I can find and absorb information through transcripts much faster and more reliably than by watching or listening to a lecture. The way material is presented can be enlightening or entertaining, but this is usually when the aim is entertainment rather than learning.
The most important part of an oral presentation is the post-lecture question and answer session. Oral debate does allow for rapid to and fro, though usually the thoughts presented are more shallow and half-baked than is the case for written debates. I've written more about this here.
Good points. The external case does run quite hot, though one other advantage of an external disk is protecting against the main box cooking due to cooling failure.
I think I'll move the mirror inside and put a third drive in the external case to store automatic backups.
An alternative to a drive in a removable bay frame is in a SATA external enclosure. It has the advantage of a separate power supply (I've known PC power supplies to fail in a way that sends mains through the DC lines, frying everything). An external RAID1 (mirror) disk on hot-plug SATA is also something you can quickly grab in case of a fire, or to take somewhere else to mount read-only.
The trouble is that all you need is one race making one set of reasonably efficient self-replicating probes any time before about a million years ago (which is a fraction of a thousandth of the age of our galaxy). If that had ever happened, even once, you wouldn't be able to walk down the street without tripping over the damn things, figuratively speaking.
The first thing a probe does when hitting a planet is to set-up/nano-build a transmitter-receiver to check out if there are any other probes in the area. If there are, it self-destructs.
You also need some anti-cancer mechanisms in the replication process.
I have to use SP1 for my embedded control system that uses Internet Explorer as a user interface because SP2 removed the ability to print from IE without a dialog box coming up.
I think rather than working on a schedule, debates should have long lives through use of an ongoing forum which is linked to a wiki summary of the respective pro and con cases, each case overseen by a group of editors.
Wikis are good at giving a group consensus opinion, but they're a poor way of showing someone all sides of an issue.
MakeTheCase.net uses a two-column Wiki to show pro and con cases for controversial topics alongside each other. In this way each case progressively improves as they face off.
Each topic has an attached forum for discussion, and the Wiki cases can be viewed at multiple levels of detail, allowing some to get a quick overview of the main issues, and for others to use it as a "forum memory" for some of the finer points of contention.
Most of the 9/11 terrorists were actually from relatively wealthy Saudi Arabian families.
Good point. Just as many young Western activists are from the educated classes, so educated Arabs can pick up nationalist, arabist, and islamist consciousnesses. What may be different in Arab learning is the more tightly controlled flow of information, which would otherwise check more extreme indoctrination.
There is no doubt that AMD's solution for connecting multiple cores and processors is superior to Intel's. And when we start to see coprocessors being popped into one CPU socket providing super-accelerated services such as encryption... the shift to AMD will accelerate. I imagine a secure webserver that is able to handle twice the number of concurrent connections is quadrupled because all of the encryption is handled in hardware by a $600 coprocessor.
I think the consequences of AMD's advantage in co-processors and shared-memory multi-processors is overrated. Most server applications parallelize without the need for very fast interprocessor communication -- independent processes that serve independent sections of the load. Examples are web-servers, and databases built using replication and clustering techniques. It's no wonder that single and dual processor systems make up the overwelming majority of the server market, a configuration where Intel's Woodcrest does well against AMD.
The advantage of SMP machines with large numbers of processors is that there is only one machine (OS image) to manage, and packaging density can be high. However a set of separate machines with low numbers of processors gives more redundancy, and blade packaging can allow many of these to fit inside a small space.
As for coprocessors, I think their cost, niche functionality, and their special programming requirements will limit their adoption to a small segment of the market.
YouTube has a simple form of colaborative filtering, in the form of ratings, view counts, and favourite counts. It'd be nice to see a video site that used a more sophisticated form, getting recommendations from users having a similar taste, such as the Last.fm music site.
I am very interested in how to portray conflicting views though. Maybe each article should have links to the related discussions? Or you could use DHTML to hide much of the discussion behind every paragraph, then choose the view you want to see.
