One: Michael Chrichton is not exactly a lay person. He is a certified MD, and a medical scientist. He does not currently practice, but he IS a scientist, and more than capable of studying the data on his own and coming up with a trustworthy conclusion, or to make comments on what he perceives as misconduct in the scientific community....being a scientists is worth about as much as shit unless the area is one you've studied. This is especially true for areas that are rapidly changing. For example a genetics biologist 15 years ago would be doing things a lot differently than one today, hell even microarray which are damn popular didn't exist then I believe. In complex topics "studying data" is worthless unless you're a genius and have months to devote to the issue to understand everything involved.
And that not even including statistics or data analysis which most "scientists" are incompetent at unless it's a really cookie cutter method. That's why you have groups working together with a statistician being part of that group if the methods used aren't generic. I mean there are articles prominently published in famous journals (with millions of government money behind the studies) whose stats can be decimated by a first year stats master's student.
As I stated, consensus in the scientific community is bad, especially when not all the data is there.
Oh? Then christ, we need to get rid of all science or make a lot more people scientists as a lot of it has a consensus. I mean god forbid scientists believe in that evil evolution, I mean we need to lobotomize some so they stop believing in it.
Again, Science must be independently verifiable.
Yes, by other scientists in the field. A consensus means that given available data the vast majority of those scientists agree with the results. This usually involves multiple independent studies that arrive at the same conclusion and a lack of visible flaws in those studies. This may change with time and details usually are argued over however at any given time that's the best we have. There is always the potential that they're wrong but working under that assumption is idiotic as we'd never move forward, medicine would not have advanced in the past century at all with that sort of mindset (mostly we had no clue what we were doing).
Currently, the concept of "Solely Man-Made Global Warming" is not independently verifiable!
The existence of a consensus among scientists indicates that they agree and have verified it.
We simply want All the data available, and have it put to a totally open, and independently verifiable test. Are you aware that Michael Mann, the scientist that came up with the famous "Hockey Stick" graph, has YET to release his data and methods for peer review?
You apparently aren't a scientist as it's very common for the data to not be released. Only with the internet is that changing.
What kind of science is that? No review? Community consensus without discussion? THIS IS NOT SCIENCE, IT IS POLITICS. Clear and simple.
They review what is available, normally independent verification involves gathering NEW data or independently gathering the same sort of data then repeating the previous results. Using the same data is in many ways bad science as you're not supposed to assume the data is correct or unbiased
Which pays many private companies for their services, in some cases to a very high degree. If you include the defense industry then space is equally valid to put there, with NASA being what agency the funding is done through.
*shrug* It's not my fault if you're an idiot who can't learn what they need for the job or who is so crappy that only the worst companies will hire you.
I've seen many of cases of people getting hired not because they know things for the job but because they can think (in my case I got an interview because my answer to a single question was apparently really good). The rest of the stuff is gravy, they'll learn it on the job for example or at worst will need to be trained (for my current job I've learned bash, perl, more in-depth python, in-depth sql and soon auction theory/economics). You can't train a monkey to think and all that. Then again sometimes all you need is monkey, in which case inability to think is a selling point not a drawback.
Well congratulations on figuring it out, and my apologies. I've seen a lot of people who go into CS or pick a school due to CS who have no idea what CS is.
Anyway the answer isn't to dumb down CS but to create other majors or cs specialties that fill in the required role. I think my school has a few CS-related departments/programs: -Mathematical and Computational Science if you want more mathish applications (with less theory) -Symbolic Systems, I think its more computer-human interaction.
In addition while CS does have some theory/math (not that many, I mean what math classes are you having to take?) they are quite often cs-specific classes (ie: not general math classes) plus there are 9 different specialties you can take with some being quite non-math/non-theoretical.
Almost everything in quantitative AI is math - machine learning, neural nets and the like.
Just a note: There are tons of jobs right now for people who can do machine learning or statistics on very large datasets (ie: the type which you can't load into memory at once and sometimes which are continually being lengthened).
Exactly, everytime I hear of this I wonder what sort of shit college this must be. Encyclopedias should be banned period, they are a reference to find other sources not a source themselves. Hell, even in middle school we were told that encyclopedias are not a proper source and not to use them as such.
