On the contrary, you need faith that the universe is governed by laws of nature, and that those laws are knowable. That concept is known as "Cosmos", and it is a pivotal contribution to human consciousness made by the ancient greeks during the axial age.
I think that the ancient greeks had discovered something true when they put down the foundation of science, but halfway across the world, the Buddha has made another important discovery: that the imaginary self we cling to is the source of all suffering, and that we can be unconditionally happy and wise if we let it go.
Very interesting juxtaposition of faith. You have faith in what the ancient greeks discovered, but that does not invalidate what the Buddha discovered and vice-versa. Faith is not always "blind" faith. A discussion of this cuts right to the core of epistemology. Socrates is famous for (amongst other things) declaring that he only knows his own ignorance. I believe this is a tremendous truth that we too often forget.
There is something entirely mystical about faith - it's too sharp to be put into words. It has something to do with certainty. For example, if you put a egg into boiling water, you probably are certain that after some time, you'll have a cooked egg. That is faith in cause and effect. Some people don't have faith in science, which I think is too bad. They might have faith in "synchronicity". To argue that your faith is better than someone else's is to miss the point that Buddha discovered, and that Socrates was alluding towards.
I believe that real faith is certainty in oneself. That you are a perfectly good person, and that you *can* understand what this life is that you're experiencing. That type of faith must be very flexible, perhaps you're dreaming right now. You can be sure that in 10 years time, you'll scratch your head at some of the things that you're yet to do this year. You can't ever *know* something 100%, but you can have faith in not-knowing, and seeing what the brings.
Pretending to be rational about faith is infantile and ridiculous.
When people say things like that, then it really makes me think that they just don't understand what the point is. There is blind faith in beliefs sure, but faith is a bigger subject than that. There is a practical aspect. For example, you might have faith that you are a good person, or that the laws of gravity just wont up and stop. That type of faith is based on personal experience, and is rooted in basic sanity. There are all sorts of dangers with believing your own thoughts, which is why religious structures are so compelling is helping people find a truer experience of their own life.
Religion is true in the sense that myths are true. Those who treat religious truth as empirical truth just confuse the issue and themselves.
Except that Scientists don't want to accept that and Zealot, fundamentalist religionsists do not want to acknoledge this.
I don't think there are many scientists who would have a problem with God creating the universe, so long as the God explaination is in accordance with observable evidence. Hence, not 6000 years ago.
Now many scientists would also say that the God explaination doesn't add any value - as in "who created God". But don't read too much into that.
Scientists aren't opposed to God, en masse, but they *are* opposed to ignorant zealots who don't understand the principles of evidence, and spew their crap on society through political action groups. But that's a larger issue than just intelligent design and young-earthers. There's also global-warming deniers too.
Asking end-users if they're complying with regulatory requirements is not a sufficient test of regulatory compliance.
We can't you just ask "Do you have XYZ installed?" You have to sneak onto my computer with your uber-tool and spy for regulatory compliance? And for *THAT* reason we must run windows... so we can use a spying-tool. PARANOID.
Balmer appreciates whoever wrote that rule about regulatory compliance. It's a windows only one! Mwhahahahahaha
Balmer is wetting his pants. Lets hope his mood doesn't swing because I don't want to get hit by some urine covered chair.
> This last item and its explanation are complete gibberish to me. About the only thing I can say for sure is that, yes, > if you want to run packet sniffers on a corporate network, then you will get looked at like a criminal.
Well, the they have this tool that scans your computer for software, so they can work out what you've got installed. For some reason they think that this is failsafe, yet I can compile a program and run it from the command line. It just stops someone who thinks that software is only ever installed with one of those installer thingies. I had open-source encryption software (on the forbidden list) sitting on my computer all year. Also, you can just like, write a few lines of C# and do whatever encryption you want !@##%#. Installing encryption software just means that I don't have to waste my time looking for work-arounds to get the job done.
The packet sniffer was for diagnosing a programming issue with complex middleware. We were never able to fix the problem because the sysadmins had too much to do, and the corporate types convinced the client that it wasn't possible to fix. Great job guys!!!!
You can buy anti-virus software for the mac btw. I find that good browsing and downloading habits is the ounce of prevention. I worked out how to disable network associates virus software (wasn't too hard), because my computer would lock up for 20 mintues at a time because of mcshield - I couldn't do anything. Something to do with switching a computer between domains. The sysadmins had no idea how to fix it, so I just disabled the antivirus when they weren't looking, and proceeded not to get a virus all year by not being daft with how I use my computer.
> Too hard for us to administer
No, no, these we're talking about sysadmins here, working in a corporate structure with lots of standards and rules.
They develop web applications but only ever test them on windows. These are apps for the government that are for general consumption. Not having a single OS X or Linux testing station is plain wrong. But hay, at least the corporate types got the contract right? Never mind doing the job properly, or even learning what that means.
Also, testing things on Linux, Windows and OS X is a great way to make sure that what you're doing doesn't have hidden quirks. That goes for designing webpages as well as network shares and other network services.
I find Outlook a terribly annoying email client to use, and would prefer to use my own.