How about the conflicting views being displayed alongside each other like referendum pro and con cases? Each of these views would be iteratively edited (and improved) by separate moderating teams, driven by discussion in associated forums. As you say, you can have links between the discussion forums and the case documents (which represent the "forum memory").
And yes, different layers of detail can be exposed to allow both newcomers to familiarize themselves with the core arguments of each side, and for the debating teams of editors to engage on each fine point of contention.
One solution to the edit-wars problem is to have separately-edited and moderated pro and con cases, displayed alongside each other, point-by-point. In this way the cross-border interaction leads to iterative improvements in each of the cases.
A solution to the information overload problem is to have the information both presented and discussed/edited at a hierarchy of detail levels.
>1. It is very difficult to allow free private use while >simultaneously preventing unrestricted copying. Good DRM >schemes attempt to maximize one while minimizing the other.
Yes, but from that doesn't follow that the only solution is to either allow both or dissallow both.
What restrictions would you support?
COpyright would most certainly not apply and as for patents, I would say that most toasters are not that high tech so that they are covered by patents.
I'd guess that just about every model of toaster has been registered as a design in its major markets to prevent (Chinese) cloning.
Hence, for example, based on copyright law there is no way for them to dissalow copying for private use if that is allowed by copyright law. SO if you are allowed by the copyright law to make unlimited copies for private use, the copyright holder can't limit that to 5 based on copyright law.
If you are not allowed to make copies for private use, then yes, since you must get permission from the copyright holder to make such coppies, they can allow you to do so but only make for example 5 copies.
Copyright laws are very specific in what they give as exclusive rights to the copyright holder. The copyright holder can license THOSE rights to others to do. There is no mandate in copyright law however for the copyright holder to create no exlcusive rights for itself on top of what the law says.
Yes, under US law (but not in some other jurastictions) you do not infringe copyright when making copies for fair non-commercial use (< 10 copies?). But vendors are quite in their rights to try to make any copying, or more than a certain amount of copying, difficult. It's just that it's legal to, if possible, break these restrictions to make copies up to the extent of fair use.
It is very difficult to allow free private use while simultaneously preventing unrestricted copying. Good DRM schemes attempt to maximize one while minimizing the other.
Copying of toasters is protected by either copyright or design patents, depending on jurastiction.
The copyright holder can licence their work to (only) authorize copying in certain circumstances: exclusive deals, restricted distribution regions, limited time periods, use of a particular DRM (that say limits burning a song to CD to no more than five times).
The aim of DRM technologies is to help enforce copyright licences. They only impinge on use because free use and free copying are strongly entangled.
A file containing a song is different to a toaster because the file is significantly more easily copied than the toaster; so much so that in recent years there has been widespread violation of the conditions imposed by those who hold copyrights on digital music. DRM is a natural solution to the practical concern of how to enforce music licencing agreements for file-based music.
I wonder what technology will be developed first: a crewed ship capable of 1g accel/decel, or nanotech AI?
The advantage of nanotech AI is that you can launch millions of them to near lightspeed at low cost, so that you have a reasonable chance that one will land and activate somewhere interesting. It wouldn't be worth sending a ship unless it was known that the system contained an earth-like (or otherwise colony-supporting) planet -- for contact or leapfrogging. The Galaxy powned in 100K years.
In most cases, the performer did the least work of anybody involved in the making of the record.
In a capitalist society you are not paid according to how hard you work, but according to the value and rarity of what you offer.
With an army of people involved in making some new band's album go gold, why should the half-drunken fucknut or fake-lesbian E-addicted bimbo pair who stumbled in to the studio to belch out tunes for a few hours become a multi-millionaire when nobody else involved in the project does so? Especially when the studio could pluck any of a dozen bands from the pool of unsigned acts in any city and make an album that's every bit as good?
Top-notch songwriting and performing skills are not easily substitutable.
Pop acts get "screwed" by their contracts because before they were famous, they signed a shitty contract which was the very best one they could get from anybody... But the only reason they became famous (and began to perceive themselves as worth more money) is because the record labels MADE them famous. They worked their asses off bribing DJ's and scrounging for airplay on iPod and Volkswagon commercials to get people hooked on the music.
