A lot of times, you don't know if you'll like the album. I'm not one to buy a bunch of music sound-unheard. But, I have, occasionally -- especially with indie bands. I discovered my absolute favorite artist by just picking a disc out of the bin and laying down the cash. (Although I did read about him in Trouser Press, where he got a favorable review.)
Also, I have purchased many cd's by artists -- after having only heard a few singles on radio -- and been pleasantly surprised to enjoy most of the music therein. Hell, sometimes the stuff you hear on the cd is better than the singles!
Do you actually believe that this "methodology" is capable of producing an all-encompassing theory of everything? Forgive me if that sounds a little arrogant. Also, what is it that is being explained? Reality, or our perception of reality?
Once, I did some temp work at a cookie factory. We punched a time card when we arrived, and again when we left. Their policy was that you absolutely could not be late. If you were late (even by a minute) three times, you would be terminated. Fair enough. I had to drive 16 miles to get there -- so I alloted a little extra time for variable road conditions, traffic, etc. I usually ended up arriving 5-10 minutes ahead of time. Now, by my way of thinking, this is 5-10 minutes that I could be watching t.v. or programming or whatever. So, I clocked in early. Two weeks later, when I got my paycheck, I noticed they had trimmed off all minutes prior to official beginning of the shift. Mother Fuckers! Burn me for 5-10 minutes a day. But, I dare not burn them for 3 in toto. I am delighted that their plant is now closed. Something about some upper management embezzlement!
In a word... No. These butt-fuckers always manage to offer up a sacrificial goat (the middle manager). "Well clearly, (S)he misinterpreted the directives and was in violation of the law and company policy, blah blah blah." Given that they are already monkeying with the numbers on the computer, a whistle-blower middle manager might be accused of "altering the billable hours allowed -- they're just a disgruntled employee."
Again, I'm sure that algebras and real numbers or N-bit numbers are excellent approximations as long as we don't forget that they are only approxmations.
I believe that approximations are the best we can do. I've been trained as a mathematician. But, I don't believe in the square root of 2 in any physical sense. Some may argue, well construct a square 1 unit on a side, then the diagonal is square root of two. I argue, is it possible to construct a physical square 1 unit to a side? Each side would have to have the same number of atoms in a regular array, otherwise, it's not a square. But even if you accomplish this magnificent feat, the atoms in the lattice are vibrating, so the length isn't constant in time. So, I don't even believe in 1 as a physically measurable number!
Point being, what is our reference point? Color perception has the same problem. I saw an excellent program on PBS (maybe NOVA? it's been several years) on color vision. One experiment was to project a red (that is a fixed frequency of light) circle onto a black background. Then they repeated the experiment with a white background. And I'll be damned... the red on white was a different color than the red on black! So, what is our reference point? Is a certain shade of red a fixed frequency of visible radiation? Or is it entirely perceptual?
I say again, every measurement is an approximation. Ergo, choose N large enough that no one can practically tell the difference. Then the approximation becomes reality.
Countably many questions. And, if we're talking about the REAL world, maybe not so many. Every instrument used to measure something has finite precision. Therefore, ask as many questions as it takes to get the required precision.
Our recent debate on whether Sedna (or Pluto) is a planet is but one example of how the real world fails to fit into simple binary categories.
True enough. But, maybe the real world fits into complex binary categories. For example, suppose I ask you to pick a real number between 0 and 1. Now, I want to guess the number you picked. I could ask is it one-third? The binary answer is yes or no. If no, then guess again. There are uncountably many such questions I could ask. A better way would be to ask if the number is greater than one-half. If so, is the number greater than three/fourths? Then, with a countable number of questions, you could deduce the number.
Similarly, a question asking the color of something (which has finitely many answers) could be reformulated as a sequence of yes/no questions. For example, if the color is in 24-bit format, start with: Is the first bit a 1? and so on.
After all, everything you do on a computer, from playing video games to chatting via Instant messaging, ultimately gets reduced to binary form.
Perhaps the universe is the 3-dimensional equivalent of the projective plane. If you go far enough in one direction, you return to your starting point.
There must be some rationel for the government to isue such law, but I fail to see it.