When writing documentation, I find it *much* easier to use OS X's screenshot technology and inter-app tools to bring the pieces together. This saves enough time that I frequently go home to write significant amounts of documentation, and it looks great when it is done, and it's done *fast*.
OS X and linux have a superior command line with a complement of tools that is esp. useful when you're batch processing vast volumes amounts of files. I used to write ruby scripts and run them on windows because of a lack of a command line. That is not the most efficient way of doing things. My co-workers were wowed at the things I could do that they just didn't think were feasible because they have no real experience with getting the command line to sing. Large numbers of files is typical when working on software projects.
I like using multiple desktops, I find that much faster and easier to do than work with the almost crippling windows taskbar.
And there's tones of fanboy stuff too.
What I don't get is how anybody thinks that standardizing everything on windows is somehow going to just make everything cheaper and hunky dory. People use other platforms for a reason, and using a bit of intelligence there is no reason why sysadmins can't figure it out. And you get the benefit of not grid-locking yourself into a single vendor.
To me it seems like common sense is being replaced by a rule book. That's why I left for a smaller company, and they let you run what you want - but only support you with stuff they know. It works out great.
First of all, I appreciate sys-admins, and would not want to do their job. But they sometimes do seem to miss a few key things about software. Where I used to work, they *refused* to let me run OS X or Linux. I even offered to pay for my own computer. This is in a large multi-national development shop, and also another time in a government department. If shares as servers are configured in a rational manner, then OS X or Linux should have no trouble talking to them, and maybe a developer may be able to to a few tricks on those systems that will save time. But no - the sys-admins just said: + Too hard for us to administer (yes your highness) + We can't run our anti-virus on your computer (ahem, I don't need that crap) + We can't tell if you're running unlicensed software on that computer (why don't you just like, ask me?) + We can't tell if you're running encryption software of packet sniffers you would-be corporate spy?
This last item is a complete joke. For some reason, a few of the sysadmins I've met aren't clued into the fact that you can get source-code and compile it into a binary and then execute it. Pretty standard stuff. Software doesn't *have* to be installed using some wizard-install-software, and never need show up on any audit. Perhaps you could scan the computer for filenames of well-known software, but that wouldn't stop someone who knew what they're doing. I asked one "top" resource if he'd let me use it anyway if I could sniff the network from a windows box without "installing" any software - he looked at me like a criminal.
I do not believe there is anything malicious that has caused this inefficiency to rise. The cost of developing software means that slow and bloaty is what we end up producing as software engineers. It just makes more sense economically.
I hope that in the future, with capped per-core CPU speeds, we will see a renaissance in tight programming. Perhaps new languages will spring up that offer the efficiency of C++, but with the coding efficiency of ECMAScript4 or even C#. D is one such language, and there may be many more to come.
We may also see much smarter compilers built on ideas like LLVM that will offer statically compiled languages some of the benefits of dynamically compiled VM code, just as taking advantage of specific architectures, and extensive inter-process analysis of code.
With many software problems becoming better understood, we could see much more extensive system libraries that offer the same features as say the.net environment. Cocoa and QT4 are already heading in this direction, with a really feature rich set of libraries, but also with the eye on cutting down memory usage and CPU cycles. In the future, we may see much more optimized shared library usage for system-level applications. This will lead to a snappier user experience. We won't need to have 100s of megs of shared libraries duplicating so much across so many apps.
I think massive parallelism in user applications will never happen without a complete rethink from the OS up, or a new application development paradigm. Furthermore, most developers simply aren't up to writing thread-safe code - it's very hard to get right, and often you don't gain that much for standard applications. That's because of the types of problems being solved in typical applications. We're having a hard enough time writing single threaded apps regardless.
I admire the managed code empire that M$ has built into vista, but ultimately we may want better performance than this heavy-weight approach can offer. Both OS X and KDE are staying away from the managed code "heaven" for the time being. I believe that apple will find a way to make future versions of Objective-C have most of the benefits that managed code can offer, but also with extremely tight machine code.
This means not only more portable code, but overall faster than compiled execution speeds for programs. So far the VMs have been under performing, but they are improving and at a faster rate than gcc and friends.
I think the VMs are improving towards the speed of static compliation. Sure there are benefits such that we could potentially see faster VM code - but there's also layers and layers of cruft that comes about because of VM abstractions. I think projects like LLVM will eventually produce code faster than any VM, with architecture independence. The project is comparatively young, and I think it will have a bright future.
The JVM, and CLR kinda symbolise the heavy-weight approach of modern software design. A hello-world xaml application uses 40 megs of memory!
With per-core CPU speeds capping, I'd like to see a more cut-down approach to software development. A brand new computer might by 1000 times faster than a similar product 20 years ago, and it seems we write software that's 1000 times slower.
Interviewer: So... tell us about windows server 2008
Balmer: We innovated... innovated, the developers can then... innovate, and when we're done with... innovative testing and furniture distribution innovation. That's how we do business.
I think they've got brilliant business and marketing knowhow - but somehow with all of their talent you'd expect more innovation. I guess it must be a sore point for them.
I recently came across this before. How do you know it's funded by Exxon? Is it just the content of the site? Has anybody been able to identify exactly what Exxon's public relation firms are doing?
