TFA says it was probably 'Homo Antecessor'. Wether a particular species of ape is called human or not seems to depend on the hips and skull, AFAIK all apes that walked upright are commonly referred to as humans (or proto-humans) by archaeologists. The rest of us call them "ape men".
Yes, Homo Sapiens (proper humans) first appeared about 200kya. However there were other species of "humans" well before that, they too originated from Africa and walked upright. The ice ages regularly pushed the spread of all primates back toward the equator.
Also if you (gasp) RTFA it tells you that the prints were probably left by Homo Antecessor, (pioneer man), sadly the prints were washed away 2 weeks after they were discovered so we can never know for sure.
Yes, but it's also about how you win, the English have a phrase "that's not cricket", it means that a certain behaviour may be technically within the rules but a real sportsman would never stoop so low. Someone who "wins" by those taboo methods never stays on top for very long since "the game" will simply ostracise them for bad behaviour. Of course in a political setting "bad behaviour" is often a euphemism meaning someone has a nuclear missile pointed at your head.
You have stated the intent is to impose a cost to the "charity" under the guise of a donation. What's worse you are conspiring with others in an effort to amplify the damages. The key moral here is the "charity" is innocent until proven guilty, and even if proven guilty, it's not your place to orchestrate financial punishment via deceit.
Yeah right, Mr Fat Cat banker has nothing better to do than to personally monitor petty cash transactions to and from local politicians. These kind of decisions are made by a computer, middle class humans are employed to rubber stamp the "yes" decisions and explain the "no" decisions.
The GP did however hit the nail on the head when he said the people who engage in this behaviour see themselves as victims. Also from the distant vantage point of Australia it does seem to me that this sort of thing is more typical of the right-wing than the left in the US, perhaps that's because from this far away the US right-wing is seen thru the prism of it's god awful mouthpiece - Fox news? Having said that the level of vitriol and misinformation in US political advertising from all sides is disheartening, the bland acceptance of this behaviour by the free press is just downright dangerous.
Senator Inhofe did something similar with his infamous anti-AGW petition signed by "35,000 scientists", he dressed it up to look remarkably similar to a National Academies survey. Like this guy, the vast majority of scientists on that petition were swayed by NAS's reputation and signed without sufficient scrutiny, they also feel they have been the victim of fraud.
None of the victims are "stupid", they are human and all humans have imperfect bullshit detectors.
The Lion King was actually based on a documentary about Lion behaviour which bears some resemblance to the political behaviour of medieval nobility. A lion cub's uncle will most definitely try and kill it. It has nothing to do with the cub being an "ugly duckling", the uncle wants to kill them so that he has a better chance to impregnate the lioness and have her rear his own cubs. Of course if his brother finds him lurking around one of his girlfriends then he will be mightily pissed off. Hyenas are direct competition, most predators will attempt to drive weaker competitors out of their territory, Hyenas are no exception and will kill a lion cub or an isolated adult.
OTOH: The ugly duckling is about a bird that is ridiculed and bullied for it's strange appearance as a child but grows up to be a beautiful adult. Birds do not behave like that, humans do. A bird will happily raise a cuckoo chick, even though the chick looks nothing like it's own offspring.
Mind you, even at it's worst, visual/graphical programming is still a lot more useful than Beta.
GP is good for laying out graphical interfaces and that's about it. The logic that goes behind the interface is rarely of a visual nature, so GP is not the right tool for the "guts" of most applications. A more "natural" way to code the "guts" is the "recipe" abstraction...step1, step2, etc.
The "problem" here is that coding (of any kind) is an abstraction, at the end of the day everything a computer does must be reduced to AND, OR, and NOT gates. When you start combining them into discrete tools (such as an adder), the type problems that tool can solve are less general than the base Boolean algebra. By time you have accumulated enough abstraction layers to get to a graphical screen painting tool, the range of problems that tool can solve is very narrow.
Watson is indeed revolutionary, it breaks the above generalization and is very close to what I think people like the submitter really want from a computer interface. Something that will understand what they want,, they do not want to spend years trying to understand what the computer "wants"
BTW: Watson will soon be sitting the US medical license exam and is expected to do well. IBM are also starting to rent instances of Watson to third party developers ( along with the mandatory(?) phalanx of expensive consultants that will help you build your application ). It really will "change the world" in the next decade or so, even more radically than CAD/CAM has changed manufacturing and engineering in the last couple of decades. In a very real sense IBM have built something akin to the ancient Greek "Oracle", lets hope it works out better for us than it did in the story.
I don't code and I don't study user interface design, so I'm not qualified to offer reasons why the beta is bad. I'm just a user.
