Did you even read the first paragraph of the GP? You know, where he pointed out that the record companies don't just ask for artists to sign contracts that some might consider unfair (arguable whether they are unfair or not, conceded). They ask for this, and then they turn around and commit contract fraud by lying to the artists about how much money is really being brought in, etc. Whether the original contract was fair or not, and whether you think contract fraud is fair or not, the law of the land says that contract fraud is no bueno.
The fact that people still sign contracts with these companies is very suggestive that perhaps they feel that there are no alternatives. It suggests that people are resigned to getting screwed over, not necessarily on the contracts themselves, but on how closely those contracts are followed. It suggests that people feel like there is no alternative but to idly sit by and watch the law be broken. I say that this is a very bad thing indeed.
We have critics because some people don't have time to go see and evaluate for themselves every show, song, movie, book, painting, sculpture, etc. that is ever produced by the human race. Choices have to be made. Critics are useful in that regard because they can go see every show, or listen to every song, in fact that is their full-time job. They then evaluate what they see, hear, read, etc., purely based of course upon their own opinions. So the proper way to use critics is to read critical reviews of several shows (books, paintings, whatever) that you have seen, both that you liked and that you disliked, and find a couple of critics whose opinions tend to match your own. Then you can extrapolate that perhaps those critics will have opinions matching your own about shows that you haven't seen yet. Finally, if the critics who tend to agree with you like a show, then you can put it on your short list of shows that you will have time to go see; if they don't like it, then you needn't bother with it. It's kind of like asking a friend "Hey, what'd you think of that movie you saw last weekend? Would I like it?"
Yeah, you'll miss some good shows this way, and you'll see some that you don't like. But unless you can really go see everything, you're not going to see all the ones you would think are good, and using critics properly gets you a better selected set of go-see shows than random selection.
Of course critics are not some sort of Supreme Court of Art. Nobody except some of the more pompous critics themselves would claim that. But, because of the way people use critics, getting good critical reviews can be crucial to short-term success of any sort of Art. Performance art in particular very rarely gets a chance for long-term success if they have already failed at short-term success, so this is quite important. And yes, sometimes the short-term success does come even though critical reviews were overwhelmingly negative. Statistically, we'd expect this to happen sometimes. If you think of critics as a poll like the Gallup poll, then it is immediately obvious that sometimes the results of the poll (a limited sample) will be quite far off of the population average.
Critics aren't (or at least shouldn't be) telling you that you should like or dislike any particular work. In some sense, they are making a guess as to whether or not you would like or dislike a particular work. If you look at it this way, then critics suddenly seem much less meaningless.
Well, if there were actually some effect upon the public welfare, for instance, if browsing to boingboing poisoned the municipal water supply, then yes, there would be a very good argument for blocking it from the municipal wifi... So, a "public welfare" argument does hold water, but only if what is claimed actually has something to do with the public welfare, which is very very rarely the case.
I don't think that's a healthy interpretation. It allows eg the municipal wifi to block all opposition political speech, but let through (or even push) friendly political speech on the web. This leads to a very gross imbalance artificially imposed by the incumbent government, even though nobody has been arrested.
I agree that the government doesn't have to facilitate political speech, but if they go out of their way to block some, they'd better have a very evenhanded approach, spreading the love to opposed, friendly, and indifferent speech alike.
Ye gods, no! A rootkit on the sun? The botnet turf wars we have now are bad enough, but when one of the nets takes over the rooted sun, we'll all be cooked!
Capacity of hard disks is nothing like capacity of magnetic tape. At Fermilab, we use tape because it'd be a real PITA to put dozens of petabytes on hard disks. CERN will soon have an even bigger problem in this regard.
We already know how to make metals that are much harder than those we make bullets out of. Problem with hardness is that along with it usually goes brittleness. Ever try to use a diamond to scratch glass? It is quite likely to shatter under your fingers. Hit two hardened steel tools together? Bad news, there is a strong risk of either sharp bits flying off, or one or both tools shattering completely.
I'd imagine that a bullet as hard and as brittle as diamond (or more so) would likely shatter before it even left the barrel. So instead of one piece of matter with a ton of momentum coming at you, you'd have a lot of tiny shards, each with not much momentum, and thus each one much more easily stopped by body armor, or even just clothing.
OTOH, I don't know that this new metal they are describing is exceedingly brittle. It might not be.
OTOH, vegan farts are pretty rank all on their own. So, by eating animals, we are both reducing the amount of methane from animal farts, and reducing the noxiousness of our own farts. It's a win-win situation!