I have to offset this with the fact that they are the RIAA, nevertheless, combining these two opinions seems roughly logically consistent to me.
It seems that we have an infinite capability for deluding ourselves, usually as part of some egocentric strategy. Reason is useless when the opposition does not see the need for evidence.
After having a long discussion with a neocon, who believes that Iraq is responsible for the US's actions (blaming ones actions on another is kinda psychopathic), and from reading the dialogs of creation "scientists", it has become remarkably apparent that logical reasoning is an endless web of self-deception when it is not combined with evidence.
It is only recently that the union of evidence and reason was discovered by the Ionian greeks. Their ideas were squashed by Pythagoras, Plato and co., probably because evidence was scant for an unfair social heirachy with them at the top.
"Thinkers" have expelled a lot of hot air, to reason why they should have what they have, and take what they take. The sophistry of the RIAA is just one voice in a long history of "reason".
It's a sad fact of life, that ignorance has a dangerously profound power when combined with greed. So powerful is this ignorance, that we'll accept the products of science, yet reject the methodology.
While that might be true, it takes a while to build up an army, with a professional and experienced core to serve as the officers. You can expand an army to be 10 times the size fairly quickly but you need some core to start from and that can take up a generation to succeed. You need to train the pilots, design and acquire hardware all of which takes time in modern warfare
IAAACG (I am an arm chair general), but, AFAIK, Sweden has a very large and well trained reserve comprising of pretty much every able-bodied man in the country. They also have very good defences and professional know-how. The USSR would certainly have defeated them, esp. in a protracted war, but it would have been tough going. They probably would have used paratroopers to capture the main airport in Stockholm, and used significant naval capability.
That is a very interesting idea. I'm not sure that thoughts are not physical, but it is possible of course. It does bring about the mind-matter problem. Where does mind stop and matter start. Buddhists decided a few thousand years ago, to solve this problem by stating that *everything* is mind. This is a very interesting idea.
Personally I believe that thoughts are a manifestation of our neurons. Consciousness was born when are nervous system detected itself. The nervous system originally evolved to detect the environment, for obvious reason. Consciousness is a tremendous evolutionary advantage, so it developed, and the world has many sentient creatures.
Mmm, I'm not an astronut, but here goes.
A photon generated in a distant star intersects with your eye instantly, from the point of view of the photon. From your point of view, the photon takes billions of years to traverse a vast distance.
So there is no "one" perpective of the universe having a certain size. You can only talk about things in relation to each other. What does that look like from my frame of reference, and vice-versa. AFAIK, that's why it's called relativity.
This space-time dilation was the solution to a long standing puzzle. The speed of light is always dictated to be the same, in relation to all things. So a flash of light immeted on a train moves at the speed of light for both a person on the train, and a person standing besides the train on the earth. How could that be?
It took decades before Einstein proposed that the speed of light *is* the same, and that space-time is dilating.
If you travel a distance of 1 light-year and back at close to the speed of light, from the point of view of earth, two years has passed. From the point-of-view of the space-farer, say 1 year has passed. Now, if the speed of light is constant, then distance the space-farer travelled has been squeezed.
Has anyone measures the speed of thought? I don't mean the speed of nerve impulses in your body.
Yes, it's about 100 kmph. Some crazy guy cut open his arm and attached a voltmeter to his nerves while he did stuff - to try to work out the timing between the brain and extremities.
Let's say you manage to accelerate to 99% of the speed of light instantly. (Ignoring of course the fact that the closer you get to c, the more you weigh and the exponentially more force it takes to accelerate you). If a star is 90 light years away, you'd still take over 90 years to reach it. It won't just be a few years.
My understanding was the space shrunk. Thus, for a photon, the universe has effectively zero size. Pretty sure that's it! The space-farer never goes faster than light because space dilates. The person on earth sees the journey take 90 years. Hehehe.
There is a lineage of consciousness that passes between generations, and is key in the formation of the mind of an infant. This is based on attachment theory, which is very well establish in psychology. Basically, a baby cognizes the consciousness of the primary care giver, through their relationship, and that has a *profound* influence on the babies life, and measurable in the growth of the brain. The robot would not just need to be sophisticated, it would need a human experience to transmit, including details of dealing with personal space, frustration, and how the "mind" of this robot deals with relationships and life. It's possible that the baby would need to recognize it as a human mind - certainly as the mind of a being the suffers through the struggles of life. Most importantly, the robot will need to love the child in the genuine unconditional sense, so that the baby can strike the right balance between self and other, and develop the natural ethics, morals and relationships that hold society together. That's a pretty steep ask for a robot.
There's a great book on the subject called "Why love matters, how affection shapes a baby's brain", by Sue Gerhardt.
The speed of light is not a deal-breaker. It means that, from *our* perspective, we'll send people to distant planets and never hear from them again. But from their perspective, it may be a few years. If interstellar travel actually happens, then the speed of light issue is just a managable logistical issue. It means that space-farers must be able to think for themselves. They already must be self-sufficient in other respects.
If there is a deal-breaker, then it is contruction and propulsion of such a craft. The vaster the craft, then the more unlikely it's construction. We might be able to fire ourselves off in a single direction, but how do we slow down, and what if we need to change course. If we need to come home, then we've doubled the energy required!