The label took nearly all the risk (the majority of acts cost them money), and did nearly all the work. It's only fair that they also get most of the money, no matter how much the poor unfortunate souls who got paid to sing songs and look pretty might think they are worth.
To the extent that they've helped culture their own fame and become somewhat unsubstitutable, they're worth some part of the reward. But I agree that many pop acts owe much of their success to the writers, engineers, and marketers that their record companies provide.
Performers who have a broader range of talent are responsible for a larger part of their success. They may be clever enough to be rewarded for this by setting up a record company bidding war. Or they may take advantage of the way technology is reducing the need for artists to rely on record companies to get a start, meaning they no longer feel compelled to sign unfavourable contracts.
In my experience, most results after the first 2 or 3 pages are utterly worthless, and usually contain a bunch of foreign language mailing list posts, and repeats of earlier results mirrored on different sites.
Not always my experience. As a compulsive maximizer, I can't help looking through 10s of pages of search results, often to the very last page. I often find the best links near the end, particularly for commercial stuff where the top results are more a reflection of market presence and SEO rather than real relevance and value.
So while Microsoft indemnifies businesses against being sued directly by Eolas, they won't be compensating them for any damage done to their business by this patent-related change in ActiveX behaviour?
An idea, it's experimental testing, and the interpretation of results can all be separated. It's often said that ideas are a dime a dozen, and that execution is the thing that's hard. But once informed of a scientific idea, thousands of scientists are capable of running with it, designing an experiment to test it, interpreting the results, and exploring the implications down the more obvious branches.
What seems like weak and irrelevant points to one side will be considered cogent and insightful by the other.
True, but the truth and relevenency of a point is best tested when the point is isolated, and a rebutal printed directly alongside.
The discussion pages on Wikipedia are fascinating, because the way a seemingly simple sentence is phrased can be the source of intense contention. It's all about who gets to frame the questions, define the terms, and even decide what arguments are mentioned and which are not.
But Wikipedia discussion pages have their own problems with information overload: poorly structured, and not properly linked to the sections of the main article being discussed. The concept of a definitive article and surrounding discussion is a hang-over from ex-cathedra paper-based publication. For controverial topics the dicussion and the article should merge to form a hierarchical point-by-point face-off.
That didn't start with the internet. Even in subjects as ostensibly fact-based as science, there are opponents to every theory who will demand that words like "conjectural," "unproven," etc are worked in to accomodate their worldview. Who gets to decide which arguments concerning Michael Moore, or Rush Limbaugh, are weak and irrelevant? Abortion? Gun control?
Exactly. Don't have a single article that tries to be even-handed, but let each side have a free hand, as long as at every step the reader can directly see the alternative points of view.
No, I think people just need to read. There are thousands of insightful posts that never get noticed, whether because of reactionary moderation or just because they got posted too late to be noticed. But the smart people will still investigate different sides of the issue at hand, while most will just watch Fox News and condider themselves informed. One more site isn't going to make people better informed.
Democracy doesn't work when the properly informed are only those with sufficient time to search and read about every topic of importance. That's why I think a place which can simultaneouly present both overviews and the nitty-gritty of a broad range of debates is so important.
Slashdot Mirror
"g search terms" is exactly what I use, using the keyword feature of Firefox for bookmark "http://www.google.com.au/search?q=%s".
I prefer this to the search box because it allows me to hide the search box, allowing me to see either a longer URL box or an extra line of content.
I didn't realise this was doing Mozilla out of revenue.
I can find and absorb information through transcripts much faster and more reliably than by watching or listening to a lecture. The way material is presented can be enlightening or entertaining, but this is usually when the aim is entertainment rather than learning.
The most important part of an oral presentation is the post-lecture question and answer session. Oral debate does allow for rapid to and fro, though usually the thoughts presented are more shallow and half-baked than is the case for written debates. I've written more about this here.
