That's redundant. You were correct in the first place, as mass is a proportionality factor within momentum that is usually interpreted to mean the measure of the amount of matter.
Bullshit. The preservation of society and human lives is the ultimate value, because society and life are the contexts for all human activity. Science thus must serve the ultimate value, and so it must preserve society. One of the mechanisms to preserve society is ethical and moral instinct (which *are*, by the way, general instincts to keep ahead of natural selection..."self-preservation" is a far more limited instinct which is much less sophisticated than genetic and cognitive analysis of primates and humans seems to imply for our cognitive decision-making). Without morals and ethics, one destroys the relationships of society that preserve human life, and therefore science must also serve morals and ethics, as they are the framework within which all human interactivity is based (and science is one of the modes of human interactivity).
Scientists may have morals which serve to hinder science but science itself does not.
With this, you imply that morals hinder science. It is your burden to show that science, in fact, can exist in its proper societal role without morality. You even contradict yourself; scientifically, show me why the purpose of science is to "assure [our] species stay one step ahead of natural selection"? Isn't "improv[ing] the quality and length of life for ourselves and for those we know and care about" a moral instinct, and one that is emotional and biased? Please show me how those ideas are "scientific"?
To advance human causes, we must have limitations to prevent abusive power from being wrought upon the minority. This is why we cannot simply sacrifice the individual for the greater cause; the sacrifice of people will devolve into an abuse of power from the strong unto the weak, from the majority upon the minority. At least in the democratic world, this is absolutely against all political and moral ideals, as the moral and value of democracy lies in each person being given an equal chance (if the minority is in any way abused or silenced, the members of the majority are given more power proportionately than the minority). Thus, the sacrifice of the individual is a form of majority dominance over the minorityl. This cannot be, and so must be forbidden in the greater scheme of the advance of the human race.
Scientifically moral and ethical issues do not exist, it is people who create these artifical constructs. Humans attribute a uniqueness or addional value to their own lifeform.
I'm sorry, I'm going to have to take issue with you on this. One cannot simply separate science from moral and ethical issues; it doesn't exist in some people-less vacuum, because science is done by people, who (hopefully) have morals, and so you can't just create this "Chinese Wall" between morality and science. Science *must* be moral; it is *not* ethical to, for instance, psychologically damage individuals in order to study how the human mind works. It is *not* ethical to surgically chop (live) people apart to study trauma responses. It just isn't done.
I support ES research, but not for the reasons you give (i.e. science is not moral). Science is moral, and in the interest of *saving human lives* , I think ES research is the holy grail.
No no, I'm all for awarding employees for their work with stock grants. The problem lies in finding a balance, and I think that Google's just tipped it. If one employee is getting millions of dollars in stock, and 25% of the profits is diluted away, that's pushing the envelope to the extreme.
Google's already diluted their earnings by almost 25% with stock-based compensation. That amount is fine as long as they get their 700% earnings increases, but as soon as the earnings drop to a reasonable growth rate, shareholders are going to ditch Google if they keep giving out shares as if there's no cost.
Sociology's fairly technical and broad; they collect theories from neuroscience, behavioral psychology, history, and economics to try to flesh out the trends they see in modern society. There's a lot of sifting through statistics and numbers, doing regression analysis, and trying to see what's meaningful and what isn't. It's really just history with a decidedly contemporary focus.
Social anthropology, I admit, is fairly fuzzy. I don't know what they do. But as for biological anthropology and archaeology, they do a lot of quantitative and biomedical analysis. Think of the cover of Science recently, having to do with running and human evolution.
The one kind of liberal arts major I've seen a general use for is history majors. They can pull together large quantities of scattered data and write a coherent explanation of what it all means. That's a niche, but it's a highly useful niche.
On the same note, anthropology and sociology majors tend to be useful, as they need to analyze a vast amount of data and pull out details that are important and coherent.
Oh believe me, it's not easy to pass Harvard. Grade inflation, certainly, is a grand thing...but it's still *damn* hard. I have plenty of friends who are clinging to their grades and studying their asses off to maintain an average grade.
The main problem is that everyone studies their asses off, and so one either needs to work just as hard or be a genius.
Not when it came out. It blew the competition out of the water.
And when was that? A long time ago, when P&G was a lot smaller. When's the last time P&G came out with a blockbuster product that grew its sales by 70%? A long time ago.