Then there are complex issues with people - our fragile minds and bodies. How do we react to the stress of space-travel, can we do it?
The speed of light seems like a comparatively simple issue.
They were tossed back to the stone age during world war two, courtesy the Japanese, and basically left to rot by the West - they are just now regaining technical traction. The Chinese used to lead the planet in terms of innovation and they want that honor back.
Exactly why Europe became what it did is an interesting thing. There is no reason, on the surface, why Europe over any other major culture, and Europe was backwards in many ways.
I believe it had to do with the free exchange of ideas, that challenged the status-quo. We introduced trial by jury, and reduced violence in society by placing vengence in the hands of judges.
There was an economic, social and scientific revolution as well. Holland become independent of Spain, but couldn't use its ports, so they created a vast fleet with which to explore and trade. They brought back ideas and money, and common folk became comparatively wealthy. The society was forward thinking and became full of painters, artists and scientists. They invented the microsope which became a popular curiosity. The motions of the planets were described, and the microscopic zoo was discovered. Something fundemental had happened. They saw past themselves to the book of nature, and began to read it.
While the Ming dynasty sent great junks to explore the world, they also stagnated. A comparatively tiny country - Holland - became a super-power much like Venice once was. The Chinese had invented all sorts of things, but their fundemental direction did not lead them to free thinking.
Of the eastern powers, only Japan successfully made the transition to an industrial society before WWII. I'm sure the reasons are very complex. The west didn't "throw" china away. They economically exploited it - yes. The British left a legacy of good government in many places in the world, and also let their empire go. This does not right the wrongs of the past, that is impossible. But it does allow the situation to move forward.
They will leapfrog the industrial revolution and plow headlong directly into the technological revolution while the rest of the world sits and watches.
I wonder where China will end up. Politically they are as arrogant and close-minded as the US. Taiwan is mine. Tibet is mine. You cannot critize us for how you treat what is mine. When the british cast free their empire, they acknowledged that how they treat their own and each other is a fundemental expression of who they are.
China's pride - and lust for economic prosperity - has exposed the worst qualities of our industrial age. The rest of the world is watching with facination and horror at China's economic miricle.
Sometime in the future we're going to be talking about sustainable development like it's the most important thing in the world. But between now and then, there will be a lot of conflict over who gets what. I wonder where China will end up.
As basic organisms evolved, for obvious reasons they developed sensory apparatus, to detect heat and cold and each other. It was a matter of time before such an apparatus detected itself, and consciousness was born. But consciousness is not isolated to each individual. We are programmed to communicate with each other, and that communication is fundamentally about how to deal with life, and pass on our collective genetics. A long time ago, that would have been along the lines of understanding useful plants, making tools, and working together. The heritage of consciousness evolved dependent upon, and parallel to our pure genetic heritage.
The nature of self-awareness means that we can "interfere" with ourselves to make the situation better. For example, we can cultivate useful skills, and contemplate our place in the world and how the world could be improved. It is no accident that consciousness should attempt to address these larger questions, as it has to do with passing along a lineage of thoughts and ideas, and ultimately our genetics - the primeval force that dives all of life.
Our self-awareness has identified a problem, one of many that causes suffering and threatens our heritage. The problem comes from a conflict between a basic instinct to consume and possess, and otherwise engage in hedonism, and our intellectual understanding of the long term implications of that. Consciousness has, and always had, the ability to interfere with natural selection, although ultimately it is beholden to it.
For those calling for sustainable development, it is a matter of ethics. We can use our understanding to best sustain our consciousness and genetic heritage, or we can give into momentary pleasures that are really just chemicals being released in our brains. The call for sustainable development is about manipulating ourselves and the environment to best suit our long term viability - obeying the law of natural selection.
When, in the article, it says the people have "learned to avoid natural selection", it means that we are using our understanding of nature in an attempt to subvert its basic law. The bubble of ignorance we create is so that we can continue the doomed attempt to permanently satiate ourselves.
The longer we attempt to live ignorance, that harder and more dramatic the wake-up call will be. The point is we need to re-learn our place in the world, and start acting accordingly. Otherwise we stand to lose a lot, and the suffering of future generations will be immense.
Sure, that's why you have test sets to determine if the models the system learns from the data are useful or not. I think it's safe to assume that the scientists working on this are familiar with the basics of learning theory and modeling.
It is never safe to assume that people (and scientists) are capable of doing things "right". Incompetence and mediocrity are so pervasive that you can just rule this out, unless you see some evidence to the contrary \
This whole exercise brings technical analysis to mind - extensive research into a huge waste of time, with the spectre of making $$$. Say, I wonder if this is some private firm trying to get research dollars for whatever half-baked idea they can come up with. Money is kinda like oxygen.
To be fair, I think an extensive detailed database system would be invaluable to crime fighting officials.
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With evidence, you don't need faith.
On the contrary, you need faith that the universe is governed by laws of nature, and that those laws are knowable. That concept is known as "Cosmos", and it is a pivotal contribution to human consciousness made by the ancient greeks during the axial age.
