I cannot buy software, films or music from amazon US; if I try I get a notice with some legal bla bla about these products having export restrictions. Of course, I can buy them on amazon here in Europe, for double the price.
Why?
Amazon claims there are exemptions for these products in international trade law.
If that is true, than that is pure evil protectionism.
This is really good news: no one is allowed to create crippled software anymore, except MS! That means if I just stay away from Windows, I'm fine. Which is of course what I've been doing anyway.
If you own a car, you SHOULD know what a starter motor is and approximately where you can find it and what it may look like.
And, if you use a computer, you should know the difference the monitor and the computer, and the difference between between hard disk and internal memory, the difference between the CPU and the keyboard.
I interpreted the caption that the MIT guys are listening to sounds made by a CPU. They are not, but it reminded me of an interesting phenomenon.
I had a transistor radio pick up signals from the CPU (or some other unidentified hardware component, not sure). I Just tuned the radio to receive static (somewhere in the 80-90Mhz FM range I believe) and depending on how busy the processor was, different squeaky noises could be heard. That was way back in the 386 era, don't know if this trick still works with modern PCs.
So, are they suggesting that if I close one eye, I won't experience reality such that it makes a lasting impression?
What about people who are blind in one eye? Is their 'flat' experience less real then ours? Is their experience significantly less interesting, and do they not learn from what they see as much as we do?
I find that hard to take seriously. If there is any effect, it must be completely insignificant in daily social life.
you are either: - a disillusioned, soured, failed scientist - an uninformed, biased, disgruntled tax-payer
I'm sorry, most scientists, including computer scientists, like me, are passionate about what we do. We ask for funding for projects that we believe in. It sucks that some subjects get more funding than others because funding agencies are indeed sensitive to buzzwords. But, you know what, we still work hard and make the best of the means we have, and we still hope that we can change the world for the better.
Oh yeah, and these buzzwords, where do you think they come from? They are someone's big idea, dream, hope, and probably good ideas too. Just because the media explains these ideas badly, and some companies ride on the band wagon, doesn't mean these are bad ideas.
5 million lines of code, what a monster! It seems to me they just coded some special case for every question they could think of. The grunt work approach to AI.
The reported average wind speed seems rather slow, for that area. The average wind speed is normally more like 6 m/s. Here' s a wind speed map of the Netherlands: http://www.gewiekste.nl/wdk.jpg.
A good biology teacher should be able to explain to his class why these are false arguments against evolution, how scientific arguments work, etc. Now the teacher has a reason (its in the curriculum) to discuss and falsify ID as an alternative to evolution. Kids who still want to believe in ID, well, they're hopeless...
Amazon is licenced to sell digital copies of these books. And as far as I know, selling devices that can 'perform' electronic books - by rendering the book as text, as audio, as Braille, as smells, whatever, is also not illegal.
So how is selling licensed digital books AND selling a device like the Kindle a copyright violation?
You could make a recording of the Kindle reading a book and try (!) to sell that, or give it away, and that would be a copyright violation. Or, you could put the Kindle on a box in a theatre, and allow a group of people to listen to it, with or without payment, that too is a copyright violation. Broadcasting it on HAM radio is also a copyright violation.
"the most advanced "renewable" technologies are too often based upon non-renewable resources"
No, that's wrong.
Some technologies (solar cells) are require scarce materials in their construction. These materials are not used up to generate power. These materials don't have to be renewable. It doesn't matter that these materials are scarce, except from an economic point of view. And, most likely, these materials are used in a renewable way. When these constructions need to be replaced, can be recycled and the scarce materials can be re-used.
No information in TFA whatsoever, only a rather bad example.
Probabilistic algorithms are very useful in computer science, and introducing uncertainly at the hardware level might be very interesting for some applications. But how did they implemented this? How do they save power? How are they faster than normal processors?
If fractions are rounded up and down randomly, I mean with an equal chance, then there should be no overall loss or gain, in the long run. Of course, there might be outliers, some accounts might get shorted a bit more, some might get lucky, some people may try to game the system. Sounds just like real life. It wouldn't make such a big difference.
