Also, Larry has a countless team of engineers and scientists working for him, so a better analogy would be "as a computer programmer with a team of 100 doctors supporting me, I like to stand over other doctors as they...."
"...but chipmakers have hit a problem in that current lithographic methods are not adequate for designs as small as 22nm owing to fundamental physical limitations. IBM claims to have solved this problem."
This is virtually the same statement made every time a smaller fabrication process is announced. It conveys no information. Obviously some physical limitation was preventing them from making smaller circuits, and then they overcame them to make them even smaller.
Does anyone actually believe this to be anything other than poor science or even worse election year propaganda masking as science?
There may be some objective simple definition of "spin" that you could use to create a automated measuring system, but is this really spin?
Human language is virtually infinitely complex, and there are layers of meaning both conscious and unconscious expressed by body language, tone, cadence, content, etc. Then there's the intention of the speaker, and the context of the speech. But no, we get a elementary school level simple bar chart that clearly shows that obama is a complete spinster, and McCain is a "straight talker". Excuse me, but what a load of horse shit! Disclaimer: I'm not voting for Obama or McCain.
Hmm, Intel already manufactures chips here, and I'm sure they are complying with Chinese and not American environmental laws. This doesn't really change anything in regards to environment.
A while back the Chinese government was making noises about standardizing on Linux, but then MS stepped in and cut a deal, and now EVERYTHING here is Windows.
Perhaps this is another ploy by the government to cut a deal with Intel?
Why are alternative ideas labeled conspiracy theory only when in relation to global warming and 9/11?
Fuck off and quit being such a tool.
I'm not validating this guy's theory, and probably has no basis in fact, but I haven't read scientific papers, and I haven't analyzed this guy's theory. It's just a goofy theory like half of the other shit on Slashdot. When you trash people with the label conspiracy theory ONLY when talking about certain controversial subjects you expose yourself as a tool
I like Slint and have their album Spiderland, and they supposedly started the style of music called "math rock", but I fail to find the patterns that you and others speak of in their music. Is there someone out there that has done a breakdown analysis of the music to clearly demonstrate these patterns? I think all it is is just good rock music.
All music is mathematical, and many types of music, especially classical, have all kinds of threads going all over the place that eventually converge. What is so different about slint? strange time signatures aren't enough to garner the name "math rock".
First, I need to say a few things to inoculate myself from being labeled one way or the other:
1. The concept of a "conspiracy theory" is flawed, and is simply a cop out. There is no such thing as a conspiracy theory. There are just good and bad theories. Labeling an idea a "conspiracy theory" is just a form of jingoism and does nothing to increase the flow of ideas. Labeling something a conspiracy theory is a brilliant tactic to bury an idea as it takes advantage of herd mentality. Judge an idea by its merit and not by its label. Here on Slashdot extremely brilliant and extremely stupid ideas are posited all the time, so why now are we disallowed to discus a certain set of ideas? I thought there was a strong freedom/libertarian mindset here...
2. If you examine history, conspiracies are actually the norm and not an aberration. Look at Rome, or the times of Shakespeare, or Nazi Germany, or the French revolution, etc etc. Look at the behavior of the current administration of the United States and say there haven't been conspiratory behaviors with a straight face. All a conspiracy means is that more than one person plans together to do something secretly. That happens ALL THE TIME, whether criminally or not.
3. As Slashdot readers many of you consider yourselves to be scientifically minded and aware of logical fallacies. Why does this mindset breakdown when it comes to politically charged events? You are labeling people nut cases and tinfoil hat wearers and conspiracy theorists the same way people were labeled communists during the McCarthy era. The ad hominem attacks are relentless.
4. In light of the awareness that several agencies in the US with billions of dollars in funding and specific programs for controlling the flow of information DO exist, wouldn't you think that Slashdot, a hub of meme flow on the internet, would be a specific target of operations? Opinions are manipulated on the net regularly. You only have to look at China with their "wangyou" (internet friends) that are paid 50 cents chinese for each message they post that supports a certain agenda. The manipulation in the US is much more subtle. Teams of PhDs and psychologists know what buttons to press to get a certain response out of a self-admittedly obsessive compulsive crowd of nerds.