Exactly. During WW2 everyone used propaganda and tried to control information, be it against the enemy or their own people.
The only difference imho is that in a good/true free information wise (be it a democracy or really nice dictatorship) government it is seen as a necessary evil that is to be avoided if possible, and the government's officials understand why it is such. In a bad/real free government the government officials believe they are morally right and thus see controlling information as the "right thing" but are kept in check by other factors (mostly). In a non-free government there are no such external controls.
Then again no government will last forever and sooner or later it will collapse by some combination of factors.
Democracy shouldn't, and isn't designed to
Not exactly, a democracy can have such massive control over information but it simply wouldn't last long. If the people want it then in no way does it go against it being a democracy. Bad decisions by the people are still decisions.
I do wonder if the Cold War will in retrospect be said to have destroyed two superpowers even if it took the second a while to implode. Fear mongers are not a problem really, the problem is a population bred and raised to believe them and not question the government (more so than we are already inclined to do by psychology). A democracy can only truly be killed by the people.
Exactly I see this going horribly wrong. Heck I can see some annoying script kiddie make a worm that puts these files specifically on P2P networks. Actually that sounds like a great method to get around the scheme, just flood P2P networks with these files from tons of innocent people.
Sure it's more likely, do you think that nice thick atmosphere is there only for show? Why do you think we have so few craters on Earth even with errorion included? Most rocks burn up before they hit the surface. Not to mention that on Earth it's cheaper to build things so the storage facilities would be tougher overall.
To quote myself non suicidal hijackers of pre-9/11, so guess who I was talking about and guess who by definition (well baring a time machine) no longer exists?
And I often said, if someone tried to hijack a plane with a box cutter that I was on, I would have fought back (definately would have gotten wounded, maybe even have died, but hey, someone else could have incapacitated him while he was cutting me. I'm no superman, but neither are they)
Before 9/11 the msot likely result would have been you needlessly leading to the death fo everyone aboard as hijackers almost always landed the planes. Hindsight is 20/20 and all.
After 9/11 that would only work if the hijackers haven't taken control of the cockpit already, msot likely by the time you knwo what is going on they already would have done so. After that you may as well take the time to plan how to rush them with others as you have better odds. Granted if they control the cockpit you may as well make a last phoen call first as you're not likely to live (ie: narrow aisles and a plane in a nose dive).
I think life originated in an environment that is most like where we find the greatest biomass and biodiversity -- water in sunlight at about 60-120 F....and amazingly enough Mars was probably a much more hospitable place in the past. So thank you for your argument supporting of potential life on Mars.
Right now a website (or other content provider) pays for the bandwith they use and the user (ie: you and me) pays for their internet access. Last I checked the former is based directly on bandwith used (more or less) while the later has lots of nice plans with various speeds (and in some places with bandwith restrictions depending on how much you pay). As a result, right now how much you pay is relatively based on how much you use the net.
What companies want to do is charge content providers a SECOND time. In other words not only do you pay Verizon for your DSL and not only does YouTube pay for their bandwith but now YouTube "has to" pay Verizon as well. Sure they could no pay but then Verizon will simply slow them down to a crawl unless they do.
In other words without net neutrality it's not goign to be based on how much you use the net (as it is now and internet providers can make it directly based on usage if they wish) but on how much the content is worth to the content provider. So streamign media would essentially cost extra for a content provider compared to downloading a file for later playback even if both use the same amount of bandwith.
Your solution still has the potential for all the data to get slagged through software errors (all the backups are online, all I need to do is access the backup server and zero the disks). That is unless someone swaps around disks on a regular basis but then you have the problem of disks being less durable than tape thus again making tape better.
It's also hardly innovative by any measure, there have been various home made luggable modern computers usually using a suitcase of some sort (with monitors at times). I'm sure some of them came very close to the Dell in idea if with less polish or style. All Dell did was take what those people attempted to do and put actual money into it, and that's marketing not innovation.