On the contrary, the user is the most qualified person to comment on the useability of the service, the more exposure the user has had to competing services (including prior versions) the more valuable their opinion is. Disclaimer: I code for a living and formally studied UI design at tertiary level some 20 odd years ago. In my professional opinion BETA SUCKS! (like many other "professionals" who lurk around here, I gave my helpful comments in the original survey)
There's also the historical perspective, today we still have one of the 12 colossus computers built during WW2, but only because Churchill's order to destroy them was not fully carried out. Slashdot is a significant part of internet history, if they are going to significantly alter that then at least donate the existing site and comment archive to someone who would care for it (eg: Smithsonian, national archives, etc)
I don't think yelling abuse is going to change the world and nobody enjoys being threatened but having said that dice would be wise to withdraw the beta and explain what the problem is with the existing site. If there really is a serious financial or technical problem for dice then perhaps the expertise in the Slashdot user base could help solve it.
As an example of that historical notability I cite the restoration of the Betchley park, Slashdot and its users were IMO instrumental of raising awareness (and cash) to highlight the shabby treatment of the site by authorities. The same people who posted the initial Slashdot story about the disgraceful neglect were also responsible for the campaign to formerly pardon Alan Turing. The gay community have welcomed the official pardon and are now demanding an official pardon for the thousands of other homosexuals who were chemically castrated. They may get it too, with the publicity surrounding Turing's pardon the UK has suddenly found new pride in their pioneering contribution to the computer industry and a clear recognition that attitudes towards homosexuals have changed (at least in the UK).
The Victorian police publish the locations of their cameras, they have done so for a number of years under both left and right wing state governments. Also every cop car is fitted with mobile radar that can record the speed of oncoming cars. As for flashing lights, it's almost mandatory these days, I do it myself to warn others to check their speed but few drivers would warn someone who is recklessly speeding, personally I only do it to "hoons" when there are no cops ahead;).
At the end of the day advertising the locations via the web (or flashing lights) increases the effectiveness of cameras, and adds weight to the claim that the goal is to prevent speeding. The road signs we have here that say "red light camera ahead" make people think twice about racing the amber, a secret red-light camera merely records who caused the inevitable pile up.
When I was a kid in the 60's we had specific "library classes" where we learnt how to research an arbitrary topic using a library. This class has been largely replaced by the "computer class", in both cases the important lessons are about "how to research", the specific tools you use in school will likely be largely forgotten by society when you're an adult. Dewey decimal anyone?
Modern life demands a certain level of computer literacy, public schools should provide that and offer a path to more advanced levels. Faimiliarity with the "big four" (word processors, spreadsheets, databases, browsers) comes under basic computer literacy in my book.
As a degree qulified software developer with 20+yrs in the industry I say with all sincerity that if you know how to use formulas in a spreadsheet, then you already know "how to code", like playing a piano the rest is mostly style and practice.
I was a big fan of doom but have been hooked on WoT for the last couple of years, their engine is good but nothing special these days. What makes WoT a beutiful game to look at is the art, good art art is more about fooling the eye than it is about faithfully reproducing details.
The US does a lot of silly things, intervening to prevent the banks from collapsing like dominoes in 2008 was not one of them. Letting the banks fail is what happened in the 1930's, doing the same thing in 2008 would have sunk the US into a deep depression rather than a mere recession. Lining up for bread just isn't as much fun as lining up for the new iThingy.
And yes, it is a "stacked deck", but for sound reasons. Without a stable banking system a modern economy simply does not work. Allowing individual banks to fail in the course of normal business is fine, their assets will be absorbed into the system by successful banks, what happened in 2008 threatened the entire system, ALL US banks were in danger of failing, regardless of their individual behaviour.
the winners are pre-ordained.
Nobody wins when the financial system is allowed to collapse. I hate banks as much as the next person but in the globalised financial system we have created the alternatives are even less attractive. The banking system is a public institution, the great depression painfully demonstrated it cannot be run like a corner store.
I don't mind my government creating (discrete) residential dumping grounds that will be repurposed as parks when full, however I do have a problem when they turn existing parks into dumping grounds.
The reason they don't dump tonnes of rubble in residential zones is because the land is more valuable as real estate than a dumping ground, and millions of tonnes of rubble takes up a whole lotta space.
Sound logic, I'm an Aussie taxpayer and I think a marine park is more valuable as a breeding ground for fish than a private dumping ground for Senator Clive Palmer's unwanted land fill.
