Watch out for both traditional and non-traditional collegiate women, they can play havoc with your concentration:)
masculine-deprived geek therapy
on
Geeks and Poker?
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· Score: 1
I live in a student house filled with computer science nerds (I do of course include myself in that:)). They've recently started playing poker in groups of 4-8 quite often. From my observations its fairly clear that poker serves several purposes other than entertainment, and is probably popular because it has an air of "manliness" about it. e.g. an association with some old western film with rough-edged cowboys sitting in a smoky back-room. The need to separate yourself when playing aids a feeling of individualism and self-importance within the group. I think it will always be popular amongst men for these reasons. I don't join in myself; I like a friendly game of cards, but don't like these silly associations that come with poker (I can always go wrestle a lion or something).
I've tried to do this over the past few weeks. I've been taking my iBook out into the garden, loads of sun. I've found that I can't sit in the sun (screen invisible), and sitting in the shade doesn't really help either (and its not going to help my pasty white skin). It seems that turning the brightness up and down doesn't seem to affect it at all, and often having the brightness lower makes it more visible! Why on earth is this?
I think whilst this is a very clever achievement, any claims that these things are anywhere near being useful or adaptable in a real sense are totally unjustified. We are very good at finding solutions to carefully crafted problems or "toy situations", such as for example capture the flag, which has finite bounds, and well-defined rules. Thats a very different thing to trying to generalise a robot to be adaptable to different and unforeseen situations (e.g. making a human). The challenge that lies there is probably going to take at lot longer than 50 years. Then comes all those dangerous questions such as "why?" and.. "what will be left for us?"
You're right, he was perhaps foolish to write such a thing here. I'm sorry if you haven't had contact with serious mental illness, and you are unable share my sensitivity on the subject. Just because I don't have the power to stop people writing insanely hurtful and obtuse things does not mean I won't stand up against it in the strongest sense available. Schizophrenia and mental illness ruins lives in the cruelest of ways. To suggest I'm setting myself up as the joke police is missing the point. There are jokes, and then there are serious personal and emotional issues, about which, anywhere in the world, it is wholly unacceptable to make fun. Regardless of your opinion, I will oppose such incredible insensitivity in any way, wherever I might find it. I suggest you accept this, and not read my post as you have suggested I shouldn't. I'm not entirely sure why you feel the need to be commenting.
At the time of writing, the moderation has balanced out. Obviously some people agree, some people disagree. If the only thing of contention is my choice of words, then I take that back, and replace with something equally symbolic of my reaction which doesn't offend your physical sensitivities. If you think a physical threat would hurt anywhere near as much as some of the comments I read when this post originated, you are a very lucky man, because you just don't understand. Be grateful of that.
This is my last post on the topic, its getting very boring now.
Sigh. Firstly the term "smack in the mouth" is of course not a serious one since we are on the internet. Its an expression of my extreme anger. Second, don't patronise me and tell me laughter is good for you. I'm aware of that. If you read the original post, it was someone who was very vulnerable and in relation to a sensitive topic. Laughter is incredibly hurtful sometimes.
Well done, you'd press charges, so would I. You're misled in your interpretation, read the original post, re-read mine, examine whom my anger is directed at, consider that I've given a thoughtful and supportive response to the original author, and leave things be.
Yes I hear you in a sense, there is a bonus to be had from an entire environment that is engineered to work together. This however is an example of the "limited scope" and "standardisation" I referred to, and not everyone, as we see, uses windows. Also you would be mistaken to think the windows environment is free of the problem. There are different versions of windows, each with their own incompatibilities, and furthermore it would be a stretch of the imagination to say third party windows software (or microsofts own) does not suffer from the same problems:)
Heterogeneity has a positive role as well as a negative; thank god we're not all slaves to Bill Gates, what a world that would be.
First of all, anybody with moderating experience, please remove any of the attempts to be funny I've just observed in the comments above here. Schizophrenia is not to be taken lightly.
My closest friend was diagnosed with it about 8 years ago. It comes in many different forms of varying severity. For me as his friend and closest support outside his family (who didn't help, they had a similar aversion to the disease as displayed by the FOOLS who have commented above) it was traumatic. Someone who I felt I knew because someone who I didn't feel I knew, even though it was the same person. It did, in the short term, destroy his life. Heavy drugs and intensive therapy (etc) were the run of the mill for a good deal of time, and an element of that remains with him today. His life never returned quite to normal. I don't want to fill you with gloom, like I say every case is different. What I will say is they'll need you every step of the way, and if you hang in there, you will be rewarded - and by that I mean the person you cared about before will still be there and show through, and they won't go away completely - it can feel like that.