You mentioned the ipod in another comment which wasn't, if one considers it as such, innovative because it was an mp3.portable player (those already existed asfaik) but because it was a good portable player. A product need not be original in form or function to be innovative in details but that's up to the public and reviewers to decide. I personally find the Dell essentially worthless but that's just me.
And as the rest of my comment said, a half assed hack of a solution has it's own massive set of problems (scalability will be worse). I'm sure trying to write a complex Ajax app in Dreamweaver is great fun...Hell, even a complex server side scripted one would probably be hell (then you get to hack all this stuff as server side templates I guess, equally fun).
And artists are simply abusing the fuck out of Flash instead of bothering with html anyway, god knows it's probably easer than trying to shove together the same thing with javascript and pure html.
Because it's always fun to have to change 342 different areas/tags to make page or site wide change.
The real effect of CSS was to make web layout more complicated, so as to keep a role for programmers in web design. Otherwise, the artists would be in full control by now.
No one forces you to use CSS, if your hypothetical artist wants to they can have all the fun they want with html. Well that is until their templated editor craps out on something (I'm assuming they're not utterly stupid), they need to do something semi-complex (ie: javascript, user controlled templates, etc.), someone else needs to take over the mess they made, bandwith is becoming a problem and so on.
No, the demographic on the Mac that would buy games is higher. Most of the Windows machines that make up their market-share figure are office machines. Hundreds of millions of them, sitting in cubicles, which will never have a game (other than minesweeper or Tetris) installed. A greater percentage of Mac machines are owned by individual users.
And a greater percentage of mac personal users are not gamers or at least not non-casual gamers. Why? Because they bought a fucking mac and you don't buy a mac if you're a gamer. If they're a gamer than they have a windows machine, gamers don't just buy one game a year or something you know.
Add to this the lack of as much compeition in the Mac games market, and you have a winner if you port a good game to the Mac.
Apparently a lot of companies disagree with you, and honestly I'd trust them much more than I trust a slashdot armchair businessman who provides nothing to back up his logic with (saying "well I believe" doesn't count).
Most Mac games are also sold for a higher price than their Windows counterparts, so this can make up for any porting costs.
Apparently a lot of companies disagree with you and higher cost also lowers potential sales even more.
This doesn't make sense. It doesn't matter how small a market is. If it can be profitable - why would you turn down the extra money? Why would you refuse a few extra million dollars? In economics, this is known as "leaving money on the table" - and only idiots leave money on the table to be taken by others.
Because it: a) Wouldn't be profitable, if you can't understand that costs may very well not scale linearly with the extra market share than there is little hope of you ever understanding this. If the mac port costs $2 million and you make $1 million from it then it's not profitable. b) The budget for a game may simply not be large enough for a mac version, unlike whatever imaginary land you live in the real world doesn't have infinite budgets.
You assume that most users of Linux who are interested in gaming do not own a second PC running Windows for that purpose.
Why even that, just dual boot. If you can get hibernate or equivalent working then you don't even lose any work when switching (and for some people needing to restart to game is a plus not a minus).
There is a set percentage of the market that has non-windows OSes, it is rather small for the demographic that would play games. No amount of logic or fanboyism will change that, period. Macs are what, 3% of the OS market? Some companies make money, others consider the extra costs (which vary between companies and even games, a mostly directx one will need a lot of changes for example) simply not worth it.
As I understand it the problem is that FPGAs have a limited number of changes/uses/whatever before they crap out. My EE friends keep complaining about how the ones in their classes are barely working even when they're relatively new (but used so much that they're already way over the recommended number of uses).
Even that would open them up to potential patent lawsuits from third parties and potential loss of revenue from easier reverse engineering. There may also be various patent relates contracts between companies that would be broken (thus leading to lawsuits) if such information was disclosed. In other words given the very small increase in sales they'd see from such a move they do not see it as worth it. Nvidia more so even since they already have a well working linux driver thus any increase in sales would be minuscule (even ATi wouldn't see much of an increase for a while if ever).