I think that the ancient greeks had discovered something true when they put down the foundation of science, but halfway across the world, the Buddha has made another important discovery: that the imaginary self we cling to is the source of all suffering, and that we can be unconditionally happy and wise if we let it go.
Very interesting juxtaposition of faith. You have faith in what the ancient greeks discovered, but that does not invalidate what the Buddha discovered and vice-versa. Faith is not always "blind" faith. A discussion of this cuts right to the core of epistemology. Socrates is famous for (amongst other things) declaring that he only knows his own ignorance. I believe this is a tremendous truth that we too often forget.
There is something entirely mystical about faith - it's too sharp to be put into words. It has something to do with certainty. For example, if you put a egg into boiling water, you probably are certain that after some time, you'll have a cooked egg. That is faith in cause and effect. Some people don't have faith in science, which I think is too bad. They might have faith in "synchronicity". To argue that your faith is better than someone else's is to miss the point that Buddha discovered, and that Socrates was alluding towards.
I believe that real faith is certainty in oneself. That you are a perfectly good person, and that you *can* understand what this life is that you're experiencing. That type of faith must be very flexible, perhaps you're dreaming right now. You can be sure that in 10 years time, you'll scratch your head at some of the things that you're yet to do this year. You can't ever *know* something 100%, but you can have faith in not-knowing, and seeing what the brings.
Pretending to be rational about faith is infantile and ridiculous.
When people say things like that, then it really makes me think that they just don't understand what the point is. There is blind faith in beliefs sure, but faith is a bigger subject than that. There is a practical aspect. For example, you might have faith that you are a good person, or that the laws of gravity just wont up and stop. That type of faith is based on personal experience, and is rooted in basic sanity. There are all sorts of dangers with believing your own thoughts, which is why religious structures are so compelling is helping people find a truer experience of their own life.
Religion is true in the sense that myths are true. Those who treat religious truth as empirical truth just confuse the issue and themselves.
So which of Earth's many religions is the correct one with respect to the creation of the universe?
That would be The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster
Except that Scientists don't want to accept that and Zealot, fundamentalist religionsists do not want to acknoledge this.
I don't think there are many scientists who would have a problem with God creating the universe, so long as the God explaination is in accordance with observable evidence. Hence, not 6000 years ago.
Now many scientists would also say that the God explaination doesn't add any value - as in "who created God". But don't read too much into that.
Scientists aren't opposed to God, en masse, but they *are* opposed to ignorant zealots who don't understand the principles of evidence, and spew their crap on society through political action groups. But that's a larger issue than just intelligent design and young-earthers. There's also global-warming deniers too.
Asking end-users if they're complying with regulatory requirements is not a sufficient test of regulatory compliance.
We can't you just ask "Do you have XYZ installed?" You have to sneak onto my computer with your uber-tool and spy for regulatory compliance? And for *THAT* reason we must run windows... so we can use a spying-tool. PARANOID.
Balmer appreciates whoever wrote that rule about regulatory compliance. It's a windows only one! Mwhahahahahaha
Balmer is wetting his pants. Lets hope his mood doesn't swing because I don't want to get hit by some urine covered chair.
Nice post =)
> This last item and its explanation are complete gibberish to me. About the only thing I can say for sure is that, yes,
> if you want to run packet sniffers on a corporate network, then you will get looked at like a criminal.
Well, the they have this tool that scans your computer for software, so they can work out what you've got installed. For some reason they think that this is failsafe, yet I can compile a program and run it from the command line. It just stops someone who thinks that software is only ever installed with one of those installer thingies. I had open-source encryption software (on the forbidden list) sitting on my computer all year. Also, you can just like, write a few lines of C# and do whatever encryption you want !@##%#. Installing encryption software just means that I don't have to waste my time looking for work-arounds to get the job done.
The packet sniffer was for diagnosing a programming issue with complex middleware. We were never able to fix the problem because the sysadmins had too much to do, and the corporate types convinced the client that it wasn't possible to fix. Great job guys!!!!
You can buy anti-virus software for the mac btw. I find that good browsing and downloading habits is the ounce of prevention. I worked out how to disable network associates virus software (wasn't too hard), because my computer would lock up for 20 mintues at a time because of mcshield - I couldn't do anything. Something to do with switching a computer between domains. The sysadmins had no idea how to fix it, so I just disabled the antivirus when they weren't looking, and proceeded not to get a virus all year by not being daft with how I use my computer.
> Too hard for us to administer
No, no, these we're talking about sysadmins here, working in a corporate structure with lots of standards and rules.
Well...
They develop web applications but only ever test them on windows. These are apps for the government that are for general consumption. Not having a single OS X or Linux testing station is plain wrong. But hay, at least the corporate types got the contract right? Never mind doing the job properly, or even learning what that means.
Also, testing things on Linux, Windows and OS X is a great way to make sure that what you're doing doesn't have hidden quirks. That goes for designing webpages as well as network shares and other network services.
I find Outlook a terribly annoying email client to use, and would prefer to use my own.
When writing documentation, I find it *much* easier to use OS X's screenshot technology and inter-app tools to bring the pieces together. This saves enough time that I frequently go home to write significant amounts of documentation, and it looks great when it is done, and it's done *fast*.
