It is well known that combining weak classifiers makes a good one. The prediction markets maybe if we stretch Wikipedia goes in that direction. I am not sure about evolution part though.
From "Alien: Resurrection" :
Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) upon discovering that Annalee Call (Winona Ryder) is an android, says, "I knew it! You were much too humane to be human".
Good points. I guess we will wait and see which one gets embedded into which. My guess is 2D will be embedded into 3D simply because it is a subset of the other and not vice versa. You can link from pages to locations but it would be more artificial than putting documents into places.
Internet forum evolved to its current form through technological limitations during its history. If anyone started designing a forum today or in the near future from scratch when 3D graphic cards are dirt cheap, then participants would express themselves and interact with each other graphically (people love expressing themselves, especially visually) and forums would look quite a bit like cyberworlds.
Besides, the idea of cyberworld is hardly old (70s or 80s? has not done homework, references?). If you find it unimaginative, this is proof alone that it has become part of our lives already in conceptual form!
And the great visionary Isaac Asimov has forseen this years ago. Check the novel "caves of steel", you will encounter similar ideas. Robustness and sensitivity are two of the fundamental concepts in control/systems engineering, which also explain this phonomenon although in a different context.
I strongly agree with Asimov regarding the direction of civilization. We loose robustness more and more to gain a little in efficiency. This is, I believe, a result of capitalism whose only goal is short term myopic optimization!
Civilization vs Guns, Germs and Steel (J. Diamond)
on
Ask Sid Meier
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
My question is this: When I have recently read the books Guns, Germs and Steel and Collapse by Jared Diamond, I was astonished by how closely the underlying concepts and ideas in the books match those in the Civilization series. (effect of environment, interaction between civilizations, making use of available resources, etc.)
Have you read the books or corresponded with Mr. Jared Diamond? Could you comment on the similarities/differences between the games and theories of J. Diamond? Honestly, I am really very curious if he has played or has been affected by the game?!!!
I am using Acrobat 7 beta almost everyday (as a beta tester). It works perfectly and opens all the ``problematic" pdf's generated by newer versions of Acrobat which xpdf, kghostview etc. fail to open.
Idealism is one thing (I prefer open source tools anyday over propriety solutions) having to boot windows in order to open an important pdf document you need to print is another.
Peer review is the basis of all of the scientific publications and journals today. It is accepted as a well functioning method and works pretty well though you can find counterexamples from time to time.
The reason for that is simple. If you are researching a new topic who are you going to ask about it other than other scientists working on similar topics? There are no all knowing Oracles in real life.
Wikipedia uses a very similar approach. The only difference is everybody becomes a reviewer. This actually makes sense because an encyclopedia covers every topic. It is not possible to group reviewers as easily as in scientific journals where subject of the journal is well defined and communities are relatively smaller.
Yet, now thinking that it might be a good idea to generate an free "expert" registration system and tag articles according to their subjects. Each expert community can then mod each other a la slashdot + value of contributions etc. Then, experts would have an additional say on the articles related to their subjects. Just an idea...
Remember the Foundation Trilogy by Asimov? ``Universes" similar to Star Wars have been there for decades before the movies. Actually, there are very few original ideas in Star Wars. An example: The galactic library in Episode II is a direct ripoff from Foundation Trilogy. Decline of Empire is similar...
Star Wars (original Trilogy) is fun, contains a lot of action and borrowing good ideas from other sources. Very good Hollywood movie making which we rarely see these days (e.g. Episode I, II are very mediocre). But nothing more...
As you can see, Hitler's not even close to first, and Saddam is way down at the bottom. Educate yourself on history. It's the only antidote to propaganda. "
I agree! There was no so called Armenian genocide. First the number is inflated, second the number of Turks killed during the period is on par with the Armenians. Genocide is a serious word. Unfortunately, Armenians are trying to use it as a propaganda for political gain (to fuel nationalism in a poor country and bring together a large abroad diaspora). When people use historical tragedies for small political gain, there is nothing noble about it, and I hate it.
We should all use history to learn something from it and both sides have a lot to learn. Yet such propaganda results in nothing but continueing hatred..
"...it started spreading Basic around just because it was there, not because it had any intrinsic merits whatsoever..."
While reading this I have realized that nothing in the real world is there because it has any intrinsic merits in the idealistic sense. Things just evolve over time and we humans and especially some intellectuals get surprised why our values did not match with the ones of the nature.
A funny analogy is socialism, which has noble idealistic goals in theory. In practice it was beaten by evolving capitalism which is theoretically inferior but obviously works ``better" in practice.