Slashdot Mirror
One: Michael Chrichton is not exactly a lay person. He is a certified MD, and a medical scientist. He does not currently practice, but he IS a scientist, and more than capable of studying the data on his own and coming up with a trustworthy conclusion, or to make comments on what he perceives as misconduct in the scientific community. ...being a scientists is worth about as much as shit unless the area is one you've studied. This is especially true for areas that are rapidly changing. For example a genetics biologist 15 years ago would be doing things a lot differently than one today, hell even microarray which are damn popular didn't exist then I believe. In complex topics "studying data" is worthless unless you're a genius and have months to devote to the issue to understand everything involved.
And that not even including statistics or data analysis which most "scientists" are incompetent at unless it's a really cookie cutter method. That's why you have groups working together with a statistician being part of that group if the methods used aren't generic. I mean there are articles prominently published in famous journals (with millions of government money behind the studies) whose stats can be decimated by a first year stats master's student.
As I stated, consensus in the scientific community is bad, especially when not all the data is there.
Oh? Then christ, we need to get rid of all science or make a lot more people scientists as a lot of it has a consensus. I mean god forbid scientists believe in that evil evolution, I mean we need to lobotomize some so they stop believing in it.
Again, Science must be independently verifiable.
Yes, by other scientists in the field. A consensus means that given available data the vast majority of those scientists agree with the results. This usually involves multiple independent studies that arrive at the same conclusion and a lack of visible flaws in those studies. This may change with time and details usually are argued over however at any given time that's the best we have. There is always the potential that they're wrong but working under that assumption is idiotic as we'd never move forward, medicine would not have advanced in the past century at all with that sort of mindset (mostly we had no clue what we were doing).
Currently, the concept of "Solely Man-Made Global Warming" is not independently verifiable!
The existence of a consensus among scientists indicates that they agree and have verified it.
We simply want All the data available, and have it put to a totally open, and independently verifiable test. Are you aware that Michael Mann, the scientist that came up with the famous "Hockey Stick" graph, has YET to release his data and methods for peer review?
You apparently aren't a scientist as it's very common for the data to not be released. Only with the internet is that changing.
What kind of science is that? No review? Community consensus without discussion? THIS IS NOT SCIENCE, IT IS POLITICS. Clear and simple.
They review what is available, normally independent verification involves gathering NEW data or independently gathering the same sort of data then repeating the previous results. Using the same data is in many ways bad science as you're not supposed to assume the data is correct or unbiased
Which pays many private companies for their services, in some cases to a very high degree. If you include the defense industry then space is equally valid to put there, with NASA being what agency the funding is done through.
*shrug*
It's not my fault if you're an idiot who can't learn what they need for the job or who is so crappy that only the worst companies will hire you.
I've seen many of cases of people getting hired not because they know things for the job but because they can think (in my case I got an interview because my answer to a single question was apparently really good). The rest of the stuff is gravy, they'll learn it on the job for example or at worst will need to be trained (for my current job I've learned bash, perl, more in-depth python, in-depth sql and soon auction theory/economics). You can't train a monkey to think and all that. Then again sometimes all you need is monkey, in which case inability to think is a selling point not a drawback.
Well congratulations on figuring it out, and my apologies. I've seen a lot of people who go into CS or pick a school due to CS who have no idea what CS is.
Anyway the answer isn't to dumb down CS but to create other majors or cs specialties that fill in the required role. I think my school has a few CS-related departments/programs:
-Mathematical and Computational Science if you want more mathish applications (with less theory)
-Symbolic Systems, I think its more computer-human interaction.
In addition while CS does have some theory/math (not that many, I mean what math classes are you having to take?) they are quite often cs-specific classes (ie: not general math classes) plus there are 9 different specialties you can take with some being quite non-math/non-theoretical.
Almost everything in quantitative AI is math - machine learning, neural nets and the like.
Just a note: There are tons of jobs right now for people who can do machine learning or statistics on very large datasets (ie: the type which you can't load into memory at once and sometimes which are continually being lengthened).
Exactly, its not CS's fault if you're an idiot who didn't even look at what the major is about or what its for.
Exactly, everytime I hear of this I wonder what sort of shit college this must be. Encyclopedias should be banned period, they are a reference to find other sources not a source themselves. Hell, even in middle school we were told that encyclopedias are not a proper source and not to use them as such.
Exactly. During WW2 everyone used propaganda and tried to control information, be it against the enemy or their own people.
