Stroustrup's book has passed the test of time. It's the only C++ book I own and I can say (without modesty) that I'm a fairly proficient C++ programmer. The book is the right mix of examples and is a very adequate reference.
I come from a scientific/engineering background and generally, when you truly want to understand and get the scope of something, going to the initial author or visionary helps a lot. Not only is their explanation simpler and more consistent than later development, it stays relevant as time goes. Especially when it comes to software engineering, one of the major problem to be solved is one of trying to simplify and generalize. So anything that isn't achieving that has probably failed.
I think C++ is simple enough and powerful enough for most needs. There are some quirks, but the language itself is sound and manageable. Most of the problems generally show up with libraries, they generally don't help to solve a problem (at all). While it may be different for other languages, it certainly isn't for C++ and once you remove libraries from your considerations, C++ becomes a very neat way of expressing solutions. It could be more concise, it could be even more generic, but I think a fair balance as been reached. Now if we could just have some half decent refactoring tools, that would be far more useful than this c++1x crap. Yes it's c++1x, I certainly remember how long it took compiler writers to get templates working right.
But they're portable. Want to browse the web on the bus? I've got Wifi in my area. Want to work on the couch? in the kitchen? Easy, just grab the thing and park someplace else. You can also literally work in bed. Built-in UPS. Taking a month vacation on the other side of the continent? Bring your laptop, no downtime. Portable DVD player. Space saver, no freaking mouse cord throwing stuff off the desk. You can put your laptop in the safe before leaving for work, nothing to steal, no footprint.
I've had the same Al-PB for the last 4 years. Bought the top of the line. It was expensive, but spread that over 4 years and its more reasonable. I dropped it a couple of times. It's got bumps, scratchs, but still runs perfectly well. I can put an external HD if I need more space or faster read/write times. If the machine becomes too slow, use it as a thin-client. Buy a headless desktop and remote login on that machine via Wifi: no need to upgrade the laptop, all the advantages of a desktop, all the advantages of a laptop. I mean what's wrong with bringing the screen and keyboard with you and have the CPU in a corner. Want to play game, buy a console.
All the (plastic) laptops I had before that, disintegrated inside 2 years (broken hinge, cracked board). So I went for quality and it's been a good decision in retrospect. It's a damn neat convenience overall. Laptop have vastly improved since last time I shopped for one. Higher resolution screens, thinner, faster HDs. I'd say they're becoming more practical with each generation.
Also based on experiences of my friends being recruited to google, I must admit, it's a nightmarish process and HR staff is nowhere near the excellence of the engineers working there.
HR is equally bad in the whole corporate world. I'm guessing it's not an easy problem. How do you measure HR performance? How do you compare the value of two recruiter against each other? It's certainly possible, but it's probably not done right now.
Anyway, it doesn't matter since you will likely meet HR only once during your whole employment lifetime at a given company. If you're a technical person, just show that you're moderately sane, don't wear a suit for the interview process and be prepared to answer real-world question like what is the most useful body part of your favorite pet and how the uncanny analytical skills you displayed in the previous question will help the company. Actually, HR only is useful when things go sour. Your best chance to get hired in the corporate world is to meet directly with the engineering staff at conferences/meetings and impress them since they will ultimately make the hiring decision.
So you think the Vikings are going to make a comeback because of warmer weather don't you? Well, let me just say this; the greatest anti-global warming force in the history of the world is assembling as we speak for the final showdown. Hail the Pirates!
So what you're saying is that the CRIA (multinational) is trying to limit additional revenues to CPCC and other national entities since they (CRIA) don't see much of it anyway. It looks to me that the national entities operate on leaner budgets but also contribute more to Canadian artist development than the CRIA. Therefore, this could be construed as a move by the CRIA to crush national competition by limiting their income and therefore decreasing (indirectly) exposure to Canadian artists.