Rationality has nothing to do with law-making. Consider that (in the U.S. anyway) it is okay for a woman to terminate a pregnancy, thereby ending the life of someone who doesn't get a say in the matter. On the other hand, a person who is terminally ill with cancer (it may vary from state to state, I'm not familiar with the laws everywhere) typically cannot end their own life (legally). Now what's up with that? When is it okay to end someone's life, and when is it not? Enlist, grab a gun, go to another country and kill innocent women and children? That's good. Kill a late-night intruder in your home? That's bad. What the FCC?
Logic, reason, morality -- these have no place in the law. It's about money & politics.
The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws. - Cornelius Tacitus
Dude, you're wasting your time complaining about other people wasting their time posting comments about other people wasting their time. Oh shit! I'm wasting my time!!!
Take a look at how he has been suckling the teat of his successes...
More like he's been licking his balls. I absolutely can't stand putting in a video tape of Star Wars to listen to Lucas going on for 10-15 minutes (seems like an hour) about how great he is, how great Star Wars is, how great he is, how great his production team and special FX guys are, and did I mention how great he is? I mean, I love Star Wars as much as the next guy. But Jesus, give me a break from this self-congratulatory epic! Vrrrrzzzzzzzzrrrr.
Don't get me wrong - I'm not saying documentation is a bad thing, or even that having to pay for a book on bash scripting or a Chilton's auto manual is too expensive/complicated/time-consuming.
But your "analogous" examples miss the point:
1) Typically automobiles are made on assembly line. So you have many many (nearly) identical cars of a particular type. Some small amount of information comes with an owner's manual, and some can be found on stickers under the hood. All but the most complex processes (automatic transmission repair) are covered in a Chilton's manual to be had for less than $20 U.S. The omitted procedures are beyond the scope of an owner anyway, as they require skills and tools not posessed by the owner. So, most info can be found in one place for a low price at your local parts dealer.
2) Homes? Those are not made assembly line. So, of course there is typically LOTS of variation from home to home. Impossible to put all the relevant information in one place.
But, your typical (commercial at least) should have some kind of manual (on line help - at least) that covers the nuts and bolts of configuring the most common services.
That may well be. But, the documentation is certainly not in one place. I purchased Red Hat 7.2, which came with two tiny books (Installation Guide & Getting Started Guide). Now I run RH 9 (downloaded) on a box configured as a router. I am aware that there are many HOWTO's and man pages on various topics. But, man pages aren't exactly user-friendly (mostly reference rather than tutorial). Some of the HOWTO'S on a distro are out of date. Typically, when I want to learn something (say iptables) I have to look at the documentation on the disc, go to LDP to download some more docs, search Google and newsgroups - and occasionally post a question there - to get up and running.
Last week I wanted to set up an ftp server on the router (no X, no GUI, all console). I hadn't configured RH9 to do that during installation. I looked around for ftp on the system (and the discs) but couldn't find it. I searched on Google and discovered RH9 uses vsftpd. So, I went and rpm'd that. Then I had to discover how to turn it on. Read search read. Then I had to figure out which holes needed to be punched through my firewall to allow it to connect.
Now, I love to tinker and learn about the system. I am a lot more knowledgeable because of it (so maybe I shouldn't bitch), but, sometimes it is nice to have a manual or book or something that lists in order what needs to be done, what changes made to configuration files, etc. for the most common services/tasks. If it weren't for friends/retailers/ebay providing my books and Google providing my HOWTOS/Guides and Usenet providing answers to my questions I would have given up Linux in the first 5 minutes. (No kidding! When I first tried to install Mandrake or Red Hat on my brand new home-built computer I got a kernel panic after about 30 rotations of the cd! I called an experienced friend who didn't have a clue how to proceed, but gave me one of the best pieces of advice I've ever received. Go search Usenet. I found the problem was with a RAID controller on my mobo, turned it off in BIOS, rebooted, and voila! Installation complete! Of course NONE of the documentation I had mentioned this particular problem.)