The only difference imho is that in a good/true free information wise (be it a democracy or really nice dictatorship) government it is seen as a necessary evil that is to be avoided if possible, and the government's officials understand why it is such. In a bad/real free government the government officials believe they are morally right and thus see controlling information as the "right thing" but are kept in check by other factors (mostly). In a non-free government there are no such external controls.
Then again no government will last forever and sooner or later it will collapse by some combination of factors.
Democracy shouldn't, and isn't designed to
Not exactly, a democracy can have such massive control over information but it simply wouldn't last long. If the people want it then in no way does it go against it being a democracy. Bad decisions by the people are still decisions.
I do wonder if the Cold War will in retrospect be said to have destroyed two superpowers even if it took the second a while to implode. Fear mongers are not a problem really, the problem is a population bred and raised to believe them and not question the government (more so than we are already inclined to do by psychology). A democracy can only truly be killed by the people.
Exactly I see this going horribly wrong. Heck I can see some annoying script kiddie make a worm that puts these files specifically on P2P networks. Actually that sounds like a great method to get around the scheme, just flood P2P networks with these files from tons of innocent people.
It's no more likly to be hit then the earth is
Sure it's more likely, do you think that nice thick atmosphere is there only for show? Why do you think we have so few craters on Earth even with errorion included? Most rocks burn up before they hit the surface. Not to mention that on Earth it's cheaper to build things so the storage facilities would be tougher overall.
It doesn't show any such thing.
To quote myself non suicidal hijackers of pre-9/11, so guess who I was talking about and guess who by definition (well baring a time machine) no longer exists?
And they all died anyway which nicely shows why given the non suicidal hijackers of pre-9/11 passangers were encouraged to not fight back.
And I often said, if someone tried to hijack a plane with a box cutter that I was on, I would have fought back (definately would have gotten wounded, maybe even have died, but hey, someone else could have incapacitated him while he was cutting me. I'm no superman, but neither are they)
Before 9/11 the msot likely result would have been you needlessly leading to the death fo everyone aboard as hijackers almost always landed the planes. Hindsight is 20/20 and all.
After 9/11 that would only work if the hijackers haven't taken control of the cockpit already, msot likely by the time you knwo what is going on they already would have done so. After that you may as well take the time to plan how to rush them with others as you have better odds. Granted if they control the cockpit you may as well make a last phoen call first as you're not likely to live (ie: narrow aisles and a plane in a nose dive).
I think life originated in an environment that is most like where we find the greatest biomass and biodiversity -- water in sunlight at about 60-120 F. ...and amazingly enough Mars was probably a much more hospitable place in the past. So thank you for your argument supporting of potential life on Mars.
You're an idiot and have no idea about the issue.
Right now a website (or other content provider) pays for the bandwith they use and the user (ie: you and me) pays for their internet access. Last I checked the former is based directly on bandwith used (more or less) while the later has lots of nice plans with various speeds (and in some places with bandwith restrictions depending on how much you pay). As a result, right now how much you pay is relatively based on how much you use the net.
What companies want to do is charge content providers a SECOND time. In other words not only do you pay Verizon for your DSL and not only does YouTube pay for their bandwith but now YouTube "has to" pay Verizon as well. Sure they could no pay but then Verizon will simply slow them down to a crawl unless they do.
In other words without net neutrality it's not goign to be based on how much you use the net (as it is now and internet providers can make it directly based on usage if they wish) but on how much the content is worth to the content provider. So streamign media would essentially cost extra for a content provider compared to downloading a file for later playback even if both use the same amount of bandwith.
Your solution still has the potential for all the data to get slagged through software errors (all the backups are online, all I need to do is access the backup server and zero the disks). That is unless someone swaps around disks on a regular basis but then you have the problem of disks being less durable than tape thus again making tape better.
It's also hardly innovative by any measure, there have been various home made luggable modern computers usually using a suitcase of some sort (with monitors at times). I'm sure some of them came very close to the Dell in idea if with less polish or style. All Dell did was take what those people attempted to do and put actual money into it, and that's marketing not innovation.