And you were accurate about the explosive growth of MSFT in the years 1994-1999? Pull up your previous predictions and lets have a look at them
First, Microsoft was a helluva lot smaller in 1994 than in 1999. Company growth *does* slow down after it hits the hundred-billion mark. Second, read my lips: overvalued. Have you ever heard of the word "bubble"? More specifically, ".com" bubble? You know, the one where everything was selling for 300 times earnings? In the year 2000, the stock finally reached a much more correct value for the company. Not Steve Ballmer's fault that investors were stupid for five years.
You do realize that Tide is only 5-6% of P&G's total sales. P&G will probably never, ever again grow 70% in a year. This year, they grew 13%, which is *huge* for them; in their own words, growing 5-6% in sales is "the equivalent of adding a business the size of P&G's total business in the UK."
If you think about Microsoft's total Enterprise Value, it's $221.18 billion. Tide, on the other hand, is a $3 billion dollar brand. If people are surprised that P&G can grow 13% and think it's good, what do you think about Microsoft growing 70%? That's outrageous, and probably not ever going to happen.
Microsoft still adds a lot of value to their software. I agree; their consumer-level software sucks pretty bad...but it has improved. Windows XP is much more stable, much faster, and much cleaner than Windows 98 was. Meanwhile, the Office suite is pretty good. I hate Microsoft Word, but PowerPoint and Excel are really, really nice.
Meanwhile, on the corporate level, Microsoft really does create a lot of software that almost no one outside of the corporate environment knows about. Sharepoint is one example; it's a wonderful godsend for collaborative work. Its server is taking larger amounts of the web's market share, mainly because of the way it integrates with the rest of people's Windows systems. Monopolistic or not, integration is very useful.
Let's look at this a little differently, shall we?
Now in the past 5 years of Balmer the stock of Microsoft has dropped maybe 50% or so in value....I figure it has to do with no new OSes for people to buy and MS's inability to profitable merge into other tech markets.
It's not that Microsoft is doing badly; it's just that it's "hi tech" stock valuation has finally given way to a more normal business evaluation. Instead of trading at 70 times earnings, it's now trading at a more reasonable 35 times earnings. Considering that it's a huge, huge, huge company, it's a good bet that it can't grow like, say, Apple or the rest of NASDAQ can. Would you expect, say, Proctor & Gamble to grow 70% a year? I doubt it.
I think you bawk at Computer Science's lack of mathematics simply because you're not aware of what the major of Computer Science really is. Not that you don't have a right to, most people with degrees in Computer Science have not really been exposed to it.
Sorry, but I was a CS concentrator before I switched to chemistry and physics. I know what CS is like, and what the theoretical aspects of it are like. Note that I didn't say that computer science has a lack of mathematics. I'm saying that CS isn't any more mathy than physics is. Don't put words in my mouth.
It depends on what field you go into, to determine what's more ``immediately'' practical. The transistor was made possible by the advances of early theoretical physics and band theory. NMR spectroscopy (and the clinical analogue, MRI) is all quantum mechanics. Theoretical chemistry is directly applied in organic synthesis, which is what gives us the wonderful pills we all take. I'd say those are all fairly immediately practical.
And code monkeys are not computer scientists. That's like saying an architect is a physicist. It'd be nice if code monkeys and architects have some knowledge of the basic ideas of CS and physics, but code monkeys and architects are about design and implementation, while physicists and computer scientists are more concerned with the structure of things.
Yeah because physics has advanced so much since the introduction of relativity and quantum mechanics. Oh, wait a minute...
It has, except that most people don't learn the latest advancements until grad school (or at least Junior year of undergradute school, for those taking graduate classes as an undergrad). Meanwhile, quantum mechanics has had huge advances since 1929. You also have things like string theory (which, admittedly, is still theory, but it is a theoretical advancement), quantum field theory, and quantum electrodynamics. Those are all post-quantum and post-relativity advancements.
Physics is just as hard if not easier. Now there are very sophisticated computers that take a large portion of the brunt mathematics out of physics.
Sorry, but the computers just do the repetative math (e.g. calculating things iteratively until they converge). There's no substitute for being able to do the math itself, knowing how Lagrangian and Hamiltonian mechanics work mathematically, and knowing how to solve some of the basic cases for Schrodinger's equation. Right there, we have algebra, analysis, diff eq, and the calculus of variations in addition to your basic high school calculus. And if you get to things like quantum field theory, that requires really high level mathematics.
As for your comments about the "lesser" physics, I say bah to that. Physics is just a cuddly version of math after all. Theoritical computer science is closer to pure math than physics is I'd wager.
Sorry, but theoretical computer science is only closer to math because...well, it is math (a branch of it, at least). Computer science is a science because you have to test things, to implement them. Physics is a science for the ssame reason. Fundamentally, "theoretical" things are all fairly mathy, because math is the best way to do it. Theoretical particle physics, for instance, has much, much more high-powered, more modern math than a lot (but certainly not all) of theoretical computer science does, for instance.