OS X and linux have a superior command line with a complement of tools that is esp. useful when you're batch processing vast volumes amounts of files. I used to write ruby scripts and run them on windows because of a lack of a command line. That is not the most efficient way of doing things. My co-workers were wowed at the things I could do that they just didn't think were feasible because they have no real experience with getting the command line to sing. Large numbers of files is typical when working on software projects.
I like using multiple desktops, I find that much faster and easier to do than work with the almost crippling windows taskbar.
And there's tones of fanboy stuff too.
What I don't get is how anybody thinks that standardizing everything on windows is somehow going to just make everything cheaper and hunky dory. People use other platforms for a reason, and using a bit of intelligence there is no reason why sysadmins can't figure it out. And you get the benefit of not grid-locking yourself into a single vendor.
To me it seems like common sense is being replaced by a rule book. That's why I left for a smaller company, and they let you run what you want - but only support you with stuff they know. It works out great.
Hi,
As a software developer I'd like to shoot back.
First of all, I appreciate sys-admins, and would not want to do their job. But they sometimes do seem to miss a few key things about software. Where I used to work, they *refused* to let me run OS X or Linux. I even offered to pay for my own computer. This is in a large multi-national development shop, and also another time in a government department. If shares as servers are configured in a rational manner, then OS X or Linux should have no trouble talking to them, and maybe a developer may be able to to a few tricks on those systems that will save time. But no - the sys-admins just said:
+ Too hard for us to administer (yes your highness)
+ We can't run our anti-virus on your computer (ahem, I don't need that crap)
+ We can't tell if you're running unlicensed software on that computer (why don't you just like, ask me?)
+ We can't tell if you're running encryption software of packet sniffers you would-be corporate spy?
This last item is a complete joke. For some reason, a few of the sysadmins I've met aren't clued into the fact that you can get source-code and compile it into a binary and then execute it. Pretty standard stuff. Software doesn't *have* to be installed using some wizard-install-software, and never need show up on any audit. Perhaps you could scan the computer for filenames of well-known software, but that wouldn't stop someone who knew what they're doing. I asked one "top" resource if he'd let me use it anyway if I could sniff the network from a windows box without "installing" any software - he looked at me like a criminal.
Autocratic, and completely clueless.
I do not believe there is anything malicious that has caused this inefficiency to rise. The cost of developing software means that slow and bloaty is what we end up producing as software engineers. It just makes more sense economically.
I hope that in the future, with capped per-core CPU speeds, we will see a renaissance in tight programming. Perhaps new languages will spring up that offer the efficiency of C++, but with the coding efficiency of ECMAScript4 or even C#. D is one such language, and there may be many more to come.
We may also see much smarter compilers built on ideas like LLVM that will offer statically compiled languages some of the benefits of dynamically compiled VM code, just as taking advantage of specific architectures, and extensive inter-process analysis of code.
With many software problems becoming better understood, we could see much more extensive system libraries that offer the same features as say the .net environment. Cocoa and QT4 are already heading in this direction, with a really feature rich set of libraries, but also with the eye on cutting down memory usage and CPU cycles. In the future, we may see much more optimized shared library usage for system-level applications. This will lead to a snappier user experience. We won't need to have 100s of megs of shared libraries duplicating so much across so many apps.
I think massive parallelism in user applications will never happen without a complete rethink from the OS up, or a new application development paradigm. Furthermore, most developers simply aren't up to writing thread-safe code - it's very hard to get right, and often you don't gain that much for standard applications. That's because of the types of problems being solved in typical applications. We're having a hard enough time writing single threaded apps regardless.
I admire the managed code empire that M$ has built into vista, but ultimately we may want better performance than this heavy-weight approach can offer. Both OS X and KDE are staying away from the managed code "heaven" for the time being. I believe that apple will find a way to make future versions of Objective-C have most of the benefits that managed code can offer, but also with extremely tight machine code.
This means not only more portable code, but overall faster than compiled execution speeds for programs. So far the VMs have been under performing, but they are improving and at a faster rate than gcc and friends.
I think the VMs are improving towards the speed of static compliation. Sure there are benefits such that we could potentially see faster VM code - but there's also layers and layers of cruft that comes about because of VM abstractions. I think projects like LLVM will eventually produce code faster than any VM, with architecture independence. The project is comparatively young, and I think it will have a bright future.
The JVM, and CLR kinda symbolise the heavy-weight approach of modern software design. A hello-world xaml application uses 40 megs of memory!
With per-core CPU speeds capping, I'd like to see a more cut-down approach to software development. A brand new computer might by 1000 times faster than a similar product 20 years ago, and it seems we write software that's 1000 times slower.
Interviewer: So... tell us about windows server 2008
Balmer: We innovated ... innovated, the developers can then ... innovate, and when we're done with ... innovative testing and furniture distribution innovation. That's how we do business.
I think they've got brilliant business and marketing knowhow - but somehow with all of their talent you'd expect more innovation. I guess it must be a sore point for them.
I recently came across this before. How do you know it's funded by Exxon? Is it just the content of the site? Has anybody been able to identify exactly what Exxon's public relation firms are doing?
