and just on that.... you can increase speed by throwing hardware at the problem. you can't increase security or stability by doing that.
That's not true. If you throw a big hammer (obviously hardware) at your system, you can make it very secure. Well, it won't work any more, but it is well known that only a switched-off system can be perfectly secure, and the hammer treatment ensures that the system will never be switched on again.
Of course that's barely the end. NAND gates are made of transistors and resistors. But in the end, it's all nothing but quarks and electrons, bound together and moving in various combinations and patterns, interacting via strong force (gluons) and electromagnetic force (photons).
Compilers can never optimize better than the *best* humans, operating without time constraints.
Well, at least the "working without time constraints" part seems to apply here. Although I guess if you were to tolerate compile times measured in days per source file, compilers could also do much better optimizations...
It would be interesting to take an x86 assembler program written 20 years ago and run it on modern hardware, then perform the same experiment with a C program recompiled with a modern compiler.
I bet the C program from 20 years ago would have some micro-optimizations which back then saved a few cycles, but which obfuscate the code for modern optimizers, so that the tweaked code is actually slower than straightforward code.
The point of high level languages is to improve the productivity of software developers
That is one point of high level languages. Another point is that you don't have to rewrite your whole code from scratch just because you're using a different processor on your next machine.
Good idea. As everyone knows, when anything bad happens, it's the redshirt who dies. So if you get a redshirt together with your synthahol, you're safe.
So if you type https.example.com in your browser, it will first try to access it by HTTP.
Of course, because you just happen to access a server called "https". Which is completely unrelated to the protocol you might want to use. The correct way to use https is to write it as protocol: https://example.com/
That looks at the percentage factual reporting vs. opinion reporting. That's a completely different question from the accuracy of the facts.
Example:
Foo reports: "The most powerful person of the U.S. is the president. The American president has green skin. Only Martians have green skin. We should not let the fate of America be controlled a Martian."
Ratio of "fact" reporting to opinion reporting: 3:1 (three "fact" sentences, one opinion statement). Number of actual facts: 1.
Bar reports: "The most powerful person of the U.S. is the president. However his power is not absolute. But his power should be absolute. It is not a good idea to divert some power to the congress."
Ratio of fact reporting to opinion reporting: 1:1 (two fact sentences, two opinion sentences). Number of actual facts: 2.
The fact/opinion statistics would prefer Foo. However Bar, despite its higher and obviously stupid opinion part, has only actual facts, and even more of those than Foo, where two of three "facts" are fake.
Now I have no idea about the quality of facts of Fox vs. MSNBC. All I wanted to point out is that the statistics you quoted is completely unrelated to this question.
Well, the politicians are probably as corrupt as everywhere. However the media in most of Europe are mostly working well. Although there's also already an erosion of media quality going on. I'd not bet that in ten years, the situation in Europe will be any better than the situation in the US.
Of course the "academics" will be the last ones to abandon their bogus and wrong practice of artificial scarcity of information.
Yeah, academics certainly want nobody to know their work... sure. That must also be the reason why so many scientists put up their published articles (and often even preprints which are not yet accepted in a journal) on places like arXiv.
Making information available is just one function of journals, and not even the most important. The most important service journals provide is peer review. So if you want to replace journals, don't think about how to make articles available. That problem has already working solutions. Think about how to either organize peer review differently, or how to better organize peer review, or how to replace it with something which is better. Note that one of the important points is that on one hand, the reviewers should have the expertise needed, and ideally people with known interests that the article does or does not appear are excluded. Therefore you cannot allow just anyone to review the article; indeed, much of what goes into the reputation of a journal is how well they choose their reviewers. On the other hand, the author should not know who reviewed the paper, to allow the reviewer to be honest even if it is a paper by an influential author. As reviewer, you have to be able to say that an influential author has written shit without fear that you risk your career for it.
Also note that currently Open Access journals require payment from the author to get the article published, and the fees are not that low. Which has its own share of problems: * Since now the income of the journal doesn't any longer depend on the number of readers (and thus on the quality of the articles) but on the number of published articles, there's the danger that an open access journal lowers its quality standards in order to get more articles published and thus paid for. * While OA journals don't restrict reader access, the publication fee creates a barrier for authors who only can publish if they can pay the money (either by being part of an institution which pays it for you, or by having enough money yourself to be able to pay it). I'm not sure that Einstein would have been able to pay for a publication in an Open Access journal from his patent officer's fee.
Yet, somehow people think selling 1's and 0's to people with computers is a valid business strategy -- And we let them call themselves "scientists".
You just showed that you have not the slightest clue about how academic publishing works. The scientists get not a single cent from the publisher for their articles. Let me repeat that, so that this is absolutely clear: The researcher does not get paid by the journal for his article. The scientist profits only and exclusively through the reputation the publication gives him (and the indirect effects, like being able to get funding).
In future revisions to this, they may have their entire work crews living underground with shaved heads and all white clothing, enforce drug usage, and forbid sexual activity.
"What's wrong?"
The "forbid sexual activity" part. Because if you do that, there will soon be no work crews at all. Workers don't grow on trees, you know?
Slashdot Mirror
and just on that.... you can increase speed by throwing hardware at the problem. you can't increase security or stability by doing that.
