A sentence, just like a word, derives part of its meaning from context.
So far as I'm concerned, this just feeds into the "sound-bite" culture vortex that television has been sucking us into for the last 2 decades. Why do we feel the need to strip the nuance and subtlety from everything?
This study seems to confirm what I've always thought about our soul-less Info-culture. I love technology, but we need to be careful that it doesn't strip away our humanity.
Don't forget the other motivation for charging, which is to help ensure that spurious papers never get submitted. Quite honestly, $1000 or so isn't that difficult to come up with if your paper is important.
An open peer review system must include some checks against spurious submissions. It would be a disaster if good research work was lost in a tide of "freebie" work which might harbor bias, bad-science or even outright fraud.
I'd be in favor of a pay-to-play system which might have a seperate system for free research posting. It could be set up such that people could "sponsor" a work to be placed in the main system. I think you'll find that such a system would promote high-quality research while not leaving poorly funded research completely by the wayside.
It really bothers me when intelligent people fall for the 'Why Spend $1 Trillion on Space When We Still Have Poverty/AIDS/Cancer/Violence/Racism/Etc.' The fact is this, about 21% of the current $2.1 trillion US budget goes to social programs (Poverty/AIDS/Cancer/Violence/Racism/Etc.), not including social security. This breaks down to about $440 billion per year (figures are from page 31 of the 1040EZ Tax Instructions). Ignoring inflation, that puts us at about $17 trillion over 40 years (to sync up with the target date for a Mars landing). Throwing $1 trillion into social programs instead of NASA amounts to a 6% increase in funding. So, will a 6% increase in social spending significantly impact Poverty/AIDS/Cancer/Violence/Racism/Etc.? What is the likelyhood that if we DID shovel in another 6% that we would see a consumate 6% rise in results? On a more cynical note, how many of these progams actually work at all? Is the problem with these programs not enough money?
Ok, lets turn this around. That $1 trillion will cost the average US tax payer about $10,000 over the next 40 years (numbers here, do the math yourself), that breaks down into about $250 a year. Is it worth $250 every year for the next 40 to put a person on Mars (of course, this wouldn't affect people below the poverty line who don't pay taxes)? In Sally Struthers terms, is it worth $0.68 a day? If we give $1 trillion to NASA and set them the goal of landing a man on Mars, will they accomplish it? (I'm biased, so I suggest you look at the long list of successes of NASA before you answer.)
I won't even argue whether we should send people (in favor of probes) since this is really about the spirit of exploration and expanding the scope of human experience. Unfortunately those are entirely subjective, but let's strike a bargain. I'll support and pay for your social programs (because I think they are a waste of time) and you support my silly little space program. Do we have a deal?
In response to those who distrust electronic voting:
Our money is thrown around the globe every day in bit form and few of us have ever been the victim of fraud. There is fundamentally no difference between your vote as a tally in a database and your money as a tally in the datbase.
In fact I once worked on a project which had a direct pipe to the Fed's ACH system. I could have easily dropped a transfer from your account to mine and it would have gone through wihtout ANY authorization on your part. Why wasn't I ever tempted to loot anyone's account? Paper-trail. There was absolutely no way I could have taken the money such that the system would not know who had submitted the transaction and who received the money (and moral grounds, thank you very much). If fraud was committed, my company would catch hell and you can be sure I would be sure to follow.
P.S. - Here's a clever idea. Let's privatize voting. How about we allow electronic voting, but it costs $5 to do so with a private firm electronically (think tax submission software). Firms compete with each other for voters. That way, it's in each company's financial interests to keep the vote secure because any company who fucked up an election would surely lose all it's customers. Perhaps each company is required to publish it's vote datbase before its votes can be tallied. Capitalism works!
I think it's worth saying that very few of us would be capable of the high standards that go into the design, fabrication and assembly of these crafts. Quoth Nasa:
"...[Discovery is] assembled from more than 2.5 million parts, 230 miles of wire, 1,060 valves, and 1,440 circuit breakers..."
I for one stand amazed at what Nasa accomplishes every single day. Could they do better? Certainly. Would we do better? Almost certainly not.
On a side-note, the reason Nasa is stuck in the proverbial hard-place between multi-billion dollar budgets and missions that nobody cares about is that we've all started over-valuing human-life. It's ridiculous that space exploration all but stopped because of the 2 shuttle disasters. Certainly, the loss of those crews was tragic, but the best way to honor those crews is to relentlessly pursue the dream that they died for, not hamstring ourselves being overly cautious.
