As almost every single comment up until now talks about personal experiences or makes stupid jokes, I'm going to critique the method he uses to score an answer. From the second link (find a google cache of it to read it) you can see that he treats each answer and estimate of the accuracy of the answer as a single question - you get a single score from both. I think this approach is fundamentally flawed. Why not instead score the guess (with some sort of algorithm like the one he uses) and then score the guess of accuracy by the same method. Then if you want a single number, add the two together. Right now if you guess well and guess your accuracy perfectly, you get zero points. That is completely out of whack. Instead, using my way you score the best possible score when you guess perfectly and perfectly guess your accuracy, and the worst possible score when you guess horribly and horribly guess your accuracy. The scores move between those two extremes rationally too. As he wanted people who guessed zero error (thought their guess was a perfect guess) to get no points, he obviously had an agenda - that people should be penalized for thinking they are perfectly right. In no way is this an unbiased or useful test.
It isn't more useful. The best place to go is google IMHO. The problem with man is that it doesn't give any sort of hands on examples usually, sort of like the difference between knowledge and wisdom. Man pages are obsoleted by current search technology and the irreplacable veteran user who helps other people.
Since this all takes place before TOS (or whatever timeline happens in the craziness of their plot lines) I think the implication is that they still haven't figured out what the right things to do are, and that there is much room to improve. The way they go with the hard choices tends to come back and haunt them.
I use it to fly the planes, guy. The two analog control sticks are great for controlling the rudders and pitch. I wish there was a throttle, but I'm not buying another controller just for that:-P.
Personally I bought a dualshock controller (I don't even own a playstation) and an adapter for use with older games. The controller is perfect for super nintendo because it has basically the same layout, and it works in a pinch for any other game as well. I use it with battlefield 1942 and racing games. The adapter was only 4 bucks, and as I may eventually buy a PS/2 to play dvd's and video games, the controller was a good buy as well (but it was expensive).
Stargate SG1 and Atlantis are both going downhill unfortunately. I've seen literally every episode, and after awhile you know episodes before you see them. "Oh, its another 'something has taken over someone's body' episode. Oh its another 'semi-advanced people in the middle of a war' episode." I thought that they were about to reveal the stargate to the entire world in SG1, which would have led to new direction and cool ideas, but that didn't happen to my disappointment. At least they brought back the bad-ass NID. Currently there is a badguy vacuum in the show, and I'm tired of the "bigger ghould" trick. I hope they introduce something different and most importantly, thought provoking.
As you can see from my other post, I found that too but even that site was a quote. This is like a quote of a quote of a quote now:-( Damn man how much plaguerizing can we take??
I have to disagree with Enterprise. You are missing the best parts of the show - the hard moral choices. Should the captain torture a captive to extract information from him (by putting him in an airlock)? Should they destroy an unarmed outpost because it can report their position? I admit they are few and far between, and the show is (in my ranking) little better than Voyager, but it uses very little technobabble, has had a few striking episodes (shuttlepod 1 was a fine work) space battles where there is visual damage to the Enterprise (in one scene you see crewmen get sucked out into space after a chunk is blown out of the hull).
The time travel is hokey, the metaplot is mediocre, but don't throw out the baby with the bathwater.
I've never read the book, but I think I'm an adrenaline addict from all the sports and games I've played. Always a competitive sport - in swimming it wasn't uncommon for me or other swimmers to shake before the start of a race because of the excitement. In FPS's, especially clan games, the tension is so powerful that I play on an entirely different level. When I drive my car to work, my favorite part is the most dangerous traffic, driving a little too fast for the situation (never been in or caused an accident). At theme parks I go on roller coasters again and again, always the fastest and tallest one. Maybe someday I'll cross the line and someone will get hurt, but right now it is the possibility of loss (my own pain or losing to someone else) that gives the rush. I think the rush during beatings in a clockwork orange were more about power than about danger. Mine are all about focus and coming up to the very edge.
It's not only compensation after the fact, it's very improbable compensation after the fact.
I believe they modeled their prize after the Nobel prize, which awards somewhere around 1M dollars. The whole point is not that people working in the field are hoping for the prize to cover their expenses, instead it is so that once someone is really good at what they do, and is willing to distribute their work for the good of humanity, they should be free of the constraints of money to continue their work after they recieve the prize. Not before.
