Nature did these peer reviews and, presumably, paid them for their time, but did they bother fixing the errors?
I see Danny fixed the Mendeleev-was-the-13th-child error yesterday (and I don't think he's a Nature editor) so it appears Nature spent the money on expert input but didn't utilize that information (though that's one out of 163 errors).
What I really would like to have seen in this comparison is words per error.
Another interesting thing is that wikipedia has more articles (of the list) with no errors found: 4 vs. 2.
people have spent their money on iPods (and a bunch of other stuff) and don't have the cash to spend on iTunes now? Mix in the pinch people have felt at the gas pumps. Mix in the news constantly splashing nightly that winter heating prices will be up.
the biggest thing to hit the music industry (in a long time) is losing it's luster to piracy or other assorted means that don't have the RIAA's stamp of approval?
people are bored from getting their music from iTunes? (As if getting song X from another store changes the content of the music
people are disgusted with Apple's DRM but still buy iPods?
Maybe it's just me, but people spend gobs of cash on presents and appealing to fear and living in culture of fear can be powerful (especially with heating your house vs. getting that iTune you really want) so I gotta go with #1 on this.
Now legal downloads may be losing their luster.
I'm not sure exactly how you go from a 0.44% drop (not even taken from Q3->Q4 of one year to Q3->Q4 of the next year nor quarter to quarter but quarter to mid-quarter) to stating such a bold thing, but there are such things as idiot journalists....
But it sure makes hot stories when you make sensationalistic claims (iPods are a Bad Thing) about something very trendy (iPods).
Real-time has nothing to do with IP, per se, but the routing of it. IP packets can be routed in real-time provided your routers and network can place some guarantee on its delivery. Today, IP is routed on a "best effort" basis. Drop a couple packets? Fine, we'll wait for the time out and try again. (But that's mostly the semantics of TCP, not IP.)
The whole process of sending and receiving of IP packets is not up to snuff to be called real-time and the problem is not with the protocol itself. You need guarantees on every step of the process from when the sending app calls "send" and when the receiver gets the packet. The weakest link makes or breaks your real-time guarantee.
Then again, you don't need real-time for streaming video. You need real-time, to some degree, for 2-way communication (video conferencing, phone calls, etc.).
Your "problem" with streaming video is bandwidth and routing, not protocol it's being delivered on.
I think Real stands on it's own and doesn't need comment.:)
The author's "Type Manager" is nothing more than a manager utilizing more metadata than normally.
Your classic file manager *IS* a type manager because the file name is a metadatum and the parent directory is a metadatum: neither are direct data (such as what I'm typing now). So organizing, say, a code base on a directory hierarchy that may include module names or library names or file types (docs go here, man files there, source files over there, etc.) *IS* feeding metadata to your filesystem to organize your files.
The "Type Manager" has existed from Day 1 when files were given names. (Punch cards are before my time but I suspect the punch cards that represented a program were stored together and each program was stored separately. At this point, *you* are the metadata organizer.) Since then, it has only progressed from a flat file system (the likes of Apple IIc) to a one-level deep filesystem to a multi-level filesystem (no linking) to a multi-level graph filesystem (includes linking). Now apps are taking it to the next step by merely using more metadata. That's it, nothing new.
In the end, the bits that represent your actual data is a long string of bits (losely stated) and your filesystem is just a type manager organizing your bits by file names and parent directories. bash, Windows Explorer, Finder, etc. are all just wrapping your metadata organizer (your fs) and some (previously and now) are using file-specific metadata for further organization.
Big whoop.
From the article: Type Manager applications are not new, in fact you probably have been using one since you got an internet connection.
It appears the author doesn't even fully understand the concept of metadata (*ahem* "Type") and it's usage has long existed before your email client and long before your internet.
Seriously, nothing to see here! In fact, I want my time back for reading it...
Someone please think of the children!!!
on
The NetBSD Toaster
·
· Score: 1
Just imagine an internet full of online toasters and kitchen sinks. Then the IPv4 address space runs out.