The balance of power in the senate is unclear after the recent election, but "billionaire miner" and newly minted federal Senator, Clive Palmer has collected a few oddball independent senators under his "PUP" party banner. Their oddball nature is what makes the balance uncertain, also AFAIK there is nothing in writing, it's been all press talks where Palmer did most of the talking. However, what is clear is that if the oddballs remain loyal to Palmer, then Palmer holds all the cards. In essence he will have the "umpire" vote whenever the major parties disagree.
Now here's the unsurprising news about the money trail - The project we are discussing is a joint venture between "mining magnates" Gina Reinhart, and you guessed it, Senator Clive Palmer.
I'm sure they can find somewhere suitable.
Yes, and that place is the open ocean beyond the reef or as clean landfill, but "doing the right thing" would mean Clive and Gina (world's richest woman) would have to spend the money they thought they could save by socialising the risks involved.
At the end of the day it's really quite simple, parks are not created for use as cheap landfill sites for the mining industry, why such an application would even be considered is beyond me. Worse still if the government were to reverse the decision, they will probably be sued for the extra costs and several million mugs like me will end up paying their costs anyway.
Clear water is essential since coral needs sunlight to survive. You won't get a tropical reef without mangroves, mangroves hold the silt in place at the river mouth and keep the reef water clear. They are so effective as a filter for fine particulate matter that they clean the filthy outflow from the Ganges and provide the crystal clear waters where some spectacular reefs can be found. These people are building the largest coal port in the world, it's a $30 billion project. This site was chosen because it was cheap and convenient, I don't think a few extra bucks to dump it in deep water off the continental shelf is too much to ask given the perceived risk to the tourist and fishing industries that rely on a healthy reef.
The silt found in the dumping area is not "already in the water", it's on the sea bed. It's only a problem to coral if someone stirs it up to the point it starts blocking sunlight.
In this specific case it's actually sand mixed with fine silt, it's clean but silt is a problem for coral, it needs clear water or it will die from insufficient sunlight. Having said that there is no coral at the dumping site, but there's plenty nearby and oceans have currents and storms that will move it around. It would have been much simpler to sail the barges a bit further out to open water off the continental shelf and dump it in the open ocean, but that would have cost a few more dollars so instead they lobby the feds to gain permission to vandalise the reef.
This new government has a vindictive ideological grudge against environmental issues, they are also planning to open up 70-something thousand hectares of world heritage forest in Tasmania to logging. Despite the fact that after decades of wrangling, loggers and environment groups agreed on a peace deal last year that included a ban on logging in that forest. Forestry is a major part of Tasmania's economy, nobody on either side of that long and arduous fight wants to reignite the divisive issue except the new federal government.
Slashdot Mirror
It would have been H. erectus
TFA says it was probably 'Homo Antecessor'. Wether a particular species of ape is called human or not seems to depend on the hips and skull, AFAIK all apes that walked upright are commonly referred to as humans (or proto-humans) by archaeologists. The rest of us call them "ape men".
"The Earth does not need saving, we do" - George Carlin.
Yes, Homo Sapiens (proper humans) first appeared about 200kya. However there were other species of "humans" well before that, they too originated from Africa and walked upright. The ice ages regularly pushed the spread of all primates back toward the equator.
Also if you (gasp) RTFA it tells you that the prints were probably left by Homo Antecessor, (pioneer man), sadly the prints were washed away 2 weeks after they were discovered so we can never know for sure.
Yes, but it's also about how you win, the English have a phrase "that's not cricket", it means that a certain behaviour may be technically within the rules but a real sportsman would never stoop so low. Someone who "wins" by those taboo methods never stays on top for very long since "the game" will simply ostracise them for bad behaviour. Of course in a political setting "bad behaviour" is often a euphemism meaning someone has a nuclear missile pointed at your head.
I'm unclear how that is fraud.
You have stated the intent is to impose a cost to the "charity" under the guise of a donation. What's worse you are conspiring with others in an effort to amplify the damages. The key moral here is the "charity" is innocent until proven guilty, and even if proven guilty, it's not your place to orchestrate financial punishment via deceit.
Yeah right, Mr Fat Cat banker has nothing better to do than to personally monitor petty cash transactions to and from local politicians. These kind of decisions are made by a computer, middle class humans are employed to rubber stamp the "yes" decisions and explain the "no" decisions.
The GP did however hit the nail on the head when he said the people who engage in this behaviour see themselves as victims. Also from the distant vantage point of Australia it does seem to me that this sort of thing is more typical of the right-wing than the left in the US, perhaps that's because from this far away the US right-wing is seen thru the prism of it's god awful mouthpiece - Fox news? Having said that the level of vitriol and misinformation in US political advertising from all sides is disheartening, the bland acceptance of this behaviour by the free press is just downright dangerous.
