Geez. The man just announced it. Give him time and see where this goes. It's not like there's a giant plug in the White House that he can just pull out. Things like that will always involve gradual steps and take time. Also, why START II? Why is that the only viable way of doing this? Next, sure dissemble our stockpile but perhaps gradually as other countries do the same with theirs. How can we monitor and be sure everyone is being honest? How can we guarantee these weapons can't be reassemble or manufactured again? These are things that need to be worked out.
"Is intel simply so confident in the strength of their architecture and manufacturing process that they don't think competition from ARM et al. will reduce their profits?"
Yes. I've been at a lunch "meeting" with a VP of Intel when I was in college and he basically told us that Intel is not really a chip designer or anything like that. Their strength is their ability to manufacture silicon products better and cheaper than anyone else. Whatever they can do to promote more use of silicon based products is a win for them. In other words, they're not tied to x86 or any one architecture. Given the current state of chip manufacturing I would have to agree that Intel is far ahead of everyone else.
Hm... is there a ban on pornographic DVDs or the watching of one on a flight? I'm sure if you started watching one on a flight, you would be prosecuted somehow so why is Internet being singled out for pre-emptive censorship?
I've been told by my manager that there are very few programmers past the age of 40. Yet, some of the best programmers at my company are older than 40. It's probably not ageism but simply a high attrition rate as the years go by. To stay in the game for any length of time requires incredible skill and experience. I know many older programmers who have this attitude that they've seem everything and done everything and everything is a repeat of the old. That might be true on a very high level but subtleties matter. These programmers refuse to learn new ideas or technologies or they map new technologies to what they already know or what they've learned in their youth. They become close minded. As time goes on, they find their skills less and less in demand until they decide to leave or hang on to maintain old code, which is rarely ever fun. The reason youth people get hired is the passion and new ideas they bring to a company. When the day comes when you think you know everything there is to know about software engineering it's time to leave because it's either going to be very boring or you're going to become obsolete by closing off your mind. In Buddhism they say that at the end of mastering it, you truly become a student. The same probably applies to computer science.
I have to disagree with you on that. It's known that Microsoft has a two track development cycle for their OS. One track is for consumer OS (XP, Vista) and the other is for enterprise OS (2000, 2003, Windows 7). They're always alternating. The consumer track gets the resources once and then after it ships, the enterprise OS track gets all the resources. Windows 7 was the next iteration of their enterprise OS. They probably took some of the feedback of Vista into account but Windows 7 was in the pipeline regardless of Vista's outcome. Vista was obviously never meant to run enterprise servers.
I think you may have misrepresented his views or oversimplified them. Part of Taleb's claim is that these models are based on historical data which doesn't account for future disastrous events. He gives the example of a turkey, who having been fed for many days, would conclude that the humans is his friends based on its historical data. He's right up until the day before Thanksgiving. Worse yet, these models give traders a misguided sense of security so they make huge bets that would give them pennies for days and take away millions or billions of dollars when that one in 1,000,000,000 event happens. The problem is that the probability for the disaster was based on historical data, which haven't even recorded such a disaster. Worse yet, he states that the thing these data and model are suppose to represent is constantly being change and manipulated, ie. people make investment decisions based on the models, which then affects the model itself. His essential thesis is that people don't account for Black Swans. People see a bunch of white swans but have never seen a black one so they conclude that all swans must be white. In short, most of the traders on Wall Street are not familiar with Popper's philosophy of science. They think they're doing science and "finacial engineering" when all they're doing are making bad bets.
The genius behind modern democracies, such as the US, was that they were constructed with the idea that no one can be trusted with enormous power, hence checks and balances. To trust Google to not be evil is naive at best. Let's assume for a minute that the founders and current CEO are good people and will never become evil. What happens when they retire? Can we trust the people under them and trust that they can always keep an eye on them? If there can be good people in a bad organization (whistleblowers) then the reverse can also be true. The key to safeguarding ourselves is to never put someone or organization in a position to act evil. Just as we don't give the President absolute power, we should never give any organization or company so much data about ourselves that they can violate our privacy.
