This is not so far-fetched as you might think. In the not-too-distant future, many homes WILL come with their own power plants the same way many new homes come with central air conditioning. And the power plants will be networked and gridded so excess power is sent to where it is needed. (Think about the current credit given to solar power or wind power users who feed back to the grid.) Multiple power sources (wind, solar, recovery, compost and fuel) will make modern homes as self-sufficient as a submarine. Look for these features in multi-family dwellings like apartment houses and condominiums first.
The right of free speech does not grant you a right to slander, defame or libel someone. When you call another person a "crook", you are expected to have reasons to back it up. In this case, the person sued actually performed, and still was defamed. All the defendent had to do to be on the right side of the line was to clearly state the facts and her reasons for being dissatisfied.
The amount awarded is astonishing, but SOME amount was justified.
There was a Professor at the University of Minnesota in the '70's named Pedoe, who taught a class in Non-Euclidian Geometry over 3 quarters. The first quarter, the descriptions were oriented around numbers (for those who understood and liked numbers, arithmetic), the second quarter the descriptions were oriented around Algebra (for those people who liked general recipes and principles), and the third quarter the descriptions were oriented around actual visualizations as in graphs and geometric diagrams(for those whose primary understanding was visual). He said there were always three approaches to understanding Mathematics, and applying your preferred descriptive method and translating into the two others would make you both a better mathematician and a better communicator.
A very good example of this is the way people learn Ohm's law: Usually, this is taught by visualizing the equation E=IR in a triangle or circle with E over a line, I and R located below the horizontal line and separated by a vertical line. But if you think about it, this is also the description of the "basic equation" x=yz. Almost every equation is solved by simplifying it to the basic equation, so this is a good entry into Algebra through visualization.
Another possibility is that your preferred learning strategy is kinesthetic rather than visual or auditory. Do you learn best when you do things "hands on"? Does something have to "feel right" before you know you understand it? If so, make models you can manipulate out of clay, wood or plastic shapes, or even objects on your desk, and use an abacus or slide rule (remember those?). You will master your subject in a VERY effective way. The best Engineers and Tecnicians I know have a "feel" or "gestalt" for the "whole thing" in a perfect description, and can "feel" or "sense" the abberations between what the perfect model is and what is out of place in the current reality.
I'm glad someone thinks so. The VA doesn't care too much, and all the administrations have tried to reduce healthcare for Vets at the VA. In Houston, we have one of the best VA hospitals in the nation. The digital communications and computer-supported diagnostics and care were top-of-the-line when it first opened. Digital imaging meant that your X-rays were immediately available to any clinic in the hospital, and the record-keeping was superb. Unfortunately, since then they have replaced most of the IBM systems installed at the outset with Dell computers. There has been some turnover, and the replacements aren't as competent to run the systems. And they hired a lot of refugees from New Orleans who are still lazy and technically incompetent a year later (but they are keeping them). It has taken me 10 months to finally get an appointment for diagnosing a case of polymyalgia. (We don't know for certain, I need a muscle biopsy to check, but it's taken 10 months to get this far?!!?) If I could work enough to earn the money I'd opt away from the VA and go private. Which I will do as soon as I find a way to control the pain and stiffness.
I'm a Vietnam Vet. When my Dad came back from 44 months in Japanese prison camps after WWII, they decided that he was 100% disabled. Does that mean that he got $100% disability? NO! They decided he was 50% disabled from starvation. Then they decided that his shoulder wound was a 25% disability, but since he was now only 50% of a soldier, it came to an additonal 12.5%. And so forth down through the rest of his wounds. (So instead of getting 100% pay for his disabilities, he ended up with about 71%.) To make matters worse, the cancer he died from in 1970 is significantly high in the survivors of the Nagasaki blast (fairly close to where my Dad was imprisoned). In a fair world, my mother would have been granted his back pay as a Major back to the time of his death, but instead they threatened to keep her tied up in courts if she sued for back pay rather than accept survivor's benefits. (She was in her late 70's at the time.)
The Government is NOT your friend. Ask any soldier who has been to war. It's a necessary duty, but once they don't need you anymore they resent you for having to meet their contractual obligations.
RAW's predicament is a simple function of income not stretching to meet the needs. You will be seeing a LOT of this in the near future as my generation gets older. Social Security and Medicaid represent about 10 Trillion dollars of unfunded, off-balance-sheet liabilities. The Government will undoubtedly inflate the money and raise taxes to cover the costs, but this is not the same as providing services. If you are young and in the tech field, NOW is the time to start putting assets aside, increase your earning power, and fund your own medical and retirement.
I am glad to see that people were able to come to RAW's aid. Personal charity is good for us all.
Hmm. I would have expected better thinking from someone with a degree in Economics.
Although my background is Computer Science and Math, I have been studying Economics for about 20 years now, and intend to go back and get a PhD. in Economics so I can spend my retirement years teaching Math and Economics.
First of all, Economics (if I recall) isn't supposed to have a "goal" as such. It is a Social Science and as such is supposed to be a discipline whereby we discover the principles behind "economic behavior." (Economics has the same root as Ecology...and we are studying the Ecology of human behavior within a specified domain.)
Secondly, There seems to exist three levels of Economic Study: The first level is Economic Philosophy, which seems to emphasize ideal systems of Economic Behavior. The third level is Economic Technology, which seems to be aimed at making behavior conform to some economic ideal or goal. Sandwiched in the middle is Economic Science, which is apparently a narrow study by Scientists trying to derive the principles that govern Economic Behavior. (They are highly handicapped in relation to other Sciences, by not always being able to control for experimental variables, therefore having to rely on historical interpretation to derive their data.)
