Could it be that the universities mentioned in the article were glutting the market with students who'd never gotten very much attention from anyone other than an overworked graduate assistant?
Yes, the economy belly-flopped. But maybe the employers that are still hiring have realized that they can get the same output quality from a biology, chemistry, or English major who's taken some basic programming, can read a manual & has a decent work ethic... without paying a premium for the CS sheepskin.
For some people, a computer is a tool for doing other things, like biology or mucking around on/. It's a very fun tool to use, but it's only a tool.
Aside from theorists & engineers who really develop the tools, I've often thought majoring in CS was a bit like majoring in circular saw operation instead of carpentry.
(Not dissin' CS majors here, just expressing an idea... And yeah, I have two degrees & a doctoral minor in biology;-)
In fact, in ultra-rural Grant County, WA, where users of the County's FTTH system have affordable access to speeds of 100 Mbps in both directions, bandwidth usage has jumped more than 600 percent and upstream usage actually exceeds downstream usage. Why? The County believes that small businesses are sending substantially more information to the Internet than they are downloading, and gamers are vastly increasing their real-time usage. That's good news for rural communities that are looking for ways to keep their kids from leaving.
No doubt, the RIAA will be moving field investigators into Grant County within the week. Must be a hotbed of P2P;-)
But see-riously, wasn't one goal of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 to increase access in rural areas? Needless to say, that's not what happened. Baller's comparison of broadband access to the situation when the Rural Electrification Act was passed is valid. But telcos & electric companies are going where they get the biggest return for the least investment. Even "rural" EPAs tend to concentrate on small towns & suburbs these days -- services in the really rural areas are not much better than they were 40 years ago.
I find it funny. someone basically leaves a $5000.00 bicycle outside and is suprised that it was stolen, this should not suprise anyone espically with a high-profile item like the segway.
Even funnier that some turkey stole it. I remember ole Ed "Big Daddy" Roth explain that the reason the Beatnik Bandit (I think it was) didn't have an ignition lock was that it would be pretty hard to drive around in a stolen car with a molded fiberglass body & a bubble top without being noticed...
As my Mr. Dylan once said, "It doesn't matter inside the gates of Eden." Seems like an appropriate quote for this thread. He also noted that "Man gave names to all the animals"... Sexist ole bastrid, ain't he?
A species is just like any other category we humans create -- a human construct to make some order out of the universe. Yes, we define it in a way that can appear "real," but it's a human construct & as such, subject to whatever our current definitions of terms happen to be. But whether it's "really real" is a question for the philosophers. We could go metaphysical about this until the cows (genus Bos) come home. That said, I agree 100% that species is the only division that seems to have some measurable basis. The other taxa are purely heuristic.
Thanks for the update on Neandertals. I stand corrected:-)
[Caveat emptor: I did this from memory, there might be a mistake somewhere]
It's been a few years since I studied it, but I think it's Homo sapiens sapiens and Homo sapiens neandertalensis -- subspecies. But like I said, it's been a while.
Taxonomists fall into two groups (just like everybody else): "lumpers" and "splitters." The lumpers want to put everything into the same genus, while the splitters love subspeciation...
... or the "integrated development tools" that let any creature with an opposable thumb (and presumably capable of moving a mouse) add "interactivity" to web pages...
The personal sites are all updated during "weekend inspiration", which generally involves consumption of mass quantities, as the Coneheads would say.
It's practically impossible to tell when the average "personal web site" is functioning as intended anyway.
A system like that would have to change too often
on
Making Change
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· Score: 1
The variables determining the amount of change a customer receives are (a) the denomination with which the customer pays, (b) the store's price, and (c) sales tax.
Why don't stores simply figure sales tax into the equation when setting prices so the total due falls on larger coin denominations. Instead of "$4.99 plus tax", which in my state would be "$5.34 with tax", simply raising the price by 1 cent would reduce the change by 1 coin.
Are there really large numbers of people who think that $4.99 is significantly cheaper than $5.00?
And let's not get into the multi-decimal pricing of gasoline... I know people who burn $1.59 in gasoline simply to save $0.60 on their next 20-gallon fill-up...
To reduce change by 100%, purchase with plastic...
Blame it on the Keswick Conventions & writers like A.B. Simpson (1843-1919) who opined:
It is very sad and humbling to see the tendency of . . . those who, if they do not reject the Bible altogether, will compromise its supremacy and question its infallible authority. The Bible is either everything or nothing. Like a chain which depends upon its weakest link, if God's Word is not absolutely and completely true, it is too weak a cable to fix our anchorage and guarantee our eternal peace.
In short, the fundamentalist Christian position is that if one single bit of the Bible is demonstrated not to be totally & literally true, then the entire document is entirely & irrevocably false.
