I know Bertrand Russell wasn't quite a scientist, but he certainly wrote quite a bit about it.
Now for my rant... Why it's hard to view scientific literature as literature.
I'm taking a break from finishing my term paper for an English class. In fact, this semester, I'm a part-time student, and I'm only taking English classes (gasp!). One of the things I have noticed this semester is how English professors solve problems. Sure, English professors like to examine problems, just not in a rigourous way. When examining problems from the eyes of an English professor, anecdotes are often evidence enough. Often times, these professors beg the question, leave paradoxes unanswered, generalize from the specific to the particular, and perform other such logical fallacies in their thinking. The sheer aesthetics of their analysis often have greater weight that the results themselves.
Poetry is about aesthetics; science is about explanation. The genius of literature is in its exposition. It's all about style. In science, genius is predictability. Literature embraces long-winded, prolix treatments of subject matter, in science this practice is abhorred. Literature can be paradoxical. It can defy the fundamental laws of logic. Science cannot. Science is built upon logic and its beauty is derived from it.
IMHO Raymond Smullyan's "First-Order Logic" is the best math book I've ever read (I've read quite a bit of mathematical literature). It's terse, rigourous, and concise. It has the most informational bang for my buck. I like my mathematics that way. Such a description horrifies the average English major. Sure, I like elaborate prose in my Shakespeare. The bard was famous for his elaborate sentence constructions. However, it's often hard to parse. Sometimes, I appreciate Shakespeare just for the rhythm of his work or his plays on words. I also appreciate the sound of Shakespeare when performed by a good actor. Science and Mathematics aren't appreciated in that way.
The best science fiction examines the human condition. That's why Star Trek:TNG is such a classic, while the new drivel from the Star Trek universe is such a bore. I appreciate work where the main characters are scientists or the plot is placed in the backdrop of science. I don't appreciate the technobable (often purely fictitious) of many pulp sci-fi authors. In fact, the best sci-fi authors often drop the sci-fi from their title. Ellison and Asimov both preferred to be thought of as writers of the general sort. Ultimately, the best science fiction is good fiction.
The most popular discoveries of science tell us something about ourselves. Why have Einstein, Godel, and Darwin been publicly canonized, while Gauss, Fermi, Von Neumann, and Hilbert have not. It's because the former's work was philosophy quantified, while the latter's work was quantified philosophy. The former gave us bold facts about our universe that could be described in human terms, while the latter gave us universally inhuman feats that can only be described by specialists of their respective fields.
Poetry and science meet when aesthetics and explanation intersect. Since literature is about human experience, the poetry of science is literature that describes the human element of exploration. Richard Feynman once remarked [I'm paraphrasing, but its derived from that famous BBC interview|special he gave] that he too could see beauty in nature. However, unlike the poet he could appreciate nature on a deeper level. He could peer inside the petals of a flower and see the beauty of the chemistry inside. That same beauty was the inspiration of much of his "amateur" art work. However, his beauty is one of order. Its aesthetic is the human need for exploration. Ultimately, if any scientist wants to win the Nobel Prize for literature, he will need to produce a literary work about science, not scientific literature.
I used to enjoy CS, but that's changed. I left school during the dot-com boom, and fortunately got experience when there was a demand. I got burned out working insane hours. I was young and could run on caffeine and hubris. I worked long hours for the sake of experience and got paid pretty well, so I can't complain. I've taken the core CS classes, but they won't transfer anywhere, and there's no way I could [or would want to] plunk down the money to finish a BS at my old school. Plus, I found I could easily earn a professional CS in a year from a grad school with a teaching|lab assistantship to pay my way. On the plus side, I enjoy theoretical CS and my math background [algebra, logic, lots of rigour] is pretty good. I've gone back to school and decided to finish a Math degree (with advance course work in Physics and Chemistry).
I've noticed when dealing with other fields that use computers extensively, they tend to frown on lazy|innovative ways of doing things. I understand they aren't usually prepared to whip some perl and parse data in creative ways. They'd rather do more menial grunt work because they understand the system better. Don't even think of coding in VBA to tweak their spreadsheet. Are there any other fields where a solid knowledge of programming|algorithm analysis is valuable? What are your experiences?
Here's a couple more questions for the Slashdot crowd:
How would you view a person with over 5 years coding/DBA experience with a BS in Math and minor in CS? Would some sample code help? What kind of project would look best?
How would you view the same person with a MCS (professional MS)?
What if the person has a master's in EE or Engineering Physics (i.e. quantum optics) instead?
What kind of work is available in related fields? Say for a biophyscist|physiologist with solid CS skills or professional statistician with solid CS skills?
I imagine solitude was thrust upon him. I'm sure people always wanted to discuss physics with him. They probably always acted in awe and often felt mentally inferior. Even Enrico Fermi felt this way! So, I can imagine he was thrust into solitude by the masses. In fact, I stated in another comment for this story, that Godel was subjected to the same treatment by the mathematical community.