Of course there is no such thing as zero production cost, the same as there is no such thing as perpetual motion. However, a society as a whole benefits from acquiring goods and services where they are produced the most efficiently. "Serfdom" was a very expensive proposition, even in the times it was popular. The same can be said for Slavery. Guilds and Unions also damaged Society by keeping acquisition costs abnormally high.
OK, I've said it before: Read Dan Pink's book, "A Whole New Mind". One good quote: "If it is likely that someone in China or India can do your work more cheaply than you can, or if a computer can do your work faster than you can, your job is obsolete."
While you're at it, read a book on Economics and understand Ricardo's Law of Comparative Advantage. You might want to back into Economics by reading "Freakonomics" by Levitt and Dubner, and something simple like, "The Economic Way of Thinking" by Heyne. You can find copies of Bastiat's, "Economic Sophisms" online. The book is old-fashioned, but it covers the basics pretty well, and if you learned it, you would see the workings of comparative advantage and the fallacy of protectionism.
And, most importantly, you might want to get a book on Rhetoric like Damer's "Attacking Faulty Arguments." (You will learn to identify the 83 common rhetorical mistakes, and your posts might not be so lame.)
And, you might want to read, "The Underground History of American Education" by Gatto to discover why you know less Rhetoric than a 5th-Grader who schooled in the 1850's.
Of course, I'm assuming that the post was made by an adult, and I could be wrong. It would pass as a pretty good post for a 10-year old.
The whole discussion is a waste of time, and the article itself is lame.
First of all, there is no careful description of the problem. A problem is the difference between the way things are and the way you want them to be. This takes into account the way things are that already acceptable. AJAX has some deficiencies, and it has some attractions. My questions are: Is it worth the effort to correct those deficiencies in AJAX? Is it worth the effort to include the attrations in EJ?
Secondly, there is no concensus on the appropriate domain for the different tools. Is EJ really a tool for doing the same things that AJAX does?
Back in the mid '70's I programmed versions of "Eliza" and "Doctor" that would fascinate people for hours. (I ahd a large selection of keyword-based responses that I kept increasing as people tripped up the program, so it got pretty entertaining.) I've also written chatbots to answer common tech support questions in mIRC, which sometimes got "Thank you's" and other responses that indicated that the questioner didn't realize they were dealing with a 'bot. I'm really disappointed that no one has developed a better version yet.
Children are the last minority. A child can be tried for murder as an adult at 12, but cannot get a job or a means of taking adult responsibility. In Houston, the schools are already starting to look like prisons; fences, guards, security systems, etc.. With curfew, they are under House Arrest from 10:00PM 'til 6:00AM, thus making their incarceration more complete.
I lied about my age and joined the Army back in the '60's, and two months later had an Army GED. The State of Alaska granted me an actual Diploma when I turned 18. People used to laugh at people with GED's, but now you have to take a GED test before they will let you graduate (in Texas they call it TAKS), and it's not even as hard as the one I took back in the '60's! But if some kid showed up for his Freshman year of High School and passed the TAKS, do you think they'd let him graduate and get a job? NO! He still has to serve the rest of his sentence!
Just wait. The population of the US is getting older. It won't be too long before they lower the age at which young people can go to work to support the old folks on Social Security.
Last night on the local 1/2 hour news show there were 12.5 minutes of ads. Occasionally I tune in to a show like "CSI" or "Grey's Anatomy" and tune out about the second round of commercials. I can tolerate 2 or 3 ads, but 7-10? No Way! The content has to be exceptionally good for me to watch a commercial program these days. I think "Dancing with the Stars" may qualify, but they don't seem to have as many ads.
I never go to Yahoo! Music to watch videos anymore either, because I have to put up with the ads first. I want to select a bunch of videos, usually the same type (Jazz, Pop, etc.), without having my entertainment interrupted by ads.
The person who figures out the balance formula for paying for services with innocuous, acceptable advertising is going to make millions of people happy and become rich at the same time.
Start again: What is the University charging for? Is it charging for chair space or is it charging for having accumulated resources in one convenient place so the payees can "better" themselves? As long as the University can certify that the student learned the material and can competently demonstrate the skills, it should not matter whether the student gets the lecture material at home, in class, in the Library, or off the Net from a small coffee shop in Europe...
I don't believe you are second-year law student: Even though lawyers are not taught to think anymore, they still are responsible for the ideas behind the Constitution. In broad terms, a person in the USA has a right to take actions to make his life better (it's called liberty) as long as his actions don't impinge on the life, liberty and property of others. (OK, these natural rights have been considerably abridged, and the actual arguments supporting this idea are too long to discuss here. I suggest you read, "We Hold These Truths" by Mortimer Adler.) This liberty cannot be abridged (supposedly) unless there is evidence of some powerful harm to society. (We lock up criminals to protect society, but they are still entitled to some liberty.) The standard for abridging a person's liberty is conviction of an offense by a jury of his peers. (I'm not a strict constitutionalist, but, like most Supreme Court Judges, I do advocate textualism. I only mention this to avoid the appearance of an irrelevant argument.)