How this took off in the agrarian backwoods of 19th Century America, fed by illiteracy, xenophobia & irrelevant authority, is a whole 'nother story.
But in the 21st Century, I attribute a lot of it to intellectual flabbiness & an overwhelming tendency for people to let others do their thinking for them.
So what's the story? Am I being excluded because Google thinks I'm a blog? Or do Google's crawlers suck?
Could it be those nekkid nipples in the "Simply... Beautiful" photo?
Well, you're certainly about to get a lot more hits than you've been getting!;-D
Other photos are nice, too...
Semi-seriously, have you revisited the META keywords & descriptions on the pages? Looked kinda sparse to me... How about your robots.txt file? Anything flakey in there?
As I read it, Google isn't segregating blog content at the moment. In fact, I'm not sure they're considering it or if The Register is just blowing smoke...
On your 'myworld' page, you have a couple of paragraphs about "some aspects of the hacker community that disgust me", things like arrogance, information leeching & crime. Since Slashdot may have a slightly larger reader base than insecure.org, this could be your bully pulpit to expound a little more on that theme. Care to take a moment & tell us all how to "shape up or ship out?":-)
P.S. For everyone else, I've had the privilege to work in a small way on an information sharing project to build on Fyodor's mailing list archives & I'm here to testify that he lives up to the standards he sets.
Computer Science is as much a science as Physics or Biology.
There are plenty of folks in physics or biology who would argue you on that point, but I won't;-)
But Graham really isn't saying that computer science isn't "science" anyway. He's saying that academic "computer science" departments span a wide spectrum that includes everything from mathematics on one extreme to hacking on the other, with the "science" component more-or-less in the center. There's a lot of "art" at the hacking end of that continuum.
Graham bandies about the idea that visual art is applied science (technology) & that really isn't a novel idea.
In the end, I would have been more surprised had Graham suggested that hacking was a liberal art more akin to poetry. And I thought he was gonna go in that direction when he started in on neat indentation.
I think I've picturing GA's as being handled in a fashion more like selective livestock breeding than "evolution in the wild." And that would make sense from an economic/production standpoint, too.
P.S. Also a relief to have a couple of follow-up posters who have brains & don't live under bridges!:-D
Simple survival does not ensure that an organism will breed. Simply having a good feeding strategy or whatever doesn't ensure that an organism will breed. In fact, many species have evolved methods (colors, crests, behaviors) for attracting mates that run 100% counter to best interests of the organism's individual survival. A field trip to any singles bar will prove this point.
Are GA's set up to reproduce if they're elegantly coded? Or colorful? Or large-breasted? Is reproductive selection contingent on some random & unpredictable event in another algorithm's "life?"
You are correct that "the fitness criterion is unknown, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist". However, you have no way to predict with any accuracy whatsoever what that fitness criterion may be. In fact, it is unknowable, except ex post facto.
As I mentioned elsewhere in this topic, I can't imagine any software developer being satisfied with the outcome if s/he started out to develop an adaptive image compression algorithm but came out with a control system for a fuel injector.
And the word for the day is...
on
Digital Darwin
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· Score: 1
This may come as a shock to readers who aren't trained in biological sciences, but we presume that nature does not "begin with the end in mind." Thus, a "genetic" algorithm only loosely follows genetics, because there is some assumption about "fitness" (i.e., a particular purpose for the alogorithm) that nature never makes about a biological system.
I'm not sure what the correct semantics might be -- "self modifying algorithm" or "self evaluating, self modifying algorithm" or whatever -- but "genetic" ain't it.
Note that in his later works (e.g., "Descent of Man"), Darwin floated the concept of sexual selection, aka "survival of the sexiest." Simply put, no matter how cool & useful your new mutation may be, if you don't breed, ultimately you die & your mutation vanishes. Applying this concept to fitness-testing a "genetic" algorithm might be pretty interesting...
I think that's the missing ingredient in "genetic" algorithms -- if the algo does what it (teleologically) is supposed to do it survives, whether or not it attracts a cute algo of the opposite gender & begets a litter of fuzzy logic.
Re:forget the anti-evolution argument
on
Digital Darwin
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· Score: 1
having just successfully completed an undergraduate project in which i have used genetic algorithms to achieve full adaptive image compression
The real twist is that genetics in the context of evolution doesn't strive to "achieve" anything other than survival of the gene. It simply puts out a product & natural selection determines if it works & survives.
This is, IMO, the big difference between so-called "genetic" computer algorithms & biological evolution. Evolution doesn't have an end in mind. And the results can be very novel. You might "want" adaptive image compression & wind up with code for controlling sequential port fuel injectors.
Applying the general principles to a system where we expect a particular result just ain't the same thing.