This all look like Fractal Geometry, Cellular Automata, etc where the end result of a computation (a model) presents some resemblance to a naturally occuring phenomena or observation. It's interesting because there is some expressive power to modelize some phenomemon. It is also deceptive in that the model is not built directly from observations from the natural phenomena.
In machine learning (really statistical modelization), people are interested in developing methods of representing relations. Expressive models can "learn" complex mathematical functions (like the distribution of spots). Because learning uses finite (and sometime noisy) data, it is necessary to limit the expressiveness of the models so that chance occurrences in the data are smoothed out of the representation and only meaninful correlations are retained. Also the model is "objectively" measured. One way to do it is to set aside some of the data and use it to validate the model. That is, try to predict unseen data. If the model performs well on unseen data then it has "learned" a meaningful representation of the function governing the creation of the data. Even then, the model doesn't have explanative power (Correlation doesn't imply causation), just predictive power.
To link back to the parent: If all you want is description, you rely on the predictive power of the model and there are standard ways to make sure the model is accurate and conservative with respect to the data used to build it. If you want to explain the underlying biological process then: though luck.
Finally, (I'm officially ranting now) you're asking a lot at the same time. It's like discarding Newton's mechanics because he wasn't aware of all the factors (atoms, quarks, quantum mechanics) even if the model fits reality well. At some point you have to fence the known and unknown and structure what you know into a coherent system of axioms. Then you bite at the unknown a little bit more and try to fit/extend/simplify your system of axioms. I mean, to this day, even if we can predict gravitational phenomena to incredible precision, nobody would be foolish enough to think that they know what gravitation really is; they can predict how it behaves but they can't explain it.
I'd wager that if you can live through failures (financially and psychologically) you're basically trading "maintenance" time (supporting a successful product) for "development" time (creating a new innovative product). Each person has its own objectives in life and its own threshold for security, and not all failures are signs of inherent potential coaxed by external factors. Still, a failure can be seen as a reset operation allowing you to turn the page and try something else that is uber-interesting. If you tried your best and something failed because of outside conditions, then you've learned your place among the elite of the industry.
Addendum: I am NOT advocating you follow my viewpoint as a kind of "road less travelled" to professional happinness. I'm just saying that road-ruggedness is not to be overlooked and that taking chances is a good way to get lucky.
We have seen the shortcomings of a lack of human intel in Afganistan, Iraq, 9/11 and so on.
What about Katrina? Sure to be modded flamebait, but I got your attention, so I'll use it. There are more important and immediate problems in this world where the situation can be improved by foresightedness, intelligence, compassion, kindness, frugality, etc. Improving the general state of our society is not something you agree while watching the olympics. You invest of yourself, your time, your passion to be a part of the solution. Now I understand that in our western societies, our individual lives are compartmentalized, rationalized, scheduled and optimized so that for whatever goes wrong, there's a product or a stopgap solution being offered in exchange for some money. Time is money, money is the equilibrium-maker, giving you back some of the efforts you made for later use. In the same way money is an abstract notion related to some units of work that you can store, technology is likewise an abstact notion for the leverage you can apply to work.
Now, most problems don't require much money to be solved or at least partially rectified. Those that need lots of money probably don't require much new technologies. Anyway, rarely are problems solved by accounting. Those problems that require new technology are probably out of your hands anyway. Even if they are not, the bottomline, is that worthwhile technological investments are those that can be leveraged by the whole of society therefore improving the effect of our work on solving problems. Developing technology for the sake of solving _one_ problem is foolish, misdirected, wasteful, unjust and incredibly shortsighted.
The NSA is not NASA, new tech won't trickle down on the rest of us. Will security trickle down to the rest of us? I don't know, very few know. I'm not into blind faith myself, so I'd prefer to know what is done to improve matters instead of signing a blank check.
I think the real boom is still to come, in the form of real AI.
