So my question is, who sees the benefit of the research? The researchers? Can Google just jack the results and incorporate into their system?
The public (who by the way pay taxes, which ultimately fund NSF grants) is the one who generally benefits from developments like this, hopefully with better search engine results.
So long as there aren't patent issues (which doesn't seem to be the case here), Google can "jack" the technology. The key thing though is that ANYBODY can "jack" it, not just Google and not just big patent-wielding corporations. Why is this a bad thing?
What will be interesting to see if Google will implement the improvements to the algorithm. This is, of course, a given, so long as the researchers haven't gone for a patent, and it really has the a 5x speedup. The only questions are matters of what additional hardware would be needed, and how much development effort it will take to integrate it. I doubt Google will simply ignore the research.
Personally, I'm somewhat curious of how relevant this may even be to Google at all. As far as I recall, Google has not published the details on how they do things for several years (1998 is the last paper I think). A lot of their new advancements have been kept secret (or at least limited to very coarse information). Publishing any specific information could give competitors access to the technologies Google relies so heavily on for its superiority. For all we know, Google may already be running new methods that are as good or better than those discussed in this paper that are just being kept as trade secrets.
Terrorism (via dictionary.com, American Heritage Dictionary):
The unlawful use or threatened use of force or violence by a person or an organized group against people or property with the intention of intimidating or coercing societies or governments, often for ideological or political reasons.
Although they're not unlawfully using force, they are threatening in the interview that they could do something illegal. You don't necessarily have to do anything to get the label of "terrorist"--you just have to threaten too. The US gov't has no problem holding somebody like Jose Padilla (the so-called "dirty bomb suspect") for just being a possible threat.
Second, they have the intention of intimidating users from using P2P software. This is not a tactic to physically stop sharing of copyrighted songs like a lawsuit. The goal is to scare users into thinking their computer or net connection will get screwed up if they don't stop. Similarly, these recent lawsuits against users also seek to intimidate (although in a legal manner).
Finally, it seems less clear that they are doing this for "ideological or political reasons". However, I don't see why this part of defining terrorism would be any different if the motive was economic. If anything, it's perhaps a bit more slimy, because you're not doing it because you feel there's an important underlying cause or belief, but rather to enrich yourself.
So, does anybody else see this as well as other recent developments in the RIAA's tactics as terroristic?
If you have no (or a very small) income and no large savings or property assets (excluding a home), the gov't (and perhaps the school) will actually give you some money to go to school. Even if you aren't broke enough for free money, loans from the gov't, the school, or even private lenders are typically available. If you're really interested, I'd recommend inquiring at the financial aid office of potential schools. While it's not easy, lots of people in similar (and worse) situations have found a way through.
European governments generally compute unemployment statistics differently than the US government does. In the US, you are only counted as being unemployed if you are receiving unemployment benefits. The consequence of this is that people who have used up all their benefits are no longer counted as looking for work, even if they really still are.
If the US counted the same way as most European nations, it's believed by many people that the discrepancy between numbers wouldn't be so large as it currently seems. Officially, the rate is just under 6% in the US. In Germany, it's around 10%, although it's a bit higher where I live (Saarland, which suffers from a similar economic situation as US cities like Pittsburgh or Detroit). Both here and where I lived in the US before coming here (SF Bay Area), I've noticed there's a certain hopelessness among the population that there are no jobs in any sector to be had.
So why, apart from the commercial interests of the election machine makers, does the US stick with voting machines?
The main reason is probably that most American ballots are long. Only in a special election (for example, a recall) would voters be asked to make just one decision. In the most extreme case, you would have to vote for president, senator, and representative at the federal level; governor, state senator, state representative, a number of other offices, and propositions (in states like CA, there are always several of these) at the state level; and finally mayor, city councilmen, judges, county supervisors, school board members, and local referendums at the local level. Although many elections don't have so many decisions (like primaries), there are still always several.
It would simply be far too time consuming to count all of these seperate categories by hand.
I couldn't agree more, as someone who is currently attending a university, and has several years of programming experience, I have seen this several times.
I'm not sure if the problem stems from instructors reluctance to admit that there is "too much of a good thing", or if it stems from students having never been introduced to anything else.
Personally, I'm convinced this is really an effect of people not having experience. That's why they want to take classes. There is of course at the heart of this the issue that computer science professors are usually not particularly interested in teaching programming for programming's (or even industrial application's) sake. In the more prestigious (aka theoretical and mathematically oriented) programs, programming is necessary to explain, apply, and understand more advanced concepts.
I do agree with you with respect to exposure to different paradigms. Actually, I didn't end up writing that much OO code in my undergraduate days. I had courses that required Java, C/C++, Lisp, Scheme, TCL, and some assembly. Any decent program should require exposure to the sorts of differences present in that list.