Who would come after you? The UN? Whenever the UN does something, it's mostly comprised of US troops. So, we'd have to come after ourselves? Unfortunately, without revenue and taxes (and a complete violation of every country's sovereignty [insert your favorite slam on the Bush administration now]) the UN is a sham. Plus, who would control the UN. Do we really want Burundi or Madagascar to have as equal a say as Germany or the US? The UN was kind of a joke from day one. It's a great forum, and that's about it.
On a tagential, but seemingly related note. Hao Wang's book "A Logical Journey: From Gödel to Philosophy" is a similar type of book. It's really more of a historical source, not a book. The author merely collected and recorded facts based on Godel's life. Godel and Einstein spent 20 years together at the Institute for Advanced Study. Often times they would take walks together and they seemed to be good friends. Also, Godel seemed to have had an active interest in cosmology, prehaps presceint of the rigourization of cosmological models in the post-Einstein era.
Godel lived a rather mundane life. He was no Feynman. He was quiet. While Einstein seemed to enjoy, if not ask, to be treated as a scientific god, Godel seemed to hate such exclusion. Often times, mathematicians and philosophers feared to even talk to the great Godel. Even Von Nuemann (who seemed to have little respect for Einstein [see Ulam's autobiography]), referred to Godel as the greatest philosopher since Aristotle. Facts, as found in Wang's book, such as Godel's fondness for "chicken and biscuits" or Godel spending Sunday mornings in bed reading the Bible are mundane. However, these men were mundane. They're world was completely of the mind. Often these men quirks are the only really interesting things about them. They were virtually indisguishable in public. In fact, in Martin Davis book, "The Universal Computer" Davis' wife exclaimed, upon first seeing Einstein and Godel together at Princeton, that see had seen "Einstein and his lawyer".
In the case of this woman's diaries, I'm more concerned she deified Einstein, thus tainting her view. I believe the publishers may have been right in this case. Her diaries probably read more like notes. They probably would have requried some extensive work or further research before being worthy of a book.
SQL is based on an algebra. Search engines are based on probability or fuzzy logic. I don't think search engines will completely REPLACE SQL.
We use probability to describe phenomena when we really don't understand it. We use algebra, calculus, or traditional logic once we have a firmer grasp. It's boils down to descriptive versus predictive science.
Reasons to avoid this insecure job: o the company has a bad business plan o the company has a boss who knows nothing about his business o the company is incredibly small o the company is going through layoffs o the company has problems shipping products o the company often requires insanely long hours (i.e. cars are in the parking lot at all hours) o you get paid in a delayed fashion (not weekly/bi-weekly) o your contract isn't ironclad (even if it is, you could still have problems) o your employer doesn't like design documents (bad if you're an independent contractor) o you've got a family and kids
Reasons to take/keep a job: o the job looks good on paper o this experience could get you another job in the future o the job pays considerably more o flexible hours o your work at this job directly effects your success o your very happy at your job o your job is fun
Frankly, we've got no details about the job. So, I couldn't tell you either way.
I know this will be seen as pedantic and off-topic, but I do feel some comment is in order? How is a price hike a tariff? Also, the RIAA isn't mentioned directly in the article. The RIAA has all the right in the world to raise the price. We also have the right to boycott it. Sorry, the tone of the article and parent post rubs me the wrong way.
[from the Slashdot summary]...and are discussing a price hike that would increase the tariff to $1.25 up to $2.99 per song.
At first, I was going to blame Slashdot for poor editing, but I realize the fault actually lies with the article. By definition, the word tariff usually implies fees imposed on a product(s) for profit by a government. Perhaps, it can be extended to corporations. It's a stretch, but I'll concede it's possibly a legitimate use of the term.
[from the article] The pigopolists have barely got their feet under the table and already demanding more.
Pigopolists? Is that derived from pigopoly, pig monopoly, or pig oligarchy? Is this an editorial or some small child's blog?
Look, I don't expect the journalistic integrity of the New York Times (actually, I do, but that's a different story), but this kind of rhetoric clearly shows bias.
Just the facts, m'am. Frankly, the facts would have stood on their own without the jab at the RIAA. This is a fault in geek rhetoric. I'm actually more sympathetic for the RIAA after such a slanted attack. The article doesn't mention the RIAA specifically. They do mention "five major record labels". Also, a link to the Wall Street Journal story would have been nice too.
People don't want to hear anti-Microsoft|SCO|RIAA diatribe. [Okay, maybe people like the anti-Microsoft diatribe.] They want to know why they should care. Let's stop with the useless mud-slinging and stick to the facts. The facts will defend themselves.
Are there any cheap open-source RAD tools? Something like VB for the intelligent, or HyperCard for Linux? Are there any budding projects for building such a tool?
Your advice might make sense if you're going to www.skyandtelescope.com/index.html
but if you're going to.../april04/11/1.jsp it's a completely different story.
You really don't have any other choices in a stateless environment.