Ah, but the cool thing about chemistry was also the experiments. We built a bubble chamber to see alpha-particles. We'd look at the polarization of light and how lenses work with photons. We'd examine ideal gas laws and pressure with the way explosive gases move inside a resonating pipe (hooked up to a bass speaker), so that when the teacher lit them, they'd dance with heights that formed a standing wave. Exothermic reactions are fun with thermite. Cotton is made explosive by nitrating the cellulose with concentrated nitric and sulfuric acids. You can draw circuits with a graphite pencil, and then show the sparks fly as you connect a high voltage across it. You can have tons of fun with liquid nitrogen and liquid oxygen (which is very dangerous stuff); it's especially fun to demonstrate molecular orbital theory by suspending oxygen between two magnets. You can ionize gases and move them with magnetic fields, or you can bend electricity with it. Or how about making your own light-sensitive film and developing it?
Chemistry is just all of the most interesting parts of quantum electrodynamics combined into one fascinating subject.
Except that Harvard, if you need it, pays for *all* of that, even show tickets for school events and such. Harvard has some of the best need-based aid in the country (which makes up for the total lack of merit-based aid).
To stop other people from doing it, too? It's the same reason the RIAA is suing consumers for pirating software; it's not to get money from them, but to scare other people into not doing the same.
Trade secrets are trade secrets, and companies have a right to protect them. If a reporter published Coca-cola's secret recipe online, I'd approve of Coke's suing the reporter to have it taken off, and to take damages from his skin.
Besides, if you read the article, what he did can be considered wholly illegal.
"If that student is inviting people to give him information that was violating a trade secret he might be liable as a contributory infringer," Weinreb said. An infringer violates the law directly, but a contributory infringer knows about the infringement and facilitates it in some way.
Milgrim agreed, saying that even if Ciarelli had not solicited trade secrets but had simply posted them, he might still be liable under California law.
"California is one of approximately 44 or 45 states that have adopted [the] Uniform Trade Secrets Act. That statute makes it wrongful to acquire or publish without authorization information you know or have a reasonable basis to know is a trade secret of another," Milgrim said.
"Just because you receive something on the internet does not mean you have a green light to do whatever you want with it," Milgrim added.
The time you lose in transit doesn't fill the time you save going to college. Not only that, you also have the human element of college. It's a perfect environment to get to know established researchers, gain references, contacts, and the inside-line. Maybe someday one of your friends from class will join a startup and put in a good word for you, getting you a job. Anyway, you get more benefit going to college than learning by yourself...if you take advantage of your time.
Another point to consider...if someone is learning something because they want to learn it, I'd be willing to bet that they'll retain the information long after someone who has assimilated the information just long enough to spit it back out on a test.
Which is why I said, "When it's taken advantage of, collegiate learning is much, much more efficient than learning it on your own." If you aren't interested, and you're just spitting back the information to pass a test, you aren't taking advantage of the learning. You're jumping hoops, and then you might as well just quit school. Let's say, however, you were taking a class in a subject that interested you. You'd learn much, much faster taking that class than you would by yourself, reading from a book. The professor points you to specific papers, textbooks, websites, and (wonder of wonders) even his own lectures. Not only that, but they can even tell you when a book is wrong about a specific concept (happens quite often at the bleeding edge), which is hard to find on the internet.
Motivated...and with enough money and resources to buy a University library, its faculty, and its labs. The whole point of college is that it's a pooled resource, so that everyone can share the flux of information. Not only can you check out books from a University (which is a godsend in and of itself), but you can also approach the faculty, take classes in which they talk about their bleeding edge work, where they point you to resources that one couldn't find unless one spend weeks on what they found in days.
Think of it like a search engine, or a portal. Sure, the information is somewhere out there on the internet. If you're motivated and clever enough, you can find the information you need. On the other hand, you can also go to Google and type in a query to get you much, much closer. When it's taken advantage of, collegiate learning is much, much more efficient than learning it on your own.
Slashdot Mirror
That's redundant. You were correct in the first place, as mass is a proportionality factor within momentum that is usually interpreted to mean the measure of the amount of matter.
Scientists may have morals which serve to hinder science but science itself does not.
With this, you imply that morals hinder science. It is your burden to show that science, in fact, can exist in its proper societal role without morality. You even contradict yourself; scientifically, show me why the purpose of science is to "assure [our] species stay one step ahead of natural selection"? Isn't "improv[ing] the quality and length of life for ourselves and for those we know and care about" a moral instinct, and one that is emotional and biased? Please show me how those ideas are "scientific"?
