> if you studied everything you know out of a book 5 years ago, most of that is useless now
It might be a good book, but the real question is how you think and how adaptable you are. If you drop it all and become a hermit for ten years, when you come back you might not know what the latest portable hologram generator is or where all the interesting research is or how to open the computer's cup-holder, but it won't take you long to figure it all out. (If you've got a head for tech.) If you know how to think about the problem, you'll be able to solve it. The facts that you learn from the book are less important than the though processes that you learn by discussing it.
I recall speculation at the time, though I'll admit I don't recall the details. It may have been that one of the people involved had been denied requests to drill into other bones in search of soft tissue? In any event, the point is that you preserve the object where it is and you find a better technique for transporting it. If it won't fit into a helicopter, put it in a big box and have the helicopter (or a heavier one) transport it that way. Or get a truck. You don't break an irreplacable object because you have trouble solving the knapsack problem.
Also, who the heck breaks an irreplacable multimillenially old object in two to fit it into a helicopter? It's almost as if they wanted to look inside for soft tissue...
trying to get money for the state and look `good,' get his name in the papers. After the NY+ Suit against the RIAA, this is the next step. It should be listened to for five minutes in case they have evidence that the auto makers are being intentionally negligent or are working to alter perception of scientific truth (which should be a crime in this case, not that Cali should get money for it,) and then it should be tossed out with a hefty fine to California for trying to tax the rest of the country. Which is what this is. That's right, California's DA is trying to tax everyone who owns a car the cost of one massive settlement + one settlement's lawyers. Given the state of the American auto industry, that's downright criminal.
It's amazing to me that here, where everyone (legitimately) gets in such a tizzy over even the appearance of a civil rights violation, all I've seen posted are comments blaming students and professors for being lazy. (And it seems to be pick one or the other.)
The software used here is a culprit in a crime much worse than a percentage of the student population cheating: it assumes a student is guilty of cheating. By scanning student works against such services when you don't have a reason to suspect that that particular student is cheating, you're marking the student as guilty until proven innocent. What's more, you're doing it to someone who's paying you thirty thousand dollars a year. (amount varies depending on instutition, obviously.)
It's one thing to realize a paper seems to be too good to be written by a particular student, or that five papers are almost identical, or the same three sentences have been used in the thesis paragraph of every paper; but it's quite another to assume your entire class is guilty of cheating until, one-by-one, the computer tells you each student is innocent.
The dialogue in that scene is done so terribly to begin with... (especially when compared to the original text.) Also, we do not necessarily know that the witch-king is invulnerable--we merely know that it is prophesied that not by the hand of man shall he fall, something Tolkien borrowed from Shakespeare. His fate is hidden from the wise, but that does not mean that a man cannot injure him; although such a man would need to have conquered his fear.
The Movie's dialogue:
"I will kill you if you touch him."
"You fool. No man can kill me. Die, now."
"I am no man. AAaaagggh!"
comes from, limiting myself almost exclusively to dialogue:
`Begone, fould dwimmerlaik, lord of carrion! Leave the dead in peace!'
`Come not between the Nazgul and his prey! Or he will not slay thee in thy turn. He will bear thee away to the houses of lamentation, beyond all darkness, where thy flesh shall be devoured, and thy shrivelled mind be left naked to the Lidless eye.'
`Do what you will; but I will hinder it, if I may.'
`Hinder me? Thou fool. No living man may hinder me!'
Then Merry heard of all sounds, in that hour the strangest. It seemed that Dernhelm laughed, and the clear voice was like the ring of steel. `But no living man am I! You look upon a woman. Eowyn I am, Eomund's daughter. You stand between me and my lord and kin. Begone if you be not deathless! For living or dark undead, I will smite you, if you touch him.'
comes from, in truth:
Then out of the blackness in his mind he thought that he heard Dernhelm speaking; yet now the voice seemed strange, recalling some other voice that he had known.
`Begone, fould dwimmerlaik, lord of carrion! Leave the dead in peace!'
`Come not between the Nazgul and his prey! Or he will not slay thee in thy turn. He will bear thee away to the houses of lamentation, beyond all darkness, where thy flesh shall be devoured, and thy shrivelled mind be left naked to the Lidless eye.'
A sword rang as it was drawn. `Do what you will; but I will hinder it, if I may.'
`Hinder me? Thou fool. No living man may hinder me!'