5. Building 7 was never hit by an airplane. The owner of the building admitted to it being demolished, then reneged his statement. There are videos of reporters describing building 7's fall while it is still standing in the background. It took SEVEN years for investigators to come up with a reason for the building to fall the way it did. Is it possible that the SEVEN years were spent honing a story plausible enough to convince even the most skeptical people of it's truth?
6. Unless you've visited the site of the building and done your own scientific measurements, everything you know comes from suspect media sources. This relates to point 3 above. I freely admit I don't know the truth of what happened due to this single fact.
In summary: Don't buy into either side of the story. There are plausible explanations for it being due to fire, but there are equally plausible explanations to it being due to malicious intent. Don't follow the herd - a certain subset of humans are purely pragmatic and will do whatever it takes to gain money or power.
PLEASE PLEASE refer to the last 5000 years of history and don't make the mistake of thinking that somehow right now things are different and innocent.
So what if they are more fearless? a 30 year old is less fearless than a 50 year old too. Youth is not an unfair advantage in Olympic sports. It is the basis of peak physical ability in Olympic sports.
Lets for argument's sake say that the universe is deterministic even if it is not. This still would not imply a lack of free-will. If you look at a person from the outside, they are just a bunch of living meat - particles of matter that react the same as anything else to physical laws. Things get interesting when you look from the inside. Your experience of consciousness - pain, color, reasoning, etc, are just the subjective experience of physical processes. That feeling of "you" are the actual processes playing out in realtime. When you are making a "choice", a process has hit a point where it could go one way or another, and to an external observer it appears that the conditions of the system would deterministically only allow one path to be taken. But subjectively, you actually make this decision, and in a sense are actually creating reality. Let me explain. For a deterministic system to be predicted exactly, you must know all the important initial conditions. But the subjective experiencer can NEVER know all conditions. It's like biting your own teeth or seeing your own eyes. When you make a decision you are actually causing a certain set of initial conditions to unfurl and have been there all along, hence "creating reality". From a quantum perspective this could be looked at as the coherence of a specific state, and you never went back in time to change the initial conditions, but actually selected a specific universe out of multiple universes depending on which interpretation of quantum theory you believe.
How is this insightful? This is easily solved - just let in a little light around the eyes of the wearer every few micrometers. Then you'd amplify the light in the cloaked areas around the eyes to compensate for the loss in brightness.
You make it sound like being true to some nostalgic past is actually important. In reality the science of tai chi has moved on considerably since the early days.
It's not nostalgia. You can learn physics from Michael Talbot, or you can learn from Niels Bohr. Physics is defined by physicists, and requires great rigor and learning from those who were trained with the same rigor. Taiji is the same. It is not the scattered dense incomprehensible jungle that many people believe it to be - there are very specific principles and milestones that should be present in a proper practice. Others can take fragments of Taiji and change it and teach it and call it Taiji, but it really is something different and should probably be called something different. I understand that what you have found may be a legitimate practice but it should probably be called something else. You can take basketball and switch the rules around and it may be just as fun and just as interesting as basketball, but is it fair to call it basketball?
Check out Chen Xiaowang, Chen Zhaokui, Chen Fake, Chen Yu, Zhu Tiancai, and others to see what proper Taiji is about.
Life is limited in length. There is a vast body of knowledge and training to learn in Taiji, and spending that much time on form is unfair to your friend. There are weapons forms, jiben gongfu (basic strength training) chenjin/yatui (stretching), silk reeling exercises, and of course several forms of tuishou that are to be learned to complete the Taiji practice. I know your thoughts - it's not about the myriad of practices, but about the correctness of the practices themselves. But you can build one wall of a house perfectly, but without the other three walls and the ceiling, it's a useless house. With Taiji, you aren't going to achieve the great health benefits, and one of the major goals that basically defined the art - fighting skills - if you are focusing on one thing. It's like spending all your time on trigonometry and never moving on to calculus. anyway enough with the analogies, i hope you get my point.
