these kinds of chiups: they're very messy, And all you can think of is "but it's miniature landfill"?
Grandparent poster's point is very valid: why consume those resources when you can just use some electrons/photons to transport the same data? Sure, this memorychip has it's place, but to say it's environmen-friendly because it's small is ignoring the poster's point that "disposable" is not very efficient.