My sister was diagnosed with a different form of mental illness, and so I fully sympathise with your position. If I can be of any help as a third party in sharing your concerns, feel free to email me at fraccy4@hotmail.com.
ps to the purveyors of the foolish comments above, you're ignorant, and if I had you here in person, you'd get a smack in the mouth.
I feel your pain, but this isn't just autoconf. Its a general theme of the way we compute. Version nightmares. I think the problem is unavoidable because of the way we currently compute:
1) Competition and the enormous diversity today will always leads to heterogenous systems, no matter how good their intentions initially
2) The semantics of software and its environment are not embedded in the data, which of course means when a version changes, something somewhere breaks, and someone somewhere has to fix it
Theres only two solutions, either by decreasing diversity through standardisation (oh heck the version of that keeps changing too), or real autonomic computing operating at a higher level of abstraction.
Roll on autonomic computing, real self-configuring and self-adapting systems. Until then, we can only attempt to minimise the problems, and can only ever solve them in a limited scope for a limited period of time.
Ok so they're misdirected purely in the sense that they drive their SUVs like so many, and thats hypocritical... but then I don't drive an SUV. If I had a backyard I would be a NIMBY. However, I'm still a hypocrit because, for example, I buy food packaged in plastic. I have no choice. So much of our lives are governed by whats dictated. NIMBYism is a general survival instinct telling us not to be near something so loathesome.. which SHOULD tell us what we're doing to f##k everything up, but people aren't usually that clear thinking, as the link between their SUV and all that crap isn't paraded in front of them.
I think if your government did as good a job of manipulating your population against the use of oil as they did fooling you over iraq, it would be a fine thing... now if only there were money in it.
I get sick to the back teeth just steppinig out the door and watching all these people incapable of running their day without their blasted cars every (cough) step of the way, and I live in the UK. Thanks to a partial infection of your culture, our country is half covered in "big" out of town stores totally reliant on cars, although thankfully that trend seems to be taking a slight rebound. If you have any idea how much I resent the american attitude to fuel. You think you pay high gasoline prices? hehehe... You don't realise how poor, dependent, greedy and self indulgent the rest of the world sees your way of life, considering the damaging nature of the energy source and unsustainable future. Well done those "NIMBYs", and I hope your fuel prices treble.
Traditional grid computing stemmed from the science community which had specific needs to both collaborate across heterogeneous administrative domains, and to process increasingly large amounts of data (often at a budget). This vision has been increased to incorporate the ultimate goal of distributed computing, in which total global processing, storage, and computing resources in general can be seen as effectively a single entity. The problems in addressing this are huge and a major focus of software research. Grid computing systems as they are today tend to be only usable by relative experts, and it is still sometime before the average user will find themselves able to regularly harness such power - something which must happen before widespread use.
Supporting such complexity requires increasing automation in the self-management of systems, which requires better representation of data and processes in terms of semantics. Ultimately the future of the web and grid computing are likely to collide into what some term as "ubiquitous computing". See www.semanticgrid.org for some more info.
That reminds me of the scene following an incident in which I was involved. The police report identified that particular factors contributing to the accident included too much coffee, a trolley with a wonky wheel, and a special offer on pork pies at the far end of a crowded aisle..
I already know I'm going to die, and through my country's average life expectancy I have a very rough statistical probability on which to base my assumpations as to when. Having some nano-computer-bot thing telling me its probably in ten years means a few adjustments to that, so of course I would want to know. However that prediction itself won't be accurate as of course my environment and so many other variables won't be in the equation (oh and not to mention that damn bus hurtling towards me)...
This reminds me of what we use to call the Live Observations list, which was supposed to have a carefully documented list of software failures or faults along with related actions and change proposals, but tended to turn into a to-do list/comments/information/oh-shit-its-broken-damn- you repository. Based on a beautifully crafted (hmm) excel spreadsheet, theres no doubt this was a PLog in disguise. I think we all agree that such information exchanges have existed since before computers, and the only value added by any of these systems is to overcome physical limitations in terms of access, and to enable better organisation of large amounts of information through automation. So that begs the question, whats the next revolutionary improvement over a whiteboard?
Re:Second version in development
on
eyeBlog
·
· Score: 5, Funny
hehehe... funny as that is, I think you're onto a winner. People want to know when they're being watched by someone/not/ in their field of view. Imagine the marketing potential of a device attached to the buttocks, alerting female wearers of an er.. admiring onlooker. This would probably result in some kind of armageddon (and a lot of slapped faces), along with the subsequent development of ButtBlog jamming devices...
This reminds me of that device (I forget who developed it) which looked like a cycle helmet and had the ability to recognise objects. As with so much technology, I get concerned as to what we're actually trying to achieve here... I'm having a forgetful day, but who was it said man is just trying to make a machine in his own image? Seems increasingly valid...Show me a machine that shocks the wearer every time they perform a ridiculously stupid act, now that would be a step forward.