As far as creating a system that mutates a sequence of 12-bit code (which is what I think a codon would be), probably a good many/.istas could kludge that in an afternoon. Do I smell a grant application brewing?
Re:Swift, merciless, brutal death is required
on
Prince of Pop-ups
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· Score: 1
No, the correct course of action is to place large speakers outside his house playing audio that cannot be turned off 24 hours a day until he shoots himself.
This is known as the Noreiga attack.
On a more pacific front, surely we have/.ers with access to backhoes who will be willing to cut the phone lines to this guy's home, business, etc. Shouldn't be too hard to locate -- look for a T1 line running under a rock.
I kept reading the guys name as "Brian Shyster"...
Here, Brian. This is an axe. Here, Brian. This is the goose that popped up the golden eggs. The chopping block is over there. Get to work. PLEASE!
If I read the original article right, this Shyster guy claims to have built a "$100 million business" selling a "product" (porn) that is illegal for over-the-counter sales in many communities using questionable & possibly fraudulent methods. And he's going to be convincing mainstream businesses to license his "technology"? Gimme a break!
No, don't give me a break. American business is driven by marketing morons these daze -- anything's possible. As ol' Forrest said, "Stupid is as stupid does."
So, is Shyster filing a complaint with Sun for distributing JavaScript? I mean, they are aiding & abetting infringement on his pop-up "patent"...
Slashdot Mirror
Could it be that the universities mentioned in the article were glutting the market with students who'd never gotten very much attention from anyone other than an overworked graduate assistant?
Yes, the economy belly-flopped. But maybe the employers that are still hiring have realized that they can get the same output quality from a biology, chemistry, or English major who's taken some basic programming, can read a manual & has a decent work ethic ... without paying a premium for the CS sheepskin.
For some people, a computer is a tool for doing other things, like biology or mucking around on /. It's a very fun tool to use, but it's only a tool.
Aside from theorists & engineers who really develop the tools, I've often thought majoring in CS was a bit like majoring in circular saw operation instead of carpentry.
(Not dissin' CS majors here, just expressing an idea... And yeah, I have two degrees & a doctoral minor in biology ;-)
The answer is, "If they had electricity & phones in 1960, they do now. If they didn't then, the odds are they still don't."
But see-riously, wasn't one goal of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 to increase access in rural areas? Needless to say, that's not what happened. Baller's comparison of broadband access to the situation when the Rural Electrification Act was passed is valid. But telcos & electric companies are going where they get the biggest return for the least investment. Even "rural" EPAs tend to concentrate on small towns & suburbs these days -- services in the really rural areas are not much better than they were 40 years ago.
The high-tech redneck,
... the way the Alpha Betas treated the Tri-Lambs in "Revenge of the Nerds"?
Even funnier that some turkey stole it. I remember ole Ed "Big Daddy" Roth explain that the reason the Beatnik Bandit (I think it was) didn't have an ignition lock was that it would be pretty hard to drive around in a stolen car with a molded fiberglass body & a bubble top without being noticed...
I do seem to recall reading that there we a fair number of gay bonobos...
A species is just like any other category we humans create -- a human construct to make some order out of the universe. Yes, we define it in a way that can appear "real," but it's a human construct & as such, subject to whatever our current definitions of terms happen to be. But whether it's "really real" is a question for the philosophers. We could go metaphysical about this until the cows (genus Bos) come home. That said, I agree 100% that species is the only division that seems to have some measurable basis. The other taxa are purely heuristic.
Thanks for the update on Neandertals. I stand corrected :-)
It's been a few years since I studied it, but I think it's Homo sapiens sapiens and Homo sapiens neandertalensis -- subspecies. But like I said, it's been a while.
Taxonomists fall into two groups (just like everybody else): "lumpers" and "splitters." The lumpers want to put everything into the same genus, while the splitters love subspeciation...
Does anybody else find this repetitive and redundant?
It should have been edited to "Humans are the only living extant species in the genus Homo, currently at this time."
... or the "integrated development tools" that let any creature with an opposable thumb (and presumably capable of moving a mouse) add "interactivity" to web pages ...
The personal sites are all updated during "weekend inspiration", which generally involves consumption of mass quantities, as the Coneheads would say.
It's practically impossible to tell when the average "personal web site" is functioning as intended anyway.
Why don't stores simply figure sales tax into the equation when setting prices so the total due falls on larger coin denominations. Instead of "$4.99 plus tax", which in my state would be "$5.34 with tax", simply raising the price by 1 cent would reduce the change by 1 coin.
Are there really large numbers of people who think that $4.99 is significantly cheaper than $5.00?
And let's not get into the multi-decimal pricing of gasoline... I know people who burn $1.59 in gasoline simply to save $0.60 on their next 20-gallon fill-up...