If what your friend wants is meditation, he should look into zazen. Taiji is something else
yes, but 8-9 years to not even finish the routine is NOT correct under any circumstances. I'm not speaking out of my ass either - I've trained 8 hours minimum every week in Beijing for the last three years as a formal apprentice in the Chen lineage. We practice traditional Taiji as designed by the originators, including fighting skills.
Correct form is absolutely important. I'm only debating the time scale. I learned the 83 move New Frame Yilu routine in a bit over a year. And definitely with proper posture, rhythm and grounding. A peach-wood stick to the body painfully indicated where my posture was incorrect and allowed me to fix it. Also, if basic training isn't being done (leg strengthening, stretching to full splits, etc), then proper posture in Taiji will never be achieved.
I can tell you with confidence that the large majority of Taiji teachers, especially in the west, are teaching a watered down version for non-apprentices and treating their practice like a business. They will keep students in the dark and stretch out training as long as possible to make money.
Sorry to have to make this so blunt, but it's a truth that people need to know, because the art is being destroyed while building a bad reputation.
Sorry to be pedantic, but I've been studying Taiji in Beijing for the last three years, so here it goes.
First, using the modern pinyin spelling of Taiji instead of Tai Chi helps reduce confusion. Chi is most often pronounced "chee", but in actuality should be pronounced "jee", especially since qi (pronounced chee) is a difference concept, that of the energy flow in the body.
Anyway, there are several forms of Taiji, one of them being Yang style, which is what most people are aware of in western countries, and what you are practicing, since you mention the 108 form.
There's nothing wrong with the Yang style, but it is an offshoot of the original Chen style, which still exists and is practiced today. It is much more athletic and trains actual fighting technique. If you learn and practice the 83 form properly, you will be in a 90-degree knee bend for more than 20 minutes, and find yourself soaked in sweat by the end of the routine. You also need to do extensive stretching in order to achieve the kicks involved in the routine.
A classic video demonstrating a well-known master, Chen Xiaowang, can be seen here. This video displays the "cannon fist" routine, which is a fast version of the 83, and starts picking up about one minute into it.
Read more about Chen style Taiji if you are interested in some serious athletic and martial training along with your meditative movements. Taiji teaches you to play your body the way you play a musical instrument, and is thus a difficult and long process, but as with an instrument, the results are amazing after a few years...
You are correct that grammar is loose, but the construction used above is rarely if ever heard. Usually the object can be brought to the front of a sentence, but the subject is not sent to the end... But anyway you are correct, the sentence would be understood - IF the correct tones and pronunciation are used, otherwise with that strange word order and bad pronunciation, you MIGHT get your point across.
It's not that simple. William Gibson writes his books on an old typewriter. He can get all condescending and miss the point and say it's just his preference but the reality is that there are several advantages to using a word processor. He can continue to use his typewriter but most people have moved on.
I don't have anything against people who use books. I'm just wondering if anyone actually uses them and why. Apparently you still do, and it's because of your eyes.
It's not necessarily true for all projects, but many of them have extensive documentation. Documentation written by the team that created that project is quite a bit different from a blogger's code snippet.
Also, I'm not railing against the structured book format, just the printed physical book.
Books about programming, especially internet programming, seem a bit archaic at this point. Or at least physical books. I find that especially with open source languages and tools, and even more so those related to the web, there is a wealth of information online, both in serial book format, tutorials, and searchable references. I haven't used a book to learn a language since Learning Perl back in about 2000. I bought a copy but I ended up using a pirated digital copy anyway because it was more useful...
Slashdot Mirror
Also, Larry has a countless team of engineers and scientists working for him, so a better analogy would be "as a computer programmer with a team of 100 doctors supporting me, I like to stand over other doctors as they...."
So actually yeah, go Larry!
LS
"...but chipmakers have hit a problem in that current lithographic methods are not adequate for designs as small as 22nm owing to fundamental physical limitations. IBM claims to have solved this problem."