You mentioned the ipod in another comment which wasn't, if one considers it as such, innovative because it was an mp3.portable player (those already existed asfaik) but because it was a good portable player. A product need not be original in form or function to be innovative in details but that's up to the public and reviewers to decide. I personally find the Dell essentially worthless but that's just me.
And as the rest of my comment said, a half assed hack of a solution has it's own massive set of problems (scalability will be worse). I'm sure trying to write a complex Ajax app in Dreamweaver is great fun...Hell, even a complex server side scripted one would probably be hell (then you get to hack all this stuff as server side templates I guess, equally fun).
And artists are simply abusing the fuck out of Flash instead of bothering with html anyway, god knows it's probably easer than trying to shove together the same thing with javascript and pure html.
Big deal.
Because it's always fun to have to change 342 different areas/tags to make page or site wide change.
The real effect of CSS was to make web layout more complicated, so as to keep a role for programmers in web design. Otherwise, the artists would be in full control by now.
No one forces you to use CSS, if your hypothetical artist wants to they can have all the fun they want with html. Well that is until their templated editor craps out on something (I'm assuming they're not utterly stupid), they need to do something semi-complex (ie: javascript, user controlled templates, etc.), someone else needs to take over the mess they made, bandwith is becoming a problem and so on.
Just to add to that, the center of a space elevator would be at over 40000km (Geosynchronous orbit). So even 40km is a few orders of magnitude off.
No, the demographic on the Mac that would buy games is higher. Most of the Windows machines that make up their market-share figure are office machines. Hundreds of millions of them, sitting in cubicles, which will never have a game (other than minesweeper or Tetris) installed. A greater percentage of Mac machines are owned by individual users.
And a greater percentage of mac personal users are not gamers or at least not non-casual gamers. Why? Because they bought a fucking mac and you don't buy a mac if you're a gamer. If they're a gamer than they have a windows machine, gamers don't just buy one game a year or something you know.
Add to this the lack of as much compeition in the Mac games market, and you have a winner if you port a good game to the Mac.
Apparently a lot of companies disagree with you, and honestly I'd trust them much more than I trust a slashdot armchair businessman who provides nothing to back up his logic with (saying "well I believe" doesn't count).
Most Mac games are also sold for a higher price than their Windows counterparts, so this can make up for any porting costs.
Apparently a lot of companies disagree with you and higher cost also lowers potential sales even more.
This doesn't make sense. It doesn't matter how small a market is. If it can be profitable - why would you turn down the extra money? Why would you refuse a few extra million dollars? In economics, this is known as "leaving money on the table" - and only idiots leave money on the table to be taken by others.
Because it:
a) Wouldn't be profitable, if you can't understand that costs may very well not scale linearly with the extra market share than there is little hope of you ever understanding this. If the mac port costs $2 million and you make $1 million from it then it's not profitable.
b) The budget for a game may simply not be large enough for a mac version, unlike whatever imaginary land you live in the real world doesn't have infinite budgets.
You assume that most users of Linux who are interested in gaming do not own a second PC running Windows for that purpose.
Why even that, just dual boot. If you can get hibernate or equivalent working then you don't even lose any work when switching (and for some people needing to restart to game is a plus not a minus).
There is a set percentage of the market that has non-windows OSes, it is rather small for the demographic that would play games. No amount of logic or fanboyism will change that, period. Macs are what, 3% of the OS market?
Some companies make money, others consider the extra costs (which vary between companies and even games, a mostly directx one will need a lot of changes for example) simply not worth it.
As I understand it the problem is that FPGAs have a limited number of changes/uses/whatever before they crap out. My EE friends keep complaining about how the ones in their classes are barely working even when they're relatively new (but used so much that they're already way over the recommended number of uses).
Even that would open them up to potential patent lawsuits from third parties and potential loss of revenue from easier reverse engineering. There may also be various patent relates contracts between companies that would be broken (thus leading to lawsuits) if such information was disclosed. In other words given the very small increase in sales they'd see from such a move they do not see it as worth it. Nvidia more so even since they already have a well working linux driver thus any increase in sales would be minuscule (even ATi wouldn't see much of an increase for a while if ever).