Of course. In the meantime, software will become more powerful but the human element will still be required. In the same way you work for the boss but the boss still decides what you have to do... It's an organizational problem where the most useful allocation of ressources is to have the guy (or the thingy) with the overall "vision of what to do" to have the power to control the process of whatever is to accomplished.
Now, most of the time it is humans that are in this position. Still, things are starting to change however. Look at Google's ad program where their system regulates and optimizes the bidding process. Another example, circulation lights control the flow of traffic. The tendancy is to ever improving ressource allocations. Systems already control our behavior, be them mechanistic, legal or whatever. You would be a bit late to start complaining about that. Or maybe you're an anarchist at heart but never realized it. But make no mistake, modern society is a big organizational construct and unless you're not part of it, you're controlled in some way. What I'm saying is that, by design, (for most of us anyway) someone or something always has the upper hand on us. We're never completely free. This won't change, the level of control probably won't change much even. What's enforcing some of the actual organizational forces may change to be more automatized, but the net effect on your quality of life will be no worst than nil.
Now, suppose that true AI is developed, what will it change for us? Unless the AI is sentient and aspires to higher things (Equality, Justice, Happiness even) it is no more than a part of the organizational construct. This means several things. First that its current position in the societal scheme of things evolved to the current situation and that things are at a relatively stable equilibrium. Second, that the AI has a purpose, is accepted by the rest of the construct and has proven reliable. This might be utopic on my parts, but anything without a minimum usefulness is quickly discarded. On the other hand, things and processes that exist today have evolved over time, over many generations, with improvement being made along the way. The integration of those things and processes is a kind of co-evolution where acceptance redefines and precises the needs we have toward that thing or process. I can't see how AI or Magic or God is going to change this anytime soon, or ever.
That's effectively the nearest equivalent except for a few differences. First among them is that the price is given to people _under_ 40. Second the price is given every 4 years. So the Fields is way more difficult to get because of those additional constraints.
Re:Ummm, so about that second law of thermodynamic
on
Artificial Tornadoes
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
You're missing the idea. The idea is that a tornado is a natural mechanism for evacuating large quantities of energy contained in warm water. Since warm water contains a lot of energy, it could be possible to invest just a little more energy to provoke a tornado and harness the wind power. Also, warm water is heated up by the sun and not by other non-renouvelable energies. It might actually be more efficient than heating water to boiling point (as is done in nuclear/thermal plants) since water is such a good heat capacitor that the difference between warming a little and boiling is huge.
So, hopefully the laws of the universe are respected. But what you missed is the 2nd law of business: A good deal is when you reap the benefits of other's investments.
Little bird, little bird
on
A Flu Pandemic?
·
· Score: 3, Funny
I had a little bird,
Its name was Enza.
I opened the window
And in-flu-enza.
On the subject of GCC, I'm sure most people are getting pretty excited at the thought of switching to the Intel compiler. GCC is not an optimization champion these days. I'd like for it to be included in a developer program of some kind. Only problem is that Apple as been adding useful stuff (Objective-C++, zerolink) to GCC, which, truth be told, are actually quite nice to have and probably don't exist in the Intel compiler. Well, the two can probably coexist...
"Altivec programs" really aren't coded against Altivec instructions directly. For example, for doing a vector add, you'd use vec_madd() which, if you have Altivec, maps to the vmaddfp altivec instruction. If you move to SSE, you'd probably code against the same vec_madd() but the compiler would generate the correct instruction for SSE. So, if you've followed Apple's instructions, conversion should be relatively easy. Furthermore, most people simply use Apple's higher level libraries (ie, vecLib, etc) that embeds most of what numerical people would need (like blas or lapack).
Most importantly, Altivec, while really fast, only support single precision computations. This is sufficient for improving multimedia playback, applying image filters on photos or compressing music, but lacking for high-precision computations. SSE supports double precision, a big improvement for the scientific market.
and it will be used as a magnifying lens during fist fights, while Don Cherry comments on the action. Or maybe they'll use it as an inverted dome to heat the Skydome (renamed Skydoom). You never know with those crazy canucks.