Children won't be able to get IPs for their EZ bake ovens. Dora the Explorer won't get her VoIP phone and have to settle for a land line. Bob the Builder will have to manually drive his bulldozer instead of using the Java applet to remotely drive it.
Rerouting outside lighting to the interior isn't new, of course: see windows and sky lights.:)
Though, this story reminded me of an episode from Beyond 2000 of a Japanese company that used a concentrator on the outside but instead of using the light for interior lighting it was some sort of therapeutic device. This was probably about a decade ago when I saw it, so the details are kind of hazy...
Does it surprise me that the Japanese had the whole sunlight-through-fiber idea a decade ago?
So, if a music video is $1.99 and the song is $0.99...then I don't get it. Does it really cost that much to make a song or does it really cost very little to make a video?
Somehow, I don't see that it's only twice the cost to make a video unless the price of the song is hyper-inflated (which, of course, could never be the case:).
Just like how the DVD is ~$17 on release day at Wal-Mart but the soundtrack is $16.
The only thing that comes to mind is information entropy. If you're given a text document, you can determine the probability distribution for each letter, letter combinations, for words, or whatever you can think of. Then given the probability distribution, you can determine the information entropy. If, in the sum, you use log with base 2 then H(x) (see formal definitions) gives you the entropy in bits.
For example, if you have a text file with letters of equal probability (all letters have a probability of 1/27) then the bits required to represent a single letter turns out to be ~4.7549 bits. (Indeed, 2^4.7549 = 27)
This is the upper limit of compression. Such methods as the, now 50-years old, Huffman coding do decent work at approaching this limit (used in JPEG, for one).
So the answer to your question is: it's not broadly definiable for "text" or "information" but based on the patterns of the English language or a specific document.
Computers can't generate true random numbers (ok, at least I don't know of any current methods) but only pseudo random numbers. There's a precise mathematical description that gets you from one number to the next.
Who knows, maybe Apple uses the meta data for a song to determine the random order (anyone hack it yet and finding the algo?) and some people just get "lucky" like prof John Allen Paulos explained in the article. You might happen to flip 6 heads in a row (despite being a 1 in 64 chance of it happening) and you might get 6 songs from an artist in a row.
Sounds to me that it's a conspiracy theory at best.
[Croc Hunter] Oh, da-lolly, lookie here! This Anonymous Coward is one of those without a sense of humor. Crickey! This species is rare and endangered. There are only a few left in the entire world. So what I'm gonna do is jam my thumb in his butthole now......oh yeah, that really pissed him off alright!!! [/Croc Hunter]
What exactly is the point of this new legislation if not a new way to add another hidden tax?
It's Bush's replacement for social security. Instead of making us "young folk" pay into social security, they're leeching off our computing addiction. I suppose you could say it's "buy computers or let your grandma starve" kind of deal.
I, for one, will be keeping my grandma alive by buying myself a Beowulf cluster of quad-Xeon with 64 GB of RAM and a RAID 5+1 50 TB multi-headed fibre channel disk array.
Not quite there, chief. An object will displace it's volume and because, for example, gold is denser than water then the same volume will weigh more than water. And since the buoyant force by the water is less than the force due to gravity, it sinks.
Anyway, applying this to computers would assume that 1) all the materials are liquid at the same temperature and 2) won't combine into other materials. Neither of which I think are fair assumptions to make, which is probably why you don't see it done...
Why link from itfacts.biz when you can get the same data and a bit more write-up directly from the source? (See the source link on the itfacts.biz site.)
It's cases like this where I go back and rethink capitalism vs. communism vs. etc. Take Kary Mullis as another example (already mentioned in comments). His polymerase chain reaction (PCR) was patented by his employer, Cetus, who gave him a $10,000 bonus and then sold the IP for $300 million. His salary & bonus are a pittance for PCR.
Makes me wonder if this is the type of stuff Marxists think will bring about communism...and how long capitalism can survive when the creator of extremely meaningful creations gets 0.00333% of the profits.
The frequency of an event happening in the news is inversely proportional to the frequency of the event actually happening in life.
Do you think the news has the time to make a 30 second story on every speeding ticket issued in the day? Of course not, but they have time to cover airplane crashes or murders because they are more rare.
