Of course, that would mean that Jesus was genetically Mary's twin brother. That would have profound theological insights. Mary, mother of God, daughter of God? That's as weird as Jesus being God *and* being the Son of God!
Do you *ever* see ugly people in any kind of media or presentation? Or, do you ever see ugliness in any kind of presentation that is successful?
Who would want to identify with that photo as the target audience, anyway? "Oh, I'm ugly, just like the woman in that photo. I should study harder in math!"
I don't think one book, even if it looks like the rest of the teen girl trash rags, is going to overcome a decades of social pressure to avoid being seen as "nerdy." Good point...they should just stop trying.
What we really need is to have high schools that don't go out of their way to reinforce the perception that going to state for ****ball is the pinnacle of achievement. (btw, great attitude to take towards solid progressive thinking that will help women out) Um, grandparent posted an actual solution and you chide their attitude? I'm starting to think you weren't being sarcastic...
You say that you have an idea that mods "protect" us from crapfloods, etc Woah woah woah. That's not *my* claim; that's what's claimed in the link to the FAQ that you provided. Have you read it lately? I didn't see any 'bragging' in the FAQ; I only saw a reasonable argument put forth by the writer of the FAQ. I have no reason to believe you or the FAQ, unless I see some evidence of actual posts and their mods.
If the mod system actually worked - that is, all worthwhile posts went up, and just trolls (like GNAA) and obvious FP masturbation went down, then I could actually use the system. I don't think we'd ever get a perfect mod system, the kind like you describe, in real life. First of all, 'worthwhile' is a subjective criteria. You and I probably have very different ideas of what is worth while. If you and I were able to mod our own independent copies of slashdot, it would probably look very different. Therefore, everyone is going to find moderations that upset them. But for me personally, I am happy with the overall moderation of slashdot. We're never going to have a perfect system. I think slashdot is balanced to overlook a few gems and avoid all of the crap. I'm happy to have slightly less gems in exchange for no crap. And I understand that the slashdot community is not one single mind, and we all will not agree on what is worthwhile.
The underlying problem is that moderation generally really means "I agree" / "I support this member" or "I disagree" / "I dislike this member." Very few people actually evaluate posts for content, rather than tone or source. I disagree. I don't think that happens at all, unless it is an editor who is carrying out a vendetta. An average user only gets 5 mod points, at very infrequent intervals, so they can't do much damage to one user, much less two or more.
I always mod based on content; I hardly ever read the username. I've often gotten in arguments thinking that a replier was a different user than the grandparent, when in fact they were the same poster!
Furthermore, I've seen a lot of mod bouncing. A joke goes over someone's head, and it gets modded down. Others get the joke and mod it back up. Or, a troll makes a snarky political point that certain users agree with, and mod up the comment. Over time, the community catches up, and the post gets modded down. The system works.
I have seen *tons* of literally insightful posts, interesting posts, funny posts, that were 0's. I *would* like the mod system to work, but without transparency and accountability, it never will. I disagree, but I am interested in seeing more evidence. Can you post some links to some great posts that stayed at 0? If there are tons, you could easily post 10 or so?
Personally, I am happy with missing a few gems in exchange for avoiding crap. I don't want to waste time wading through crap, I want only good stuff, and since I am pressed on time, I don't need all of them.
This is something meta-moderating doesn't address, or doesn't address sufficiently? Aren't mod points relatively limited, both in number and frequency of distribution, so that an abusive mod can't do much damage? You don't buy the argument that the editors are protecting the community from crap floods that would otherwise take a lot of mod points out of the community to offset? Are there really *that* many unfairly down-modded posts?
I agree that there might be a problem in slashdot's system with insightful or informative posts being modded down, but the genius of the system is that it really does a good job of keeping the crap out. If there has to be a trade-off, I'm willing to lose a few good posts in order not to have to wade through screens of liquid feces.
If your only concern is that 'Editors' have an inaccurate job title, then I think we are doing just fine. That's sort of the least of my concerns. It's kind of the "That's not a bug, it's a feature!" solution. Either call them moderators, or admins, or sysops, or have them edit, with proper spelling, grammar and clarity, and an editorial policy, while calling them editors:)
In a perfect world, I'd rather have editors doing a better job, but since the FAQ says that the editors are doing just fine, the least we could do is not mislead people into thinking there is a standard job of editing going on, in the normal/default sense of the word 'editor':)
If you want community oriented tools to actually edit content wiki style or whatever Eeg! That's very tempting. I'm adding that to my to-do list right now...
