Currently, according to popular rumours, Amazon takes 70% for themselves on Kindle purchases. From that figure, it doesn't sound like publishers are doing too well, and I know from my literary fiction instructor that they're operating on bare bones. What I want is an open format/protocol that allows publishers to register in some central, open registry and optionally provide payment preferences, etc. That way, there is no distributor like Amazon-- it goes straight from the publisher to the consumer.
Secondly, if it is easy for a publisher to register themselves in this open registry, then independent publishers, or the authors themselves, are on the same playing field as the largest publishers.
Third, the device will be independent of the format & distribution method, so this will encourage device providers to be competitive: give choices of telecom providers, support pdf w/ a thumb-drive-like interface, etc.
People should just STOP BUYING STUFF that locks you into proprietary formats. Yeah, I bought an iPhone when it first came out, so I'm guilty, but I don't need an e-reader so badly I can't wait for something that doesn't screw the consumer.
Thanks for the link. I can't really argue with Steven Weinberg, but it's hard to believe Kuhn would hold to this without further analysis. One phrase stood out for me:
[Kuhn] often used the metaphor of biological evolution: scientific progress for him was like evolution as described by Darwin, a process driven from behind, rather than pulled toward some fixed goal to which it grows ever closer.
In other words, the standard against which organisms evolve is the ever-changing environment, while the standard against which physical theories evolve is the static universe. To give Kuhn some credit, the latter standard is a social one, in that we agree that we all perceive the same things, albeit not really arguable. We are still limited by our humanity, but then the question becomes less scientific than it is philosophical, which means it can be safely ignored:)
No one is questioning the intelligence of the soviets or eastern europeans. The problem was that when they did science, they did it in an inverted way. For example, in Soviet Russia, the particles accelerated you.
It sounds like you're claiming that Kuhn didn't believe that a new paradigm offers more accurate results than the last, which he almost certainly didn't.
If he said something controversial along those lines, he might have meant that our perceptions don't actually reflect reality as it really is, so as we are trying to mold science into our reality, we aren't necessarily molding it into a model of actual reality.
Sokal may have been correct that Kuhn didn't make the distinction, but that doesn't mean Kuhn didn't have a valid concern that our scientific reality is socially-constructed. Again, I don't know if Kuhn actually believed this, I'm just guessing based on my reading of Kuhn that he wouldn't have said something as controversial as what you've implied.
On more than one occasion I've made fools cry because I broke their scaffolding...
Ha! That's the quote of the day:)
For what it's worth, I don't mind Ruby. I don't particularly like it, but I don't mind it. The (lack of a) type system makes it unwieldy for any serious endeavor. I'll bet you anything that a Java developer with Eclipse or Netbeans can work at least twice as fast as any Ruby/Python/Perl developer. Not to say Java is good for all things...
Now, with Python, doesn't the significant whitespace pretty much rule it out for use as a headache-free templating language? Or is that not a problem?
I don't care much for Keith Olberman's or Rachel Maddow's styles of broadcasting, but to their credit, they don't engage in the type of misinformation that Beck does-- which is exactly what this website is parodying. Olberman & Maddow use a fact-based analysis to push their views. Beck and much of the right wing use deliberate misinformation. People watch it because the misinformation backs up views they already have, not to use information to shape their views.
It's dumb to say Beck is analogous to Olbermann. One is intellectually honest and one is asking "Was Barack Obama born in the United States?" with the implication being that it's possible he wasn't. You can't say 'Beck is on the right' and 'Olberman is on the left', and that the two sides are symmetrical. There isn't symmetry. It's possible to be conservative and be rational/sane, but Beck isn't.
You can't just categorically say "X doesn't work" on a public forum, especially on an explicitly pro-linux one. Then you are guaranteed the type of response you characterize because for every person with an ernest grievance, there's ten apple/windows fanboys who post that sort of thing just for the hell of it. To get a polite response, you need to post relevant details that may or may not contribute to the problem, and do so in the relevant forums. There's no other way for anyone to help you.
that said, I don't even really think that Walmart is a villain exactly (most of the time), they are just an extremely well run business optimizing their profits.
I think you can call them a villain. They are just doing their jobs, like the record companies, but they are doing it to the detriment of civilization.