I don't see where you arrive at the failure rates being the "only" meaningful numbers to compare. Let's consider the extremes. You're basically saying that for numbers x,y in the interval [0,1] that x is m times better than y translates into (1-y)/(1-x) = m. That is, x = 1 - [(1-y)/m]. Now, take y=0% and x=80%, which gives m=5. Therefore, 80% success is 5 times better than 0% success. But, 90% is 10 times better than 0%. Seems a little odd to me. At the other extreme, if x=100% and y is any smaller value, we must have 100% is infinitely better than y. This doesn't make any sense whatsoever. No, I wouldn't say the sedan is 10 times better. It's an abuse of mathematical terminology.
My whole point here is this -- Saying that 90% is 2 times as good as 80% is misleading and mathematically ambiguous. The word "times", as in 6 is 2 times 3, means a multiple (2) of 3. Furthermore, the quantities being compared must be stated at the outset. I mean, if we're going to play crazy games with the numbers, let's map the reals from [0,1] into the space of polynomials. Then, to compare the quantities in [0,1], take the ratio of the Square roots of the Laplace transforms of the cubes of the polynomials. Use that as your "multiple". The whole thing is ridiculous. There are no special rules for using percents -- they are just plain vanilla real numbers. So, the simplest meaning of "A is n times better than B" means take the ratio of A to B to get n. Here, we are interested in successes (like 99.84%) rather than failures. So, the spam filters are only 1.001442 times better than humans, or a relative increase of 0.14%. Now, I know that doesn't sound as impressive as 10 times.
Oh, I get it! So like if my rate of catching a ball is 20% and my friend has a success rate of 1%, then like I'm (1-0.01)/(1-0.2)= 1.2375 times a better catcher than my friend. Who is bad at math?
Slashdot Mirror
A lot of times, you don't know if you'll like the album. I'm not one to buy a bunch of music sound-unheard. But, I have, occasionally -- especially with indie bands. I discovered my absolute favorite artist by just picking a disc out of the bin and laying down the cash. (Although I did read about him in Trouser Press, where he got a favorable review.)
Also, I have purchased many cd's by artists -- after having only heard a few singles on radio -- and been pleasantly surprised to enjoy most of the music therein. Hell, sometimes the stuff you hear on the cd is better than the singles!
Do you actually believe that this "methodology" is capable of producing an all-encompassing theory of everything? Forgive me if that sounds a little arrogant. Also, what is it that is being explained? Reality, or our perception of reality?
Have you read the works of Charles Fort? There's lots of stuff science can't explain.
Once, I did some temp work at a cookie factory. We punched a time card when we arrived, and again when we left. Their policy was that you absolutely could not be late. If you were late (even by a minute) three times, you would be terminated. Fair enough. I had to drive 16 miles to get there -- so I alloted a little extra time for variable road conditions, traffic, etc. I usually ended up arriving 5-10 minutes ahead of time. Now, by my way of thinking, this is 5-10 minutes that I could be watching t.v. or programming or whatever. So, I clocked in early. Two weeks later, when I got my paycheck, I noticed they had trimmed off all minutes prior to official beginning of the shift. Mother Fuckers! Burn me for 5-10 minutes a day. But, I dare not burn them for 3 in toto. I am delighted that their plant is now closed. Something about some upper management embezzlement!
In a word ... No. These butt-fuckers always manage to offer up a sacrificial goat (the middle manager). "Well clearly, (S)he misinterpreted the directives and was in violation of the law and company policy, blah blah blah." Given that they are already monkeying with the numbers on the computer, a whistle-blower middle manager might be accused of "altering the billable hours allowed -- they're just a disgruntled employee."
should have been "... relatively virus-free with Linux or BSD for FREE." But, you all knew that.
But Microsoft does. It's stance is 'quality products, at a fair price'.
Hmmm, let's see. Get the virus of the week and Windows XP for $200, or stay relatively virus-free for FREE. Decisions, decisions.
The mere fact that you cannot exactly express 1/3 in a finite number of bits is enough to disprove what you said.
Nope. I suggest you look up the mathematical meaning of the word countable. The dyadic rationals are dense in the reals.
Again, I'm sure that algebras and real numbers or N-bit numbers are excellent approximations as long as we don't forget that they are only approxmations.
... the red on white was a different color than the red on black! So, what is our reference point? Is a certain shade of red a fixed frequency of visible radiation? Or is it entirely perceptual?