Think about it like this. It's as if you're just browsing through the stores in the mall, but instead of going through the front door, you're mulling in the back trying to crawl in through the window.
It's just a cookie. Make a shortcut to the folder and delete by date or write a cron job. Heck, if I was creating sky and telescope's site, I'm not going to be worrying about "cookie ettiquete". I'd probably be busy designing a method to help their site withstand a slashdotting.
I just dropped a penny from my desk. I have discovered a calculation outside a computer. It's computation is specific, serial, and grossly primitive. However, by looking at my atomic clock atop my desk, I can see that the duration of a fraction of a second has occured. I can now take my measurement and use it to construct a table which displays the real world calculation of "a mass under the attraction of Earth's gravity at sea level for the duration of time N". Thus my measurement of real-time phenomena has verified that calculations occur outside my PC.
Perhaps we need to rethink our perception of life. So, some microbes are found on Mars. Have they produced the works of Shakespeare or even Oog the caveman? (Actually, Oog isn't his name, but that's what everbody called him.) Have they done anything interesting at all? Of course not, 2,500 years in earth time is like a timeslice on a Cray.
This is not like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's "The Lost World". When biologists began to embrace computability theory and combinatorics in their science, I think they won't be so impressed at life in every petri dish.
2. They think that companies having huge databases containing existing parts, such as in the automotive or the airline industries, will be able to save millions of dollars annually by saving up to 80 percent of the time necessary to search information on parts.
3. Profit ???
I could see some applications for this, but I don't know how well something like this could actually perform. Will companies bite?
Actually all joking aside, I believe the results of their research might be an interesting and hopefully prunned database for Computer Vision researchers. Interestingly, the center seems to be composed of mostly Mech E's.
So, essentially they're developing a living inverse-heat engine. You input work and energy and it puts out heat. Up to 90% efficency!
I'm going to run back to the lab to finish my research on a "Universal Heat Death Accelerator". With this I'll be able to destory the entire universe at once and I'll keep warm in the process (well, as warm as everybody else). I just need to apply for that DARPA grant.
I would argue that our system of government, in its ideal form (thus adhering to the constitution), was meant to be system of checks and balances. Remember, the people did not directly elect their Senators. We elected electors to elect the President (IIRC correctly, they could vote as they choose). Also, the courts lacked the power of judicial review. Thus, the people's voice would be heard by the revolving door that would be the House of Representatives, the Senate would be filled by those who emerged victorious in a struggle for power among each state's competing elite, and the presidency would be held by the man with the most political pull. Unfortunately, we allowed Senators to be directly elected by the people, incumbents in the House basically own their seat, activist judges play lawmaker by setting precedents, and the president tends to be bounded by little. Oh, I forgot to mention the little detail of lobbyists, drafts, taxes, social security, social programs, and abused police powers. Still, it's not a bad form of government; it's just not what was intended.
The computer would have eventually sold itself. Someone would have come around and improved|invented|mass produced the GUI [yes, I know about PARC). Some other "Henry Ford" in his garage would have streamlined the computer industry.
A better question is what would the world look like if Gary Kildall was Bill Gates? Would we be any better off? Is money an all-encompassing evil (a LOTR reference?)? Would billions of dollars taint anybody?
IMHO, the discovery of a real-world application of the idempotent law that was Boole's greatest accomplishment. One could argue that Lebnitz and Boole had independently discovered this. This is not unlike Hamilton's discovery of an application for non-commutative algebra.
Boole's contribution to logic was profound. First, a real world model for any mathematical property ensures the consistency of that model. Boole's work provided an abstraction for elementary set theory. The key to this abstraction is idempotency. The aggregate of set A and itself is the set A (i.e. A+A=A). Thus, Boolean algebra formalizes the basic set theoretic operations of union and intersection, which in turn is almost trivially isomorphic to a Boolean ring. I could create all kinds of stupid rules [insert your favorite slam on mathematics here] that have no meaning in the real world. Most importantly, Boole seemed to be the first to attempt to bridge the gap between abstract thought and mathematics. Admittedly there was some previous work in attempting to formalize|classify all syllogistic reasoning. It was the first step towards a unified theory of logic and ultimately what is hope to be a universal theory of symbolism (see Chomsky's mathematical linguistics).
The irony about mathematics is that often the best ideas are childishly simple. It's not the proof of deep theorems (although that has it's place) that often has the greatest impact. It's the fresh applications of mathematical rigour to some real world scenario. Thus, mathematics is often at it's weakest when done in isolation. Incidentally, Knuth's work in algorithm analysis was revolutionary. In a world described by (K-Complexity (AIT)|cellular automata|simple computer programs) algorithm analysis and ultimately a proof of P not= NP may be to hold the key to the fundamental laws of nature (i.e. physics, biology, and chemistry).
Incidentally, the Martin Davis' The Universal Computer is a great popular science book on this topic. A free copy of the introduction is here. This book manages to introduce the ideas of Turing (Turing-Post?) Machines and the Diagonal Method to the lay reader. The author is a respected logician and computer scientist who studied under Church and Post.