Still, you're right, nobody would accept such a system, because we all like the illusion of control.
There's a big difference between infringing a patent and stealing someone else's labour: when someone does not pay for a welding job or does not pay an employee, a contract between the parties has been breached. However, in case of patent infringement, there is no contract between the parties involved.
In fact, if I invent something independently, and it turns out someone else has already patented that idea, then I cannot use my idea for profit, since that would infringe on the patent. But I have certainly not stolen any labour - quite the opposite.
Even when a patent infringement is clearly a case of using someone else's idea, you still cannot call it stealing someone else's labour simply because that person/company MIGHT have made money from it. There's no guarantee that investing in an idea will pay itself back.
In this light, I would like to remark the following regarding the article by Ord et al.:
Indeed, it seems they follow a Bayesian or subjective approach - they postulate that we must account for the assumptions used in a probability estimate, by using Bayes formula for conditional probabilities. This seems like a sensible thing to do.
But they are not consistent: in a truly subjective approach, there are no absolute probabilities - only probabilities under some assumptions. Ideally, we should try to make all such assumptions explicit. Yet they use Bayes formula to compute some absolute probability, by including even more hidden assumptions, namely, some default probability in case the original assumption were wrong. What assumptions is that default based on? They don't seem to care suddenly, they just want to water down any expert opinion - if its a low number, make it higher, if its a high number, make it lower.
Okay, I've read the paper. I do not agree with it.
You claim that when a probability estimate for some event is very small, much smaller than the chance of the estimate being flawed, then we should consider the actual probability of the event to be larger.
In the papers terminology:
P(X) = P(X|A)P(A) + P(X|not A)P(not A)
Where given are:
- P(X|A) the probability estimate based on some argument and
- P(A) the chance that the argument is flawed
You then argue that if P(X|A) is very small, then P(X|not A), an arbitrary number, is probably much larger, and therefore P(X|not A) P(not A) may be significant compared to P(X|A)P(A). Thus, you argue, P(X) is probably higher than P(X|A).
This is where you go wrong.
You basically insert an arbitrary number, P(X|not A), based on an inexpert opinion, in the equation. Sure, the maths add up, you get a higher value for probability of the event, but your new probability estimate is no longer based on expert knowledge. You use some small number (1/1000) for P(X|not A) in your examples, but this makes no sense. Why not assume 50/50 if you simply don't know how likely it is that some event will happen? The main component of your new probability estimate is now only the statistical probability of an expert being wrong, which is independent of the probability of some event taking place.
In other words: you simply replace the estimate of an expert with the estimate of a lay person, multiplied by the change that the expert is wrong. However, even if the expert is wrong, that does not mean the lay person is right. The number you end up with is junk, it is meaningless. It should definitely not be used for risk assessment.
This is very dangerous use of probability theory. The argument in your paper is easy to follow, but it is false, and seeing that is not so simple. I sure hope no policy maker will read your paper and base important decisions on it.
the late-2008 Macbook Pro glossy displays are 'deep into the not acceptable category' when used in ambient light environments
From the article:
It's important to remember that, even though the late-2008 MacBook Pro 15 inch doesn't keep up in either colour accuracy or viewing angle with laptops from IBM/Lenovo, its display is still quite good and still falls on the right side of the line of acceptable display quality for field use by a working photographer, at least in ambient light that discourages reflections.
Of course, you shouldn't use a laptop for serious color work. But it's fine for previewing.
But life that doesn't organise itself into more complex structures, organisms, isn't very interesting. Well, it IS very interesting for a biotech scientist, but not quite as interesting as the kind of life that does, the life that we see around us and marvel at.
