The GPL fringe of the open-source movement is radically different in how it views 'freedom' than normal people. Telling Joe Schmoe that the software is "Only free is in free beer, not really free" is hardly not going to get you understood.
It's a radical idea (and a good radical idea) of what freedom is.
So being down on Gosling for 'accusing RMS of redefining "Free"' is a bit odd because the great thing RMS did was express a new idea of what "Free" should mean.
Usually these stories involve corporations trying to outsource storage of personal data from other western nations to the US, to take advantage of the US's almost-nonexistant privacy laws. So it's ironic that in the one industry (Health) in which the US has any real privacy laws, the US is suffering the same problem.
Odd that no libertarians have posted yet saying that the govts should just butt out and stop trying to impose privacy laws.
Standard economics is that prices will stabilise across countries, unless govts intervene heavily to subsidize local goods (eg by taxing exports and/or imports).
But that does not apply to the devaluation of the US dollar. Americans are not seeing as big a rise in the cost of imported goods as they should be.
It's not just electronic goods and computers either, it's a huge range of consumer products: check out (eg) www.lego.com and you'll see that if you tell it you're in the US the lego will be cheaper. Lego is not made in the US, but it's cheaper there.
The problem for those exporting to the US is that the US is a huge part of their market, and is a very competitive market. So to stay competitive in the US marketplace many manufacturers are dropping their prices (in their own currency) to keep their $USD price the same for their US trading partners.
I believe this cannot last forever, and that in the long run simple economic laws will catch up and things will equalize. But as Keynes put it about the value of such long-term economic predictions: "in the long run, we're all dead". In the short term, you US consumers are getting lucky.
Go to the Game Developers' Conference and sit in on a physics or AI session. Watch punked-out twentysomethings fill up whiteboards with advanced math. Those guys are really good
Wibble. Try doing credit risk analysis. Maths phDs pushing algorithms around for high-performance systems so your bank's trader can find out how much margin he should charge, while on the phone to the client. Don't worry, it'll only cost millions if you screw it up. Try a generic system to evaluate student's qualifications. It's NP-hard, but it's got to perform well, so you're very focussed on heuristics (that job sucked - and I still think we should have talked the client out of it instead of building it for them).
If you're comparing it to the business programming done in building your local petstore's website, then game programming is hard. But real "business programming" encompasses so much diversity that it's hard to say what it's like except in terms of generalities - and at that general level the problems you have these days appear an awful lot like the problems that games tech is having these days.
My guess (can anyone confirm or deny?) is that the article's author did business programming years ago, then moved into games, and they aren't up with how complex business programming has become. IMAO: The things that make business programming work these days are that (1) 80% is easy, dross work it's only 20'% that's hard and (2) we're moving away from low-level work in C++ except for specialist libraries because in business the increased complexity in development in C++ isn't worth the increase performance (except in a few very specialized bottlenecks - the 5% of code that takes 80% of the time).
In the end, a computer is more like a car than an oven, capable of great power but requiring a good deal of knowledge to use (and not run over people in the process).
I agree about the car point, but I think you're drawing the wrong conclusion.
A 15-year old schoolkid can learn to drive a car by spending a day learning the road code followed by 6 1-hour driving lessons, followed by doing some driving with an experienced driver nearby someone sitting there to tell them if they're screwed up.
That's about how much time Aunt Tillie has spent learning how to use a computer. If you can't make simple computer-use as easy to do as driving a car, then you're not providing the service you need to provide to your users.
Sean
(yes, our driving age here in New Zealand is 15, I could say "18" to be more inclusive but I'm making a point here).
All crystal latticies are a result of molecular polarity between molecules. Water crystalizes and so do metals, for the same reason. Nuff said.
It has been quite a while since I did inorganic chem, but I think you're wrong.
Ice is made of H2O molecules in a lattice, with obvious polarities because H and O are not equally electrophilic (ie the electrons hang out down one end of H-O bond more than down the other).
If you are claiming that solid Iron is the same, with polarised molecules, then what molecules do you claim exist in solid Iron? Because I don't think there are any.
Solid metals don't work the way that high school chemistry tells you about with each atom bonding to one other atom by sharing electrons with it.
2.4 Ghz has nothing to do with the ressonance frequency of water, which is what you claim by claiming that water molecules heat the food. I can melt metal in a microwave, and the metal has no water in it. But it is made of molecules that have polalrity. It takes several hours, but you can get it to 1000C where most everything melts.
Yes, but... water molecules are small and quite dipolar compared to most fats, and water wiggles about better than fats (ahem, "has a higher specific heat that fats").
So while it is false to say that "microwaves work by heat up the water in food" it's still true that most of the effects of microwaves is from heating the water in food.