One big problem I have seen in my own classes is that you have a class full of students, and maybe 1 or 2 of them have any programming experience at all. They go in and are instructed on basic logic and then given a class on Java and the wonder of OOP and they never learn anything else.
Sometimes I wonder if this is an effect of the boom. Speaking as somebody who entered university (in the bay area of all places) on the upswing of the boom and graduated after the fall, it was amazing how many people I met who were studying computer science because a) they wanted to make a lot of money or b) they're parents wanted them to make a lot of money.
I even TA'd a data structures course one summer, where anybody including high school students, community members, etc. could pay some $$$ and attend. I can't even remember how many people told me they were so excited to learn Java. This was back in 2000 when certain skills (especially Java) were in hot demand. A number of people had dropped the course after just a couple of weeks. I think a lot of them realized we were only going to cover enough of Java to introduce basic data structures and allow them to do some larger projects, not write applets. Still there were others, who seemed very upset that we weren't doing "real programming" like they had done in their x years of real-world industrtial experience.
Naturally, there were also students that summer, who knew nothing (or maybe just a little) about programming beforehand and who really enjoyed learning about more theoretical aspects covered (simple things like big O notation) or trying to understand elegant solutions to problems.
We then have (and this problem is not isolated to just the tech industry) a sea of mindless drones being pushed out into the real world and solving all the problems exactly the way they were instructed to without an ounce of actual though or insite.
you know you have a problem when someone in your 300 level programming class asks "what's slashdot?"
Hmm... not sure about this one. At least not being sucked into the time vortex that is slashdot, they're more likely to get their work done on time. (:
Oops... I mean 1/40 of the *income*. Freudian slip from reading too many "Indians cost nothing to employ and are stealing all our jobs" rants on slashdot? I'll let you decide.
The cost of this is not inexpensive if you consider what most indians make at a yearly level. Not to mention the cost of the phone or computer. It's a step in the right direction.
Yes, this is really not cheap, even for people making good money in India. A friend of mine was telling me how a couple of years ago, he got an offer of around $750/month, right out of college for some sort of programming job. He said this was an obscene amount of money, not just by the standards of the average Indian, but also by other friends who had gotten IT-related jobs. He seemed to think it was comparable to making close to 6 figures in USD. I've had other friends say things like "multiply by 60" to get the idea of how much lower the cost of everyday items (food, clothing, etc) is.
So, the cost for this is something like 1/40 of even a well-off middle class Indian.
I'm still curious what percentage of jobs were lost between (roughly) 2000 and now. Or have been lost since, say, 1997. Is it really over 50%? I just find that hard to believe. Maybe 50% of slashdotters who have nothing better to do than hit refresh and post to flaimbate-esque stories like this all day, but out of the entire field?
Yes, European law functions differently than American law does with respect to sentencing it seems. I had a discussion with a German law student once about this very thing. She said life sentences were very rare. 15 or 20 years even for vicious murder seemed to be the standard. Furthermore, the death penalty is banned (mandatory for EU members). I think this just stands in stark contrast to the spirit of American law making that is often influenced by the "be tough on crime" mentality.
I guess what's importain here is that the RIAA can more easy track a static ip whereas for a dial up connection they have to go though the ISP. Though I'm starting to wonder how they knew anyway who it was without the university's co-operation.
If I recall correctly from an earlier article about this whole ordeal, the RIAA didn't track them down via IP adresses. The students had websites for the software. In one of the cases, there was also something (an interview or something like that) published in a school newspaper.
We were running some sort of consumer-grade Linksys home router dealie, which didn't support such fancy things. People were encouraged to do file trading during non-peak hours. When that strategy failed, I would block ports, but only when things got really out of hand. Looking back now, it could have been an interesting project replacing it with some sort of linux box. Probably would have been more stable too.
I used to live in a large student co-op and this was something pretty much every house (as far as I know) did. At some point, our ISP went bankrupt and whoever bought it at that point decided not to continue their DSL services. As a "temporary" solution we ended up on a standard SBC residential DSL line. Divided 37 or so ways it was quite cheap, but there were some issues:
- when somebody switched on Kazaa, everyone's connection came almost to a standstill
- we had to wire the house ourselves to make it cost efficient
- somebody had to maintain everything
To me it seems like the biggest problem in an apartment complex or neighborhood would be the last issue. Who maintains it? For us, it was essentially somebody's job to tend to it (just like it was somebody's job to wash dishes on Sunday morning). Anybody know how this happens in these cases we're talking about? Is there a benevolent net admin (dictator) or do people pay a fee to some 3rd party?