To advance human causes, we must have limitations to prevent abusive power from being wrought upon the minority. This is why we cannot simply sacrifice the individual for the greater cause; the sacrifice of people will devolve into an abuse of power from the strong unto the weak, from the majority upon the minority. At least in the democratic world, this is absolutely against all political and moral ideals, as the moral and value of democracy lies in each person being given an equal chance (if the minority is in any way abused or silenced, the members of the majority are given more power proportionately than the minority). Thus, the sacrifice of the individual is a form of majority dominance over the minorityl. This cannot be, and so must be forbidden in the greater scheme of the advance of the human race.
I'm sorry, I'm going to have to take issue with you on this. One cannot simply separate science from moral and ethical issues; it doesn't exist in some people-less vacuum, because science is done by people, who (hopefully) have morals, and so you can't just create this "Chinese Wall" between morality and science. Science *must* be moral; it is *not* ethical to, for instance, psychologically damage individuals in order to study how the human mind works. It is *not* ethical to surgically chop (live) people apart to study trauma responses. It just isn't done.
I support ES research, but not for the reasons you give (i.e. science is not moral). Science is moral, and in the interest of *saving human lives* , I think ES research is the holy grail.
No no, I'm all for awarding employees for their work with stock grants. The problem lies in finding a balance, and I think that Google's just tipped it. If one employee is getting millions of dollars in stock, and 25% of the profits is diluted away, that's pushing the envelope to the extreme.
Google's already diluted their earnings by almost 25% with stock-based compensation. That amount is fine as long as they get their 700% earnings increases, but as soon as the earnings drop to a reasonable growth rate, shareholders are going to ditch Google if they keep giving out shares as if there's no cost.
Sorry, but this isn't the 1984 ad you're thinking of. Try watching it.
Social anthropology, I admit, is fairly fuzzy. I don't know what they do. But as for biological anthropology and archaeology, they do a lot of quantitative and biomedical analysis. Think of the cover of Science recently, having to do with running and human evolution.
On the same note, anthropology and sociology majors tend to be useful, as they need to analyze a vast amount of data and pull out details that are important and coherent.
The main problem is that everyone studies their asses off, and so one either needs to work just as hard or be a genius.
A substantial number of ivy leaguers tend to be foreign; some of them have a poor command of English.
And when was that? A long time ago, when P&G was a lot smaller. When's the last time P&G came out with a blockbuster product that grew its sales by 70%? A long time ago.
And you were accurate about the explosive growth of MSFT in the years 1994-1999? Pull up your previous predictions and lets have a look at them
First, Microsoft was a helluva lot smaller in 1994 than in 1999. Company growth *does* slow down after it hits the hundred-billion mark. Second, read my lips: overvalued. Have you ever heard of the word "bubble"? More specifically, ".com" bubble? You know, the one where everything was selling for 300 times earnings? In the year 2000, the stock finally reached a much more correct value for the company. Not Steve Ballmer's fault that investors were stupid for five years.
If you think about Microsoft's total Enterprise Value, it's $221.18 billion. Tide, on the other hand, is a $3 billion dollar brand. If people are surprised that P&G can grow 13% and think it's good, what do you think about Microsoft growing 70%? That's outrageous, and probably not ever going to happen.
Meanwhile, on the corporate level, Microsoft really does create a lot of software that almost no one outside of the corporate environment knows about. Sharepoint is one example; it's a wonderful godsend for collaborative work. Its server is taking larger amounts of the web's market share, mainly because of the way it integrates with the rest of people's Windows systems. Monopolistic or not, integration is very useful.
Now in the past 5 years of Balmer the stock of Microsoft has dropped maybe 50% or so in value....I figure it has to do with no new OSes for people to buy and MS's inability to profitable merge into other tech markets.
It's not that Microsoft is doing badly; it's just that it's "hi tech" stock valuation has finally given way to a more normal business evaluation. Instead of trading at 70 times earnings, it's now trading at a more reasonable 35 times earnings. Considering that it's a huge, huge, huge company, it's a good bet that it can't grow like, say, Apple or the rest of NASDAQ can. Would you expect, say, Proctor & Gamble to grow 70% a year? I doubt it.
Sorry, but I was a CS concentrator before I switched to chemistry and physics. I know what CS is like, and what the theoretical aspects of it are like. Note that I didn't say that computer science has a lack of mathematics. I'm saying that CS isn't any more mathy than physics is. Don't put words in my mouth.
