The reason why academia and the press have been so resistant to HTML, historically, is that you don't get any control over page layout. Which means that you can't refer to things by page number.
LaTeX is the same, more-or-less. You can refer to page numbers in the PDF though, which is the "final product" you actually exchange. Also, academic works tend to be very structured into sections and subsections (something LaTeX does nicely for you) which in some ways eliminates the need to refer to page numbers.
This mostly works if you include the style you're using with the source... but if not then overall it's the same problem as dependencies that you get when you compile software from source. Obviously this is not a trivial problem, as otherwise it wouldn't have been necessary to invent apt, emerge and the like. The one difference is that generally I've found code libraries easier to to find than the correct LaTeX styles...
But... not everything about the PDF is specified by the LaTeX source -- and the toolchain matters. For instance, a document prepared for pdflatex with pdf figures and another prepared for the latex-->dvips-->ps2pdf route (which is often necessary as a number of journal styles use some pstricks) will in general not work with the opposite toolchain. Another example is paper size; certain of these tools output either letter or A4 by default, and must be instructed on the command line (or, really, in your build scripts) when you want the other (I know you can specify paper sizes in the source, but this is lost somewhere in the toolchain).
Download ubuntu on one computer. Use apt to install kile and all its dependecies. Compile a paper written with the IEEE conference style. Now install Windows on another computer. Install MiKTeX on it and do the same. You will get similar output, but it will by no means be identical. The most noticeable thing is that margins are different.
Oh, and so far I've ignored in this discussion that different styles will use different methods for including, say, theorems. It is a pipe dream to simply change the style of a document and expect decent results. Chances are the damn thing won't even compile -- and if it does, all your beautiful theorems will look like crap because the other style expected some different markup for them.
I don't rule out that I'm doing something wrong, and if I am, I could stand to use some enlightenment. But I know that I don't use LaTeX significantly differently from anyone else I know...
Wrong. In Supreme Commander, you hold the right mouse button and left click when units are selected. This cycles through the many available formations.
Ok! Point noted. Good to know.:-)
Furthermore, in SupCom the units do not move in a straight line as the parent noted about SC1, instead they will by default spread out and move forward in a sort of wall formation with artillery and weaker but longer ranged units staying behind the front line.
Actually, in retrospect I remember this; I just hadn't really noticed it. I guess I wasn't watching carefully enough.
And you're right; I didn't check the manual. My bad.
I'll maintain that the AI is abysmal though. Even the 'Supreme' AI doubled up against you is worthless. Or maybe swarms of Broadswords are just a tactic the AI was never designed to deal with...
Dunno, I haven't played any in that series. I did try installing a borrowed copy of 'Rome: Total War' but it didn't even run properly (maybe it was my graphics drivers).
It's not how many calories you consume; it's how many you absorb. You could eat little wooden pellets and they'd have plenty of calories (burn 'em in a calorimeter and tell me what happens), but you wouldn't metabolize them; you'd just poop all the energy out. In fact, feces has a pretty darn high energy content. People have been burning dried dung for centuries and longer. This is just evidence that, in your power balance equation, you need to include a term for the rate at which you poop out fuel...
Many of the things you complain about were "fixed" in the post-Starcraft RTS games released during the heyday of RTS (when there was competition). For instance, in Age of Kings, units automatically march in sensible formations, which avoids your complaint, and the AI is also decent, if not spectacular -- better than Starcraft's, for sure. Newer RTS games seem to be a step backwards. Supreme Commander has abysmal AI, and neither it nor the latest C&C features formations.
There are some little-known "post-heyday" RTS games that have attempted to push the envelope a little too, with mixed success. Earth2150 is one that I like; it features land, air, and sea units (all of which are in fact designed by the player from individual components (weapons systems, armor systems, etc)), as well as subterranean gameplay, various WMDs, and three relatively-different races. Earth2160, its sequel, simplified some things -- it all takes place on land and in the air -- but has radically different races; one even behaves the way the Zerg "should" have, by eschewing buildings altogether and simply reproducing (unfortunately, they didn't get the gameplay balance quite right, as you end up being able to grow exponentially with these guys and killing anyone else); another has bases that are built as a system of tubes, which imposes certain nontrivial constraints on them.
Yeah, but it's not cyber-"terrorism;" nothing is going to blow up. It's just espionage.