I have to agree here. The FAA's primary responsibility to ensure safety. The article makes it sound like "the FAA makes things go very slowly" for no particular reason. Frankly, I wouldn't want these kinds of tests being done anywhere near me. Furthermore, the technology (at least as described in the article) relies on data taken at some point in the non-immediate past. What about new structures? or other aircraft? I'm sure planes equipt with this would still rely on collision avoidance systems and things like radar, but those are certainly no substitute for actually being able to see with your own two eyes.
Slashdot Mirror
The public (who by the way pay taxes, which ultimately fund NSF grants) is the one who generally benefits from developments like this, hopefully with better search engine results.
So long as there aren't patent issues (which doesn't seem to be the case here), Google can "jack" the technology. The key thing though is that ANYBODY can "jack" it, not just Google and not just big patent-wielding corporations. Why is this a bad thing?
Personally, I'm somewhat curious of how relevant this may even be to Google at all. As far as I recall, Google has not published the details on how they do things for several years (1998 is the last paper I think). A lot of their new advancements have been kept secret (or at least limited to very coarse information). Publishing any specific information could give competitors access to the technologies Google relies so heavily on for its superiority. For all we know, Google may already be running new methods that are as good or better than those discussed in this paper that are just being kept as trade secrets.
ein Name, ein Login, ein Fuehrer
Where do kids learn German grammar these days?
telemarketer: Can I speak to Mrs. Jones please?
her: There's a Mrs. Jones!!! He never told me he was married!
She says the telemarkets always promptly hang up without saying anything.
Although they're not unlawfully using force, they are threatening in the interview that they could do something illegal. You don't necessarily have to do anything to get the label of "terrorist"--you just have to threaten too. The US gov't has no problem holding somebody like Jose Padilla (the so-called "dirty bomb suspect") for just being a possible threat.
Second, they have the intention of intimidating users from using P2P software. This is not a tactic to physically stop sharing of copyrighted songs like a lawsuit. The goal is to scare users into thinking their computer or net connection will get screwed up if they don't stop. Similarly, these recent lawsuits against users also seek to intimidate (although in a legal manner).
Finally, it seems less clear that they are doing this for "ideological or political reasons". However, I don't see why this part of defining terrorism would be any different if the motive was economic. If anything, it's perhaps a bit more slimy, because you're not doing it because you feel there's an important underlying cause or belief, but rather to enrich yourself.
So, does anybody else see this as well as other recent developments in the RIAA's tactics as terroristic?
If you have no (or a very small) income and no large savings or property assets (excluding a home), the gov't (and perhaps the school) will actually give you some money to go to school. Even if you aren't broke enough for free money, loans from the gov't, the school, or even private lenders are typically available. If you're really interested, I'd recommend inquiring at the financial aid office of potential schools. While it's not easy, lots of people in similar (and worse) situations have found a way through.
If the US counted the same way as most European nations, it's believed by many people that the discrepancy between numbers wouldn't be so large as it currently seems. Officially, the rate is just under 6% in the US. In Germany, it's around 10%, although it's a bit higher where I live (Saarland, which suffers from a similar economic situation as US cities like Pittsburgh or Detroit). Both here and where I lived in the US before coming here (SF Bay Area), I've noticed there's a certain hopelessness among the population that there are no jobs in any sector to be had.
Setting: cocktail party
"So what do you do for a living?"
"I'm a bounty hunter--a spammer bounty hunter."
How cool would that look on a resume? Boring freelancers and consultants eat your hearts out!
And as anyone who has ridden a Mexican bus can tell you: efficiency isn't everything, although it usually seems pretty important.
The main reason is probably that most American ballots are long. Only in a special election (for example, a recall) would voters be asked to make just one decision. In the most extreme case, you would have to vote for president, senator, and representative at the federal level; governor, state senator, state representative, a number of other offices, and propositions (in states like CA, there are always several of these) at the state level; and finally mayor, city councilmen, judges, county supervisors, school board members, and local referendums at the local level. Although many elections don't have so many decisions (like primaries), there are still always several.
It would simply be far too time consuming to count all of these seperate categories by hand.
I'm not sure if the problem stems from instructors reluctance to admit that there is "too much of a good thing", or if it stems from students having never been introduced to anything else.
Personally, I'm convinced this is really an effect of people not having experience. That's why they want to take classes. There is of course at the heart of this the issue that computer science professors are usually not particularly interested in teaching programming for programming's (or even industrial application's) sake. In the more prestigious (aka theoretical and mathematically oriented) programs, programming is necessary to explain, apply, and understand more advanced concepts.
I do agree with you with respect to exposure to different paradigms. Actually, I didn't end up writing that much OO code in my undergraduate days. I had courses that required Java, C/C++, Lisp, Scheme, TCL, and some assembly. Any decent program should require exposure to the sorts of differences present in that list.
