> > Ecological change is usually on the order of hundreds of thousands of years.
> Bull puckey. I suggest you read Spencer Weart's excellent article in Physics > Today. Seems there is a whole heap of data to support the notion that a lot of > ecological change occurs on very short time scales (oceanic currents, > de/re-forestation due to climate alterations, etc).
I'm aware of punctured equilibrium/isolated population theories and I agree with them.
Unfortunately, I think you've been sidetracked by this issue; it's irrelevent the main issue.
The problem of rapid environmental change is that the more rapid it is, the greater the proportion of species are wiped out. For sure a proportion will survive and adapt, but the more rapid the change, the smaller that proportion is.
I have no wish to see the continuation of the current mass extinction event, because I like biodiversity.
> The same thing has been happening for ever. > Its how bio diversity starts.
Not quite.
Ecological change is usually on the order of hundreds of thousands of years.
Evolution is a slow process; it can cope with hundreds of thousands of years.
It doesn't cope with drastic changes on the order of a hundred years.
When *that* happens, species just get wiped out.
The rate of change in their environment is greater than the rate of change in their genome and so they find themselves trying to behave in a way entirely unsuited to their new environment.
Examples of this are swimming sixty miles in open water in storms, or trying to eat bamboo when there's none left because it doesn't grow any more, or laying eggs which only hatch when it gets hotter than 28.5C but it never gets that warm any more, etc.
> It only took two times of dropping to one knee in the middle of the grocery > aisle, upending my son onto the other knee and a couple of quick whacks on his > bottom to curtail whiny outbursts over whatever pretty shiny box with on it that > he wanted. Not even hard whacks, it was the embarrassment and shame of having > that done in front of strangers that did it.
I would ask you to consider the other consequences of your actions.
I agree what's been done is completely effective at stopping him from using disruptive behaviour in an attempt to coerce his parent into buying something.
However, being physically disciplined, *excruciatingly so in public*, also tells the child that his self-respect means very little or nothing to his parent (this is the natural consequence of humiliation). Parents are THE most important factors in a child's life. Children naturally perceive what their parents do as always correct and adjust their logic accordingly. If he is "told", by his parents actions ("it's okay to beat you in public if you want something you can't have"), that he is worth very little, that *is* what he will believe; and when he grows up, he will have no self-confidence and no self-respect.
One other issue is that of proportionality. The death sentance is not handed out for speeding offenses. If it were, the world would be a horrific place. Imagine being a child where such a terrible experience is given to you for what is, when all is said and done, a fairly trivial behaviour; and this in turn leads to another issue, whereby adults have to accept children are *children*, they lack the experience to be responsible in the way adults are. It is often the case that children behaviour obnoxiously - but the fact is, they're children and don't know any better. Adults, despite being irritated, annoyed and frustrated, are *adults*, and must therefore behave reasonably, no matter how they feel.
I was about 10 when my mother divorced and remarried badly. I had an appalling step-father while I was a teenager. I'm now almost 33; for the last six years I've been doing therapy to recover from the constant humiliation he inflicted.
I was lucky, because I had a normal life till my mother divorced, so deep down, in my core, I'd already come to think I was okay, and so I rejected and hated my step-father.
If humiliation begins from age zero, you've had it. Your very inner core believes you're not worth it. You don't *know* any different and you think and feel this is normal and you behave in the same way to your children.
> From the article: 'When kids see flashing pictures on cereal boxes we don't > expect them to just ask for the product, but to say, "I want it", said Axel > Gerlt, an engineer at Siemens tasked with helping packaging companies implement > the technology.'
Western culture appears to have lost its vision.
New technology being thought of in terms of how much you can make a child coerce its parent into buying cereal?
I would expect everyone to feel this way and so understand that my comment was serious and about that issue.
Well - everyone except the person who somewhere in the Coca-Cola organisation *read and approved* this blurb as being part of what the company wishes to project.
> The lightly carbonated, mid-calorie beverage, which is designed to appeal to > adult consumers, is yet another example how The Coca-Cola Company reaches out to > new audiences and addresses new beverage occasions.
Spew, vomit, hurl, etc.
It's true what they say, about marketing people having sold their souls.
> It's also one of the State roles to regulate so-called "free markets". Many > think that the stock exchange is an example of a "free market", but it's > actually very regulated (insider trading laws, as one of many examples).
One of the roles of State is to ensure everyone plays by the same rules. Insider trading is a form of monopoly - those with additional information keep it to themselves, takes steps to ensure others do not know, and profit by it.
> So to say that free markets are efficient, one must first define by what one > mean by a free market.
State regulation only to prevent monopolies and neighbourhood effects.
> For some very strange reason some people think that a so called "free market > solution" is always best (a solution looking for a problem). Actually, > unregulated "free market" can have a devasting effect on the people and the > economy : Russia and the Crisis of Neoliberalism(1999)
> Did it occur to you, that a regulated market is not a free market, and a free > market may well have monopolies?