Good points. The external case does run quite hot, though one other advantage of an external disk is protecting against the main box cooking due to cooling failure.
I think I'll move the mirror inside and put a third drive in the external case to store automatic backups.
An alternative to a drive in a removable bay frame is in a SATA external enclosure. It has the advantage of a separate power supply (I've known PC power supplies to fail in a way that sends mains through the DC lines, frying everything). An external RAID1 (mirror) disk on hot-plug SATA is also something you can quickly grab in case of a fire, or to take somewhere else to mount read-only.
Why wouldn't you put your videos on many sites simultaneously, or does one have to sign an exclusivity agreement?
Billions of nanotech AI probes weighing a few grams accelerated to near c by electromagnetics (including lasers)?
The first thing a probe does when hitting a planet is to set-up/nano-build a transmitter-receiver to check out if there are any other probes in the area. If there are, it self-destructs.
You also need some anti-cancer mechanisms in the replication process.
I have to use SP1 for my embedded control system that uses Internet Explorer as a user interface because SP2 removed the ability to print from IE without a dialog box coming up.
I think rather than working on a schedule, debates should have long lives through use of an ongoing forum which is linked to a wiki summary of the respective pro and con cases, each case overseen by a group of editors.
In this respect, check out: makethecase.net.
MakeTheCase.net uses a two-column Wiki to show pro and con cases for controversial topics alongside each other. In this way each case progressively improves as they face off.
Each topic has an attached forum for discussion, and the Wiki cases can be viewed at multiple levels of detail, allowing some to get a quick overview of the main issues, and for others to use it as a "forum memory" for some of the finer points of contention.
Good point. Just as many young Western activists are from the educated classes, so educated Arabs can pick up nationalist, arabist, and islamist consciousnesses. What may be different in Arab learning is the more tightly controlled flow of information, which would otherwise check more extreme indoctrination.
I think the consequences of AMD's advantage in co-processors and shared-memory multi-processors is overrated. Most server applications parallelize without the need for very fast interprocessor communication -- independent processes that serve independent sections of the load. Examples are web-servers, and databases built using replication and clustering techniques. It's no wonder that single and dual processor systems make up the overwelming majority of the server market, a configuration where Intel's Woodcrest does well against AMD.
The advantage of SMP machines with large numbers of processors is that there is only one machine (OS image) to manage, and packaging density can be high. However a set of separate machines with low numbers of processors gives more redundancy, and blade packaging can allow many of these to fit inside a small space.
As for coprocessors, I think their cost, niche functionality, and their special programming requirements will limit their adoption to a small segment of the market.
YouTube has a simple form of colaborative filtering, in the form of ratings, view counts, and favourite counts. It'd be nice to see a video site that used a more sophisticated form, getting recommendations from users having a similar taste, such as the Last.fm music site.
How about the conflicting views being displayed alongside each other like referendum pro and con cases? Each of these views would be iteratively edited (and improved) by separate moderating teams, driven by discussion in associated forums. As you say, you can have links between the discussion forums and the case documents (which represent the "forum memory").
And yes, different layers of detail can be exposed to allow both newcomers to familiarize themselves with the core arguments of each side, and for the debating teams of editors to engage on each fine point of contention.
I implemented both these concepts at my Makethecase.net site.
One solution to the edit-wars problem is to have separately-edited and moderated pro and con cases, displayed alongside each other, point-by-point. In this way the cross-border interaction leads to iterative improvements in each of the cases.
A solution to the information overload problem is to have the information both presented and discussed/edited at a hierarchy of detail levels.
Both these are implemented at Makethecase.net.
What restrictions would you support?
I'd guess that just about every model of toaster has been registered as a design in its major markets to prevent (Chinese) cloning.
Yes, under US law (but not in some other jurastictions) you do not infringe copyright when making copies for fair non-commercial use (< 10 copies?). But vendors are quite in their rights to try to make any copying, or more than a certain amount of copying, difficult. It's just that it's legal to, if possible, break these restrictions to make copies up to the extent of fair use.