I think that part of why Slashdot is relevant is because us editors exist and prevent 'amazing photos! title sez it all". Of course that's true, but what I'm betting on is that the hurdle has been cleared and the slashdot community has been 'gentrified'. Just as we don't get "Doucebag!" comments modded to +5 Insightful, I likewise don't think we would get "Amazing Photos!" submissions modded to the front page by slashdotters with mod points.
Also, and I don't mean to start a flame war here, but editors have consistently gotten away with poor editing. Most recently, there has been at least threesubmissions with improper usage of the phrase 'begs the question' in the summary. They don't really edit, or at least, they are allowed to make the same editorial mistakes over and over again -- they are just mods! Admins! Title them correctly.;)
Basically what I'm arguing is that the community system we've created through development and usage, karma + mod points, is strong enough to handle the editing job. The proof of the ability of the community to handle editing is the high quality of comment moderation, as compared to digg.
My hope is that the hose will give us a chance to satisfy the desires of a broad spectrum of users... I think I see now where you are trying to go with this. However, I think most users will use the features and functions of the default opening page, which means, they won't use these personalizing features at all. At least, that's my prediction;)
I think it's fairly obvious personally, It's fairly obvious once someone clues you in to what the hyphen means, which means it's not intuitive at all. It's simple, clear, and useful, yes; but not intuitive.
I first thought that the '-' was an additive tag marker, until I read your comment, then I realized it was a copy from google's search interface.
Basically, it's like a spam filter for the editors, and is essentially doing part of their job for them. That's wonderful. The more the editors get out of the way, the better. If slashdot totally got rid of the editors, I think that would be paradise. They don't even edit ( as in, correct and revise text for clarity, spelling, and grammar)!
I can read articles days in advance on digg. However, digg is cluttered up with crappy "Amazing Photos! title sez it all" articles and insightful, highly rated comments such as +157 "Doucehbag [Reply] ".
I come to slashdot for the community. Not for the articles, not for the crappy non-editing that the mods-called-editors do, but for the intelligent discussion from karmalized nerds with modpoints. If the slashdot community could also have complete control of the story posting system **and summary editing**, that would be the Shangri-la of internet message boards.
You'll find that about 9% of your male audience will also be unable to use it correctly. In other words, about 8.99999% of the slashdot audience:)
Especially contiguous spectrums. Don't such interfaces mitigate the problems of color coded interfaces for color-blind users? Instead of looking at the colors, you know what the value is by it's position on the spectrum.
...I think most people are just going to vote based on the subject alone. Is this good or bad? I think it's wonderful. In the few times I've used the firehose, I immediately canceled stories that had sensationalist or uninformative headlines ( "Amazing New Findings!" ). For the headlines that were pithy, informative, and intriguing, I went to the article ( yes, I actually navigated to the internet article ) and decided whether the story was worthwhile, appropriate for slashdot, and accurately summarized in the subject, and voted accordingly.
It is true that only American citizens enjoy the rights and protections afforded by the US constitution. But you aren't totally out in the cold -- you are still protected by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, to which the US is a signatory.
I personally would like to see a decentralized, encrypted p2p network. Using PKI, we could create a system where you send an encrypted email out into the p2p network. It's passed around until it gets to its intended recipient, who has the decryption key. Since it's encrypted, nobody else can read it. Because of the PKI, you can be certain of who sent you the email, that it's really from them, and that nobody intercepted it on its way.
Now instead of just email, change this to any kind of data. Create your own username with a private key, and you can use it to get access to data directed to you on any machine connected to the PKI network.
Seriously, religious wars aside, you pick the tool that will best meet your needs. Does this metaphor of OS as tools really apply? We've has the basic tools for thousands, if not tens of thousands of years. They're tried and true, and have proven their usefulness. Their tasks are well-defined and certain tools haven't really changed in shape much for thousands of years.
By contrast, the three main OSes available to Desktop users -- Apple, Linux and Windows -- aren't more than 15 years old. Are they really all that different from each other in terms of usefulness, as a saw is different from a hammer? Are they really as useful and singly-purposed as a chisel or screwdriver? I.E. are they all that effective in the roles they are supposed to fulfill?