And how, out of curiousity, were you privy to this information?
In Other News, Steve Ballmer once bragged (under an NDA'd room that included Margaret Thatcher and Celine Dion) that he'd just spent the night with three monkeys in a sleazy motel. (They were typing the windows source code on a couple of typewriters for him...)
Note Slashdot has a problem with Magnet URI's there is NO space between the last K and XV
That's part of the lameness filter. In an effort to prevent screen-widening hacks, long strings of characters with no whitespace get some whitespace inserted in them. You can get around this by enclosing the URI in a URL tag. The URI as displayed will still include the whitespace, but the HREF for the generated link will not. Observe:
Yes. I stand corrected. There does exist a bijection from R to R^n. That is surprising to me. I was definitely wrong about the negation having been proven (unless of course ZFC and friends turn out to be inconsistent:).
Some of what Ubuntu Ubuntu (instead of, say, Debian) is not the software, and is not free or Free. For a quick example: Shipit. Is there any meaningful way in which Shipit could be Free? It is most certainly not free (to Shuttleworth), nor will it be.
So, to put it shortly, the Communist Manifesto is inconsistent with Das Kapital in that one lauds the death of the state and the other calls for a strong state.
I agree with you, partly. Going from all theory to practice is relatively quick, but only if you're smart. There are plenty of people out there who really have about as hard a time going from the abstract to the concrete as they do going from the concrete to the abstract.
Most people studying physics are studying it because it relates to their REAL interest (such as engineering).
Well, that depends on what you mean by "studying physics". If you mean "taking a course in physics", then you are correct. If you mean "obtaining a degree in physics", then I would argue that you are incorrect based on my experience. While it is true that the majority of physics degree holders do not end up working in physics research, typically that is not by design. Most people who are seeking a degree in physics are doing so because they want to do physics, because they think that physics is interesting in its own right (both theoretical and experimental). They leave the field either because they aren't good enough at it to get by, or because they can't find a job in the field (although they typically have a fairly easy time finding jobs that pay pretty well outside the field).
Take a look at pure math. Provided that space is continuous, we can model position (in one dimension) as a real number. In two dimensions, we need 2 real numbers. There is no way to use a single real number to pinpoint an arbitrary position in the cartesian plane with continuous axes. Similarly, for three continuous dimensions, you can use no fewer than 3 real numbers to describe an arbitrary position. In jargon, there is no bijection from R to R^3 (reals to reals times reals times reals). This can be (and has been) proven.
Now, it might be that space is discrete instead. Then you could use a single number to describe an arbitrary position. In jargon, there does exists a bijection (infinitely many of them in fact) from Q to Q^3 (rationals to rationals times rationals times rationals) or N to N^3 (naturals etc.), or even N to Q^3. This can be (and has been) proven.
But, I'm not sure there's any real argument for space being discrete. I'm not familiar with any theory which uses a discrete space, but I would conjecture that it would be much more complicated and difficult to work with. And certainly there isn't any experimental evidence which suggests a discrete space.
They aren't so much extra "time" dimensions as in extra directions of time, as extra time-like dimensions which has a specific meaning that refers to how they behave in calculating space-time distances.
Yes. Also, IIRC, theories with multiple timelike dimensions tend to be unstable, leading to the collapse of all but one timelike dimension, so that the total length of space in the extra timelike directions is very small. This would tend to lead to a physical interpretation in which the extra timelike dimensions matter very very little, especially on macroscopic scales.
Of course, I'm an experimentalist, not a theorist, so I'm really just talking out of my elbow here.
Also, check out The Boy Who Reversed Himself by William Sleator. Really aimed at a slightly younger (junior high) audience, but still an interesting and entertaining read.
Programming is to computer science what engineering is to physics. Programming isn't science, it is an application of science. You wouldn't say that engineering is the most important aspect of physics, and you wouldn't say that de-emphasizing the engineering aspects of physics amounts to lowering the bar. Rather, the opposite. Emphasizing the engineering aspects of physics amounts to lowering the bar in a physics program.
Really, the fields of programming and computer science ought to be separated. Most people studying computer science are doing so because they want to learn programming. Conflating the two means that people wanting to study computer science itself have a hard time finding a program which meets their desires. If de-emphasizing the programming aspects of computer science in a conflated program causes more women to enter and complete that program, then separating the two ought to achieve a similar effect, and would still provide a program for those who wish to learn computer engineering more than computer science.