Pretentious? I'm surprised that 19th Nervous Breakdown is the only one who sees the irony in this: They give us a choice between a free mp3 version or an $80 box set. Why not a $15 CD like every other album that comes out?????? Some of us have decent stereos and we can hear the difference between mp3 and CD. Not to mention radiohead's music is one of the few bands that's worth playing on a good stereo..
I think you missed his point. Like me, all he wants is a high-quality CD, but they give you a choice of MP3's for free or an $80 box set of stuff that only collectors might enjoy. I'm a huge fan, but of the music. I don't care about their artwork and I don't have a record player.
Very true. If history teachers ever get around to teaching non-nationalist history (e.g. the French Revolution), there are a lot of interesting, even 'romantic' stories, in math and science, and not just silly ones, how Newton 'discovered' gravity when an apple fell on his head, for example, which make scientists seem dull, if not mildly retarded. English teachers ought to throw out big words like calculus and relativity from time to time so they seem more like a part of the real world and not just something confined to the dark halls of science and mathematics. Give them readings from Douglas Hofstandter (his book Metamagical Themas is full of shorter essays) or Bell's (?) Men of Mathematics. My advice is for teachers to be more inter-disciplinary in ALL courses of study. As for myself, I was lucky to have an outstanding and enthusiastic math teacher. The other higher math teacher at our school was also the basketball coach and seemed to do his best to distance himself from the geekiness of his classwork. He was popular with the athletic students but inspired no one towards his field of teaching.
So, why are environmental protection laws in place?
Because a few people, sometime, managed to get them passed into law. There's no reason beyond that. Sort of like what Bush said of the constitution: it's just a goddamn piece of paper. It's the job of anyone to whom it poses an obstruction to get it removed. It's not BP's fault for trying, because it will ultimately benefit their shareholders. It's not the state govt's problem, because they do what they do to stay in power. It's the result of a public who sits back and allows it to happen. Anybody who complains is easily labeled a 'wacko environmentalist' by pundits and pretty soon newspapers and the people themselves stop talking. A few decades from now, the lake will catch on fire again, the fishing will be terrible, and people will vote for the 'coolest' or best-looking candidate who says he will do something about it. Maybe he will, maybe he won't.
If you don't live there anymore, then why do you care? America became as powerful as it is because we have a strong corporate superstructure. If we don't make sacrifices, we're going to lose our edge on the world. So what if you don't have a place to swim. Eighty other people just found work and I'll bet the State of Indiana and surrounding states would love to hand out more money to a few large corporations to clean up the lake at the same time as BP is polluting it. Would you rather have a pristine environment and no job, or some extra cash and a less-than beautiful world? Keep in mind there are 300 million people that this gov't needs to support. No jobs, no resources == mass starvation.
Mmm, okay, I don't really think this way. I'm just in a pissy, devil's advocate sort of mood.
A lot of people have a problem with that reasoning and that's why it's become one of the central questions of western philosophy. Some claim (Hegel? Marx/Lukacz?) that only through experience do we gain ideal knowledge of being. The experience of a car hitting you would therefore 'prove' many aspects of its existence.
When you close your eyes, the flag still flies and when you're not there, the falling tree still makes a sound, but motion is dependent on our being. Otherwise it's something totally different: a series of discrete snapshots spread along the time 'axis' or the 'potential' of an initial configuration that our being experiences as a continual unfolding.
Really, it depends on what context you base your semantics on, since we probably can't agree on a universal context. In a materialist philosophy, the flag moves. In an idealist philosophy, it doesn't necessarily. They're both correct, but they're looking at the problem in a different context.
To keep this on-topic, there is a scientific context and a religious context which resolves the creation question in different ways. The religious fail to recognize the fact that despite what the Bible says, God put down clues on the Earth which show that events happened differently. It doesn't contradict their story, because science is only an empirical investigation and despite what it says, it can't 'prove' what happened a million years ago. It's only a trail of clues. You could say that scientists are following God's clues, which are inarguable only in the context of the scientific method. The fact that the scientific method discovers something different from the Biblical 'truth' doesn't mean it's correct, it only means that God, for whatever reason, decided to place a separate version of creation in the existence of these clues. So whatever the religious nuts say, you can't ignore the fact that the clues exist, and if they exist, then why not follow them?
No. Democrats know how to work a budget and see the necessity of taxes, but they're not afraid of taxing large campaign contributors. Republicans know that a good deal of their constituents, (and the Republican representatives themselves) can barely fathom the idea of 'internet'. Democrats are much hipper to the technology of the past 30 years. Case in point, the overwhelming liberal bias on Slashdot.