Being there and functioning ``efficiently" is a merit in itself. I am close to getting my PhD and from experience I can tell that many abstract so called merits mean nothing in the real world. Maybe they are not that important merits after all?
There is not a -visible, i.e. positively moderated- comment here on akregator which I find unbelievable. They were saying that Slashdot is biased against KDE and now I see it is true!
Akregator is a very well functioning RSS reader which works great (especially with its kontact-konqueror integration). It is what I have been waiting for in the last couple of months: a decent linux rss aggregator/reader.
To those bitching about K in its name and why they don't need rss newsreader: open your eyes and appreciate a good product for what it is!
If this is the interview process they are using, it is simply insulting to me. Yes, they may want a company made of geniuses. Fine. But I am not a robot (nor a genius BTW) and do not want to be treated that way. If I am applying to a job, I apply with certain credentials (a degree or some accomplishments). Making 14 interviews is disrespectful to my background.
In addition, really creative people and real geniuses hate such processes (not that I am very creative). So good luck to google! They will end up with a lot of puzzle solvers. Unfortunately, real life problems are not newspaper puzzles. Solving really interesting problems require a whole different set of qualities.
I grew up with TV so it is impossible for me to be impartial. Yet, I have two rather objective arguments:
1) PBS, history channel, documentaries, Charlie Rose etc. You click the links here, you press the buttons of the remote there...
2) We live in a society. In order to connect with people you share the world with, you need to know what they are interested/talking about although this means sometime witnessing dumb discussions about the boob of Janet Jackson or watching couple of minutes of that stupid reality show...
First, I am not against fantasy genre. Classifying art is a difficult challange which I find unnecessary anyway, unless there is a good reason. An author can write whatever he likes SF, fantasy, poems, and he does not even need to classify his own work.
The reason of my post was this: Once you give this years Hugo award to a fantasy book, then you do not give it to a SF book. There is a hidden opportunity cost involved. Hence, it may be necessary to take the unpleasant task of separating the two genres for the sake of the award. This is also due to the fact that SF should open minds by promoting science and scientific thinking. This is the defining characteristic of the genre (to me at least). It cannot be done if one talks about magicians. Not that anything is wrong with magicians.
I belive, it is possible to distinguish the two genres although both use limitless human imagination. Any novel which relates/justifies its content to/with science (or scientific method as we know it) or technology should be considered SF. If something is in between (authors use tons of plot devices as they please) then one can look at the majority of the content. Note that, A. Clarke said "Any sufficiently advanced TECHNOLOGY is indistinguishable from magic". Bottomline is they do it in all major awards it can be done here, too. There should be a separate award for fantasy.
I am happy that Bujold is primarily a science fiction writer. Congratulations to her for her success!
From FAQ of Hugo awards: "Aren't Hugos just for Science Fiction? Have you ever tried to define science fiction?..."It's all fantasy," he proclaimed. "Science fiction is fantasy you can convince yourself might happen....."
I like, for example, LoTR as much as anyone else and find it one of the best trilogies ever (as novels). But, what has magic, dragons, castles etc. to do with science? If science or scientific methodology is not part of the story then why should it be eligible for this award? What happened to the heritage of Asimov, Lem, Dick, Heinlein, Clarke, and others? Has popular themes of Star Wars and Star Trek reduced Sci-Fi to mere fantasy now?
As a scientist myself, I still believe that Sci-Fi is more than simple fantasy. It is -to me- exploration of possibilities for humanity's future (and past), scientific developments, and their effects. Believe me, in today's incredible speed of scientific progress we need Sci-Fi in this sense more than ever.
I have been a computer user since Commodore 64. Having an MS degree in ECE and being a linux user for the last 3-5 years, I consider myself an advanced user.
IMHO, Gnome HIG is bulls... if it says cancel/ok is a good idea. Simply because:
1) It is against the language conventions as said by other posts: in all online-offline questionnaires the options are: yes or no, with this order. Positive first! Daily usage follows the same pattern: Are we going to the movies today? Yes or no?
2) It is against all the established conventions on computers: >90% desktops being windows for as long as modern PC's exist and windows uses yes or no pattern! Others the same as far as I remember.
3) Most of the time I take actions in my computer knowingly not by mistake. I have chosen the save menu entry for a reason not to hit cancel. Seeing cancel first puts an additional and very annoying mental step between my goal and me, every time!
I said it before, I say it again. I have not spend hours and hours to install linux on my laptop to obey stupid guidelines written by some folks who claim to know everything. If I wanted to do that, my computer came preinstalled with windows!!!