I think I can summarize the collective "wha" by saying, I do really appreciate postings on abstract mathematics, but I don't have a clue what your talking about. In fact, I could have a PhD in mathematics and be a respectable researcher and only have a foggy notion.
With that said, I included a couple of links below:
Personally, I don't care that Janet Jackson briefly flashed the audience. However, people have some right to complain. They intended to watch the Superbowl. They didn't turn on MTV, HBO, or some other cable channel. For whatever reason, they were offended. They complained. Good for them.
I was a bit disgusted of the lame excuses that came out afterwards. "It was a clothing malfunction." How gulliable do they think we are? Just say you did it to keep up with Madonna and Brittney. Just say, you feel like a has-been, and you need to shock to prolong your 15 minutes of fame.
People have a right to be prudes. People have a right be horny. We've got a pretty good system in place that allows both horniness and prudishness. The system is maintaining itself quite well. We'll most certainly complain when they censure us to far.
I've always thought "The Life Of Brian" was a parody of the radical 60's political movement. Brian joined the Jewish underground because he's attracted to a girl, not because he really cares about politics. They plot meaningless proganda attacks against the Romans, and argue with splinter factions. I tought the aquaduct and "why can't men have babies" scenes where priceless.
Re:I'll say it first
on
The Wrong Stuff
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Oh, but you don't understand.....
Among geniuses he's a dimwit; but among dimwits he's a genius.
Incidentally, I might disagree with his opinion in the editorial, but he's certainly a very smart man. However, I find his editorial a bit disappointing. To give you an idea of where I come from, I enjoy physics and I find the mathematical problems of physics interesting, but I could care less about looking through a telescope. With that said, I still see good reasons for a manned mission to Mars.
The line between science and engineering is thin. By definition, engineering is science applied to problems. When most of the great physicists of the early 20th century assembled in the desert in New Mexico to build the atom bomb, they were focused on a deep problem in applied science. The technology of nuclear weapons isn't so advanced. It's the engineering details that have prohibited nuclear proliferation. When the United States entered the space race, the same gathering of minds occurred. If we would attack cancer and/or genomics with the same collective vigour we might actually see some results. Man needs goals to succeed. Clearly, climbing Mt. Everest isn't the feat it once was. It's the mental challenge that often stands in the way.
Man exceeds previous barriers by setting outlandish goals and engaging in the development of new tools. The field of mathematics has embraced the computer. Not just as a calculation, but we've started to embrace the program as math (see Church's Thesis, Kolmogorov Complexity, Algorithm Analysis, and ultimately P?=NP). Having embraced the program as math, we are able to model mathematical phenomena once thought intractable. The fields of in silico biology, computational physics, and computational neuroscience have emerged.
I believe the quest of a manned mission to Mars might bring the discovery of new propulsion systems. Imagine efficient solar powered engines or advances in a new science of terraforming (advanced environmental|chemical engineering). Could man eventually grow his own ecology? While this experiment may prove fatal on Earth. In a closed environment in space, such experiments might be possible. We may destroy the Earth via global warming, NBC warfare, or other acts of stupidity long before our sun goes nova. Could we someday repair the earth if necessary? Could we sustain life elsewhere?
Of course there is the insatiable curiosity that is science. Is there other life out there? What's the point of it all? Why do we exist? America has been defined by our rugged pioneers. "Go west young man!" This line fueled an age of unprecedented American expansion. Fortunes where sought rustling cattle in the mid-west and mining for gold on the coast. Would the United States be the same if it where not for Lewis and Clark?
Games infused with an advertisements is not a new concept. I've seen several companies do it. Remeber Spot, the game infused with 7UP branding. It actually did quite well. I picked up a used copy for $10 and it was fun.
Frankly, the whole Mickey Mouse series on the Genesis was quite well done, and clearly smacked of a Disney tie-in.
It's done quite a bit. Maybe you could write a simple game for a PDA, RealPlayer, or cell phone. I've thought about tinkering with a game, thus creating a neat little demo to go with my resume.
I'd like to add one little detail. If you get to take classes for free, do it. Don't pass it up.
Your skills will get stale. It's not that you can't do good work at a school. It's that people don't respect university IT. Of course, I've always said most of college IT can be lumped into to categories -- students and the worthless. This is not to say that there aren't some lazy students or some really good staff. However, I usually see really lazy IT people for a school. I used to work for my school's IT department and I have friends who still work in academia (staff and professors). Many of them will even admit to being lazy. So, you've got that stigma should you decide to return to the workforce. Degrees help combat this. If you're earning a degree while you are on staff, it isn't viewed the same.
Slashdot Mirror
I know Bertrand Russell wasn't quite a scientist, but he certainly wrote quite a bit about it.
Now for my rant... Why it's hard to view scientific literature as literature.