I think that paying 1M for a single programmer is actually quite high, except that they are obviously going to stimulate growth in the ingres OSS community. I think this is a good plan, and one of the only ways to jump start the OSS juggernaught. The problem with OSS is that it has to be popular to have those "million eyes" on it, and this goes a long way towards making that happen.
Well I have karma to burn so I'll respond to the troll:
News flash HungSoLow - energy production will always be expensive and produce pollution. There are no magic ways to avoid paying the toll for power! There is simply no way that a couple of electrodes (the production of which produce quite a bit of pollution) and some carefully refined heavy water (the process of refining produces quite a bit of pollution) produce more energy than goes in. Right now this is all pie in the sky science - some fusion is taking place maybe (cold fusion is not new to science, but producing energy with it would be) but there is simply no way that this will ever turn out to be some sort of magic power source that never runs out. And then your segue into military technology is priceless - if somehow we did create power from basically nothing, your worry is that the military might use it??? You're not worried about the fact that every economy would probably crash overnight, that war would almost certainly follow, and that it wouldn't be a dinky war but something along the lines of WWIII?
we're pretty smart guys who are spending alot of money looking at the problem. Mean while all these people on slashdot know the answer already. I guess we should have just asked them.
Well duh, I could have told you that like 5 years ago!
Except the space program in its current state is only a sideshow for the media. Most if not all of the manned space missions could be better accomplished by robots. The shuttle can barely get to low earth orbit. We need to scrap it all and start over. I hope no one gets hurt, but I don't think it would be such a bad thing if the hurricaine wrecked our space program.
The old Apollo missions were the right direction. Imagine what we could do now, or ten years from now, with better materials, infinitely better computer simulations, better communications, and a deep understanding of the conditions in space. Maybe if we start all over and reach further instead of not as far, we'll have some real progress. To quote Jerry Pournelle, "I always dreamed I'd live to see the first man walk on the moon. I never imagined I'd live to see the last."
Then to make it even worse the existing telecom grid was put in place by private companies using MASSIVE government subsidies.
Ah, but as Adam Smith said, the wealth of a country is proportional to the connectedness of the people in it (roads, trains, phones, etc.) so a government subsidy of broadband makes sense - it increases everyone's wealth and improves worker effeciency by leaps and bounds. The return from the combination of that and the multiplier effect should easily be enough to convince the government to invest in broadband connections for everyone. These things aren't just for entertainment and communication, they are extremely useful for work and education as well. I'm not suprised the US government has not subsidized the deployment, but they should.
Yeah um... I'm gunna go ahead and disagree with you on this one.
The true value of any code is its current use combined with its reusability. Yes, it is nice to be able to write some code that does something useful quickly. But that code that can be used again and again is extremely valuable - and is especially valuable when other programmers can also reuse your code. Perl is hard to reuse when you wrote your own program. For someone else to understand it is a nightmare. And yes, I've written software in perl. I've written in assembly, basic, visual basic, C, C++, Pascal, matlab, excel, delphi, and bash. Only assembly rivals perl in incomprehensibility, and that is only when it isn't commented. Perl's lack of structure is an impediment to other people reusing the code. For a one-off program, or something very well defined and documented, Perl is fine. But it sure ain't pretty.
Guess you didn't RTA... the studies showed that there was no difference in word recognition when it was in ALL CAPS (which eliminates shape recognition) and when it is in lowercase. It turns out your mind recognizes the letters in parallel, with some lookahead to distant words to determine which is the best place to look next. That seems to be done on length alone.
except that the whole thing is crap. If the letters are truly scrambled then it is nearly impossible to read the words. Check it out on snopes or do a google search for it:-)
I'd be slightly interested in this program if I thought that it would happen at all. Think about the potential for VOIP. Think about cell phone companies getting mad that they are being put out of business by the government. Think about ISPs getting mad that they are being put out of business by the government. Then think about how much money these guys will spend to make sure this kind of thing doesn't happen. Helloooo lobbying industry, Christmas came twice for you this year!
Slashdot Mirror
As almost every single comment up until now talks about personal experiences or makes stupid jokes, I'm going to critique the method he uses to score an answer. From the second link (find a google cache of it to read it) you can see that he treats each answer and estimate of the accuracy of the answer as a single question - you get a single score from both. I think this approach is fundamentally flawed. Why not instead score the guess (with some sort of algorithm like the one he uses) and then score the guess of accuracy by the same method. Then if you want a single number, add the two together. Right now if you guess well and guess your accuracy perfectly, you get zero points. That is completely out of whack. Instead, using my way you score the best possible score when you guess perfectly and perfectly guess your accuracy, and the worst possible score when you guess horribly and horribly guess your accuracy. The scores move between those two extremes rationally too. As he wanted people who guessed zero error (thought their guess was a perfect guess) to get no points, he obviously had an agenda - that people should be penalized for thinking they are perfectly right. In no way is this an unbiased or useful test.