I have very good news for you! The reader that you are looking for is called Acrobat Reader. From openoffice 1.1 you can export anything to pdf!
They even have a button for that. Problem is (mostly) solved, and congrats to openoffice developers.
Finnish and turkish belong to the same language family, so it is not a big surprise that the same word somehow exists in finnish albeit with a different meaning. Maybe the prehistoric "Orkut" was known for having a lot of fun;)
Sorry, but what I have read in the article has not
impressed me at all as a KDE user. It looks like
the two major desktop environments Gnome and
KDE have begun (or continue) to
diversify in terms of their approach. It seems to me
that Gnome is going for a clean and simple
experience. KDE, on the other hand, adds features
like crazy. Personally, I like KDE's approach as I
am capable of "personalizing" my desktop
environment. Actually, I don't think that offering
many choices kills usability as long as choices are
well organized (in a control center) and easily
accessible (by a mouse click).
Gnome's approach of being clean, simple, and usable, deserves kudos from one point of view. But
it is actually not consistent with the current situation linux is in. In order to install linux, you already have to go out of your way, and spend some effort.
Unfortunately, I don't think this will change in the
next 3-5 years. After all this effort to install linux
(limited hw-sw support, hdd partitioning, driver problems) I personally do not want a limited choice
on my desktop environment. Furthermore, if I wanted something really clean, there are already some good minimalistic window managers/desktop
environements.
IMHO, this direction will not bring much to Gnome. I am afraid some big companies are shaping the development according to their taste (mad hatter?).
It makes sense from the business point of view for
sure. But how will it affect the real user base (who are linux geeks after all who like choice) in the long term, I don't know!
I hope I am wrong and congratulations to all Gnome
developers. Critisizing is easy, actually doing/contributing is hard!
ta_relax
I would not be surprised a bit if after 5 or 10 years we will learn that MS was behind all this mess.
1. Hire the greedy immoral CEO of a firm near bankruptcy for outrageous attacks on linux and open source.
2. Start an accountability, IP property, etc. bull.... campaign to promote your own products.
3. Deny any relationship with attacks on your competitor.
4. Profit!!!
ta_relax
Slashdot Mirror
It is well known that combining weak classifiers makes a good one. The prediction markets maybe if we stretch Wikipedia goes in that direction. I am not sure about evolution part though.
Just my 2 cents.
From "Alien: Resurrection" : Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) upon discovering that Annalee Call (Winona Ryder) is an android, says, "I knew it! You were much too humane to be human".
Good points. I guess we will wait and see which one gets embedded into which. My guess is 2D will be embedded into 3D simply because it is a subset of the other and not vice versa. You can link from pages to locations but it would be more artificial than putting documents into places.
Internet forum evolved to its current form through technological limitations during its history. If anyone started designing a forum today or in the near future from scratch when 3D graphic cards are dirt cheap, then participants would express themselves and interact with each other graphically (people love expressing themselves, especially visually) and forums would look quite a bit like cyberworlds. Besides, the idea of cyberworld is hardly old (70s or 80s? has not done homework, references?). If you find it unimaginative, this is proof alone that it has become part of our lives already in conceptual form!
And the great visionary Isaac Asimov has forseen this years ago. Check the novel "caves of steel", you will encounter similar ideas. Robustness and sensitivity are two of the fundamental concepts in control/systems engineering, which also explain this phonomenon although in a different context.
I strongly agree with Asimov regarding the direction of civilization. We loose robustness more and more to gain a little in efficiency. This is, I believe, a result of capitalism whose only goal is short term myopic optimization!
My question is this:
When I have recently read the books Guns, Germs and Steel and Collapse by Jared Diamond, I was astonished by how closely the underlying concepts and ideas in the books match those in the Civilization series. (effect of environment, interaction between civilizations, making use of available resources, etc.)
Have you read the books or corresponded with Mr. Jared Diamond? Could you comment on the similarities/differences between the games and theories of J. Diamond? Honestly, I am really very curious if he has played or has been affected by the game?!!!
I am using Acrobat 7 beta almost everyday (as a beta tester). It works perfectly and opens all the ``problematic" pdf's generated by newer versions of Acrobat which xpdf, kghostview etc. fail to open.
Idealism is one thing (I prefer open source tools anyday over propriety solutions) having to boot windows in order to open an important pdf document you need to print is another.
I hope they release version 7 for linux soon.
Peer review is the basis of all of the scientific publications and journals today. It is accepted as a well functioning method and works pretty well though you can find counterexamples from time to time.