As for metals: I agree that microwaves make the atoms in a metal wiggle about (ie, heat up). But you say that "metals are made of molecules that have polarity" and that does not make sense to me at all - are not solid metals crystal lattices rather than molecular structures per se? (ugh, inorganic chem, it's been a while...) Given that how can metals be made of "molecules that have polarity"? Occam may get me for this, but I think the effects on metals may well be by a different mechanism that the effects on organic molecules.
Maybe the kneejerk "it's it space, so it's better" reaction could do with a little thought.
And the optical range is far from ideal for most astronomical purposes. It produces fantastic jpegs for people to download, but that's not exactly a foundation for high-quality science.
For gods sake, do you have any idea how much you could buy in ground-based astronomy with US$1 billion? Image it... 4,000 phD scholarships, 2,000 post-docs, 50 professorships and we'd still have a huge chunk of cash left for ground-based equipment, which would buy a hell of a lot more, more useful, stuff than the Hubble.
It's not the the Hubble is useless: space-based telescopes have advantages... but I've never seen a convincing argument that this is well-spent research money.
Sean
Scientists are not as different as Paul claims
on
What You Can't Say
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· Score: 1
The history of science is full of sad, disparaged, ignored geniuses dying in obscurity - or failing to be recognised decades later when their views finally are taken seriously. Even in science it can take many decades and a huge mountain of evidence before fashion changes and people will listen to a heresy.
Advance the theory at the right time, and you're a genius. Advance it too early, and you're a crackpot who will be quietly ignored. Look at Mendel. No-one argued that Mendel's published views on genetics were wrong, they just ignored them. Or look at the early proponents of the idea that Ice Ages occurred ("Ice? I know what Ice is, I've got some in my whisky glass now. Ice move boulders for miles? Absurd!") or the immense difficulties that early proponents of Plate Tectonics hit
These rocks in Ireland are just like those rocks in NewFoundLand
Don't be silly, continents can't move
The coast of Eurasia fits neatly against the coast of the Americas
Are you mad?
The problem if someone tries to deviate *radically* from accepted views in science is not that their views will be debated carefully and seen as false, but that their views will be seen as nonsensical and ignored (unless they have immense personal status). We just don't talk about that stuff.
But for about three decades between 1900 and 1930 physics was different. I wish I knew why.
Sean
PS: Okay, maybe Paul's right the scientists are more open-minded that the rest of humanity - my point is that is still not saying much.
A little story from a LOTR set here in Wellington (related to me by a friend who worked there):
The Nazgul scream sound effect was a bit naff, and the hobbits jumping in shock and surprise weren't really getting into it.
So Fran Walsh (scriptwriter, producer, and partner of Peter Jackson) crept up and when the Nazgul scream sound effect was supposed to happen she let loose with the loudest, highest-pitch scream you can imagine. Hobbits jumped in surprise and shock, as they should. Peter Jackson chortled and filmed.
So they redid the sound effect, basing it on Fran's scream.
Slashdot Mirror
The GPL fringe of the open-source movement is radically different in how it views 'freedom' than normal people. Telling Joe Schmoe that the software is "Only free is in free beer, not really free" is hardly not going to get you understood.
It's a radical idea (and a good radical idea) of what freedom is.
So being down on Gosling for 'accusing RMS of redefining "Free"' is a bit odd because the great thing RMS did was express a new idea of what "Free" should mean.
Sean
Usually these stories involve corporations trying to outsource storage of personal data from other western nations to the US, to take advantage of the US's almost-nonexistant privacy laws. So it's ironic that in the one industry (Health) in which the US has any real privacy laws, the US is suffering the same problem.
Odd that no libertarians have posted yet saying that the govts should just butt out and stop trying to impose privacy laws.
Sean
But that does not apply to the devaluation of the US dollar. Americans are not seeing as big a rise in the cost of imported goods as they should be.
It's not just electronic goods and computers either, it's a huge range of consumer products: check out (eg) www.lego.com and you'll see that if you tell it you're in the US the lego will be cheaper. Lego is not made in the US, but it's cheaper there.
The problem for those exporting to the US is that the US is a huge part of their market, and is a very competitive market. So to stay competitive in the US marketplace many manufacturers are dropping their prices (in their own currency) to keep their $USD price the same for their US trading partners.
I believe this cannot last forever, and that in the long run simple economic laws will catch up and things will equalize. But as Keynes put it about the value of such long-term economic predictions: "in the long run, we're all dead". In the short term, you US consumers are getting lucky.
Sean
The tiny pacific island state of Niue has covered itself for wifi.
So CowboyNeal could sit on the deck of a yacht floating in the lagoon and read Slashdot on his laptop.
Sean
Wibble. Try doing credit risk analysis. Maths phDs pushing algorithms around for high-performance systems so your bank's trader can find out how much margin he should charge, while on the phone to the client. Don't worry, it'll only cost millions if you screw it up. Try a generic system to evaluate student's qualifications. It's NP-hard, but it's got to perform well, so you're very focussed on heuristics (that job sucked - and I still think we should have talked the client out of it instead of building it for them).