It isn't an estimate if you can already see the results! No fair cheating ;-)
It isn't more useful. The best place to go is google IMHO. The problem with man is that it doesn't give any sort of hands on examples usually, sort of like the difference between knowledge and wisdom. Man pages are obsoleted by current search technology and the irreplacable veteran user who helps other people.
Scientific progress goes boing??
Since this all takes place before TOS (or whatever timeline happens in the craziness of their plot lines) I think the implication is that they still haven't figured out what the right things to do are, and that there is much room to improve. The way they go with the hard choices tends to come back and haunt them.
I use it to fly the planes, guy. The two analog control sticks are great for controlling the rudders and pitch. I wish there was a throttle, but I'm not buying another controller just for that :-P.
Personally I bought a dualshock controller (I don't even own a playstation) and an adapter for use with older games. The controller is perfect for super nintendo because it has basically the same layout, and it works in a pinch for any other game as well. I use it with battlefield 1942 and racing games. The adapter was only 4 bucks, and as I may eventually buy a PS/2 to play dvd's and video games, the controller was a good buy as well (but it was expensive).
Stargate SG1 and Atlantis are both going downhill unfortunately. I've seen literally every episode, and after awhile you know episodes before you see them. "Oh, its another 'something has taken over someone's body' episode. Oh its another 'semi-advanced people in the middle of a war' episode." I thought that they were about to reveal the stargate to the entire world in SG1, which would have led to new direction and cool ideas, but that didn't happen to my disappointment. At least they brought back the bad-ass NID. Currently there is a badguy vacuum in the show, and I'm tired of the "bigger ghould" trick. I hope they introduce something different and most importantly, thought provoking.
Wait, we can make women out of robots put together from sixteen PocketPC's, a Garmin eTrex GPS, three Aibos, a Roomba and a Segway???
/.'ers can speak the same language as women - C++!
You're sitting on a goldmine right there! Finally
As you can see from my other post, I found that too but even that site was a quote. This is like a quote of a quote of a quote now :-( Damn man how much plaguerizing can we take??
I found it in a google cache... here that seems to be the exact same.
I have to disagree with Enterprise. You are missing the best parts of the show - the hard moral choices. Should the captain torture a captive to extract information from him (by putting him in an airlock)? Should they destroy an unarmed outpost because it can report their position? I admit they are few and far between, and the show is (in my ranking) little better than Voyager, but it uses very little technobabble, has had a few striking episodes (shuttlepod 1 was a fine work) space battles where there is visual damage to the Enterprise (in one scene you see crewmen get sucked out into space after a chunk is blown out of the hull).
The time travel is hokey, the metaplot is mediocre, but don't throw out the baby with the bathwater.
I've never read the book, but I think I'm an adrenaline addict from all the sports and games I've played. Always a competitive sport - in swimming it wasn't uncommon for me or other swimmers to shake before the start of a race because of the excitement. In FPS's, especially clan games, the tension is so powerful that I play on an entirely different level. When I drive my car to work, my favorite part is the most dangerous traffic, driving a little too fast for the situation (never been in or caused an accident). At theme parks I go on roller coasters again and again, always the fastest and tallest one. Maybe someday I'll cross the line and someone will get hurt, but right now it is the possibility of loss (my own pain or losing to someone else) that gives the rush. I think the rush during beatings in a clockwork orange were more about power than about danger. Mine are all about focus and coming up to the very edge.
Anyone want to take me skydiving?
I bet it doesn't pay as well as my job where I communicate with people through email, messages, and meetings, and talk to them about my job!
It's not only compensation after the fact, it's very improbable compensation after the fact.
I believe they modeled their prize after the Nobel prize, which awards somewhere around 1M dollars. The whole point is not that people working in the field are hoping for the prize to cover their expenses, instead it is so that once someone is really good at what they do, and is willing to distribute their work for the good of humanity, they should be free of the constraints of money to continue their work after they recieve the prize. Not before.