This is virtually the same statement made every time a smaller fabrication process is announced. It conveys no information. Obviously some physical limitation was preventing them from making smaller circuits, and then they overcame them to make them even smaller.
LS
Does anyone actually believe this to be anything other than poor science or even worse election year propaganda masking as science?
There may be some objective simple definition of "spin" that you could use to create a automated measuring system, but is this really spin?
Human language is virtually infinitely complex, and there are layers of meaning both conscious and unconscious expressed by body language, tone, cadence, content, etc. Then there's the intention of the speaker, and the context of the speech. But no, we get a elementary school level simple bar chart that clearly shows that obama is a complete spinster, and McCain is a "straight talker". Excuse me, but what a load of horse shit! Disclaimer: I'm not voting for Obama or McCain.
LS
Ok, how much would you really have? 5 or 10 cents? Nothing? Be honest with us please.
LS
Yeah, I don't get it either... Slashdot is a non-profit organi... oh wait
Cao ni ma de! Cao ni daye shiba dai!
Hmm, Intel already manufactures chips here, and I'm sure they are complying with Chinese and not American environmental laws. This doesn't really change anything in regards to environment.
LS
A while back the Chinese government was making noises about standardizing on Linux, but then MS stepped in and cut a deal, and now EVERYTHING here is Windows.
Perhaps this is another ploy by the government to cut a deal with Intel?
LS
Why are alternative ideas labeled conspiracy theory only when in relation to global warming and 9/11?
Fuck off and quit being such a tool.
I'm not validating this guy's theory, and probably has no basis in fact, but I haven't read scientific papers, and I haven't analyzed this guy's theory. It's just a goofy theory like half of the other shit on Slashdot. When you trash people with the label conspiracy theory ONLY when talking about certain controversial subjects you expose yourself as a tool
I like Slint and have their album Spiderland, and they supposedly started the style of music called "math rock", but I fail to find the patterns that you and others speak of in their music. Is there someone out there that has done a breakdown analysis of the music to clearly demonstrate these patterns? I think all it is is just good rock music.
All music is mathematical, and many types of music, especially classical, have all kinds of threads going all over the place that eventually converge. What is so different about slint? strange time signatures aren't enough to garner the name "math rock".
Fair enough. But the problem is that the majority of people use the epithet "conspiracy theory" to debase an idea whether there is evidence or not.
First, I need to say a few things to inoculate myself from being labeled one way or the other:
1. The concept of a "conspiracy theory" is flawed, and is simply a cop out. There is no such thing as a conspiracy theory. There are just good and bad theories. Labeling an idea a "conspiracy theory" is just a form of jingoism and does nothing to increase the flow of ideas. Labeling something a conspiracy theory is a brilliant tactic to bury an idea as it takes advantage of herd mentality. Judge an idea by its merit and not by its label. Here on Slashdot extremely brilliant and extremely stupid ideas are posited all the time, so why now are we disallowed to discus a certain set of ideas? I thought there was a strong freedom/libertarian mindset here...
2. If you examine history, conspiracies are actually the norm and not an aberration. Look at Rome, or the times of Shakespeare, or Nazi Germany, or the French revolution, etc etc. Look at the behavior of the current administration of the United States and say there haven't been conspiratory behaviors with a straight face. All a conspiracy means is that more than one person plans together to do something secretly. That happens ALL THE TIME, whether criminally or not.
3. As Slashdot readers many of you consider yourselves to be scientifically minded and aware of logical fallacies. Why does this mindset breakdown when it comes to politically charged events? You are labeling people nut cases and tinfoil hat wearers and conspiracy theorists the same way people were labeled communists during the McCarthy era. The ad hominem attacks are relentless.
4. In light of the awareness that several agencies in the US with billions of dollars in funding and specific programs for controlling the flow of information DO exist, wouldn't you think that Slashdot, a hub of meme flow on the internet, would be a specific target of operations? Opinions are manipulated on the net regularly. You only have to look at China with their "wangyou" (internet friends) that are paid 50 cents chinese for each message they post that supports a certain agenda. The manipulation in the US is much more subtle. Teams of PhDs and psychologists know what buttons to press to get a certain response out of a self-admittedly obsessive compulsive crowd of nerds.
