The problem is that pop-sci movies/books are made to make money. They're not made to educate. So, obviously they're selling to the lowest common denomenator. That's the point.
Somewhere I read that the publishers told Hawking that every equation in his book would cut sales in half. Clearly the man could have put math in his books. IIRC, he avoided using math altogether and the book was a best-seller.
I imagine every integral in a book cuts sales by 90%. At least that's what it did to my Calculus class.
Perhaps the Palestinians and the Israelis will embrace peace, when they see the futility of blowing each other up.
I know this is off-topic, but I feel that this analogy is the best, because like the Middle East, I'm not holding my breath for the RIAA to change its ways.
The RIAA won't change. The RIAA is nothing more than the business end of copyright lawyers. They're not musicians or producers.
5 out of 7 serial killers said they were happy in their profession.
One killer, Hannibal L. says: "I just loveeeeee my job. I always dine out. I get to eat so many interesting people (with a nice side of Chianti of course).
How can you quantitatively measure happiness? Should I be shocked that the derivative of my happy graph is negative? What happens when contentment approaches infinity? Is my joy infinitesimal to you? If Alice and Bob are happily married, do they have happy children? How many and when?
Heck, 39% of all people know that 87% of all statistics are made up. Well, mocking the social sciences always makes me happy. Could I be a professional skeptic? Hmm....
Do you want to know why the Democratic party has lost so many house seats, senate seats, and the White House?
You don't win elections by just "hating" the other canidate. The "I just hate Bush" mantra can only win so many votes. People want a positive vision for their future. Heck, you should have picked Edwards as your canidate. Now you've got the John "my secret service agent is an SOB and I don't fall down" Kerry as your canidate. Why is he snowboarding to begin with? Sheesh, I can't wait for his heart-to-heart, extra-special episode of MTV's "Rock the Vote". His personality, and not his ideas, are going to lose this election.
The democratic party used to be the party of the working man. Now, it's the party of elitest snobs. How many european mansions does John Kerry own? Seriously. The only positive thing about John Kerry is his war record. Which most hardcore liberals probably hate anyway. Go figure.
So before you bash Bush, remember this: -Kerry is "Skull and Bones" -Soros makes Halliburton looks squeaky clean. -Jimmy Carter isn't helping anyone by talking.
How can the internet enhance social networks? The issue about most connections has little to do with distance and more to do with some sort of social stigma. "Skull and Bones" isn't going to be inviting me to join them any time soon.
IIRC, Stephen Wolfram has argued that there exists a Principle of Computational Equivalence. (Kolmogorov and Chaitin said similar things in a more rigourous way.) In short, PCE says that any computation to describe certain phenomena would take a similar amount of time to occur as the phenomena itself. In other words, massive parallelism or some other intrinsic property causes some phenomena to be so computationally intractable, that it would be just as quick to take a measurement of the phenomena as opposed to mathematically computing it ourselves. Algorithmic Information Theory says that some data is so random that the program to describe it is of a similar message length (in terms of information) as the actual data itself. Thus there is a hidden complexity in the data.
I wonder what Kolmogorov's view of Brooks' Mythical Man Month would be. Could it that software is complex because software is Complex? Perhaps we've reduced software to it's most reduced form. In other words, maybe there exists no more efficent way of describing the phenomena we wish to describe. Is the data that we describe in the business world is so random, that no set of instructions can reduce it by any signifigant order?
Advanced engineering is applied physics; but advanced CS is mostly math. That's the problem. CS isn't quite engineering. Algorithm analysis is math. Database theory is an applied form of algebra. Compiler design is math. Computer graphics (research side) is math. CS is really more an engineering of ideas.
What about AI? AI is a cross of logic, mathematical modeling, statistics, psychology, physiology, biology and many other fields. That's another great problem with CS. CS has no identity.
What can a CS major do? It depends. If he enjoys his field, probably quite a bit. However, the more CS is moved away from mathematics and into engineering, it will be look at as EE lite or advanced MIS. Add to the fact that many CS people got into CS for money (haha), and CS is in bad shape.
The original computer scientists where logicians and engineers. Yet the average CS PhD knows little about either. Sure, you study algorithm analysis/computability theory. Can you write a proof? (Actually yes you can, you probably do so everyday -- you just may not know it. Can you tell me why?)