The damn things ship with developer tools (Python, Ruby, etc.) and SDKs out of the box. Not sure if you're from the Bay Area or Silicon Valley but those things are really popular among software developers here. I switched to a Mac from Windows because I was sick of my tools getting in the way of my work. Not sure if things have improved much since Windows Vista (heard otherwise) or Windows 7 (heard good things) but I'm quite happy with Mac OSX that it would take a lot to make me give it up.
I agree and would add another dimension to what you've said. A great deal of knowledge/truth are interconnected so even a non-expert in one area can detect inaccuracies or even outright lies in another when it contradicts what he knows in his area of expertise. Wikipedia has this web of inter-connection in place because of its links and citations. This, I think, pushes Wikipedia or any grand system of knowledge towards "the truth" because reality cannot be inconsistent or self-contradictory so neither can any representation of "the truth". A lie or false statement somewhere can undermine the entire system. We see this happening in science and other fields as the experts in those fields work out the inconsistencies. This also happens to an extend on Wikipedia.
While I agree with you that this solution is not a good fit for the problem, I just want point out that the threat of a sniper isn't in the total body count. Snipers tend to have a much greater psychological effect that's very disproportionate to the the resources employed. Soldiers, especially officers, are less likely to be out in the open if they knew there are snipers stalking them. Maybe one soldier will be killed per day or maybe even less but that's probably enough to make the unit operate less effectively the rest of the time. No one wants to be that one soldiers. More importantly, there is nothing they can really do about the threat and that makes soldiers feel helpless and drains their morale.
Conversely, you can say that in Western culture, jocks and athletes are favored over nerds in courtship and mating that by now all the intelligence have been bred out...
It's a silly, unsubstantiated, and stereotypical way of characterizing something as complex as a society or country. Your conclusion needs something more substantial than stereotypes.
VMware might not be a completely open source company but they've always been friendly towards open source software and make use of them. They've also contributed back as well such as extensions to the Linux kernel to make it run better as a guest in a paravirtualization environment, even though VMware can work using binary translation. They've also pushed heavily for an open VM format (OVF) so that users won't be locked into any specific virtualization vendor even though they're the dominant player in the market. They don't really see it as a zero-sum game. As long as virtualization as a whole keeps expanding, they benefit from it.
I don't know if that's fair to Canada. Yes they definitely benefit from our alliance with them, etc. but they have fought along side us. The wars they've joined in are not nearly as morally ambiguous as the ones they've avoided. They fought along side the US in WWI, WWII, Korean War, first Persian Gulf war, and Afghanistan war.
If Iran (or even the rest of the world) aspires to be like Canada, the world would be a better place. Unlike other peaceful countries, Canada actually fights but they tend to choose their battles and wars more carefully than we do in the US.
Depends on who you ask. If you're asking a socially conservative, self-righteous "virtuous" woman, she might say "yes", it's the girl fault. We know there are countries where people are like that. On Slashdot, if you ask a bunch of condescending techies about being a victim of a cyber crime, there's a good possibility that some of the people will blame the victim. I'm not saying that they're right but simply their perspective is narrower and maybe even biased. Personally, counting on people for reasonable, correct behavior is a fool's hope and failing to account for people's tendency to act less than reasonable is a weakness in any security system or protocol.
This is why I've stopped RTQA. I was really hoping the boat would be propelled by the power of positive thinking. Surface tension?! Bor...ing...
Although, 100 times efficiency is quite exciting. Would the efficiency scale though?