I think that paying 1M for a single programmer is actually quite high, except that they are obviously going to stimulate growth in the ingres OSS community. I think this is a good plan, and one of the only ways to jump start the OSS juggernaught. The problem with OSS is that it has to be popular to have those "million eyes" on it, and this goes a long way towards making that happen.
Well I have karma to burn so I'll respond to the troll:
News flash HungSoLow - energy production will always be expensive and produce pollution. There are no magic ways to avoid paying the toll for power! There is simply no way that a couple of electrodes (the production of which produce quite a bit of pollution) and some carefully refined heavy water (the process of refining produces quite a bit of pollution) produce more energy than goes in. Right now this is all pie in the sky science - some fusion is taking place maybe (cold fusion is not new to science, but producing energy with it would be) but there is simply no way that this will ever turn out to be some sort of magic power source that never runs out. And then your segue into military technology is priceless - if somehow we did create power from basically nothing, your worry is that the military might use it??? You're not worried about the fact that every economy would probably crash overnight, that war would almost certainly follow, and that it wouldn't be a dinky war but something along the lines of WWIII?
we're pretty smart guys who are spending alot of money looking at the problem. Mean while all these people on slashdot know the answer already. I guess we should have just asked them.
Well duh, I could have told you that like 5 years ago!
Except the space program in its current state is only a sideshow for the media. Most if not all of the manned space missions could be better accomplished by robots. The shuttle can barely get to low earth orbit. We need to scrap it all and start over. I hope no one gets hurt, but I don't think it would be such a bad thing if the hurricaine wrecked our space program.
The old Apollo missions were the right direction. Imagine what we could do now, or ten years from now, with better materials, infinitely better computer simulations, better communications, and a deep understanding of the conditions in space. Maybe if we start all over and reach further instead of not as far, we'll have some real progress. To quote Jerry Pournelle, "I always dreamed I'd live to see the first man walk on the moon. I never imagined I'd live to see the last."
Then to make it even worse the existing telecom grid was put in place by private companies using MASSIVE government subsidies.
Ah, but as Adam Smith said, the wealth of a country is proportional to the connectedness of the people in it (roads, trains, phones, etc.) so a government subsidy of broadband makes sense - it increases everyone's wealth and improves worker effeciency by leaps and bounds. The return from the combination of that and the multiplier effect should easily be enough to convince the government to invest in broadband connections for everyone. These things aren't just for entertainment and communication, they are extremely useful for work and education as well. I'm not suprised the US government has not subsidized the deployment, but they should.
What next I wonder? Masturbating in time to the squeals that a modem makes?
What I do with myself in my own spare time is my business!
er hold on, getting a fax! =D
Since you sir, have made the first hack the planet joke, you are now contractually obligated to fulfill your promise because:
1)You have met and are currently co-located with yourself.
You are the first person to make a "Hack the Planet" joke.
Therefore, it is your duty and task to kick your ass forthwith.
Yours truly,
Ignignot
Yeah um... I'm gunna go ahead and disagree with you on this one.
The true value of any code is its current use combined with its reusability. Yes, it is nice to be able to write some code that does something useful quickly. But that code that can be used again and again is extremely valuable - and is especially valuable when other programmers can also reuse your code. Perl is hard to reuse when you wrote your own program. For someone else to understand it is a nightmare. And yes, I've written software in perl. I've written in assembly, basic, visual basic, C, C++, Pascal, matlab, excel, delphi, and bash. Only assembly rivals perl in incomprehensibility, and that is only when it isn't commented. Perl's lack of structure is an impediment to other people reusing the code. For a one-off program, or something very well defined and documented, Perl is fine. But it sure ain't pretty.
Guess you didn't RTA... the studies showed that there was no difference in word recognition when it was in ALL CAPS (which eliminates shape recognition) and when it is in lowercase. It turns out your mind recognizes the letters in parallel, with some lookahead to distant words to determine which is the best place to look next. That seems to be done on length alone.
except that the whole thing is crap. If the letters are truly scrambled then it is nearly impossible to read the words. Check it out on snopes or do a google search for it :-)
I'd be slightly interested in this program if I thought that it would happen at all. Think about the potential for VOIP. Think about cell phone companies getting mad that they are being put out of business by the government. Think about ISPs getting mad that they are being put out of business by the government. Then think about how much money these guys will spend to make sure this kind of thing doesn't happen. Helloooo lobbying industry, Christmas came twice for you this year!