5. Building 7 was never hit by an airplane. The owner of the building admitted to it being demolished, then reneged his statement. There are videos of reporters describing building 7's fall while it is still standing in the background. It took SEVEN years for investigators to come up with a reason for the building to fall the way it did. Is it possible that the SEVEN years were spent honing a story plausible enough to convince even the most skeptical people of it's truth?
6. Unless you've visited the site of the building and done your own scientific measurements, everything you know comes from suspect media sources. This relates to point 3 above. I freely admit I don't know the truth of what happened due to this single fact.
In summary: Don't buy into either side of the story. There are plausible explanations for it being due to fire, but there are equally plausible explanations to it being due to malicious intent. Don't follow the herd - a certain subset of humans are purely pragmatic and will do whatever it takes to gain money or power.
PLEASE PLEASE refer to the last 5000 years of history and don't make the mistake of thinking that somehow right now things are different and innocent.
LS
So what if they are more fearless? a 30 year old is less fearless than a 50 year old too. Youth is not an unfair advantage in Olympic sports. It is the basis of peak physical ability in Olympic sports.
Lets for argument's sake say that the universe is deterministic even if it is not. This still would not imply a lack of free-will. If you look at a person from the outside, they are just a bunch of living meat - particles of matter that react the same as anything else to physical laws. Things get interesting when you look from the inside. Your experience of consciousness - pain, color, reasoning, etc, are just the subjective experience of physical processes. That feeling of "you" are the actual processes playing out in realtime. When you are making a "choice", a process has hit a point where it could go one way or another, and to an external observer it appears that the conditions of the system would deterministically only allow one path to be taken. But subjectively, you actually make this decision, and in a sense are actually creating reality. Let me explain. For a deterministic system to be predicted exactly, you must know all the important initial conditions. But the subjective experiencer can NEVER know all conditions. It's like biting your own teeth or seeing your own eyes. When you make a decision you are actually causing a certain set of initial conditions to unfurl and have been there all along, hence "creating reality". From a quantum perspective this could be looked at as the coherence of a specific state, and you never went back in time to change the initial conditions, but actually selected a specific universe out of multiple universes depending on which interpretation of quantum theory you believe.
LS
How is this insightful? This is easily solved - just let in a little light around the eyes of the wearer every few micrometers. Then you'd amplify the light in the cloaked areas around the eyes to compensate for the loss in brightness.
LS
You make it sound like being true to some nostalgic past is actually important. In reality the science of tai chi has moved on considerably since the early days.
It's not nostalgia. You can learn physics from Michael Talbot, or you can learn from Niels Bohr. Physics is defined by physicists, and requires great rigor and learning from those who were trained with the same rigor. Taiji is the same. It is not the scattered dense incomprehensible jungle that many people believe it to be - there are very specific principles and milestones that should be present in a proper practice. Others can take fragments of Taiji and change it and teach it and call it Taiji, but it really is something different and should probably be called something different. I understand that what you have found may be a legitimate practice but it should probably be called something else. You can take basketball and switch the rules around and it may be just as fun and just as interesting as basketball, but is it fair to call it basketball?
Check out Chen Xiaowang, Chen Zhaokui, Chen Fake, Chen Yu, Zhu Tiancai, and others to see what proper Taiji is about.
Life is limited in length. There is a vast body of knowledge and training to learn in Taiji, and spending that much time on form is unfair to your friend. There are weapons forms, jiben gongfu (basic strength training) chenjin/yatui (stretching), silk reeling exercises, and of course several forms of tuishou that are to be learned to complete the Taiji practice. I know your thoughts - it's not about the myriad of practices, but about the correctness of the practices themselves. But you can build one wall of a house perfectly, but without the other three walls and the ceiling, it's a useless house. With Taiji, you aren't going to achieve the great health benefits, and one of the major goals that basically defined the art - fighting skills - if you are focusing on one thing. It's like spending all your time on trigonometry and never moving on to calculus. anyway enough with the analogies, i hope you get my point.