The reason for that is simple. If you are researching a new topic who are you going to ask about it other than other scientists working on similar topics? There are no all knowing Oracles in real life.
Wikipedia uses a very similar approach. The only difference is everybody becomes a reviewer. This actually makes sense because an encyclopedia covers every topic. It is not possible to group reviewers as easily as in scientific journals where subject of the journal is well defined and communities are relatively smaller.
Yet, now thinking that it might be a good idea to generate an free "expert" registration system and tag articles according to their subjects. Each expert community can then mod each other a la slashdot + value of contributions etc. Then, experts would have an additional say on the articles related to their subjects. Just an idea...
Remember the Foundation Trilogy by Asimov? ``Universes" similar to Star Wars have been there for decades before the movies. Actually, there are very few original ideas in Star Wars.
An example: The galactic library in Episode II is a direct ripoff from Foundation Trilogy. Decline of Empire is similar...
Star Wars (original Trilogy) is fun, contains a lot of action and borrowing good ideas from other sources. Very good Hollywood movie making which we rarely see these days (e.g. Episode I, II are very mediocre). But nothing more...
" Ottoman Empire(Armenian Genocide)=2x10^6
As you can see, Hitler's not even close to first, and Saddam is way down at the bottom. Educate yourself on history. It's the only antidote to propaganda. "
I agree! There was no so called Armenian genocide. First the number is inflated, second the number of Turks killed during the period is on par with the Armenians. Genocide is a serious word. Unfortunately, Armenians are trying to use it as a propaganda for political gain (to fuel nationalism in a poor country and bring together a large abroad diaspora). When people use historical tragedies for small political gain, there is nothing noble about it, and I hate it.
We should all use history to learn something from it and both sides have a lot to learn. Yet such propaganda results in nothing but continueing hatred..
" ...it started spreading Basic around just because it was there, not because it had any intrinsic merits whatsoever. .."
While reading this I have realized that nothing in the real world is there because it has any intrinsic merits in the idealistic sense.
Things just evolve over time and we humans and especially some intellectuals get surprised why our values did not match with the ones of the nature.
A funny analogy is socialism, which has noble idealistic goals in theory. In practice it was beaten by evolving capitalism which is theoretically inferior but obviously works ``better" in practice.
Being there and functioning ``efficiently" is a merit in itself. I am close to getting my PhD and from experience I can tell that many abstract so called merits mean nothing in the real world. Maybe they are not that important merits after all?
There is not a -visible, i.e. positively moderated- comment here on akregator which I find unbelievable. They were saying that Slashdot is biased against KDE and now I see it is true!
Akregator is a very well functioning RSS reader which works great (especially with its kontact-konqueror integration). It is what I have been waiting for in the last couple of months: a decent linux rss aggregator/reader.
To those bitching about K in its name and why they don't need rss newsreader: open your eyes and appreciate a good product for what it is!
If this is the interview process they are using, it is simply insulting to me. Yes, they may want a company made of geniuses. Fine. But I am not a robot (nor a genius BTW) and do not want to be treated that way. If I am applying to a job, I apply with certain credentials (a degree or some accomplishments). Making 14 interviews is disrespectful to my background.
In addition, really creative people and real geniuses hate such processes (not that I am very creative). So good luck to google! They will end up with a lot of puzzle solvers. Unfortunately, real life problems are not newspaper puzzles. Solving really interesting problems require a whole different set of qualities.
I grew up with TV so it is impossible for me to be impartial. Yet, I have two rather objective arguments:
1) PBS, history channel, documentaries, Charlie Rose etc. You click the links here, you press the buttons of the remote there...
2) We live in a society. In order to connect with people you share the world with, you need to know
what they are interested/talking about although this means sometime witnessing dumb discussions about the boob of Janet Jackson or watching couple of minutes of that stupid reality show...
First, I am not against fantasy genre. Classifying art is a difficult challange which I find unnecessary anyway, unless there is a good reason. An author can write whatever he likes SF, fantasy, poems, and he does not even need to classify his own work.
The reason of my post was this: Once you give this years Hugo award to a fantasy book, then you do not give it to a SF book. There is a hidden opportunity cost involved. Hence, it may be necessary to take the unpleasant task of separating the two genres for the sake of the award. This is also due to the fact that SF should open minds by promoting science and scientific thinking. This is the defining characteristic of the genre (to me at least). It cannot be done if one talks about magicians. Not that anything is wrong with magicians.
I belive, it is possible to distinguish the two genres although both use limitless human imagination.