Call me old-fashioned, but I still believe there are things more important than one or a dozen human lives. IMO, exploring the universe is one of them.
The only tough part in making this technology work is getting high resolution brain states. If one of us would be willing to get, say, 1000 electrodes implanted in our domes we would all be able to play much more sophisticated games with only our brains.
Of course, the holy grail will be to be able to do this without thousands of unsightly wires sticking from our heads, but this is a long way off. Consider the similar (but easier) problem of tracking the state of a computer based solely on it's EM emissions, compounded by the fact that every computer will have its different components in slightly different places and orientations.
I think there is a distinction between machine intelligence and artificial intelligence. Machine intelligence is, as you say, a very long way off and would require huge advancements in materials science. I'd even argue that it will never happen. Perhaps a century from now we'll find that nano-scale engineering is done by what we'd call a genetecist instead of a physicist. And is a 'biological information processor' just a brain?
Artificial intelligence on the other hand is simply the simulation of the processes which underpin intelligence (decision making, pattern recognition). The goal of most AI research is to create systems which can replace human intelligence, not stand along side it.
There are some ambitious projects to simulate human intelligence in-toto which usually fall under the AI moniker, but I suggest you study biology instead of computer science if that's your goal.
What I think you really are interested in is machine intelligence. Developing machine intelligence requires a much deeper understanding of information than we currently have since it requires that we know the What and Why rather than just the How. Unfortunately, we lazy computer engineer types will have to wait for the computer scientists to lay this groundwork for us*.
* - Yes, we all like to consider ourselves scientists, but I submit that you are an engineer unless you are actively doing research.
Am I the only one drawing the connection between that escaped gorilla and this AI orang?
We all know Bubbles was the mastermind behind the recent Jackson family assaults on our children and our public decency.
And you know that gorilla that uses sign-language? Well, when the researcher tells you Koko loves you, Koko is really outlining the Monkey Master Plan to overthrow humanity.
No wonder Heston joined the NRA...Those damn dirty apes...
Bob E. J.
I am forever cursed with a first and last name that are always already in-use in every user-base everywhere...
Sigh...If only I could have been a Percival...
I loved those books growing up. The first book ranks with Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game in my esteem as the best 2 novels ever written.
I just hope they don't turn it into one of those special effects crap-fests they usually put on. I understand that a little CGI can go a long way towards shrinking the budgets of these smaller productions, but the Earthsea stories don't need fancy ornamentation, just a faithful portrayal of the characters. This is a prime example of how most good fantasy/sci-fi stories are NOT their settings.
Radioactive Material In Space
on
Melting Europa
·
· Score: 1
Frankly, I think we need to turn our attention to a far more deadly radioactive contaminant that's been polluting our solar system for much longer than the puny hunks of Uranium we throw out on our probes...
The Sun! This killer source of radioactive is throwing off billions of tons of radioactive material every single day! Little known facts:
continuously destroying our ozone layer!
causes 47,000 cases of cancer every year!
single greatest contributor to global warming!
I for one think we should stand together and protest this environmental catastrophe that we've all been ignoring for far too long.
If you itemize, you may claim gambling losses as a miscellaneous deduction on Schedule A. However, this deduction cannot be more than your winnings. For example, if your gambling winnings for the year are $1,000, your deduction for gambling losses cannot exceed $1,000.
I purchased the 2001 Brittanica set that included the Great Books of the Western World. Couldn't be happier with it. I'm an established Google user, but I love the visceral satisfaction that a set of books offers.
I can also be sure that if I want to find coherent yet concise information about a topic which has at least been cursorily edited for objectivity and veracity.
Much of the non-technical information on the web is tainted by opinion, usually because the source is a news outlet trying to sell 'the big story' or because it's an individual with an agenda. While I'm sure there is great information on the web, more often than not, finding it is like digging for pearls in shit.
An interesting topic for discussion would be how the easy dissemination of information affects society when there are no controls on how truthful or objective the information is. Will people become jaded skeptics who cross-check every bit of information? Will our own history begin to wash away in a sea of misinformation?
Why should I pay 5 bucks for something I do anyways for free?
Here's the only options I see:
1. Because the RIAA nazis will sue your ass if you use anything else. (Problem is, it's just another way for RIAA to propogate their monopoly, just using a different scheme.)
2. Because it's a value added service that has better searching and higher quality content. (I can almost buy that, but then you'd have to charge $10 a month to support the network, people and applications which provide those values.)