Slashdot Mirror
Watch out for both traditional and non-traditional collegiate women, they can play havoc with your concentration :)
I live in a student house filled with computer science nerds (I do of course include myself in that :)). They've recently started playing poker in groups of 4-8 quite often. From my observations its fairly clear that poker serves several purposes other than entertainment, and is probably popular because it has an air of "manliness" about it. e.g. an association with some old western film with rough-edged cowboys sitting in a smoky back-room. The need to separate yourself when playing aids a feeling of individualism and self-importance within the group. I think it will always be popular amongst men for these reasons. I don't join in myself; I like a friendly game of cards, but don't like these silly associations that come with poker (I can always go wrestle a lion or something).
I've tried to do this over the past few weeks. I've been taking my iBook out into the garden, loads of sun. I've found that I can't sit in the sun (screen invisible), and sitting in the shade doesn't really help either (and its not going to help my pasty white skin). It seems that turning the brightness up and down doesn't seem to affect it at all, and often having the brightness lower makes it more visible! Why on earth is this?
I think whilst this is a very clever achievement, any claims that these things are anywhere near being useful or adaptable in a real sense are totally unjustified. We are very good at finding solutions to carefully crafted problems or "toy situations", such as for example capture the flag, which has finite bounds, and well-defined rules. Thats a very different thing to trying to generalise a robot to be adaptable to different and unforeseen situations (e.g. making a human). The challenge that lies there is probably going to take at lot longer than 50 years. Then comes all those dangerous questions such as "why?" and.. "what will be left for us?"
You're right, he was perhaps foolish to write such a thing here. I'm sorry if you haven't had contact with serious mental illness, and you are unable share my sensitivity on the subject. Just because I don't have the power to stop people writing insanely hurtful and obtuse things does not mean I won't stand up against it in the strongest sense available. Schizophrenia and mental illness ruins lives in the cruelest of ways. To suggest I'm setting myself up as the joke police is missing the point. There are jokes, and then there are serious personal and emotional issues, about which, anywhere in the world, it is wholly unacceptable to make fun. Regardless of your opinion, I will oppose such incredible insensitivity in any way, wherever I might find it. I suggest you accept this, and not read my post as you have suggested I shouldn't. I'm not entirely sure why you feel the need to be commenting. At the time of writing, the moderation has balanced out. Obviously some people agree, some people disagree. If the only thing of contention is my choice of words, then I take that back, and replace with something equally symbolic of my reaction which doesn't offend your physical sensitivities. If you think a physical threat would hurt anywhere near as much as some of the comments I read when this post originated, you are a very lucky man, because you just don't understand. Be grateful of that. This is my last post on the topic, its getting very boring now.
Sigh. Firstly the term "smack in the mouth" is of course not a serious one since we are on the internet. Its an expression of my extreme anger. Second, don't patronise me and tell me laughter is good for you. I'm aware of that. If you read the original post, it was someone who was very vulnerable and in relation to a sensitive topic. Laughter is incredibly hurtful sometimes. Well done, you'd press charges, so would I. You're misled in your interpretation, read the original post, re-read mine, examine whom my anger is directed at, consider that I've given a thoughtful and supportive response to the original author, and leave things be.
I'd say that was quite heartless given the disgraceful nature of some of the comments. I am no troll.
Yes I hear you in a sense, there is a bonus to be had from an entire environment that is engineered to work together. This however is an example of the "limited scope" and "standardisation" I referred to, and not everyone, as we see, uses windows. Also you would be mistaken to think the windows environment is free of the problem. There are different versions of windows, each with their own incompatibilities, and furthermore it would be a stretch of the imagination to say third party windows software (or microsofts own) does not suffer from the same problems :)
Heterogeneity has a positive role as well as a negative; thank god we're not all slaves to Bill Gates, what a world that would be.
First of all, anybody with moderating experience, please remove any of the attempts to be funny I've just observed in the comments above here. Schizophrenia is not to be taken lightly. My closest friend was diagnosed with it about 8 years ago. It comes in many different forms of varying severity. For me as his friend and closest support outside his family (who didn't help, they had a similar aversion to the disease as displayed by the FOOLS who have commented above) it was traumatic. Someone who I felt I knew because someone who I didn't feel I knew, even though it was the same person. It did, in the short term, destroy his life. Heavy drugs and intensive therapy (etc) were the run of the mill for a good deal of time, and an element of that remains with him today. His life never returned quite to normal. I don't want to fill you with gloom, like I say every case is different. What I will say is they'll need you every step of the way, and if you hang in there, you will be rewarded - and by that I mean the person you cared about before will still be there and show through, and they won't go away completely - it can feel like that. My sister was diagnosed with a different form of mental illness, and so I fully sympathise with your position. If I can be of any help as a third party in sharing your concerns, feel free to email me at fraccy4@hotmail.com. ps to the purveyors of the foolish comments above, you're ignorant, and if I had you here in person, you'd get a smack in the mouth.