Plus, I've got to wonder how much of this is truly "hackers" from the outside, and how much is just the result of employees taking data with them -- whether they're just being sloppy, or actually malicious (e.g., ethnic Chinese with misplaced loyalties (god do I hate nationalism)).
Whatever the case, without disclosure for each "incident" of what actually happened in technical terms, we the public will never understand what's going on at any level besides "OMG HACKERS" -- which can mean anything.
Holy shit, dude. Elitist much? This kind of thinking is what makes academia such an ego-driven rat-race... I'm not disagreeing with your position on global warming -- just pointing out that you've got three choices re. your worldview:
1 - Become a professor at MIT, Berkeley, etc.
2 - Loathe yourself for the rest of your life for failing at #1.
3 - Stop being such an elitist prick.
In fact, even if you succeed at #1, you'll still probably loathe yourself anyway. I've met professors even at Ivy League schools who were bitter, self-absorbed wretches with overpowering feelings of inadequacy. Because even if you get to MIT, you won't have won a Nobel. And even if you win a Nobel, you won't be Gauss or Euler. You'll never be good enough. And you'll die miserable.
So please, please, for your own benefit and for the benefit of those around you (because this brand of elitism is contagious), reconsider your worldview.
(None which has to do with global warming. Again: No argument there.)
I've always wondered if the Confederacy had used nonviolent resistance in their attempt to secede instead of open war if they might have been successful.
I think it's hard to claim the moral high ground when one of the central planks of your platform is the continuation of chattel slavery. Had it not been for that, I think a strong case could have been made for the right of southerners to self-determination. The problem is that this right of theirs was in conflict with that of their black slaves.
Using Wikipedia entries even if they're properly cited is unacceptable.
When I hear about this statement I wonder if it has more to do with fundamental truth or social convention. Are "authoritative sources" truly more authoritative? As a pragmatist, I simply avoid citing Wikipedia because I know there are people with strong opinions who would disapprove if I did.
But let me give you an example:
Suppose I need to look up a mathematical identity which is not obvious. I go to Wikipedia and find it there. Then I sit down, verify it myself (math has that advantage), and use it. Now I have a dilemma. Do I,
1 - Use the identity without citation.
2 - Cite Wikipedia.
3 - Cite the source cited by Wikipedia without reading it.
4 - Cite the source cited by Wikipedia after wasting my time slogging through it to get to the punchline that I just verified myself.
Option #1 is fairly safe, but does nothing to help the reader, and moreover represents someone else's idea as your own (even if it is "common knowledge"). Option #2 makes your paper more transparent and accessible, and is honestly the most helpful, but it makes you look bad. So you might be tempted to do #3; that's somewhat helpful to your readers (but less so than #2) but also not entirely honest; it's also slightly risky because it's entirely possible that the unread source doesn't actually contain the tidbit you used. Option #4 is by far the safest, but it is a tremendous waste of time -- and since it asks your readers to slog through the same dense paper, it is less helpful to them than #2.
Of course, this kind of use of Wikipedia is only really justified for things that one is in a position to verify oneself, like math. But I think that the standard debates about "authoritative sources" tend to neglect this angle, assuming that truth is necessarily generated by authority and is not observable directly from nature. For those cases where I can verify myself that what Wikipedia says is true, I'd sort of like to be able to cite it. Being a pragmatist, however, I refrain!
I've often had the same thought, but my focus is a tiny bit different: I think about the gas turbines that propel planes. In the end, we're "just" burning a bunch of stuff. It's an application of the discovery of fire millions of years ago. Something about that juxtaposition of the primitive with the sophisticated -- in combination with the thought of how people from the past would see this -- just fills me with awe.
Indeed. It sounds like he didn't understand the significance of "soaked in formaldehyde." I won't go so far as to blame the teacher (clearly this is just a kid being stupid; it's his own fault), but somebody should have explained to the students that the preservatives used were carcinogenic; it sounds like he just thought it was meat...
Solar cells are also limited by the Carnot efficiency; it's just not as obvious what your hot and cold reservoirs are. They must be Carnot-limited, for consider the following thought experiment: I heat up a mass to a very high temperature so that it radiates light, and then I convert that light to electricity with a solar cell. If solar cells could exceed Carnot efficiency then so would this system and we would have a heat engine which violates the laws of thermodynamics.
Then we're down to altering the N/O ratio. That's a bugger, because whatever method you use is going to consume energy and it'll be tough to think of a method of gaining more than you use.