The more a free market has monopolies, the less free is it.
> Some even argue that monopolies are even unevitable in a free market, and not > necessarily bad.
There are natural monopolies (Microsoft, for example) and as I understand the matter, they are always worse than a free market. However, a private monopoly is probably the least worst kind (with State monopolies being the worst kind, since they often abuse the law to maintain their monopoly, this is Friedman's view).
> There are many people, especially here on Slashdot, who believe that a less > regulated market leads inevitably to a more competetive market, the results of > the study seem to suggest otherwise.
I think you're mixing up two different types of regulation.
Regulation which acts to prevent monopolies is good.
Regulation which acts to discourage the free market is bad.
There's a lot of regulation which discourages the free market - agricultural subsidies, for example, or trade tariffs. Reducing that sort of regulation is good.
> And where does Adam Smith present a discussion on the matter of regulation, in > which cases it is good, and in which cases it is not?
When you specify something like a cable, it's straightfoward to get it right, because the job the cable does and the way it's used is very well understood and doesn't vary between users.
With something complex like a data center, there's so much variance in how they're operated, exactly what they do, where they are, etc...having a standard may well *not* fit everyone's needs, either because their needs were not perceived or understood at the time or because their needs simply cannot be met by the standard.
It's not too surprising, though. DRM has to extend to display hardware for it to be any use.
Right now I'm a Windows users and I have been for many years. I've stayed with W2K because I didn't much like the direction XP took. I'm pretty sure that there is going to come a point in the future where I move to Linux, because the control the Windows OS would have over my PC is unacceptable.
Unfortunately, the majority of PC users have no idea that this issue even exists.
Little did I know when I bought it that every 15 minutes it would make a loud screeching noise as it performs a self-check.
There's no way to turn this off and it's über annoying. It's a lovely drive in all other respects, but I won't buy another unless I know for a *fact* it doesn't behave in this way.
> Some tasks, such as web serving, mail serving, and > to some degree data-base machines scale almost > linearly with the number of processors. All of the > first tier, and some of the second tier server > manufacturers have been selling 32+-way SMP boxes > for years. They work pretty damn well.
I explicitly described this method of multi-threading in my reply.
I also noted that when the work done by each thread is examined, it is performing serial tasks; e.g. it is internally single-threaded, so we haven't *really* got away from the single-threaded paradym.
32 threads in hardware on one chip is the same as 32 slow CPUs.
Current programming languages are insufficiently descriptive to permit compilers to generate usefully multi-threaded code.
Accordingly, multi-threading is currently handled by the programmer; which by and large doesn't happen, because programmers are not used to it.
A lot of applications these days are weakly multi-threaded - Windows apps for example often have one thread for the GUI, another for their main processing work.
This is *weak* multi-threading; because the main work done occurs within a single thread. Strong multi-threading is when the main work is somehow partioned so that it is processed by several threads. This is difficult, because a lot of tasks are inherently essentially serial; stage A must complete before stage B which must complete before stage C.
The main technique I'm aware of for making good use of multi-threading support is that of worker-thread farms. A main thread receives requests for work and farms them out to worker threads. This approach is useful only for a certain subset of problem types, however, and within the processing of *each* worker thread, the work done itself remains essentially serial.
In other words, clock speeds have hit the wall, transistor counts are still rising, the only way to improve performance is to have more CPUs/threads, but programming models don't yet know how to actually *use* multiple CPU/threads.
Slashdot Mirror
> > Ecological change is usually on the order of hundreds of thousands of years.
> Bull puckey. I suggest you read Spencer Weart's excellent article in Physics
> Today. Seems there is a whole heap of data to support the notion that a lot of
> ecological change occurs on very short time scales (oceanic currents,
> de/re-forestation due to climate alterations, etc).
I'm aware of punctured equilibrium/isolated population theories and I agree with them.
Unfortunately, I think you've been sidetracked by this issue; it's irrelevent the main issue.
The problem of rapid environmental change is that the more rapid it is, the greater the proportion of species are wiped out. For sure a proportion will survive and adapt, but the more rapid the change, the smaller that proportion is.
I have no wish to see the continuation of the current mass extinction event, because I like biodiversity.
> Really? There has not yet been a catastrophic event in Earth's history that life
> has not coped with.
I think the whole point of being worried about global warming is that catastrophic events are best avoided.
> The same thing has been happening for ever.
> Its how bio diversity starts.
Not quite.
Ecological change is usually on the order of hundreds of thousands of years.
Evolution is a slow process; it can cope with hundreds of thousands of years.
It doesn't cope with drastic changes on the order of a hundred years.
When *that* happens, species just get wiped out.