It think it has to do with the different natures of those 2 products. The search appliance is a search engine over publically (over the company's lan anyway) accessible files, optimizing relevance of results over all users. On the other hand, desktop search is fine tuned to a particular user and his own files (not necessarily accessible over the network). So while both products hypothetically use the same algorithms (they probably share some common lineage) they focus on different problems and they really are solving 2 different problems.
Way of missing the idea. What he's saying is that static media is not consumer friendly. In expanded form, this means that a product shouldn't be tied to its original media (Gates should take note of where his flights of thought bring him). This is kind of obvious when you consider that a static media is nothing more than a transit system between the media producer and you. It can also act as backup.
The conceptualization of a "disk" where you can read and write frequently at relative high speed doesn't change whether it's HD based, flash based, internet based or hologram based. I'm sure Gates still wants a file to be DRM'ed to death, he must make sure that MS are the gatekeepers.
Still. Cryptographic locks are potentially very interesting features for securing content, assessing authorship. Paraphrasing Linus: "_real_ men just upload their important stuff encrypted on ftp, and let the rest of the world mirror it". You're not really putting up stuff on ftp, but who knows what can be accessed without your explicit approval/knowledge. Preemptively act as if that was the case. Contrary to material properties, information is very resilient and durable. The only downsides are that it can be lost in an instant (hence the need for redundancy and backups) and can be disclosed in an innoportune fashion (hence the need for cryptographic protection).
As we embark (on the inevitable) road to making information a full-fledged property, we need to make sure all the usual ingredients of a property are present. Some will say that instead of trying to fit information in the usual definition of (material) property, we should instead enlarge and refine the definition of property. Sure, that doesn't invalidate the fact that we want to be able to protect and lock down information properties. What I guess I'm saying is that a property has attributes that are requisite for trade and that since our civilization is mostly built on that (and some form of democracy), any new property will have to incorporate those attributes we have come to rely upon.
Yup, that was some crescendo concocted by Zonk right there to fool us and derail us and make us lose faith in slashdot and suspect betrayal of our common motto "News for Nerds. Stuff that matters". But no, this last article is the climax of a grand operation to shake the slashdot comunity and reinforce our common bound. against the Enemy. of Freedom. as in Beer.
There's quite a bit of tradition at NASA. For example, the CAPCOM is always an astronaut. This person is, alone, tasked with relaying information between command and shuttle crew. Seems experience as an astronaut is mandatory for conveying essential information in critical times.
So my guess is Aldrin brings up something important to "the continuity of space exploration" in the same way. Whether you thing this is a PR move or not, I think having people with (successful) field experience in the decision structure is tremendously important. I think the 2 shuttle disasters showed how much managers not grounded in reality can be, well, disastrous.
CiteSeer is a lot more complete. For instance, you can naviguate citations, finding papers citing a given papers. You can easily find related papers, see other papers by given authors, see citation frequency graphs. It's simply a more natural interface for "surfing" the litterature. It contains a cache for most articles in.ps and.pdf, a link to the authors home pages. Frankly, Scholar is little more than a subset of the whole Google restricted to research.
As for the ACM, you must be a paying member or have your university buy it for you, to access the content (same thing for IEEE). I'm not making judgement on the content as it is probably of a higher quality than average. But I'd rather pull the.ps for free and print it locally than pay/head to the library. I know TANSTAAFL but still.
Nah, CiteSeer is still THE resource for Computer Science related papers. And it's sponsored (in part) my Microsoft Research (where has NEC gone?). So we have a nice healthy competition going on. yay!
Slashdot Mirror
I come from a scientific/engineering background and generally, when you truly want to understand and get the scope of something, going to the initial author or visionary helps a lot. Not only is their explanation simpler and more consistent than later development, it stays relevant as time goes. Especially when it comes to software engineering, one of the major problem to be solved is one of trying to simplify and generalize. So anything that isn't achieving that has probably failed.