The same thing happen about a year ago with international messaging rate hike. I called to cancel my plan but the rep. tried to argue that it doesn't constitute a "material change" to the contract. Seriously? Anyways, after threatening to call the California Public Utilities Commission failed, I actually called the California PUC. The PUC rep. told me that before I file a complaint, I should speak to their executive accounts customer service people so he transferred me over to their number. Some Sprint person picked up and was about to redirect me to retentions again but I told him very clearly that I've been forwarded by the PUC and am about to file a complaint. At that point, he actually forwarded me to their executive accounts people. I spoke to the lady and laid out my argument by reading the back of my bill, which contains the terms, along with the notice of the rate change. She put me on hold for a few minutes to check some stuff over and agreed with me. She even went so far as to put my account on hold and save my number so it can be ported to a new carrier. I switched to Virgin, who ironically is on the Sprint network, but having no contracts is awesome.
Hope that helps anyone trying to leave Sprint. Don't let the retention rep scare you. If you have something like a PUC backing you up, use it! Know your rights.
No that wasn't where my confusion was. I definitely got that point wrong. Nonetheless, does that even change the point I was making? Nixon as an authority on the limits of Presidential power is just a bad choice, regardless of if he was actually impeached and convicted or if he was going to be. Focusing on so much on his actual conviction is simply distracting from the entire argument.
I am impressed by depth of your knowledge nonetheless.
No I did not realize that so I stand corrected on that point. However, getting that point wrong doesn't change the fact that citing Nixon as an authority on the limits of Presidential power is about as convincing as citing the RIAA on fair use.
Right because Nixon, the only President to be impeached and convicted, is the authority on the law and justice... Apparently everyone disagreed with him.
NPR had a segment talking about the oath of office today.
"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."
See that sentence? The President is not above the law since he swears to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States." The Constitution trumps the President. The NPR segment even mentions how the words "my Judgment" was changed to "my Ability" to make sure that the President doesn't even get a choice in this. He's there to obey and execute the law, not overrule it.
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Geez. The man just announced it. Give him time and see where this goes. It's not like there's a giant plug in the White House that he can just pull out. Things like that will always involve gradual steps and take time. Also, why START II? Why is that the only viable way of doing this? Next, sure dissemble our stockpile but perhaps gradually as other countries do the same with theirs. How can we monitor and be sure everyone is being honest? How can we guarantee these weapons can't be reassemble or manufactured again? These are things that need to be worked out.
"Is intel simply so confident in the strength of their architecture and manufacturing process that they don't think competition from ARM et al. will reduce their profits?"
Yes. I've been at a lunch "meeting" with a VP of Intel when I was in college and he basically told us that Intel is not really a chip designer or anything like that. Their strength is their ability to manufacture silicon products better and cheaper than anyone else. Whatever they can do to promote more use of silicon based products is a win for them. In other words, they're not tied to x86 or any one architecture. Given the current state of chip manufacturing I would have to agree that Intel is far ahead of everyone else.
Hm... is there a ban on pornographic DVDs or the watching of one on a flight? I'm sure if you started watching one on a flight, you would be prosecuted somehow so why is Internet being singled out for pre-emptive censorship?
I've been told by my manager that there are very few programmers past the age of 40. Yet, some of the best programmers at my company are older than 40. It's probably not ageism but simply a high attrition rate as the years go by. To stay in the game for any length of time requires incredible skill and experience. I know many older programmers who have this attitude that they've seem everything and done everything and everything is a repeat of the old. That might be true on a very high level but subtleties matter. These programmers refuse to learn new ideas or technologies or they map new technologies to what they already know or what they've learned in their youth. They become close minded. As time goes on, they find their skills less and less in demand until they decide to leave or hang on to maintain old code, which is rarely ever fun. The reason youth people get hired is the passion and new ideas they bring to a company. When the day comes when you think you know everything there is to know about software engineering it's time to leave because it's either going to be very boring or you're going to become obsolete by closing off your mind. In Buddhism they say that at the end of mastering it, you truly become a student. The same probably applies to computer science.
It's a beautiful field to be in.