That said, I guarantee if such a volcano explodes or comet hits the Earth then the news would have 24/7 news coverage of it (provided they're around to do it). Further supporting the inverse proportionality.
When the planes hit the World Trade Center, every news network had full, constant coverage. Again, further supporting the inverse proportionality.
For your bachelor's degree the content is primarily the same...for any field (I know nothing of the libaral arts part, so I'm talking just science). Computer science, engineering, physics, etc.
You got your calc, your classical physics, your circuit theory, your algorithm complexity, your thermodynamics, etc. and they are all basically the same content. All just the fundamental basics to each field. A top school might just get your learning wheel going faster and sooner but you certainly can get there by yourself (IOW: self-motivation).
As for master's and doctorate it's another ball game. You need good faculty to do good research in good labs. Sure, you can get by with less but research is about pushing the envelope farther. Lacking the key ingredients hinders doing this. Less is fine depending on your goals, but ask your drag strip racers if you win by having a mediocre car and/or a mediocre driver.
But once you get out of academia/research then see the hundreds of other posts here talking about job experience.
I've always considered the stuff put out saying piracy is bad as FUD. Lawsuits also FUD. Etc.
This article is just some of what I think should be common business sense shining through:
Don't force people to buy songs they don't want (by bundling them (aka album-filler) with a few good songs)
Give people a cheap way to buy individual tracks (iTunes, etc.)
Give people faster/more instant gratification via online sales
Put out good talent and not another Spears or Backstreet Boys or mo-thugging-gangster-wannabie
$18 for a soundtrack & $16 for the movie is ridiculous considering movies are like twice as long with VIDEO and usually contain something called talent
Forcing customers to do business on your terms (buy the CD @ the producer-price-fixed $18 or break the law) while simultaneously feeding them no talent hacks (most anyway) is just begging for them to "steal" the few decent songs produced. Maybe I'm just messed in the head in thinking that suing your customers because you (the producer) won't listen to what they (the consumer) want is just FUBAR'ed.
Note to the entertainment industry: we computer scientists have jumped into the 21st century by getting through the Y2K bug, I suggest you push your business model to the 21st century as well and reap the benefits be earning my money instead of coercing me. iTunes started it, now embrace it.
PS: I'm not the only one waiting for you to do so.
I've looked around and can't find what kind of license Solaris 10 is under. The only way I figured I can is to register with Sun, download it, and view the license, but I don't want to do that as I don't intend on using it. Perhaps this speaks something on its own. I can download the linux kernel all over the net and I don't have to register for it to boot.
I guess I don't see this as cut-and-dry as Mr. Ottnik is making it out to be.
Also, can I hack Solaris, write drivers, or port Solaris 10 to whatever platform I want? Can I even get the source? (Again, I don't have the license and I'm generally clueless about Solaris.)
Am I the only one who thought of Fountains of Paradise by Arthur C. Clarke when reading this?
For those that don't know, Foutains of Paradise is where ACC first coined the idea of building an elevator into space which he later used in 3001: A Final Odyssey (The 3rd sequal to 2001: A Space Odyssey). To build the elevator a super-strength carbon string was bundled into three bundles and then attached to a giant mass in space to keep the tethers taught. At least if memory serves me correctly that's how it was done. If you're an ACC fan and haven't read Fountains of Paradise, I recommend it.
"The meter is the length of the path travelled by light in vacuum during a time interval of 1/299 792 458 of a second."
So if you can measure time more accuractly then you can measure a meter more accurately.
Fluidic state machine: automatic transmissions
on
Fluid Logic Chips
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Using fluid for logic isn't new. The best example I can think of is the automatic transmission. The valve body is a maze of pathways that essentially act as a state machine of the transmissions that chooses the appropriate bands and gears and such.
The modern processor is an electrical state machine and the valve body is a fluidic state machine.
The only real development is the physical implementation of the logic but considering that currently they can't link gates it's not of that much practical use since you can't form a state machine (or anything more complex than a gate)...at least I'm not aware of a way to make one layer of logic a state machine...