Senator Inhofe did something similar with his infamous anti-AGW petition signed by "35,000 scientists", he dressed it up to look remarkably similar to a National Academies survey. Like this guy, the vast majority of scientists on that petition were swayed by NAS's reputation and signed without sufficient scrutiny, they also feel they have been the victim of fraud.
None of the victims are "stupid", they are human and all humans have imperfect bullshit detectors.
The Lion King was actually based on a documentary about Lion behaviour which bears some resemblance to the political behaviour of medieval nobility. A lion cub's uncle will most definitely try and kill it. It has nothing to do with the cub being an "ugly duckling", the uncle wants to kill them so that he has a better chance to impregnate the lioness and have her rear his own cubs. Of course if his brother finds him lurking around one of his girlfriends then he will be mightily pissed off. Hyenas are direct competition, most predators will attempt to drive weaker competitors out of their territory, Hyenas are no exception and will kill a lion cub or an isolated adult.
OTOH: The ugly duckling is about a bird that is ridiculed and bullied for it's strange appearance as a child but grows up to be a beautiful adult. Birds do not behave like that, humans do. A bird will happily raise a cuckoo chick, even though the chick looks nothing like it's own offspring.
Mind you, even at it's worst, visual/graphical programming is still a lot more useful than Beta.
GP is good for laying out graphical interfaces and that's about it. The logic that goes behind the interface is rarely of a visual nature, so GP is not the right tool for the "guts" of most applications. A more "natural" way to code the "guts" is the "recipe" abstraction...step1, step2, etc.
The "problem" here is that coding (of any kind) is an abstraction, at the end of the day everything a computer does must be reduced to AND, OR, and NOT gates. When you start combining them into discrete tools (such as an adder), the type problems that tool can solve are less general than the base Boolean algebra. By time you have accumulated enough abstraction layers to get to a graphical screen painting tool, the range of problems that tool can solve is very narrow.
Watson is indeed revolutionary, it breaks the above generalization and is very close to what I think people like the submitter really want from a computer interface. Something that will understand what they want,, they do not want to spend years trying to understand what the computer "wants"
BTW: Watson will soon be sitting the US medical license exam and is expected to do well. IBM are also starting to rent instances of Watson to third party developers ( along with the mandatory(?) phalanx of expensive consultants that will help you build your application ). It really will "change the world" in the next decade or so, even more radically than CAD/CAM has changed manufacturing and engineering in the last couple of decades. In a very real sense IBM have built something akin to the ancient Greek "Oracle", lets hope it works out better for us than it did in the story.
SciAm's "connections" was a great column!
Let me guess your occupation - Apple Genius?
I don't code and I don't study user interface design, so I'm not qualified to offer reasons why the beta is bad. I'm just a user.
On the contrary, the user is the most qualified person to comment on the useability of the service, the more exposure the user has had to competing services (including prior versions) the more valuable their opinion is. Disclaimer: I code for a living and formally studied UI design at tertiary level some 20 odd years ago. In my professional opinion BETA SUCKS! (like many other "professionals" who lurk around here, I gave my helpful comments in the original survey)
There's also the historical perspective, today we still have one of the 12 colossus computers built during WW2, but only because Churchill's order to destroy them was not fully carried out. Slashdot is a significant part of internet history, if they are going to significantly alter that then at least donate the existing site and comment archive to someone who would care for it (eg: Smithsonian, national archives, etc)
I don't think yelling abuse is going to change the world and nobody enjoys being threatened but having said that dice would be wise to withdraw the beta and explain what the problem is with the existing site. If there really is a serious financial or technical problem for dice then perhaps the expertise in the Slashdot user base could help solve it.
As an example of that historical notability I cite the restoration of the Betchley park, Slashdot and its users were IMO instrumental of raising awareness (and cash) to highlight the shabby treatment of the site by authorities. The same people who posted the initial Slashdot story about the disgraceful neglect were also responsible for the campaign to formerly pardon Alan Turing. The gay community have welcomed the official pardon and are now demanding an official pardon for the thousands of other homosexuals who were chemically castrated. They may get it too, with the publicity surrounding Turing's pardon the UK has suddenly found new pride in their pioneering contribution to the computer industry and a clear recognition that attitudes towards homosexuals have changed (at least in the UK).
"Guilty until proven innocent, because it's unfair to try an innocent man" - Q
The Victorian police publish the locations of their cameras, they have done so for a number of years under both left and right wing state governments. Also every cop car is fitted with mobile radar that can record the speed of oncoming cars. As for flashing lights, it's almost mandatory these days, I do it myself to warn others to check their speed but few drivers would warn someone who is recklessly speeding, personally I only do it to "hoons" when there are no cops ahead ;).