The rate of change in their environment is greater than the rate of change in their genome and so they find themselves trying to behave in a way entirely unsuited to their new environment.
Examples of this are swimming sixty miles in open water in storms, or trying to eat bamboo when there's none left because it doesn't grow any more, or laying eggs which only hatch when it gets hotter than 28.5C but it never gets that warm any more, etc.
> It only took two times of dropping to one knee in the middle of the grocery
> aisle, upending my son onto the other knee and a couple of quick whacks on his
> bottom to curtail whiny outbursts over whatever pretty shiny box with on it that
> he wanted. Not even hard whacks, it was the embarrassment and shame of having
> that done in front of strangers that did it.
I would ask you to consider the other consequences of your actions.
I agree what's been done is completely effective at stopping him from using disruptive behaviour in an attempt to coerce his parent into buying something.
However, being physically disciplined, *excruciatingly so in public*, also tells the child that his self-respect means very little or nothing to his parent (this is the natural consequence of humiliation). Parents are THE most important factors in a child's life. Children naturally perceive what their parents do as always correct and adjust their logic accordingly. If he is "told", by his parents actions ("it's okay to beat you in public if you want something you can't have"), that he is worth very little, that *is* what he will believe; and when he grows up, he will have no self-confidence and no self-respect.
One other issue is that of proportionality. The death sentance is not handed out for speeding offenses. If it were, the world would be a horrific place. Imagine being a child where such a terrible experience is given to you for what is, when all is said and done, a fairly trivial behaviour; and this in turn leads to another issue, whereby adults have to accept children are *children*, they lack the experience to be responsible in the way adults are. It is often the case that children behaviour obnoxiously - but the fact is, they're children and don't know any better. Adults, despite being irritated, annoyed and frustrated, are *adults*, and must therefore behave reasonably, no matter how they feel.
I was about 10 when my mother divorced and remarried badly. I had an appalling step-father while I was a teenager. I'm now almost 33; for the last six years I've been doing therapy to recover from the constant humiliation he inflicted.
I was lucky, because I had a normal life till my mother divorced, so deep down, in my core, I'd already come to think I was okay, and so I rejected and hated my step-father.
If humiliation begins from age zero, you've had it. Your very inner core believes you're not worth it. You don't *know* any different and you think and feel this is normal and you behave in the same way to your children.
> From the article: 'When kids see flashing pictures on cereal boxes we don't
> expect them to just ask for the product, but to say, "I want it", said Axel
> Gerlt, an engineer at Siemens tasked with helping packaging companies implement
> the technology.'
Western culture appears to have lost its vision.
New technology being thought of in terms of how much you can make a child coerce its parent into buying cereal?
We're amusing ourselves to death.
Odd...
This post is now;
20% Interesting
20% Flamebait
20% Insightful
Prevously, there was a vote for "Underrated".
It appears to have spontaniously disappeared? ah, or perhaps the voter wrote something in the thread?
I'm surprised I was given a -1 flamebait.
Reading the blurb, I felt psychically sick.
I would expect everyone to feel this way and so understand that my comment was serious and about that issue.
Well - everyone except the person who somewhere in the Coca-Cola organisation *read and approved* this blurb as being part of what the company wishes to project.
*That* I find amazing.
> The lightly carbonated, mid-calorie beverage, which is designed to appeal to
> adult consumers, is yet another example how The Coca-Cola Company reaches out to
> new audiences and addresses new beverage occasions.
Spew, vomit, hurl, etc.
It's true what they say, about marketing people having sold their souls.
> Personally, I'd rather *DE*cellerate to avoid a crash,
It's easy to imagine situations where you can only accelerate to avoid the crash.
What happens if you need to accelerate to avoid a crash?
> It's also one of the State roles to regulate so-called "free markets". Many
> think that the stock exchange is an example of a "free market", but it's
> actually very regulated (insider trading laws, as one of many examples).
One of the roles of State is to ensure everyone plays by the same rules. Insider trading is a form of monopoly - those with additional information keep it to themselves, takes steps to ensure others do not know, and profit by it.
> So to say that free markets are efficient, one must first define by what one
> mean by a free market.
State regulation only to prevent monopolies and neighbourhood effects.
> For some very strange reason some people think that a so called "free market
> solution" is always best (a solution looking for a problem). Actually,
> unregulated "free market" can have a devasting effect on the people and the
> economy : Russia and the Crisis of Neoliberalism(1999)
Russia is not a free market.
> Did it occur to you, that a regulated market is not a free market, and a free
> market may well have monopolies?
The more a free market has monopolies, the less free is it.
> Some even argue that monopolies are even unevitable in a free market, and not
> necessarily bad.
There are natural monopolies (Microsoft, for example) and as I understand the matter, they are always worse than a free market. However, a private monopoly is probably the least worst kind (with State monopolies being the worst kind, since they often abuse the law to maintain their monopoly, this is Friedman's view).