While it makes logical sense that a person losing a civil trial can be subsequently tried for criminal acts exposed during that civil trial, and there may be a rationale for assessing restorative damages or conducting a civil trial for someone whose acts have been exposed in a criminal trial in which he was convicted, there is no logically consistent rationale for subjecting a person to civil penalties for a criminal act unless he has actually been convicted of the criminal act. (IMO, both the OJ and Blake civil suits were a mis-application of Justice.) Certainly there is no rationale for a bench judgement of civil penalties for a person not even exposed to a civil trial! This law presupposes a definition of a person in an invalid "to be" format. It is valid to say, "Joe was convicted (caught, diagnosed) as a sex offender." but it is not valid to say, "Joe is a sex offender." This is an unwarranted generalization unless the first, valid statement is also true.
Think of it this way: It is invalid for me to say, "Ted Turner is a farmer" when, in fact, Ted Turner does not work the soil, plow a field or plant a crop. (Ted Turner is paid huge sums by the US Government for NOT cultivating the land he owns in Colorado.) It is valid for me to say, "Ted Turner owns many acres of farm and agricultural land in Colorado.)
So, a person convicted of being a sex offender might rationally be placed on a list of people whose liberty is too be restricted, but this isn't right for someone who is not convicted. Get it?
First, I'd like to give a nod tot he the other comments made here: Interesting thinking going on.
Second, I'd like to point out that there are certain processes alrady in exisitence (especially TRIZ and ARIZ) that are predecessors to this type of approach. In one of his earlier books, Altshuler (inventor of TRIZ) proposed that once we were able to catalog the tertiary combinations of chemical reactions, invention and innovation would blossom explosively. It looks like this is where it's happening.
Data mining and genetic programming are not sufficient for creating new products. We still need goals and specifications. However, wouldn't it be great if we could score a material and reduce the time necessary to discover materials and techniques that reduced the negative attributes using computer searches? Maybe this is just the next level of computer simulation (a pre-processor?).
You have both made excellent points, and the only thing I disagree with is the process of "voting" being conducted the way it expressed itself in this particular case. I have a strong bias toward scientific consensus rather than scientific majority. The definitions and standards should be guided by the people most informed in the particular discipline, and accepted by a consensus of the people informed enough to understand the distinctions and arguments. (The politicization of the Theory of Evolution is a good example of what happens when this is not done, as is the experiences of Gallileo and Kepler.) I agree that (in this case) the voting process was, indeed, hijacked by a minor faction.
A couple of good points have already been made in subsequent posts, but if I understand it, there were almost 10,000 scientists at this gathering (about 2700 were considered authoritative), and the vote was cast in the 11th hour by a mere 457 scientists with a specialized point of view. I agree that useful standards and definitions ought to be made, but I expect a fair-minded body to have something like 90+% consensus, not just a majority of the voters available.
My favorite definition of politics (verb): "Vying for scarce resources". In many areas of Science the "scarce resource" is fame or prestige. (This may make politics a subset of Economics, rather than the other way around. Don't forget: Fame and prestige also may translate into monetary benefits.) Imposing the dynamic definition instead of the geologic definition may lead to diffrerences in the way Astronomy is conducted and funded. However, I believe that scientific definitions and standards ought to be created for their universal usefulness, not for political gain. And therefore, I believe these definitions and standards ought to be objectively evaluated and agreed upon by consensus of all but the "fringe" in the body of Scientists.
Whether Pluto is or is not considered a planet is not as important to me as the integrity of high-level guidance among senior scientists. When the arguments for or against a decision depend on popular vote rather than rational consensus, scientists reduce themselves to the level of lawyers. When the objectivity of scientific thought is bypassed by special interest groups and politics, science is no longer Science. This whole process has been a shameful exhibition of politics.
RTFA. Despite the lack of clarity in his argument, ESR being a Libertarian is not relevant. His premise is that to gain ground in the user community, these proprietary codecs should be paid for and included in the OS. His primary supposition is that if LINUX doesn't gain ground in the user community, the popularity of LINUX will be diminished and morale, development, and support will also be diminished. I disagree, but I disagree because I don't accept the premise as a valid premise. His personal politics don't affect the argument any more than his race or religion.
It is a pity that high schools and colleges quit teaching Rhetoric in the 1970's and we have to listen to people like you trying to sound intelligent. May I suggest going back to school and taking English 101 and Philosophy 101?
There are some videos I'd pay for. I wouldn't object to a download system like iTunes for music videos in a good format. I occasionally use Yahoo! music, but I can't stand the commericals interrupting my musical pleasure.
The problem of arbitrary precision for floating point arithmetic has been around for years. A USENIX conference in the early 90's ('90 or '92 I think) had a paper presented that showed a method for testing the precision of your floating point unit, and interestingly enough, only the Motorola worked with acceptable precision. It's been about 15 years since this issue was really addressed (although there was a small reminder in 1998) and I think it's good for us to be reminded periodically that not all hardware is reliable. Or rather, a reminder that hardware is reliable only under specific circumstances. (The original paper made mention of the the fact that the Intel FPU became more unreliable under high heat.) If anyone can point me to the original paper I'd be grateful. I can't seem to find it in my files.
Funny thing: An old colleague of mine recently recovered some old research data from punched plastic tape (coated paper, actually) that we used to input the CDC-160G back in the mid-60's. Barcoding has an even higher reliability, and can be coded for error correction. It's probably not as space-efficient as what we have now, but my mom has tape measures from the early 1800's that are still readable. Maybe we should print the data in barcode on fabric?
I keep going over this with people all the time: Complexity is a by-product of design decisons, including features. The more connections you make, the more complex the system.