I feel your pain, but this isn't just autoconf. Its a general theme of the way we compute. Version nightmares. I think the problem is unavoidable because of the way we currently compute: 1) Competition and the enormous diversity today will always leads to heterogenous systems, no matter how good their intentions initially 2) The semantics of software and its environment are not embedded in the data, which of course means when a version changes, something somewhere breaks, and someone somewhere has to fix it Theres only two solutions, either by decreasing diversity through standardisation (oh heck the version of that keeps changing too), or real autonomic computing operating at a higher level of abstraction. Roll on autonomic computing, real self-configuring and self-adapting systems. Until then, we can only attempt to minimise the problems, and can only ever solve them in a limited scope for a limited period of time.
Ok so they're misdirected purely in the sense that they drive their SUVs like so many, and thats hypocritical... but then I don't drive an SUV. If I had a backyard I would be a NIMBY. However, I'm still a hypocrit because, for example, I buy food packaged in plastic. I have no choice. So much of our lives are governed by whats dictated. NIMBYism is a general survival instinct telling us not to be near something so loathesome.. which SHOULD tell us what we're doing to f##k everything up, but people aren't usually that clear thinking, as the link between their SUV and all that crap isn't paraded in front of them. I think if your government did as good a job of manipulating your population against the use of oil as they did fooling you over iraq, it would be a fine thing... now if only there were money in it.
Hear Hear. No doubt they would continue to er.... spread good and promote peace like they usually do.
I get sick to the back teeth just steppinig out the door and watching all these people incapable of running their day without their blasted cars every (cough) step of the way, and I live in the UK. Thanks to a partial infection of your culture, our country is half covered in "big" out of town stores totally reliant on cars, although thankfully that trend seems to be taking a slight rebound. If you have any idea how much I resent the american attitude to fuel. You think you pay high gasoline prices? hehehe... You don't realise how poor, dependent, greedy and self indulgent the rest of the world sees your way of life, considering the damaging nature of the energy source and unsustainable future. Well done those "NIMBYs", and I hope your fuel prices treble.
Traditional grid computing stemmed from the science community which had specific needs to both collaborate across heterogeneous administrative domains, and to process increasingly large amounts of data (often at a budget). This vision has been increased to incorporate the ultimate goal of distributed computing, in which total global processing, storage, and computing resources in general can be seen as effectively a single entity. The problems in addressing this are huge and a major focus of software research. Grid computing systems as they are today tend to be only usable by relative experts, and it is still sometime before the average user will find themselves able to regularly harness such power - something which must happen before widespread use. Supporting such complexity requires increasing automation in the self-management of systems, which requires better representation of data and processes in terms of semantics. Ultimately the future of the web and grid computing are likely to collide into what some term as "ubiquitous computing". See www.semanticgrid.org for some more info.
That reminds me of the scene following an incident in which I was involved. The police report identified that particular factors contributing to the accident included too much coffee, a trolley with a wonky wheel, and a special offer on pork pies at the far end of a crowded aisle..
I already know I'm going to die, and through my country's average life expectancy I have a very rough statistical probability on which to base my assumpations as to when. Having some nano-computer-bot thing telling me its probably in ten years means a few adjustments to that, so of course I would want to know. However that prediction itself won't be accurate as of course my environment and so many other variables won't be in the equation (oh and not to mention that damn bus hurtling towards me)...
This reminds me of what we use to call the Live Observations list, which was supposed to have a carefully documented list of software failures or faults along with related actions and change proposals, but tended to turn into a to-do list/comments/information/oh-shit-its-broken-damn- you repository. Based on a beautifully crafted (hmm) excel spreadsheet, theres no doubt this was a PLog in disguise. I think we all agree that such information exchanges have existed since before computers, and the only value added by any of these systems is to overcome physical limitations in terms of access, and to enable better organisation of large amounts of information through automation. So that begs the question, whats the next revolutionary improvement over a whiteboard?
hehehe... funny as that is, I think you're onto a winner. People want to know when they're being watched by someone /not/ in their field of view. Imagine the marketing potential of a device attached to the buttocks, alerting female wearers of an er.. admiring onlooker. This would probably result in some kind of armageddon (and a lot of slapped faces), along with the subsequent development of ButtBlog jamming devices...
This reminds me of that device (I forget who developed it) which looked like a cycle helmet and had the ability to recognise objects. As with so much technology, I get concerned as to what we're actually trying to achieve here... I'm having a forgetful day, but who was it said man is just trying to make a machine in his own image? Seems increasingly valid...Show me a machine that shocks the wearer every time they perform a ridiculously stupid act, now that would be a step forward.