I have to agree with the RIAA on this one.
...A self respecting slash-dotter doesn't have multiple machines to do do this with? I did my 500+ collection using 2 boxen and 2 laptops all going at the same time.
Bah, I believe a person is responsible for a their own basic personal conditions, regardless of the station in life they were born too. Thinking that people in third-world countries are generally filthy (which seems to be your assertion) and that it's because of how they are raised is absurd and offensive.
I have no issues with whether a person uses a muddy river or an immaculate bathtub to bathe, just so long as they do so.
Call me a bastard, but I think that guy deserves to die in his own filth. Not because you shouldn't have to put up with those conditions (although I commend you for doing so), but because there should be a lower threshold for what should be allowed to exist in the human gene pool.
Is evolution truly dead for us hairless apes?
I did a stint in high school with the local parks and recreation service (community service) and all I have to say is, you would be surprised at how often people will crap in a urinal...
Slashdot Mirror
So far as I'm concerned, this just feeds into the "sound-bite" culture vortex that television has been sucking us into for the last 2 decades. Why do we feel the need to strip the nuance and subtlety from everything?
This study seems to confirm what I've always thought about our soul-less Info-culture. I love technology, but we need to be careful that it doesn't strip away our humanity.
An open peer review system must include some checks against spurious submissions. It would be a disaster if good research work was lost in a tide of "freebie" work which might harbor bias, bad-science or even outright fraud.
I'd be in favor of a pay-to-play system which might have a seperate system for free research posting. It could be set up such that people could "sponsor" a work to be placed in the main system. I think you'll find that such a system would promote high-quality research while not leaving poorly funded research completely by the wayside.
Converting a quarter of a million lines of VB code to Java...
Ok, lets turn this around. That $1 trillion will cost the average US tax payer about $10,000 over the next 40 years (numbers here, do the math yourself), that breaks down into about $250 a year. Is it worth $250 every year for the next 40 to put a person on Mars (of course, this wouldn't affect people below the poverty line who don't pay taxes)? In Sally Struthers terms, is it worth $0.68 a day? If we give $1 trillion to NASA and set them the goal of landing a man on Mars, will they accomplish it? (I'm biased, so I suggest you look at the long list of successes of NASA before you answer.)
I won't even argue whether we should send people (in favor of probes) since this is really about the spirit of exploration and expanding the scope of human experience. Unfortunately those are entirely subjective, but let's strike a bargain. I'll support and pay for your social programs (because I think they are a waste of time) and you support my silly little space program. Do we have a deal?
Seconded.
Made ya look. In my experience there is only one programming methodology that works every time:
If you're going to spend energy to make your programming life better, then spend them on the list above.
FR33 3l3CTR1C1TY F0R H4X0R5!!!
Our money is thrown around the globe every day in bit form and few of us have ever been the victim of fraud. There is fundamentally no difference between your vote as a tally in a database and your money as a tally in the datbase.
In fact I once worked on a project which had a direct pipe to the Fed's ACH system. I could have easily dropped a transfer from your account to mine and it would have gone through wihtout ANY authorization on your part. Why wasn't I ever tempted to loot anyone's account? Paper-trail. There was absolutely no way I could have taken the money such that the system would not know who had submitted the transaction and who received the money (and moral grounds, thank you very much). If fraud was committed, my company would catch hell and you can be sure I would be sure to follow.
P.S. - Here's a clever idea. Let's privatize voting. How about we allow electronic voting, but it costs $5 to do so with a private firm electronically (think tax submission software). Firms compete with each other for voters. That way, it's in each company's financial interests to keep the vote secure because any company who fucked up an election would surely lose all it's customers. Perhaps each company is required to publish it's vote datbase before its votes can be tallied. Capitalism works!
Agreed. But often necessary.
On a side-note, the reason Nasa is stuck in the proverbial hard-place between multi-billion dollar budgets and missions that nobody cares about is that we've all started over-valuing human-life. It's ridiculous that space exploration all but stopped because of the 2 shuttle disasters. Certainly, the loss of those crews was tragic, but the best way to honor those crews is to relentlessly pursue the dream that they died for, not hamstring ourselves being overly cautious.
Call me old-fashioned, but I still believe there are things more important than one or a dozen human lives. IMO, exploring the universe is one of them.
Bah, I print mine out to hard copy and put them in my Porno Bin to swim around in. If only it weren't for those damn Beagle boys...and the paper cuts.
