I do agree with your evaluation. I just don't think eliminating a 2-party-system will help. I'm from Germany and we do not have a 2-party-system, yet still we see the same kind of left-vs.-right propaganda that you are describing (and, incidentally, with the same skew to the left as you see). It crosses party boundaries. It's like the human race is only able to perceive things in black and white. I am at a loss at what to do.
It seems to me that you need the languages with the right features to be able to implement good tool support. Consider the excellent IDEs that have been created for Java (Eclipse, IDEA, NetBeans) with extremely advanced refactoring capabilities, code navigation, and inline compilation with meaningful error messages. Such support requires the ability to do static analysis, which you can't do properly in some of the newly popular languages like JavaScript.
The article seems to imply that the humanities are not science, but helping the real science (and lists engineering, of all things). I completely disagree!
Science is a way of thinking, an approach --- you can and must apply it to everything: Humanities as well as Natural Sciences as well as Engineering. It includes rigorous work, sceptical thinking, an open mind, etc. --- and it is necessary for ALL scientists to follow, regardless of their field.
Here's the rub. A lot of people show up at the doctor for things which will take n days to go away - with or without treatment. The common cold, for example. They won't accept NOT getting any prescription and will hop from doctor to doctor until they get one.
Now the best thing would be educating the public about this issue. This is very, very hard to do. Barring that, it is actually better for the patients and cheaper to just prescribe placebos - they DO work in this case! (up to the placebo effect, as any other medicine would).
Unfortunately there is another issue involved: Most placebos (at least in Germany) are homeopatic. This lends credibility to the whole homeopatic industry, and THEY are nothing but quacks. And THAT is a bad thing.
I have not read the 1972 book, but I think the main point was that economic growth has to stop at some point (because the planet won't support it) and we have to go for a steady-state economy. The problem with that is, while it is perfectly possible to do, it apparently still just doesn't fit into the heads of the people responsible.
I recommend reading "2052: A Global Forecast for the Next Forty Years" (http://www.amazon.com/2052-Global-Forecast-Forty-Years/dp/1603584218).
It is written by the same guy who co-wrote the 1972 report "The Limits Of Growth" and deals with what humanity will likely do (globally) in the next 40 years (not what we SHOULD do, but what we will most likely do).
It is very interesting (and actually quite easy) to read and deals among other things with the expected results of climate change.
I read about a clever piece of work by some town officials in a German town to drive away teens hanging around a certain area at night (drinking and harrassing people).
What they did was install a light usually used by dermatologists which highlights unclean skin -- pimples and the like.
It seems the point is that "matter outside our solar system [...] seems to be deficient in oxygen compared to neon." (from TFA). The newly found matter seems to be distributed differently: 74 oxygen atoms for every 20 neon atoms compared to 111 oxygen atoms for every 20 neon atoms within the solar system.
I still don't understand the "material what we're mad from" part...
Exactly. I play games for having a bit of fun (like in first person shooters). If I have to really use my brain, why waste it on a game? Why not do something actually worth doing?
Funny you should mention IMAX. They recently installed projectors in a cinema in Berlin, where apparently the system can't even be activated without being calibrated EVERY day.
On the other hand, calibration depends on user input as well...:)
The German magazine c't (from Heise) has recently compared three 3D display techniques (with glasses) with 45 test subjects (original source - full text is not available online for free). Granted, the number is not statistically relevant, but I found it interesting nonetheless. They compared LCD screens with shutter glasses, LCDs with polarized glasses, and plasma screens with shutter glasses.
The result: The best technique is using polarized glasses, as those are the lightest and thus best to wear (i.e. a non-technical reason) while tester subjects found the shutter glasses to be too heavy and in some cases unbearable. Furthermore the reduced resolution of the polarization technique did not matter (most of the test subjects did not even notice). They also point out, however, that one of the main argument commonly heard against shutter glasses - flickering - was not a problem reported by any of the test subjects.
I would love to see a scientific study with a greater number of subjects...
I recently read a (very good) novel by Walter Tevis ("Mockingbird") which features telepathic buses called "thought buses". They'd listen to your brain stating a destination and drive there. In the novel, they originally also had the ability to "project" thoughts, but that was disabled due to "invasion of privacy".
By the way, is it just me or is the moderation system down?
Their about page (http://www.bilibot.com/about) claims that the name "bilibot" stems from the German word "bilig" (cheap). However, the word is actually written with two l ("billig") in German. I hope they are more thorough in their computing research...
For anyone else wondering what Wayland is: "Wayland is a lightweight display server for the GNU/Linux desktop. Started by Kristian Høgsberg [...] the software's stated goal is "every frame is perfect, by which I mean that applications will be able to control the rendering enough that we'll never see tearing, lag, redrawing or flicker"" (Wikipedia)
The problem with LaTeX mostly occurs when you create documents with many authors, for example scientific papers with multiple sections written by different people. Everyone has their own set of packages, and trying to integrate all into one coherent set is a major pain.
OK, my first thought here was "damn, one of them guys who can't differentiate between protocols and client applications". But no, turns out they were talking about Zureo (http://www.zudeo.com/), a separate app/business model which may yet require payment for their service.
So, there's two questions out for the/. crew to answer:
1) Was this move anticipated when the Azureus app was first released? I.e. gather a following and then move on with the name?
2) How much is a "community name" like Azureus worth these days, appearing on the news?
You can search inside of the book to get some more pages, but only a few at a time.
Seems like this is only intended to show you interesting books based on full text search, not for reading or using them online. For this, you'd still have to buy them.