I have to offset this with the fact that they are the RIAA, nevertheless, combining these two opinions seems roughly logically consistent to me.
It seems that we have an infinite capability for deluding ourselves, usually as part of some egocentric strategy. Reason is useless when the opposition does not see the need for evidence.
After having a long discussion with a neocon, who believes that Iraq is responsible for the US's actions (blaming ones actions on another is kinda psychopathic), and from reading the dialogs of creation "scientists", it has become remarkably apparent that logical reasoning is an endless web of self-deception when it is not combined with evidence.
It is only recently that the union of evidence and reason was discovered by the Ionian greeks. Their ideas were squashed by Pythagoras, Plato and co., probably because evidence was scant for an unfair social heirachy with them at the top.
"Thinkers" have expelled a lot of hot air, to reason why they should have what they have, and take what they take. The sophistry of the RIAA is just one voice in a long history of "reason".
It's a sad fact of life, that ignorance has a dangerously profound power when combined with greed. So powerful is this ignorance, that we'll accept the products of science, yet reject the methodology.
While that might be true, it takes a while to build up an army, with a professional and experienced core to serve as the officers. You can expand an army to be 10 times the size fairly quickly but you need some core to start from and that can take up a generation to succeed. You need to train the pilots, design and acquire hardware all of which takes time in modern warfare
IAAACG (I am an arm chair general), but, AFAIK, Sweden has a very large and well trained reserve comprising of pretty much every able-bodied man in the country. They also have very good defences and professional know-how. The USSR would certainly have defeated them, esp. in a protracted war, but it would have been tough going. They probably would have used paratroopers to capture the main airport in Stockholm, and used significant naval capability.
Develop towards equilibrium, which may itself be a moving target as things change.
Now, let us close our eyes for a moment of harmony.
That is a very interesting idea. I'm not sure that thoughts are not physical, but it is possible of course. It does bring about the mind-matter problem. Where does mind stop and matter start. Buddhists decided a few thousand years ago, to solve this problem by stating that *everything* is mind. This is a very interesting idea.
Personally I believe that thoughts are a manifestation of our neurons. Consciousness was born when are nervous system detected itself. The nervous system originally evolved to detect the environment, for obvious reason. Consciousness is a tremendous evolutionary advantage, so it developed, and the world has many sentient creatures.
Again, just a thought.
Mmm, I'm not an astronut, but here goes. A photon generated in a distant star intersects with your eye instantly, from the point of view of the photon. From your point of view, the photon takes billions of years to traverse a vast distance. So there is no "one" perpective of the universe having a certain size. You can only talk about things in relation to each other. What does that look like from my frame of reference, and vice-versa. AFAIK, that's why it's called relativity. This space-time dilation was the solution to a long standing puzzle. The speed of light is always dictated to be the same, in relation to all things. So a flash of light immeted on a train moves at the speed of light for both a person on the train, and a person standing besides the train on the earth. How could that be? It took decades before Einstein proposed that the speed of light *is* the same, and that space-time is dilating. If you travel a distance of 1 light-year and back at close to the speed of light, from the point of view of earth, two years has passed. From the point-of-view of the space-farer, say 1 year has passed. Now, if the speed of light is constant, then distance the space-farer travelled has been squeezed.
Has anyone measures the speed of thought? I don't mean the speed of nerve impulses in your body.
Yes, it's about 100 kmph. Some crazy guy cut open his arm and attached a voltmeter to his nerves while he did stuff - to try to work out the timing between the brain and extremities.
Let's say you manage to accelerate to 99% of the speed of light instantly. (Ignoring of course the fact that the closer you get to c, the more you weigh and the exponentially more force it takes to accelerate you). If a star is 90 light years away, you'd still take over 90 years to reach it. It won't just be a few years.
My understanding was the space shrunk. Thus, for a photon, the universe has effectively zero size. Pretty sure that's it! The space-farer never goes faster than light because space dilates. The person on earth sees the journey take 90 years. Hehehe.
There is a lineage of consciousness that passes between generations, and is key in the formation of the mind of an infant. This is based on attachment theory, which is very well establish in psychology. Basically, a baby cognizes the consciousness of the primary care giver, through their relationship, and that has a *profound* influence on the babies life, and measurable in the growth of the brain. The robot would not just need to be sophisticated, it would need a human experience to transmit, including details of dealing with personal space, frustration, and how the "mind" of this robot deals with relationships and life. It's possible that the baby would need to recognize it as a human mind - certainly as the mind of a being the suffers through the struggles of life. Most importantly, the robot will need to love the child in the genuine unconditional sense, so that the baby can strike the right balance between self and other, and develop the natural ethics, morals and relationships that hold society together. That's a pretty steep ask for a robot.
There's a great book on the subject called "Why love matters, how affection shapes a baby's brain", by Sue Gerhardt.
Of course, you would have to have some kind of robot teachers to raise them when the ship reaches its destination
I think you're under-estimating the importance of an adult in a child's life. Esp. an infant.
The speed of light is not a deal-breaker. It means that, from *our* perspective, we'll send people to distant planets and never hear from them again. But from their perspective, it may be a few years. If interstellar travel actually happens, then the speed of light issue is just a managable logistical issue. It means that space-farers must be able to think for themselves. They already must be self-sufficient in other respects.