I didn't rtfa, but if things ever come to the point where they're taxing email, you can be sure people are going to re-invent email using http or some "non-email" protocol, and probably solving the spam problem, among other problems, at the same time. I know a lot of people have been thinking about new email protocols for a long time, and this could have an incentive for people to upgrade...
...if you want to look on the bright side of bad policy:)
That's ridiculous. Exactly how wild are your bedtime reading sessions?:) Showing the proper care for a paperback will make it last a very long time. And it's lightweight and easy to carry with you. I have probably a hundred books, many that I've owned for a decade or more. Unless the binding is bad from the start and you fail to show it some common decency, it should be in fair condition for as long as any hard cover book. I suppose if the book is *really* special to you (I bought Mostly Harmless in hardback when it came out, and the special edition of the Stand), then you could justify the extra $10 to $15.
Yeah, but the hard cover. Why pay for the hard cover? There's an interesting book out I'd like to buy called The Wealth of Networks. Hardcover price: $40. Probable paper price: $25. Probable paper price on Amazon: $17.
I think it was on Showtime everyday for several years while I was growing up. I have similar fantasies that all of my work in Kobo Deluxe will pay off. I'm on level 647.
Conspiracy theorists might, in general, be a little nutty, but they tend to dig up a lot of good questions. And disproving the conspiracy theorists forces people to take a much closer look than they normally would. Just calling them nutjobs and moving on doesn't change the fact that they often pose perfectly valid questions.
Check out This website is a great source of paranoid documentary, among other things, including a great 9/11 conspiracy movie.
Now, the JFK assassination must've been one of the most fascinating conspiracies in the past century, but after reading about it, I would have to go with the 'mainstream' belief that Oswald and Ruby were both acting independently. Still, we know Ruby had mob ties and that Oswald had left a note with the FBI days before the assassination, the contents of which were never disclosed. Furthermore Kennedy had a lot of enemies in a time when the mob was fairly effective-- the new Cuban regime, the mafia itself and it's been said that J. Edgar Hoover didn't like Kennedy (not sure why).
The fact remains that Oswald was insane enough, and trained enough (by the Soviets), to carry out the assassination on his own. Ruby was also an eccentric guy who's claim rings true-- that Oswald would never had gotten the death penalty he deserved, and so Ruby took it upon himself to do it.
And if there were two gunmen, then it wouldn't change much of what is known. Because we'll never ever know who the second gunman was.
Slashdot Mirror
When I see a post in mono-space font, I always imagine that a robot is talking :)
Secondly, if it is easy for a publisher to register themselves in this open registry, then independent publishers, or the authors themselves, are on the same playing field as the largest publishers.
Third, the device will be independent of the format & distribution method, so this will encourage device providers to be competitive: give choices of telecom providers, support pdf w/ a thumb-drive-like interface, etc.
People should just STOP BUYING STUFF that locks you into proprietary formats. Yeah, I bought an iPhone when it first came out, so I'm guilty, but I don't need an e-reader so badly I can't wait for something that doesn't screw the consumer.
[Kuhn] often used the metaphor of biological evolution: scientific progress for him was like evolution as described by Darwin, a process driven from behind, rather than pulled toward some fixed goal to which it grows ever closer.
In other words, the standard against which organisms evolve is the ever-changing environment, while the standard against which physical theories evolve is the static universe. To give Kuhn some credit, the latter standard is a social one, in that we agree that we all perceive the same things, albeit not really arguable. We are still limited by our humanity, but then the question becomes less scientific than it is philosophical, which means it can be safely ignored :)
She's growing on me now.. her analysis and interviewing is great, but her tone can be gratingly sarcastic :)
No one is questioning the intelligence of the soviets or eastern europeans. The problem was that when they did science, they did it in an inverted way. For example, in Soviet Russia, the particles accelerated you.
It sounds like you're claiming that Kuhn didn't believe that a new paradigm offers more accurate results than the last, which he almost certainly didn't.
If he said something controversial along those lines, he might have meant that our perceptions don't actually reflect reality as it really is, so as we are trying to mold science into our reality, we aren't necessarily molding it into a model of actual reality.