I believe that approximations are the best we can do. I've been trained as a mathematician. But, I don't believe in the square root of 2 in any physical sense. Some may argue, well construct a square 1 unit on a side, then the diagonal is square root of two. I argue, is it possible to construct a physical square 1 unit to a side? Each side would have to have the same number of atoms in a regular array, otherwise, it's not a square. But even if you accomplish this magnificent feat, the atoms in the lattice are vibrating, so the length isn't constant in time. So, I don't even believe in 1 as a physically measurable number!
Point being, what is our reference point? Color perception has the same problem. I saw an excellent program on PBS (maybe NOVA? it's been several years) on color vision. One experiment was to project a red (that is a fixed frequency of light) circle onto a black background. Then they repeated the experiment with a white background. And I'll be damned
I say again, every measurement is an approximation. Ergo, choose N large enough that no one can practically tell the difference. Then the approximation becomes reality.
Countably many questions. And, if we're talking about the REAL world, maybe not so many. Every instrument used to measure something has finite precision. Therefore, ask as many questions as it takes to get the required precision.
Our recent debate on whether Sedna (or Pluto) is a planet is but one example of how the real world fails to fit into simple binary categories.
True enough. But, maybe the real world fits into complex binary categories. For example, suppose I ask you to pick a real number between 0 and 1. Now, I want to guess the number you picked. I could ask is it one-third? The binary answer is yes or no. If no, then guess again. There are uncountably many such questions I could ask. A better way would be to ask if the number is greater than one-half. If so, is the number greater than three/fourths? Then, with a countable number of questions, you could deduce the number.
Similarly, a question asking the color of something (which has finitely many answers) could be reformulated as a sequence of yes/no questions. For example, if the color is in 24-bit format, start with: Is the first bit a 1? and so on.
After all, everything you do on a computer, from playing video games to chatting via Instant messaging, ultimately gets reduced to binary form.
If it's finite, then what's at the border?
Perhaps the universe is the 3-dimensional equivalent of the projective plane. If you go far enough in one direction, you return to your starting point.
There must be some rationel for the government to isue such law, but I fail to see it.
Rationality has nothing to do with law-making. Consider that (in the U.S. anyway) it is okay for a woman to terminate a pregnancy, thereby ending the life of someone who doesn't get a say in the matter. On the other hand, a person who is terminally ill with cancer (it may vary from state to state, I'm not familiar with the laws everywhere) typically cannot end their own life (legally). Now what's up with that? When is it okay to end someone's life, and when is it not? Enlist, grab a gun, go to another country and kill innocent women and children? That's good. Kill a late-night intruder in your home? That's bad. What the FCC?
Logic, reason, morality -- these have no place in the law. It's about money & politics.
The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws. - Cornelius Tacitus
Ohhh, that's bad ;)
Then, your kid that you are protecting so much goes to 3rd grade and learns all the swear words he'll ever need.
Followed by the 5th grade where your kid discovers your Hustler collection stashed beneath the socks in your drawer, and shows them to his friends.
Someone linked to this on Groklaw a few days ago. Anyone who's played Steve Jackson's "Illuminati" will get a kick out of it: SCO/Illuminati
Dude, you're wasting your time complaining about other people wasting their time posting comments about other people wasting their time. Oh shit! I'm wasting my time!!!
Take a look at how he has been suckling the teat of his successes ...
More like he's been licking his balls. I absolutely can't stand putting in a video tape of Star Wars to listen to Lucas going on for 10-15 minutes (seems like an hour) about how great he is, how great Star Wars is, how great he is, how great his production team and special FX guys are, and did I mention how great he is? I mean, I love Star Wars as much as the next guy. But Jesus, give me a break from this self-congratulatory epic! Vrrrrzzzzzzzzrrrr.
Don't get me wrong - I'm not saying documentation is a bad thing, or even that having to pay for a book on bash scripting or a Chilton's auto manual is too expensive/complicated/time-consuming.