There's a fundamental thermodynamic thing going on here too: A mixture of two gasses has much more entropy than those two gasses do separately. And entropy can't be 'pumped out' of a system without doing work (even if this process is somehow performed with 100% efficiency).
In general, thermodynamic cycles are more efficient when they operate over a larger temperature difference. Wiki 'Carnot Efficiency.' Presumably this increased efficiency offsets energy losses from making NOx.
Here's another hypothesis: Presumably your mixed-race friends grew up in the United States or another developed Western nation on a fairly typical American-style diet, whereas their parents may not have. Diet may be the thing.
Is it better nutrition? Just plain more food? Growth hormones from industrial farms getting into the food supply? I don't know. However, average heights in Japan shot up after WWII when a (slightly) more American diet was introduced, and the difference is even more marked between Asian-American kids nowadays and their parents.
There is also a (smaller) difference between Caucasian-American children and their parents; newer generations do tend to be taller. This would also support the "it's the food" hypothesis.
I'm not saying genes play no role. And it may even be that mixed-race kids end up healthier on average. But I suspect that diet plays a much larger role.
I'm going to pretend I have no opinion in this post and instead make a "meta-comment:"
What I find fascinating is that, just a year ago, an overwhelming majority of Slashdot readers would have defended this student, written posts to the effect that it is justifiable to download copyrighted work, made angry statements about the MP/RI-AA, and the like. Now, I see many more posts (and story tags -- currently "righttosteal") like yours. Sure, the old pro-pirate posts are still around -- they are probably even still the majority -- but I think that the percentage is lower. I wonder if this means that attitudes are changing, and whether this is due at all to the RIAA's campaign.
Slashdot Mirror
The reason why academia and the press have been so resistant to HTML, historically, is that you don't get any control over page layout. Which means that you can't refer to things by page number.
LaTeX is the same, more-or-less. You can refer to page numbers in the PDF though, which is the "final product" you actually exchange. Also, academic works tend to be very structured into sections and subsections (something LaTeX does nicely for you) which in some ways eliminates the need to refer to page numbers.
This mostly works if you include the style you're using with the source... but if not then overall it's the same problem as dependencies that you get when you compile software from source. Obviously this is not a trivial problem, as otherwise it wouldn't have been necessary to invent apt, emerge and the like. The one difference is that generally I've found code libraries easier to to find than the correct LaTeX styles...
But... not everything about the PDF is specified by the LaTeX source -- and the toolchain matters. For instance, a document prepared for pdflatex with pdf figures and another prepared for the latex-->dvips-->ps2pdf route (which is often necessary as a number of journal styles use some pstricks) will in general not work with the opposite toolchain. Another example is paper size; certain of these tools output either letter or A4 by default, and must be instructed on the command line (or, really, in your build scripts) when you want the other (I know you can specify paper sizes in the source, but this is lost somewhere in the toolchain).
Download ubuntu on one computer. Use apt to install kile and all its dependecies. Compile a paper written with the IEEE conference style. Now install Windows on another computer. Install MiKTeX on it and do the same. You will get similar output, but it will by no means be identical. The most noticeable thing is that margins are different.
Oh, and so far I've ignored in this discussion that different styles will use different methods for including, say, theorems. It is a pipe dream to simply change the style of a document and expect decent results. Chances are the damn thing won't even compile -- and if it does, all your beautiful theorems will look like crap because the other style expected some different markup for them.
I don't rule out that I'm doing something wrong, and if I am, I could stand to use some enlightenment. But I know that I don't use LaTeX significantly differently from anyone else I know...
Wrong. In Supreme Commander, you hold the right mouse button and left click when units are selected. This cycles through the many available formations.
Ok! Point noted. Good to know. :-)
Furthermore, in SupCom the units do not move in a straight line as the parent noted about SC1, instead they will by default spread out and move forward in a sort of wall formation with artillery and weaker but longer ranged units staying behind the front line.
Actually, in retrospect I remember this; I just hadn't really noticed it. I guess I wasn't watching carefully enough.
And you're right; I didn't check the manual. My bad.
I'll maintain that the AI is abysmal though. Even the 'Supreme' AI doubled up against you is worthless. Or maybe swarms of Broadswords are just a tactic the AI was never designed to deal with...
Dunno, I haven't played any in that series. I did try installing a borrowed copy of 'Rome: Total War' but it didn't even run properly (maybe it was my graphics drivers).