If what your friend wants is meditation, he should look into zazen. Taiji is something else
yes, but 8-9 years to not even finish the routine is NOT correct under any circumstances. I'm not speaking out of my ass either - I've trained 8 hours minimum every week in Beijing for the last three years as a formal apprentice in the Chen lineage. We practice traditional Taiji as designed by the originators, including fighting skills.
Correct form is absolutely important. I'm only debating the time scale. I learned the 83 move New Frame Yilu routine in a bit over a year. And definitely with proper posture, rhythm and grounding. A peach-wood stick to the body painfully indicated where my posture was incorrect and allowed me to fix it. Also, if basic training isn't being done (leg strengthening, stretching to full splits, etc), then proper posture in Taiji will never be achieved.
I can tell you with confidence that the large majority of Taiji teachers, especially in the west, are teaching a watered down version for non-apprentices and treating their practice like a business. They will keep students in the dark and stretch out training as long as possible to make money.
Sorry to have to make this so blunt, but it's a truth that people need to know, because the art is being destroyed while building a bad reputation.
LS
I'm sorry, but your friend is being milked by his teacher...
Sorry to be pedantic, but I've been studying Taiji in Beijing for the last three years, so here it goes.
First, using the modern pinyin spelling of Taiji instead of Tai Chi helps reduce confusion. Chi is most often pronounced "chee", but in actuality should be pronounced "jee", especially since qi (pronounced chee) is a difference concept, that of the energy flow in the body.
Anyway, there are several forms of Taiji, one of them being Yang style, which is what most people are aware of in western countries, and what you are practicing, since you mention the 108 form.
There's nothing wrong with the Yang style, but it is an offshoot of the original Chen style, which still exists and is practiced today. It is much more athletic and trains actual fighting technique. If you learn and practice the 83 form properly, you will be in a 90-degree knee bend for more than 20 minutes, and find yourself soaked in sweat by the end of the routine. You also need to do extensive stretching in order to achieve the kicks involved in the routine.
A classic video demonstrating a well-known master, Chen Xiaowang, can be seen here. This video displays the "cannon fist" routine, which is a fast version of the 83, and starts picking up about one minute into it.
Read more about Chen style Taiji if you are interested in some serious athletic and martial training along with your meditative movements. Taiji teaches you to play your body the way you play a musical instrument, and is thus a difficult and long process, but as with an instrument, the results are amazing after a few years...
LS
You are correct that grammar is loose, but the construction used above is rarely if ever heard. Usually the object can be brought to the front of a sentence, but the subject is not sent to the end... But anyway you are correct, the sentence would be understood - IF the correct tones and pronunciation are used, otherwise with that strange word order and bad pronunciation, you MIGHT get your point across.
Should be: "wang ba zai nar?", with a english-like pronunciation of "wong bah zye nar?".
Internet cafes are still only 1 dollar an hour, and our office here in Beijing's connection with 2MBps up/down and 4 static IPs is about $130/month.
LS
It's not that simple. William Gibson writes his books on an old typewriter. He can get all condescending and miss the point and say it's just his preference but the reality is that there are several advantages to using a word processor. He can continue to use his typewriter but most people have moved on.
I don't have anything against people who use books. I'm just wondering if anyone actually uses them and why. Apparently you still do, and it's because of your eyes.
It's not necessarily true for all projects, but many of them have extensive documentation. Documentation written by the team that created that project is quite a bit different from a blogger's code snippet.
Also, I'm not railing against the structured book format, just the printed physical book.
LS
Books about programming, especially internet programming, seem a bit archaic at this point. Or at least physical books. I find that especially with open source languages and tools, and even more so those related to the web, there is a wealth of information online, both in serial book format, tutorials, and searchable references. I haven't used a book to learn a language since Learning Perl back in about 2000. I bought a copy but I ended up using a pirated digital copy anyway because it was more useful...
LS