> There are many people, especially here on Slashdot, who believe that a less
> regulated market leads inevitably to a more competetive market, the results of
> the study seem to suggest otherwise.
I think you're mixing up two different types of regulation.
Regulation which acts to prevent monopolies is good.
Regulation which acts to discourage the free market is bad.
There's a lot of regulation which discourages the free market - agricultural subsidies, for example, or trade tariffs. Reducing that sort of regulation is good.
> And where does Adam Smith present a discussion on the matter of regulation, in
> which cases it is good, and in which cases it is not?
Pretty much all of Book IV.
> Customers are always better off when government bureaucrats get out of the way
> and let the market work, right? Well, maybe not in all cases.
This is economics 101.
Free markets are efficient. Monopolies are the exact opposite of a free market. One of the roles of the State is to intervene to prevent monopolies.
Slashdot is going downhill.
Posts about full-on AI being developed and now this?
Do you really want to present something which has been known about since Adam Smith wrote Inquiry (1776) as if it were startling new news?
Be interesting to see if it's useful.
When you specify something like a cable, it's straightfoward to get it right, because the job the cable does and the way it's used is very well understood and doesn't vary between users.
With something complex like a data center, there's so much variance in how they're operated, exactly what they do, where they are, etc...having a standard may well *not* fit everyone's needs, either because their needs were not perceived or understood at the time or because their needs simply cannot be met by the standard.
--
Toby
It's only been three years...
It's not too surprising, though. DRM has to extend to display hardware for it to be any use.
Right now I'm a Windows users and I have been for many years. I've stayed with W2K because I didn't much like the direction XP took. I'm pretty sure that there is going to come a point in the future where I move to Linux, because the control the Windows OS would have over my PC is unacceptable.
Unfortunately, the majority of PC users have no idea that this issue even exists.
--
Toby
Punishment must be appropriate to the crime.
If it's not, then the punishment is a crime.
--
Toby
I have the 160GB deskstar.
Little did I know when I bought it that every 15 minutes it would make a loud screeching noise as it performs a self-check.
There's no way to turn this off and it's über annoying. It's a lovely drive in all other respects, but I won't buy another unless I know for a *fact* it doesn't behave in this way.
--
Toby
Is this really still news?
--
Toby
OS boot times are usually disk and network bound.
I don't see how even an order of magnitude increase in CPU power could shorten boot times to the extent described here.
There must be other factors.
--
Toby
See title :-)
--
Toby
So we make Tube entrances secure.
Bombers then attack concert halls.
We make concert halls secure.
Bombers then attack football stadiums.
We make football stadiums secure...
There is no purely defensive solution to this problem.
--
Toby
I had an interview with MS Research in Cambridge.
The boss there was considerate, intelligent and thoughtful. The interview process was proper and appropriate.
I would argue in general, citing my experience in contrast to that given in the story, that it is unwise to generalise from a small number of cases.
(FYI, I didn't make the grade, and wasn't hired.)
--
Toby
"This is one of the technological advancement vital to the ageing population of Japan, where 1 in 5 Japanese are over 65 years old."
Surely if 1 in 5 Japanese are over 65 years old, there's going to be an equally proportional reduction in crime?
--
Toby
> Some tasks, such as web serving, mail serving, and
> to some degree data-base machines scale almost
> linearly with the number of processors. All of the
> first tier, and some of the second tier server
> manufacturers have been selling 32+-way SMP boxes
> for years. They work pretty damn well.
I explicitly described this method of multi-threading in my reply.
I also noted that when the work done by each thread is examined, it is performing serial tasks; e.g. it is internally single-threaded, so we haven't *really* got away from the single-threaded paradym.
--
Toby
32 threads in hardware on one chip is the same as 32 slow CPUs.
Current programming languages are insufficiently descriptive to permit compilers to generate usefully multi-threaded code.
Accordingly, multi-threading is currently handled by the programmer; which by and large doesn't happen, because programmers are not used to it.
A lot of applications these days are weakly multi-threaded - Windows apps for example often have one thread for the GUI, another for their main processing work.
This is *weak* multi-threading; because the main work done occurs within a single thread. Strong multi-threading is when the main work is somehow partioned so that it is processed by several threads. This is difficult, because a lot of tasks are inherently essentially serial; stage A must complete before stage B which must complete before stage C.
The main technique I'm aware of for making good use of multi-threading support is that of worker-thread farms. A main thread receives requests for work and farms them out to worker threads. This approach is useful only for a certain subset of problem types, however, and within the processing of *each* worker thread, the work done itself remains essentially serial.
In other words, clock speeds have hit the wall, transistor counts are still rising, the only way to improve performance is to have more CPUs/threads, but programming models don't yet know how to actually *use* multiple CPU/threads.
El problemo!
--
Toby