I think C++ is simple enough and powerful enough for most needs. There are some quirks, but the language itself is sound and manageable. Most of the problems generally show up with libraries, they generally don't help to solve a problem (at all). While it may be different for other languages, it certainly isn't for C++ and once you remove libraries from your considerations, C++ becomes a very neat way of expressing solutions. It could be more concise, it could be even more generic, but I think a fair balance as been reached. Now if we could just have some half decent refactoring tools, that would be far more useful than this c++1x crap. Yes it's c++1x, I certainly remember how long it took compiler writers to get templates working right.
It's obviously the handy work of the commies.
But they're portable. Want to browse the web on the bus? I've got Wifi in my area. Want to work on the couch? in the kitchen? Easy, just grab the thing and park someplace else. You can also literally work in bed. Built-in UPS. Taking a month vacation on the other side of the continent? Bring your laptop, no downtime. Portable DVD player. Space saver, no freaking mouse cord throwing stuff off the desk. You can put your laptop in the safe before leaving for work, nothing to steal, no footprint.
I've had the same Al-PB for the last 4 years. Bought the top of the line. It was expensive, but spread that over 4 years and its more reasonable. I dropped it a couple of times. It's got bumps, scratchs, but still runs perfectly well. I can put an external HD if I need more space or faster read/write times. If the machine becomes too slow, use it as a thin-client. Buy a headless desktop and remote login on that machine via Wifi: no need to upgrade the laptop, all the advantages of a desktop, all the advantages of a laptop. I mean what's wrong with bringing the screen and keyboard with you and have the CPU in a corner. Want to play game, buy a console.
All the (plastic) laptops I had before that, disintegrated inside 2 years (broken hinge, cracked board). So I went for quality and it's been a good decision in retrospect. It's a damn neat convenience overall. Laptop have vastly improved since last time I shopped for one. Higher resolution screens, thinner, faster HDs. I'd say they're becoming more practical with each generation.
HR is equally bad in the whole corporate world. I'm guessing it's not an easy problem. How do you measure HR performance? How do you compare the value of two recruiter against each other? It's certainly possible, but it's probably not done right now.
Anyway, it doesn't matter since you will likely meet HR only once during your whole employment lifetime at a given company. If you're a technical person, just show that you're moderately sane, don't wear a suit for the interview process and be prepared to answer real-world question like what is the most useful body part of your favorite pet and how the uncanny analytical skills you displayed in the previous question will help the company. Actually, HR only is useful when things go sour. Your best chance to get hired in the corporate world is to meet directly with the engineering staff at conferences/meetings and impress them since they will ultimately make the hiring decision.
They must be handing out free donuts and coffee.
So you think the Vikings are going to make a comeback because of warmer weather don't you? Well, let me just say this; the greatest anti-global warming force in the history of the world is assembling as we speak for the final showdown. Hail the Pirates!
Gotta love business strategy.
In machine learning (really statistical modelization), people are interested in developing methods of representing relations. Expressive models can "learn" complex mathematical functions (like the distribution of spots). Because learning uses finite (and sometime noisy) data, it is necessary to limit the expressiveness of the models so that chance occurrences in the data are smoothed out of the representation and only meaninful correlations are retained. Also the model is "objectively" measured. One way to do it is to set aside some of the data and use it to validate the model. That is, try to predict unseen data. If the model performs well on unseen data then it has "learned" a meaningful representation of the function governing the creation of the data. Even then, the model doesn't have explanative power (Correlation doesn't imply causation), just predictive power.
To link back to the parent: If all you want is description, you rely on the predictive power of the model and there are standard ways to make sure the model is accurate and conservative with respect to the data used to build it. If you want to explain the underlying biological process then: though luck.
