"... it's quite evident that we've not only approached but started down a slippery slope.
I prefer to think in terms of approaching and starting up the slippery slope of liberty... rather like the labors of Sisyphus. The bad guys keep making the slope steeper and slipperier... and the damned rock heavier....
I bought a power saw once, tried to saw my arm off, and not a scratch. So I took it right back and told the people at the store to give me one that could saw my arm off.
It works both ways. I once bought a plumber's helper -- and the damned thing blasted the sewer main and sent every manhole cover fifty feet into the air for miles around. Guess I should've gotten the home-use model....
Reminds me of ads in trade journals for various database products, showing a picture of a non-geek executive getting amazing results from the product, with a slogan that amounts to "Simple Yet Powerful!"
If it's that simple, it's not powerful.
If it's powerful, it's not simple. (Furthermore, it's not really powerful if you can't hurt yourself with it. A power saw that won't saw your arm off isn't much of a power saw; same as power-tool software.)
If offshoring is so simple... is it that powerful?
... Probably, which is a bummer for American programmers like me. Welcome to the modern world, I guess. Still... I expect the foes of offshoring to exercise due diligence in the discovery of hidden costs.
Summary of the competition principles, from the NSF web site:
"Photographs, pictorial and diagrammatic illustrations, computer graphics, and animations are now an essential aspect of communicating research findings. These new avenues prompt discussion of different techniques, and encourage innovative approaches to visual communication. This competition was created to reward these new techniques and ways of communicating."
It's interesting that the ancients were well aquainted with and made extensive use of similar principles of communication, in the form of mnemonic metaphors used by orators:
"In the ancient Greek arts of rhetoric, memory was a science. The science has an origin in what is surely myth. The poet Simonides of Ceos was hired by the noble Scopas to attend a formal banquet as a paid performer, singing a poem of praise of his host. As was the custom, Simonides began by first praising a pair of gods. After the performance, Scopas informed the poet that he would only get half of the agreed-upon fee, the other half he should get from the gods who had stolen the limelight.
"At that point, a messenger came in and told Simonides that a couple of athletic men on horseback were outside waiting for him. Simonides went outside, but nobody was there. But, while he was outside, the gods destroyed the banquet hall to teach Scopas a few lessons about respect. (The lessons being pay the poet; don't mess with the gods; and, memory palaces are a gift from above.)
"The banquet hall was so badly destroyed that none of the diners could be recognized. Simonides was able to remember the exact location of every guest at the banquet, using the principles of the Method of Loci, the science of memory. Later, Cicero (106-43 B.C.) wrote a few pages on the science in his classic work, De Oratore. [See De Oratore, II. lxxxvi. 350- 353]. The definitive treatment in Greek literature, however, is the work of an unknown author previously attributed to Cicero in the classic work Ad Herennium.
"The principles of the science are fairly simple, at least using our modern hindsight. A person who wished to memorize a large work, say an address after dinner or the closing argument of a legal proceeding, would begin by constructing a memory palace. While novices constructed a palace by going to a real one and memorizing the rooms, the memory palace could just as easily be any structure that can be imagined."
The Chilean events get a mention in John Brunner's excellent novel The Shockwave Rider (Ballantine, 1975):
When the short-lived Allende government was elected to power in Chile and needed a means of balancing that unfortunate country's precarious economy, Allende appealed to the British cyberntics expert Stafford Beer.
Who announced that as few as ten significant quantities, reported from a handful of key locations where adequate communications facilities existed, would enable the state of the economy to be reviewed and adjusted on a day-to-day basis.
Judging by what happened subsequently, his claim infuriated nearly as many people as did the news that there are only four elements in the human genetic code.
"One thing is for certain, there is no stopping them; the tags will soon be here. And I, for one, welcome our new radio-frequency overlords. I'd like to remind them that as a trusted TV personality, I can be helpful in rounding up others to toil in their returned-goods and overstock caves."
Remember oliver, the electronic personality extender predicted by Alvin Toffler in "Future Shock"...?
There's an interesting passage about olivers in John Brunner's excellent novel, "The Shockwave Rider":
"... so-called olivers, electronic alter-egos designed to save the owner the strain of worrying about all his person-to-person contacts. A sort of twenty-first-century counterpart to the ancient Roman nomenclator, who discreetly whispered data into the ear of the emperor and endowed him with the reputation of a phenomenal memory." (pp. 41-42)
Any know the OS of choice for drug cartels? I have no idea, but I assume that a lot of computing power is involved in running a covert multi-billion-dollar international corporation....
Proteins deformed by heat can also have the geometric properties of prions. There is some truth to the fact that cooking food is not always very healthy.
Specifically, the geometric properties of deformed prions (as opposed to normal prions).
Of course, it would be nice to know how these broken prions manage to duplicate themselves, almost analog to the cancer cells.
Something to do with the protein geometry... the deformed prions cause deformation of nearby normal prions.
Why does it happen in the first place? Various causes:
* Mutation -- about one person in a million gets CJD spontaneously.
* Heredity -- some people pass on the gene.
* Ingestion -- eating deformed prions (e.g. Mad Cow).
But prions, as far as I know (I might be grossly misinformed) are not living organisms. In fact, they don't rreally multiply at all, do they?
Prions are not alive. They are proteins, naturally occuring in the brain. Prions can become deformed -- same molecule, different geometry -- and this 'rogue' version causes deformation of nearby normal prions. It's not a living organism, yet the effect is infectious.