Then Merry heard of all sounds in that hour the strangest. It seemed that Dernhelm laughed, and the clear voice was like the ring of steel. `But no living man am I! You look upon a woman. Eowyn I am, Eomund's daughter. You stand between me and my lord and kin. Begone, if you be not deathless! For loving or dark undead, I will smite you, if you touch him.'
The winged creature screamed at her, but the Ringwraith made no answer, and was silent, as if in sudden doubt. Very amazement for a moment conquered Merry's fear. He opened his eyes and the blackness was lifted from them. There some paces from him sat the great beast, and all seemed dark about it, and above it loomed the Nazgul Lord like a shadow of despair. A little to the left facing them stood she whom he had called Dernhelm. But the helm of her secrecy had fallen from her, and her bright hair, released from its bonds, gleamed with pale gold upon her shoulders. Her eyes grey as the sea were hard and fell, and yet tears were on her cheek. A sword was in her hand, and she raised her shield against the horror of her enemy's eyes.
Eowyn it was, and Dernhelm also. For into Merry's mind flashed the memory of the face that he saw at the riding from Dunharrow: the face of one that goes seeking death, having no hope. Pity filled his heart and great wonder, and suddenly the slow-kindled courage of his race awoke. He clenched his hand. She should not die, so fair, so desperate! At least she should not die alone, unaided.
The face of their enemy was not turned towards him, but still he hardly dared to move, dreading lest the deadly eyes should fall on him. Slowly, slowly he began to crawl aside; but the Black Captain, in doubt and malice intent upon the woman before him, heeded him no more than a worm in the mud.
Suddenly the great beast beat its hideous wings, and the wind of them w
Only with someone new as the lead screenwriter--someone with a sense of a cadence and a good understanding of the books and the beauty of language. It's less important with the Hobbit than in would have been with the Lord of the Rings, but it would still be nice. Beagle or Stracynski, maybe. Come to think of it, while either of them would have been great for LOTR, given the sort of humor that runs throughout the Hobbit, I actually wonder if Whedon wouldn't be good for the project. Hmmm... fascinating thought.
Me and my friend walk to the store.
My friend and I walk to the store.
He told the truth to my friend and me.
He lied to I.
He lied to my friend and I.
He lied to me and my friend.
There are probably instances one could construct where ambiguous parse trees resulted, but I can't think of any offhand. The big difference, though, is that one sounds wrong to an educated ear. This reflects poorly on the speaker. It doesn't change whether or not the speaker's a good person, but it might change how confident you feel about their education. A doctor doesn't need to have perfect grammar for his job--but if his chatter is a barrage of `anyhows,' `um... gee, I think maybe's, and he writes about the `patience' on a chart, I'll be a bit more hesitant to trust his counsel.
When they get this working for movies and gaming, it's going to be incredible. Not only manufactured taste, but scent. (I recall they were working on scent detection some years ago at Caltech, and I've seen it mentioned a few places since, I think both on the detection and generation side.) But imagine a gaming experience that can invoke smell...
Of course, they'll probably hesitate to use the technology during war films or movies about skunks. In fact, they'll probably accidentally use it with a movie about skunks first, to show realism, and it can be the power glove of the next generation... (An idea that could work wonderfully, but really fails to deliver right the first time and isn't marketed again for twenty years)
Actually, that raises some interesting ideas for profit maximization: as subscribers pay more to watch fewer ads, the cost of the ads increases. You'd be able to target ads based not only on the timeslot and program, but on the timeslot, program, and economic status of the watcher. Now that's not to say it'd always be accurate--but there'd be a strong enough correlation between income and willingness to pay for fewer ads that it to be salable to advertisers.
I love how most of the other short cultural stereotype-based responses (such as myspace users) get modded funny, but then we get back to Dilbert and it gets modded insightful, with just a pinch of profound. =)
> So why don't geeks tend to gravitate toward the social sciences
Sometimes they do. I know geeks that have gravitated towards anthropology, psychology, history, and philosophy. Now there are logical... well, pseudological, anyway... systems within each of those disciplines, but I think that for most of the geeks I know that have an interest in the social science, it's not the raw manipulation of facts and systems that they enjoy about it, but rather the understanding it gives them about the universe or their place in it.
Then there are different sorts of geeks within the hard sciences. There are those that engage in their activities because they're fun, and science can be elegant, and for that sort of reason. And then there are those that engage in their activities because that's the world that they've grown up learning about, and it's easier for them to deal in that world than it is to deal with the rest of the real one. Sometimes geekdom is a crutch, an excuse not to grow up. (That's the bad kind, obviously.)