One big problem I have seen in my own classes is that you have a class full of students, and maybe 1 or 2 of them have any programming experience at all. They go in and are instructed on basic logic and then given a class on Java and the wonder of OOP and they never learn anything else.
Sometimes I wonder if this is an effect of the boom. Speaking as somebody who entered university (in the bay area of all places) on the upswing of the boom and graduated after the fall, it was amazing how many people I met who were studying computer science because a) they wanted to make a lot of money or b) they're parents wanted them to make a lot of money.
I even TA'd a data structures course one summer, where anybody including high school students, community members, etc. could pay some $$$ and attend. I can't even remember how many people told me they were so excited to learn Java. This was back in 2000 when certain skills (especially Java) were in hot demand. A number of people had dropped the course after just a couple of weeks. I think a lot of them realized we were only going to cover enough of Java to introduce basic data structures and allow them to do some larger projects, not write applets. Still there were others, who seemed very upset that we weren't doing "real programming" like they had done in their x years of real-world industrtial experience.
Naturally, there were also students that summer, who knew nothing (or maybe just a little) about programming beforehand and who really enjoyed learning about more theoretical aspects covered (simple things like big O notation) or trying to understand elegant solutions to problems.
We then have (and this problem is not isolated to just the tech industry) a sea of mindless drones being pushed out into the real world and solving all the problems exactly the way they were instructed to without an ounce of actual though or insite.
you know you have a problem when someone in your 300 level programming class asks "what's slashdot?"
Hmm... not sure about this one. At least not being sucked into the time vortex that is slashdot, they're more likely to get their work done on time. (:
Oops... I mean 1/40 of the *income*. Freudian slip from reading too many "Indians cost nothing to employ and are stealing all our jobs" rants on slashdot? I'll let you decide.
Yes, this is really not cheap, even for people making good money in India. A friend of mine was telling me how a couple of years ago, he got an offer of around $750/month, right out of college for some sort of programming job. He said this was an obscene amount of money, not just by the standards of the average Indian, but also by other friends who had gotten IT-related jobs. He seemed to think it was comparable to making close to 6 figures in USD. I've had other friends say things like "multiply by 60" to get the idea of how much lower the cost of everyday items (food, clothing, etc) is.
So, the cost for this is something like 1/40 of even a well-off middle class Indian.
I'm still curious what percentage of jobs were lost between (roughly) 2000 and now. Or have been lost since, say, 1997. Is it really over 50%? I just find that hard to believe. Maybe 50% of slashdotters who have nothing better to do than hit refresh and post to flaimbate-esque stories like this all day, but out of the entire field?
Yes, European law functions differently than American law does with respect to sentencing it seems. I had a discussion with a German law student once about this very thing. She said life sentences were very rare. 15 or 20 years even for vicious murder seemed to be the standard. Furthermore, the death penalty is banned (mandatory for EU members). I think this just stands in stark contrast to the spirit of American law making that is often influenced by the "be tough on crime" mentality.
I guess what's importain here is that the RIAA can more easy track a static ip whereas for a dial up connection they have to go though the ISP. Though I'm starting to wonder how they knew anyway who it was without the university's co-operation. If I recall correctly from an earlier article about this whole ordeal, the RIAA didn't track them down via IP adresses. The students had websites for the software. In one of the cases, there was also something (an interview or something like that) published in a school newspaper.
We were running some sort of consumer-grade Linksys home router dealie, which didn't support such fancy things. People were encouraged to do file trading during non-peak hours. When that strategy failed, I would block ports, but only when things got really out of hand. Looking back now, it could have been an interesting project replacing it with some sort of linux box. Probably would have been more stable too.
- when somebody switched on Kazaa, everyone's connection came almost to a standstill
- we had to wire the house ourselves to make it cost efficient
- somebody had to maintain everything
To me it seems like the biggest problem in an apartment complex or neighborhood would be the last issue. Who maintains it? For us, it was essentially somebody's job to tend to it (just like it was somebody's job to wash dishes on Sunday morning). Anybody know how this happens in these cases we're talking about? Is there a benevolent net admin (dictator) or do people pay a fee to some 3rd party?
I have to agree here. The FAA's primary responsibility to ensure safety. The article makes it sound like "the FAA makes things go very slowly" for no particular reason. Frankly, I wouldn't want these kinds of tests being done anywhere near me. Furthermore, the technology (at least as described in the article) relies on data taken at some point in the non-immediate past. What about new structures? or other aircraft? I'm sure planes equipt with this would still rely on collision avoidance systems and things like radar, but those are certainly no substitute for actually being able to see with your own two eyes.
Hmmm... That might be difficult, since Yugoslavia no longer exists.
Maybe they're talking about taxing the levy of $13? As bizarre as this sounds, this seriously wouldn't surprise me.