I have to disagree with you on that. It's known that Microsoft has a two track development cycle for their OS. One track is for consumer OS (XP, Vista) and the other is for enterprise OS (2000, 2003, Windows 7). They're always alternating. The consumer track gets the resources once and then after it ships, the enterprise OS track gets all the resources. Windows 7 was the next iteration of their enterprise OS. They probably took some of the feedback of Vista into account but Windows 7 was in the pipeline regardless of Vista's outcome. Vista was obviously never meant to run enterprise servers.
I think you may have misrepresented his views or oversimplified them. Part of Taleb's claim is that these models are based on historical data which doesn't account for future disastrous events. He gives the example of a turkey, who having been fed for many days, would conclude that the humans is his friends based on its historical data. He's right up until the day before Thanksgiving. Worse yet, these models give traders a misguided sense of security so they make huge bets that would give them pennies for days and take away millions or billions of dollars when that one in 1,000,000,000 event happens. The problem is that the probability for the disaster was based on historical data, which haven't even recorded such a disaster. Worse yet, he states that the thing these data and model are suppose to represent is constantly being change and manipulated, ie. people make investment decisions based on the models, which then affects the model itself. His essential thesis is that people don't account for Black Swans. People see a bunch of white swans but have never seen a black one so they conclude that all swans must be white. In short, most of the traders on Wall Street are not familiar with Popper's philosophy of science. They think they're doing science and "finacial engineering" when all they're doing are making bad bets.
The genius behind modern democracies, such as the US, was that they were constructed with the idea that no one can be trusted with enormous power, hence checks and balances. To trust Google to not be evil is naive at best. Let's assume for a minute that the founders and current CEO are good people and will never become evil. What happens when they retire? Can we trust the people under them and trust that they can always keep an eye on them? If there can be good people in a bad organization (whistleblowers) then the reverse can also be true. The key to safeguarding ourselves is to never put someone or organization in a position to act evil. Just as we don't give the President absolute power, we should never give any organization or company so much data about ourselves that they can violate our privacy.
"The price of liberty is eternal vigilance."
The damn things ship with developer tools (Python, Ruby, etc.) and SDKs out of the box. Not sure if you're from the Bay Area or Silicon Valley but those things are really popular among software developers here. I switched to a Mac from Windows because I was sick of my tools getting in the way of my work. Not sure if things have improved much since Windows Vista (heard otherwise) or Windows 7 (heard good things) but I'm quite happy with Mac OSX that it would take a lot to make me give it up.
I agree and would add another dimension to what you've said. A great deal of knowledge/truth are interconnected so even a non-expert in one area can detect inaccuracies or even outright lies in another when it contradicts what he knows in his area of expertise. Wikipedia has this web of inter-connection in place because of its links and citations. This, I think, pushes Wikipedia or any grand system of knowledge towards "the truth" because reality cannot be inconsistent or self-contradictory so neither can any representation of "the truth". A lie or false statement somewhere can undermine the entire system. We see this happening in science and other fields as the experts in those fields work out the inconsistencies. This also happens to an extend on Wikipedia.
While I agree with you that this solution is not a good fit for the problem, I just want point out that the threat of a sniper isn't in the total body count. Snipers tend to have a much greater psychological effect that's very disproportionate to the the resources employed. Soldiers, especially officers, are less likely to be out in the open if they knew there are snipers stalking them. Maybe one soldier will be killed per day or maybe even less but that's probably enough to make the unit operate less effectively the rest of the time. No one wants to be that one soldiers. More importantly, there is nothing they can really do about the threat and that makes soldiers feel helpless and drains their morale.
"but will such a machine really fly in the business world?"
Yes, yes they will along with the chairs as soon as Balmer gets his hands on them.
Conversely, you can say that in Western culture, jocks and athletes are favored over nerds in courtship and mating that by now all the intelligence have been bred out...
It's a silly, unsubstantiated, and stereotypical way of characterizing something as complex as a society or country. Your conclusion needs something more substantial than stereotypes.