"Prions are proteins that occur in the brains of all mammals so far studied. The normal function of prion proteins is not understood, but recent research on mice that lack the PrP gene -- which encodes the prion protein -- suggest that it protects the brain against dementia and other degenerative problems associated with old age. Sometimes, 'rogue' prions are produced by genetic mutations. This explains why some cases of CJD in humans are inherited."
Just wait till someone finds a living creature that can withstand several hundred degrees..... it'd have a real chance of surviving a fire..... now that would be scary.
Prions -- the deformed proteins responsible for Mad Cow, CJD, and related spongiform encephalopathies -- can survive autoclaving (steam at high pressure).
Autoclaved surgical instruments (e.g. eye-surgery scalpels) have been found to transmit CJD between patients. This means that the tiniest trace of protein on a knife blade isn't denatured.
Slashdot Mirror
... a device that creates unlimited amounts of electrical energy from common household dirt.
You must not be married: if you were, you'd know that the spark goes out, and there'd better not be any dirt in the house.
Maybe we should all start to think about jumping ship?
What, into the raging sea? But I can't swim!
A better idea: let's all hang ourselves.
I believe that picture shows Feynman a conga drum, rather than the smaller bongo drum.
If I were an alien, and observed your species making sculptural encryptions, I'd probably laugh.
" ... it's quite evident that we've not only approached but started down a slippery slope.
... rather like the labors of Sisyphus. The bad guys keep making the slope steeper and slipperier ... and the damned rock heavier ....
I prefer to think in terms of approaching and starting up the slippery slope of liberty
i heard that microsoft is doing a lot of hiring now
yeah but are they turning dateless geeks into millionaires?
I bought a power saw once, tried to saw my arm off, and not a scratch. So I took it right back and told the people at the store to give me one that could saw my arm off.
....
It works both ways. I once bought a plumber's helper -- and the damned thing blasted the sewer main and sent every manhole cover fifty feet into the air for miles around. Guess I should've gotten the home-use model
Reminds me of ads in trade journals for various database products, showing a picture of a non-geek executive getting amazing results from the product, with a slogan that amounts to "Simple Yet Powerful!"
If it's that simple, it's not powerful.
If it's powerful, it's not simple. (Furthermore, it's not really powerful if you can't hurt yourself with it. A power saw that won't saw your arm off isn't much of a power saw; same as power-tool software.)
If offshoring is so simple
Me Zog, cousin of Og.
Og funny, make Zog laugh!
If it's a powerful gyroscope, I can drink enough to fall over, yet stand upright while making a phone call -- !
I think it'll be shipping with a tie-in promotional product, like a bottle of KC Masterpiece BBQ Sauce."
If they rename the product "Shorthair", maybe it will ship with a promotional bottle of BBQ flavor K-Y jelly.
Instead of calling it "Longhorn",
I think they should call it "Shorthair",
as in the phrase,
"We've got you by the short hairs now."
"One thing is for certain, there is no stopping them; the tags will soon be here. And I, for one, welcome our new radio-frequency overlords. I'd like to remind them that as a trusted TV personality, I can be helpful in rounding up others to toil in their returned-goods and overstock caves."
Remember oliver, the electronic personality extender predicted by Alvin Toffler in "Future Shock"
There's an interesting passage about olivers in John Brunner's excellent novel, "The Shockwave Rider":
"... so-called olivers, electronic alter-egos designed to save the owner the strain of worrying about all his person-to-person contacts. A sort of twenty-first-century counterpart to the ancient Roman nomenclator, who discreetly whispered data into the ear of the emperor and endowed him with the reputation of a phenomenal memory." (pp. 41-42)
Any know the OS of choice for drug cartels? I have no idea, but I assume that a lot of computing power is involved in running a covert multi-billion-dollar international corporation
"One thing is certain: the exoskeletons will soon be here. And I for one welcome our new geriatric overlords
Proteins deformed by heat can also have the geometric properties of prions. There is some truth to the fact that cooking food is not always very healthy.
Specifically, the geometric properties of deformed prions (as opposed to normal prions).
One of the guys who did the work:
Professor Alan Heavens
Of course, it would be nice to know how these broken prions manage to duplicate themselves, almost analog to the cancer cells.
... the deformed prions cause deformation of nearby normal prions.
Something to do with the protein geometry
Why does it happen in the first place? Various causes:
* Mutation -- about one person in a million gets CJD spontaneously. * Heredity -- some people pass on the gene. * Ingestion -- eating deformed prions (e.g. Mad Cow).
Prions are not alive. They are proteins, naturally occuring in the brain. Prions can become deformed -- same molecule, different geometry -- and this 'rogue' version causes deformation of nearby normal prions. It's not a living organism, yet the effect is infectious. The situation is not well understood, and there is considerable debate about the nature of prions, spongiform encephalopathies, etc.:
Just wait till someone finds a living creature that can withstand several hundred degrees ..... it'd have a real chance of surviving a fire ..... now that would be scary.
Prions -- the deformed proteins responsible for Mad Cow, CJD, and related spongiform encephalopathies -- can survive autoclaving (steam at high pressure).
Autoclaved surgical instruments (e.g. eye-surgery scalpels) have been found to transmit CJD between patients. This means that the tiniest trace of protein on a knife blade isn't denatured.
"In the age of weighted rankings on search engines for profits, there's an obvious need for an unbiased search engine."
Bias is inevitable -- we're talking about ranking, which necessarily means bias.
The question is: what bias do you want? What bias suits your purposes?
My ideal search engine would offer a variety of biases from which to pick.
"Like rats from a sinking ship, these are the days of our lives