To reduce change by 100%, purchase with plastic...
How this took off in the agrarian backwoods of 19th Century America, fed by illiteracy, xenophobia & irrelevant authority, is a whole 'nother story.
But in the 21st Century, I attribute a lot of it to intellectual flabbiness & an overwhelming tendency for people to let others do their thinking for them.
Might I propose a suit against Mr Felstein for bandwidth theft, loss of productivity & embarrassing stains in the in-box?
Well, you're certainly about to get a lot more hits than you've been getting! ;-D
Other photos are nice, too...
Semi-seriously, have you revisited the META keywords & descriptions on the pages? Looked kinda sparse to me... How about your robots.txt file? Anything flakey in there?
As I read it, Google isn't segregating blog content at the moment. In fact, I'm not sure they're considering it or if The Register is just blowing smoke...
P.S. For everyone else, I've had the privilege to work in a small way on an information sharing project to build on Fyodor's mailing list archives & I'm here to testify that he lives up to the standards he sets.
For the utterly benighted, here's a little primer: Thomas Kuhn
But Graham really isn't saying that computer science isn't "science" anyway. He's saying that academic "computer science" departments span a wide spectrum that includes everything from mathematics on one extreme to hacking on the other, with the "science" component more-or-less in the center. There's a lot of "art" at the hacking end of that continuum.
Graham bandies about the idea that visual art is applied science (technology) & that really isn't a novel idea.
In the end, I would have been more surprised had Graham suggested that hacking was a liberal art more akin to poetry. And I thought he was gonna go in that direction when he started in on neat indentation.
I think I've picturing GA's as being handled in a fashion more like selective livestock breeding than "evolution in the wild." And that would make sense from an economic/production standpoint, too.
P.S. Also a relief to have a couple of follow-up posters who have brains & don't live under bridges! :-D
Simple survival does not ensure that an organism will breed. Simply having a good feeding strategy or whatever doesn't ensure that an organism will breed. In fact, many species have evolved methods (colors, crests, behaviors) for attracting mates that run 100% counter to best interests of the organism's individual survival. A field trip to any singles bar will prove this point.
Are GA's set up to reproduce if they're elegantly coded? Or colorful? Or large-breasted? Is reproductive selection contingent on some random & unpredictable event in another algorithm's "life?"
You are correct that "the fitness criterion is unknown, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist". However, you have no way to predict with any accuracy whatsoever what that fitness criterion may be. In fact, it is unknowable, except ex post facto.
As I mentioned elsewhere in this topic, I can't imagine any software developer being satisfied with the outcome if s/he started out to develop an adaptive image compression algorithm but came out with a control system for a fuel injector.
This may come as a shock to readers who aren't trained in biological sciences, but we presume that nature does not "begin with the end in mind." Thus, a "genetic" algorithm only loosely follows genetics, because there is some assumption about "fitness" (i.e., a particular purpose for the alogorithm) that nature never makes about a biological system.
I'm not sure what the correct semantics might be -- "self modifying algorithm" or "self evaluating, self modifying algorithm" or whatever -- but "genetic" ain't it.
Note that in his later works (e.g., "Descent of Man"), Darwin floated the concept of sexual selection, aka "survival of the sexiest." Simply put, no matter how cool & useful your new mutation may be, if you don't breed, ultimately you die & your mutation vanishes. Applying this concept to fitness-testing a "genetic" algorithm might be pretty interesting...
I think that's the missing ingredient in "genetic" algorithms -- if the algo does what it (teleologically) is supposed to do it survives, whether or not it attracts a cute algo of the opposite gender & begets a litter of fuzzy logic.
This is, IMO, the big difference between so-called "genetic" computer algorithms & biological evolution. Evolution doesn't have an end in mind. And the results can be very novel. You might "want" adaptive image compression & wind up with code for controlling sequential port fuel injectors.
Applying the general principles to a system where we expect a particular result just ain't the same thing.
As far as creating a system that mutates a sequence of 12-bit code (which is what I think a codon would be), probably a good many /.istas could kludge that in an afternoon. Do I smell a grant application brewing?
Here, Brian. This is an axe. Here, Brian. This is the goose that popped up the golden eggs. The chopping block is over there. Get to work. PLEASE!
If I read the original article right, this Shyster guy claims to have built a "$100 million business" selling a "product" (porn) that is illegal for over-the-counter sales in many communities using questionable & possibly fraudulent methods. And he's going to be convincing mainstream businesses to license his "technology"? Gimme a break!
No, don't give me a break. American business is driven by marketing morons these daze -- anything's possible. As ol' Forrest said, "Stupid is as stupid does."
So, is Shyster filing a complaint with Sun for distributing JavaScript? I mean, they are aiding & abetting infringement on his pop-up "patent"...