So what they've done in the lab here doesn't solve all the mysteries of life. They haven't figured out all the conditions to create complex life as we see around us. Also, they started out with RNA, and managed to get it to multiply and evolve somewhat, but they haven't figured out how RNA etc. was formed from soup or whatever to begin with.
may: - cause you brain to be filled with FUD - empower the nanny-state - damage a honest industry - do nothing to stop violence or solve society's problems - cause severe aggravation and aggression against certain politicians - make you vomit
Who started the war? Jews, Christians, Muslims? It doesn't matter which religion started the war. All wars are started by the rich and powerful, to gain more riches and power. They use religion to motivate and scare the poor into fighting for them. That doesn't make one religion worse than another, it makes them all bad. Religion is bad because its an instrument to keep the masses ignorant and to manipulate them. Sure, religion can be used for good things too, and good and bad things also happen without religion, but the point it, people shouldn't let themselves be blindly guided by religion, because religion can and will be abused by politics.
I've still got lots of old incandescent light bulbs around that aren't used that much, e.g. in wardrobes, cabinets, etc, that are on only for a short time and then off most of the day. They last for ever that way.
When they die eventually, i'll have to replace them with LEDs, because CFL's don't like to be turned on and off so much and they need some time to warm up.
On the other hand, commercial space flight, especially in its development stage, needs investors. The economy is currently in a bit of a depresession, and commercial space flight is quite a risky investment (engineers make a mistake somewhere, booom, millions of dollars up in smoke). So I expect things will progress quite slowly in commercial space flight for a while.
Capitalist economies are inherently unstable, and therefore, I'm glad that there are government sponsored space agencies.
I do not personally know this conference, I've never attended or tried to get something published there. But I am a computer scientist, working in academia, and I always write my papers for conferences that are specific to my specialization (computer/graphics, CAD etc). This conference is so general in the topics that it accepts, I would expect the quality of papers (and therefore the review process) to be quite low. This is a conference you would send your paper to if you cannot get it accepted at a better conference.
I think it would be much harder to get computer generated bla bla accepted at a conference on a specific topic.
Why does IEEE sponsor such crap conferences? Because it's big business. Easy money. Other have said it here already: that's the problem with science these days, it's all about quantity, not quality. Hit your university board over the head with this stuff.
Slashdot Mirror
I cannot buy software, films or music from amazon US; if I try I get a notice with some legal bla bla about these products having export restrictions.
Of course, I can buy them on amazon here in Europe, for double the price.
Why?
Amazon claims there are exemptions for these products in international trade law.
If that is true, than that is pure evil protectionism.
This is really good news: no one is allowed to create crippled software anymore, except MS! That means if I just stay away from Windows, I'm fine. Which is of course what I've been doing anyway.
shouldn't!... I shouldn't be allowed to post on slashdot.
If you own a car, you SHOULD know what a starter motor is and approximately where you can find it and what it may look like.
And, if you use a computer, you should know the difference the monitor and the computer, and the difference between between hard disk and internal memory, the difference between the CPU and the keyboard.
If you don't, you should be allowed to use one.
I interpreted the caption that the MIT guys are listening to sounds made by a CPU. They are not, but it reminded me of an interesting phenomenon.
I had a transistor radio pick up signals from the CPU (or some other unidentified hardware component, not sure). I Just tuned the radio to receive static (somewhere in the 80-90Mhz FM range I believe) and depending on how busy the processor was, different squeaky noises could be heard. That was way back in the 386 era, don't know if this trick still works with modern PCs.
So, are they suggesting that if I close one eye, I won't experience reality such that it makes a lasting impression?
What about people who are blind in one eye? Is their 'flat' experience less real then ours? Is their experience significantly less interesting, and do they not learn from what they see as much as we do?
I find that hard to take seriously. If there is any effect, it must be completely insignificant in daily social life.
you are either:
- a disillusioned, soured, failed scientist
- an uninformed, biased, disgruntled tax-payer
I'm sorry, most scientists, including computer scientists, like me, are passionate about what we do. We ask for funding for projects that we believe in. It sucks that some subjects get more funding than others because funding agencies are indeed sensitive to buzzwords. But, you know what, we still work hard and make the best of the means we have, and we still hope that we can change the world for the better.
Oh yeah, and these buzzwords, where do you think they come from? They are someone's big idea, dream, hope, and probably good ideas too. Just because the media explains these ideas badly, and some companies ride on the band wagon, doesn't mean these are bad ideas.
5 million lines of code, what a monster! It seems to me they just coded some special case for every question they could think of. The grunt work approach to AI.