VMware might not be a completely open source company but they've always been friendly towards open source software and make use of them. They've also contributed back as well such as extensions to the Linux kernel to make it run better as a guest in a paravirtualization environment, even though VMware can work using binary translation. They've also pushed heavily for an open VM format (OVF) so that users won't be locked into any specific virtualization vendor even though they're the dominant player in the market. They don't really see it as a zero-sum game. As long as virtualization as a whole keeps expanding, they benefit from it.
They also created and open sourced Review Board.
VMware is very engineer driven and engineers have a tendency to favor openness.
Touche! Fair enough.
I think a mod took my joke too seriously.
Shit, when did you guys managed to secede?
I don't know if that's fair to Canada. Yes they definitely benefit from our alliance with them, etc. but they have fought along side us. The wars they've joined in are not nearly as morally ambiguous as the ones they've avoided. They fought along side the US in WWI, WWII, Korean War, first Persian Gulf war, and Afghanistan war.
If Iran (or even the rest of the world) aspires to be like Canada, the world would be a better place. Unlike other peaceful countries, Canada actually fights but they tend to choose their battles and wars more carefully than we do in the US.
Depends on who you ask. If you're asking a socially conservative, self-righteous "virtuous" woman, she might say "yes", it's the girl fault. We know there are countries where people are like that. On Slashdot, if you ask a bunch of condescending techies about being a victim of a cyber crime, there's a good possibility that some of the people will blame the victim. I'm not saying that they're right but simply their perspective is narrower and maybe even biased. Personally, counting on people for reasonable, correct behavior is a fool's hope and failing to account for people's tendency to act less than reasonable is a weakness in any security system or protocol.
This is why I've stopped RTQA. I was really hoping the boat would be propelled by the power of positive thinking. Surface tension?! Bor...ing... Although, 100 times efficiency is quite exciting. Would the efficiency scale though?
The same thing happen about a year ago with international messaging rate hike. I called to cancel my plan but the rep. tried to argue that it doesn't constitute a "material change" to the contract. Seriously? Anyways, after threatening to call the California Public Utilities Commission failed, I actually called the California PUC. The PUC rep. told me that before I file a complaint, I should speak to their executive accounts customer service people so he transferred me over to their number. Some Sprint person picked up and was about to redirect me to retentions again but I told him very clearly that I've been forwarded by the PUC and am about to file a complaint. At that point, he actually forwarded me to their executive accounts people. I spoke to the lady and laid out my argument by reading the back of my bill, which contains the terms, along with the notice of the rate change. She put me on hold for a few minutes to check some stuff over and agreed with me. She even went so far as to put my account on hold and save my number so it can be ported to a new carrier. I switched to Virgin, who ironically is on the Sprint network, but having no contracts is awesome.
Hope that helps anyone trying to leave Sprint. Don't let the retention rep scare you. If you have something like a PUC backing you up, use it! Know your rights.
No that wasn't where my confusion was. I definitely got that point wrong. Nonetheless, does that even change the point I was making? Nixon as an authority on the limits of Presidential power is just a bad choice, regardless of if he was actually impeached and convicted or if he was going to be. Focusing on so much on his actual conviction is simply distracting from the entire argument.
I am impressed by depth of your knowledge nonetheless.
No I did not realize that so I stand corrected on that point. However, getting that point wrong doesn't change the fact that citing Nixon as an authority on the limits of Presidential power is about as convincing as citing the RIAA on fair use.
Sorry, meant to reply to the guy who originally posted the quote.
Right because Nixon, the only President to be impeached and convicted, is the authority on the law and justice... Apparently everyone disagreed with him.
NPR had a segment talking about the oath of office today.
"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."
See that sentence? The President is not above the law since he swears to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States." The Constitution trumps the President. The NPR segment even mentions how the words "my Judgment" was changed to "my Ability" to make sure that the President doesn't even get a choice in this. He's there to obey and execute the law, not overrule it.