Fair enough. I also didn't mean to imply that the south had a monopoly on politeness. The OP complained that people around him are so very impolite, and I know that people here are more polite than he describes. So, I suggested he move here. According to your experience, he could move to where you live for the same effect. And yes, there certainly are plenty of examples of impoliteness, but it is the exception rather than the rule, which seems to be opposite to where the OP lives.
Slashdot Mirror
Did you even read the first paragraph of the GP? You know, where he pointed out that the record companies don't just ask for artists to sign contracts that some might consider unfair (arguable whether they are unfair or not, conceded). They ask for this, and then they turn around and commit contract fraud by lying to the artists about how much money is really being brought in, etc. Whether the original contract was fair or not, and whether you think contract fraud is fair or not, the law of the land says that contract fraud is no bueno.
The fact that people still sign contracts with these companies is very suggestive that perhaps they feel that there are no alternatives. It suggests that people are resigned to getting screwed over, not necessarily on the contracts themselves, but on how closely those contracts are followed. It suggests that people feel like there is no alternative but to idly sit by and watch the law be broken. I say that this is a very bad thing indeed.
I have my kitchen decorated with cases of Dublin Dr Pepper bottles... Sweeeeeet stuff.
We have critics because some people don't have time to go see and evaluate for themselves every show, song, movie, book, painting, sculpture, etc. that is ever produced by the human race. Choices have to be made. Critics are useful in that regard because they can go see every show, or listen to every song, in fact that is their full-time job. They then evaluate what they see, hear, read, etc., purely based of course upon their own opinions. So the proper way to use critics is to read critical reviews of several shows (books, paintings, whatever) that you have seen, both that you liked and that you disliked, and find a couple of critics whose opinions tend to match your own. Then you can extrapolate that perhaps those critics will have opinions matching your own about shows that you haven't seen yet. Finally, if the critics who tend to agree with you like a show, then you can put it on your short list of shows that you will have time to go see; if they don't like it, then you needn't bother with it. It's kind of like asking a friend "Hey, what'd you think of that movie you saw last weekend? Would I like it?"
Yeah, you'll miss some good shows this way, and you'll see some that you don't like. But unless you can really go see everything, you're not going to see all the ones you would think are good, and using critics properly gets you a better selected set of go-see shows than random selection.
Of course critics are not some sort of Supreme Court of Art. Nobody except some of the more pompous critics themselves would claim that. But, because of the way people use critics, getting good critical reviews can be crucial to short-term success of any sort of Art. Performance art in particular very rarely gets a chance for long-term success if they have already failed at short-term success, so this is quite important. And yes, sometimes the short-term success does come even though critical reviews were overwhelmingly negative. Statistically, we'd expect this to happen sometimes. If you think of critics as a poll like the Gallup poll, then it is immediately obvious that sometimes the results of the poll (a limited sample) will be quite far off of the population average.
Critics aren't (or at least shouldn't be) telling you that you should like or dislike any particular work. In some sense, they are making a guess as to whether or not you would like or dislike a particular work. If you look at it this way, then critics suddenly seem much less meaningless.
Well, if there were actually some effect upon the public welfare, for instance, if browsing to boingboing poisoned the municipal water supply, then yes, there would be a very good argument for blocking it from the municipal wifi... So, a "public welfare" argument does hold water, but only if what is claimed actually has something to do with the public welfare, which is very very rarely the case.
I don't think that's a healthy interpretation. It allows eg the municipal wifi to block all opposition political speech, but let through (or even push) friendly political speech on the web. This leads to a very gross imbalance artificially imposed by the incumbent government, even though nobody has been arrested.
I agree that the government doesn't have to facilitate political speech, but if they go out of their way to block some, they'd better have a very evenhanded approach, spreading the love to opposed, friendly, and indifferent speech alike.
Ye gods, no! A rootkit on the sun? The botnet turf wars we have now are bad enough, but when one of the nets takes over the rooted sun, we'll all be cooked!
Capacity of hard disks is nothing like capacity of magnetic tape. At Fermilab, we use tape because it'd be a real PITA to put dozens of petabytes on hard disks. CERN will soon have an even bigger problem in this regard.
We already know how to make metals that are much harder than those we make bullets out of. Problem with hardness is that along with it usually goes brittleness. Ever try to use a diamond to scratch glass? It is quite likely to shatter under your fingers. Hit two hardened steel tools together? Bad news, there is a strong risk of either sharp bits flying off, or one or both tools shattering completely.