I'm taking a break from finishing my term paper for an English class. In fact, this semester, I'm a part-time student, and I'm only taking English classes (gasp!). One of the things I have noticed this semester is how English professors solve problems. Sure, English professors like to examine problems, just not in a rigourous way. When examining problems from the eyes of an English professor, anecdotes are often evidence enough. Often times, these professors beg the question, leave paradoxes unanswered, generalize from the specific to the particular, and perform other such logical fallacies in their thinking. The sheer aesthetics of their analysis often have greater weight that the results themselves.
Poetry is about aesthetics; science is about explanation. The genius of literature is in its exposition. It's all about style. In science, genius is predictability. Literature embraces long-winded, prolix treatments of subject matter, in science this practice is abhorred. Literature can be paradoxical. It can defy the fundamental laws of logic. Science cannot. Science is built upon logic and its beauty is derived from it.
IMHO Raymond Smullyan's "First-Order Logic" is the best math book I've ever read (I've read quite a bit of mathematical literature). It's terse, rigourous, and concise. It has the most informational bang for my buck. I like my mathematics that way. Such a description horrifies the average English major. Sure, I like elaborate prose in my Shakespeare. The bard was famous for his elaborate sentence constructions. However, it's often hard to parse. Sometimes, I appreciate Shakespeare just for the rhythm of his work or his plays on words. I also appreciate the sound of Shakespeare when performed by a good actor. Science and Mathematics aren't appreciated in that way.
The best science fiction examines the human condition. That's why Star Trek:TNG is such a classic, while the new drivel from the Star Trek universe is such a bore. I appreciate work where the main characters are scientists or the plot is placed in the backdrop of science. I don't appreciate the technobable (often purely fictitious) of many pulp sci-fi authors. In fact, the best sci-fi authors often drop the sci-fi from their title. Ellison and Asimov both preferred to be thought of as writers of the general sort. Ultimately, the best science fiction is good fiction.
The most popular discoveries of science tell us something about ourselves. Why have Einstein, Godel, and Darwin been publicly canonized, while Gauss, Fermi, Von Neumann, and Hilbert have not. It's because the former's work was philosophy quantified, while the latter's work was quantified philosophy. The former gave us bold facts about our universe that could be described in human terms, while the latter gave us universally inhuman feats that can only be described by specialists of their respective fields.
Poetry and science meet when aesthetics and explanation intersect. Since literature is about human experience, the poetry of science is literature that describes the human element of exploration. Richard Feynman once remarked [I'm paraphrasing, but its derived from that famous BBC interview|special he gave] that he too could see beauty in nature. However, unlike the poet he could appreciate nature on a deeper level. He could peer inside the petals of a flower and see the beauty of the chemistry inside. That same beauty was the inspiration of much of his "amateur" art work. However, his beauty is one of order. Its aesthetic is the human need for exploration. Ultimately, if any scientist wants to win the Nobel Prize for literature, he will need to produce a literary work about science, not scientific literature.
I used to enjoy CS, but that's changed. I left school during the dot-com boom, and fortunately got experience when there was a demand. I got burned out working insane hours. I was young and could run on caffeine and hubris. I worked long hours for the sake of experience and got paid pretty well, so I can't complain. I've taken the core CS classes, but they won't transfer anywhere, and there's no way I could [or would want to] plunk down the money to finish a BS at my old school. Plus, I found I could easily earn a professional CS in a year from a grad school with a teaching|lab assistantship to pay my way. On the plus side, I enjoy theoretical CS and my math background [algebra, logic, lots of rigour] is pretty good. I've gone back to school and decided to finish a Math degree (with advance course work in Physics and Chemistry).
I've noticed when dealing with other fields that use computers extensively, they tend to frown on lazy|innovative ways of doing things. I understand they aren't usually prepared to whip some perl and parse data in creative ways. They'd rather do more menial grunt work because they understand the system better. Don't even think of coding in VBA to tweak their spreadsheet. Are there any other fields where a solid knowledge of programming|algorithm analysis is valuable? What are your experiences?
Here's a couple more questions for the Slashdot crowd:
How would you view a person with over 5 years coding/DBA experience with a BS in Math and minor in CS? Would some sample code help? What kind of project would look best?
How would you view the same person with a MCS (professional MS)?
What if the person has a master's in EE or Engineering Physics (i.e. quantum optics) instead?
What kind of work is available in related fields? Say for a biophyscist|physiologist with solid CS skills or professional statistician with solid CS skills?
I imagine solitude was thrust upon him. I'm sure people always wanted to discuss physics with him. They probably always acted in awe and often felt mentally inferior. Even Enrico Fermi felt this way! So, I can imagine he was thrust into solitude by the masses. In fact, I stated in another comment for this story, that Godel was subjected to the same treatment by the mathematical community.
Who would come after you? The UN? Whenever the UN does something, it's mostly comprised of US troops. So, we'd have to come after ourselves? Unfortunately, without revenue and taxes (and a complete violation of every country's sovereignty [insert your favorite slam on the Bush administration now]) the UN is a sham. Plus, who would control the UN. Do we really want Burundi or Madagascar to have as equal a say as Germany or the US? The UN was kind of a joke from day one. It's a great forum, and that's about it.