Sokal may have been correct that Kuhn didn't make the distinction, but that doesn't mean Kuhn didn't have a valid concern that our scientific reality is socially-constructed. Again, I don't know if Kuhn actually believed this, I'm just guessing based on my reading of Kuhn that he wouldn't have said something as controversial as what you've implied.
On more than one occasion I've made fools cry because I broke their scaffolding...
Ha! That's the quote of the day :)
For what it's worth, I don't mind Ruby. I don't particularly like it, but I don't mind it. The (lack of a) type system makes it unwieldy for any serious endeavor. I'll bet you anything that a Java developer with Eclipse or Netbeans can work at least twice as fast as any Ruby/Python/Perl developer. Not to say Java is good for all things...
Now, with Python, doesn't the significant whitespace pretty much rule it out for use as a headache-free templating language? Or is that not a problem?
I don't care much for Keith Olberman's or Rachel Maddow's styles of broadcasting, but to their credit, they don't engage in the type of misinformation that Beck does-- which is exactly what this website is parodying. Olberman & Maddow use a fact-based analysis to push their views. Beck and much of the right wing use deliberate misinformation. People watch it because the misinformation backs up views they already have, not to use information to shape their views.
It's dumb to say Beck is analogous to Olbermann. One is intellectually honest and one is asking "Was Barack Obama born in the United States?" with the implication being that it's possible he wasn't. You can't say 'Beck is on the right' and 'Olberman is on the left', and that the two sides are symmetrical. There isn't symmetry. It's possible to be conservative and be rational/sane, but Beck isn't.
Not lame. You can put your own PDFs on it. This is why I don't buy a kindle.
You can't just categorically say "X doesn't work" on a public forum, especially on an explicitly pro-linux one. Then you are guaranteed the type of response you characterize because for every person with an ernest grievance, there's ten apple/windows fanboys who post that sort of thing just for the hell of it. To get a polite response, you need to post relevant details that may or may not contribute to the problem, and do so in the relevant forums. There's no other way for anyone to help you.
I think you can call them a villain. They are just doing their jobs, like the record companies, but they are doing it to the detriment of civilization.
I can't imagine doing list processing in LISP without recursion.. maybe you have a narrower definition of recursion?
Pretentious? I'm surprised that 19th Nervous Breakdown is the only one who sees the irony in this: They give us a choice between a free mp3 version or an $80 box set. Why not a $15 CD like every other album that comes out?????? Some of us have decent stereos and we can hear the difference between mp3 and CD. Not to mention radiohead's music is one of the few bands that's worth playing on a good stereo..
I think you missed his point. Like me, all he wants is a high-quality CD, but they give you a choice of MP3's for free or an $80 box set of stuff that only collectors might enjoy. I'm a huge fan, but of the music. I don't care about their artwork and I don't have a record player.
Very true. If history teachers ever get around to teaching non-nationalist history (e.g. the French Revolution), there are a lot of interesting, even 'romantic' stories, in math and science, and not just silly ones, how Newton 'discovered' gravity when an apple fell on his head, for example, which make scientists seem dull, if not mildly retarded. English teachers ought to throw out big words like calculus and relativity from time to time so they seem more like a part of the real world and not just something confined to the dark halls of science and mathematics. Give them readings from Douglas Hofstandter (his book Metamagical Themas is full of shorter essays) or Bell's (?) Men of Mathematics. My advice is for teachers to be more inter-disciplinary in ALL courses of study. As for myself, I was lucky to have an outstanding and enthusiastic math teacher. The other higher math teacher at our school was also the basketball coach and seemed to do his best to distance himself from the geekiness of his classwork. He was popular with the athletic students but inspired no one towards his field of teaching.
Because a few people, sometime, managed to get them passed into law. There's no reason beyond that. Sort of like what Bush said of the constitution: it's just a goddamn piece of paper. It's the job of anyone to whom it poses an obstruction to get it removed. It's not BP's fault for trying, because it will ultimately benefit their shareholders. It's not the state govt's problem, because they do what they do to stay in power. It's the result of a public who sits back and allows it to happen. Anybody who complains is easily labeled a 'wacko environmentalist' by pundits and pretty soon newspapers and the people themselves stop talking. A few decades from now, the lake will catch on fire again, the fishing will be terrible, and people will vote for the 'coolest' or best-looking candidate who says he will do something about it. Maybe he will, maybe he won't.