I believe that attributing complexity to "Open Source" is a mis-applied cause. A cause is defined as something both necessary and sufficient to explain the effect. The article does not describe the problem domain in enough detail to support the argument. The complexity is a result of arithmetic, not "Open Source".
In the old days, doing assembly language, I would build my systems using Decision Tables. The complexity is directly related to the number of decisions (5 rules = 2^5 = 32 potential tests, 10 rules = 2^10 = 1024 potential tests.) Athough all the tests are mathematically possible, a large number of test don't make logical sense. But the amount of complexity still increases rapidly with the number of decisions traversed by the system.
UNIX (and LINUX) have simplified the state of the system at the OS level by accessing everything as if it were a file. Complexity is added after that by the number of states and messages that an app has to keep track of in order to traverse the decision points correctly. Complex applications sometimes require additional state computation in order to work with other applications. So, as you work your way up from a simple text terminal program to a windowed environment, the complexity multiplies a LOT. Now, consider that there are a multitude of environments to run in, a multitude of desires and possibilities for applications, then if you want your application to run in more than one simple environment you have to make the installation choices more complex. (Therefore, I maintain that writing an application to run on both Gnome and KDE increases the complexity almost as annoying as writing it for two different operating systems.) Then add one more choice: How do you keep the app updated? (rpm? apt? source? etc.?)
Dang! This whole post is just another way of saying that the author didn't distiguish between "complexity", "ease-of-use" and "ease-of-administration" and blamed the confusion on "Open Source".
My wish, of course, is that more designers of systems and apps would put more thought into resolving the administrator's headaches instead of just adding cool new features. My standard is to "write it to a directory" and be done with it, but I usually write stand-alone apps that don't require so many complex interactions.
Having said all that, I also want to say I'm grateful to designers like the FireFox folks who spend a lot of time making the app easily installable and self-updating.
Strong anti-Bush and pro-Democratic feelings, including a strong reinforcement for those already polarized. I suspect that if there was enough money to produce 10 or 12 of these type of films, (including the Al Gore type film) that it would be a major influence in swinging the vote from the Republicrats to the Demopublicans. I expect to see many of these type of films in the 2008 election, and even more in 2012. Soon after that the novelty will wear off and the public will no longer find them as attractive. I suspect that a film is in pre-production right now that will "expose" the election frauds perpetrated during the 2000 and 2004 elections, and the intent will be inflame the voters against one party. (Both parties made massive underhanded attempts to sway the elections, so I'm not going to guess which party actually gets their film out first, but the Democrats have more active actors willing to put money and time into it, so they may have the slight edge.) Whichever party gets its film out first gains the high ground on that issue. The counter-tactic will be to produce a propaganda film exposing how the other party is using propaganda films to influence the voters...
The key, of course, will be to produce these "independently" to diminish the charges of bias, and to prevent the appearance of campaign contributions.
The reason that this crap works is that most of the citizenry is unable to follow a valid argument, neither on an informal nor formal level. Informally, can you distinguish between the 83 Rhetorical Fallacies? (Read "Attacking Faulty Reasoning" by Damer, if it's not too much work. Did you notice the three Rhetorical Fallacies contained in my first sentence?) In his book, "Dumbing Us Down", John Taylor Gatto http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/ says that if you picked up a 5th grade book on Rhetoric or Arithmetic from the 1850's, some of the content is equivalent to what is now being withheld until college.
And think about this: Al Gore's movie is built on the same premise; that people are too stupid and/or too lazy to follow rational argument. Another example would be Michael Moore's movie. While he claims that there are no "factual" discrepanciews in his movie, Moore's presentation of relying on out-of-context snippets and arrangements bypasses any rational thought, and promotes a whole movie of ad hominem argument. Moore could be the most successful propagandist since Hermann Goering.
I get this all the time. I've been troubleshooting systems since the mid-60's, and now I get a lot of calls to fix systems that other techs and engineers failed to fix. One thing I've learned over all those years, is that 90% of problems on most projects (including my own) are due to inadequate design and specifications in the beginning.
A problem is a discrepancy between the way things are and the way you want and expect them to be. All problems have a specific description, and elements of timing, location and scope. In order to resolve a customer's problem you must have agreement UP FRONT about what the resolved problem looks like in description, timing, location and scope. Without that agreement about "how you know when the problem is solved" you will just keep tracking unspecified problems. Precision is ultimately important.
Now, if one of my projects fails to perform within the environment, time and extent that I promised, I fix it. Occasionally the customer has an additional requirement (change orders, anyone?). If I can profitably meet the customer's requirements, I will. Some projects are not worth fixing. In less than one percent of my projects have I had to give a refund or a discount, but I'm willing to do so if that will get some projects out of my hair. As has already been said, some customers are not worth having. I usually find this out when I try to get proper agreement on the specs and prices.
Occasionally I find there are conditions outside my control that keep the project from performing like the customer expects. I will work with just about anyone to help alleviate these problems, but if it works correctly in my test environment, and if the test environment is spec'd at the design phase, and if the customer agreed to the test environment, then it's not my problem. (The last problem I had like that, about 4 years ago, the customer changed telephone systems just before I installed the project, and the new system had some incompatible idiosyncracies. The customer paid extra for me to resolve the problem.)