I think that they are are practically identical for the general purposes of the desktop user -- internet, email, word processing and spreadsheets. Other tasks, such as website serving or video editing, are more suited to different operating systems.
Furthermore, when you start multiplying the meanings that a word or phrase can have, you start reducing its usefulness. The word 'do' has 38 definitions. I take it it's a fairly useless word, then?
No, I worked at a pawnshop for a summer.;) Basically, they don't take anything that you couldn't sell on a street corner. They trade in commodities, not specialty items.
I think the parent lumping the two scenarios into a single paragraph created some ambiguity. Oh, now I see. But I think the two separate points are wrong anyway.
What I believe he actually meant was:
1) Data is salable so if someone sees tape drives they don't have to be too particularly savvy to realize that *something* of value might be on them. Well, I don't think data is that salable. You would have to have some pretty good connections to find a buyer who would trust you enough to risk buying illegal information. It's not like you can post an ad on craigslist or something.
2) Or at the VERY LEAST even a crackhead could see "ah that's something to do with computers!" and head over to the local pawn shop to get a "few bucks" (his words) for them. A crackhead might not have great long-term strategizing skills, but they know how to make a quick buck. Odd computer equipment will get you blank looks when you bring it into the computer shop. Nobody needs it, and anybody who would wouldn't go to the pawnshop looking for it. The pawnshop takes stuff like laptops ( not worthless old pentium II desktops ), car steroes, watches, gold, jewelry -- stuff that almost anyone would buy, and has high salability. Backup tapes or disks are not really salable items.
This is the problem with all of our modern technology and labor-saving devices. If we can do in a day what used to take a week, such as harvest a field, that means we have a hell of a lot of free-time on our hands. We have a couple of ways to deal with it:
Let people enjoy their free time. We could make the work-week something like 30-35 hours, and not expect to have the latest car, fastest computer, or bigger and bigger houses. The problem is that this creates a welfare state and re-distribution of wealth. You could argue that state employees are part of a welfare system.
Create make-work, such as the entertainment industry A lot of the private 'industry' we have nowadays is not 'real' work. We don't need movies or CDs -- stories and singalongs have filled the role for thousands of years. A Hollywood movie, or the tire-rim industry, are just ways to use up the extra labor of people who aren't working in the fields anymore.
Create a prison society. You can use up a lot of the extra labor by creating a lot of laws ( drug laws, driving while black ). Lock up a significant portion of the population, say, 10% of black youth, and use up some extra labor policing and imprisoning the new criminal population.
You can also do a combination of the above. There are also probably other ways to use up spare labor, this is just what I could think of off the top of my head.
... let's throw a little conspiracy angle in. OK! Wayne Madsen has a conspiracy theory that all of the data thefts are a black op to populate the Total Information Awareness database, which is itself now a black op.
He maintains a chart of data thefts that shows millions of records from both public and private sources, but the chart is now on the subscription portion of the site.
in today's world it's quite apparent that data tapes (usually marked with the size of the tapes, i.e. 50GB, 100GB, etc.) usually mean sensitive information - which is usually salable. Heck, even a crackhead would recognize that and try to sell them for a few bucks, not knowing what he really had. I don't see how a crackhead could line this deal up. Their only market seems to be the pawnshop and the street corner.
I take it that you are a relatively savvy tech-head geek. Would you be able to line up a buyer for social security or other personal information?
I'm with you as far as appreciating the present moment, but I don't understand how you feel that you can always earn a bit more money, but you might suddenly run out of time. If you run out of time, there is no way you would ever earn any more money. Or do you mean that if you run out of time, it doesn't matter if you ever earn more money?
The argument you have mentioned makes clever use of circular logic to misdirect the reader. No, it's not circular reasoning, and there is not misdirection. Goedel's theorem is recursive. No matter how powerful the system, there are always truths outside of that system. If you build a more powerful system to show the truths that the weaker system couldn't, there are more, *other* truths that the newer, more powerful system cannot show. The human is aware that there are truths that a Turing machine cannot show, but a Turing machine cannot never show that there are truths that it cannot express. It's not a trick of 'circular reasoning' as you claim.