On a tagential, but seemingly related note. Hao Wang's book "A Logical Journey: From Gödel to Philosophy" is a similar type of book. It's really more of a historical source, not a book. The author merely collected and recorded facts based on Godel's life. Godel and Einstein spent 20 years together at the Institute for Advanced Study. Often times they would take walks together and they seemed to be good friends. Also, Godel seemed to have had an active interest in cosmology, prehaps presceint of the rigourization of cosmological models in the post-Einstein era.
Godel lived a rather mundane life. He was no Feynman. He was quiet. While Einstein seemed to enjoy, if not ask, to be treated as a scientific god, Godel seemed to hate such exclusion. Often times, mathematicians and philosophers feared to even talk to the great Godel. Even Von Nuemann (who seemed to have little respect for Einstein [see Ulam's autobiography]), referred to Godel as the greatest philosopher since Aristotle. Facts, as found in Wang's book, such as Godel's fondness for "chicken and biscuits" or Godel spending Sunday mornings in bed reading the Bible are mundane. However, these men were mundane. They're world was completely of the mind. Often these men quirks are the only really interesting things about them. They were virtually indisguishable in public. In fact, in Martin Davis book, "The Universal Computer" Davis' wife exclaimed, upon first seeing Einstein and Godel together at Princeton, that see had seen "Einstein and his lawyer".
In the case of this woman's diaries, I'm more concerned she deified Einstein, thus tainting her view. I believe the publishers may have been right in this case. Her diaries probably read more like notes. They probably would have requried some extensive work or further research before being worthy of a book.
IF they index XML properly...
SQL is based on an algebra. Search engines are based on probability or fuzzy logic. I don't think search engines will completely REPLACE SQL.
We use probability to describe phenomena when we really don't understand it. We use algebra, calculus, or traditional logic once we have a firmer grasp. It's boils down to descriptive versus predictive science.
It depends.
Reasons to avoid this insecure job:
o the company has a bad business plan
o the company has a boss who knows nothing about his business
o the company is incredibly small
o the company is going through layoffs
o the company has problems shipping products
o the company often requires insanely long hours (i.e. cars are in the parking lot at all hours)
o you get paid in a delayed fashion (not weekly/bi-weekly)
o your contract isn't ironclad (even if it is, you could still have problems)
o your employer doesn't like design documents (bad if you're an independent contractor)
o you've got a family and kids
Reasons to take/keep a job:
o the job looks good on paper
o this experience could get you another job in the future
o the job pays considerably more
o flexible hours
o your work at this job directly effects your success
o your very happy at your job
o your job is fun
Frankly, we've got no details about the job. So, I couldn't tell you either way.
I know this will be seen as pedantic and off-topic, but I do feel some comment is in order? How is a price hike a tariff? Also, the RIAA isn't mentioned directly in the article. The RIAA has all the right in the world to raise the price. We also have the right to boycott it. Sorry, the tone of the article and parent post rubs me the wrong way.
...and are discussing a price hike that would increase the tariff to $1.25 up to $2.99 per song.
[from the Slashdot summary]
At first, I was going to blame Slashdot for poor editing, but I realize the fault actually lies with the article. By definition, the word tariff usually implies fees imposed on a product(s) for profit by a government. Perhaps, it can be extended to corporations. It's a stretch, but I'll concede it's possibly a legitimate use of the term.
[from the article]
The pigopolists have barely got their feet under the table and already demanding more.
Pigopolists? Is that derived from pigopoly, pig monopoly, or pig oligarchy? Is this an editorial or some small child's blog?
Look, I don't expect the journalistic integrity of the New York Times (actually, I do, but that's a different story), but this kind of rhetoric clearly shows bias.
Just the facts, m'am.
Frankly, the facts would have stood on their own without the jab at the RIAA. This is a fault in geek rhetoric. I'm actually more sympathetic for the RIAA after such a slanted attack. The article doesn't mention the RIAA specifically. They do mention "five major record labels". Also, a link to the Wall Street Journal story would have been nice too.
People don't want to hear anti-Microsoft|SCO|RIAA diatribe. [Okay, maybe people like the anti-Microsoft diatribe.] They want to know why they should care. Let's stop with the useless mud-slinging and stick to the facts. The facts will defend themselves.
Are there any cheap open-source RAD tools? Something like VB for the intelligent, or HyperCard for Linux? Are there any budding projects for building such a tool?
Your advice might make sense if you're going to
.../april04/11/1.jsp
www.skyandtelescope.com/index.html
but if you're going to
it's a completely different story.
You really don't have any other choices in a stateless environment.
Think about it like this. It's as if you're just browsing through the stores in the mall, but instead of going through the front door, you're mulling in the back trying to crawl in through the window.