If you are not trained in a formal problem resolution process, I recommend starting with "The New Rational Manager" by Kepner and Tregoe. Good luck
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This is not so far-fetched as you might think. In the not-too-distant future, many homes WILL come with their own power plants the same way many new homes come with central air conditioning. And the power plants will be networked and gridded so excess power is sent to where it is needed. (Think about the current credit given to solar power or wind power users who feed back to the grid.) Multiple power sources (wind, solar, recovery, compost and fuel) will make modern homes as self-sufficient as a submarine. Look for these features in multi-family dwellings like apartment houses and condominiums first.
The right of free speech does not grant you a right to slander, defame or libel someone. When you call another person a "crook", you are expected to have reasons to back it up. In this case, the person sued actually performed, and still was defamed. All the defendent had to do to be on the right side of the line was to clearly state the facts and her reasons for being dissatisfied. The amount awarded is astonishing, but SOME amount was justified.
There was a Professor at the University of Minnesota in the '70's named Pedoe, who taught a class in Non-Euclidian Geometry over 3 quarters. The first quarter, the descriptions were oriented around numbers (for those who understood and liked numbers, arithmetic), the second quarter the descriptions were oriented around Algebra (for those people who liked general recipes and principles), and the third quarter the descriptions were oriented around actual visualizations as in graphs and geometric diagrams(for those whose primary understanding was visual). He said there were always three approaches to understanding Mathematics, and applying your preferred descriptive method and translating into the two others would make you both a better mathematician and a better communicator.
A very good example of this is the way people learn Ohm's law: Usually, this is taught by visualizing the equation E=IR in a triangle or circle with E over a line, I and R located below the horizontal line and separated by a vertical line. But if you think about it, this is also the description of the "basic equation" x=yz. Almost every equation is solved by simplifying it to the basic equation, so this is a good entry into Algebra through visualization.
Another possibility is that your preferred learning strategy is kinesthetic rather than visual or auditory. Do you learn best when you do things "hands on"? Does something have to "feel right" before you know you understand it? If so, make models you can manipulate out of clay, wood or plastic shapes, or even objects on your desk, and use an abacus or slide rule (remember those?). You will master your subject in a VERY effective way. The best Engineers and Tecnicians I know have a "feel" or "gestalt" for the "whole thing" in a perfect description, and can "feel" or "sense" the abberations between what the perfect model is and what is out of place in the current reality.
I'm glad someone thinks so. The VA doesn't care too much, and all the administrations have tried to reduce healthcare for Vets at the VA. In Houston, we have one of the best VA hospitals in the nation. The digital communications and computer-supported diagnostics and care were top-of-the-line when it first opened. Digital imaging meant that your X-rays were immediately available to any clinic in the hospital, and the record-keeping was superb. Unfortunately, since then they have replaced most of the IBM systems installed at the outset with Dell computers. There has been some turnover, and the replacements aren't as competent to run the systems. And they hired a lot of refugees from New Orleans who are still lazy and technically incompetent a year later (but they are keeping them). It has taken me 10 months to finally get an appointment for diagnosing a case of polymyalgia. (We don't know for certain, I need a muscle biopsy to check, but it's taken 10 months to get this far?!!?) If I could work enough to earn the money I'd opt away from the VA and go private. Which I will do as soon as I find a way to control the pain and stiffness.
I'm a Vietnam Vet. When my Dad came back from 44 months in Japanese prison camps after WWII, they decided that he was 100% disabled. Does that mean that he got $100% disability? NO! They decided he was 50% disabled from starvation. Then they decided that his shoulder wound was a 25% disability, but since he was now only 50% of a soldier, it came to an additonal 12.5%. And so forth down through the rest of his wounds. (So instead of getting 100% pay for his disabilities, he ended up with about 71%.) To make matters worse, the cancer he died from in 1970 is significantly high in the survivors of the Nagasaki blast (fairly close to where my Dad was imprisoned). In a fair world, my mother would have been granted his back pay as a Major back to the time of his death, but instead they threatened to keep her tied up in courts if she sued for back pay rather than accept survivor's benefits. (She was in her late 70's at the time.)
The Government is NOT your friend. Ask any soldier who has been to war. It's a necessary duty, but once they don't need you anymore they resent you for having to meet their contractual obligations.
RAW's predicament is a simple function of income not stretching to meet the needs. You will be seeing a LOT of this in the near future as my generation gets older. Social Security and Medicaid represent about 10 Trillion dollars of unfunded, off-balance-sheet liabilities. The Government will undoubtedly inflate the money and raise taxes to cover the costs, but this is not the same as providing services. If you are young and in the tech field, NOW is the time to start putting assets aside, increase your earning power, and fund your own medical and retirement.
I am glad to see that people were able to come to RAW's aid. Personal charity is good for us all.
Hmm. I would have expected better thinking from someone with a degree in Economics.
Although my background is Computer Science and Math, I have been studying Economics for about 20 years now, and intend to go back and get a PhD. in Economics so I can spend my retirement years teaching Math and Economics.
First of all, Economics (if I recall) isn't supposed to have a "goal" as such. It is a Social Science and as such is supposed to be a discipline whereby we discover the principles behind "economic behavior." (Economics has the same root as Ecology...and we are studying the Ecology of human behavior within a specified domain.)
Secondly, There seems to exist three levels of Economic Study: The first level is Economic Philosophy, which seems to emphasize ideal systems of Economic Behavior. The third level is Economic Technology, which seems to be aimed at making behavior conform to some economic ideal or goal. Sandwiched in the middle is Economic Science, which is apparently a narrow study by Scientists trying to derive the principles that govern Economic Behavior. (They are highly handicapped in relation to other Sciences, by not always being able to control for experimental variables, therefore having to rely on historical interpretation to derive their data.)