Any novel which relates/justifies its content to/with science (or scientific method as we know it) or technology should be considered SF. If something is in between (authors use tons of plot devices as they please) then one can look at the majority of the content. Note that,
A. Clarke said "Any sufficiently advanced TECHNOLOGY is indistinguishable from magic".
Bottomline is they do it in all major awards it can be done here, too. There should be a separate award for fantasy.
I am happy that Bujold is primarily a science fiction writer. Congratulations to her for her success!
From FAQ of Hugo awards: ..."It's all fantasy," he proclaimed. "Science fiction is fantasy you can convince yourself might happen. ...."
"Aren't Hugos just for Science Fiction?
Have you ever tried to define science fiction?
I like, for example, LoTR as much as anyone else and find it one of the best trilogies ever (as novels). But, what has magic, dragons, castles etc. to do with science? If science or scientific methodology is not part of the story then why should it be eligible for this award? What happened to the heritage of Asimov, Lem, Dick, Heinlein, Clarke, and others?
Has popular themes of Star Wars and Star Trek reduced Sci-Fi to mere fantasy now?
As a scientist myself, I still believe that Sci-Fi is more than simple fantasy. It is -to me- exploration of possibilities for humanity's future (and past), scientific developments, and their effects. Believe me, in today's incredible speed of scientific progress we need Sci-Fi in this sense more than ever.
I am sure the winner is a wonderful novel but...
What Turkish genocide are you talking about? IMHO, people should learn a little bit history before playing the blame game!
I have been a computer user since Commodore 64. Having an MS degree in ECE and being a linux user for the last 3-5 years, I consider myself an advanced user.
IMHO, Gnome HIG is bulls... if it says cancel/ok is a good idea. Simply because:
1) It is against the language conventions as said by other posts: in all online-offline questionnaires the options are: yes or no, with this order. Positive first! Daily usage follows the same pattern: Are we going to the movies today? Yes or no?
2) It is against all the established conventions on computers: >90% desktops being windows for as long as modern PC's exist and windows uses yes or no pattern! Others the same as far as I remember.
3) Most of the time I take actions in my computer knowingly not by mistake. I have chosen the save menu entry for a reason not to hit cancel. Seeing cancel first puts an additional and very annoying mental step between my goal and me, every time!
I said it before, I say it again. I have not spend hours and hours to install linux on my laptop to obey stupid guidelines written by some folks who claim to know everything. If I wanted to do that, my computer came preinstalled with windows!!!
I have very good news for you! The reader that you are looking for is called Acrobat Reader. From openoffice 1.1 you can export anything to pdf! They even have a button for that. Problem is (mostly) solved, and congrats to openoffice developers.
Finnish and turkish belong to the same language family, so it is not a big surprise that the same word somehow exists in finnish albeit with a different meaning. Maybe the prehistoric "Orkut" was known for having a lot of fun ;)
Sorry, but what I have read in the article has not impressed me at all as a KDE user. It looks like the two major desktop environments Gnome and KDE have begun (or continue) to diversify in terms of their approach. It seems to me that Gnome is going for a clean and simple experience. KDE, on the other hand, adds features like crazy. Personally, I like KDE's approach as I am capable of "personalizing" my desktop environment. Actually, I don't think that offering many choices kills usability as long as choices are well organized (in a control center) and easily accessible (by a mouse click).
Gnome's approach of being clean, simple, and usable, deserves kudos from one point of view. But it is actually not consistent with the current situation linux is in. In order to install linux, you already have to go out of your way, and spend some effort. Unfortunately, I don't think this will change in the next 3-5 years. After all this effort to install linux (limited hw-sw support, hdd partitioning, driver problems) I personally do not want a limited choice on my desktop environment. Furthermore, if I wanted something really clean, there are already some good minimalistic window managers/desktop environements.
IMHO, this direction will not bring much to Gnome. I am afraid some big companies are shaping the development according to their taste (mad hatter?). It makes sense from the business point of view for sure. But how will it affect the real user base (who are linux geeks after all who like choice) in the long term, I don't know!
I hope I am wrong and congratulations to all Gnome developers. Critisizing is easy, actually doing/contributing is hard!
ta_relax
I would not be surprised a bit if after 5 or 10 years we will learn that MS was behind all this mess.
1. Hire the greedy immoral CEO of a firm near bankruptcy for outrageous attacks on linux and open source.
2. Start an accountability, IP property, etc. bull.... campaign to promote your own products.
3. Deny any relationship with attacks on your competitor.
4. Profit!!!
ta_relax