(1) If T can prove the mathematical statements I can prove, it can use Gödel's technique just as well as me. After all, they are mathematical statements as well. This is they key. I think Goedel's theorem cannot be shown by a Turing machine. In other words, while a turing machine can do a lot of math, there is at least one kind of math that a Turing machine cannot do, but a human mathematician can.
(2) If there exists a statement that T cannot prove but I can, then T does not represent me totally. However, I can always build another Turing machine, T-Prime, that can prove everything T could prove PLUS the statement that T failed to prove. Good so far...
This machine can now be said to represent me totally. Wrong! The property of the human mind that we are interested is not the statements that you can prove that a particular Turing machine cannot, but the ability to apply Goedel's theorem to show that there are statements that a Turing machine cannot show. the Turing machine doesn't represent you because it cannot apply Goedel's theorem to itself, not that it can do all the proofs that a weaker machine couldn't. The ability to apply Goedel's theorem is the ability of the human mind that shows it is different from a Turing machine.
You can re-apply Goedel's theorem to create a statement that you can show, but the newer T cannot. Therefore, newer T is does not represent you totally. No matter what you are always capable of applying Goedel's theorem to make a statement that a Turing machine cannot. The Turing machine is incapable of applying Goedel's theorem.
I'm sure you see where this is going. If it is true that I can see where this is going, then I am not a Turing machine, because a Turing machine cannot see where this is going. I am aware ( if I were a sufficiently powerful mathematician that understands Goedel's theorem) that there will always be truths that a Turing cannot express, no matter who powerful it is; that Turing machine will never be able to show that there are truths that it cannot express. Sure, another Turing machine can expressed truths that a weaker one can't, but no Turing machine can ever show that there are truths that it itself cannot express.
Use the incompleteness theorem to go beyond the limits of this machine, build T-Prime-Prime to solve that, use the theorem once more, build T-Prime-Prime-Prime to solve that and so on. There is no end to this recursion. So, is the Turing machine able to show that there are truths that it cannot show? If not, a human can do something that a Turing machine cannot. Therefore, the mind would not be a Turing machine.
The ability that the human mind has that the Turing machine does not is the ability to perceive this recursion, to understand Goedel's theorem.
As I've explained above, it is not the human that is always one step of the Turing machine. They are not ahead or behind each other in any way. The recursion is simply infinite. I think this is the catch. The entire recursion can be conceived or expressed in the human mind, while a single Turing machine cannot show the infinite recursion. You actually have to build an infinite series of Turing machines to completely express the recursion. It seems that you are claiming that the human mind is an infinite series of Turing machines. This would mean that the mind is not a Turing machine.
Oh, maybe now I understand.What you are saying is that Goedel's theorem has nothing to do with a device that can perform the tasks of the human mind, but is a fundamentally different type of device?
However, that lecture or anything else produced by Gödel does not prove that a human can understand something that the Turing machine cannot. It does not disprove of the fact either. You are welcome to believe anything you want, but that does not change the fact that the proof simply does not exist. OK, so if the proof does not exist, what do you think of this argument? (Hilary Putnam, _Minds and Machines_) It seems pretty straightforward to me. What am I misunderstanding?
Let T be a Turing machine which "represents" me in the sense that T can prove just the mathematical statements I prove. Then using Gödel's technique I can discover a proposition that T cannot prove, and moreover I can prove this proposition. This refutes the assumption that T "represents" me, hence I am not a Turing machine. Can a Turing machine demonstrate Godel's incompleteness theorem? Can a human always stay one step ahead of a Turing machine, insofar as what propositions can be proven?
Slashdot Mirror
Some people are self-taught or learn on the job. Not everybody needs to learn from another person.
Do you *ever* see ugly people in any kind of media or presentation? Or, do you ever see ugliness in any kind of presentation that is successful?
Who would want to identify with that photo as the target audience, anyway? "Oh, I'm ugly, just like the woman in that photo. I should study harder in math!"
I always mod based on content; I hardly ever read the username. I've often gotten in arguments thinking that a replier was a different user than the grandparent, when in fact they were the same poster!
Furthermore, I've seen a lot of mod bouncing. A joke goes over someone's head, and it gets modded down. Others get the joke and mod it back up. Or, a troll makes a snarky political point that certain users agree with, and mod up the comment. Over time, the community catches up, and the post gets modded down. The system works. I have seen *tons* of literally insightful posts, interesting posts, funny posts, that were 0's. I *would* like the mod system to work, but without transparency and accountability, it never will. I disagree, but I am interested in seeing more evidence. Can you post some links to some great posts that stayed at 0? If there are tons, you could easily post 10 or so?