Of course there is no such thing as zero production cost, the same as there is no such thing as perpetual motion. However, a society as a whole benefits from acquiring goods and services where they are produced the most efficiently. "Serfdom" was a very expensive proposition, even in the times it was popular. The same can be said for Slavery. Guilds and Unions also damaged Society by keeping acquisition costs abnormally high.
OK, I've said it before: Read Dan Pink's book, "A Whole New Mind". One good quote: "If it is likely that someone in China or India can do your work more cheaply than you can, or if a computer can do your work faster than you can, your job is obsolete."
While you're at it, read a book on Economics and understand Ricardo's Law of Comparative Advantage. You might want to back into Economics by reading "Freakonomics" by Levitt and Dubner, and something simple like, "The Economic Way of Thinking" by Heyne. You can find copies of Bastiat's, "Economic Sophisms" online. The book is old-fashioned, but it covers the basics pretty well, and if you learned it, you would see the workings of comparative advantage and the fallacy of protectionism.
And, most importantly, you might want to get a book on Rhetoric like Damer's "Attacking Faulty Arguments." (You will learn to identify the 83 common rhetorical mistakes, and your posts might not be so lame.)
And, you might want to read, "The Underground History of American Education" by Gatto to discover why you know less Rhetoric than a 5th-Grader who schooled in the 1850's.
Of course, I'm assuming that the post was made by an adult, and I could be wrong. It would pass as a pretty good post for a 10-year old.
The whole discussion is a waste of time, and the article itself is lame.
First of all, there is no careful description of the problem. A problem is the difference between the way things are and the way you want them to be. This takes into account the way things are that already acceptable. AJAX has some deficiencies, and it has some attractions. My questions are: Is it worth the effort to correct those deficiencies in AJAX? Is it worth the effort to include the attrations in EJ?
Secondly, there is no concensus on the appropriate domain for the different tools. Is EJ really a tool for doing the same things that AJAX does?
Back in the mid '70's I programmed versions of "Eliza" and "Doctor" that would fascinate people for hours. (I ahd a large selection of keyword-based responses that I kept increasing as people tripped up the program, so it got pretty entertaining.) I've also written chatbots to answer common tech support questions in mIRC, which sometimes got "Thank you's" and other responses that indicated that the questioner didn't realize they were dealing with a 'bot. I'm really disappointed that no one has developed a better version yet.
Children are the last minority. A child can be tried for murder as an adult at 12, but cannot get a job or a means of taking adult responsibility. In Houston, the schools are already starting to look like prisons; fences, guards, security systems, etc.. With curfew, they are under House Arrest from 10:00PM 'til 6:00AM, thus making their incarceration more complete.
d _paradox.htm The rest of the site is pretty interesting also.
I lied about my age and joined the Army back in the '60's, and two months later had an Army GED. The State of Alaska granted me an actual Diploma when I turned 18. People used to laugh at people with GED's, but now you have to take a GED test before they will let you graduate (in Texas they call it TAKS), and it's not even as hard as the one I took back in the '60's! But if some kid showed up for his Freshman year of High School and passed the TAKS, do you think they'd let him graduate and get a job? NO! He still has to serve the rest of his sentence!
Just wait. The population of the US is getting older. It won't be too long before they lower the age at which young people can go to work to support the old folks on Social Security.
Check this out: http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/multimedia/jtgsoun
Last night on the local 1/2 hour news show there were 12.5 minutes of ads. Occasionally I tune in to a show like "CSI" or "Grey's Anatomy" and tune out about the second round of commercials. I can tolerate 2 or 3 ads, but 7-10? No Way! The content has to be exceptionally good for me to watch a commercial program these days. I think "Dancing with the Stars" may qualify, but they don't seem to have as many ads.
I never go to Yahoo! Music to watch videos anymore either, because I have to put up with the ads first. I want to select a bunch of videos, usually the same type (Jazz, Pop, etc.), without having my entertainment interrupted by ads.
The person who figures out the balance formula for paying for services with innocuous, acceptable advertising is going to make millions of people happy and become rich at the same time.
Start again: What is the University charging for? Is it charging for chair space or is it charging for having accumulated resources in one convenient place so the payees can "better" themselves? As long as the University can certify that the student learned the material and can competently demonstrate the skills, it should not matter whether the student gets the lecture material at home, in class, in the Library, or off the Net from a small coffee shop in Europe...
I don't believe you are second-year law student: Even though lawyers are not taught to think anymore, they still are responsible for the ideas behind the Constitution. In broad terms, a person in the USA has a right to take actions to make his life better (it's called liberty) as long as his actions don't impinge on the life, liberty and property of others. (OK, these natural rights have been considerably abridged, and the actual arguments supporting this idea are too long to discuss here. I suggest you read, "We Hold These Truths" by Mortimer Adler.) This liberty cannot be abridged (supposedly) unless there is evidence of some powerful harm to society. (We lock up criminals to protect society, but they are still entitled to some liberty.) The standard for abridging a person's liberty is conviction of an offense by a jury of his peers. (I'm not a strict constitutionalist, but, like most Supreme Court Judges, I do advocate textualism. I only mention this to avoid the appearance of an irrelevant argument.)