But your "analogous" examples miss the point: 1) Typically automobiles are made on assembly line. So you have many many (nearly) identical cars of a particular type. Some small amount of information comes with an owner's manual, and some can be found on stickers under the hood. All but the most complex processes (automatic transmission repair) are covered in a Chilton's manual to be had for less than $20 U.S. The omitted procedures are beyond the scope of an owner anyway, as they require skills and tools not posessed by the owner. So, most info can be found in one place for a low price at your local parts dealer. 2) Homes? Those are not made assembly line. So, of course there is typically LOTS of variation from home to home. Impossible to put all the relevant information in one place. But, your typical (commercial at least) should have some kind of manual (on line help - at least) that covers the nuts and bolts of configuring the most common services.
Linux is every bit as well documented as Unix.
That may well be. But, the documentation is certainly not in one place. I purchased Red Hat 7.2, which came with two tiny books (Installation Guide & Getting Started Guide). Now I run RH 9 (downloaded) on a box configured as a router. I am aware that there are many HOWTO's and man pages on various topics. But, man pages aren't exactly user-friendly (mostly reference rather than tutorial). Some of the HOWTO'S on a distro are out of date. Typically, when I want to learn something (say iptables) I have to look at the documentation on the disc, go to LDP to download some more docs, search Google and newsgroups - and occasionally post a question there - to get up and running.
Last week I wanted to set up an ftp server on the router (no X, no GUI, all console). I hadn't configured RH9 to do that during installation. I looked around for ftp on the system (and the discs) but couldn't find it. I searched on Google and discovered RH9 uses vsftpd. So, I went and rpm'd that. Then I had to discover how to turn it on. Read search read. Then I had to figure out which holes needed to be punched through my firewall to allow it to connect.
Now, I love to tinker and learn about the system. I am a lot more knowledgeable because of it (so maybe I shouldn't bitch), but, sometimes it is nice to have a manual or book or something that lists in order what needs to be done, what changes made to configuration files, etc. for the most common services/tasks. If it weren't for friends/retailers/ebay providing my books and Google providing my HOWTOS/Guides and Usenet providing answers to my questions I would have given up Linux in the first 5 minutes. (No kidding! When I first tried to install Mandrake or Red Hat on my brand new home-built computer I got a kernel panic after about 30 rotations of the cd! I called an experienced friend who didn't have a clue how to proceed, but gave me one of the best pieces of advice I've ever received. Go search Usenet. I found the problem was with a RAID controller on my mobo, turned it off in BIOS, rebooted, and voila! Installation complete! Of course NONE of the documentation I had mentioned this particular problem.)
So I guess any discussion of the mating habits of the praying mantis are verboten, right?
I don't see where you arrive at the failure rates being the "only" meaningful numbers to compare. Let's consider the extremes. You're basically saying that for numbers x,y in the interval [0,1] that x is m times better than y translates into (1-y)/(1-x) = m. That is, x = 1 - [(1-y)/m]. Now, take y=0% and x=80%, which gives m=5. Therefore, 80% success is 5 times better than 0% success. But, 90% is 10 times better than 0%. Seems a little odd to me. At the other extreme, if x=100% and y is any smaller value, we must have 100% is infinitely better than y. This doesn't make any sense whatsoever. No, I wouldn't say the sedan is 10 times better. It's an abuse of mathematical terminology.
My whole point here is this -- Saying that 90% is 2 times as good as 80% is misleading and mathematically ambiguous. The word "times", as in 6 is 2 times 3, means a multiple (2) of 3. Furthermore, the quantities being compared must be stated at the outset. I mean, if we're going to play crazy games with the numbers, let's map the reals from [0,1] into the space of polynomials. Then, to compare the quantities in [0,1], take the ratio of the Square roots of the Laplace transforms of the cubes of the polynomials. Use that as your "multiple". The whole thing is ridiculous. There are no special rules for using percents -- they are just plain vanilla real numbers. So, the simplest meaning of "A is n times better than B" means take the ratio of A to B to get n. Here, we are interested in successes (like 99.84%) rather than failures. So, the spam filters are only 1.001442 times better than humans, or a relative increase of 0.14%. Now, I know that doesn't sound as impressive as 10 times.
Oh, I get it! So like if my rate of catching a ball is 20% and my friend has a success rate of 1%, then like I'm (1-0.01)/(1-0.2)= 1.2375 times a better catcher than my friend. Who is bad at math?
True. But where I come from, when someone says x is 10 times y, they don't mean 1-x is ten times 1-y.