I'd imagine that a bullet as hard and as brittle as diamond (or more so) would likely shatter before it even left the barrel. So instead of one piece of matter with a ton of momentum coming at you, you'd have a lot of tiny shards, each with not much momentum, and thus each one much more easily stopped by body armor, or even just clothing.
OTOH, I don't know that this new metal they are describing is exceedingly brittle. It might not be.
OTOH, vegan farts are pretty rank all on their own. So, by eating animals, we are both reducing the amount of methane from animal farts, and reducing the noxiousness of our own farts. It's a win-win situation!
Hmmm, you're right. Interesting... I don't off the top of my head know the HTML entity thingamajiggers for ?, :, and =.
And how, out of curiousity, were you privy to this information?
In Other News, Steve Ballmer once bragged (under an NDA'd room that included Margaret Thatcher and Celine Dion) that he'd just spent the night with three monkeys in a sleazy motel. (They were typing the windows source code on a couple of typewriters for him...)
<URL:magnet:?xt=urn:btih:DMDDBZV4X4NWSEHVEBBZHSMF
(without the extra space of course) becomes
magnet:xturnbtihDMDDBZV4X4NWSEHVEBBZHSMFY4GHDKXV
You are correct. I was not. Somebody give this guy some mod points.
Yes. I stand corrected. There does exist a bijection from R to R^n. That is surprising to me. I was definitely wrong about the negation having been proven (unless of course ZFC and friends turn out to be inconsistent :).
Some of what Ubuntu Ubuntu (instead of, say, Debian) is not the software, and is not free or Free. For a quick example: Shipit. Is there any meaningful way in which Shipit could be Free? It is most certainly not free (to Shuttleworth), nor will it be.
So, to put it shortly, the Communist Manifesto is inconsistent with Das Kapital in that one lauds the death of the state and the other calls for a strong state.
Unless the susceptible strain multiplies fast enough to starve out the slower multiplying resistant strain.
I want to stand up and cheer, except I'd wake my roommate and neighbors.
I agree with you, partly. Going from all theory to practice is relatively quick, but only if you're smart. There are plenty of people out there who really have about as hard a time going from the abstract to the concrete as they do going from the concrete to the abstract.
Take a look at pure math. Provided that space is continuous, we can model position (in one dimension) as a real number. In two dimensions, we need 2 real numbers. There is no way to use a single real number to pinpoint an arbitrary position in the cartesian plane with continuous axes. Similarly, for three continuous dimensions, you can use no fewer than 3 real numbers to describe an arbitrary position. In jargon, there is no bijection from R to R^3 (reals to reals times reals times reals). This can be (and has been) proven.
Now, it might be that space is discrete instead. Then you could use a single number to describe an arbitrary position. In jargon, there does exists a bijection (infinitely many of them in fact) from Q to Q^3 (rationals to rationals times rationals times rationals) or N to N^3 (naturals etc.), or even N to Q^3. This can be (and has been) proven.
But, I'm not sure there's any real argument for space being discrete. I'm not familiar with any theory which uses a discrete space, but I would conjecture that it would be much more complicated and difficult to work with. And certainly there isn't any experimental evidence which suggests a discrete space.
Of course, I'm an experimentalist, not a theorist, so I'm really just talking out of my elbow here.
Also, check out The Boy Who Reversed Himself by William Sleator. Really aimed at a slightly younger (junior high) audience, but still an interesting and entertaining read.
Programming is to computer science what engineering is to physics. Programming isn't science, it is an application of science. You wouldn't say that engineering is the most important aspect of physics, and you wouldn't say that de-emphasizing the engineering aspects of physics amounts to lowering the bar. Rather, the opposite. Emphasizing the engineering aspects of physics amounts to lowering the bar in a physics program.
Really, the fields of programming and computer science ought to be separated. Most people studying computer science are doing so because they want to learn programming. Conflating the two means that people wanting to study computer science itself have a hard time finding a program which meets their desires. If de-emphasizing the programming aspects of computer science in a conflated program causes more women to enter and complete that program, then separating the two ought to achieve a similar effect, and would still provide a program for those who wish to learn computer engineering more than computer science.
Fair enough. I also didn't mean to imply that the south had a monopoly on politeness. The OP complained that people around him are so very impolite, and I know that people here are more polite than he describes. So, I suggested he move here. According to your experience, he could move to where you live for the same effect. And yes, there certainly are plenty of examples of impoliteness, but it is the exception rather than the rule, which seems to be opposite to where the OP lives.