The reported average wind speed seems rather slow, for that area. The average wind speed is normally more like 6 m/s. Here' s a wind speed map of the Netherlands: http://www.gewiekste.nl/wdk.jpg.
1. put your own music on youtube
2. ask google for money
3. profit? ah.. rats!
A good biology teacher should be able to explain to his class why these are false arguments against evolution, how scientific arguments work, etc. Now the teacher has a reason (its in the curriculum) to discuss and falsify ID as an alternative to evolution. Kids who still want to believe in ID, well, they're hopeless...
Amazon is licenced to sell digital copies of these books. And as far as I know, selling devices that can 'perform' electronic books - by rendering the book as text, as audio, as Braille, as smells, whatever, is also not illegal.
So how is selling licensed digital books AND selling a device like the Kindle a copyright violation?
You could make a recording of the Kindle reading a book and try (!) to sell that, or give it away, and that would be a copyright violation. Or, you could put the Kindle on a box in a theatre, and allow a group of people to listen to it, with or without payment, that too is a copyright violation. Broadcasting it on HAM radio is also a copyright violation.
But Amazon isn't doing any of those things.
from TFA:
"the most advanced "renewable" technologies are too often based upon non-renewable resources"
No, that's wrong.
Some technologies (solar cells) are require scarce materials in their construction. These materials are not used up to generate power. These materials don't have to be renewable. It doesn't matter that these materials are scarce, except from an economic point of view. And, most likely, these materials are used in a renewable way. When these constructions need to be replaced, can be recycled and the scarce materials can be re-used.
No information in TFA whatsoever, only a rather bad example.
Probabilistic algorithms are very useful in computer science, and introducing uncertainly at the hardware level might be very interesting for some applications. But how did they implemented this? How do they save power? How are they faster than normal processors?
Bah. I hate non articles like this.
well, lets argue it a bit anyway, for fun.
If fractions are rounded up and down randomly, I mean with an equal chance, then there should be no overall loss or gain, in the long run. Of course, there might be outliers, some accounts might get shorted a bit more, some might get lucky, some people may try to game the system. Sounds just like real life. It wouldn't make such a big difference.
Still, you're right, nobody would accept such a system, because we all like the illusion of control.
There's a big difference between infringing a patent and stealing someone else's labour: when someone does not pay for a welding job or does not pay an employee, a contract between the parties has been breached. However, in case of patent infringement, there is no contract between the parties involved.
In fact, if I invent something independently, and it turns out someone else has already patented that idea, then I cannot use my idea for profit, since that would infringe on the patent. But I have certainly not stolen any labour - quite the opposite.
Even when a patent infringement is clearly a case of using someone else's idea, you still cannot call it stealing someone else's labour simply because that person/company MIGHT have made money from it. There's no guarantee that investing in an idea will pay itself back.
Thanks for the link, it's an interesting read.
In this light, I would like to remark the following regarding the article by Ord et al.:
Indeed, it seems they follow a Bayesian or subjective approach - they postulate that we must account for the assumptions used in a probability estimate, by using Bayes formula for conditional probabilities. This seems like a sensible thing to do.
But they are not consistent: in a truly subjective approach, there are no absolute probabilities - only probabilities under some assumptions. Ideally, we should try to make all such assumptions explicit. Yet they use Bayes formula to compute some absolute probability, by including even more hidden assumptions, namely, some default probability in case the original assumption were wrong. What assumptions is that default based on? They don't seem to care suddenly, they just want to water down any expert opinion - if its a low number, make it higher, if its a high number, make it lower.
Terrible!
Okay, I've read the paper. I do not agree with it.
You claim that when a probability estimate for some event is very small, much smaller than the chance of the estimate being flawed, then we should consider the actual probability of the event to be larger.
In the papers terminology:
P(X) = P(X|A)P(A) + P(X|not A)P(not A)
Where given are:
- P(X|A) the probability estimate based on some argument and
- P(A) the chance that the argument is flawed
You then argue that if P(X|A) is very small, then P(X|not A), an arbitrary number, is probably much larger, and therefore P(X|not A) P(not A) may be significant compared to P(X|A)P(A). Thus, you argue, P(X) is probably higher than P(X|A).