While it makes logical sense that a person losing a civil trial can be subsequently tried for criminal acts exposed during that civil trial, and there may be a rationale for assessing restorative damages or conducting a civil trial for someone whose acts have been exposed in a criminal trial in which he was convicted, there is no logically consistent rationale for subjecting a person to civil penalties for a criminal act unless he has actually been convicted of the criminal act. (IMO, both the OJ and Blake civil suits were a mis-application of Justice.) Certainly there is no rationale for a bench judgement of civil penalties for a person not even exposed to a civil trial! This law presupposes a definition of a person in an invalid "to be" format. It is valid to say, "Joe was convicted (caught, diagnosed) as a sex offender." but it is not valid to say, "Joe is a sex offender." This is an unwarranted generalization unless the first, valid statement is also true.
Think of it this way: It is invalid for me to say, "Ted Turner is a farmer" when, in fact, Ted Turner does not work the soil, plow a field or plant a crop. (Ted Turner is paid huge sums by the US Government for NOT cultivating the land he owns in Colorado.) It is valid for me to say, "Ted Turner owns many acres of farm and agricultural land in Colorado.)
So, a person convicted of being a sex offender might rationally be placed on a list of people whose liberty is too be restricted, but this isn't right for someone who is not convicted. Get it?
First, I'd like to give a nod tot he the other comments made here: Interesting thinking going on.
Second, I'd like to point out that there are certain processes alrady in exisitence (especially TRIZ and ARIZ) that are predecessors to this type of approach. In one of his earlier books, Altshuler (inventor of TRIZ) proposed that once we were able to catalog the tertiary combinations of chemical reactions, invention and innovation would blossom explosively. It looks like this is where it's happening.
Data mining and genetic programming are not sufficient for creating new products. We still need goals and specifications. However, wouldn't it be great if we could score a material and reduce the time necessary to discover materials and techniques that reduced the negative attributes using computer searches? Maybe this is just the next level of computer simulation (a pre-processor?).
You have both made excellent points, and the only thing I disagree with is the process of "voting" being conducted the way it expressed itself in this particular case. I have a strong bias toward scientific consensus rather than scientific majority. The definitions and standards should be guided by the people most informed in the particular discipline, and accepted by a consensus of the people informed enough to understand the distinctions and arguments. (The politicization of the Theory of Evolution is a good example of what happens when this is not done, as is the experiences of Gallileo and Kepler.) I agree that (in this case) the voting process was, indeed, hijacked by a minor faction.
A couple of good points have already been made in subsequent posts, but if I understand it, there were almost 10,000 scientists at this gathering (about 2700 were considered authoritative), and the vote was cast in the 11th hour by a mere 457 scientists with a specialized point of view. I agree that useful standards and definitions ought to be made, but I expect a fair-minded body to have something like 90+% consensus, not just a majority of the voters available.
My favorite definition of politics (verb): "Vying for scarce resources". In many areas of Science the "scarce resource" is fame or prestige. (This may make politics a subset of Economics, rather than the other way around. Don't forget: Fame and prestige also may translate into monetary benefits.) Imposing the dynamic definition instead of the geologic definition may lead to diffrerences in the way Astronomy is conducted and funded. However, I believe that scientific definitions and standards ought to be created for their universal usefulness, not for political gain. And therefore, I believe these definitions and standards ought to be objectively evaluated and agreed upon by consensus of all but the "fringe" in the body of Scientists.
Of course, this is just my opinion.
Whether Pluto is or is not considered a planet is not as important to me as the integrity of high-level guidance among senior scientists. When the arguments for or against a decision depend on popular vote rather than rational consensus, scientists reduce themselves to the level of lawyers. When the objectivity of scientific thought is bypassed by special interest groups and politics, science is no longer Science. This whole process has been a shameful exhibition of politics.
RTFA. Despite the lack of clarity in his argument, ESR being a Libertarian is not relevant. His premise is that to gain ground in the user community, these proprietary codecs should be paid for and included in the OS. His primary supposition is that if LINUX doesn't gain ground in the user community, the popularity of LINUX will be diminished and morale, development, and support will also be diminished. I disagree, but I disagree because I don't accept the premise as a valid premise. His personal politics don't affect the argument any more than his race or religion.
It is a pity that high schools and colleges quit teaching Rhetoric in the 1970's and we have to listen to people like you trying to sound intelligent. May I suggest going back to school and taking English 101 and Philosophy 101?
You know, I didn't know that. It may have been to long since I checked out what was available on iTunes. Thank you for telling me.
There are some videos I'd pay for. I wouldn't object to a download system like iTunes for music videos in a good format. I occasionally use Yahoo! music, but I can't stand the commericals interrupting my musical pleasure.
The problem of arbitrary precision for floating point arithmetic has been around for years. A USENIX conference in the early 90's ('90 or '92 I think) had a paper presented that showed a method for testing the precision of your floating point unit, and interestingly enough, only the Motorola worked with acceptable precision. It's been about 15 years since this issue was really addressed (although there was a small reminder in 1998) and I think it's good for us to be reminded periodically that not all hardware is reliable. Or rather, a reminder that hardware is reliable only under specific circumstances. (The original paper made mention of the the fact that the Intel FPU became more unreliable under high heat.) If anyone can point me to the original paper I'd be grateful. I can't seem to find it in my files.
Funny thing: An old colleague of mine recently recovered some old research data from punched plastic tape (coated paper, actually) that we used to input the CDC-160G back in the mid-60's. Barcoding has an even higher reliability, and can be coded for error correction. It's probably not as space-efficient as what we have now, but my mom has tape measures from the early 1800's that are still readable. Maybe we should print the data in barcode on fabric?