It depends on what field you go into, to determine what's more ``immediately'' practical. The transistor was made possible by the advances of early theoretical physics and band theory. NMR spectroscopy (and the clinical analogue, MRI) is all quantum mechanics. Theoretical chemistry is directly applied in organic synthesis, which is what gives us the wonderful pills we all take. I'd say those are all fairly immediately practical.
And code monkeys are not computer scientists. That's like saying an architect is a physicist. It'd be nice if code monkeys and architects have some knowledge of the basic ideas of CS and physics, but code monkeys and architects are about design and implementation, while physicists and computer scientists are more concerned with the structure of things.
It has, except that most people don't learn the latest advancements until grad school (or at least Junior year of undergradute school, for those taking graduate classes as an undergrad). Meanwhile, quantum mechanics has had huge advances since 1929. You also have things like string theory (which, admittedly, is still theory, but it is a theoretical advancement), quantum field theory, and quantum electrodynamics. Those are all post-quantum and post-relativity advancements.
Physics is just as hard if not easier. Now there are very sophisticated computers that take a large portion of the brunt mathematics out of physics.
Sorry, but the computers just do the repetative math (e.g. calculating things iteratively until they converge). There's no substitute for being able to do the math itself, knowing how Lagrangian and Hamiltonian mechanics work mathematically, and knowing how to solve some of the basic cases for Schrodinger's equation. Right there, we have algebra, analysis, diff eq, and the calculus of variations in addition to your basic high school calculus. And if you get to things like quantum field theory, that requires really high level mathematics.
As for your comments about the "lesser" physics, I say bah to that. Physics is just a cuddly version of math after all. Theoritical computer science is closer to pure math than physics is I'd wager.
Sorry, but theoretical computer science is only closer to math because...well, it is math (a branch of it, at least). Computer science is a science because you have to test things, to implement them. Physics is a science for the ssame reason. Fundamentally, "theoretical" things are all fairly mathy, because math is the best way to do it. Theoretical particle physics, for instance, has much, much more high-powered, more modern math than a lot (but certainly not all) of theoretical computer science does, for instance.
Chemistry is just all of the most interesting parts of quantum electrodynamics combined into one fascinating subject.
Except that Harvard, if you need it, pays for *all* of that, even show tickets for school events and such. Harvard has some of the best need-based aid in the country (which makes up for the total lack of merit-based aid).
To stop other people from doing it, too? It's the same reason the RIAA is suing consumers for pirating software; it's not to get money from them, but to scare other people into not doing the same.
Well, of course, there is the fact that the other rumors sites will be a lot more cautious, and hence less likely to be forums for NDA violations.
Because he's the greatest marketer that ever lived? His famous "reality distortion field" is what PR and ad people are in awe of.
Besides, if you read the article, what he did can be considered wholly illegal.
Milgrim agreed, saying that even if Ciarelli had not solicited trade secrets but had simply posted them, he might still be liable under California law.
"California is one of approximately 44 or 45 states that have adopted [the] Uniform Trade Secrets Act. That statute makes it wrongful to acquire or publish without authorization information you know or have a reasonable basis to know is a trade secret of another," Milgrim said.
"Just because you receive something on the internet does not mean you have a green light to do whatever you want with it," Milgrim added.
RTFA
The time you lose in transit doesn't fill the time you save going to college. Not only that, you also have the human element of college. It's a perfect environment to get to know established researchers, gain references, contacts, and the inside-line. Maybe someday one of your friends from class will join a startup and put in a good word for you, getting you a job. Anyway, you get more benefit going to college than learning by yourself...if you take advantage of your time. Another point to consider...if someone is learning something because they want to learn it, I'd be willing to bet that they'll retain the information long after someone who has assimilated the information just long enough to spit it back out on a test.
Which is why I said, "When it's taken advantage of, collegiate learning is much, much more efficient than learning it on your own." If you aren't interested, and you're just spitting back the information to pass a test, you aren't taking advantage of the learning. You're jumping hoops, and then you might as well just quit school. Let's say, however, you were taking a class in a subject that interested you. You'd learn much, much faster taking that class than you would by yourself, reading from a book. The professor points you to specific papers, textbooks, websites, and (wonder of wonders) even his own lectures. Not only that, but they can even tell you when a book is wrong about a specific concept (happens quite often at the bleeding edge), which is hard to find on the internet.
Think of it like a search engine, or a portal. Sure, the information is somewhere out there on the internet. If you're motivated and clever enough, you can find the information you need. On the other hand, you can also go to Google and type in a query to get you much, much closer. When it's taken advantage of, collegiate learning is much, much more efficient than learning it on your own.