So I guess no publisher is going to be offended;)
Slashdot Mirror
SCNR
I do agree with your evaluation. I just don't think eliminating a 2-party-system will help. I'm from Germany and we do not have a 2-party-system, yet still we see the same kind of left-vs.-right propaganda that you are describing (and, incidentally, with the same skew to the left as you see). It crosses party boundaries. It's like the human race is only able to perceive things in black and white. I am at a loss at what to do.
It seems to me that you need the languages with the right features to be able to implement good tool support. Consider the excellent IDEs that have been created for Java (Eclipse, IDEA, NetBeans) with extremely advanced refactoring capabilities, code navigation, and inline compilation with meaningful error messages. Such support requires the ability to do static analysis, which you can't do properly in some of the newly popular languages like JavaScript.
USB plugs only fit in after they are observed, Before that, they are in superposition. See http://www.funnyjunk.com/funny_pictures/4555650/The+Quantum+state+of+a+USB/ for an explanation.
The article seems to imply that the humanities are not science, but helping the real science (and lists engineering, of all things). I completely disagree!
Science is a way of thinking, an approach --- you can and must apply it to everything: Humanities as well as Natural Sciences as well as Engineering. It includes rigorous work, sceptical thinking, an open mind, etc. --- and it is necessary for ALL scientists to follow, regardless of their field.
Here's the rub. A lot of people show up at the doctor for things which will take n days to go away - with or without treatment. The common cold, for example. They won't accept NOT getting any prescription and will hop from doctor to doctor until they get one.
Now the best thing would be educating the public about this issue. This is very, very hard to do. Barring that, it is actually better for the patients and cheaper to just prescribe placebos - they DO work in this case! (up to the placebo effect, as any other medicine would).
Unfortunately there is another issue involved: Most placebos (at least in Germany) are homeopatic. This lends credibility to the whole homeopatic industry, and THEY are nothing but quacks. And THAT is a bad thing.
So - either way you lose.
US != World
But in general, "the media" loves to report stuff like this, normally completely without citations of course.
Apparently, not so bad: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16058-prophesy-of-economic-collapse-coming-true.html
I have not read the 1972 book, but I think the main point was that economic growth has to stop at some point (because the planet won't support it) and we have to go for a steady-state economy. The problem with that is, while it is perfectly possible to do, it apparently still just doesn't fit into the heads of the people responsible.
I recommend reading "2052: A Global Forecast for the Next Forty Years" (http://www.amazon.com/2052-Global-Forecast-Forty-Years/dp/1603584218).
It is written by the same guy who co-wrote the 1972 report "The Limits Of Growth" and deals with what humanity will likely do (globally) in the next 40 years (not what we SHOULD do, but what we will most likely do).
It is very interesting (and actually quite easy) to read and deals among other things with the expected results of climate change.
I read about a clever piece of work by some town officials in a German town to drive away teens hanging around a certain area at night (drinking and harrassing people).
What they did was install a light usually used by dermatologists which highlights unclean skin -- pimples and the like.
The teens stayed away.
It seems the point is that "matter outside our solar system [...] seems to be deficient in oxygen compared to neon." (from TFA). The newly found matter seems to be distributed differently: 74 oxygen atoms for every 20 neon atoms compared to 111 oxygen atoms for every 20 neon atoms within the solar system. I still don't understand the "material what we're mad from" part...
Exactly. I play games for having a bit of fun (like in first person shooters). If I have to really use my brain, why waste it on a game? Why not do something actually worth doing?
Yay, Nazis again. Computers are what got them to the moon! I saw it in a movie, it must be true! (btw: The movie looks like loads of fun)
"I am Princess Vespa, daughter of Roland, King of the Druids!"
Maybe they'll find a space camper on that rock?
Exactly. Same thing here in Germany. Had to switch to the "US" version on the Gizmodo page; after that, it worked.
Funny you should mention IMAX. They recently installed projectors in a cinema in Berlin, where apparently the system can't even be activated without being calibrated EVERY day. On the other hand, calibration depends on user input as well... :)
The result: The best technique is using polarized glasses, as those are the lightest and thus best to wear (i.e. a non-technical reason) while tester subjects found the shutter glasses to be too heavy and in some cases unbearable. Furthermore the reduced resolution of the polarization technique did not matter (most of the test subjects did not even notice). They also point out, however, that one of the main argument commonly heard against shutter glasses - flickering - was not a problem reported by any of the test subjects.
I would love to see a scientific study with a greater number of subjects...
By the way, is it just me or is the moderation system down?
Their about page (http://www.bilibot.com/about) claims that the name "bilibot" stems from the German word "bilig" (cheap). However, the word is actually written with two l ("billig") in German. I hope they are more thorough in their computing research...
Here is the website and the wikipedia entry.
Windows 7 has been available through amazon.de for some time now, and is being delivered as well. Nothing to see here, move along.
The problem with LaTeX mostly occurs when you create documents with many authors, for example scientific papers with multiple sections written by different people. Everyone has their own set of packages, and trying to integrate all into one coherent set is a major pain.
OK, my first thought here was "damn, one of them guys who can't differentiate between protocols and client applications". But no, turns out they were talking about Zureo (http://www.zudeo.com/), a separate app/business model which may yet require payment for their service.
/. crew to answer:
So, there's two questions out for the
1) Was this move anticipated when the Azureus app was first released? I.e. gather a following and then move on with the name?
2) How much is a "community name" like Azureus worth these days, appearing on the news?
-DaPhil
You can search inside of the book to get some more pages, but only a few at a time. Seems like this is only intended to show you interesting books based on full text search, not for reading or using them online. For this, you'd still have to buy them. So I guess no publisher is going to be offended ;)