Lately, I've noticed quite a few logicians using LISP to work through problems. Ultimately, math is the computer program. You don't have to look further than the fields of computational physics, bioinfomatics, algorithmic information theory, or even modern quantum computing. This makes sense. Math in the sciences has always been about predictability. If doing a rain dance helps you determine the state of some biological system and you can reproduce the results on demand, then the rain dance is mathematics.
If you want to do interesting stuff in CS, you need to go to a good school and eventually get some graduate training. A BS in physics doesn't cut it, and neither does a modern day BS in CS. Actually, I see a lot of interesting stuff being done with computers in other fields, or better yet, I see academics with PhDs in the sciences learning more about CS.
The more homegrown a young researcher, the more humdrum (by Intel standards) his or her enterprise--and the more exotic the kids' names, the more esoteric their topics. The correlation looked promising. Yuyin Chen's project sounded dauntingly abstract...
I know Slate is sponsored|run by MSNBC, so I shouldn't expect any real journalism here. I think we all know that MSNBC has been living off of Imus (a radio show with a TV camera) for years now.
Frankly, this reporting borders on the obscene. If Rush Limbaugh makes a commentary about black quaterbacks, the world ignites with rage. However, if some reporter for Slate mocks children with "exotic" sounding names or having acne, this is sound journalism. Of course if Slate did fire Ms. Hulbert she'd probably find a job at USA Today or the New York Times. At least she actually went to the news scene to report the story.
Your bait of falsehood takes this carp of truth: and thus do we of wisdom and of reach, with windlasses and with assays of bias, by indirections find directions out: so by my former lecture and advice, shall you my son.
You have me, have you not?
--Polonius, from Hamlet Act II Scene
Whenever I acquire the use of an attorney, doctor, or an accountant, I google their name first. I googled (searched outside of google as well) the names of my professors to determine their research interests and teaching style. I can understand this man's complaint. However, I believe his complaint is with the website owner (in this case the state of California).
Although this does bring up an interesting legal question. Does Google have the same responsibility that say the New York Times (haha, I know) of providing context for their reporting. Matt Drudge has demonstrated the power of the internet. Heck, I've recently run into two cases where people in our justice system have been disbarred|fired for misconduct based solely on their internet postings. There is a deeper precedent here.
Imagine a future in which programmers are hired to place data to throw off intelligent agents parsing for good information. Do you have a bad credit history? You need to call a data munger. Did your business get a bad review in the local paper and it's now been preserved for all of history on the Wayback Machine and Google -- get a data munger. You see a data munger won't hide the information, but he will surround it with so much spamorific tripe as so to make it unparsable. The Orwellian future is now. Are you a struggling musician wishing to create some word of mouth for your band -- hire a data munger. Perhaps we should all jump on board the new field of data manipulation for profit.
I've created a simple business plan: Step 1: Spam|Parse the internet at large Step 2: (Blackmail|Obfuscate data for|plant news for) clients Step 3: Profit
It's really a study of the history of Computability. It contains chapters on Hilbert, Godel, Turing, Boole, Frege, and many others.
The author is a logician. He solved one of Hilbert's problems. He studied under Emil Post and Alanzo Church. He also worked at the Institute of Advanced Study with Von Nuemann and Godel.
The book requires a small dose (hardly any) mathematical maturity. It explains concepts like Turing Machines and Cantor's Diagonal Arugument very well.
IMHO, it's the best popular science book on logic.
There are many nice state schools in Virginia. UVa and Virginia Tech both have solid CS departments. Maybe you could even get a job working for the school's IT department. Incidently, if you pull it off, I'd appreciate you telling me how you did it (spent several years in IT and I'm finishing my BS now). It doesn't seem like an impossible task. I'd recommend you talk to the local LUG. They'd probably give you a heads up. I'd actually try traveling to one of their meetings.
I have to concur with the overall "go-out-and -have-some-fun" response. Just make sure you don't go into debt over this. If you're debt-and-responsibility free, you'll be okay, no matter what you do.
Make sure you define the financial compensation up front. Make sure you stick to it, even if things get tough. Otherwise things will get ugly fast. Family or not.
First, don't compare this to Stargate (I know the music doesn't help) or Independence Day. Compare this to the Shadow, Hudsucker Proxy, or the Rocketeer. Second, remember this is one step away from indie. Yeah, I question the mainstream appeal. However, the story behind the movie will probably make me go see it.