This is where you go wrong.
You basically insert an arbitrary number, P(X|not A), based on an inexpert opinion, in the equation. Sure, the maths add up, you get a higher value for probability of the event, but your new probability estimate is no longer based on expert knowledge. You use some small number (1/1000) for P(X|not A) in your examples, but this makes no sense. Why not assume 50/50 if you simply don't know how likely it is that some event will happen? The main component of your new probability estimate is now only the statistical probability of an expert being wrong, which is independent of the probability of some event taking place.
In other words: you simply replace the estimate of an expert with the estimate of a lay person, multiplied by the change that the expert is wrong. However, even if the expert is wrong, that does not mean the lay person is right. The number you end up with is junk, it is meaningless. It should definitely not be used for risk assessment.
This is very dangerous use of probability theory. The argument in your paper is easy to follow, but it is false, and seeing that is not so simple. I sure hope no policy maker will read your paper and base important decisions on it.
from summary:
the late-2008 Macbook Pro glossy displays are 'deep into the not acceptable category' when used in ambient light environments
From the article:
It's important to remember that, even though the late-2008 MacBook Pro 15 inch doesn't keep up in either colour accuracy or viewing angle with laptops from IBM/Lenovo, its display is still quite good and still falls on the right side of the line of acceptable display quality for field use by a working photographer, at least in ambient light that discourages reflections.
Of course, you shouldn't use a laptop for serious color work. But it's fine for previewing.
But life that doesn't organise itself into more complex structures, organisms, isn't very interesting. Well, it IS very interesting for a biotech scientist, but not quite as interesting as the kind of life that does, the life that we see around us and marvel at.
So what they've done in the lab here doesn't solve all the mysteries of life. They haven't figured out all the conditions to create complex life as we see around us. Also, they started out with RNA, and managed to get it to multiply and evolve somewhat, but they haven't figured out how RNA etc. was formed from soup or whatever to begin with.
may:
- cause you brain to be filled with FUD
- empower the nanny-state
- damage a honest industry
- do nothing to stop violence or solve society's problems
- cause severe aggravation and aggression against certain politicians
- make you vomit
Who started the war? Jews, Christians, Muslims? It doesn't matter which religion started the war. All wars are started by the rich and powerful, to gain more riches and power. They use religion to motivate and scare the poor into fighting for them. That doesn't make one religion worse than another, it makes them all bad. Religion is bad because its an instrument to keep the masses ignorant and to manipulate them. Sure, religion can be used for good things too, and good and bad things also happen without religion, but the point it, people shouldn't let themselves be blindly guided by religion, because religion can and will be abused by politics.
I've still got lots of old incandescent light bulbs around that aren't used that much, e.g. in wardrobes, cabinets, etc, that are on only for a short time and then off most of the day. They last for ever that way.
When they die eventually, i'll have to replace them with LEDs, because CFL's don't like to be turned on and off so much and they need some time to warm up.
On the other hand, commercial space flight, especially in its development stage, needs investors. The economy is currently in a bit of a depresession, and commercial space flight is quite a risky investment (engineers make a mistake somewhere, booom, millions of dollars up in smoke). So I expect things will progress quite slowly in commercial space flight for a while.
Capitalist economies are inherently unstable, and therefore, I'm glad that there are government sponsored space agencies.
I do not personally know this conference, I've never attended or tried to get something published there. But I am a computer scientist, working in academia, and I always write my papers for conferences that are specific to my specialization (computer/graphics, CAD etc). This conference is so general in the topics that it accepts, I would expect the quality of papers (and therefore the review process) to be quite low. This is a conference you would send your paper to if you cannot get it accepted at a better conference.
I think it would be much harder to get computer generated bla bla accepted at a conference on a specific topic.
Why does IEEE sponsor such crap conferences? Because it's big business. Easy money. Other have said it here already: that's the problem with science these days, it's all about quantity, not quality. Hit your university board over the head with this stuff.