Some points:
The aim of DRM technologies is to help enforce copyright licences. They only impinge on use because free use and free copying are strongly entangled.
A file containing a song is different to a toaster because the file is significantly more easily copied than the toaster; so much so that in recent years there has been widespread violation of the conditions imposed by those who hold copyrights on digital music. DRM is a natural solution to the practical concern of how to enforce music licencing agreements for file-based music.
Interesting.
I wonder what technology will be developed first: a crewed ship capable of 1g accel/decel, or nanotech AI?
The advantage of nanotech AI is that you can launch millions of them to near lightspeed at low cost, so that you have a reasonable chance that one will land and activate somewhere interesting. It wouldn't be worth sending a ship unless it was known that the system contained an earth-like (or otherwise colony-supporting) planet -- for contact or leapfrogging. The Galaxy powned in 100K years.
In most cases, the performer did the least work of anybody involved in the making of the record.
In a capitalist society you are not paid according to how hard you work, but according to the value and rarity of what you offer.
With an army of people involved in making some new band's album go gold, why should the half-drunken fucknut or fake-lesbian E-addicted bimbo pair who stumbled in to the studio to belch out tunes for a few hours become a multi-millionaire when nobody else involved in the project does so? Especially when the studio could pluck any of a dozen bands from the pool of unsigned acts in any city and make an album that's every bit as good?
Top-notch songwriting and performing skills are not easily substitutable.
Pop acts get "screwed" by their contracts because before they were famous, they signed a shitty contract which was the very best one they could get from anybody... But the only reason they became famous (and began to perceive themselves as worth more money) is because the record labels MADE them famous. They worked their asses off bribing DJ's and scrounging for airplay on iPod and Volkswagon commercials to get people hooked on the music.
The label took nearly all the risk (the majority of acts cost them money), and did nearly all the work. It's only fair that they also get most of the money, no matter how much the poor unfortunate souls who got paid to sing songs and look pretty might think they are worth.
To the extent that they've helped culture their own fame and become somewhat unsubstitutable, they're worth some part of the reward. But I agree that many pop acts owe much of their success to the writers, engineers, and marketers that their record companies provide.
Performers who have a broader range of talent are responsible for a larger part of their success. They may be clever enough to be rewarded for this by setting up a record company bidding war. Or they may take advantage of the way technology is reducing the need for artists to rely on record companies to get a start, meaning they no longer feel compelled to sign unfavourable contracts.
In my experience, most results after the first 2 or 3 pages are utterly worthless, and usually contain a bunch of foreign language mailing list posts, and repeats of earlier results mirrored on different sites.
Not always my experience. As a compulsive maximizer, I can't help looking through 10s of pages of search results, often to the very last page. I often find the best links near the end, particularly for commercial stuff where the top results are more a reflection of market presence and SEO rather than real relevance and value.
* 53% new footage
So while Microsoft indemnifies businesses against being sued directly by Eolas, they won't be compensating them for any damage done to their business by this patent-related change in ActiveX behaviour?
An idea, it's experimental testing, and the interpretation of results can all be separated. It's often said that ideas are a dime a dozen, and that execution is the thing that's hard. But once informed of a scientific idea, thousands of scientists are capable of running with it, designing an experiment to test it, interpreting the results, and exploring the implications down the more obvious branches.
True, but the truth and relevenency of a point is best tested when the point is isolated, and a rebutal printed directly alongside.
But Wikipedia discussion pages have their own problems with information overload: poorly structured, and not properly linked to the sections of the main article being discussed. The concept of a definitive article and surrounding discussion is a hang-over from ex-cathedra paper-based publication. For controverial topics the dicussion and the article should merge to form a hierarchical point-by-point face-off.
Exactly. Don't have a single article that tries to be even-handed, but let each side have a free hand, as long as at every step the reader can directly see the alternative points of view.
Democracy doesn't work when the properly informed are only those with sufficient time to search and read about every topic of importance. That's why I think a place which can simultaneouly present both overviews and the nitty-gritty of a broad range of debates is so important.