It's not how many calories you consume; it's how many you absorb. You could eat little wooden pellets and they'd have plenty of calories (burn 'em in a calorimeter and tell me what happens), but you wouldn't metabolize them; you'd just poop all the energy out. In fact, feces has a pretty darn high energy content. People have been burning dried dung for centuries and longer. This is just evidence that, in your power balance equation, you need to include a term for the rate at which you poop out fuel...
Many of the things you complain about were "fixed" in the post-Starcraft RTS games released during the heyday of RTS (when there was competition). For instance, in Age of Kings, units automatically march in sensible formations, which avoids your complaint, and the AI is also decent, if not spectacular -- better than Starcraft's, for sure. Newer RTS games seem to be a step backwards. Supreme Commander has abysmal AI, and neither it nor the latest C&C features formations.
There are some little-known "post-heyday" RTS games that have attempted to push the envelope a little too, with mixed success. Earth2150 is one that I like; it features land, air, and sea units (all of which are in fact designed by the player from individual components (weapons systems, armor systems, etc)), as well as subterranean gameplay, various WMDs, and three relatively-different races. Earth2160, its sequel, simplified some things -- it all takes place on land and in the air -- but has radically different races; one even behaves the way the Zerg "should" have, by eschewing buildings altogether and simply reproducing (unfortunately, they didn't get the gameplay balance quite right, as you end up being able to grow exponentially with these guys and killing anyone else); another has bases that are built as a system of tubes, which imposes certain nontrivial constraints on them.
Care to elaborate? What kinds of attacks?
Yeah, but it's not cyber-"terrorism;" nothing is going to blow up. It's just espionage.
Plus, I've got to wonder how much of this is truly "hackers" from the outside, and how much is just the result of employees taking data with them -- whether they're just being sloppy, or actually malicious (e.g., ethnic Chinese with misplaced loyalties (god do I hate nationalism)).
Whatever the case, without disclosure for each "incident" of what actually happened in technical terms, we the public will never understand what's going on at any level besides "OMG HACKERS" -- which can mean anything.
What's wrong with MPEG?
You mean that these hundreds of girls being advertised who just happen to live in the same town as me aren't really looking for someone to date? :(
I love those ads! They are hilarious!
Try surfing through a South Korean proxy. They'll magically teleport to something-something Province. It's spectacular.
Holy shit, dude. Elitist much? This kind of thinking is what makes academia such an ego-driven rat-race... I'm not disagreeing with your position on global warming -- just pointing out that you've got three choices re. your worldview:
1 - Become a professor at MIT, Berkeley, etc.
2 - Loathe yourself for the rest of your life for failing at #1.
3 - Stop being such an elitist prick.
In fact, even if you succeed at #1, you'll still probably loathe yourself anyway. I've met professors even at Ivy League schools who were bitter, self-absorbed wretches with overpowering feelings of inadequacy. Because even if you get to MIT, you won't have won a Nobel. And even if you win a Nobel, you won't be Gauss or Euler. You'll never be good enough. And you'll die miserable.
So please, please, for your own benefit and for the benefit of those around you (because this brand of elitism is contagious), reconsider your worldview.
(None which has to do with global warming. Again: No argument there.)
I've always wondered if the Confederacy had used nonviolent resistance in their attempt to secede instead of open war if they might have been successful.
I think it's hard to claim the moral high ground when one of the central planks of your platform is the continuation of chattel slavery. Had it not been for that, I think a strong case could have been made for the right of southerners to self-determination. The problem is that this right of theirs was in conflict with that of their black slaves.
Using Wikipedia entries even if they're properly cited is unacceptable.
When I hear about this statement I wonder if it has more to do with fundamental truth or social convention. Are "authoritative sources" truly more authoritative? As a pragmatist, I simply avoid citing Wikipedia because I know there are people with strong opinions who would disapprove if I did.
But let me give you an example:
Suppose I need to look up a mathematical identity which is not obvious. I go to Wikipedia and find it there. Then I sit down, verify it myself (math has that advantage), and use it. Now I have a dilemma. Do I,
1 - Use the identity without citation.
2 - Cite Wikipedia.
3 - Cite the source cited by Wikipedia without reading it.
4 - Cite the source cited by Wikipedia after wasting my time slogging through it to get to the punchline that I just verified myself.