It's just a cookie. Make a shortcut to the folder and delete by date or write a cron job. Heck, if I was creating sky and telescope's site, I'm not going to be worrying about "cookie ettiquete". I'd probably be busy designing a method to help their site withstand a slashdotting.
I just dropped a penny from my desk. I have discovered a calculation outside a computer. It's computation is specific, serial, and grossly primitive. However, by looking at my atomic clock atop my desk, I can see that the duration of a fraction of a second has occured. I can now take my measurement and use it to construct a table which displays the real world calculation of "a mass under the attraction of Earth's gravity at sea level for the duration of time N". Thus my measurement of real-time phenomena has verified that calculations occur outside my PC.
Perhaps we need to rethink our perception of life. So, some microbes are found on Mars. Have they produced the works of Shakespeare or even Oog the caveman? (Actually, Oog isn't his name, but that's what everbody called him.) Have they done anything interesting at all? Of course not, 2,500 years in earth time is like a timeslice on a Cray.
This is not like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's "The Lost World". When biologists began to embrace computability theory and combinatorics in their science, I think they won't be so impressed at life in every petri dish.
1. Crazy idea about searching on shapes.
2. They think that companies having huge databases containing existing parts, such as in the automotive or the airline industries, will be able to save millions of dollars annually by saving up to 80 percent of the time necessary to search information on parts.
3. Profit ???
I could see some applications for this, but I don't know how well something like this could actually perform. Will companies bite?
Actually all joking aside, I believe the results of their research might be an interesting and hopefully prunned database for Computer Vision researchers. Interestingly, the center seems to be composed of mostly Mech E's.
So, essentially they're developing a living inverse-heat engine. You input work and energy and it puts out heat. Up to 90% efficency!
I'm going to run back to the lab to finish my research on a "Universal Heat Death Accelerator". With this I'll be able to destory the entire universe at once and I'll keep warm in the process (well, as warm as everybody else). I just need to apply for that DARPA grant.
Sorry if this has already been mentioned...
So while s u b l i m i n a l m e s s a g e s don't work, SUGGESTIVE statements about subliminal messages do work.
Not that I'm suggesting anything
modmeup
I would argue that our system of government, in its ideal form (thus adhering to the constitution), was meant to be system of checks and balances. Remember, the people did not directly elect their Senators. We elected electors to elect the President (IIRC correctly, they could vote as they choose). Also, the courts lacked the power of judicial review. Thus, the people's voice would be heard by the revolving door that would be the House of Representatives, the Senate would be filled by those who emerged victorious in a struggle for power among each state's competing elite, and the presidency would be held by the man with the most political pull. Unfortunately, we allowed Senators to be directly elected by the people, incumbents in the House basically own their seat, activist judges play lawmaker by setting precedents, and the president tends to be bounded by little. Oh, I forgot to mention the little detail of lobbyists, drafts, taxes, social security, social programs, and abused police powers. Still, it's not a bad form of government; it's just not what was intended.
The computer would have eventually sold itself. Someone would have come around and improved|invented|mass produced the GUI [yes, I know about PARC). Some other "Henry Ford" in his garage would have streamlined the computer industry.
A better question is what would the world look like if Gary Kildall was Bill Gates? Would we be any better off? Is money an all-encompassing evil (a LOTR reference?)? Would billions of dollars taint anybody?
IMHO, the discovery of a real-world application of the idempotent law that was Boole's greatest accomplishment. One could argue that Lebnitz and Boole had independently discovered this. This is not unlike Hamilton's discovery of an application for non-commutative algebra.
Boole's contribution to logic was profound. First, a real world model for any mathematical property ensures the consistency of that model. Boole's work provided an abstraction for elementary set theory. The key to this abstraction is idempotency. The aggregate of set A and itself is the set A (i.e. A+A=A). Thus, Boolean algebra formalizes the basic set theoretic operations of union and intersection, which in turn is almost trivially isomorphic to a Boolean ring. I could create all kinds of stupid rules [insert your favorite slam on mathematics here] that have no meaning in the real world. Most importantly, Boole seemed to be the first to attempt to bridge the gap between abstract thought and mathematics. Admittedly there was some previous work in attempting to formalize|classify all syllogistic reasoning. It was the first step towards a unified theory of logic and ultimately what is hope to be a universal theory of symbolism (see Chomsky's mathematical linguistics).
The irony about mathematics is that often the best ideas are childishly simple. It's not the proof of deep theorems (although that has it's place) that often has the greatest impact. It's the fresh applications of mathematical rigour to some real world scenario. Thus, mathematics is often at it's weakest when done in isolation. Incidentally, Knuth's work in algorithm analysis was revolutionary. In a world described by (K-Complexity (AIT)|cellular automata|simple computer programs) algorithm analysis and ultimately a proof of P not= NP may be to hold the key to the fundamental laws of nature (i.e. physics, biology, and chemistry).
Incidentally, the Martin Davis' The Universal Computer is a great popular science book on this topic. A free copy of the introduction is here. This book manages to introduce the ideas of Turing (Turing-Post?) Machines and the Diagonal Method to the lay reader. The author is a respected logician and computer scientist who studied under Church and Post.