Slashdot Mirror
Nature did these peer reviews and, presumably, paid them for their time, but did they bother fixing the errors?
I see Danny fixed the Mendeleev-was-the-13th-child error yesterday (and I don't think he's a Nature editor) so it appears Nature spent the money on expert input but didn't utilize that information (though that's one out of 163 errors).
What I really would like to have seen in this comparison is words per error.
Another interesting thing is that wikipedia has more articles (of the list) with no errors found: 4 vs. 2.
Maybe it's just me, but people spend gobs of cash on presents and appealing to fear and living in culture of fear can be powerful (especially with heating your house vs. getting that iTune you really want) so I gotta go with #1 on this.
Now legal downloads may be losing their luster.
I'm not sure exactly how you go from a 0.44% drop (not even taken from Q3->Q4 of one year to Q3->Q4 of the next year nor quarter to quarter but quarter to mid-quarter) to stating such a bold thing, but there are such things as idiot journalists....
But it sure makes hot stories when you make sensationalistic claims (iPods are a Bad Thing) about something very trendy (iPods).
...damage of Hurricane Katrina wasn't so bad. After all, it will give us the "opportunity" to invest billions of dollars in rebuilding things.
This is known as the "broken window fallacy" or Parable of the broken window.
Real-time has nothing to do with IP, per se, but the routing of it. IP packets can be routed in real-time provided your routers and network can place some guarantee on its delivery. Today, IP is routed on a "best effort" basis. Drop a couple packets? Fine, we'll wait for the time out and try again. (But that's mostly the semantics of TCP, not IP.)
:)
The whole process of sending and receiving of IP packets is not up to snuff to be called real-time and the problem is not with the protocol itself. You need guarantees on every step of the process from when the sending app calls "send" and when the receiver gets the packet. The weakest link makes or breaks your real-time guarantee.
Then again, you don't need real-time for streaming video. You need real-time, to some degree, for 2-way communication (video conferencing, phone calls, etc.).
Your "problem" with streaming video is bandwidth and routing, not protocol it's being delivered on.
I think Real stands on it's own and doesn't need comment.
The author's "Type Manager" is nothing more than a manager utilizing more metadata than normally.
Your classic file manager *IS* a type manager because the file name is a metadatum and the parent directory is a metadatum: neither are direct data (such as what I'm typing now). So organizing, say, a code base on a directory hierarchy that may include module names or library names or file types (docs go here, man files there, source files over there, etc.) *IS* feeding metadata to your filesystem to organize your files.
The "Type Manager" has existed from Day 1 when files were given names. (Punch cards are before my time but I suspect the punch cards that represented a program were stored together and each program was stored separately. At this point, *you* are the metadata organizer.) Since then, it has only progressed from a flat file system (the likes of Apple IIc) to a one-level deep filesystem to a multi-level filesystem (no linking) to a multi-level graph filesystem (includes linking). Now apps are taking it to the next step by merely using more metadata. That's it, nothing new.
In the end, the bits that represent your actual data is a long string of bits (losely stated) and your filesystem is just a type manager organizing your bits by file names and parent directories. bash, Windows Explorer, Finder, etc. are all just wrapping your metadata organizer (your fs) and some (previously and now) are using file-specific metadata for further organization.
Big whoop.
From the article:
Type Manager applications are not new, in fact you probably have been using one since you got an internet connection.
It appears the author doesn't even fully understand the concept of metadata (*ahem* "Type") and it's usage has long existed before your email client and long before your internet.
Seriously, nothing to see here! In fact, I want my time back for reading it...
Just imagine an internet full of online toasters and kitchen sinks. Then the IPv4 address space runs out.
Children won't be able to get IPs for their EZ bake ovens. Dora the Explorer won't get her VoIP phone and have to settle for a land line. Bob the Builder will have to manually drive his bulldozer instead of using the Java applet to remotely drive it.
Will someone please think of the children?
Damn you cruel, cruel world!
Rerouting outside lighting to the interior isn't new, of course: see windows and sky lights. :)
Though, this story reminded me of an episode from Beyond 2000 of a Japanese company that used a concentrator on the outside but instead of using the light for interior lighting it was some sort of therapeutic device. This was probably about a decade ago when I saw it, so the details are kind of hazy...