The best geeks just love what it is they're doing...
Given the high degree of parallelism and the social aspects, you'd think that distributed computing would be ideal for hollywood rendering, given that you could implement sufficient security restrictions. (Security restrictions which should be perfectly managable.) How many people out there do you think would like to be able to say "I rendered part of this movie!"
There are some issues, of course, but it strikes me as worth exploring.
That's an interesting way to look at it. (I especially like the 401 bit.) The response that it engenders in me, oddly enough, is a strange craving to type...
sudo apt-get install freeciv
Must... not... fall... to... darkside.
But you do have a good point or two. I'm reminded of some observations I've heard on the D-day landings--how any other nation in the world would have been decimated by the effective loss of one of the mulberries used in the invasion to a storm, but the resources were there to just keep going.
I'm not entirely sure that I agree on the socialistic bit, but you've certainly got a good point on the massive scale of the resources that are available to the central government. Those resources, though, are only a tiny part of the total resources of the nation. Hence the urge to play civilization.
Look, I know it's slashdot, but COME ON! It's a 190 Million years old! If you can't date a 190 Million-year-old on your own, I'm sorry, but those first-date jitters will be the rightly-earned destruction of your gene pool...
Is the idea of finding math.:) I love the article summary that makes it sound like NASA just sort of lobbed the thing into space, found it had blurry vision, and started looking an old drawer in the corner of the lab: "History. Nope, not helpful. Biology? Nope, no use. Psychology? We'd better send that one to the public relations dept. Math. Hey, that might be a good idea..."
Slashdot Mirror
And a lot of adults are a lot dumber than they think. I love the smell of sweeping generalizations in the morning!
> if you studied everything you know out of a book 5 years ago, most of that is useless now
It might be a good book, but the real question is how you think and how adaptable you are. If you drop it all and become a hermit for ten years, when you come back you might not know what the latest portable hologram generator is or where all the interesting research is or how to open the computer's cup-holder, but it won't take you long to figure it all out. (If you've got a head for tech.) If you know how to think about the problem, you'll be able to solve it. The facts that you learn from the book are less important than the though processes that you learn by discussing it.
I recall speculation at the time, though I'll admit I don't recall the details. It may have been that one of the people involved had been denied requests to drill into other bones in search of soft tissue? In any event, the point is that you preserve the object where it is and you find a better technique for transporting it. If it won't fit into a helicopter, put it in a big box and have the helicopter (or a heavier one) transport it that way. Or get a truck. You don't break an irreplacable object because you have trouble solving the knapsack problem.
This is a dupe.
Also, who the heck breaks an irreplacable multimillenially old object in two to fit it into a helicopter? It's almost as if they wanted to look inside for soft tissue...
True. =)
The last foot in the first half sounds better without the `a.' I tried posting the scansion, but the lameness filter found that too dorky. =)
And we wonder why medical costs are getting so out of hand. =)
trying to get money for the state and look `good,' get his name in the papers. After the NY+ Suit against the RIAA, this is the next step. It should be listened to for five minutes in case they have evidence that the auto makers are being intentionally negligent or are working to alter perception of scientific truth (which should be a crime in this case, not that Cali should get money for it,) and then it should be tossed out with a hefty fine to California for trying to tax the rest of the country. Which is what this is. That's right, California's DA is trying to tax everyone who owns a car the cost of one massive settlement + one settlement's lawyers. Given the state of the American auto industry, that's downright criminal.
It's amazing to me that here, where everyone (legitimately) gets in such a tizzy over even the appearance of a civil rights violation, all I've seen posted are comments blaming students and professors for being lazy. (And it seems to be pick one or the other.)
The software used here is a culprit in a crime much worse than a percentage of the student population cheating: it assumes a student is guilty of cheating. By scanning student works against such services when you don't have a reason to suspect that that particular student is cheating, you're marking the student as guilty until proven innocent. What's more, you're doing it to someone who's paying you thirty thousand dollars a year. (amount varies depending on instutition, obviously.)
It's one thing to realize a paper seems to be too good to be written by a particular student, or that five papers are almost identical, or the same three sentences have been used in the thesis paragraph of every paper; but it's quite another to assume your entire class is guilty of cheating until, one-by-one, the computer tells you each student is innocent.