I think I can summarize the collective "wha" by saying, I do really appreciate postings on abstract mathematics, but I don't have a clue what your talking about. In fact, I could have a PhD in mathematics and be a respectable researcher and only have a foggy notion.
With that said, I included a couple of links below:
Wikipedia's explanation on the problem
an insanely terse definition with a bibliography of the originally sited papers
However, you felt the need to push you voluptuous Swedish masseuse girlfriend away and post to Slashdot. Hmmmm.........
Personally, I don't care that Janet Jackson briefly flashed the audience. However, people have some right to complain. They intended to watch the Superbowl. They didn't turn on MTV, HBO, or some other cable channel. For whatever reason, they were offended. They complained. Good for them.
I was a bit disgusted of the lame excuses that came out afterwards. "It was a clothing malfunction." How gulliable do they think we are? Just say you did it to keep up with Madonna and Brittney. Just say, you feel like a has-been, and you need to shock to prolong your 15 minutes of fame.
People have a right to be prudes. People have a right be horny. We've got a pretty good system in place that allows both horniness and prudishness. The system is maintaining itself quite well. We'll most certainly complain when they censure us to far.
I've always thought "The Life Of Brian" was a parody of the radical 60's political movement. Brian joined the Jewish underground because he's attracted to a girl, not because he really cares about politics. They plot meaningless proganda attacks against the Romans, and argue with splinter factions. I tought the aquaduct and "why can't men have babies" scenes where priceless.
Oh, but you don't understand.....
Among geniuses he's a dimwit; but among dimwits he's a genius.
Incidentally, I might disagree with his opinion in the editorial, but he's certainly a very smart man. However, I find his editorial a bit disappointing. To give you an idea of where I come from, I enjoy physics and I find the mathematical problems of physics interesting, but I could care less about looking through a telescope. With that said, I still see good reasons for a manned mission to Mars.
The line between science and engineering is thin. By definition, engineering is science applied to problems. When most of the great physicists of the early 20th century assembled in the desert in New Mexico to build the atom bomb, they were focused on a deep problem in applied science. The technology of nuclear weapons isn't so advanced. It's the engineering details that have prohibited nuclear proliferation. When the United States entered the space race, the same gathering of minds occurred. If we would attack cancer and/or genomics with the same collective vigour we might actually see some results. Man needs goals to succeed. Clearly, climbing Mt. Everest isn't the feat it once was. It's the mental challenge that often stands in the way.
Man exceeds previous barriers by setting outlandish goals and engaging in the development of new tools. The field of mathematics has embraced the computer. Not just as a calculation, but we've started to embrace the program as math (see Church's Thesis, Kolmogorov Complexity, Algorithm Analysis, and ultimately P?=NP). Having embraced the program as math, we are able to model mathematical phenomena once thought intractable. The fields of in silico biology, computational physics, and computational neuroscience have emerged.
I believe the quest of a manned mission to Mars might bring the discovery of new propulsion systems. Imagine efficient solar powered engines or advances in a new science of terraforming (advanced environmental|chemical engineering). Could man eventually grow his own ecology? While this experiment may prove fatal on Earth. In a closed environment in space, such experiments might be possible. We may destroy the Earth via global warming, NBC warfare, or other acts of stupidity long before our sun goes nova. Could we someday repair the earth if necessary? Could we sustain life elsewhere?
Of course there is the insatiable curiosity that is science. Is there other life out there? What's the point of it all? Why do we exist? America has been defined by our rugged pioneers. "Go west young man!" This line fueled an age of unprecedented American expansion. Fortunes where sought rustling cattle in the mid-west and mining for gold on the coast. Would the United States be the same if it where not for Lewis and Clark?
Games infused with an advertisements is not a new concept. I've seen several companies do it. Remeber Spot, the game infused with 7UP branding. It actually did quite well. I picked up a used copy for $10 and it was fun.
Frankly, the whole Mickey Mouse series on the Genesis was quite well done, and clearly smacked of a Disney tie-in.
It's done quite a bit. Maybe you could write a simple game for a PDA, RealPlayer, or cell phone. I've thought about tinkering with a game, thus creating a neat little demo to go with my resume.
Or you could just turn off the television and read a book. Now, I'm being told I NEED commercials for my protection.
Most of what everyone said is dead on.
I'd like to add one little detail. If you get to take classes for free, do it. Don't pass it up.
Your skills will get stale. It's not that you can't do good work at a school. It's that people don't respect university IT. Of course, I've always said most of college IT can be lumped into to categories -- students and the worthless. This is not to say that there aren't some lazy students or some really good staff. However, I usually see really lazy IT people for a school. I used to work for my school's IT department and I have friends who still work in academia (staff and professors). Many of them will even admit to being lazy. So, you've got that stigma should you decide to return to the workforce. Degrees help combat this. If you're earning a degree while you are on staff, it isn't viewed the same.