Does it surprise me that the Japanese had the whole sunlight-through-fiber idea a decade ago?
Having disks in parallel doesn't solve the latency problem, only increases the throughput.
So, if a music video is $1.99 and the song is $0.99...then I don't get it. Does it really cost that much to make a song or does it really cost very little to make a video?
:).
Somehow, I don't see that it's only twice the cost to make a video unless the price of the song is hyper-inflated (which, of course, could never be the case
Just like how the DVD is ~$17 on release day at Wal-Mart but the soundtrack is $16.
...other techniques did whittle down the execution time to about 5 hours, the final solution ...is now 2 hours.
That's only a 60% reduction. A 60% reduction of 347 PB is still 138.8 PB...still a huge archival task.
Keep 1% of the data still leaves you with 3.47 PB. Not impossible, but still a daunting task.
The only thing that comes to mind is information entropy. If you're given a text document, you can determine the probability distribution for each letter, letter combinations, for words, or whatever you can think of. Then given the probability distribution, you can determine the information entropy. If, in the sum, you use log with base 2 then H(x) (see formal definitions) gives you the entropy in bits.
For example, if you have a text file with letters of equal probability (all letters have a probability of 1/27) then the bits required to represent a single letter turns out to be ~4.7549 bits. (Indeed, 2^4.7549 = 27)
This is the upper limit of compression. Such methods as the, now 50-years old, Huffman coding do decent work at approaching this limit (used in JPEG, for one).
So the answer to your question is: it's not broadly definiable for "text" or "information" but based on the patterns of the English language or a specific document.
Computers can't generate true random numbers (ok, at least I don't know of any current methods) but only pseudo random numbers. There's a precise mathematical description that gets you from one number to the next.
Who knows, maybe Apple uses the meta data for a song to determine the random order (anyone hack it yet and finding the algo?) and some people just get "lucky" like prof John Allen Paulos explained in the article. You might happen to flip 6 heads in a row (despite being a 1 in 64 chance of it happening) and you might get 6 songs from an artist in a row.
Sounds to me that it's a conspiracy theory at best.
"It's Bush's replacement for social security."
Bullshit.
[Croc Hunter]
Oh, da-lolly, lookie here! This Anonymous Coward is one of those without a sense of humor. Crickey! This species is rare and endangered. There are only a few left in the entire world. So what I'm gonna do is jam my thumb in his butthole now......oh yeah, that really pissed him off alright!!!
[/Croc Hunter]
What exactly is the point of this new legislation if not a new way to add another hidden tax?
It's Bush's replacement for social security. Instead of making us "young folk" pay into social security, they're leeching off our computing addiction. I suppose you could say it's "buy computers or let your grandma starve" kind of deal.
I, for one, will be keeping my grandma alive by buying myself a Beowulf cluster of quad-Xeon with 64 GB of RAM and a RAID 5+1 50 TB multi-headed fibre channel disk array.
What will YOU do to keep grandma from starving?
...an object will displace its weight in water...
Not quite there, chief. An object will displace it's volume and because, for example, gold is denser than water then the same volume will weigh more than water. And since the buoyant force by the water is less than the force due to gravity, it sinks.
Anyway, applying this to computers would assume that 1) all the materials are liquid at the same temperature and 2) won't combine into other materials. Neither of which I think are fair assumptions to make, which is probably why you don't see it done...
Why link from itfacts.biz when you can get the same data and a bit more write-up directly from the source? (See the source link on the itfacts.biz site.)
It's cases like this where I go back and rethink capitalism vs. communism vs. etc. Take Kary Mullis as another example (already mentioned in comments). His polymerase chain reaction (PCR) was patented by his employer, Cetus, who gave him a $10,000 bonus and then sold the IP for $300 million. His salary & bonus are a pittance for PCR.
Makes me wonder if this is the type of stuff Marxists think will bring about communism...and how long capitalism can survive when the creator of extremely meaningful creations gets 0.00333% of the profits.