Net Neutrality.
The dialogue in that scene is done so terribly to begin with... (especially when compared to the original text.) Also, we do not necessarily know that the witch-king is invulnerable--we merely know that it is prophesied that not by the hand of man shall he fall, something Tolkien borrowed from Shakespeare. His fate is hidden from the wise, but that does not mean that a man cannot injure him; although such a man would need to have conquered his fear.
The Movie's dialogue:
"I will kill you if you touch him."
"You fool. No man can kill me. Die, now."
"I am no man. AAaaagggh!"
comes from, limiting myself almost exclusively to dialogue:
`Begone, fould dwimmerlaik, lord of carrion! Leave the dead in peace!'
`Come not between the Nazgul and his prey! Or he will not slay thee in thy turn. He will bear thee away to the houses of lamentation, beyond all darkness, where thy flesh shall be devoured, and thy shrivelled mind be left naked to the Lidless eye.'
`Do what you will; but I will hinder it, if I may.'
`Hinder me? Thou fool. No living man may hinder me!'
Then Merry heard of all sounds, in that hour the strangest. It seemed that Dernhelm laughed, and the clear voice was like the ring of steel. `But no living man am I! You look upon a woman. Eowyn I am, Eomund's daughter. You stand between me and my lord and kin. Begone if you be not deathless! For living or dark undead, I will smite you, if you touch him.'
comes from, in truth:
Then out of the blackness in his mind he thought that he heard Dernhelm speaking; yet now the voice seemed strange, recalling some other voice that he had known.
`Begone, fould dwimmerlaik, lord of carrion! Leave the dead in peace!'
`Come not between the Nazgul and his prey! Or he will not slay thee in thy turn. He will bear thee away to the houses of lamentation, beyond all darkness, where thy flesh shall be devoured, and thy shrivelled mind be left naked to the Lidless eye.'
A sword rang as it was drawn. `Do what you will; but I will hinder it, if I may.'
`Hinder me? Thou fool. No living man may hinder me!'
Then Merry heard of all sounds in that hour the strangest. It seemed that Dernhelm laughed, and the clear voice was like the ring of steel. `But no living man am I! You look upon a woman. Eowyn I am, Eomund's daughter. You stand between me and my lord and kin. Begone, if you be not deathless! For loving or dark undead, I will smite you, if you touch him.'
The winged creature screamed at her, but the Ringwraith made no answer, and was silent, as if in sudden doubt. Very amazement for a moment conquered Merry's fear. He opened his eyes and the blackness was lifted from them. There some paces from him sat the great beast, and all seemed dark about it, and above it loomed the Nazgul Lord like a shadow of despair. A little to the left facing them stood she whom he had called Dernhelm. But the helm of her secrecy had fallen from her, and her bright hair, released from its bonds, gleamed with pale gold upon her shoulders. Her eyes grey as the sea were hard and fell, and yet tears were on her cheek. A sword was in her hand, and she raised her shield against the horror of her enemy's eyes.
Eowyn it was, and Dernhelm also. For into Merry's mind flashed the memory of the face that he saw at the riding from Dunharrow: the face of one that goes seeking death, having no hope. Pity filled his heart and great wonder, and suddenly the slow-kindled courage of his race awoke. He clenched his hand. She should not die, so fair, so desperate! At least she should not die alone, unaided.
The face of their enemy was not turned towards him, but still he hardly dared to move, dreading lest the deadly eyes should fall on him. Slowly, slowly he began to crawl aside; but the Black Captain, in doubt and malice intent upon the woman before him, heeded him no more than a worm in the mud.
Suddenly the great beast beat its hideous wings, and the wind of them w
Only with someone new as the lead screenwriter--someone with a sense of a cadence and a good understanding of the books and the beauty of language. It's less important with the Hobbit than in would have been with the Lord of the Rings, but it would still be nice. Beagle or Stracynski, maybe. Come to think of it, while either of them would have been great for LOTR, given the sort of humor that runs throughout the Hobbit, I actually wonder if Whedon wouldn't be good for the project. Hmmm... fascinating thought.
Me and my friend walk to the store. My friend and I walk to the store. He told the truth to my friend and me. He lied to I. He lied to my friend and I. He lied to me and my friend. There are probably instances one could construct where ambiguous parse trees resulted, but I can't think of any offhand. The big difference, though, is that one sounds wrong to an educated ear. This reflects poorly on the speaker. It doesn't change whether or not the speaker's a good person, but it might change how confident you feel about their education. A doctor doesn't need to have perfect grammar for his job--but if his chatter is a barrage of `anyhows,' `um... gee, I think maybe's, and he writes about the `patience' on a chart, I'll be a bit more hesitant to trust his counsel.