I keep going over this with people all the time: Complexity is a by-product of design decisons, including features. The more connections you make, the more complex the system.
I believe that attributing complexity to "Open Source" is a mis-applied cause. A cause is defined as something both necessary and sufficient to explain the effect. The article does not describe the problem domain in enough detail to support the argument. The complexity is a result of arithmetic, not "Open Source".
In the old days, doing assembly language, I would build my systems using Decision Tables. The complexity is directly related to the number of decisions (5 rules = 2^5 = 32 potential tests, 10 rules = 2^10 = 1024 potential tests.) Athough all the tests are mathematically possible, a large number of test don't make logical sense. But the amount of complexity still increases rapidly with the number of decisions traversed by the system.
UNIX (and LINUX) have simplified the state of the system at the OS level by accessing everything as if it were a file. Complexity is added after that by the number of states and messages that an app has to keep track of in order to traverse the decision points correctly. Complex applications sometimes require additional state computation in order to work with other applications. So, as you work your way up from a simple text terminal program to a windowed environment, the complexity multiplies a LOT. Now, consider that there are a multitude of environments to run in, a multitude of desires and possibilities for applications, then if you want your application to run in more than one simple environment you have to make the installation choices more complex. (Therefore, I maintain that writing an application to run on both Gnome and KDE increases the complexity almost as annoying as writing it for two different operating systems.) Then add one more choice: How do you keep the app updated? (rpm? apt? source? etc.?)
Dang! This whole post is just another way of saying that the author didn't distiguish between "complexity", "ease-of-use" and "ease-of-administration" and blamed the confusion on "Open Source".
My wish, of course, is that more designers of systems and apps would put more thought into resolving the administrator's headaches instead of just adding cool new features. My standard is to "write it to a directory" and be done with it, but I usually write stand-alone apps that don't require so many complex interactions.
Having said all that, I also want to say I'm grateful to designers like the FireFox folks who spend a lot of time making the app easily installable and self-updating.
Strong anti-Bush and pro-Democratic feelings, including a strong reinforcement for those already polarized. I suspect that if there was enough money to produce 10 or 12 of these type of films, (including the Al Gore type film) that it would be a major influence in swinging the vote from the Republicrats to the Demopublicans. I expect to see many of these type of films in the 2008 election, and even more in 2012. Soon after that the novelty will wear off and the public will no longer find them as attractive. I suspect that a film is in pre-production right now that will "expose" the election frauds perpetrated during the 2000 and 2004 elections, and the intent will be inflame the voters against one party. (Both parties made massive underhanded attempts to sway the elections, so I'm not going to guess which party actually gets their film out first, but the Democrats have more active actors willing to put money and time into it, so they may have the slight edge.) Whichever party gets its film out first gains the high ground on that issue. The counter-tactic will be to produce a propaganda film exposing how the other party is using propaganda films to influence the voters...
The key, of course, will be to produce these "independently" to diminish the charges of bias, and to prevent the appearance of campaign contributions.
The reason that this crap works is that most of the citizenry is unable to follow a valid argument, neither on an informal nor formal level. Informally, can you distinguish between the 83 Rhetorical Fallacies? (Read "Attacking Faulty Reasoning" by Damer, if it's not too much work. Did you notice the three Rhetorical Fallacies contained in my first sentence?) In his book, "Dumbing Us Down", John Taylor Gatto http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/ says that if you picked up a 5th grade book on Rhetoric or Arithmetic from the 1850's, some of the content is equivalent to what is now being withheld until college.
And think about this: Al Gore's movie is built on the same premise; that people are too stupid and/or too lazy to follow rational argument. Another example would be Michael Moore's movie. While he claims that there are no "factual" discrepanciews in his movie, Moore's presentation of relying on out-of-context snippets and arrangements bypasses any rational thought, and promotes a whole movie of ad hominem argument. Moore could be the most successful propagandist since Hermann Goering.
I get this all the time. I've been troubleshooting systems since the mid-60's, and now I get a lot of calls to fix systems that other techs and engineers failed to fix. One thing I've learned over all those years, is that 90% of problems on most projects (including my own) are due to inadequate design and specifications in the beginning.
A problem is a discrepancy between the way things are and the way you want and expect them to be. All problems have a specific description, and elements of timing, location and scope. In order to resolve a customer's problem you must have agreement UP FRONT about what the resolved problem looks like in description, timing, location and scope. Without that agreement about "how you know when the problem is solved" you will just keep tracking unspecified problems. Precision is ultimately important.
Now, if one of my projects fails to perform within the environment, time and extent that I promised, I fix it. Occasionally the customer has an additional requirement (change orders, anyone?). If I can profitably meet the customer's requirements, I will. Some projects are not worth fixing. In less than one percent of my projects have I had to give a refund or a discount, but I'm willing to do so if that will get some projects out of my hair. As has already been said, some customers are not worth having. I usually find this out when I try to get proper agreement on the specs and prices.
Occasionally I find there are conditions outside my control that keep the project from performing like the customer expects. I will work with just about anyone to help alleviate these problems, but if it works correctly in my test environment, and if the test environment is spec'd at the design phase, and if the customer agreed to the test environment, then it's not my problem. (The last problem I had like that, about 4 years ago, the customer changed telephone systems just before I installed the project, and the new system had some incompatible idiosyncracies. The customer paid extra for me to resolve the problem.)
If you are not trained in a formal problem resolution process, I recommend starting with "The New Rational Manager" by Kepner and Tregoe. Good luck