The frequency of an event happening in the news is inversely proportional to the frequency of the event actually happening in life.
Do you think the news has the time to make a 30 second story on every speeding ticket issued in the day? Of course not, but they have time to cover airplane crashes or murders because they are more rare.
That said, I guarantee if such a volcano explodes or comet hits the Earth then the news would have 24/7 news coverage of it (provided they're around to do it). Further supporting the inverse proportionality.
When the planes hit the World Trade Center, every news network had full, constant coverage. Again, further supporting the inverse proportionality.
For your bachelor's degree the content is primarily the same...for any field (I know nothing of the libaral arts part, so I'm talking just science). Computer science, engineering, physics, etc.
You got your calc, your classical physics, your circuit theory, your algorithm complexity, your thermodynamics, etc. and they are all basically the same content. All just the fundamental basics to each field. A top school might just get your learning wheel going faster and sooner but you certainly can get there by yourself (IOW: self-motivation).
As for master's and doctorate it's another ball game. You need good faculty to do good research in good labs. Sure, you can get by with less but research is about pushing the envelope farther. Lacking the key ingredients hinders doing this. Less is fine depending on your goals, but ask your drag strip racers if you win by having a mediocre car and/or a mediocre driver.
But once you get out of academia/research then see the hundreds of other posts here talking about job experience.
On the same line of thought, I can easily end up with lots of tracks that I don't like. And being the way things are I can't return it.
Radio stations won't play but the top tracks and the music industry won't tell you what songs are junk.
I can't download the song to preview it, which is what I really suspect people download music for.
This article is just some of what I think should be common business sense shining through:
Forcing customers to do business on your terms (buy the CD @ the producer-price-fixed $18 or break the law) while simultaneously feeding them no talent hacks (most anyway) is just begging for them to "steal" the few decent songs produced. Maybe I'm just messed in the head in thinking that suing your customers because you (the producer) won't listen to what they (the consumer) want is just FUBAR'ed.
Note to the entertainment industry: we computer scientists have jumped into the 21st century by getting through the Y2K bug, I suggest you push your business model to the 21st century as well and reap the benefits be earning my money instead of coercing me. iTunes started it, now embrace it.
PS: I'm not the only one waiting for you to do so.
I've looked around and can't find what kind of license Solaris 10 is under. The only way I figured I can is to register with Sun, download it, and view the license, but I don't want to do that as I don't intend on using it. Perhaps this speaks something on its own. I can download the linux kernel all over the net and I don't have to register for it to boot.
I guess I don't see this as cut-and-dry as Mr. Ottnik is making it out to be.
Also, can I hack Solaris, write drivers, or port Solaris 10 to whatever platform I want? Can I even get the source? (Again, I don't have the license and I'm generally clueless about Solaris.)
Am I the only one who thought of Fountains of Paradise by Arthur C. Clarke when reading this?
For those that don't know, Foutains of Paradise is where ACC first coined the idea of building an elevator into space which he later used in 3001: A Final Odyssey (The 3rd sequal to 2001: A Space Odyssey). To build the elevator a super-strength carbon string was bundled into three bundles and then attached to a giant mass in space to keep the tethers taught. At least if memory serves me correctly that's how it was done. If you're an ACC fan and haven't read Fountains of Paradise, I recommend it.
The length of the meter is defined by time
http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/meter.html
"The meter is the length of the path travelled by light in vacuum during a time interval of 1/299 792 458 of a second."
So if you can measure time more accuractly then you can measure a meter more accurately.
Using fluid for logic isn't new. The best example I can think of is the automatic transmission. The valve body is a maze of pathways that essentially act as a state machine of the transmissions that chooses the appropriate bands and gears and such.
One link I found (go down to "Valve Body"):
http://www.familycar.com/transmission.htm
The modern processor is an electrical state machine and the valve body is a fluidic state machine.
The only real development is the physical implementation of the logic but considering that currently they can't link gates it's not of that much practical use since you can't form a state machine (or anything more complex than a gate)...at least I'm not aware of a way to make one layer of logic a state machine...
Cool nonetheless.