Personally, I am happy with missing a few gems in exchange for avoiding crap. I don't want to waste time wading through crap, I want only good stuff, and since I am pressed on time, I don't need all of them.
This is something meta-moderating doesn't address, or doesn't address sufficiently? Aren't mod points relatively limited, both in number and frequency of distribution, so that an abusive mod can't do much damage? You don't buy the argument that the editors are protecting the community from crap floods that would otherwise take a lot of mod points out of the community to offset? Are there really *that* many unfairly down-modded posts?
I agree that there might be a problem in slashdot's system with insightful or informative posts being modded down, but the genius of the system is that it really does a good job of keeping the crap out. If there has to be a trade-off, I'm willing to lose a few good posts in order not to have to wade through screens of liquid feces.
In a perfect world, I'd rather have editors doing a better job, but since the FAQ says that the editors are doing just fine, the least we could do is not mislead people into thinking there is a standard job of editing going on, in the normal/default sense of the word 'editor'
If you want community oriented tools to actually edit content wiki style or whatever Eeg! That's very tempting. I'm adding that to my to-do list right now...
Also, and I don't mean to start a flame war here, but editors have consistently gotten away with poor editing. Most recently, there has been at least threesubmissions with improper usage of the phrase 'begs the question' in the summary. They don't really edit, or at least, they are allowed to make the same editorial mistakes over and over again -- they are just mods! Admins! Title them correctly.
Basically what I'm arguing is that the community system we've created through development and usage, karma + mod points, is strong enough to handle the editing job. The proof of the ability of the community to handle editing is the high quality of comment moderation, as compared to digg. My hope is that the hose will give us a chance to satisfy the desires of a broad spectrum of users... I think I see now where you are trying to go with this. However, I think most users will use the features and functions of the default opening page, which means, they won't use these personalizing features at all. At least, that's my prediction
I first thought that the '-' was an additive tag marker, until I read your comment, then I realized it was a copy from google's search interface.
I can read articles days in advance on digg. However, digg is cluttered up with crappy "Amazing Photos! title sez it all" articles and insightful, highly rated comments such as +157 "Doucehbag [Reply] ".
I come to slashdot for the community. Not for the articles, not for the crappy non-editing that the mods-called-editors do, but for the intelligent discussion from karmalized nerds with modpoints. If the slashdot community could also have complete control of the story posting system **and summary editing**, that would be the Shangri-la of internet message boards.
...I think most people are just going to vote based on the subject alone. Is this good or bad? I think it's wonderful. In the few times I've used the firehose, I immediately canceled stories that had sensationalist or uninformative headlines ( "Amazing New Findings!" ). For the headlines that were pithy, informative, and intriguing, I went to the article ( yes, I actually navigated to the internet article ) and decided whether the story was worthwhile, appropriate for slashdot, and accurately summarized in the subject, and voted accordingly.It is true that only American citizens enjoy the rights and protections afforded by the US constitution. But you aren't totally out in the cold -- you are still protected by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, to which the US is a signatory.
I personally would like to see a decentralized, encrypted p2p network. Using PKI, we could create a system where you send an encrypted email out into the p2p network. It's passed around until it gets to its intended recipient, who has the decryption key. Since it's encrypted, nobody else can read it. Because of the PKI, you can be certain of who sent you the email, that it's really from them, and that nobody intercepted it on its way.
Now instead of just email, change this to any kind of data. Create your own username with a private key, and you can use it to get access to data directed to you on any machine connected to the PKI network.
Want anonymity? Just create another identity.
By contrast, the three main OSes available to Desktop users -- Apple, Linux and Windows -- aren't more than 15 years old. Are they really all that different from each other in terms of usefulness, as a saw is different from a hammer? Are they really as useful and singly-purposed as a chisel or screwdriver? I.E. are they all that effective in the roles they are supposed to fulfill?
I think that they are are practically identical for the general purposes of the desktop user -- internet, email, word processing and spreadsheets. Other tasks, such as website serving or video editing, are more suited to different operating systems.