I've seen bare stage interpretations of Shakespeare. This isn't that type of flick. However, seeing as how the last movie I've seen is the Segal-like Payback (sorry, Afflick's bravado reminds me of Under Siege), I don't know if this will be so bad. Yes, I know that we get caught up in CGI valhalla. However, this does speak a lot for effort.
Plus, remember the goal is to make money. Not necessarily rake in $300 million at the US box office.
Except this guy has a Havard MBA. A tad bit overeducated? Good luck. I'm sure the money is good. Especially given the rates he charges. However, I think I'd just cut out the middle man and become an industrial plumber.
Which leads me to the point. Do you realize how easy a smart guy could clean up in some field like industrial construction? There's lot's of money in it. Imagine entering that field with some serious math/physics/chemistry skills. Why waste your time being a computer technician? Heck, no one would care if you taught yourself chemistry in a field like that.
Have you ever met guys like this? The man buys a piece of land, relatively cheap. He has some really stupid ideas for it. Suckers in some church youth group to clean it during the summer. His business ideas obviously failed. Fortunately his wife is a banker.
I doubt he gets his 4 million.
1. Buy property 2. Stumble onto silo 3. Build underwater adventure, rock climbing, and recreational facility... 4. Profit
Somehow I don't think Sam Walton would have done things this way!
Anyway, I for one think the movie will be entertaining and make money. It won't do Asimov justice and it'll make Ellison look good. On the bright side, Harlan will have another excuse to hate Hollywood. Maybe the cranky old man will start rant or something.:) That might be better than the movie.
I know I'm going to get slammed for this...
I for one welcome our new robot overlords!
Look, I've never used a slashdotism before! Cut me a little slack.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually you can share files legally. They didn't, but you could. Just thought I'd nitpick. It's slashdot you know.
The problem is that pop-sci movies/books are made to make money. They're not made to educate. So, obviously they're selling to the lowest common denomenator. That's the point.
Somewhere I read that the publishers told Hawking that every equation in his book would cut sales in half. Clearly the man could have put math in his books. IIRC, he avoided using math altogether and the book was a best-seller.
I imagine every integral in a book cuts sales by 90%. At least that's what it did to my Calculus class.
Perhaps the Palestinians and the Israelis will embrace peace, when they see the futility of blowing each other up.
I know this is off-topic, but I feel that this analogy is the best, because like the Middle East, I'm not holding my breath for the RIAA to change its ways.
The RIAA won't change. The RIAA is nothing more than the business end of copyright lawyers. They're not musicians or producers.
Of course my job will be replaced by AI by then. However, the server will be in India. Probably be designed by some genius at IIT.
Of course the internet will probably be as useful as the telegraph.
Of course Skynet will have become sentient and I'll be nothing more than some mainframe's meatpuppet servant.
Of course the companies will no longer exist and we'll all be living on Mars because we destroyed Earth in nuclear Holocaust.
Of course I'll be dead long before then -- so sure, why not?
5 out of 7 serial killers said they were happy in their profession.
One killer, Hannibal L. says:
"I just loveeeeee my job. I always dine out. I get to eat so many interesting people (with a nice side of Chianti of course).
How can you quantitatively measure happiness? Should I be shocked that the derivative of my happy graph is negative? What happens when contentment approaches infinity? Is my joy infinitesimal to you? If Alice and Bob are happily married, do they have happy children? How many and when?
Heck, 39% of all people know that 87% of all statistics are made up. Well, mocking the social sciences always makes me happy. Could I be a professional skeptic? Hmm....
Do you want to know why the Democratic party has lost so many house seats, senate seats, and the White House?
You don't win elections by just "hating" the other canidate. The "I just hate Bush" mantra can only win so many votes. People want a positive vision for their future. Heck, you should have picked Edwards as your canidate. Now you've got the John "my secret service agent is an SOB and I don't fall down" Kerry as your canidate. Why is he snowboarding to begin with? Sheesh, I can't wait for his heart-to-heart, extra-special episode of MTV's "Rock the Vote". His personality, and not his ideas, are going to lose this election.
The democratic party used to be the party of the working man. Now, it's the party of elitest snobs. How many european mansions does John Kerry own? Seriously. The only positive thing about John Kerry is his war record. Which most hardcore liberals probably hate anyway. Go figure.
So before you bash Bush, remember this:
-Kerry is "Skull and Bones"
-Soros makes Halliburton looks squeaky clean.
-Jimmy Carter isn't helping anyone by talking.