That's not true. If you throw a big hammer (obviously hardware) at your system, you can make it very secure. Well, it won't work any more, but it is well known that only a switched-off system can be perfectly secure, and the hammer treatment ensures that the system will never be switched on again.
You had clay tablets? Luxury. We had to carve ours in stone.
I'm for option 4: A 5.25" disk. You know, the ones which actually were floppy.
Of course that's barely the end. NAND gates are made of transistors and resistors.
But in the end, it's all nothing but quarks and electrons, bound together and moving in various combinations and patterns, interacting via strong force (gluons) and electromagnetic force (photons).
Well, at least the "working without time constraints" part seems to apply here. Although I guess if you were to tolerate compile times measured in days per source file, compilers could also do much better optimizations ...
I bet the C program from 20 years ago would have some micro-optimizations which back then saved a few cycles, but which obfuscate the code for modern optimizers, so that the tweaked code is actually slower than straightforward code.
That is one point of high level languages. Another point is that you don't have to rewrite your whole code from scratch just because you're using a different processor on your next machine.
But where do I get TurboCOBOL for Firefox?
Actually I imagine you'd need to run your browser on a Beowulf cluster in order to get good performance of your VM.
Only if it is is a Windows browser running under Wine.
The last thing I would want is a clone of the Windows UI. If I wanted Windows, I'd know where to get it.
Looking at the URLs, I strongly doubt that most of those are unbiased sources.
Rum bottles are usually made of glass. Let me tell you, glass doesn't taste very well.
PentiRUm?
Good idea. As everyone knows, when anything bad happens, it's the redshirt who dies. So if you get a redshirt together with your synthahol, you're safe.
Of course, because you just happen to access a server called "https". Which is completely unrelated to the protocol you might want to use.
The correct way to use https is to write it as protocol: https://example.com/
Whoosh watching?
Yeah, the NSA version is here. ;-)
OK, now we know how the Matrix gets powered.
You can still access the knowledge at libraries.
That looks at the percentage factual reporting vs. opinion reporting. That's a completely different question from the accuracy of the facts.
Example:
Foo reports: "The most powerful person of the U.S. is the president. The American president has green skin. Only Martians have green skin. We should not let the fate of America be controlled a Martian."
Ratio of "fact" reporting to opinion reporting: 3:1 (three "fact" sentences, one opinion statement). Number of actual facts: 1.
Bar reports: "The most powerful person of the U.S. is the president. However his power is not absolute. But his power should be absolute. It is not a good idea to divert some power to the congress."
Ratio of fact reporting to opinion reporting: 1:1 (two fact sentences, two opinion sentences). Number of actual facts: 2.
The fact/opinion statistics would prefer Foo. However Bar, despite its higher and obviously stupid opinion part, has only actual facts, and even more of those than Foo, where two of three "facts" are fake.
Now I have no idea about the quality of facts of Fox vs. MSNBC. All I wanted to point out is that the statistics you quoted is completely unrelated to this question.
Well, the politicians are probably as corrupt as everywhere. However the media in most of Europe are mostly working well. Although there's also already an erosion of media quality going on. I'd not bet that in ten years, the situation in Europe will be any better than the situation in the US.
No. But I wouldn't want the average quality of a Slashdot comment in scientific publications.
Yeah, academics certainly want nobody to know their work ... sure. That must also be the reason why so many scientists put up their published articles (and often even preprints which are not yet accepted in a journal) on places like arXiv.
Making information available is just one function of journals, and not even the most important. The most important service journals provide is peer review. So if you want to replace journals, don't think about how to make articles available. That problem has already working solutions. Think about how to either organize peer review differently, or how to better organize peer review, or how to replace it with something which is better. Note that one of the important points is that on one hand, the reviewers should have the expertise needed, and ideally people with known interests that the article does or does not appear are excluded. Therefore you cannot allow just anyone to review the article; indeed, much of what goes into the reputation of a journal is how well they choose their reviewers. On the other hand, the author should not know who reviewed the paper, to allow the reviewer to be honest even if it is a paper by an influential author. As reviewer, you have to be able to say that an influential author has written shit without fear that you risk your career for it.
Also note that currently Open Access journals require payment from the author to get the article published, and the fees are not that low. Which has its own share of problems:
* Since now the income of the journal doesn't any longer depend on the number of readers (and thus on the quality of the articles) but on the number of published articles, there's the danger that an open access journal lowers its quality standards in order to get more articles published and thus paid for.
* While OA journals don't restrict reader access, the publication fee creates a barrier for authors who only can publish if they can pay the money (either by being part of an institution which pays it for you, or by having enough money yourself to be able to pay it). I'm not sure that Einstein would have been able to pay for a publication in an Open Access journal from his patent officer's fee.
You just showed that you have not the slightest clue about how academic publishing works. The scientists get not a single cent from the publisher for their articles. Let me repeat that, so that this is absolutely clear: The researcher does not get paid by the journal for his article. The scientist profits only and exclusively through the reputation the publication gives him (and the indirect effects, like being able to get funding).
In future revisions to this, they may have their entire work crews living underground with shaved heads and all white clothing, enforce drug usage, and forbid sexual activity.
"What's wrong?"
The "forbid sexual activity" part. Because if you do that, there will soon be no work crews at all. Workers don't grow on trees, you know?