The only tough part in making this technology work is getting high resolution brain states. If one of us would be willing to get, say, 1000 electrodes implanted in our domes we would all be able to play much more sophisticated games with only our brains. Of course, the holy grail will be to be able to do this without thousands of unsightly wires sticking from our heads, but this is a long way off. Consider the similar (but easier) problem of tracking the state of a computer based solely on it's EM emissions, compounded by the fact that every computer will have its different components in slightly different places and orientations.
Artificial intelligence on the other hand is simply the simulation of the processes which underpin intelligence (decision making, pattern recognition). The goal of most AI research is to create systems which can replace human intelligence, not stand along side it.
There are some ambitious projects to simulate human intelligence in-toto which usually fall under the AI moniker, but I suggest you study biology instead of computer science if that's your goal.
What I think you really are interested in is machine intelligence. Developing machine intelligence requires a much deeper understanding of information than we currently have since it requires that we know the What and Why rather than just the How. Unfortunately, we lazy computer engineer types will have to wait for the computer scientists to lay this groundwork for us*.
* - Yes, we all like to consider ourselves scientists, but I submit that you are an engineer unless you are actively doing research.
We all know Bubbles was the mastermind behind the recent Jackson family assaults on our children and our public decency.
And you know that gorilla that uses sign-language? Well, when the researcher tells you Koko loves you, Koko is really outlining the Monkey Master Plan to overthrow humanity.
No wonder Heston joined the NRA...Those damn dirty apes...
Bob E. J. I am forever cursed with a first and last name that are always already in-use in every user-base everywhere... Sigh...If only I could have been a Percival...
I loved those books growing up. The first book ranks with Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game in my esteem as the best 2 novels ever written.
I just hope they don't turn it into one of those special effects crap-fests they usually put on. I understand that a little CGI can go a long way towards shrinking the budgets of these smaller productions, but the Earthsea stories don't need fancy ornamentation, just a faithful portrayal of the characters. This is a prime example of how most good fantasy/sci-fi stories are NOT their settings.
The Sun! This killer source of radioactive is throwing off billions of tons of radioactive material every single day! Little known facts:
continuously destroying our ozone layer!
causes 47,000 cases of cancer every year!
single greatest contributor to global warming!
I for one think we should stand together and protest this environmental catastrophe that we've all been ignoring for far too long.
Sincerely,
Marty Morlock
I purchased the 2001 Brittanica set that included the Great Books of the Western World. Couldn't be happier with it. I'm an established Google user, but I love the visceral satisfaction that a set of books offers.
I can also be sure that if I want to find coherent yet concise information about a topic which has at least been cursorily edited for objectivity and veracity.
Much of the non-technical information on the web is tainted by opinion, usually because the source is a news outlet trying to sell 'the big story' or because it's an individual with an agenda. While I'm sure there is great information on the web, more often than not, finding it is like digging for pearls in shit. An interesting topic for discussion would be how the easy dissemination of information affects society when there are no controls on how truthful or objective the information is. Will people become jaded skeptics who cross-check every bit of information? Will our own history begin to wash away in a sea of misinformation?
Why should I pay 5 bucks for something I do anyways for free? Here's the only options I see: 1. Because the RIAA nazis will sue your ass if you use anything else. (Problem is, it's just another way for RIAA to propogate their monopoly, just using a different scheme.) 2. Because it's a value added service that has better searching and higher quality content. (I can almost buy that, but then you'd have to charge $10 a month to support the network, people and applications which provide those values.) I have to agree with the RIAA on this one.
Make the system mandatory for people convicted of convicted drunk drivers.
...A self respecting slash-dotter doesn't have multiple machines to do do this with? I did my 500+ collection using 2 boxen and 2 laptops all going at the same time.
Bah, I believe a person is responsible for a their own basic personal conditions, regardless of the station in life they were born too. Thinking that people in third-world countries are generally filthy (which seems to be your assertion) and that it's because of how they are raised is absurd and offensive.
I have no issues with whether a person uses a muddy river or an immaculate bathtub to bathe, just so long as they do so.
Call me a bastard, but I think that guy deserves to die in his own filth. Not because you shouldn't have to put up with those conditions (although I commend you for doing so), but because there should be a lower threshold for what should be allowed to exist in the human gene pool. Is evolution truly dead for us hairless apes?
I did a stint in high school with the local parks and recreation service (community service) and all I have to say is, you would be surprised at how often people will crap in a urinal...