How can the internet enhance social networks? The issue about most connections has little to do with distance and more to do with some sort of social stigma. "Skull and Bones" isn't going to be inviting me to join them any time soon.
Perhaps the notion of fruit and vegetable are nothing more than poorly imposed taxonomies from an antiquated era.
Why can't a Tomato be both a fruit and a vegetable?
Just a random, but somewhat related thought....
IIRC, Stephen Wolfram has argued that there exists a Principle of Computational Equivalence. (Kolmogorov and Chaitin said similar things in a more rigourous way.) In short, PCE says that any computation to describe certain phenomena would take a similar amount of time to occur as the phenomena itself. In other words, massive parallelism or some other intrinsic property causes some phenomena to be so computationally intractable, that it would be just as quick to take a measurement of the phenomena as opposed to mathematically computing it ourselves. Algorithmic Information Theory says that some data is so random that the program to describe it is of a similar message length (in terms of information) as the actual data itself. Thus there is a hidden complexity in the data.
I wonder what Kolmogorov's view of Brooks' Mythical Man Month would be. Could it that software is complex because software is Complex? Perhaps we've reduced software to it's most reduced form. In other words, maybe there exists no more efficent way of describing the phenomena we wish to describe. Is the data that we describe in the business world is so random, that no set of instructions can reduce it by any signifigant order?
No, that kind of art gets grants.
Advanced engineering is applied physics; but advanced CS is mostly math. That's the problem. CS isn't quite engineering. Algorithm analysis is math. Database theory is an applied form of algebra. Compiler design is math. Computer graphics (research side) is math. CS is really more an engineering of ideas.
What about AI? AI is a cross of logic, mathematical modeling, statistics, psychology, physiology, biology and many other fields. That's another great problem with CS. CS has no identity.
What can a CS major do? It depends. If he enjoys his field, probably quite a bit. However, the more CS is moved away from mathematics and into engineering, it will be look at as EE lite or advanced MIS. Add to the fact that many CS people got into CS for money (haha), and CS is in bad shape.
The original computer scientists where logicians and engineers. Yet the average CS PhD knows little about either. Sure, you study algorithm analysis/computability theory. Can you write a proof? (Actually yes you can, you probably do so everyday -- you just may not know it. Can you tell me why?)
Lately, I've noticed quite a few logicians using LISP to work through problems. Ultimately, math is the computer program. You don't have to look further than the fields of computational physics, bioinfomatics, algorithmic information theory, or even modern quantum computing. This makes sense. Math in the sciences has always been about predictability. If doing a rain dance helps you determine the state of some biological system and you can reproduce the results on demand, then the rain dance is mathematics.
If you want to do interesting stuff in CS, you need to go to a good school and eventually get some graduate training. A BS in physics doesn't cut it, and neither does a modern day BS in CS. Actually, I see a lot of interesting stuff being done with computers in other fields, or better yet, I see academics with PhDs in the sciences learning more about CS.
The more homegrown a young researcher, the more humdrum (by Intel standards) his or her enterprise--and the more exotic the kids' names, the more esoteric their topics. The correlation looked promising. Yuyin Chen's project sounded dauntingly abstract...
I know Slate is sponsored|run by MSNBC, so I shouldn't expect any real journalism here. I think we all know that MSNBC has been living off of Imus (a radio show with a TV camera) for years now.
Frankly, this reporting borders on the obscene. If Rush Limbaugh makes a commentary about black quaterbacks, the world ignites with rage. However, if some reporter for Slate mocks children with "exotic" sounding names or having acne, this is sound journalism. Of course if Slate did fire Ms. Hulbert she'd probably find a job at USA Today or the New York Times. At least she actually went to the news scene to report the story.
Your bait of falsehood takes this carp of truth:
and thus do we of wisdom and of reach,
with windlasses and with assays of bias,
by indirections find directions out:
so by my former lecture and advice,
shall you my son.
You have me, have you not?
--Polonius, from Hamlet Act II Scene
Whenever I acquire the use of an attorney, doctor, or an accountant, I google their name first. I googled (searched outside of google as well) the names of my professors to determine their research interests and teaching style. I can understand this man's complaint. However, I believe his complaint is with the website owner (in this case the state of California).
Although this does bring up an interesting legal question. Does Google have the same responsibility that say the New York Times (haha, I know) of providing context for their reporting. Matt Drudge has demonstrated the power of the internet. Heck, I've recently run into two cases where people in our justice system have been disbarred|fired for misconduct based solely on their internet postings.