No, I worked at a pawnshop for a summer. ;) Basically, they don't take anything that you couldn't sell on a street corner. They trade in commodities, not specialty items.
1) Data is salable so if someone sees tape drives they don't have to be too particularly savvy to realize that *something* of value might be on them. Well, I don't think data is that salable. You would have to have some pretty good connections to find a buyer who would trust you enough to risk buying illegal information. It's not like you can post an ad on craigslist or something. 2) Or at the VERY LEAST even a crackhead could see "ah that's something to do with computers!" and head over to the local pawn shop to get a "few bucks" (his words) for them. A crackhead might not have great long-term strategizing skills, but they know how to make a quick buck. Odd computer equipment will get you blank looks when you bring it into the computer shop. Nobody needs it, and anybody who would wouldn't go to the pawnshop looking for it. The pawnshop takes stuff like laptops ( not worthless old pentium II desktops ), car steroes, watches, gold, jewelry -- stuff that almost anyone would buy, and has high salability. Backup tapes or disks are not really salable items.
- Let people enjoy their free time. We could make the work-week something like 30-35 hours, and not expect to have the latest car, fastest computer, or bigger and bigger houses. The problem is that this creates a welfare state and re-distribution of wealth. You could argue that state employees are part of a welfare system.
- Create make-work, such as the entertainment industry A lot of the private 'industry' we have nowadays is not 'real' work. We don't need movies or CDs -- stories and singalongs have filled the role for thousands of years. A Hollywood movie, or the tire-rim industry, are just ways to use up the extra labor of people who aren't working in the fields anymore.
- Create a prison society. You can use up a lot of the extra labor by creating a lot of laws ( drug laws, driving while black ). Lock up a significant portion of the population, say, 10% of black youth, and use up some extra labor policing and imprisoning the new criminal population.
You can also do a combination of the above. There are also probably other ways to use up spare labor, this is just what I could think of off the top of my head.
... let's throw a little conspiracy angle in. OK! Wayne Madsen has a conspiracy theory that all of the data thefts are a black op to populate the Total Information Awareness database, which is itself now a black op.He maintains a chart of data thefts that shows millions of records from both public and private sources, but the chart is now on the subscription portion of the site.
I take it that you are a relatively savvy tech-head geek. Would you be able to line up a buyer for social security or other personal information?
Thanks for giving me the chance to discuss this with someone who knows what they are talking about. I will check out the book you recommend! :)
I'm with you as far as appreciating the present moment, but I don't understand how you feel that you can always earn a bit more money, but you might suddenly run out of time. If you run out of time, there is no way you would ever earn any more money. Or do you mean that if you run out of time, it doesn't matter if you ever earn more money?
You can re-apply Goedel's theorem to create a statement that you can show, but the newer T cannot. Therefore, newer T is does not represent you totally. No matter what you are always capable of applying Goedel's theorem to make a statement that a Turing machine cannot. The Turing machine is incapable of applying Goedel's theorem. I'm sure you see where this is going. If it is true that I can see where this is going, then I am not a Turing machine, because a Turing machine cannot see where this is going. I am aware ( if I were a sufficiently powerful mathematician that understands Goedel's theorem) that there will always be truths that a Turing cannot express, no matter who powerful it is; that Turing machine will never be able to show that there are truths that it cannot express. Sure, another Turing machine can expressed truths that a weaker one can't, but no Turing machine can ever show that there are truths that it itself cannot express. Use the incompleteness theorem to go beyond the limits of this machine, build T-Prime-Prime to solve that, use the theorem once more, build T-Prime-Prime-Prime to solve that and so on. There is no end to this recursion. So, is the Turing machine able to show that there are truths that it cannot show? If not, a human can do something that a Turing machine cannot. Therefore, the mind would not be a Turing machine.
The ability that the human mind has that the Turing machine does not is the ability to perceive this recursion, to understand Goedel's theorem. As I've explained above, it is not the human that is always one step of the Turing machine. They are not ahead or behind each other in any way. The recursion is simply infinite. I think this is the catch. The entire recursion can be conceived or expressed in the human mind, while a single Turing machine cannot show the infinite recursion. You actually have to build an infinite series of Turing machines to completely express the recursion. It seems that you are claiming that the human mind is an infinite series of Turing machines. This would mean that the mind is not a Turing machine.