When they get this working for movies and gaming, it's going to be incredible. Not only manufactured taste, but scent. (I recall they were working on scent detection some years ago at Caltech, and I've seen it mentioned a few places since, I think both on the detection and generation side.) But imagine a gaming experience that can invoke smell...
Of course, they'll probably hesitate to use the technology during war films or movies about skunks. In fact, they'll probably accidentally use it with a movie about skunks first, to show realism, and it can be the power glove of the next generation... (An idea that could work wonderfully, but really fails to deliver right the first time and isn't marketed again for twenty years)
Actually, that raises some interesting ideas for profit maximization: as subscribers pay more to watch fewer ads, the cost of the ads increases. You'd be able to target ads based not only on the timeslot and program, but on the timeslot, program, and economic status of the watcher. Now that's not to say it'd always be accurate--but there'd be a strong enough correlation between income and willingness to pay for fewer ads that it to be salable to advertisers.
Mmmm... I wonder if I'm going to hell now.
I for one welcome our new radioactive bear overl...
wait...
That would make me a conformist to the mocking of conformity that is a slashdot hallmark... meaning a sheep.
Do radioactive bears eat sheep?
Doh.
I love how most of the other short cultural stereotype-based responses (such as myspace users) get modded funny, but then we get back to Dilbert and it gets modded insightful, with just a pinch of profound. =)
You know how on a lot of DVD's, when you put them into a DVD player they won't let you skip the FBI warning?
Seems to me they shouldn't be able to patent something everyone and their mother has been using for a decade.
Okay, so Atlantis may be going downhill... very... very... far... downhill. But Galactica's pretty dang good.
> So why don't geeks tend to gravitate toward the social sciences
Sometimes they do. I know geeks that have gravitated towards anthropology, psychology, history, and philosophy. Now there are logical... well, pseudological, anyway... systems within each of those disciplines, but I think that for most of the geeks I know that have an interest in the social science, it's not the raw manipulation of facts and systems that they enjoy about it, but rather the understanding it gives them about the universe or their place in it.
Then there are different sorts of geeks within the hard sciences. There are those that engage in their activities because they're fun, and science can be elegant, and for that sort of reason. And then there are those that engage in their activities because that's the world that they've grown up learning about, and it's easier for them to deal in that world than it is to deal with the rest of the real one. Sometimes geekdom is a crutch, an excuse not to grow up. (That's the bad kind, obviously.)
The best geeks just love what it is they're doing...
Given the high degree of parallelism and the social aspects, you'd think that distributed computing would be ideal for hollywood rendering, given that you could implement sufficient security restrictions. (Security restrictions which should be perfectly managable.) How many people out there do you think would like to be able to say "I rendered part of this movie!"
There are some issues, of course, but it strikes me as worth exploring.
That's an interesting way to look at it. (I especially like the 401 bit.) The response that it engenders in me, oddly enough, is a strange craving to type... sudo apt-get install freeciv Must... not... fall... to... darkside. But you do have a good point or two. I'm reminded of some observations I've heard on the D-day landings--how any other nation in the world would have been decimated by the effective loss of one of the mulberries used in the invasion to a storm, but the resources were there to just keep going. I'm not entirely sure that I agree on the socialistic bit, but you've certainly got a good point on the massive scale of the resources that are available to the central government. Those resources, though, are only a tiny part of the total resources of the nation. Hence the urge to play civilization.
Look, I know it's slashdot, but COME ON! It's a 190 Million years old! If you can't date a 190 Million-year-old on your own, I'm sorry, but those first-date jitters will be the rightly-earned destruction of your gene pool...
I see a study like this and I have to ask 2 questions:
The Boy Scouts of America did a study to see if piracy should somehow be worked into the Scout Oath or Law?
And the study was biased?
Is the idea of finding math. :) I love the article summary that makes it sound like NASA just sort of lobbed the thing into space, found it had blurry vision, and started looking an old drawer in the corner of the lab: "History. Nope, not helpful. Biology? Nope, no use. Psychology? We'd better send that one to the public relations dept. Math. Hey, that might be a good idea..."