There is a deeper precedent here.
Imagine a future in which programmers are hired to place data to throw off intelligent agents parsing for good information. Do you have a bad credit history? You need to call a data munger. Did your business get a bad review in the local paper and it's now been preserved for all of history on the Wayback Machine and Google -- get a data munger. You see a data munger won't hide the information, but he will surround it with so much spamorific tripe as so to make it unparsable. The Orwellian future is now. Are you a struggling musician wishing to create some word of mouth for your band -- hire a data munger. Perhaps we should all jump on board the new field of data manipulation for profit.
A case study of the church of scientology newsgroup
I've created a simple business plan:
Step 1: Spam|Parse the internet at large
Step 2: (Blackmail|Obfuscate data for|plant news for) clients
Step 3: Profit
Take a look at the The Universal Computer.
It's really a study of the history of Computability. It contains chapters on Hilbert, Godel, Turing, Boole, Frege, and many others.
The author is a logician. He solved one of Hilbert's problems. He studied under Emil Post and Alanzo Church. He also worked at the Institute of Advanced Study with Von Nuemann and Godel.
The book requires a small dose (hardly any) mathematical maturity. It explains concepts like Turing Machines and Cantor's Diagonal Arugument very well.
IMHO, it's the best popular science book on logic.
There are many nice state schools in Virginia. UVa and Virginia Tech both have solid CS departments. Maybe you could even get a job working for the school's IT department. Incidently, if you pull it off, I'd appreciate you telling me how you did it (spent several years in IT and I'm finishing my BS now). It doesn't seem like an impossible task. I'd recommend you talk to the local LUG. They'd probably give you a heads up. I'd actually try traveling to one of their meetings.
Also, you can't get more country than Blacksburg. It's nice if you like open and quiet. There are a few tech companies listed here.
I have to concur with the overall "go-out-and -have-some-fun" response. Just make sure you don't go into debt over this. If you're debt-and-responsibility free, you'll be okay, no matter what you do.
I stopped reading after I saw:
CBS will be airing...
Make sure you define the financial compensation up front. Make sure you stick to it, even if things get tough. Otherwise things will get ugly fast. Family or not.
Disgruntled and pendantic!
You work at Blockbuster don't you.
First, don't compare this to Stargate (I know the music doesn't help) or Independence Day. Compare this to the Shadow, Hudsucker Proxy, or the Rocketeer. Second, remember this is one step away from indie. Yeah, I question the mainstream appeal. However, the story behind the movie will probably make me go see it.
I've seen bare stage interpretations of Shakespeare. This isn't that type of flick. However, seeing as how the last movie I've seen is the Segal-like Payback (sorry, Afflick's bravado reminds me of Under Siege), I don't know if this will be so bad. Yes, I know that we get caught up in CGI valhalla. However, this does speak a lot for effort.
Plus, remember the goal is to make money. Not necessarily rake in $300 million at the US box office.
You could just sum him up as a "man of the letters".
Not that I would know.....
Plus, I think Shakespeare was a bit more talented than your average producer. :)
Except this guy has a Havard MBA. A tad bit overeducated? Good luck. I'm sure the money is good. Especially given the rates he charges. However, I think I'd just cut out the middle man and become an industrial plumber.
Which leads me to the point. Do you realize how easy a smart guy could clean up in some field like industrial construction? There's lot's of money in it. Imagine entering that field with some serious math/physics/chemistry skills. Why waste your time being a computer technician? Heck, no one would care if you taught yourself chemistry in a field like that.
Have you ever met guys like this? The man buys a piece of land, relatively cheap. He has some really stupid ideas for it. Suckers in some church youth group to clean it during the summer. His business ideas obviously failed. Fortunately his wife is a banker.
I doubt he gets his 4 million.
1. Buy property
2. Stumble onto silo
3. Build underwater adventure, rock climbing, and recreational facility...
4. Profit
Somehow I don't think Sam Walton would have done things this way!
Anyway, I for one think the movie will be entertaining and make money. It won't do Asimov justice and it'll make Ellison look good. On the bright side, Harlan will have another excuse to hate Hollywood. Maybe the cranky old man will start rant or something. :) That might be better than the movie.
I know I'm going to get slammed for this...
I for one welcome our new robot overlords!
Look, I've never used a slashdotism before! Cut me a little slack.