At the end of the day advertising the locations via the web (or flashing lights) increases the effectiveness of cameras, and adds weight to the claim that the goal is to prevent speeding. The road signs we have here that say "red light camera ahead" make people think twice about racing the amber, a secret red-light camera merely records who caused the inevitable pile up.
When I was a kid in the 60's we had specific "library classes" where we learnt how to research an arbitrary topic using a library. This class has been largely replaced by the "computer class", in both cases the important lessons are about "how to research", the specific tools you use in school will likely be largely forgotten by society when you're an adult. Dewey decimal anyone?
Modern life demands a certain level of computer literacy, public schools should provide that and offer a path to more advanced levels. Faimiliarity with the "big four" (word processors, spreadsheets, databases, browsers) comes under basic computer literacy in my book.
As a degree qulified software developer with 20+yrs in the industry I say with all sincerity that if you know how to use formulas in a spreadsheet, then you already know "how to code", like playing a piano the rest is mostly style and practice.
I was a big fan of doom but have been hooked on WoT for the last couple of years, their engine is good but nothing special these days. What makes WoT a beutiful game to look at is the art, good art art is more about fooling the eye than it is about faithfully reproducing details.
And yes, it is a "stacked deck", but for sound reasons. Without a stable banking system a modern economy simply does not work. Allowing individual banks to fail in the course of normal business is fine, their assets will be absorbed into the system by successful banks, what happened in 2008 threatened the entire system, ALL US banks were in danger of failing, regardless of their individual behaviour.
the winners are pre-ordained.
Nobody wins when the financial system is allowed to collapse. I hate banks as much as the next person but in the globalised financial system we have created the alternatives are even less attractive. The banking system is a public institution, the great depression painfully demonstrated it cannot be run like a corner store.
After all, we don't allow corporations to own real bridges to important places.
You don't have toll bridges in the US?
Agree with your post however it was not all one sided, Henry Ford voluntarily implemented a 40hr week.
I don't mind my government creating (discrete) residential dumping grounds that will be repurposed as parks when full, however I do have a problem when they turn existing parks into dumping grounds.
The reason they don't dump tonnes of rubble in residential zones is because the land is more valuable as real estate than a dumping ground, and millions of tonnes of rubble takes up a whole lotta space.
Sound logic, I'm an Aussie taxpayer and I think a marine park is more valuable as a breeding ground for fish than a private dumping ground for Senator Clive Palmer's unwanted land fill.
Now here's the unsurprising news about the money trail - The project we are discussing is a joint venture between "mining magnates" Gina Reinhart, and you guessed it, Senator Clive Palmer.
I'm sure they can find somewhere suitable.
Yes, and that place is the open ocean beyond the reef or as clean landfill, but "doing the right thing" would mean Clive and Gina (world's richest woman) would have to spend the money they thought they could save by socialising the risks involved.
At the end of the day it's really quite simple, parks are not created for use as cheap landfill sites for the mining industry, why such an application would even be considered is beyond me. Worse still if the government were to reverse the decision, they will probably be sued for the extra costs and several million mugs like me will end up paying their costs anyway.
Clear water is essential since coral needs sunlight to survive. You won't get a tropical reef without mangroves, mangroves hold the silt in place at the river mouth and keep the reef water clear. They are so effective as a filter for fine particulate matter that they clean the filthy outflow from the Ganges and provide the crystal clear waters where some spectacular reefs can be found. These people are building the largest coal port in the world, it's a $30 billion project. This site was chosen because it was cheap and convenient, I don't think a few extra bucks to dump it in deep water off the continental shelf is too much to ask given the perceived risk to the tourist and fishing industries that rely on a healthy reef.
The silt found in the dumping area is not "already in the water", it's on the sea bed. It's only a problem to coral if someone stirs it up to the point it starts blocking sunlight.
In this specific case it's actually sand mixed with fine silt, it's clean but silt is a problem for coral, it needs clear water or it will die from insufficient sunlight. Having said that there is no coral at the dumping site, but there's plenty nearby and oceans have currents and storms that will move it around. It would have been much simpler to sail the barges a bit further out to open water off the continental shelf and dump it in the open ocean, but that would have cost a few more dollars so instead they lobby the feds to gain permission to vandalise the reef.
This new government has a vindictive ideological grudge against environmental issues, they are also planning to open up 70-something thousand hectares of world heritage forest in Tasmania to logging. Despite the fact that after decades of wrangling, loggers and environment groups agreed on a peace deal last year that included a ban on logging in that forest. Forestry is a major part of Tasmania's economy, nobody on either side of that long and arduous fight wants to reignite the divisive issue except the new federal government.