Option #1 is fairly safe, but does nothing to help the reader, and moreover represents someone else's idea as your own (even if it is "common knowledge"). Option #2 makes your paper more transparent and accessible, and is honestly the most helpful, but it makes you look bad. So you might be tempted to do #3; that's somewhat helpful to your readers (but less so than #2) but also not entirely honest; it's also slightly risky because it's entirely possible that the unread source doesn't actually contain the tidbit you used. Option #4 is by far the safest, but it is a tremendous waste of time -- and since it asks your readers to slog through the same dense paper, it is less helpful to them than #2.
Of course, this kind of use of Wikipedia is only really justified for things that one is in a position to verify oneself, like math. But I think that the standard debates about "authoritative sources" tend to neglect this angle, assuming that truth is necessarily generated by authority and is not observable directly from nature. For those cases where I can verify myself that what Wikipedia says is true, I'd sort of like to be able to cite it. Being a pragmatist, however, I refrain!
The article seems filled with examples of fuzzy logic.
Membership functions? Fuzzifiers? Defuzzifiers? Linguistic variables? Where are they? They aren't even citing Lotfi Zadeh...
;-)
I've often had the same thought, but my focus is a tiny bit different: I think about the gas turbines that propel planes. In the end, we're "just" burning a bunch of stuff. It's an application of the discovery of fire millions of years ago. Something about that juxtaposition of the primitive with the sophisticated -- in combination with the thought of how people from the past would see this -- just fills me with awe.
Indeed. It sounds like he didn't understand the significance of "soaked in formaldehyde." I won't go so far as to blame the teacher (clearly this is just a kid being stupid; it's his own fault), but somebody should have explained to the students that the preservatives used were carcinogenic; it sounds like he just thought it was meat...
Solar cells are also limited by the Carnot efficiency; it's just not as obvious what your hot and cold reservoirs are. They must be Carnot-limited, for consider the following thought experiment: I heat up a mass to a very high temperature so that it radiates light, and then I convert that light to electricity with a solar cell. If solar cells could exceed Carnot efficiency then so would this system and we would have a heat engine which violates the laws of thermodynamics.
Disclaimer: I'm a scientist.[...]
There is 2 ways to stay in the system: either you are lucky or you lie like hell.
You have managed to stay in the system, haven't you? Which is your method? I can guess, since luck is by definition unlikely...
(I know; I know: deconstruction is an easy game...)
Then we're down to altering the N/O ratio. That's a bugger, because whatever method you use is going to consume energy and it'll be tough to think of a method of gaining more than you use.
There's a fundamental thermodynamic thing going on here too: A mixture of two gasses has much more entropy than those two gasses do separately. And entropy can't be 'pumped out' of a system without doing work (even if this process is somehow performed with 100% efficiency).
In general, thermodynamic cycles are more efficient when they operate over a larger temperature difference. Wiki 'Carnot Efficiency.' Presumably this increased efficiency offsets energy losses from making NOx.
Here's another hypothesis: Presumably your mixed-race friends grew up in the United States or another developed Western nation on a fairly typical American-style diet, whereas their parents may not have. Diet may be the thing.
Is it better nutrition? Just plain more food? Growth hormones from industrial farms getting into the food supply? I don't know. However, average heights in Japan shot up after WWII when a (slightly) more American diet was introduced, and the difference is even more marked between Asian-American kids nowadays and their parents.
There is also a (smaller) difference between Caucasian-American children and their parents; newer generations do tend to be taller. This would also support the "it's the food" hypothesis.
I'm not saying genes play no role. And it may even be that mixed-race kids end up healthier on average. But I suspect that diet plays a much larger role.
I'm going to pretend I have no opinion in this post and instead make a "meta-comment:"
What I find fascinating is that, just a year ago, an overwhelming majority of Slashdot readers would have defended this student, written posts to the effect that it is justifiable to download copyrighted work, made angry statements about the MP/RI-AA, and the like. Now, I see many more posts (and story tags -- currently "righttosteal") like yours. Sure, the old pro-pirate posts are still around -- they are probably even still the majority -- but I think that the percentage is lower. I wonder if this means that attitudes are changing, and whether this is due at all to the RIAA's campaign.
R&D can't be done without long lunches and a pack of Gaulloise?
Personally I'd leave out the cigarettes, but otherwise that's spot-on. :-)
Seriously, it's less than two dozen guys pumping out 90% of the spam in the world.
Do you have a source for this? It's interesting...