If you don't live there anymore, then why do you care? America became as powerful as it is because we have a strong corporate superstructure. If we don't make sacrifices, we're going to lose our edge on the world. So what if you don't have a place to swim. Eighty other people just found work and I'll bet the State of Indiana and surrounding states would love to hand out more money to a few large corporations to clean up the lake at the same time as BP is polluting it. Would you rather have a pristine environment and no job, or some extra cash and a less-than beautiful world? Keep in mind there are 300 million people that this gov't needs to support. No jobs, no resources == mass starvation.
Mmm, okay, I don't really think this way. I'm just in a pissy, devil's advocate sort of mood.
copyright extensions are in the same ballpark as well, if you look at it not as a 'right' of the copyright holder, but a law imposed on the public...
When you close your eyes, the flag still flies and when you're not there, the falling tree still makes a sound, but motion is dependent on our being. Otherwise it's something totally different: a series of discrete snapshots spread along the time 'axis' or the 'potential' of an initial configuration that our being experiences as a continual unfolding.
Really, it depends on what context you base your semantics on, since we probably can't agree on a universal context. In a materialist philosophy, the flag moves. In an idealist philosophy, it doesn't necessarily. They're both correct, but they're looking at the problem in a different context.
To keep this on-topic, there is a scientific context and a religious context which resolves the creation question in different ways. The religious fail to recognize the fact that despite what the Bible says, God put down clues on the Earth which show that events happened differently. It doesn't contradict their story, because science is only an empirical investigation and despite what it says, it can't 'prove' what happened a million years ago. It's only a trail of clues. You could say that scientists are following God's clues, which are inarguable only in the context of the scientific method. The fact that the scientific method discovers something different from the Biblical 'truth' doesn't mean it's correct, it only means that God, for whatever reason, decided to place a separate version of creation in the existence of these clues. So whatever the religious nuts say, you can't ignore the fact that the clues exist, and if they exist, then why not follow them?
No. Democrats know how to work a budget and see the necessity of taxes, but they're not afraid of taxing large campaign contributors. Republicans know that a good deal of their constituents, (and the Republican representatives themselves) can barely fathom the idea of 'internet'. Democrats are much hipper to the technology of the past 30 years. Case in point, the overwhelming liberal bias on Slashdot.
That's ridiculous. Exactly how wild are your bedtime reading sessions? :) Showing the proper care for a paperback will make it last a very long time. And it's lightweight and easy to carry with you. I have probably a hundred books, many that I've owned for a decade or more. Unless the binding is bad from the start and you fail to show it some common decency, it should be in fair condition for as long as any hard cover book. I suppose if the book is *really* special to you (I bought Mostly Harmless in hardback when it came out, and the special edition of the Stand), then you could justify the extra $10 to $15.
Yeah, but the hard cover. Why pay for the hard cover? There's an interesting book out I'd like to buy called The Wealth of Networks. Hardcover price: $40. Probable paper price: $25. Probable paper price on Amazon: $17.
"The Last Starfighter"
I think it was on Showtime everyday for several years while I was growing up. I have similar fantasies that all of my work in Kobo Deluxe will pay off. I'm on level 647.
Conspiracy theorists might, in general, be a little nutty, but they tend to dig up a lot of good questions. And disproving the conspiracy theorists forces people to take a much closer look than they normally would. Just calling them nutjobs and moving on doesn't change the fact that they often pose perfectly valid questions.
Check out This website is a great source of paranoid documentary, among other things, including a great 9/11 conspiracy movie.
Now, the JFK assassination must've been one of the most fascinating conspiracies in the past century, but after reading about it, I would have to go with the 'mainstream' belief that Oswald and Ruby were both acting independently. Still, we know Ruby had mob ties and that Oswald had left a note with the FBI days before the assassination, the contents of which were never disclosed. Furthermore Kennedy had a lot of enemies in a time when the mob was fairly effective-- the new Cuban regime, the mafia itself and it's been said that J. Edgar Hoover didn't like Kennedy (not sure why).
The fact remains that Oswald was insane enough, and trained enough (by the Soviets), to carry out the assassination on his own. Ruby was also an eccentric guy who's claim rings true-- that Oswald would never had gotten the death penalty he deserved, and so Ruby took it upon himself to do it.
And if there were two gunmen, then it wouldn't change much of what is known. Because we'll never ever know who the second gunman was.