If you're comparing it to the business programming done in building your local petstore's website, then game programming is hard. But real "business programming" encompasses so much diversity that it's hard to say what it's like except in terms of generalities - and at that general level the problems you have these days appear an awful lot like the problems that games tech is having these days.
My guess (can anyone confirm or deny?) is that the article's author did business programming years ago, then moved into games, and they aren't up with how complex business programming has become. IMAO: The things that make business programming work these days are that (1) 80% is easy, dross work it's only 20'% that's hard and (2) we're moving away from low-level work in C++ except for specialist libraries because in business the increased complexity in development in C++ isn't worth the increase performance (except in a few very specialized bottlenecks - the 5% of code that takes 80% of the time).
Sean
I agree about the car point, but I think you're drawing the wrong conclusion.
A 15-year old schoolkid can learn to drive a car by spending a day learning the road code followed by 6 1-hour driving lessons, followed by doing some driving with an experienced driver nearby someone sitting there to tell them if they're screwed up.
That's about how much time Aunt Tillie has spent learning how to use a computer. If you can't make simple computer-use as easy to do as driving a car, then you're not providing the service you need to provide to your users.
Sean
(yes, our driving age here in New Zealand is 15, I could say "18" to be more inclusive but I'm making a point here).
It has been quite a while since I did inorganic chem, but I think you're wrong.
Ice is made of H2O molecules in a lattice, with obvious polarities because H and O are not equally electrophilic (ie the electrons hang out down one end of H-O bond more than down the other).
If you are claiming that solid Iron is the same, with polarised molecules, then what molecules do you claim exist in solid Iron? Because I don't think there are any.
Solid metals don't work the way that high school chemistry tells you about with each atom bonding to one other atom by sharing electrons with it.
Sean
Yes, but... water molecules are small and quite dipolar compared to most fats, and water wiggles about better than fats (ahem, "has a higher specific heat that fats"). So while it is false to say that "microwaves work by heat up the water in food" it's still true that most of the effects of microwaves is from heating the water in food.
As for metals: I agree that microwaves make the atoms in a metal wiggle about (ie, heat up). But you say that "metals are made of molecules that have polarity" and that does not make sense to me at all - are not solid metals crystal lattices rather than molecular structures per se? (ugh, inorganic chem, it's been a while...) Given that how can metals be made of "molecules that have polarity"? Occam may get me for this, but I think the effects on metals may well be by a different mechanism that the effects on organic molecules.
Sean
And the optical range is far from ideal for most astronomical purposes. It produces fantastic jpegs for people to download, but that's not exactly a foundation for high-quality science.
For gods sake, do you have any idea how much you could buy in ground-based astronomy with US$1 billion? Image it... 4,000 phD scholarships, 2,000 post-docs, 50 professorships and we'd still have a huge chunk of cash left for ground-based equipment, which would buy a hell of a lot more, more useful, stuff than the Hubble.
It's not the the Hubble is useless: space-based telescopes have advantages... but I've never seen a convincing argument that this is well-spent research money.
Sean
The history of science is full of sad, disparaged, ignored geniuses dying in obscurity - or failing to be recognised decades later when their views finally are taken seriously. Even in science it can take many decades and a huge mountain of evidence before fashion changes and people will listen to a heresy.
Advance the theory at the right time, and you're a genius. Advance it too early, and you're a crackpot who will be quietly ignored. Look at Mendel. No-one argued that Mendel's published views on genetics were wrong, they just ignored them. Or look at the early proponents of the idea that Ice Ages occurred ("Ice? I know what Ice is, I've got some in my whisky glass now. Ice move boulders for miles? Absurd!") or the immense difficulties that early proponents of Plate Tectonics hit
The problem if someone tries to deviate *radically* from accepted views in science is not that their views will be debated carefully and seen as false, but that their views will be seen as nonsensical and ignored (unless they have immense personal status). We just don't talk about that stuff.
But for about three decades between 1900 and 1930 physics was different. I wish I knew why.
Sean
PS: Okay, maybe Paul's right the scientists are more open-minded that the rest of humanity - my point is that is still not saying much.
A little story from a LOTR set here in Wellington (related to me by a friend who worked there): The Nazgul scream sound effect was a bit naff, and the hobbits jumping in shock and surprise weren't really getting into it. So Fran Walsh (scriptwriter, producer, and partner of Peter Jackson) crept up and when the Nazgul scream sound effect was supposed to happen she let loose with the loudest, highest-pitch scream you can imagine. Hobbits jumped in surprise and shock, as they should. Peter Jackson chortled and filmed. So they redid the sound effect, basing it on Fran's scream.