Finally, (I'm officially ranting now) you're asking a lot at the same time. It's like discarding Newton's mechanics because he wasn't aware of all the factors (atoms, quarks, quantum mechanics) even if the model fits reality well. At some point you have to fence the known and unknown and structure what you know into a coherent system of axioms. Then you bite at the unknown a little bit more and try to fit/extend/simplify your system of axioms. I mean, to this day, even if we can predict gravitational phenomena to incredible precision, nobody would be foolish enough to think that they know what gravitation really is; they can predict how it behaves but they can't explain it.
Addendum: I am NOT advocating you follow my viewpoint as a kind of "road less travelled" to professional happinness. I'm just saying that road-ruggedness is not to be overlooked and that taking chances is a good way to get lucky.
When the business plan isn't about sound business, than the business plan is the business.
I hear the Turing committee actually has an infinite red tape.
What about Katrina? Sure to be modded flamebait, but I got your attention, so I'll use it. There are more important and immediate problems in this world where the situation can be improved by foresightedness, intelligence, compassion, kindness, frugality, etc. Improving the general state of our society is not something you agree while watching the olympics. You invest of yourself, your time, your passion to be a part of the solution. Now I understand that in our western societies, our individual lives are compartmentalized, rationalized, scheduled and optimized so that for whatever goes wrong, there's a product or a stopgap solution being offered in exchange for some money. Time is money, money is the equilibrium-maker, giving you back some of the efforts you made for later use. In the same way money is an abstract notion related to some units of work that you can store, technology is likewise an abstact notion for the leverage you can apply to work.
Now, most problems don't require much money to be solved or at least partially rectified. Those that need lots of money probably don't require much new technologies. Anyway, rarely are problems solved by accounting. Those problems that require new technology are probably out of your hands anyway. Even if they are not, the bottomline, is that worthwhile technological investments are those that can be leveraged by the whole of society therefore improving the effect of our work on solving problems. Developing technology for the sake of solving _one_ problem is foolish, misdirected, wasteful, unjust and incredibly shortsighted.
The NSA is not NASA, new tech won't trickle down on the rest of us. Will security trickle down to the rest of us? I don't know, very few know. I'm not into blind faith myself, so I'd prefer to know what is done to improve matters instead of signing a blank check.
Of course. In the meantime, software will become more powerful but the human element will still be required. In the same way you work for the boss but the boss still decides what you have to do... It's an organizational problem where the most useful allocation of ressources is to have the guy (or the thingy) with the overall "vision of what to do" to have the power to control the process of whatever is to accomplished.
Now, most of the time it is humans that are in this position. Still, things are starting to change however. Look at Google's ad program where their system regulates and optimizes the bidding process. Another example, circulation lights control the flow of traffic. The tendancy is to ever improving ressource allocations. Systems already control our behavior, be them mechanistic, legal or whatever. You would be a bit late to start complaining about that. Or maybe you're an anarchist at heart but never realized it. But make no mistake, modern society is a big organizational construct and unless you're not part of it, you're controlled in some way. What I'm saying is that, by design, (for most of us anyway) someone or something always has the upper hand on us. We're never completely free. This won't change, the level of control probably won't change much even. What's enforcing some of the actual organizational forces may change to be more automatized, but the net effect on your quality of life will be no worst than nil.
Now, suppose that true AI is developed, what will it change for us? Unless the AI is sentient and aspires to higher things (Equality, Justice, Happiness even) it is no more than a part of the organizational construct. This means several things. First that its current position in the societal scheme of things evolved to the current situation and that things are at a relatively stable equilibrium. Second, that the AI has a purpose, is accepted by the rest of the construct and has proven reliable. This might be utopic on my parts, but anything without a minimum usefulness is quickly discarded. On the other hand, things and processes that exist today have evolved over time, over many generations, with improvement being made along the way. The integration of those things and processes is a kind of co-evolution where acceptance redefines and precises the needs we have toward that thing or process. I can't see how AI or Magic or God is going to change this anytime soon, or ever.