If there is a deal-breaker, then it is contruction and propulsion of such a craft. The vaster the craft, then the more unlikely it's construction. We might be able to fire ourselves off in a single direction, but how do we slow down, and what if we need to change course. If we need to come home, then we've doubled the energy required!
Then there are complex issues with people - our fragile minds and bodies. How do we react to the stress of space-travel, can we do it?
The speed of light seems like a comparatively simple issue.
They were tossed back to the stone age during world war two, courtesy the Japanese, and basically left to rot by the West - they are just now regaining technical traction. The Chinese used to lead the planet in terms of innovation and they want that honor back.
Exactly why Europe became what it did is an interesting thing. There is no reason, on the surface, why Europe over any other major culture, and Europe was backwards in many ways.
I believe it had to do with the free exchange of ideas, that challenged the status-quo. We introduced trial by jury, and reduced violence in society by placing vengence in the hands of judges.
There was an economic, social and scientific revolution as well. Holland become independent of Spain, but couldn't use its ports, so they created a vast fleet with which to explore and trade. They brought back ideas and money, and common folk became comparatively wealthy. The society was forward thinking and became full of painters, artists and scientists. They invented the microsope which became a popular curiosity. The motions of the planets were described, and the microscopic zoo was discovered. Something fundemental had happened. They saw past themselves to the book of nature, and began to read it.
While the Ming dynasty sent great junks to explore the world, they also stagnated. A comparatively tiny country - Holland - became a super-power much like Venice once was. The Chinese had invented all sorts of things, but their fundemental direction did not lead them to free thinking.
Of the eastern powers, only Japan successfully made the transition to an industrial society before WWII. I'm sure the reasons are very complex. The west didn't "throw" china away. They economically exploited it - yes. The British left a legacy of good government in many places in the world, and also let their empire go. This does not right the wrongs of the past, that is impossible. But it does allow the situation to move forward.
They will leapfrog the industrial revolution and plow headlong directly into the technological revolution while the rest of the world sits and watches.
I wonder where China will end up. Politically they are as arrogant and close-minded as the US. Taiwan is mine. Tibet is mine. You cannot critize us for how you treat what is mine. When the british cast free their empire, they acknowledged that how they treat their own and each other is a fundemental expression of who they are.
China's pride - and lust for economic prosperity - has exposed the worst qualities of our industrial age. The rest of the world is watching with facination and horror at China's economic miricle.
Sometime in the future we're going to be talking about sustainable development like it's the most important thing in the world. But between now and then, there will be a lot of conflict over who gets what. I wonder where China will end up.
As basic organisms evolved, for obvious reasons they developed sensory apparatus, to detect heat and cold and each other. It was a matter of time before such an apparatus detected itself, and consciousness was born. But consciousness is not isolated to each individual. We are programmed to communicate with each other, and that communication is fundamentally about how to deal with life, and pass on our collective genetics. A long time ago, that would have been along the lines of understanding useful plants, making tools, and working together. The heritage of consciousness evolved dependent upon, and parallel to our pure genetic heritage.
The nature of self-awareness means that we can "interfere" with ourselves to make the situation better. For example, we can cultivate useful skills, and contemplate our place in the world and how the world could be improved. It is no accident that consciousness should attempt to address these larger questions, as it has to do with passing along a lineage of thoughts and ideas, and ultimately our genetics - the primeval force that dives all of life.
Our self-awareness has identified a problem, one of many that causes suffering and threatens our heritage. The problem comes from a conflict between a basic instinct to consume and possess, and otherwise engage in hedonism, and our intellectual understanding of the long term implications of that. Consciousness has, and always had, the ability to interfere with natural selection, although ultimately it is beholden to it.
For those calling for sustainable development, it is a matter of ethics. We can use our understanding to best sustain our consciousness and genetic heritage, or we can give into momentary pleasures that are really just chemicals being released in our brains. The call for sustainable development is about manipulating ourselves and the environment to best suit our long term viability - obeying the law of natural selection.
When, in the article, it says the people have "learned to avoid natural selection", it means that we are using our understanding of nature in an attempt to subvert its basic law. The bubble of ignorance we create is so that we can continue the doomed attempt to permanently satiate ourselves.
The longer we attempt to live ignorance, that harder and more dramatic the wake-up call will be. The point is we need to re-learn our place in the world, and start acting accordingly. Otherwise we stand to lose a lot, and the suffering of future generations will be immense.
Sure, that's why you have test sets to determine if the models the system learns from the data are useful or not. I think it's safe to assume that the scientists working on this are familiar with the basics of learning theory and modeling.
It is never safe to assume that people (and scientists) are capable of doing things "right". Incompetence and mediocrity are so pervasive that you can just rule this out, unless you see some evidence to the contrary
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This whole exercise brings technical analysis to mind - extensive research into a huge waste of time, with the spectre of making $$$. Say, I wonder if this is some private firm trying to get research dollars for whatever half-baked idea they can come up with. Money is kinda like oxygen.
To be fair, I think an extensive detailed database system would be invaluable to crime fighting officials.