Wow, end of year rant
That's effectively the nearest equivalent except for a few differences. First among them is that the price is given to people _under_ 40. Second the price is given every 4 years. So the Fields is way more difficult to get because of those additional constraints.
So, hopefully the laws of the universe are respected. But what you missed is the 2nd law of business: A good deal is when you reap the benefits of other's investments.
Its name was Enza.
I opened the window
And in-flu-enza.
Stolen from: http://www.stanford.edu/group/virus/uda/
On the subject of GCC, I'm sure most people are getting pretty excited at the thought of switching to the Intel compiler. GCC is not an optimization champion these days. I'd like for it to be included in a developer program of some kind. Only problem is that Apple as been adding useful stuff (Objective-C++, zerolink) to GCC, which, truth be told, are actually quite nice to have and probably don't exist in the Intel compiler. Well, the two can probably coexist...
Most importantly, Altivec, while really fast, only support single precision computations. This is sufficient for improving multimedia playback, applying image filters on photos or compressing music, but lacking for high-precision computations. SSE supports double precision, a big improvement for the scientific market.
and it will be used as a magnifying lens during fist fights, while Don Cherry comments on the action. Or maybe they'll use it as an inverted dome to heat the Skydome (renamed Skydoom). You never know with those crazy canucks.
It think it has to do with the different natures of those 2 products. The search appliance is a search engine over publically (over the company's lan anyway) accessible files, optimizing relevance of results over all users. On the other hand, desktop search is fine tuned to a particular user and his own files (not necessarily accessible over the network). So while both products hypothetically use the same algorithms (they probably share some common lineage) they focus on different problems and they really are solving 2 different problems.
The conceptualization of a "disk" where you can read and write frequently at relative high speed doesn't change whether it's HD based, flash based, internet based or hologram based. I'm sure Gates still wants a file to be DRM'ed to death, he must make sure that MS are the gatekeepers.
Still. Cryptographic locks are potentially very interesting features for securing content, assessing authorship. Paraphrasing Linus: "_real_ men just upload their important stuff encrypted on ftp, and let the rest of the world mirror it". You're not really putting up stuff on ftp, but who knows what can be accessed without your explicit approval/knowledge. Preemptively act as if that was the case. Contrary to material properties, information is very resilient and durable. The only downsides are that it can be lost in an instant (hence the need for redundancy and backups) and can be disclosed in an innoportune fashion (hence the need for cryptographic protection).
As we embark (on the inevitable) road to making information a full-fledged property, we need to make sure all the usual ingredients of a property are present. Some will say that instead of trying to fit information in the usual definition of (material) property, we should instead enlarge and refine the definition of property. Sure, that doesn't invalidate the fact that we want to be able to protect and lock down information properties. What I guess I'm saying is that a property has attributes that are requisite for trade and that since our civilization is mostly built on that (and some form of democracy), any new property will have to incorporate those attributes we have come to rely upon.
Yup, that was some crescendo concocted by Zonk right there to fool us and derail us and make us lose faith in slashdot and suspect betrayal of our common motto "News for Nerds. Stuff that matters". But no, this last article is the climax of a grand operation to shake the slashdot comunity and reinforce our common bound. against the Enemy. of Freedom. as in Beer.
So my guess is Aldrin brings up something important to "the continuity of space exploration" in the same way. Whether you thing this is a PR move or not, I think having people with (successful) field experience in the decision structure is tremendously important. I think the 2 shuttle disasters showed how much managers not grounded in reality can be, well, disastrous.
As for the ACM, you must be a paying member or have your university buy it for you, to access the content (same thing for IEEE). I'm not making judgement on the content as it is probably of a higher quality than average. But I'd rather pull the .ps for free and print it locally than pay/head to the library. I know TANSTAAFL but still.
Nah, CiteSeer is still THE resource for Computer Science related papers. And it's sponsored (in part) my Microsoft Research (where has NEC gone?). So we have a nice healthy competition going on. yay!